Equestria's first interstellar ship is crewed by the best and brightest Equestria has to offer. Twilight Sparkle and her friends are determined to uncover the origin of the mysterious alien Signal, no matter what it costs. A comment-driven story.
Twilight Sparkle was only a filly when Equestria detected the enigmatic Signal. A series of increasingly complex mathematical proofs, the Signal transformed from an intriguing curiosity to reliable evidence of extraequestrian life.
And as it happened, Equestria's exploration of their own solar system was nearly complete. With colonies orbiting every planet and large body, and an asteroid belt filled with miners and prospectors, Twilight's civilization was just about ready to turn its focus outward. The signal was less than ten light-years away, within reach of a daring, experimental voyage. A voyage Twilight Sparkle would lead.
Along with a small crew of the most skilled scientists and engineers Equestria could offer, Twilight is determined to uncover the mystery of the Signal, and brave the final frontier for future generations of Equestrian explorers.
A comment-driven, CYoA story. Please use the links provided in the author's notes of each chapter to vote, rather than the comments.
This story is a creative experiment of mine, one meant to explore the general idea that creativity is often most fostered by restrictions. As a result, I've imposed a number of restrictions on the writing of this story, which I'm stating explicitly here so I can be called out if I break any of them.
1. Brevity is the soul of wit No chapter may be more than 1000 words long. This wordcount only includes prose, and not the questions/rolls.
2. Every choice matters When a choice is offered in a chapter, at least one sub-optimal choice must be present, with no indication about which is which other than the prose itself. Every chapter should end with a CYoA-style decision tree when possible.
3. Fate is cruel and the universe is heartless The decision of the vote must be respected. This means any character could be killed, or the entire story could end in failure, if that's what the votes decide. Where numbers, stats, and randomization appear in the text, these elements are not verisimilitude, but are decided by public diecrolls in my discord server.
Note: Because of the unusual production of this story, its chapters won't be edited in the same way as my usual fare. Feel free to point out any mistakes you encounter.
Awesome cover by Zutcha as you can probably tell. Editing stuff by Two Bit and Sparktail, where applicable.
Captain Twilight Sparkle shifted uneasily in the confines of her insulated sleeper suit. She could feel the fabric pressing down on her coat, constricting her movement. It’s alright. Once I go into hibernation, I won’t be feeling anything.
She pushed off gently from the back of the elevator, then used only an occasional flap of her wings to keep her moving through cryogenics. She passed five other pods, each of which was already occupied, and had been for weeks. There was no way to look inside, but the glowing name she saw on each screen was enough of a reminder that she wasn’t really alone.
Geologist, Pinkie Pie said the first of the screens, along with the crewmare’s cutie mark. Heart rate .01 BPM. Lifesigns nominal. So went all the others, each one shining a friendly green. Cryogenics were a testing field of thaumic science now—not at all the shotgun in the dark of spellcraft that had sent the Crystal Empire spiraling forward in time. But fundamentally, the theory was the same. And equally secure.
Twilight’s own pod waited in back, its mechanisms open and exposed. The cot within had been pulled out, along with the intricate series of enchanted crystals, plastic tubes, and flashing circuitry.
But that wasn’t what she cared to see. No, she was far more interested in the dragon sitting beside it.
Second Officer Spike wore no compression suit, only plain fabric with a belt holding his various tools. He clutched a tablet in front of him, and seemed to be studying its contents intently. He looked up as Twilight approached, eyes widening with joy at seeing her. “You finished your goodbyes, Captain?”
Twilight grinned stupidly at the title. It was either that, or let him see her pain. “You don’t have to call me that.”
“Do now,” he said, rising to his claws and saluting. “We’re Equestria’s best. They’ll be watching the holovids of this for centuries. You know they’ll watch this part.” He pointed sideways, towards the large display above the last pod. There was a camera built into the screen, even if it was too small for Twilight to see. And Spike was probably right.
“The little colts and fillies watching this shouldn’t think we’re not real ponies, Spike. It doesn’t matter how important our mission is.” She reached out, pulling him close to her with a wing. It wasn’t easy, not with the wrap thoroughly covering her feathers. But she stretched against the spandex, and he seemed to get the message. She held him there for a few seconds, as tightly as she’d held her brother back in Equestria. “What about you? Last chance to change your mind.”
Spike laughed, though there was something of nervousness to it. “You’ve got one escape pod, Captain. You really offering to give it to me?” His voice cracked, and he looked away, wiping a tear from his face with the back of his claw.
“We’ll have a lander by the time we get there,” Twilight said. “Better than any escape pod. It’s not like there will be anywhere to escape to before we get to Proximus. If something goes wrong, we either sleep until Equestria can send a rescue, or…” She trailed off. There was no need to say more.
Spike nodded. “I knew I’d be saying goodbye to some ponies when I came, Twi. I picked the ones I couldn’t give up. Besides…” He chuckled weakly. “In dragon time, forty years is nothing! Maybe Rarity won’t think I’m a baby when she wakes up.”
“Specialist Rarity,” Twilight corrected, though her tone was teasing. “Seriously though, don’t be afraid to trade with me if you start…” She reached up towards her head, making a twisting motion with one hoof. “Just because the psychologists say that dragons are solitary creatures doesn’t mean there’s any shame in taking some time to rest. Or waking me up for a little company.”
He nodded. “I’m not too worried. We’ve got the tight-beam from Equestria following us the whole way. Big Mac says he’ll make sure they include all the solo adventure modules published in all of Equestria.”
Twilight nodded. There was a few seconds of silence between them, with nothing but the steady hum of the Equinox’s engines.
“You really think we might find somepony waiting for us when we get there?” Spike asked.
“Somepony sent the signal,” Twilight said. “We get to be Equestria’s first ambassadors. I know we’ll make a good impression.”
“Assuming they’re still there in forty years,” Spike muttered. But his pessimism didn’t seem serious. He offered Twilight the pad he was holding, which she took in her magic. “One last thing before your nap. Preliminary readings from Proximus. The computer wants direction on which landing craft to build. Uh… material permitting.”
Twilight scanned the tablet at a glance.
There wasn’t as much as she’d hoped. Calculations based on observations of Proximus suggested there were three planets, at least one of which was in its predicted habitable zone for liquid water. There was a large gas giant almost certainly outside that range, which might or might not be composed of the hydrogen they would need to make a return trip. Assuming the Equinox is still working after forty years. From that information, the Equinox’s computer had suggested one of several designs Equestria had provided to them.
Twilight had a decision to make. They only had the resources to build a single lander.
1. Construct the Wraith (Visual and machine stealth capabilities) 2. Construct the Pioneer (Reinforced to survive in extreme environments) 3. Construct the Prospector (Equipped with mining and fabrication hardware) 4. Let Spike Decide (He’ll be awake anyway, might as well let him choose once there’s more information)
4. Let Spike Decide (He’ll be awake anyway, might as well let him choose once there’s more information)
"I can't decide right now," Twilight said, pushing the tablet back with her magic. Spike caught it in his claws, frowning.
"You've got to decide," he said. "It takes a long time to build a lander, Twi."
"I know!" she grinned down at him. "And you'll be around to make the right choice. Wait until the probe gets there, then do what seems best." She hopped up onto the table, wincing visibly as the telescoping arms unhinged themselves from the cot and began adjusting her body into place. The cryopod looked like a tomb, even with most of its parts hinged open around her. I guess it might be. We've never kept somepony asleep for this long before. But ponies didn't brave new frontiers by staying safe in their beds.
"Good luck, Spike," she whispered, as the first blast of medication took her in the face. "See you… in a few."
"Yeah," he said. His tone stretched, becoming wistful. "In a few." Twilight saw no more.
But Spike did. Some selfish part of himself had been looking forward to this time alone—it was time Twilight had never given him growing up. To read as many comics as he wanted, do as few chores as he wanted. Not eat as much as he wished to, since the Equinox dispensed the rations automatically. The ship did not need his help. And while Ponies might've struggled under the high apparent gravity of acceleration, Spike's dragon constitution did not. He would have to enjoy it, because once it stopped, it would be into the centrifuge every day to keep his bones from getting weak.
For the first time in his life, Spike had an endless wealth of time on his claws. Enough time to play every adventure module from Equestria, to decorate the whole ship, to sit beside the hibernation pods for hours and tell Rarity just how he felt. Without an answer, obviously. Eventually, though, the leisure started getting to him, and he sent a request back along the laser line. He wanted home study university courses—as many as they would give.
"Here you go, buddy," came the datascroll from Big Mac. "You keep my sister safe now." So he gave himself a routine.
Spike studied on the main deck, where one day the crew might wake and live and look down at an alien world through real windows. The sky out here didn't include Celestia's sun, the window faced the wrong way for that. But they were still stars, the same stars he'd see from Equestria. The same stars his friends back home were seeing.
Spike didn't resist his dragon constitution, either. If he wanted to turn down the climate control to near freezing and sleep for a few months, who was going to stop him? The computer could wake him if anything serious happened that needed his attention. And after napping for a few weeks, his mind would be fresh for the next day of class.
The Equinox's systems became less of a mystery to him as the months turned to years. His own body changed too, and those changes were the most exciting of all. He almost woke Twilight when a pair of wings emerged on his back. But he'd also melted through several sections of deck-plating, and that would probably not have impressed her as much.
Eventually, the drone sent long ahead of the Equinox passed through Proximus, and though it had no fuel to stop it sent back enough data for Spike to select the prospector with certainty. Twilight would probably support his choice, and if not… she shouldn't have left it to him.
But then something terrible happened.
It was near the end of the trip—long enough that much of the deck was beginning to show wear from the places he'd walked, and he'd had to swap out his furniture with that stolen from other quarters. An explosion that shook the ship, waking him from one of his month-long naps. Spike jerked suddenly to alertness, ears flattening as alarms throbbed.
Spike did not sleep in his quarters, but in Engineering, with the Equinox's own sun burning just through the shield. Gas hissed into the air from several vents, even as bulkheads on both floors smashed closed. "MULTIPLE HULL BREACHES DETECTED. DANGER CODE SOMBRA!"
Spike's mind returned only sluggishly. But there was procedure for this, and the computer had made him rehearse it almost weekly. He pulled into a space-suit as quickly as he could and did nothing else until his helmet was securely in place. The screens circling the reactor weren't green anymore, but shone an angry amber, along with steadily increasing radiation levels. A pony in his position would be in trouble soon, but dragons were tougher.
Spike stopped in front of the nearest console, scanning it for the computer's warning messages.
Rupture detected in primary plasma line! Cause: Unknown. Damage detected in primary drive manifold! Coolant leak detected in central reactor! Atmosphere venting on decks 2-4!
If he were religious, Spike might've whispered a prayer of thanks to Celestia that they were still alive. If that line had broken inside the Equinox, they'd be nothing more than scraps of relativistic space debris.
He began shutting down the central reactor, claws moving sluggishly in gloves. He could actually feel the deck shake as the auxiliary chemical generators switched on, running a little unsteady after many years of neglect. They would keep him alive while he figured out what to do.
Spike quickly realized there weren't enough spare parts to get the engines ready for deceleration—not without some "creative" engineering. But the Equinox was built from highly modular components, and he was reasonably sure he could get enough by sacrificing a less-important system.
Scrap Backup Cryogenics (So long as nothing goes wrong, I should still be able to thaw them out.) Scrap the Lander (The Equinox can land. Taking off again, not so much.) Scrap the Weapons (We come in peace, why'd they even give us these?)
Waking from stasis was a painful process. Twilight remembered the awful discomfort she’d felt after a few training freezes. But now it was real, and she had to watch chunks of her mane crumble away from her face into the water washed of her pod. Her veins burned, and she knew a slurry of chemistry and spells blasted her from the inside.
How long have we been moving?
As the light gradually came up in her tiny pod, she watched the water draining away carry an awful lot of purple fur.
The pod finally opened, coolant gasses hissing around her and filling the stasis bay with fog. Her eyes didn’t want to focus, and they couldn’t. Not for hours, if she remembered her last time well enough. Even so, she could make out a purple blob above her, with little bits of gleaming white reflecting the amber status lights.
“Twilight… Twilight, say something! You look… ugh. No offence.” His voice sounded deeper, and each word came haltingly. “Celestia don’t let her be burned.”
“I’m n-not,” she croaked, though after just waking up that would be hard to believe. Particularly for a dragon, whose physiology wouldn’t allow him to ever experience the sensation himself. She held up one of her legs, and lifting it felt like she was lifting up Equestria’s sun with the raw might of magic alone. “Think I’m not. Can take… a few hours. Do we have a few hours?”
“I, uh… I think so,” Spike said. “We aren’t… exploding or anything.”
“Great.” Twilight couldn’t get out of the cot under her own power—that meant they were accelerating. But none of the technical details mattered to Twilight right now. She was barely even aware of Spike’s claws wrapping her in a fluffy towel, then helping her into a wheelchair and rolling her out.
I’d be the first one up. None of my friends are awake yet. Even in her addled post-thaw state, Twilight was conscious of the disarray of the ship around her. Numerous wall panels had been opened, and in many cases it looked as though elements from within had been stripped and moved. A layer of thick marker covered many of the surfaces, along with notes scrawled in Spike’s dense printing. Screens were cracked, or hung loose from their mountings, with displays that occasionally flickered when she tried to look at them.
“Take these,” Spike whispered, holding a little cup right in front of her mouth. Thaw pills. They would help her body repair the damage it had suffered during her long freeze. Until her friends woke up, she would hold the record for the longest-frozen pony alive.
She swallowed, careful not to chew and taste the awful flavor of the drugs. A few felt hard against her teeth—the little enchanted crystals that were the thaumochemical portion. Outside her field, but just as important.
Spike took her to the habitation deck, which meant a difficult ramp engineward. “Tell me…” Twilight muttered, finding the words came a little more easily to her now. “Tell me we made it. You didn’t wake me up to… die in space.” Some part of her wanted to die, with the way her muscles throbbed and her head was splitting. I only need a week or two of rehab. It’ll pass.
“We made it,” Spike said. “I got you… maybe a little earlier than we planned… but not that much earlier. We’re in the Proximus system. There were… some complications…” his voice got high again for a few seconds, words tripping over themselves as he went through a long list of system failures and retrofits that would’ve been trying even for their chief engineer. But Twilight was in no place to understand them all, and so she just waved him away with one wing. It responded sluggishly, and the feathers had gone bone-white.
I bet I look like a lab specimen. Like I just came out of formaldehyde. That wasn’t entirely divorced from the truth. “Save all that,” Twilight said. “My brain isn’t… quite ready to cope with it all.”
The bedrooms on the Equinox were surprisingly spacious, not the tiny cabins she was used to from the ships that could do atmosphere and space-travel both. It was mass that was at a premium, and making a room just a little wider wasn’t so hard. But the sheets felt hard, and even moved onto the current “floor” the mattress felt lackluster against her back at best. But considering how sore she was, she probably would’ve been uncomfortable even on the softest Equestrian cloud.
There was a little window, and her eyes would focus enough to let her look out at the sky. Some primitive part of her expected they would already be in orbit of their destination—but no, they were still decelerating.
“There’s one thing that can’t wait,” Spike said, once he’d settled her into the bed, and replaced her damp towel with some dry quilts. Some of them had other names sewn into them—bedding meant for the other crew members.
“It’s important we get an answer now. We’ve been suffering a cascading series of system failures since…” and Spike devolved into technical terms that Twilight wasn’t able to understand.
But his voice came back into focus a few seconds later. “Cryogenics was one of the systems effected. I’m not sure how much you know about how it works…”
“They’re solid-state,” Twilight remembered. “Almost… immune to damage. Right?”
“Each pod is, yes,” Spike said. He sounded so mature, so confident at a time when Twilight was vulnerable. How much did you grow up? “The theory is, if anything goes wrong, we can let ponies sleep longer, make repairs, wake them up later. Well, before the biochem printer went down, I managed to make enough revitalizer for two ponies. You’re one… we only have enough for one more. I need you to decide who it is.”
- Rainbow Dash (Climatology, Military Trained) - Fluttershy (Medicine, Linguist) - Applejack (Engineering, Hydroponics) - Pinkie Pie (Geology, Insight) - Rarity (Physics, EVA Expert)
Twilight stared unblinking into her mirror, eyes watering even with the assistance of a pair of new plastic glasses. A thin line of fuzzy mane had sprouted in the week since she had first woken, the only healthy color on her whole body.
Patches of her fur were still missing, with splotches of grayish skin visible underneath. But they’d started to itch terribly, which the manual told her meant they were healing. The joys of being generation one. She could only hope that Equestria’s future expeditions would have better versions of that technology.
The Equinox had gone from the factory perfection she remembered upon launch to a place of near-constant alarms and minor emergencies. She could hear one of them now, along with the faint crackle of Spike’s voice over the radio. “I got this!” he called. “It’s no big deal. Don’t let Applejack out of bed again.”
Twilight levitated the radio up to her face. Proximity was enough to make it click on. At least their field equipment was still working. “I was about to see her anyway.” She lifted her thick clipboard up off the deck, then bounded towards the door. She didn’t have very far to go—their quarters were arranged in a spiral around a central living area, like the spokes of a wheel.
Applejack’s bedroom door was open, and so Twilight could see straight through to where a roughly mare-sized lump was struggling into a wheelchair. Twilight herself wasn’t able to move terribly quick yet. She was only a week or so ahead of her friend when it came to healing.
“Wait, Applejack! Stay where you are!”
“Horsefeathers,” her friend cursed, slumping sideways into bed. Her legs were slipping out from under her though, and she was already starting to slip.
Twilight covered the distance as quickly as she could, climbing over a set of low chairs and stopping in the doorway.
Applejack looked the way Twilight felt a week ago—her head almost bare, her coat patchy and uneven. But there was no new growth on her yet. Twilight hurried over, pushing with a little magic to nudge her gently back into bed. “What did the computer say about your first duty shift, Applejack?”
“Two weeks,” Her friend muttered, glaring at the half-dozen pill bottles all around her. It came from being an Earth Pony—all that endurance meant drug resistance, which meant a harsher freeze than the other tribes. Twilight knew a little of what it felt like, but she was also an Alicorn, with the benefit of faster healing.
“Two weeks,” Twilight repeated. “You have my permission to ignore that restraint as soon as we explode. Until then, trust Spike. If he could manage four decades, he can handle a few more weeks.”
“I ain’t rightly convinced of that yet, Twi.” The mare sat up in bed, propping her back as vertically as she could. She’d somehow struggled into her duty jumpsuit, though Twilight couldn’t have guessed how. Her motions were sluggish and clumsy, and her eyes were perpetually unfocused. She had her own computer-issued glasses, though she wasn’t wearing them now.
“Well, I’ve got something that might make you feel better.” She held up the clipboard in her magic. “An exhaustive list of every system failure on the Equinox! How great is that?”
Applejack snatched for it. “For everything on that list, I bet there are three bigger problems he don’t even know about. He’s just a baby, Twi. We can’t… think of him like he’s a proper engineer.”
“We can,” Twilight argued. “He basically grew up on the Equinox. He’s known this ship longer than we’ve known each other. It’s possible… though I’m not making any judgements on it… that he might be better at keeping her running than you are.”
Another siren went off from somewhere down the hall, along with a brief flash of sparks from an exposed panel. Applejack rolled her eyes.
“Well, maybe not better,” Twilight added hastily. “But he’s not a baby. He did his best.”
Applejack took the clipboard, scanning over it with difficulty. “Could you, uh… help me find my glasses, Captain? I figure I must ‘a lost ‘em behind my desk ‘er somethin’.”
“Sure thing,” Twilight looked around for a few seconds, then lifted the crude plastic frames in her magic. She could see the faint layers there, though the lenses themselves had been melted and polished so well that it was almost imperceptible.
Applejack stuck out her tongue a little, muttering quietly to herself as she read. Now that was the engineer Twilight remembered. If anything convinced her that her friend would heal up in no time, it was the energy she could see flow into that face. Engineering was itself a kind of magic for Applejack.
“Spike explained all this to you?” Applejack asked.
She shook her head. “That would’ve been time he wasn’t using to fix the damage out there, or sleep. But I went through the computer a little. I know we… hit something when we penetrated Proximus from the interstellar void. Almost all the damage on that list occurred during that instant, or cascaded afterwards. I’m not qualified to interpret the data from before the impact, and what we’ve been reading ever since might as well be static.”
Applejack nodded, tapping her hoof against the clipboard. “Well, that’s what it says, Captain. And since you’re the Captain… I’m gonna need to know your first priority. Spike might not have talked to me much, but he made it pretty clear. He ain’t got the learnin’ to fix none of this. You’re gonna have to tell me what matters to you most. Any of it could kill us, so… it’s gotta be your call.”
1. Repair the transmitter/receiver array. Seems mighty secondary from where I’m sittin,’ but ya never know. It might be Equestria is just fittin’ to tell us somethin’ mighty critical. Or they were, few years ago. Or, ya’ know, maybe the ones who sent the message have been callin’ our names mighty insistent like and we can’t hear em no more.
2. Repair the eye. I don’t know any prospector worth two shakes of a comet’s tail ain’t got a workin’ eye and be fixin’ to fly through some uncharted patch’a space. We’re riding blind, nothing but what you’an see out the window with a glass. You know Spike said he’s been plottin’ the path towards Proximus by claw since we got into the system? That’s bloomin’ crazy.
3. Repair the engine. Spike sure did try his best, I don’t mean to make him feel bad ‘er nothin.’ But we’re leaking fuel like one’a Rainbow’s rainclouds. Remember how we’re supposed to be caryin’ enough propellant to tour all over Proximus and find whatever we might need for a trip home? If I don’t try an’ fix this, we better pray to Celestia wherever we stop has plenty of helium-3, cuz if it don’t we ain’t gonna move again.
4. Build Hydroponics. Hey, nopony ever heard of an apple blowin’ up no starship, but that ain’t the only thing we gotta’ worry about. Spike didn’t take it easy with the rations on the way over, if ya know what I mean. And more important-like, that Biofab ain’t broken, it’s outta feedstock. Guess Spike didn’t figure the computer would call all our revitalizer expired, or he wouldn’ta made so many sweets. Unless there’s life like we know it on some planet—and that’s a real long buck—the day we get our friends back comes three months after I plant our first crop a’ Geneseed.
Twilight Sparkle drifted through the computer mainframe, fighting down her stomach with every bounce and push with her wings. It’s okay, Applejack is doing what I told her. There’s no reason to be upset.
Repairing the Equinox’s engines required shutting them down, which meant they stopped decelerating. No more negative acceleration meant no more apparent gravity. Unlike some of her friends, Twilight was no rock hopping prospector, who had spent months at a time in low-to-no gravity. She liked her hooves on something solid, thanks. Just a few more days, she said. I can last a few more days.
Nograv hadn’t been nearly this bad before being frozen, but soft tissue was the slowest to heal, and her ears were still a work in progress. All it took was a single unexpected bump to send her clutching at her stomach. But Twilight fought that down, concentrated on each push, each bounce.
The central computer was the single largest part of the ship and the second-heaviest system after the engines. Twilight passed dozens of identical mainframe racks, their tapes dutifully spinning even after all these years. There wasn’t even any dust. The central computer usually ran in vacuum, except for the insulated fluid conduits taking heat away. But the huge computer would have to adapt, at least for a few hours.
So many of the Equinox’s terminals had given her trouble that Capitan Twilight had no choice but to go to the source.
She reached the chair, pulled it out, then slipped into the straps. She was a little pleased to see a few strands of her mane drift in front of her eyes and have to push them out of the way. Her feathers hadn’t recovered—she’d probably have white feathers in her wings for years. But if her body could finish healing away all the necrotic flesh, that would be good enough for her.
The keyboard at this terminal was still covered in a little plastic shroud. Twilight peeled it away and was pleased to see it didn’t crumble but came free with a delightfully satisfying sound. She unplugged the keyboard, testing each of its fourteen keys with her hooves. The springs were still good. Too bad we couldn’t keep the whole ship on vacuum like this. Might not be falling apart the way it is. But Equestria had been impatient to answer the signal, even if that meant sending a ship that wasn’t ready to run itself.
Twilight settled in against her chair, rested her hooves onto the keyboard’s rests, and settled into a familiar routine. Here in the Equinox’s mainframe she finally had her library.
There was a vast repository of information here, observations taken by their probe, messages back and forth from Equestria, and much more. She heard several of the drives behind her spin up as she drug through the vast library of information here. She’d been through bits and pieces of that during her time awake, trying to catch up on everything that had happened back in Equestria. Well, the Equestria of four years ago. Anything newer was still on its way.
And we’re missing it because the antenna is down.
But she had ruled that system secondary for now. They had to get their own microscopic world in order before they could worry about what was happening to another one.
Part of that would be setting a course. Spike had kept a general heading towards Proximus, but that was too general. If they were going to be burning fuel to slow down, might as well settle that orbit down around something useful. They’d already leaked enough fuel that their range would be reduced, though Applejack couldn’t yet tell her by how much.
For now, she needed to pick their first destination. With the sensors down, that meant going into the archives and digging up what the probe had seen on its flyby through Proximus over a decade ago.
The data took her some time to find. Despite the appearance of a well-oiled machine, the Equinox’s data storage involved many moving parts, not all of which were still moving. With enough time and the right resources, they had blueprints for fabricators that could replace literally anything on the Equinox. And we’ll have to seriously think about what we’re going to repair for the return trip. There’s no chance she’ll make it back to Equestria in this condition.
But that was a concern for a future Twilight. She couldn’t go back into storage again, not for at least a year to fully heal. And there would be no reason to return to Equestria until they had accomplished their purpose.
Fortunately for them, Equestria’s engineers had foreseen their current predicament. The computer had many layers of redundancy. After swapping out several dead spools, Twilight finally found the right backup drive.
Spike’s initial estimate had been right, all those years ago. There were only three planets in the system, plus a modestly sized asteroid belt that might’ve once been a fourth. Her judgment wouldn’t be final—she could always change their course if new information presented itself. But that would waste fuel, which they no longer had in great supply. When Applejack finished working with the engine, she would be expecting a course. Unfortunately for her, the engineers were both too busy to ask their advice.
It’s okay, I can change my mind if I really need to.
A. Proximus A, a rocky planet with a thick hydrocarbon atmosphere located so close to Proximus that travel there would require a little extra fuel. The probe’s measurements indicated its surface temperature was at least 400 C.
B. Proximus B, an Equus-sized planet located squarely in the Proximus habitable zone. What was more, its surface appeared almost coated in places with metallic deposits. The probe observed no signs of a biosphere or oceans, but also reported an oxygen atmosphere and unusual radio readings. Sadly none of these readings had been compact enough to archive, and so they were lost on the damaged tape.
C. Proximus C, a gas giant composed primarily of hydrogen. Based on its current orbital position, it would be the easiest to reach for fuel, but require the longest time to allow it to process some distance around Proximus and not force a sustained high-G deceleration burn. The planet itself appeared unremarkable, but readings indicate several moons, at least one of which read positive for the tritium required to make fuel for the return trip.
“You made the right choice, Twilight. I ain’t never went and did nothin’ as unprepared as we were and found it went right.”
Twilight stood on the bridge of the Equinox, where a transparent aluminum window looked out on the vast expanse of space in all directions. There was no denying that the Equestrian engineers had gone for vanity here, with all the structural reinforcement required to install a window this large. She could see its many transparent facets, each one banded with thin metallic struts. Yet if they weren’t decelerating, that window would’ve been just another wall. There was much to respect in the work that had gotten her here.
“Maybe I did,” Twilight said, though from her tone there would be no hiding just how likely she thought that was. “I know it’s the smart move, making sure we’re prepared. We don’t have to risk Proximus B not having everything we would need to make it home.”
She walked over to one of the drive consoles, sighing as she read its flickering display. “Data not available,” said the green on green, the lines of the Equinox’s projected flight referenced with basic visual sensors only.
“Seems like a shame we’re not… sending something back from here.” She pointed out the window with her horn. “We did it. Forty years of deep space, and we did it. Sent a pony to another star. When word gets back… this will only be the first of many. There might be thousands of Equestrias one day, maybe more. All those little stars could have ponies living around them.”
“We’ll tell ‘em,” Applejack said. Her friend had to use mechanical crutches to get around now, wobbling whenever she walked and occasionally hacking up lungfuls of pus-filled phlegm. “My instinct was right about the engines too, by the way. We already vented… maybe a third of our remain’ reaction mass. We’d be dryer than an Appleloosa summer by the time we got anywhere.”
“I hope you didn’t give Spike a hard time about it,” Twilight said, finally turning from the console. “He did tremendous work getting us this far. No pony could’ve gone this long alone without losing their minds completely. I’ve already included a write-up for our report.”
“I didn’t.” Applejack hurried over, or as close as she could. She wobbled and rocked on her crutches, and nearly fell over at one point. Twilight watched her with confusion, and couldn’t have said what she was intending—until she started whispering. “Sugarcu—Captain, I don’t mean to be the one to give you bad news, but I ain’t fully sure he’s as sane as you think. All that time alone… it don’t do a body good.”
“What makes you say that?” She didn’t bother whispering. Spike was asleep now, after days straight helping Applejack with the engines. There was no chance of him overhearing their conversation. “Applejack, we’re still flying. I don’t know that an insane pony could keep us together.”
“Not insane,” Applejack replied, stubbornly whispering even when Twilight didn’t. “That’s not… look, you ain’t seen the ship like I can see it. You should…” She got even quieter. “There’s something you should see. I didn’t really get a good look, seeing as I’d need to force the door, and then he’d know. But your captain’s key should get you in and out without him ever knowin’.”
Twilight’s eyebrows went up. “That’s… strange advice coming from you, Applejack. Are you saying… Spike is keeping something secret, and I should find it without telling him?”
“Yeah,” Applejack said. “Listen, maybe it’s nothin,’ I dunno. That’s why Equestria fixes to give us a captain like you, instead a’ one who knows her tail from a ram scoop. Er… no offence by that, Captain.” She looked away, backing up a few steps and wobbling on her crutches again. “I don’t mean…”
“I know,” Twilight said. It still stung her pride a little—she’d gotten the mission this far, hadn’t she? It wasn’t right of Applejack to hold old grudges. Just because she was spaceborn, and Twilight was Equestrian Navy. “What did you see, exactly. Something he was doing? Because… I tested Spike quite thoroughly. Same psychological evaluation I performed on you, actually. It’s very hard to fool those spells. Only a master unicorn should be able to. He’s sane, Applejack. As difficult as that is for us to understand. Dragon minds just don’t work the same way.”
Applejack waved a hoof dismissively. “Whatever you say, Captain.” She turned away, a rigid formality returning to her voice. “I got my work cut out for me anyway. If I don’t get the eye up before we get near the asteroid belt, we’ll be takin’ the chance of accidents much too high.”
“Applejack—”
She stopped in the doorway. “If you change yer mind about trustin’ me, make your way down to deep storage. Deck E, I think.”
“By the colonial supplies?” Twilight’s eyebrows went up. “That’s not supposed to be unsealed unless we—” But Applejack was already gone. A few seconds later, she could hear the lift rattling down its track.
Twilight had to wait for it, several whole minutes to herself to think. But considering the trip to Proximus C would take months, she had a few moments.
Twilight rode down to deep storage. She could feel the engines pushing on her, as she reached those parts of the ship that weren’t meant for frequent pony habitation. But dragons do just fine in higher gravity.
There was a tiny window on the storage room, and Twilight could see through it what Applejack had meant. Their colonial supplies—tents, water purifiers, dried food—it looked as though the entire room had been torn apart. Crates were opened, their contents dissected and recombined in strange ways. Was some of that machinery pointed at the door?
She was the captain, there wasn’t anypony else to help with discipline. She had to act.
- Confront Spike. He should’ve known every supply stored on the Equinox might be life and death. What he did in there better have a good explanation.
- Go in and investigate first. Could Spike have done all that on his own?
- Help Applejack with repairs instead. What Spike did to get through the long journey doesn’t matter to me now, surviving to complete our mission does. We can worry about our camping supplies when we need to go camping.
Twilight couldn’t help but agree with Applejack. Spike’s apparent degradation in sanity—undetectable though it was—made confronting this mission critical.
But just because Twilight was determined to get inside and see what had happened didn’t mean she had to be an idiot about it. There were machines in there, and she couldn’t even guess at their function with a glance through the window.
“Applejack, you there?” Twilight asked over the radio. It had been almost two hours since she’d seen the cargo bay for the first time, enough for her to clamber into a space suit and get all the stiff zippers closed. Enough to formulate a plan. Twilight Sparkle wasn’t captain of the Equinox just because she was an Alicorn.
“Reading ya,’ Captain.”
“Did you go to the bridge like I asked?”
“Sure did.”
Twilight hesitated in front of the cargo bay, leaning back and forth on her hooves. “Check on Spike for me. Still in his quarters?”
There was a brief pause, a crackle of static over her headset radio. “Sure is, Twi.”
“I need you to…” she took a few steps back, into the umbilical hallway. “Seal Bulkhead Pegasus-Green.” It clicked into place, and the little light below the window went green signifying a solid pressure seal.
“What are you thinkin’?”
Twilight didn’t answer. “Are you reading any lifesigns in cargo bay two?”
“No. Twi, I told you Spike was in his quarters. I’m up here, so who would be in there? Our friends are all still asleep, if that’s what ‘yer thinkin’.”
“Depressurize cargo bay two, Corridor Pegasus Green, and Umbilical Uplink Pegasus.”
“I assume you mean the slow and safe way, and not the way that means losing half a ton of air and everythin’ that isn’t bolted down into space.”
“Yes,” Twilight agreed. “I can wait.”
She heard the hiss start a minute later, and she sat down on her haunches to wait. There was no dust to see billowing around her, no other visual signs except for the thin red gage projected onto her helmet slowly going down. It took nearly half an hour.
Eventually she heard Applejack’s voice come back over the radio. “I hope your space suit was workin,’ because there’s almost as little air in those sections as around us.”
“Good.” Twilight rose to her hooves, then stepped aside, as far towards the stairs as she could without smacking into another sealed bulkhead. “Cut all power to the sections I named, even life support.” The lights went out around her, and Twilight’s helmet warmed to life. But all power didn’t mean quite everything. There were still red lights near the floor, a visual sign to the crew occupying these sections that they’d lost power. “Open the interior cargo-bay door.”
Twilight heard nothing, but she felt it. The floor shook through her hooves, just a little. She waited another minute or so for safety, before finally poking around the corner.
The bulkhead between her and the cargo bay had caved inward a little, deforming under the weight of several projectiles. “Looks like I made the right choice. Some kinda’ booby trap.”
“And you’re going in alone? Twi, are you—” But Twilight didn’t hear Applejack’s response, because at that moment she teleported through the door rather than opening it. Not any more difficult than it would’ve been on a planet, despite what members of the other tribes sometimes thought. Planetary motion was a lot more complicated than a starship decelerating along a single path.
Twilight was inside. There were bits of metal scattered everywhere, several of which were sunk straight into the wall or the now-destroyed bulkhead. A clever little construction, using electromagnets and timing circuits and still glowing bright red with energy where it had fired. I probably should’ve cut power a few days before we tried this. Or maybe that wouldn’t have been enough. She couldn’t see any other traps, not at a glance.
The cargo bay was much as it had seemed from the outside, as though someone utterly insane had opened every box without bothering with a manifest. Yet Twilight’s eyes were drawn to the back of the room, where the “camp cube” had been cut open. Food-wrappers covered the floor, and plastic containers meant for holding plants were filled with something that unmistakably would’ve stunk if there was any air. She looked away from the bubbling putrescence, shining her headlamp inside the crate.
Inside, among many other things, she could make out the emergency cryo pods—or what was left of them.
These were the last resort against mission failure. An entirely enclosed stasis system, which might enable them to crawl inside and await rescue even if the ship fell apart around them. It might be landed on an asteroid, or a planet, or even just used right here.
But the system had been butchered. Lines had been cut, glass shattered, circuits strewn everywhere. Twilight lowered her head slightly, climbing over a spent welding torch to get inside. She wasn’t imagining things—there were only five pods here, not six.
“Applejack, you still there?”
“About to have a bloomin’ heart attack,” came the response, after a long string of profanity. “What do ya’ think?”
“Can you think of anywhere on the Equinox large enough to fit a cryo-pod?”
“A few, why? What’s that have to do with Spike?”
“Any of them that you wouldn’t have seen?”
“Ah, well. Only the Lander. I’ve inspected every inch of the Equinox otherwise. But the lander was returning perfect greens to the computer, so ah didn’t bother.”
“Meet me at the lander,” Twilight said. “Bring a gun.”
“What about Spike?”
What about Spike indeed.
- Seal him in his quarters. This is well beyond insanity—this is intentional sabotage. Until we have more time to figure out what’s going on, we can’t risk what he might do if he discovered we know.
- Get him first. Spike never would’ve done this, no matter how crazy. Not to mention, he’s a dragon. If something or somepony dangerous is aboard, he’ll be in better shape to fight it than a pair of freezer burned ponies.
- Just let him sleep. We have no evidence Spike has done anything wrong, or that he was even involved. But just because we don’t know doesn’t mean we have to take risks. If he is a hazardous element, best keep him away while we confirm his innocence.
“Spike, wake up.” She pushed him gently, but firm enough that he wouldn’t have a choice. It took a little more effort than it might’ve when he was younger. But he was no baby dragon anymore, not small enough to push around whenever she wanted. There was still something cute about the way he curled up, even if he didn’t use the bed, just slept on the floor in a corner. I wonder if that’s what happened because you grew up without any pony role models. Too bad you could’ve have been frozen with the rest of us.
Spike looked weary, his eyes drooping. “Twilight? I thought you were gonna… give me a week.”
Twilight passed him a levitating cup of tea. It had been brewed with her day’s ration, far hotter than she could’ve drunk. But to a dragon the closer to boiling the better. Spike took it, swallowed, and looked a bit better. “We’ve discovered something… very serious, Spike. It didn’t feel right to deal with it without involving you.”
“Serious?” He sat up in bed, running one claw through the purple ridges on his head. “Something worse than our leaking engines? Did I somehow… pump carbon monoxide into the vents? Or… maybe an alien ship is outside trying to talk to us?”
“No, neither.” Twilight pulled over a chair, sitting down and facing him. She explained what they’d discovered as quickly as she could, and finished with. “Whoever did this has put our landing in jeopardy. You know as well as I do that we don’t have the supplies to fly back to Equestria right now. We were expecting to make friends here, and use what they could give us to make the trip. Or, worst case, wait another few decades for Equestrian ships with better drives to catch up. But now we’ve lost our deployable cryo pods… and probably a lot of other things. I haven’t had time to catalog it all yet.”
“It wasn’t me, Twi. You know I’d… I’d never do any of that! Why would I hide in a cargo bay when I have a nice bedroom right here? Why would I… piss in a bucket when we have toilets?”
“I know,” Twilight answered, though she wasn’t convinced either way yet. But there was no reason to make Spike think that she didn’t agree. “But at the same time, we have a problem. We have to figure out how you didn’t notice someone living with you on the Equinox for… I don’t know, months? Maybe years? I’m sure we could calculate from the volume of the…” she shook her head. “Missing rations.”
“That’s easy,” Spike flipped out of bed, rising to his claws. “You said it was all in the cargo bay? Twi, when would I go in there? That’s landing supplies. I only ever visited Cargo 3—that’s where the spare parts are. Two is a different hallway.”
“You never inspected, even once? Didn’t check to see if things might’ve shifted during the turnover, or…”
Spike shook his head. “Never. The turnover was… pretty long into the trip, Captain. I was getting… I wasn’t doing great by then, okay? Messages from Equestria took years by then. I thought about waking you up almost every day… but that would’ve meant years you wouldn’t get back. You don’t have as many to spare as I do. The others even less. And… don’t forget I’m a dragon. When things got really bad, I would just sleep. I can do it for months at a time if I bring the temperature down slow and carefully enough. If I was older, I could sleep for a lot longer. But even six months and I feel pretty cranky when I get up.”
Twilight nodded. She still didn’t know if she’d inherited Celestia’s immortality, or whether her new elevation was basically cosmetic. It might be many years still before she knew the answer, thanks to Spike’s generosity. “You know there are logs I can check, right? I’m not saying this to disbelieve you, Spike. But the computer will know if you ever went in.”
Spike shrugged, though he winced a little as she said it. “If you don’t believe me… you can look. But I promise you’re not going to find anything in there, Twi. The only storage I ever went into is three. Now… didn’t you say there was another reason for waking me up?”
“Yes,” Twilight rose as well. She wasn’t convinced yet—wouldn’t be until she dug through the logs and checked for herself, and that would take hours of moving reels around. But it was at least reasonable. “Because if it wasn’t you who was moving things around… it was somepony else. Lander is still green, and so is the escape pod. You know what that means?”
“They’re still here?”
She nodded. “Do you have a weapon?”
Spike shook his head. “I, uh… used to walk around with one of those riot sticks, just to have something for my claws. But after a while the trip started to…” he looked away. “I didn’t even want a knife in my toolkit sometimes. But I can get something out of—”
“No.” Twilight pulled him close, wrapping her wings around him in a hug. She could hear the pain in Spike’s voice, the sincerity. If Spike was lying to her, then he had used his years alone to become remarkably good at manipulating ponies. Somehow, she didn’t think that was possible. “I’m sorry, Spike. I don’t really think it was you. I’m just doing my job. All Equestria’s counting on us.”
“I know,” Spike said, wiping tears away from his face with the back of one claw. “I know.”
They stayed that way for a few more seconds until Spike finally shifted uncomfortably and let go. Twilight nodded towards the door. “Well then… let’s find our stowaway.”
Twilight knew Applejack wouldn’t be happy even before they reached the docking platform. But whatever else might be said for the former prospector, she had good common sense. Whatever distrust she might still be feeling towards Spike, she didn’t show it.
“Here to join our little investigation, eh’? Guess you didn’t quite get to finish yer beauty rest.”
Spike chuckled weakly, showing no sign of his emotional weakness earlier. I’m glad I didn’t tell him that Applejack was the one who discovered all this. It would hurt him even more to know that she’d been involved. Maybe this way he could pretend it had nothing to do with her, and keep their relationship relatively normal. Please Celestia, no more dragon oaths.
The airlock to the lander showed all green, just like it had over the computer. For that reason Twilight hadn’t brought a space suit, though she did carry a gun. The crystal sticking out the back was bright enough to double as a flashlight, and the plastic bullets inside wouldn’t pierce their hull if it came to shooting.
“Did you get any readings out of the lander?”
Applejack shook her head. “Nothin’ that would interest ‘ya too much. She’s readin’ as 11% more massive than she ought to be… like she’s got a full cargo bay. Pulling about 3% more energy, too… but that’s within tolerances, so the computer didn’t neigh at me.”
“Lifesigns?”
“None,” Applejack glanced quickly over her shoulder at Spike, then back to her. “But you said it would be a cryo pod. But I haven’t tried to open ‘er up yet. Figured it might be best to have your authorization to be the one giving the order, just in case.”
Twilight nodded. “Something tried to…” she hesitated. “Hurt me. When I opened the cargo bay. Before I scan my card, I want you to go over the docking system like it was one of your family’s haulers. No, better.”
“Can’t do better than an apple hauler,” Applejack muttered, moving past her to the docking ring. She dropped to her knees, opening the hatch with her mouth and sliding goggles down over her eyes.
Applejack searches for sabotage to the docking system. Failure
But she was barely down five minutes before she rose to her hooves again, flipping the colored lenses out and away from her eyes. “Nothin’ there, captain. She hasn’t been touched.”
Twilight nodded, then levitated her master keycard out from her pocket and into Spike’s claw. “Applejack and I aren’t as sturdy as you are, Spike. I hope you don’t mind if I ask you to open it. Just in case.”
Applejack’s eyes widened. Behind Spike’s back, she mouthed something, probably ‘Not him’ though it was hard to be sure. Twilight ignored her. She hadn’t had the chance to verify spike’s claims of innocence yet, it was true. But she didn’t need to. His explanation made sense, and he was her dragon. If she couldn’t trust the one she’d hatched from an egg during her first day of High Officer’s training, who could she trust?
“Of course,” Spike said, taking the key without flinching. “My scales are pretty tough. You’d be surprised how many little explosions we made it through together.”
“We’ll be right around the corner,” Twilight said. “Where we can still see,” she added in a whisper.
“This is a mistake, Twi.” Applejack hissed into her ear. “I know he looks fine now, but we haven’t made certain of it yet. If there’s one thing you don’t do when yer’ away from home, it’s puttin’ someone who ain’t all together in charge of anythin.’ Even scrubbing dishes could start a fire or somethin’.”
Twilight shook her head. “It wasn’t him.”
Spike scanned the keycard, and the outer airlock slid open.
Everything happened in a rush. There were a few flashes of light from the end of the tiny hallway, followed by the unmistakable “hull breach” alarm. Air roared past them towards the bulkhead, lifting a cloud of debris from the floor and some of Applejack’s tools from beside the airlock and tearing them right out into the bulkhead.
Spike staggered back, sparks showering from his front as little tears opened in his jumpsuit. Behind him the docking bulkhead slammed shut.
Then Twilight felt it—a slight shove against her hooves, one that pushed against all the Equinox. Her center of gravity briefly faltered, and she nearly fell over—but her worry over Spike was just too severe. She ran to his side anyway, tearing away the remains of his jumpsuit. There was a little blood from where a few scales had cracked, though nothing too serious. He looked up, wincing weakly as he met her eyes. “Good thing it was…” and he fell limp, unconscious.
The rushing sound stopped, along with the sirens. Applejack hadn’t followed her—instead, she’d crossed to the little balcony above the dock, and the viewing window there. There, she would have an excellent view of their landing craft, taking a nice chunk of the docking tube with it as it drifted into space. Applejack swore, and for once Twilight didn’t even think of reprimanding her. “Well… I’m loathe to say I told ‘ya so…”
“You told me there was nothing to worry about,” Twilight hissed, glaring at Applejack. But she didn’t leave the words to linger long—they were all in trouble. “Chief Engineer, bring me a medkit, as fast as you can gallop. After that… I want you to make sure nothing else is going to blow us up.”
Applejack ran to do as she was told, while Twilight busied herself with a few simple medical spells. It seemed spike’s collapse was mostly shock—his injuries were not that serious. She’d bandage him up, then…
1. Exhaustively search for sabotage. Whoever did all this knew the Equinox well enough to trick Applejack. But I know the computer, and she’s harder to fool. I’ll find the trail they missed.
2. Care for Spike. Not only is one of my crew injured, but staying at his side will make sure he can’t do anything, if he was the one behind anything that happened so far.
3. Investigate the Cargo Bay. Whoever ruined the cargo bay is probably floating away in the Prospector right now, but that doesn’t mean we might not be able to learn something useful from what they left behind. A full inventory should show us some of what they planned, and if we’re lucky they left some of their own possessions behind too.
4. Breakthrough. Applejack is feeling deeply ashamed about not discovering the sabotage before it cost the lander, and so she works in an absolute frenzy to put right what she’s done wrong. If chosen, her brief surge of engineering genius will repair both the transmitter and the eye, along with detecting any sabotage to those systems.
Twilight hardly even saw her friend over the next few weeks. Applejack was a ghost amid the conduits, occasionally emerging in the mess hall to grab a few dry hay-cakes and hurry off again.
The work was obviously taking its toll on her—Applejack’s coat wasn’t growing back nearly as healthy as Twilight’s was, and her limbs still shook a little while she walked. At the rate she was going, they might run out of drugs before she ran out of need for them.
Twilight cut her own dose in half, hoping that would be enough to keep her healing. And it seemed to be—she didn’t need crutches anymore, and she stopped seeing her own hair in the shower.
Twilight spent most of her free time with Spike, who as it turned out had been hurt worse than they’d thought. A chunk of metal hadn’t just cracked a scale, but pierced right through it, meaning without their doctor awake it was all Twilight could do to teleport the chunk out and hope for the best. He didn’t get out of bed, and rarely even seemed to wake up.
The lander had many functions they could’ve used, if only their transmitter-receiver array was still working. No doubt a saboteur would’ve disabled the systems that could let them shut it down or control it, but at least she could’ve seen where they were going, and asked them to be reasonable.
Whoever had been on that ship, they’d been willing to kill to keep themselves secret. Yet she couldn’t understand their motives—if they were willing to murder, why not murder Spike, then never wake the others? They’d have the whole ship to themselves.
Maybe they didn’t think they could fight a dragon.
Without Applejack willing to accept her help, Twilight took the time to confirm Spike’s story. He hadn’t accessed the cargo bay at any point during the time she’d been awake. Records went back as normal to the moment of the explosion—then there was nothing. The files were gone, and the backup reels with them.
But Twilight didn’t need that for confirmation, and apparently neither did Applejack. It was during a rare afternoon with her in the mess hall that she interrupted Twilight’s reading with a tap on the shoulder. “I thought I should let you know, captain… I’ve had private words with Spike.”
Her eyes narrowed immediately. “Spike is in no condition to hear you—”
“No,” Applejack interrupted. “To apologize. I don’t think it could’ve been him after all. Standing in front of the explosion like that… well, he’d have known it was there, wouldn’t he? I watched the recording—he looked straight down the hallway without blinking. Never argued with you… he didn’t know. I told him I was sorry. And you too… I was the one who failed, not him.”
“Applejack—”
She stood up. “No, don’t say it. I should’ve found that bomb. Whoever set the lander to go off like that is a better engineer than I am. But I won’t let it stay that way.” She smiled weakly. “I’ve got the array back online. Ain’t gonna be catching any video from Equestria at this distance… you ought to know that. Actually, didn’t look at the damn thing past makin’ sure the signal was clean. But it’s there. I’m working on the eye right now. Give me another two weeks, and I’ll have it too. Pray to Celestia there ain’t any little rocks headed our way.”
“Y-yeah,” Twilight repeated, ignoring the religious suggestion at the end. She lost all interest in her soup, rising too. “You’re amazing, Chief Engineer! Two weeks… I expected you’d take twice that much time.”
Applejack beamed. “Don’t call me amazin’ until I get that Prospector right back where she belongs. Don’t think I won’t, either. But for now… Equinox has got to walk before she can run.”
Twilight darted straight for the bridge, something she could actually do now. She practically jumped into the coms chair, basking in the even red glow as its three screens came online. She could use the coms from almost anywhere on the Equinox, but nowhere with such fine control as coms.
There was a single pending signal, and she reached to confirm it and start downloading the dump of missed Equestrian data. Yet her eyes caught the frequency, and the origin triangulation. It wasn’t coming from Equestria at all. There was no Equestrian signal. And this one was coming from in-system, towards Proximus.
It was the Signal, the repeating series of mathematical proofs that built from a few basic primes to higher-dimensional systems that had remained unsolved in Equestria when the Equinox was launched.
“I don’t understand…” Twilight said, the next time she had a chance to visit Spike. “The antenna is working—Applejack went out and verified it herself with a probe. We’re not getting anything from Equestria anymore, not even the home ping.”
Spike shuddered. He could barely even sit up, and he was sipping broth through a straw. Half his body had at least some kind of bandages. “Must be something on our end,” he said. “I remember getting that signal, right up until… the explosion, I guess. When we got into the system.”
Could something be shielding us? Twilight thought. Then she thought about how advanced someone would have to be to do that without their detecting it, and she shivered.
But if it was something on their end, Twilight couldn’t find it. Then Applejack kept her word, and two weeks later the eye came back online. Twilight immediately trained it on the origin of the Signal, which was aimed not towards Equestria but towards the Equinox directly.
There in the void of space, she saw a glint of metal. A spacecraft, traveling directly towards them on a trajectory that led back to Proximus B.
What should Twilight do?
1. Alter course towards the ship. This is why we’re here, isn’t it? The Prospector won’t matter if we’ve really found an alien civilization! They can help us get this mission back on track.
2. Alter course towards the Prospector. It’s closer, and Applejack thinks we might be able to get it back. The Equinox is faster than a Lander.
3. Ignore both and stay the course. If the ones who sent the Signal really want to talk to us, they’ve already waited forty years, they can wait a little longer. The prospector isn’t irreplaceable, we just need more materials. Let the saboteur enjoy their lifetime banishment, they won’t be getting back to Equestria in a Prospector.
4. Applejack suggests an emergency course-correction towards the asteroid belt could allow the Equinox to hide from the approaching ship using some clever prospecting tactics. It will add months and cost fuel, but prevent the Equinox from being discovered by known Equestrian means. (Certainty 150 required)
Twilight Sparkle watched the display in front of her with modest disappointment. Somehow, she expected a thrilling chase through an alien star system to be a little more like the movies she’d enjoyed as a child. Where were the clever angles of ships zooming past each other, of entire battles resolved in the course of minutes?
Instead, she watched the Prospector’s tractor tick slowly away closer, so slowly that she almost couldn’t register it.
“You should know, captain, we’re burnin’ fuel like it’s goin’ outa style. Not just burnin’, neither. We’re accelerating to catch up with ‘em. That’s kinda like walkin’ backwards from where we’re goin’. I’ve counted things out—we should have enough to stop somewhere when it’s over. But… that’s where we’ll stop. Between this chase and the leaks, that’s our tank.
Twilight stared at the display a moment longer, watching the three digits of the Prospector get another tick closer. “How long until we catch them?” Of course, those weren’t the only marks on the tactical scanner. There was a third ship, traveling directly towards them. It had adjusted course the instant they had, so fast Twilight wasn’t sure if there had even been enough time for the light to travel that far.
“Sixteen days,” Applejack answered. “Full burn all the way. Wouldn’t take half as long, except they’ve seen us, and they’re running. They can track us too. We weren’t ever supposed to be running away.”
“And when we catch them…”
“We’ll be moving about twelve percent faster than they are,” Applejack said. “That ain’t a small amount, Twi. If we had anypony who wasn’t you on board, I wouldn’t even try it.”
“What difference do I make?” Twilight asked. “If I was any good as a captain, we wouldn’t be here in the first place.”
Applejack stomped one hoof on the deck-plating between them. “Says the pony who stopped takin’ her drugs so she could give them to the daughter of some nutty prospector who worked way harder than she should’ve.” Applejack removed a clipboard of erasable paper from her saddlebags, settling it on top of the computer.
It was a force calculation, with masses and speeds scrawled in Applejack’s dense printing. It was a spell. “You want me to cast… this?” Twilight skimmed the rest of it. Applejack wasn’t joking—there were maybe three unicorns in the whole world who could manage this spell. “The Starswirl construct might be able to cast this. But he’s still teaching in the academy—”
“You can do it, captain,” Applejack said. “I know it looks scary, but there’s less variables there than it looks. I’m gonna cut the Prospector’s engines. It won’t be able to tug free. And while you’re grabbin’, I’ll be out there with a few boarding hooks to make sure she stays where she belongs.”
Twilight slumped into the captain’s chair, eyes rolling back into her head at the difficulty of the spell. The energy requirements came down to the difference in their speeds—a hundred thousand newtons of energy minimum that she had to find a way to dissipate.
“Applejack,” Twilight spoke slowly, trying not to sound patronizing. “If I buck this spell up by a single percentage point… I’ll shear the Equinox in half.”
“You won’t,” Applejack insisted. “We can do it, Twi. You can do it. We owe it to Equestria, don’t we?”
The screen under her tablet flashed bright red for a second, and a mechanical voice sounded. Starlight Glimmer’s voice, since she’d been the one to write the Equinox’s operating system. “Ship ERROR has entered visual range. Transmission detected.”
Applejack fell silent, retreating to the weapons console across the room. There was nothing there anymore, beyond the flack cannons meant for shooting down incoming obstructions.
That was what the Signaler (not the best name, but since they hadn’t identified themselves yet) ship read on their tactical scanner, about three hundred kilometers and still closing.
“I’m focusing the eye…” Twilight muttered. The window in front of them contorted, shifting until the patch of space it showed was no longer empty. It wasn’t a screen, not like the ones their computers used. Getting a look at a few flashing red characters wouldn’t give them any tactical information worth knowing.
According to the tiny scale at the bottom of the image, the ship was about the size of the Prospector, though much thinner, like an elongated torpedo. There were no enclosed sections—she could see straight through it in a few places, where spindly protrusions like antennas emerged.
“Give me a weapons scan,” Twilight called.
“Already did. Not reading any hotspots, or the signatures from any weapons we’ve got. But Twilight, you know—”
“I know,” Twilight muttered. “It’s an alien ship. It might be a warship and we’d have no way of knowing.”
“Yeah, but not that. I’m not getting any thermals out of this thing… but it’s decelerating right now. Where’s the heat from its thrusters?”
“We’re getting another signal,” Twilight cut in, darting across the room towards coms. She could listen to it anywhere, but the oscilloscopes and other readouts were nowhere else. She flipped it onto the Equinox’s speakers.
It sounded like a series of clicks, with varying distances between them. But not the Signal she was used to. This meant something else. And her linguist—the only pony with a prayer of understand them—was still asleep.
“Looks like that’s it… no, wait. It’s repeating. Same message, but it’s a full megawatt more intense. Buck, it’s whiting out the receiver.”
They’d missed the chance of running from this ship, or… probe, whatever it was. Now she had to do something.
1. Send back the original signal. We’ve got a perfect recording, might as well give them something they understand. Let them know we’re the ponies they called.
2. Send their exact transmission. Nothing’s a quicker shortcut to prove we’re intelligent. We can figure out what it means later.
3. Try to translate the transmission anyway and respond. (high chance of failure) I know this isn’t my area, but there’s got to be some way…
4. Applejack suggests waiting for the probe to get close, then a full spray from the anti-collision systems. The cannons should shred it before it blinks.
Twilight didn’t hesitate. They’d come all this way to investigate the ancient creators of the Signal. She dug through the computer for a few seconds, found the recording of the original signal, and sent it back as loud as their transmitter could handle.
The instant she started, the vessel stopped transmitting its own signal, changing the overflow of white on all her screens back to the steady background hum of Proximus, still enormously distant.
“I sure hope you know what yer doin,’ Captain. That thing sure don’t look friendly. All those little spikes and towers. I bet she’s armed to the teeth.”
Twilight sat back in her chair. Whatever the vessel was about to do to them, there wasn’t much she could do to stop it now. Either their deaths would become mysteries in Equestria forevermore, or they wouldn’t.
Then it changed. She saw the lights appear along the hull, rippling lines like the illuminated flesh of a deep-sea fish. Were those patterns she could see along its surface, or was that just her imagination? She double-checked with the computer that they were recording from every forward-facing camera they had, just in case.
“What did you do?” Applejack asked. But even she seemed moved speechless by the display. She leaned forward over the weapons’ console, watching the little ship as glowed in alternating shades of green and blue.
“Just sent them back The Signal. They’ve been sending it to Equestria for almost a century now, I figured maybe… they’d know they called us.”
“Guess they did,” Applejack muttered. “Unless that’s their way of tellin’ us to prepare to explode, which don’t seem too likely.”
(Twilight attempts to figure out the message the alien vessel is sending. Failure)
Then the coms console in front of her lit up like Hearth’s Warming decorations. Solid, repeating bars appeared on her oscilloscope, so dense that she almost couldn’t see them. The screen still displaying database access flashed for a moment, then cracked down the center, emitting the stench of phosphorus. Twilight recoiled on instinct, watching as several other screens all over the bridge started flickering, scan lines appearing in irregular patterns.
“Buck it’s attacking us!” Applejack darted over to the weapons console, settling her hooves onto the controls. “We can’t just let it…”
Something was happening to the probe. The massive lens at the front of the bridge wasn’t a screen, and so was unaffected by the strange behavior that had infected their computer systems. The ship in front of them was getting smaller. Not just that, but its colors were glowing brighter, like someone had lit a fire in its little metal heart.
Twilight almost covered her face with a leg, but resisted the temptation. If it was about to kill her, she would at least watch her death coming.
Then it started to leak. Bright orange and yellow something leaked out from the front of the craft, quickly engulfing its glowing lights, turning silvery and metallic the instant it left the vessel. Then she saw an explosion—a flash that sent the various bits and pieces of the craft expanding outward in all directions.
Twilight winced. “Buck, how much time…”
“Not much!” Applejack leaned into the controls, settling her eyes into the scope connected to the eye. Her hooves twisted rapidly in quick succession, and Twilight heard the sound of the flak revving to speed before firing for nearly twenty seconds straight.
(Applejack fires the anti-collision system. Success)
She couldn’t see the little flashes in the void from bits of debris that would’ve smacked into the Equinox—but a few moments later the flack spun down again and Applejack rose from the controls, dripping with sweat and shaking on her hooves. “I think I got it all. Buck me if we shouldn’t have shot it earlier.”
Then all the lights went out.
For a moment the two of them stood in perfect, frozen stillness, listening to the silence on the Equinox. There was, no whirring of the air recyclers, no rumble of the engine. Nothing but the rumbling of steel as it settled under the sudden cession of acceleration.
A few seconds later the emergency crystals came on, a brilliant blue glow over the airlock settled into a metal bracket. Twilight winced at the thought of recharging every one on the ship when this was over.
Because that’s my biggest problem right now. Not that the Equinox may’ve just been fried by an alien weapon for reasons unknown. But that didn’t make sense, not any way she thought about it. That thing could’ve flown right up to them and exploded! It could’ve just hit them head on and left nothing but bits of dust in the wake of the resulting explosion. It isn’t a weapon. Probably just… alien technology. An accident. “Wonder what broke,” Applejack muttered, removing the crystal from its hook and settling it around her neck. “I don’t hear auxiliary power kickin’ in, so… probably the computer. Pray to Celestia it ain’t fried, or we’re gonna be mummies within a week.”
They checked core systems along the way, with Twilight briefly peeking in to make sure Spike was alright. He was asleep, and Twilight didn’t wake him. It took almost an hour to reach the central computer, time spent manually opening every sealed airlock. Eventually arrived, and found it was the only system still running.
Every screen in the core was filled with strange text, unreadable rectangle characters scrolling past in a blurring array. Every tape drive in the room was spinning, every computational cluster belching enough heat that their breath didn’t fog in the air anymore.
Now Twilight had a choice to make…
1. Manually cut the power and run a full system restore from the master backup. I don’t care what the probe was trying to do before it exploded, now it’s put all of us at risk. Sure, we might be giving up on the probe’s response, but it might also just be a totally accidental side-effect that’s going to kill us all.
2. Let the computer run for a few days before shutting it down if that isn’t enough time. The probe received our message, and this is how it answers. This is why we came here, we have to let it play itself out. But if we wait too long, we’re going to be helpless when we catch up to the Prospector. There’s plenty of air in the Equinox, but we can’t stay helpless forever. If the batteries drain completely, we might not be able to get the reactor going again.
3. If pressed, Applejack suggests a modified version of the latter option. Using the Equinox’s supply of EVA suits and the computer core as a base camp, the program could be allowed to run for weeks without much disrupting ship’s operations. Some auxiliary power sources could be manually operated to keep the batteries from going dry completely. Working in space suits cramped in one room is likely to hurt morale and slow Spike’s healing, but if the probe did intend anything it will certainly be allowed to complete.
It had been almost two weeks. They’d burned through most of their emergency rations, along with their patience. For a prospector, Applejack was none too happy smelling like one. Twilight herself had spent at least a few minutes alone in decompressed rooms, screaming into her suit with the radio deactivated.
But then the lights came on. Twilight blinked, stirring only sluggishly in her space suit. Starlight’s voice came next, flat as ever but with more emotion behind it now for Twilight than would’ve been for the reunion of a lover. “Reactor emergency start-up sequence underway. Core temperature at five hundred degrees Celsius and rising. WARNING: Decompression damage detected in OVERFLOW ERROR. Warning, sections HABITATION, BRIDGE, FABRICATION, STORAGE, REACTOR, HYDROPONICS unsafe. Life support cannot be restored until fusion is restored. Please remain in COMPUTER CORE.”
Then came the whirring of the air recyclers, which filled the air with misty vapor from every vent as they cleared.
Applejack wasn’t far—on the other side of the survival tent, which they’d set up right beside the mainframes like this was some kind of campout. She reached out, settling one hoof on Spike’s shoulder. “No, can’t take that off yet. That’s near to pure C02 as can be belching out right now. You breathe that for a few minutes and I don’t think even Twilight’s magic will do for ‘ya.”
Spike groaned, rolling onto his side. “If I have to smell myself for another ten minutes I’m going out an airlock. This better have been worth it, Twi.”
“Yeah,” Applejack said. “Yer’ instincts haven’t led us astray so far, unlike mine. But I ain’t takin’ another campin’ trip like this. You can freeze me up with the others instead.”
“No need,” Twilight said, though the confidence in her tone was false. If she could only act wise, and actually find the program had done something worthwhile… she could turn their suffering over the last few weeks into a win. “We’ve given it enough time. You can go ahead and do whatever you need to get the Equinox back in working order, Applejack. If our computers aren’t working now, I’ll restore from backup myself.”
She rose slowly, stretching her tired limbs one at a time as she made her way past the screens. She kept her eyes on her hooves, not wanting to look at what they contained. If those screens said the Equinox was dead in the water… then only she would be to blame for their deaths. But the recordings are back, and the diagnostics sounded right. Feels like the reactor is going again too.
It didn’t seem like their computer was fried, despite how hard it had been working. Guess all those imperial bits really did get put to good use. Crystal tubes might be a thousand times more expensive than magnetic, but they didn’t go out.
Twilight could feel Spike and Applejack behind her, though she didn’t actually turn to look. They wanted to see as much as she did. She sat down in front of the screen, pushing the chair back a little to accommodate her suit. The arms were far enough apart that it wasn’t a problem for her, even as an Alicorn.
It was a mainframe terminal, utterly unchanged from what she might’ve expected. Twilight ran a jobs report, and saw that background usage had dropped near to its previous level, about 20% of the mainframe’s capacity. Though… that was strange. Available storage. Had dropped from the mind-bending 64mb to 16mb, a number she would’ve expected from a typical university mainframe.
She glanced over her shoulder, and sure enough all the tape drives were green.
“What is it?” Applejack asked. “Are we bucked or aren’t we?”
“I don’t… think we are.” She said, ordering a diagnostic while she flipped over to another terminal and called up the activity log. There was exactly one unready entry on the table, marked with her own credentials. “Fabrication request. One ▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯”
“Fab request…” Spike muttered, leaning over the arm and pointing with a claw. “What did you order?”
“Nothing,” she said. She flipped through a few layers of menus and commands to reach the request, eyes widening as she read it.
The order was for an item not found anywhere in their database, though with only a fourth of it connected anymore she couldn’t be sure if it wasn’t one of theirs. Except that it had no name, no attribution, nothing but the template.
“I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that before, cap. Print the raw.”
Twilight did, and a few seconds later the printer located beside her started to hum. Perforated paper emerged from a slot in the console, and Twilight tore with her magic, offering it to her engineer.
“What do you make a’ this, Spike?”
He leaned in to look, frowning. “I don’t understand. That’s a lot of silicon, but…” he glanced back at the screen. “That doesn’t look like a gasket. There’s no opening. Boron, phosphorous… is it a bullet?”
“No,” Applejack said. “It looks like soup to me. These production instructions look like my sister made ‘em.” She tossed the sheet to one side. “I dunno how this was worth a camping trip, captain.”
Twilight leaned closer to the screen, searching it for meaning. The design was made of several constituent parts, and the totality would be impossible for them with their dreadfully low supplies. But it had pieces, and one of which had a flashing asterisk beside it. The computer could build it, if only she put in the order.
“We made contact with an alien race,” Twilight said, spinning her chair around to face her crew. “This was the message they sent. It has to be significant.”
“Getting our damn prospector back is significant, captain. We’ve already lost time. If they were smart, they could’ve got two good weeks of acceleration on us. We don’t have time for…” she waved a hoof through the air. “I need both of you on deck with me until we catch up.”
1. Shelve the blueprints, catch the Prospector. Applejack’s right, answering academic questions can wait. All crew members devote themselves to catching up with the prospector.
2. Forget the Prospector, build the thing. We had a destination in mind once that would’ve been rich in resources. If we really need a prospector we can build another one. Maybe with the help of alien technology along the way.
3. Archive the blueprint on a backup tape, then purge the computer anyway. Just because it’s working now doesn’t mean there weren’t a thousand undetectable changes that might kill us at any moment. If the Signalers wanted to send a message, they sent it. Now we get our computer back.
4. Have Spike build a section of the blueprint. Applejack and I are more than capable of repairing enough of the Equinox when our plan for recapturing the prospector is mostly magical anyway. Spike could use some more time to heal, and a little hobby project is just the thing.
Chase the prospector, but Spike starts on the device.
Applejack was right about how far behind they had become during the few weeks Twilight let the probe’s program run. The Equinox’s chief engineer made good use of the time—Twilight saw her moving every moment, always at work preparing for their mad gambit.
Applejack performs repairs on damage caused by computer failure. 90% complete.
But Twilight could be of only nominal assistance. The parts of the Equinox that made sense to her were digital. But there was grunt work to do—the kind of dirty labor that she would’ve ordinarily let Applejack handle. The cargo bay was still a disaster, including the huge containers of biological waste.
That material couldn’t just be left to rot, and not just because of the smell. Their nutrition was meant to be recycled as much as anything else aboard. Nutrient paste might be flavorless and awful, but it would keep them alive.
While cleaning the cargo bay, Twilight attempts to find evidence of the intruder. Critical success.
But not all her work was physical. The habitat taught her a little about the intruder’s operation—whoever they were, there had only been one of them, and they had been up for a long time. A full year’s worth of survival rations for a single pony, if she worked the numbers right. But with all that done, Twilight could update the inventory and trawl through the terminal.
It was as she expected—somepony had used it extensively, and they hadn’t been nearly as good at erasing their traces as she was at digging them up. There was a message for their stowaway still in the terminal’s memory. She assembled as much as she could, and read quietly to herself.
Your sacrifice for Equestria will *** *** ***. Though you will not return, foals will read about you in the history books. Thanks to you, we’ll *** *** ***. We *** *** *** *** *** ***. You will not *** *** *** again. -S Twilight’s heart sank as she considered what the message might mean—something she had already been dreading. Smuggling a stowaway onto the Equinox, the single most expensive and important ship in all their civilization’s history, would have been immensely difficult. So who was it?
If she was very clever, Twilight might be able to find more in the computer that would confirm the intruder’s identity, perhaps even connect them back with the pony who had put them inside. But there was no time for such an investigation now, when they needed the Equinox to be fully prepared to intercept the prospector.
She still had to be captain. That meant keeping the Equinox on track to rendezvous with the prospector. She kept trying to send messages back to Equestria, kept trying to find the dataline tethering them home, but there was no trace.
And of course, part of being captain meant checking in on her creatures every now and then.
She found Spike tucked away in a far corner of Central Fabrication.
It was the single largest interior section of the Equinox—larger by volume than the reactor or both cargo bays combined. Most of the space was empty, aside from the fabricator arm. It was larger than a pony, sliding along a series of complex tracks that would allow it to build almost any component aboard.
The only thing it couldn’t build was Thaumotech, since every one of those components had to be hoof-crafted by expert engineers. Primarily, that meant the crystal tube arrays used by their computer and the reactor’s compression ring.
“Twi, over here!” he rose from his chair, gesturing her over eagerly. “You’re just in time! It’s almost done!”
Already? Twilight didn’t gallop, she just teleported straight across to him.
Spike had transformed the “home” position of the fabricator arm into his own little workshop. The arm itself moved in regular patterns, printing layer by layer in plastic.
But it wasn’t the fabricator he was watching, but what looked like a hollowed-out bit of furniture covered in a clear plastic sheet. A thick bundle of wire ran straight out from a terminal he’d gutted and into the machine, which belched heat from an opening in the top like it was trying to melt through the deck.
“This is the blueprint?” Twilight couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice.
“No, no.” Spike circled it once, glancing back periodically at the terminal. “I just got creative to save material. But…” he beamed, settling one claw on Twilight’s shoulder. It didn’t shake anymore. His cracked scales were still sealed with medical glue, but they weren’t weeping pus anymore. “I know what it is.” He pointed at the robotic fabricator arm. “What is it printing? Go on, look.”
She did, and instantly recognized what Spike was getting at. “That’s a fabricator shell.”
“Based on our own designs,” Spike agreed. “I think… whoever sent that message somehow went through everything we had, and designed a machine it knew we could build. A new kind of fabricator.”
“But what does it make?”
Spike bent down, lifting the plastic out of the way and vanishing underneath. “Not sure yet. There are lots of steps involved. But the first one here…” he rose, holding something in his claw.
It was about as thick as a pony’s leg, a perfectly round cylinder, clearer than any glass Twilight had ever seen. “That looks… almost like a Thaumotech blank.”
“Almost,” Spike agreed. “I think the principle might be similar.” He pointed at the wall, where a dozen pages of fabrication blueprints were stacked one above another. Twilight skimmed and saw that Spike had managed to lay them out in functional order.
The machine was going to work on the crystal blank, slicing it into disks, then running each one through dozens of discrete steps.
“Do you have enough to finish?” she asked.
“Well…” Spike hesitated. “Not without stripping some important spare parts. Applejack said she’d space me if I tried.”
“We’re not in any hurry,” Twilight said. “Just do what you can with what we don’t need.”
But as the central fabricator airlock shut behind her, there was a renewed spring in Twilight’s step.
Their mission might be floundering, but at least in one respect there was progress. The Signalers had spoken, and their message was meaningful. If they could make sense of that, a little miracle like catching the prospector should be easy.
Twilight could see the prospector in the viewfinder ahead of them, with its invisible cone of hyperaccelerated particles blasting almost directly back at the Equinox. But it didn’t matter—the ship could make interplanetary trips in a pinch. But the Equinox could travel between stars. It was a chase the Prospector was doomed to lose.
“We’re in range for disruption,” Applejack’s voice came in only slightly distorted over the radio, echoing around in her helmet. “Just give the order, captain.”
“Once you do…” Spike’s voice was hesitant. “Their engines stop working and we catch right up?”
“Not quite,” Applejack said. “This only works because we’re using the same engines. I… look, there’s no time to explain the technical side. We both stop accelerating as soon as I fire. We’re moving faster than they are, and they won’t have any way to change direction. I fire, and in an hour, Twilight can work her magic.”
“I’m not so sure I can,” Twilight admitted. “I’ve memorized the spell, but… it’s more advanced velocity manipulation with higher inertia than any unicorn I’ve ever known could manage. I’m not a computer.”
“You’ll do fine, cap,” Applejack said. “Last chance to turn back. Not that we should. As much fuel as we burned, ought to get the prospector back for our trouble.”
Twilight watched the retreating craft for a few more seconds. It was indeed getting closer by the moment. Still ignoring all their radio calls, but how much longer would it ignore them now?
“Do it.”
“Killing the engines,” Spike said from beside her, and the shaking under their hooves abruptly stopped. Twilight felt the deck plating begin to drift under her, and she pushed down with magic.
Spike was strapped into his chair, so he wouldn’t be going anywhere either.
“Firing!” A flash of brilliant light emerged from somewhere on the front of the ship, a green and blue aurora that diffused around them in moments.
Twilight saw it on the prospector a moment later—it’s drive went from a focused invisible lance to a struggling white and yellow flame, belching out in uneven spurts that made its trajectory wobble for a second before going out completely.
“How’s it look, cap?”
“They’re not accelerating anymore,” Twilight leaned forward a little, trying to tell what might be going on inside the craft. But it was much too far away for that kind of magic.
“Yee-haw!” Applejack squealed. “Serves you right for tryin’ to steal my…” she stopped abruptly. “Sorry, cap. On my way to the cargo bay now. Spike, remember what I told ‘ya?”
“Steady on maneuvering thrusters.” Spike repeated, a little annoyed. “Pass on the starboard side. I got it, Applejack.”
The engineer didn’t respond. Twilight pulled herself down into the captain’s chair, securing the straps that would stop her from drifting. She was wearing magnetic horseshoes now, just as Spike had his boots, but she’d spent enough time in space to be able to use her magic for most things. What the other tribes called cheating out of unicorns was really just convenience for her.
Twilight lifted Applejack’s spell outline into the air in front of her, focusing on the diagram she had scribbled all over it. “If this spell doesn’t kill me, we’ll have our Prospector back,” Twilight muttered. “Keep an eye on things. I need to memorize.”
“You got it.” Spike saluted with one claw, then rose and began his slow, deliberate walk towards coms.
But Twilight didn’t watch him, or anything else. An hour more was so much less time to memorize than she would’ve liked, even after memorizing in every spare moment.
It felt like seconds before her time was up. “Coming up on the Prospector!” Spike called, his voice nervous. “We, uh… don’t have a huge window here. Looks like our difference in speed is… about three meters per second. Make it count, Twi.”
Three meters per second. And the prospector weighs about two million kilograms…
Twilight stood up, twitching each leg so the horseshoes could do the work of holding her down. She stared out through the window, concentrating on her spell. The Prospector was there, unmagnified now, and getting closer with terrifying speed.
“Eight… seven… six… five…”
“I’m with you, Twi!” Applejack called. “You got this!”
For a few seconds, Twilight’s horn grew so bright that the deck lighting was eclipsed. Everything in the bridge washed away to outlines, and spike raised a claw to cover his eyes.
In the window ahead of them, the prospector glowed too.
A slight pop emerged from twilight’s horn, and her world turned into a scream of pain. She collapsed, but her hooves were still magnetically held to the deck. The glow went out.
Her world overwhelmed with pain, she could still dimly make out Applejack’s voice over the radio. “I’ve got her, captain! This might get bumpy!"
Applejack fires the harpoon. Success
The Equinox rattled and shook, and Twilight was powerless to do anything but watch as the Prospector slipped behind them. The Equinox leaned suddenly to one side, and Twilight could hear its beams and supports squealing in protest at the abuse. What did Applejack do?
The pain was too much. Twilight’s world went white.
Spike, meanwhile, stared on in horror at his now-collapsed captain.
“Bringing them in now, cap!” Applejack called over the radio. “Whoever’s in there is probably banged right to Tartarus, but probably ain’t dead. Now… what do you want me to do? She’ll have her engines back in… just under sixteen hours. And there’s no telling what the pony aboard might have in terms of resources. We gotta act right away.”
Spike made his way over to where Twilight had fallen, trying to ignore the blood. “Captain’s down,” he said. “What are our options with the prospector?”
1. Have Applejack attach a few more lines and hold it secure enough not to get away. Whoever they are has got to be smart enough to know that their engines will tear us both apart if they try.
2. Have Applejack climb over and disable key systems during an EVA. I know it’s a risk, but it’s the only way to be sure they won’t try to get away again. Might be able to patch the hole I made in their belly while I’m at it.
3. The prospector is too dangerous to save. I could get on over there, plant some mining explosive, then push her away again. Once we’re a safe distance out, we punch a big enough hole through her that we know she won’t move again. Bit of a shame to waste the materials, but at least we know we’re safe again.
Spike chewed nervously on the edge of his claws as he listened to Applejack’s running commentary on her work. He really would’ve rather been out there with her, to be the extra pair of claws if something went wrong. But Twilight needed tending, and they might need someone on the Equinox.
“That’s three high-tension lines straight into her belly,” Applejack said. “If she tries to take off and fly away now, all she’ll do is be our little tugboat.”
Spike had spent almost no time at all in medical during their voyage—there was no one to get him sick in the Equinox’s sterile environment, and he was too tough (or just not stupid enough) to get himself seriously hurt. As a result, while the crew quarters and some of the common areas had been worn down by his occupation, Medical had been sealed. It still smelled like new plastic, the counter tops were still white and not slightly yellowed with age.
Twilight was tucked safely into bed now, with the best medical care spike could give her.
Spike attempts first aid on Twilight. Success. Twilight will recover her magic in 1 week.
He was fairly sure the glue bandage he’d used on her horn was setting correctly, since the computer said there would already be signs of infection otherwise. Her monitor beeped in regular rhythm. “Guess we both get to test out the facilities,” he said, resting one claw on the edge of the bed. There was only one other bed in here, which for space doubled as the surgical table.
Their surgeon was asleep, of course. Like almost everything.
“Those… boarding spikes you’re using…” Spike said into the radio. “Are they going through into the ship?”
“You betcha they are,” Applejack said. Butwhatever air they had, it’s gone now.”
“So what happens?” Spike asked, walking over to the tiny circular window. It was on the wrong side of the ship, so all he could see through it was unfamiliar stars. I wonder which one of those is ours. “We, uh… k-killed them? Like they tried to kill us?”
Applejack was silent for a few moments. “I’m sorry you have to see this, Spike. I know you aren’t—”
“I’m older than you are,” Spike interrupted, before she could get any further. “I can handle it. Are we trying to kill them or not?”
“It would be easiest,” Applejack replied. “You’d think that out here in the cold, with space itself tryin’ to kill us, ponies would have more reason to work together. But as it turns out, that’s backwards. Bein’ nice and kind and forgivin’ is a luxury of grounders. Out here, a pony who lets a filter go out, well that might be the day that the whole station dies of carbon monoxide. Shoot a hole in the water tank, that’s what the foal next door needs to drink. If the pony on that ship is alive, it means we’ve got a prisoner to deal with. Equinox doesn’t have a brig.”
“Spiiiiiike—” mumbled a voice from the other side of the room.
Spike nearly dropped his radio, hurrying over to Twilight. “Twi, you there?”
Twilight attempts vigor check to return to consciousness. Critical Success
She nodded, eyes going perfectly clear. “Sorry, I was dreaming about something.” She reached up, clutching at her horn with one hoof and groaning loudly. “Why did you… test all the ship’s hammers on my head?”
Spike hurried over, opening one drawer and then another in search of the medication he wanted. Cryogenic vapor filled the air in a cloud as he went through, before he found what he was looking for. He unwrapped the plastic capsule, kicking the drawers shut all at once with one knee and sliding it into the nitrogen injector. “Hold still, computer suggested something for the pain.”
Twilight extended a hoof with surprising force, keeping him away. “Not yet. I… ugh… I think I know what the computer wants you to give me. I’ll go right back to limbo if you give me that.” She eyed the radio. “Stowaway?”
“Still a few hours before their engines come back,” Spike answered, holding out the radio with his other hand. That must hurt terribly, are you sure you don’t want—”
“Put it on the desk there. No, I’ll…” Her horn glowed for a second, then fizzled. She screamed, then melted back onto her bed in a wave of shivering protest. Spike didn’t wait for permission, he just hurried in and pressed the injector to her neck. There was a hiss, and Twilight stopped struggling. Her expression went placid, eyes glazing over.
“Uh… Spike?” Applejack’s voice came over the radio. “I think I see someone in the window.” There was a pause. “Yeah, that’s a pony for sure. Looks like they’re… wavin’ something. Maybe a radio?”
“I’ll try the prospector’s band.” Spike said. “Hold on.” Shame he’d just doped his captain. Twilight wouldn’t be making any more decisions for the next few hours at least.
He twisted the little dial, and instantly a voice resolved on the other end. Not a pony he’d ever heard before, a mare that sounded about the same age as Twilight and her friends. But what was age when every one of them had been in cryosleep caskets for decades?
“Equinox, can you hear me? Stop shooting those spikes into my ship!”
Spike couldn’t help himself—he laughed. “You mean the ship you stole?”
The voice made a frustrated sound. “I want to talk to the captain. Put Twilight on.”
He hesitated. Sharing what had happened to her probably wasn’t a great idea. “Twilight is too busy with important things,” he said. “You get me instead. Now surrender peacefully, and Applejack doesn’t have to blow up our prospector. Everyone lives.”
“Alright,” the voice didn’t even hesitate. “Running out of backup air for the suit… no point going down with the ship. Tell Applejack to hold her fire, and I’ll EVA across. You can arrest me.”
“Who are you?” Spike found himself asking. “Why did you try to kill us?”
“I’m running out of air,” the speaker answered, her voice increasingly annoyed. “I’ll be more willing to talk when I’m not about to die.”
It was Spike’s decision to make.
1. Accept the pony’s surrender. I don’t care what Applejack says, we can’t leave a pony to die. I’m the one who she hurt the most, and I say let her live. We can just throw her into stasis or something when we’re done interrogating her.
2. Wait her out. If she really only has a few hours left, then she won’t get engines back before she’s out of air. It’s cruel, but it’s no more than she could’ve done to us with a bomb on the hull. Maybe as the time runs out she’ll get more talkative, too.
3. Distract her. If I keep her busy, Applejack could try the EVA to disable the ship properly. Might be dangerous, but it was her idea. It will only get safer.
Applejack’s advice made perfect sense—space was merciless and cruel, he knew that even better than she did now. It didn’t matter-- he couldn’t kill someone just because it made sense. Even so, that didn’t mean he had to make the pony think she’d won.
Spike attempts to act like a badass and intimidate over the radio. Success.
“Alright stowaway, this is what we’re going to do. I want you to leave everything but your suit on the Prospector, then climb across. I’m telling my engineer to shoot you if you do anything she doesn’t like.”
“Alright, alright!” the mare called. “I get it! I’ll play hoofball, honest. No need for violence.”
“That will be the captain’s choice,” Spike said flat. “Assuming you don’t get yourself shot.” He switched frequencies. “Were you listening to that, Applejack?”
“Sure was,” the engineer replied. “Didn’t think ya’ had it in ya’, Spike. Sounded like she wet herself in her suit.”
“Well, I meant what I told her,” Spike said. “I want her alive, but if it looks like she’s going to hurt you or the ship, shoot her.”
“What will you do? Try to get Twilight to wake up?”
“Nah. She doesn’t need to know about Twilight. When you bring her in, make her put on four magnetic gauntlets and lock them together. Oh, and cut her suit open so bad she can’t fix it.”
Applejack whistled over the radio. “Damn, Spike. What have you been doing the last few years?”
“Forty-one years,” Spike corrected. “Reading, mostly. If it works for Buck Rogers…”
Applejack laughed. “I ain’t no adventurin’ deer, Spike. You ain’t either.”
Spike didn’t respond to that. “I’m going to make a brig. Take her to the crew deck when you’ve finished. I’ll handle her.”
“Alright,” Applejack sounded hesitant. “But I’m gonna be there when we talk to her. I want what she knows as bad as you.”
“I think Twilight would too. We’ll just bring her in for now.”
Spike floated past security on his way down to the crew quarters, and removed a pistol from the safe. He clicked out the magazine, checking each of the fourteen plastic bullets. I might not be Buck Rodgers, but I can protect my friends just as good. This pony had almost killed the only ponies left in his whole world. Once he learned why, she would go straight back into the ice where she came from. It was better if she didn’t die—she could go into an Equestrian prison, when their mission was finally done, and they saw home again.
Spike’s intimidation skill increases by one.
Spike wasn’t sure which of the crew quarters to choose, and ultimately picked Fluttershy’s only because she was the least likely to care about the damage she was about to do to its fiber hookups.
There was no telling what this pony would be capable of—but she couldn’t do much if Spike tore the wires right out of the walls. He cut with claws and his own fiery breath, not even bothering to go down for the proper equipment. The damage it would take weeks to repair could be inflicted in mere minutes.
He took the time to remove Fluttershy’s vacuum-sealed belonging cube, tossing it in to Rainbow Dash’s room beside. The prisoner would get a bare mattress. What are we going to do if she’s a unicorn? We don’t have antimagic shackles. The lift came to a stop at the crew deck a second later. A pony floated in front of Applejack, hooves hogtied with magnetic shackles just as he suggested. Applejack hadn’t just torn the back of her suit, she’d also removed the helmet completely. A soft pink pony was inside, with a curly sky-blue mane. No horn, just a pair of glasses with a single cracked lens. It didn’t look like Applejack had been gentle with her.
“Second Officer Spike,” Applejack said, her voice exaggerated. “Prisoner as ordered.”
“Excuse me…” The pony said, looking up towards Spike with wide, brown eyes. “Do you think you could… maybe ask your kind engineer to untie me? I don’t think my legs aren’t meant to stay this way.” She drifted a little further down, then sunk rapidly, smacking straight into the ground with a whimper.
“Do you have external controls?” he asked.
Applejack tossed a remote through the air towards him. Spike caught it in one claw.
“I want your name, pony.”
“I would really rather talk directly to the captain,” she said, her voice as sweet as expired lemonade. “Isn’t that the procedure for prisoners?”
“Fine.” Spike turned away, sliding the remote into his belt. “Then Twilight can be the one to unlock your gauntlets. She should be down to talk to you sometime in the next… forty-eight hours or so.”
The pony swore under her breath. “Cozy Glow. That’s my name. Let me go.”
“Are you an Earth Pony, Cozy Glow? A pegasus? Thestral?”
“I’m not sure why…” she glared up at him. “Pegasus.”
She’s not going to be kicking her way out of her cell, then.
“Applejack, if she tries anything, shoot.”
Applejack removed the pistol from her own toolbelt—far more complicated than the unicorn model he used, the weapon was a brace that snapped onto a foreleg and required careful twists and twitches to fire. “Pleasure, sir.”
Spike pressed the release, and immediately Cozy started to drift up from the deck. She didn’t try anything, just rose into something like a standing position, using a nearby dining chair to keep from floating away. “In there.” He said, pointing at the open door. “You can wait in there for the captain.” Don’t try anything, or we’ll… we’ll space you.”
“Dragons,” she muttered under her breath, but she moved. Drifted forward, until she was across the threshold. “We’re saving Equestria, you know. From idiots like you.”
Spike smiled toothily in at her. “We’ll see.” He reached out, sealing the door shut with a claw on the controls.
“What do you want me to do, Spike?” Applejack asked.
1. Take in the Prospector. We’ve wasted enough time and fuel. There’s information over there we might be able to use as leverage, and we need to get the Prospector repaired and docked again before we can move. 2. Wait, guard the prisoner instead. That pony had at least a year to learn about the Equinox, and the Prospector might have traps like the cargo bay did. Waiting a few more days won’t kill us. 3. Wait, repair another ship’s system in the meantime. Hydroponics has been waiting long enough to get the first crop in. Besides, pegasus locked up in a tiny room without any wires can’t cause too much trouble. It’s only a few days.
Twilight Sparkle was better now. She would stay better, so long as she didn’t try to use her magic accidentally in the next few days.
Unfortunately, that meant she couldn’t possibly look like a skilled unicorn to the prisoner, since the simplest trick of a space-faring unicorn was making their own gravity. But the captured pony had held her mysteries long enough.
“You both did excellent work,” she said, as the lift came to a stop on crew level. “I couldn’t have asked for a better crew. But.” She raised one wing, cutting them both off. She could see it on their faces, Spike’s concern and Applejack’s sense of justice. Or revenge.
“Naval intelligence is clear on this. The best way to get answers is for me to go alone.” She carefully reached into her jumpsuit, removing the radio and switching it on. “There. You can both listen, but you can’ go in. Go back to doing what you’re doing, and… we’ll catch up when I’m done with her.”
“We’re gonna freeze her, right?” Spike asked. “We’re not going to…” He looked nervously towards Applejack.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Twilight said. “But yes, that’s my plan. When we’ve learned everything we can, we’ll freeze her. Maybe. We can talk about it.” Right now the only two pods she knew worked were hers and Applejack's—she didn’t particularly feel inclined to give up her own spot to a criminal. Maybe Rarity would’ve, but she wasn’t as generous.
“It’s only fer your sake I’d wanna come, cap. You ain’t all together. If she tries something…”
“I have a gun,” Twilight said. “I have more combat training than either of you. It will be fine.” She walked out of the lift, crossing towards the new brig slowly enough for the lift to vanish engineward behind her. Twilight took one last glance at her reflection in the mirror. Formal coat, gold trim, sun on her shoulder—the uniform had survived storage better than Twilight herself.
The cap would hide her bandaged horn, even if the jacket couldn’t do the same for her grieves.
Unfortunately, the crew quarters had never been designed to be used for a brig, which meant there was no way to have this conversation without opening the door. There was a tiny window, but nothing near what they would’ve needed to keep an eye on their guest. She wasn’t afraid to set traps before. She could do it again.
So far as Twilight knew Applejack’s repairs on the prospector hadn’t encountered anything dangerous so far, but they hadn’t actually been inside yet.
“I need you to back away from the door,” Twilight called, loud enough that she was sure her voice would penetrate steel. "I’m armed, but I don’t think there’s any need for violence. We can both be civilized ponies, can’t we?”
“Of course, Captain Twilight, I would love nothing more than to follow your directions.” She heard motion in the room and saw her distant form by the back wall. No sign of a trap, though the walls had been ripped open. But how much of that was Spike’s doing, and how much was the prisoner trying to escape?
“You’re to stay by that wall during our conversation,” Twilight called through the door. If you move, I’ll try to lock you in. If I can’t, I’ll have to shoot. Nothing is more important to me than the safety of my crew.”
“I understand,” the voice answered. “You don’t have anything to worry about, Captain. I can be a cooperative prisoner.”
The door opened. Twilight was momentarily taken aback by the pony’s strange appearance. She was a pegasus, but she was so tall. Those legs looked unnaturally thin, her wings too long.
She knew the look. A spacer child, who hadn’t spent nearly enough time under gravity spell or centrifuge. But did this one grow up on a separatist asteroid colony, or on the Equinox?
There were no traps she could see, no sign that anything in the room had been moved. Twilight sat down in the doorway, keeping her earth-pony pistol close at hoof if she needed it. “You already know my name,” she began. “I’m told your name is Cozy Glow, is that correct?”
She nodded.
“Why are you on my ship, Cozy Glow?”
“Same reason you are,” the pegasus rose to her hooves, stretching out her wings casually. “But I think I understand it better than you. Not to say I’m smarter than you—obviously, I couldn’t be, you’re the most brilliant pony in Equestria. But I have better information.”
“We’re here to contact the ones who sent the Signal,” Twilight said, annoyed. “You expect me to believe that some kind of… Signaler superfan… stole a piece of our starship and set traps all over… because that would help with our mission?”
“Well…” From her expression, it almost seemed like she did. “It’s not help how you think. The Listeners didn’t just hear the Signal, we translated it."
What?
"We’re both here to help Equestria, but the Listeners understand what Equestria will have to do to survive, and… you’re doing your best to make sure we don’t. But being accidental won’t help if invaders show up in our star system and kill everypony.”
Twilight’s blood chilled in her veins. I really hope you’re wrong. We already made contact. There was no reason to share that information, though. No reason to believe a word this pony was saying. For all Twilight knew, this “Listener” organization was some kind of Xenophobic cult, or… maybe didn’t exist at all.
But there was one way to be sure. “We already know what the message was,” Twilight snapped, puffing out her chest a little. “It wasn’t words, it was a signal of intelligence. A call for new friends. It’s a series of patterns and math problems.”
Cozy Glow shook her head. “That’s only what’s on the surface. Bring me to a computer, and I can show you.”
1. Give her a terminal. If Equestria is really in danger, we need to know what we’ve done. All other risks are secondary.
2. Don’t. It’s obviously some kind of ruse to get access to our systems. She’s saying whatever she thinks she has to say to get us to do what she wants. For all we know she has some failsafe in place in case she got captured, and she’ll just use it. Call her bluff, press her to learn why she’s really here.
3. Bring a written copy of the signal. The danger might be real, but Cozy Glow is dangerous too. The signal’s mathematics are so advanced that even Ph.D. level scholars can’t fully understand its total complexity, but that shouldn’t be required. She only has to show the translation, not invent it herself.
4. Applejack suggests rigging an expedition terminal with data from the signal and nothing else. We don’t have very many portable terminals and they’re impossible to replace, but risking one seems like the best compromise. That way she won’t have any argument that she lacks the computational power to give her evidence, but won’t be able to affect the Equinox either.
Twilight Sparkle settled the “portable” computer down in Cozy’s cell. More accurately, the screen and keyboard were in the cell, and the three pieces of the computer took up most of the dining room.
“You’ll find the entire text of the Signal in the root directory,” Twilight said. “And I made sure all the same math utilities are installed. If you need the mainframe for anything, you can write it out on the pad there and I’ll run it myself.”
Cozy Glow visibly squirmed at the end of the cell. She’d started to take on that ‘prisoner look’ over the last few days, her carefully groomed curls starting to blur together into a frayed mess. Twilight had searched her name in the mainframe, but hadn’t been surprised not to see it. Personal information and potential criminal histories were just wasted mass on a vessel with a known crew of national heroes.
And if Equestria knew we had a stowaway, they would’ve warned us. Unless, the dark parts of her mind reminded her, she was meant to be here.
“This isn’t what I need,” Cozy Glow declared, her forced sweetness not even remotely convincing now. “I told you, I need your computer. This isn’t powerful enough.”
Twilight rolled her eyes, settling down on her haunches just outside the cell. She still had her pistol strapped to her belt, but that was it. Spike was with her now, since this wasn’t the interrogation anymore. Applejack was nearly done with the hull repairs to the Prospector, and wanted to finish getting it parked in the dock, so she wasn’t in attendance.
“This is your chance to make your case, and it’s the only one you’ll get. Technically what you did in the cargo bay constitutes attempted murder of an officer of the fleet and is justification for…” she shook her head. “I don’t know if we’ve ever had an execution on an Equestrian ship, and it won’t start on mine. But I will freeze you. We’ve got backup cryogenics, and that’s right where you’re going if you don’t convince me.”
Cozy Glow made a frustrated noise, then pulled over the keyboard. “I don’t know how convincing I’ll be without the computer. But I can… give you the translation, anyway. We all know it.”
Twilight didn’t have to stand beside her in the cell to look at what she was doing, the portable computer had a second terminal. She propped it up on the dining-room chair and watched as she typed.
“The message of the signal is in here.” She highlighted a few sections on the first page.
“The… spacing?”
“Yes,” Cozy Glow didn’t give her time to doubt. “It’s compression, look…” and so she explained. It was a surprisingly compelling case—without having seen the message yet, she could see the order resolving out of chaos. It was as though the mathematics that dominated most of the message were actually only the backbone for something else.
Cozy Glow lost her a little when the actual message finally emerged. There was no translation, no alien tongue. The words were in plain Ponish. Between a dozen different math problems and their solutions, a single sentence had been encoded.
Life is not advised, the message said. You must change into constancy. Will perform it.
Twilight studies the calculations to detect deception. Critical Failure
Whatever else might be said for this pony—maybe she was a terrorist, or a misguided zealot. But her math was perfect. Twilight could detect no flaw in what she’d drawn—she checked and rechecked and even pulled over a keyboard to run the numbers herself. She spent ten minutes in total silence verifying for herself.
“The Listeners found this message, and we understand its meaning. It is a threat—a threat of attack to Equestria. Coming here is part of what makes it happen.”
“That’s… one interpretation,” Twilight eventually said, pushing the keyboard away. “How could they send the message in Ponish?”
“We’ve been sending out radio for… how many years?” Cozy asked. “They’re only four light years away.”
“Okay, but… why doesn’t Equestria know about this?” she pointed at the screen with a hoof. “I get it, this would be hard to find. But there are lots of smart ponies out there. A whole system full.”
“They did,” Cozy said. “They formed the Listeners. Recruited me… lots of other ponies. To make sure we survived.”
“By sneaking you onto my ship?” Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Instead of blowing it up? Or just… cutting the funding when it was still bare steel?”
The pegasus rose, looking out with innocent eyes. “We didn’t learn in time. The Equinox mission was almost finished.” She looked away. “I can’t get into their reasons, but our leaders think the Signalers aren’t going to come to Equestria and invade… they think they use the same methods they already did. Send a message, teach something. Like the Signal… I don’t understand the math, but isn’t it part of how we built the engines on this thing? It taught us something…”
Yes. Twilight realized, with growing horror. Not only were the mathematics of their drive in the Signal, but they’d already found a probe that had nearly killed them, and had instructions for a machine.
A machine spike was building.
Spike caught her eyes from the other side of the wall, shaking his head in obvious disagreement. I’m glad you don’t think so.
“We think the Signalers were waiting… maybe for our civilizations to get advanced enough. They test us by waiting for us to come to them. And once we arrive, they teach us something else. The Equinox would come back to Equestria with its computers full of… knowledge bombs, ready to blow up Equestria. Back home, they make sure everypony thinks you died, and… out here, I make sure you never get home. Evil aliens think we’re too primitive to bother with, and… everypony lives.”
“So that’s the message,” Twilight finished, after having explained everything. They would’ve ordinarily had a meeting like this in the dining room, but the risk of being overheard was too great right now. So they stood on the bridge instead, looking down at the translation and Twilight’s notes.
Life is not advised, the message said. You must change into constancy. We will perform it.
“So that’s her plan to convince us?” Applejack asked, her tone doubting. “Come up with some new way to read the Signal that will get us to do what she wants? You can’t seriously be thinking of listening to her.”
Spike nodded his agreement. “I’ve been working on the Signaler machine for almost two weeks now, and nothing about it seems dangerous. It’s not making a bomb, or… anything else we need to be afraid of.”
“It’s a dumb plan,” Applejack repeated. “She’s lying, obviously. Or… been misled somehow. If these ‘Listener’ ponies were so smart, they would’ve been smart enough to convince Celestia. Nah, I don’t buy it. She’s leaving somethin’ out, somethin’ huge. Maybe the whole reason for her being here, or… maybe she’s just crazy. Dunno which, but it doesn’t frankly matter.”
Twilight has since studied the translation and attempted to discover alternative reasons it might be so convincing. Critical Success
“Well… it might not say what we think it does. There’s a problem with compression… particularly alien compression we had to reverse-engineer. Since data is lost, there’s a possibility the same message might be decompressed into different, equally valid possibilities. There’s a chance it was meant to say something else… maybe not even in our language.” She turned to Spike. “What do you think we should do?”
“Well… I wish we had Fluttershy,” he said. “If there’s anypony who could’ve been sure about this translation, it’s her. But since we can’t… I think keeping her is dangerous.”
“She said…” Twilight hesitated. She didn’t want to make it seem like she was taking the prisoner’s side. “That she knows the ship almost as well as you. She’ll follow my orders from now on and be another skilled engineer on the crew.”
Applejack laughed. “Yeah? And if you believe that, I’ve got some FlimFlam pharmaceutical anti-aging infusion back home you’d be interested in. Real magical stuff.” She rose from the engineering station, turning to leave. “Frankly cap, we could really use another engineer. But havin’ a pony wandering around the ship we don’t trust—one who’s already tried to attack us a few times. Busted Spike up pretty good, and you know what would’ve happen if that were you or me.”
We’d be lucky to be alive, and we both have earth pony endurance. Had most other crew been standing there, they would’ve been turned into a reddish paste.
“I see two real options here, cap. One ain’t so pretty, one’s the right thing. You get to decide which is which. We can freeze her right away, or… we could use some stronger methods to get the real truth out of her. Maybe start waiting a few days between her meals, or… I dunno, somethin.’ Make her willing to cooperate, and only when we’re sure she’s tellin’ the truth do we put her on ice. No more made-up translation business.”
“If we freeze her, we won’t be able to wake her up again until the first crop of geneseed is finished,” Spike said. “Same as the rest of the crew. It feels like a waste to just lock her in a box for the rest of the trip, but… I can’t think of any way to be sure she’s on our side. Maybe if we had a changeling on the crew who could read her emotions… but we don’t.”
Twilight winced a little at that—there was unicorn magic for reading minds, the kind Starlight Glimmer probably would’ve known. They didn’t need a changeling, they just needed an evil unicorn. Something they didn’t have.
“I think this translation… means your device warrants some extra caution, Spike. She might be telling the truth, despite all our instincts. I think you should start using the portable computer instead of the Equinox’s own mainframe.”
Spike shrugged. “Might go a lot slower that way, but… guess we’ve got time. Or I do.”
“And if anything happens down the line to suggest the Signalers might be hostile, like she’s suggesting… maybe that’s when we thaw her out and give her another chance.”
“Think she’ll go quietly?” Applejack asked. “She was obviously willing to die if she climbed onto this ship. Freezing her might mean mission failure. Might mean we’re going to freeze her and then cut the cord and let her die. Cornered animal like that… get real desperate.”
“I’m not sure,” Twilight admitted. “Probably isn’t smart to tell her what we’re planning before we do it. But…”
“We could still let her be an engineer,” Spike said. “With me to supervise her, maybe. Maybe if we convince her we’re at least considering her point of view… getting the Equinox working right and refueled is in her best interests too. She might not fight us while we’re doing things she wants.”
“Ain’t worth it,” Applejack argued. “Frankly cap, you’re being nice as anypony could ask for by not spacing her. That’s more than a stowaway like her could expect in any free spacer’s ship, make no mistake.
Twilight frowned down at the table, considering her options…
1. Take on Cozy Glow as an engineer. [New Character joins the party. Repair: 4, Construction: 3, Persuasion: 3, Computers: 3]. Her motives are dubious and her reliability moreso, but she will certainly improve ship readiness and repair times. This might also be an opportunity to learn more about the Signal and why she’s really aboard.
2. March her to cryogenics and freeze her. We don’t need any special plan; a gun will do. She’s just a Pegasus, and these hallways are tight. She won’t be able to escape.
3. Leave her as a conscious prisoner for now. She obviously hasn’t shared everything with us. Maybe she needs time to be convinced she was wrong.
4. Applejack suggests drugging her food first, then marching her to cryogenics. Even if she has an escape plan, she’ll be too doped to carry it out.
5. Extreme interrogation methods. The information extracted this way cannot always be relied upon, and even if it succeeds it is likely to have a negative morale impact on the crew. Ponies just don’t do this.
Twilight was pained to give up such a potentially useful crew-member. But considering everything she’d done so far, the injuries she’d already caused, there was no way for her to justify returning Cozy Glow to freedom. She was probably preparing an escape plan right then, and it was only a matter of time before somepony made a mistake and the dangerous pony escaped.
She prepared the meal carefully herself, though it was really just the same nutrient paste they ate every day. A little added spice to cover up the sedatives—though without the roughage to make “real” meals, it was going to be impossible to cover up what they were doing completely.
“Stay close,” she whispered from around the corner. Spike and Applejack were both here, armed with makeshift clubs instead of firearms. “But don’t let her see you unless I call.”
“We got it, cap.” Applejack whispered back. “It’s more kindness than she would’ve got on my family’s ship.”
Twilight stepped out from around the corner, right up in front of Fluttershy’s room.
The window had been smeared all over with nutrient paste, dark green already drying to brown and covering up whatever was inside. Apparently she’d noticed the drugs.
Twilight stopped in front of the door, raising the earth-pony pistol. Her horn was still bandaged and glued, and would probably work if she needed it. But she hoped not to find out. “Cozy, we’re taking you to cryogenics,” she called, her voice clear. “If you try anything, I’ll shoot.”
“Taking me to an airlock,” came the pony’s response from inside. From the sound of it, she was near the back of the room. Don’t forget, she used traps last time. She covered the window for a reason. “I get it. You’re getting revenge. Wouldn’t expect you to be better than that just because you’re a princess.
“No revenge,” Twilight said. “But I can’t trust you, and we don’t have a jail. If I left you in there forever you’d find a way out eventually. You’re coming with me.”
Twilight backed up, kicking over the aluminum mess table and dragging it forward until it was right in front of Fluttershy’s door. It would be annoying for a pony to climb over, but more importantly it would also be cover.
“We’ll see,” Cozy Glow said. “Threaten me all you want, I’m staying right here.”
“I could kill life support on the whole deck,” Twilight called through the door. “Either you come with me, or I’ll leave you here while I pump the air. Your choice.”
Cozy muttered something on the other side of the door—profanity, probably. But Twilight couldn’t make it out.
“I’m opening this door,” Twilight called. “If anything comes out at me, I’m shutting it and you can get vacuum-packed.”
“Wait!” Cozy called, voice suddenly afraid. Apparently she’d accepted the bluff. If that’s what it was. “You can open it now. I’ll come.”
Twilight did. She still stayed far to the side, and wasn’t surprised to see Cozy Glow had made something near the entrance. It looked like she’d torn apart the back of Fluttershy’s mattress, and used the springs in some truly creative ways. The spike laying on the floor was at least as long as her leg and sharp enough it might even give a dragon trouble.
“Out.” Twilight backed away, out of reach of the pegasus. “Straight to the lift. Don’t stop, don’t turn around.”
Cozy Glow moved. “A princess is really willing to kill me,” she said, her voice pained. “I thought you were supposed to be better than that.”
“I hope I can be,” Twilight said. “We’re freezing you, and I swear to treat your pod with the same respect and maintenance as the ones my friends are using. You’ll stay there until we return to Equestria, where you can be tried like anypony else.”
They arrived in cryogenics a few minutes later. One of the pods was already open, casket lid gently hissing with the vaporization of refrigeration gasses. There was a careful slot for a pony inside. And from the look of it, Cozy Glow was starting to sway on her hooves. I wonder how much she ate before she realized it was drugged.
That was the moment she chose to attack. She smashed backward with her hindlegs, kicking at the gun strapped to Twilight’s leg with surprising precision. The plastic cracked and crumpled at the pressure, turning the gun into a useless lump that fell away from the elastic strap and tumbled to the deck in front of her.
Twilight was stunned, but not for long. By the time Cozy came around for her, she was already bracing herself against the deck. “Applejack! Spike!” The pegasus collided with her.
And finally she was the one at a disadvantage. Twilight was an Alicorn—she had the magic of all three tribes when she needed it. By the time Spike and Applejack arrived, she already had the pegasus pinned. It looked like she’d probably broken one of her legs, because Cozy had been reduced to moaning pitifully.
“It’s not… you don’t know what you’re doing…” she wailed, as they lifted her up into the casket. “Equestria… won’t survive. Don’t go back. It won’t be the place you think it is. It already happened. It’s all gone… back to the way it should be.”
Twilight ignored her, strapping the mask on over her face, and smacking the nitrogen needle against her neck with unnecessary force. Only when she’d fallen still did she point to the damaged leg. “Splint that before she goes in,” she instructed. “Medical sealant.”
Applejack frowned. “Sure she’s worth it? We could just amputate it first.”
“Yes,” Twilight muttered, slumping to the deck. She’d taken a few bruises during the fight, but nothing a little ice and a few hours rest couldn’t cure. “Then… meet me on the bridge. We’ve got… to decide on our next move.
A few hours later, with some fresh bandages and a nap, it was time to decide what to do next.
1. Fully dock and repair the prospector before moving. It ain’t easy moving a ship around while you’re both acceleratin.’ [Repairs are more likely to succeed, but waste fuel]
2. Use the eye to find a promising asteroid nearby, and set up shop for repairs and refuel. Bit of a roll of the dice if we find what we need, but there are a few good prospects within’ a month’s trip. Mostly deceleratin’ the whole way. [Prospector won’t be available until repaired, but no fuel will be wasted in the meantime]
3. Resume trip for previous destination. Proximus C has everythin’ we need, no sense takin’ a gamble we don’t have to. Tanks will be dry as dead wood when we get there, but we’ll be able to refuel and repair to our heart’s content. [Destination is certain to have all necessary resources, but if something prevents the Equinox from arriving there, the ship will likely not get a chance to refuel.]
They’d named the asteroid Harmony’s Repost, probably because Twilight was tired, and she didn’t have hours to obsess about what it should be called. Ever since they’d tossed their stowaway into the freezer, Twilight had been having trouble sleeping.
It was all bluster, it’s okay. Equestria isn’t in danger. Still, she hadn’t be able to get her last words from her mind. “It already happened. It’s all gone back to the way it should be.” Even if they were still in touch with Equestria, their information would be four years behind. IF she asked for confirmation that nothing was wrong, she wouldn’t know their answer for another eight. By then they would probably be on their way home already, and beyond the power to change course.
If Spike or Applejack had been affected by their actions, they made no sign of it. Spike certainly didn’t seem torn with regret—he’d taken to her assignment with incredible enthusiasm.
She found her way to central fabrication roughly ten minutes before they were scheduled to park beside the asteroid, and he was still hard at work.
“Don’t worry!” Spike called, sounding quite worried himself. “The new stuff is all mine, I didn’t steal ship parts.”
The new stuff indeed. Spike now had several different machines, each one nestled inside standard fabricator shells that had been gutted and opened and connected with thick bundles of wire. She approached cautiously, watching through the plastic as Spike did.
The thaumic-grade crystals were gone, replaced with a single disk about as wide around as the bottom of a pony’s hoof. Tiny grippers inside the machine held it as it was sprayed from both sides, then lowered it into another section of the machine. Lights flashed from within, and it was lifted again to be sprayed and polished. From the look of it, all these connected machines were made to pass that single thin disk around.
“That’s an awful lot of effort,” Twilight said, sitting on her haunches and trying to make sense of it. “Guess you made progress in the last month, huh?” He also wasn’t wearing badinages anymore, which she found even more encouraging. His scales had healed, though the purple and lavender pattern there would show slight splits for the rest of his life. “All that for a disk?”
“Actually all this is for a single component of the real machine.” Spike pointed to the wall. He’d significantly restructured, with most of the diagrams kept in their original size. But two had been enormously enlarged, printed and painstakingly glued together into two huge posters. “This is the machine you’re looking at.” He said. “And that is what it makes. Here’s a failure, check it out.”
He tossed another disk towards her, and Twilight caught it in her magic. At least she didn’t get a headache when she tried to levitate anymore.
It wasn’t clear anymore, but faintly reflective. There were lots of little patterns visible in the crystal, square, repeating and regular and connected with hair thin wires. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “The aliens gave us an art machine. I’ve never seen ponies carve so fine. What in Equestria are they using do print so fine?”
“Light,” Spike answered. But he still sounded frustrated. “It’s not art Twilight. It’s some kind of… thinking machine.”
“A computer?” She tossed the disk back. “I’ve heard ponies talk about tiny tubes, but not this tiny.”
Spike shrugged. “I can’t make any more sense of how it works than you can. I just know the fabricator they have us can’t be controlled by our computer. No uplink at all, just one of those sitting in the heart.”
“It’s really interesting,” Twilight admitted. “But we’ve got bigger problems right now. Asteroid looks promising. Applejack has a sensor probe ready as soon as we get closer. All three of us on mining detail until further notice. So…” she gestured at the complex machine with a wing. “Pack this up. Maybe make some room, too. We might need fabrication again as soon as we have the spare metal.”
“Right,” Spike deflated at her words, though he was obviously trying not to show it. “Mining duty. I’ll be there. Just…” He reached over to the wall, ripping out the ingredient sheet and pushing it towards her. “We need all this. If there’s any chance we can get it…”
“We’ll try,” Twilight said. “But getting the Prospector up is priority one. Then we refuel, then we get enough to get Hydroponics growing, then we get to other projects. I’m sick of operating with only part of my crew.
A few hours later, they were back on the bridge, with the screens all filled with data readings. “Well…” Applejack relaxed, pushing away from the science station. “Say ‘yer prayers back to Celestia, cuz’ we’ve got Xenon. We’ll have to melt a nice little lake of ice to get to it, but… nothin’ the Equinox can’t handle.”
Twilight looked again out the window—the asteroid didn’t look like much. An oblong bit of mostly ice, wrapped around a thin spur of rock and metal. It was larger than the Equinox, but not much larger. “What about the rest of our systems?”
Applejack shrugged. “The rest is… mostly aluminum, few other trace metals. Was hoping for some titanium, so we could replace some of the systems somepony decided to gut… but hydroponics will work just fine with aluminum trays. But we do need an agenda, cap. We could spend… oh, six months here. Use some ice to dome over down there, get into the gut on that rock and dig out everything we need… like mah family would do… or we could just start hauling ice back, looking for pockets a xenon.”
“What difference does it make?”
“Well… how big a rush we’re in,” Applejack answered. “Waitin’ means we’re better prepared. We could go into the prospector nice and slow, check if for all kinda traps. We could make ourselves a fresh batch ‘a spare parts and fill our tanks till they’re like Rainbow in cider season. But that’s a long time, especially with just three. So long it might be faster to lose time in the beginnin’ plantin’ some geneseed, cuz the first crop’ll be one more set a hooves, and another every month after. The longer we’re here the faster we get.”
“Basically, comes down to what yah’ want fixed, and how prepared we want to be.”
Twilight needed to make a list.
- Rebuild weapons [ORE UNAVAILABLE]
- Construct Hydroponics (one crew-member will revive every month following its completion, speeding further repairs)
- Repair the prospector
- Minimum fuel for inter-system destination
- Fully refuel all tanks
- Replace field equipment
- Complete Spike’s Project
- Repair backup cryogenics
- Build a second lander (using a different template)
- Conduct a serious study of why Equestria is out of contact
- Split the party: Once Prospector is repaired, have Twilight take it somewhere while the crew repairs the Equinox.
Equinox Bill of Repair: 1. Hydroponics 8/8 COMPLETE 2. Repair the prospector 4/4 COMPLETE 3. Fully Refuel 2/20 4. Backup Cryogenics 0/4 5. Replace field equipment 0/2 6. Study of communications blackout 0/?
[In one month of repair time, Applejack has fully recovered from Cryosleep sickness, Twilight’s horn has completely healed. One month of nutrient paste has been used, another 3 months’ supply remain.]
Twilight adjusted the space suit a little tighter about her chest, wishing the standard design had done a little more to accommodate alicorns. As though just adding extra space for legs and horn was enough…
But she couldn’t rightly protest—this was her first visit to the mining site since the day Applejack had first anchored cables there. She needed to show support for the crew.
Out the airlock she went, into the sudden, uncomfortable silence of the air recyclers and the fluid heater in her suit. Far below, or at least it looked below, was Harmony’s Repost, an asteroid that had become a temporary home in the void. She could see the foil dome far below, doing its best to conserve heat against the unfathomable cold of space. There were several anchor lines, each one about a hundred meters out, and kept in tension so the asteroid wouldn’t drift closer to the Equinox and surprise them all with a few fresh hull breaches.
They were both down there now—the diligent Applejack and a Spike who would obviously rather keep working on the first assignment Twilight had given him. He was becoming almost obsessed with that thing. It’s not mind control he’s just excited, that’s all.
The nearest line had a motorized unit waiting, with an oversized clip meant to attach to a line from her suit. But Twilight’s horn was working now—she could afford to do what not even spacefaring pegasai could. She could fly.
She jumped, and that single push was enough to propel her “downward” towards the asteroid. What if I lost concentration right now? What if I failed a levitation spell like I failed to control the inertia on that starship? Then she would drift off and die alone, obviously. There was no Rarity around to rescue her, and skilled as Applejack was she was neither a pilot nor gifted with EVAs. It was all attached to a body for her, either starship or smaller.
But of course nothing like that happened to her horn, and after only a few more moments Twilight was approaching the asteroid. She needed a little more magic now, carefully directed force to cancel out what was left of her initial push. A bit of reversing direction, so that her hooves settled comfortably on the ice.
Well, comfortably enough so long as she was using her magic to keep her down. She’d be slipping and sliding all over the place without that help. “Cheating” as Rainbow called it. Well, she’d keep cheating, as she made her way over to the airlock and unzipped it carefully.
Inside was the prospector’s real airlock, so she didn’t have to rely on the questionable protection of a thin layer of plastic to separate her from the outside.
A few minutes of standing in place while air refilled, and she was in again.
Spike sat in only his jumpsuit in front of the ice-processor, with several oversized bins of ice all around him. He had a book open on the terminal in front of him, though he barely seemed to be reading. He brightened as she approached, turning to face her as she came in. But whatever he said was too muffled by her suit to be intelligible.
Twilight waved politely to him, making her way over and switching her suit to “external conversation” mode. “How’s the refining going?”
“Not as bad as being alone during an interstellar trip,” Spike admitted. “But almost as bad. At least I had the news from Equestria coming back, that was pretty interesting sometimes. This is just… ugh. If I knew we were gonna drop out of contact I would’ve ordered more books.”
Twilight nodded sympathetically—she had packed as many as her space on the computer allowed, but that was limited. “How close are we to done? Getting… a lot of argon out of that ice?”
Spike laughed bitterly. “My guess—two months of this. Two months sitting in this chair, running blocks through the machine. If we’re lucky.”
“We could switch to mining ore instead… build an external processor. One of those big…”
“Nope,” Spike cut her off. “I already asked her about that. But our chief engineer says it would be a waste of time and metal. This is the only time we do this. Once we go through a few more tons of rich ice, we’re done. We’ll have enough fuel to make it back home again, unless we spend a few decades circling Proximus first.”
He sat up. “Twilight, this is a waste of time. I just know that Signaler machine is going to change everything. But it can’t help us if we won’t even build it.”
Twilight imagined could see Cozy Glow’s face, a pale reflection in the glass terminal behind Spike. The promise of Equestria’s doom was still on her lips.
“We’ll be here a long time, Spike. There’s plenty of time to build it.”
He grumbled, folding his arms. “That’s what Applejack always says.”
Applejack was the real reason she was here. Twilight straightened, turning away. “I’ll be back in a few. Keep up the great work!” And she headed out, down the Prospector’s stairs. Everything was still strapped down around the ship—there was no gravity here, despite how easily she could pretend.
And out through another Airlock. There was air outside, in the growing pocket of excavated ice and ore that they worked. Twilight’s suit began to fog out its exhaust, and the fluid heaters began to struggle to keep up—a chilly atmosphere was much harder to keep warm in than the vacuum.
And there was Applejack—no space suit, though an emergency mask hung from her belt along with a spare tank. She worked a laser-saw with quick strokes, severing promising blocks of ice from the asteroid with ease.
“Ah, cap!” she grinned, settling it down. For all Spike had been dying of boredom, the prospector was all smiles. “I was hopin’ you’d show up. Got some good news.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Applejack pushed off, drifting closer. She seemed entirely unaffected by the cold, though a thin layer of ice had formed on what little coat emerged from her thermal jumpsuit. “First batch a Geneseed is through the processor. It’s time to pick our lucky recruit.”
- Rainbow Dash (Climatology, Military) - Fluttershy (Medicine, Linguist) - Pinkie Pie (Geology, Insight) - Rarity (Physics, EVA Expert)
Twilight shuddered as she watched Fluttershy’s sleeping form through the medbay window. Her coat was spotty, skin gray and blotchy, and her mane nearly gone. It was the look of a pony who was barely alive—or more accurately, recently dead. We don’t sleep for the trip. We die and get reconstructed on the other side.
It hadn’t been an easy choice to make, by any means. But Fluttershy’s medical skills would’ve been useful more than once already, and her translation abilities were just too critical.
I need to know if Cozy told the truth. She’d flirted briefly with regret at freezing the other pegasus—but she could still sleep at night, largely thanks to the violence Cozy had displayed. If she had cooperated all the way into the tank, she might’ve turned around and given her a second chance.
Maybe if we can get secure in our mission. If we ever land anywhere, she might be useful. Anything where she can’t try to blow up the Equinox.
Twilight wasn’t left waiting very long before the pegasus finally opened her eyes for the first time. Greenish slime dribbled from her lips, and her eyes were still glassy. But all that would change.
She stepped through the door, putting on her warmest smile as she did. “Fluttershy, welcome to Proximus.”
The pegasus didn’t even seem to hear her at first. Her eyes turned in Twilight’s general direction, but she didn’t look at her. Her ears were a little more accurate. “We made it.”
“You didn’t think we would?” Twilight sat down on her haunches across from the bed, where she could see the medical readout. She wouldn’t be able to make sense of it like Fluttershy could, but at least she could know if something was seriously wrong. She’d been off repairs for the last two days, with Fluttershy every moment. “You didn’t have to come.”
Fluttershy looked away, expression wistful. A few strands of mane came away from her head as she moved. “If I didn’t come with you, I’d be an old mare. Watching the laser line, waiting years to hear back. I’d be dead before you ever came back.” There was bitterness in her voice, a little passive-aggressive anger. But it wasn’t like Fluttershy was going to emerge from the ice a different pony than when she’d gone in.
It’s mostly the meds. Twilight still remembered what it was like to wake up feeling like she’d been bucked a dozen ways to Sunday, wanting to wring Spike’s neck whenever he spoke. Everything he said was bad news—you only get one crewmember, the Equinox almost exploded, they were running low on fuel. She wouldn’t give Fluttershy the same sort of revival.
“We’re glad to have you back, Fluttershy,” she said instead. “Well, Applejack and Spike and I are. Others are still asleep.”
Fluttershy’s eyebrows went up—before they fell off. “I thought Spike was supposed to wake the doctor first.”
“Yeah, uh… there were some complications. Nothing we couldn’t deal with! But… let’s just say the mission hasn’t gone quite the way we expected. I could tell you now, or you could wait until you feel better. Up to you.”
“I’d like… the short version, please.”
She summarized, keeping it as brief as possible in the trouble spots. Mostly she focused on the probe, and the message they’d received. The machine Spike was building. Of course she couldn’t tell the story without including at least a little about Cozy, and her claim that the Signal had been translated before they even left.”
“I’ll have to look,” Fluttershy said, leaning back in her bed with a faint moan. “Maybe… maybe after I feel better.” She sighed. “I wish angel was here.”
But Fluttershy wasn’t the only one to leave a pet behind. So far as Twilight knew, those pets were all waiting for them back in system, frozen exactly as they were. It just didn’t make sense to transport extra creatures, strain life support, waste space…
“We’re well on our way,” Twilight said. “We should be refueled in another month or two, and then onto the next phase of repairs. After that…” she didn’t actually know. Twilight had been thinking about it. Tracing the probe’s trajectory back into the system seemed promising. Either that, or try to outrange the radio jam and get back in touch with Equestria. But planning for that future could wait.
“The signals are already talking to us,” Fluttershy said. “Maybe we won’t have to be on this mission that much longer. I’ll… need to see everything the probe sent us. Cozy’s ‘translation’ from the signal… everything.”
“Of course,” Twilight said. “I’ll have it sent to your account before I go back to Harmony’s Repast. That’s, uh… what we’re calling the asteroid.”
“Sure. I’m sure you already remember this, but I’ll need time before I can… be alive again.”
“Yeah,” Twilight said. “That translation is your first priority, as soon as you feel better. I want to know if there’s a chance Cozy was telling the truth. After that, we can see what the new probe sent to us. But start with the Signal.”
“If that’s what you think I should do,” Fluttershy said. “I’ll tell you as soon as I know anything interesting.”
Twilight could tell her shy friend needed time alone. Probably she wanted to curl up in the hospital bed and sleep for a week. She just might, though Twilight would check back periodically with meals, to make sure she was getting what she needed. Doctors had a frightening habit of not taking their own advice.
1. Hydroponics 8/8 COMPLETE 2. Repair the prospector 4/4 COMPLETE 3. Fully Refuel 20/20 COMPLETE 4. Backup Cryogenics 0/4 5. Replace field equipment 0/2 6. Study of communications blackout 0/?
“Alright, everypony…” They were stuck having their meeting on the common room table. There were still three prominent empty chairs, and that was part of the reason they were meeting now.
Fluttershy had healed enough that she was up and walking now, though her coat still looked faded and some feathers were still missing. She’d taken to wearing a little cap around everywhere, tucking away her ratty mane up inside it.
“I’ll go last. Applejack?”
The prospector didn’t hesitate. “I done up and did it all. Cryo’s workin’ again, minus not bein’ able to thaw nopony out without the drugs. Fixed up everythin’ I could think of in the landin’ suite that Cozy wrecked. Equinox is topped up with all the gas we would need to turn around right now and go home. If we wanted.”
Twilight glanced around the room, but so far as she could tell, none of them did. Even Fluttershy looked neutral at the statement. Her cryo-hangover was apparently over.
“How close are we to thawing out somepony else?”
“Well…” Applejack’s ears flattened. “Not closer, Cap. I, uh… I noticed we were runnin’ real low on paste, and I alternated crops. I know I should’ve asked, but…”
Twilight frowned, but she didn’t actually reprimand her. “How low were we?”
“Another month. Enough time that we might’ve been able to grow more before we ran out, assumin’ nothing went wrong. But that just… it didn’t seem like a smart risk, cap.”
“Right,” Twilight sat up a little straighter in her chair. “I would’ve made the same call, Applejack. But tell me before you make a judgement like that, please. That’s why I’m here.”
There was a brief, awkward silence. Twilight eventually just nodded to Spike. “What about you?” Spike hadn’t been helping with the repairs, not for some time. Twilight just couldn’t look at him mope around any longer, or listen to his constant reminders about the device.
“Going good!” he exclaimed, holding up a bit of black plastic in one claw. Twilight could see the glint of little metal prongs on the bottom. “We’re getting our first of these.”
“And what the hay is that?” Applejack asked.
“Well…” he hesitated. “Something we need to make the next part. I haven’t been able to get it to talk to our computer, even though it should… but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”
“Good work,” Twilight said, doing her best impression of believing it. “Fluttershy? I know you didn’t have as much time as the rest of us. But if you learned anything about Cozy Glow’s Signal translation…”
“Yeah,” Fluttershy glanced down at her notes. “Yeah, I have.” She took a deep breath. “The translation Cozy gave you is valid. I, uh… did it my own way, and I…” she winced. “It works.”
There was an explosion of sound—mostly from Spike and Applejack. Twilight herself fell into silence, staring down at the table.
But Applejack wasn’t willing to just fall silent. “So you’re sayin’ an evil pony who almost killed Twi and Spike and probly me too was right?”
“No,” Fluttershy said, but her voice wasn’t nearly loud enough for Applejack to notice. As it was Twilight could barely hear her.
“None of our smartest ponies could figure it out,” Spike muttered. “We came all the way out here for something that we shouldn’t… we should’ve stayed home.”
“No,” Fluttershy said, a little louder.
“We need to pack up and turn around,” Applejack said. “We’re puttin’ everypony at risk. We need to send everythin’ that probe gave us out into space, and fly straight home.”
“NO!” Fluttershy rose to her hooves, spreading her wings as wide as they would go. “LISTEN TO ME!”
The room quieted. Twilight only kept staring.
“First, the message was compressed,” Fluttershy said. “We could be looking at a case of… translation Pareidolia. We like to see patterns and meaning, so we kept trying things until we found some. It might not really be a message. Maybe it really was just spacing, like we thought, and translating into Ponish was just a coincidence.”
“So she wasn’t right all along—”
But Fluttershy just glared, and Applejack fell silent. “It could be a real message, that’s another option. Maybe it really did mean to say that.” She held up the paper, then read. “Life is not advised. You must changed into constancy. We will perform it.”
She settled it back down. “That could mean all kinds of different things. I don’t know how the Signalers learned how to speak Ponish, but maybe they didn’t learn too well. The stowaway pony told you they thought it meant one thing… but it could mean something else. There are lots of ways to interpret that message. Or maybe the Signalers don’t even know Ponish that well, and it’s not what they meant.”
“Which do you think is most likely?” Twilight asked. “I’m going to trust you on this, Fluttershy.”
“Well…” she hesitated. “I think it doesn’t make sense as a threat. Even if it’s a real message, which I just can’t be sure… why? The Signal taught us how to come here. That means they have their own Starships. You saw a probe that could do things nothing built in Equestria ever could. If they wanted to hurt Equestria, they could’ve just done it themselves. And while we were still weak, without any way to come back and fight if they lost.
“In Equestria, we couldn’t translate the Signal. But we did have a behavior profile for the Signalers. The translation doesn’t match their profile.” She pushed the sheets away. “Until I talk to them some more, I’m positive Cozy is wrong. But… that could change all the way around and the next thing they tell us could prove me wrong and really you should just ignore everything I said because the Signal was really just one of my hobbies and—”
Twilight silenced her with a wing. “Thanks, Fluttershy. I agree with you.”
“Me too,” Spike said. “I’ve been building a Signaler machine for a long time now. They’re really smart—I think they’d beat us in a second if they wanted to. If they did, we wouldn’t be talking.”
“I ain’t countin’ us out just yet…” Applejack began. “But yeah, I agree. Cozy’s as crazy as a screen door on a starship.”
“Then we continue with our mission,” Twilight declared, and her voice echoed through the little dining room with finality and confidence.
"This last month, I tried to figure out why we weren’t in touch with Equestria. I was able to confirm a few things—there’s no jamming signal I can detect coming from anywhere in the system. I left a navigation probe a few thousand kilometers behind us—where we had our engagement with the Prospector. We’re still in perfect contact.”
“How do we know the sensors aren’t lying to us?” Applejack asked. “Cozy mighta… done somethin’.”
Twilight nodded. “I hardcoded a few modifications into the probe before I sent it. We’re reading the modified signal, not a standard sensor buoy. Antennas are working fine. I did pick up on a little radio static from one of the planets… but we can go over that later. For now, I’ve eliminated a local jamming signal. This leaves us with two possibilities I can think of for why we’re not reading Equestria."
She took a deep breath, then forged on. The others were watching her closely—no chance she’d lose them to boredom in a meeting this important. Even if they would never receive help from the homeworld, they had hall hoped to stay in touch with their loved ones. The time they were awake for the mission would be their last chance to talk to anypony with a normal lifespan who was still alive.
“We suffered structural damage when we entered the system,” Twilight said, holding up a printout of the Equinox in her magic. The entire forward plane of the ship had been highlighted in red, showing the places most severely affected. There were still entire engineering sections still open to hard vacuum, since Harmony’s Repast hadn’t given them the Titanium, they needed to make hull repairs. “It’s possible we passed through some kind of… structure, on our way into the system. Something permeable to visible light, but… not to radio. It could be blocking signals home.”
Spike shook his head once, frowning. “Something big enough to surround a whole system, but not strong enough that we didn’t turn to dust when we smacked into it?”
Applejack tapped one hoof on the table. “I agree with Spike. If ya could build that big, then you’d be buldin’ so strong we can’t even imagine. Equinox would’ve been Applesauce.”
“If we think so…” Twilight continued. “Then there’s only one other option. About four years ago, for unknown reasons, Equestria stopped transmitting. I’ve reviewed the radio logs… and those that survived confirm we are still sending our regular status reports.”
“What are the chances…” Fluttershy began, her voice timid. “Maybe there’s some way to block out Equestria you didn’t think of?”
Twilight shrugged. “Might be high. The Signalers use drives that don’t produce heat. They gave us instructions to build devices that don’t make sense. There may be kinds of magic they can create we just couldn’t imagine.”
“But we were talking to them before…” Fluttershy went on. “When we get out that far, we’ll talk to them again. Won’t we?”
“That’s… one hope,” Twilight said, speaking slowly. “It might happen. But that’s the decision we have to make now. I wanted all of you to be involved, since… now that the repairs are done, we need to choose a direction. I see two possibilities here, but if you’ve got any others, feel free to suggest.
“First choice, we could pick one of the planets and head in to investigate, like we planned before. It seems like the probe came from one of the inner planets, so that would be my suggestion. We’re not 100%, but it’s not like we’re making the interstellar voyage back to Equestria yet.”
“And what’s the other option?” Spike asked.
“What Fluttershy suggested,” she answered. “Assuming we dropped off the line with Equestria the instant we came into the system, we’ve been out of contact for almost five months. I’m sure we’re missing a lot, ad frightening a lot of ponies who only care about our welfare. We could fly out of the system, far enough that we reacquire the signal. Then we leave a sensor buoy to start recording everything Equestria sends, so we can come back here to resume our mission. On our way out again we pick it up, and we haven’t missed anything.”
“Those sound like options all right,” Applejack said. “But what’s the time on that second one? I might not be a navigator like you, but ah know… a few things. I know we burn most of our fuel just acceleratin’ enough to break gravity well with a star, yeah? Even flying out that little bit is gonna mean we have to refuel again before we make the return trip. I’ll assume it takes two months, like this time. Plus travel time out to wherever we’re getting the gas, call that two months more. So whatever number you’re about to give us, add four months.”
“Then… eighteen months.” Twilight admitted. “We were far from Proximus the last time we got an Equestrian transmission, and we have to fly back in once we’re finished.”
“Or we fly into the inner system. Flyin’ down, so far as space goes. How long would that take?” Applejack asked.
“Proximus A, four months. Three for Proximus B.”
“How is that even a choice?” Spike asked. “Eighteen months before we could do something we could finish right now.”
“There are ponies waiting for us,” Fluttershy said. “That’s, um… not the only number that matters. Eighteen months…how long would it be until we could send our first message home?”
“Seven months, ish,” Twilight answered. “We can’t be sure exactly how far we have to go. And… of course, we’re assuming the problem is on our end. As hard as it is to think about… maybe Equestria isn’t talking. The stowaway… Cozy Glow, suggested this was planned. Maybe the Listeners did something in Equestria. Maybe the space program… isn’t what it used to be.”
“Which is why there’s… one more thing we could do,” Fluttershy squeaked. “We could just go home. Turn around, and… go back. We already made contact. We could… compose a really great message, saying everything about us, send it towards the planet on a probe, and… be done. If we wanted.”
Did they?
1. Set course for Proximus A (Rocky, inhospitable world, 4 months)
2. Set course for Proximus B (Metallic, habitable world, 3 months)
3. Leave Proximus to place a probe (18 months round trip)
Proximus B (Metallic, habitable world, 3 months) 81%
Twilight couldn’t exactly remember the last time she’d caught two members of the crew in the rec room at the same time before. But then—she almost never used the space. Despite the promised two hours personal time in every day’s rotation, Twilight found herself more often gravitating towards getting more of her work done. There were mysteries to solve, data to investigate, and ponies that needed her attention.
But today was different. Today she stepped off the lift, slid past the cargo bay, and emerged into the recreation area to find Applejack and Fluttershy sitting together at a back table. She closed the distance quietly, hoping she might overhear some little snippet of how her crew was really feeling. But they looked up, and Applejack waved her over. “Come on over, ‘cap. We were just talkin’ about you.”
She did, wincing slightly at the patch state of Fluttershy’s mane. It took more than a few weeks to heal from cryosleep. But it was easy to be sympathetic for suffering she could remember vividly. “About me? Can’t be very interesting then.”
She pulled over a cushion, taking a seat across from the mostly-finished puzzle. This one depicted Canterlot Station, the single largest artificial structure in existence. No surprise the ones stocking the Equinox would use a space puzzle. Couldn’t you have picked something with a little more green? Twilight had thought all that steel rotating around in its many independent sections were beautiful, once. But now… now she just wanted to see something alive.
“Yeah, well. We both know that now yer just bein’ humble, cap. You wouldn’t be runnin’ this whole show if you didn’t know what you were about. Alicorn… ain’t another like ‘ya, might never be.
Twilight winced, ears flattening in embarrassment. “I wouldn’t have done it without all of you. The really big accomplishments were yours as much as mine. Nightmare Moon’s Starcarrier didn’t blow itself up, Applejack.”
“And Fluttershy, convincing that dragon to fly back to the asteroid belt—I don’t know that anypony else could’ve done that job. And those… I could go on for an hour. Everypony else waiting there in cryo… we were supposed to be a team. Don’t forget—when we caught up to Cozy, I failed my spell, and you grabbed her ship on the first try.”
“Third try,” Applejack corrected, as though covering her mouth for a cough. “I only said I had her after falin’ a few times. That way if I missed again, I’d be lettin’ you and spike down as well as me. I didn’t wanna let ya’ down.”
Twilight shrugged, then levitated a piece into place in the puzzle. She couldn’t help it—she could see the unfinished parts and feel what needed to go in next. The starry sky part was the hardest, but Twilight had her constellations memorized, and it was easy to see the gaps that had been confusing to Fluttershy and Applejack. “Was it something you wanted to ask me?” Twilight asked, breaking the awkward silence. “You know you can tell me anything. This isn’t a military ship, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t speak your mind.”
Applejack looked to Fluttershy. The doctor winced under the pressure, but Twilight knew how to deal with it. She just watched patiently, until her smile made the pegasus so nervous and uncomfortable that she had to speak. It took over a full minute this time.
“I was just going over your scans,” she eventually said, in a panicked rush that made her impossible to understand. “It looks like being frozen was much harder on you than it was for us. I was trying to get Applejack’s advice about how to tell you.”
“And I told you,” Applejack said, firmly. “You just say it. The truth won’t be different just cuz’ you put a different hat on it.”
“Harder… how?” Twilight asked, reaching up to adjust her mane subconsciously. But none of it came away against her hoof, and no fresh sores sprung up in her skin. She was exactly as healthy as she felt—perfect! “The computer didn’t give me any warning alarms while you were asleep. If you saw my records you saw I didn’t miss a single automated checkup.”
“Oh, yeah,” Fluttershy muttered. “It’s probably nothing.” Her voice trailed away, and she looked like she might get up.
But then Applejack fixed her with a glare, and she seemed to melt. “It’s, uh… look, the autocheckup is really not very smart. You’re breathing, no infections, no broken bones… so that’s it. But what you have… I can show you the x-ray. It’s…” she tapped the side of her head with a hoof. “There’s some scarring, um… around your horn.”
“You mean on my brain?”
She winced, but didn’t give up this time. “Um… yes. If I had to guess… I think maybe you might be impossible to completely freeze. It looks like some part of you might’ve been… awake the whole time. Trapped, helpless, blind…”
Twilight could almost see it. Those words—for an instant, she felt the terrible cold, the endless, dreamless nightmare. She fought, screamed for Discord, Celestia… and no one came.
Then the vision faded, and she was clutching the table with both hooves, sweat dripping down her brow. “H-how bad is it? The damage?”
“I… don’t know yet,” Fluttershy admitted. “Alicorns break all the rules we know about other tribes. But probably you’ll heal. Celestia says she grew back a whole wing once, and I believe her.”
“Is that the only thing that could cause it?” Twilight hesitated—she didn’t even want to ask, but couldn’t stop herself anymore. “I mean—there are memory spells. What if something happened on the way… and a unicorn erased it. Staying awake seems pretty far-fetched to me.”
“Well… yeah, it could be something else,” Fluttershy admitted. “But Cozy Glow isn’t a unicorn, and Rarity doesn’t know dark magic. I don’t think somepony erased your memory.”
They sat in silence together for another few moments. Twilight stared down at the puzzle, levitating a few pieces into place. At least her magic still worked.
“That reminds me, cap. I wanted to ask you about freezing. See… it’s time to plant another crop. We got ourselves a decision to make about that, and you said not to make it for you…”
“I did,” Twilight said, collecting herself. “Of course, Applejack. What is it?”
“It’s about how we manage what we grow next,” she said. “Geneseed, nutrition algae, real food. I’ve put together a few plans. I reakon you should pick one.
1. Stockpile Food. We should be able to increase our stores all the way to eight months if we grow nothing but nutrition. That’s more than half a year to study what we want, and not feel no pressure while we’re doin’ it. And it goes without sayin’ that if there’s land down there, real land… I could plant enough Geneseed to get everypony back all at once. Earth pony magic just don’t work the same on trays and spray-water.
2. Grow nothing but Geneseed. See, that’s enough time to bring back two more of our friends, that’s almost everypony. But the catch is, we’ll only have about a month a’ paste left by the time we get there. That’s about what it takes to get a full crop, so… on paper nopony starves. But granny always taught me never to trust paper for my supper.
3. Balanced approach of nutrient solution and Geneseed. We get one pony back, and there’s not a chance in Tartarus of anypony starving. Still wishin’ our tongues would fall out from eatin’ paste, but… at least we’ll have one more set of hooves on deck for Proximus B.
4. Grow real food. Real veggies and greens just barely keep up with demand, so we’ll only arrive with the same three months of food we’ve got today. Treadin’ water ain’t great, but tell that to me when I’ve got a full belly. See if I care.
Twilight almost never visited Hydroponics. But now that she wandered between the rows of identical racks, surrounded by the first green and growing things she’d seen in months, she wished she’d come back more often. The system was mostly automated, with carefully measured spurts of water and precise modulation of the lights from the grow lamps.
Per her instructions, half of the trays were filled only with a reddish green slurry, a paste that looked nothing at all like food and wouldn’t taste much like it either once they processed it. But the smell was alright—like loamy ground, or a fish tank that had been established for a long time. It was a living smell that didn’t resemble a barn, and just now Twilight would welcome even that.
The room was round, with a dozen rectangular trays around the length of the circle, each stacked four layers deep. When the Equinox was fully operating, this chamber was meant to exactly keep up with the food demands of a crew of seven. But now that they needed Geneseed, that conversion was more of an emergency measure.
AS she watched, the grow-arm rotated along to the next stack of trays, and each was carefully sprayed. The “Geneseed” trays actually had roots visible in the dark section under each tray, and that was where the sprayer focused. The tubular bodies tucked underneath looked to be fat and swollen now, just about as full as their crop would get. I get to choose one more crewmember. Who do I want when we arrive? It was something to think about. There would still be the two that didn’t come, the resources she would have to wait months more to acquire.
Unless something else terrible happens in the meantime. Did Cozy have any redundant sabotage we haven’t found yet? It might keep her up at night, like the true meaning of the message. But they’d searched as much as they could. Twilight took a few minutes every week or so to visit cryogenics, just to make sure Cozy’s casket was still filled.
“Twilight!” came a voice from down the hall, Spike’s, overflowing with panic. “Twilight, you need to see this!” He’d already run past hydroponics, probably on his way to the central computer.
Twilight passed through the plastic moisture-guard, then through to the hallway on the other end. “Spike,” she called, not nearly as loud as he was. But he should still hear. “Spike, what’s up? I don’t hear any alarms.”
Spike skidded to a stop, his claws sparking on the deck-plating. He caught himself against a rail, then spun. “Twilight? You’re farming?”
“No,” she stepped all the way through the screen, letting the airlock seal behind her. “I was just… enjoying something green for a bit. I don’t hear any alarms, what’s the issue?”
“There wouldn’t be, no,” Spike said, jogging back towards her, then past her to the lift. “Come on, you have to see for yourself.”
She wasn’t surprised to see him mash the button for central fabrication, and they were moving “down” again. “You could tell me what it is you’re taking me to see, Spike.”
“It’s working,” he said. “The new fabricator.”
Well, that wasn’t her ship about to explode—but Twilight’s expertise wasn’t needed much these days, beyond a few minutes of navigation each day. If going with Spike would make him feel better, then…
Central fabrication was still largely empty—the Prospector was docked outside, which meant they could use this space to fabricate large projects, if they needed it.
Spike’s little corner had a flimsy plastic wall now, made of the shell they’d made for mining on Harmony’s Repast and a few bits of scrap metal. There was no door, just an opening with strands of plastic hanging down over it.
They passed through to the other side, where Twilight got her first look at the “new fabricator.”
It used the standard fabricator shell, or at least several of them linked together in series. They moved quickly, taking the same thin disks of silicon the earlier stage used, slicing them down into rectangles, and running them through a strange series of liquid baths, flashing lights, and tiny wires.
“That’s so… fast.” She muttered, staring in fascination through the clear plastic shroud on the nearest one. “How is it reading the template crystal so fast?”
“There is no template crystal. It’s all digital.”
“Not possible,” Twilight stated, settling down onto her haunches and pointing at the “stage one” device. There, nestled into the housing, was the length of clear silicon the computer had printed during their time “camping.” It’s right there.” The first stage moved the way she expected to, with the hair fine reader gliding along the surface of the template, carefully reconstructing the pattern for the strange disks that emerged.
“No…” Spike said. “These machines aren’t connected, look.” He walked over to one of the new fabricators, and removed the plastic shell. Inside were dozens of those black rectangles, set into a standard pink breadboard that could’ve come from any spare parts bin. Little LEDs glowed and flashed, labeled in Spike’s tiny scrawl. No crystal, just the warmth of heat radiating out.
“The first machine made these things…” He picked one up off the desk, with its little metal prongs gleaming. “I think one of them might be… and I know this sounds crazy, but… I think each of these might be about as powerful as… the Equinox’s mainframe.”
“It does sound crazy.” Twilight walked along the second fabricator, over to the side where its “output” was piling up in a clear plastic tray, and levitated one of the objects out.
Like the plastic rectangles inside the machine, only these were still mostly clear. Lots of tiny lines crisscrossed inside, and instead of fifty or so metal pins, these were covered with a grid of coppery lines, thin wires. “So your theory is—this little fabricator is smarter than our whole ship. And it makes… these little things. What do we do, glue them together into another fabricator?”
“No,” Spike said, folding his arms. “But we do put them together in a machine. And… I don’t know what it does yet. It needs another thousand or so of those.” He lifted something off his workbench—a thin sheet of circuit board, this one obviously newly printed. But semitransparent rectangles covered most of its surface. “Like this.”
Now I see why Applejack didn’t want you using our spare parts. “Just…” she turned, backing slowly out of his corner of fabrication. “Don’t steal parts for this project. It’s interesting, but… I’m not giving up anything for it.”
She had more important things to worry about just now. Spike’s impossible claims about alien computers aside, it was about time she settle on her final crew-member.
- Rainbow Dash (Climatology, Military) - Pinkie Pie (Geology, Insight) - Rarity (Physics, EVA Expert)
Twilight knew something was wrong from the moment Pinkie emerged from the ice. She wasn’t in the room then—the slurry of chemicals and refrigerants that would be in the air during a pony’s decanting were not something she wanted to ingest.
But through the glass, she could see Pinkie Pie emerge, with a plain jumpsuit uniform still clinging to her frozen body. Bits of it broke apart in little chunks as she emerged, taking coat or skin with them on their way down. Sweet Celestia.
The painful reality of it hit her then, as surely as any other reality in her confusing world. You weren’t supposed to go into cryo wearing anything, other than medical implants. That was a basic fact that even entry-level students to the space program would’ve known. Pinkie Pie certainly did.
More importantly, Twilight had been there when her crew went under, and they’d all be properly naked. You woke up, Pinkie Pie. But when?
Most of the next few hours for her friend would not require her intervention, though she did call Fluttershy over coms immediately.
“It’s Pinkie Pie,” she said, before her friend could so much as squeak. “Something happened on the voyage. She went in wearing her jumpsuit. Looks hurt. There’s blood in here.”
Fluttershy wasn’t in cryo—according to the system, she was speaking from medical. Probably getting it ready for the routine procedure of regeneration and immune-boosting drugs.
“Horesefeathers,” Fluttershy swore, louder than Twilight had ever heard her. “You said she was wearing her… we can’t grow grafts out here, uh… I’ll be there right away.”
Twilight remained in the background for the next few hours, just far enough to be out of the way as her friend worked.
There were more than a few close calls, with Twilight terrified she might be able to watch Pinkie bleed to death under Fluttershy’s knife. But the Pegasus’s skilled hoof prevailed. At times it seemed that Twilight could feel the magic in the room, with Fluttershy’s kindness manifested as a physical force.
But then it was done. Pinkie Pie, still under dozens of different medications, was finally resting.
Fluttershy emerged from medical to an anxious crowd—even Spike had come to wait, watching through the glass beside them.
“She’ll make it,” Fluttershy finally said. “It’s going to be… rough. I had to take some tissue…” at their expressions, she quickly trailed off. “She’ll have scars. But she should be able to heal otherwise. Earth ponies are tough. That would’ve killed a pegasus or a unicorn.”
For a few seconds, there was silence—silence except for the Harmony’s distant engines. The air recyclers kicked in, rattling a little in their housing. Finally Twilight spoke.
“Did she ever wake up?”
“No!” Fluttershy seemed horrified. “I’m keeping her in a medical coma for at least another month. There are grafts healing, and I don’t know what kind of infections there might be… do you know what it feels like to be missing some of your skin?”
Applejack clutched at her stomach, stumbling a few steps away. She didn’t actually puke, though Twilight could’ve sworn her coat went a little greener. “Yes.”
“Do we…” Twilight hesitated. After something so sensitive, asking about the practical side could make ponies think you were callus. But this was her friend’s life they were talking about. “Do we have enough supplies for you to keep treating her that way? Enough medicine…”
“Yes,” Fluttershy answered. “But… we’re going to be real low on… everything when we’re done. I guess that’s something for Applejack to keep in mind.”
“I could switch back to geneseed,” Applejack muttered. “Would cut into our food supply, but… if something else happens.”
“No.” Twilight shook her head. “We have enough, food is more important right now. We just… we won’t wake up anypony else until we’ve got more. And we can be sure that they aren’t going to… Celestia, how did it happen? Could you get anything out of the computer, Spike?”
Spike nodded. “Not… as much as you’d like. Her pod showed her going into the ice about… twenty years ago.”
“You don’t remember that?” She had to ask the question delicately, but it was hard to restrain her frustration. Spike hadn’t been frozen during the whole trip, yet more and more terrible things had happened without him sounding an alarm.
Spike winced, looking away from them both. “Dragons hibernate, Twilight. That would’ve been right after we started decelerating. A few intense weeks, then… I slept. For almost a year. There was nothing going on when I went in, I remember. And when I woke up, everything seemed normal.”
And here we thought that having a dragon would mean we had a perfect watchpony for the trip. But Spike was right, she’d known about dragon hibernations for years. In older creatures, they could last for centuries. But a dragon as young as Spike wouldn’t need to sleep nearly as long. When we got here, the computer was scrambled. Spike didn’t know how to destroy records. Either he learned during the trip, or it was somepony else.
How much had happened during the trip over? Forty years was a long time. I have scars on my brain. Pinkie Pie was woken up and put back under with her clothes still on. Someone either didn’t know or didn’t care what happened to her.
“We have one more question to answer,” Fluttershy said. “I know it’s… not gonna be a nice one. But we should. Pinkie Pie… ordinarily you don’t put someone back under the ice after waking them up. But her body is damaged enough that the risks are… about the same as leaving her awake. Another freeze is more damage, but… if we leave her in until we’re back in Equestria, we can treat her in a real hospital. She can get real grafts, and real organ replacements if anything failed I haven’t noticed yet. Keeping her here stops from doing more damage, but… leaves her with me to care for her.”
She lowered her voice to a faint, nervous squeak. “I can’t be sure if it was only her body that was damaged. For all I know, she might not ever wake up. Or maybe she went through something similar to you, Twilight. It might be kinder just to put her back.”
“Freeze her again, after all that?” Applejack shook her head. “I don’t like it, cap.”
“If it’s really best for her…” Spike didn’t sound convinced. “I trust Fluttershy.”
“I think it would be,” Fluttershy said. “But the odds are close. If it wasn’t, I would just decide. But this is Twilight’s ship. She gets to make the call.”
A. Put Pinkie Pie back on ice, permanently. As much as it hurts, she has a better chance back in Equestria.
B. Let her heal here. Fluttershy has already done medical miracles. Pinkie Pie is barely holding on as it is. She can’t survive being frozen again.
First there was the simple notification from the ship’s computer that they were nearing the end of their deceleration burn, and would soon fire the navigational thrusters to settle into stable orbit around Proximus B. This meant the Eye could get a good view, and would likely have interesting information about the planet below.
But on her way to the eye’s little station near the top of the Equinox, she got another message—from Spike. “It’s finished,” he said, his voice nervous and eager. “The thing we’ve been working on all this time. It didn’t take as long as I thought. Once the fabricator started working…”
And she turned, lifting into the air and using her unicorn magic to make “down” be along the corridor, so she could “fall” back towards the elevator as fast as she could go. She held the radio in her magic as she went. “What’s it doing? The machine… is it safe? You shouldn’t have switched it on without a crew meeting!”
“I didn’t!” Spike sounded almost hurt. “It’s finished building, Twilight. And the last step… I’d never do it without your permission. It’s too dangerous.”
Spike had been obsessive about that stupid fabricator for months now—a very dragon way to behave. But he hadn’t forgotten his training, or his loyalty. Somewhere deep inside, he was still the egg she’d hatched in the Imperial Academy all those years ago.
Only once she was breathing easily did she get the call from Fluttershy. “Um… Captain? Captain Twilight?”
She stopped what she was doing with her magic, settling onto her hooves. Spike was almost all the way down, and she was only one deck away from medical. Best stop running if her medical pony was going to need her. “Yes, Fluttershy?”
“It’s, uh… about Pinkie.”
“I want you to tell me everything I need to know in the next sentence you say, Fluttershy. Tell me what happened.”
Fluttershy’s deep breath was all the confirmation Twilight needed.
“She’s awake. But—”
But Twilight hardly even heard her. She was galloping now, not mustering enough of the magic it would take for a careful flight. The one who knew what had happened to her ship was awake. Maybe now she would finally get some bucking answers.
“Are you still coming, Twi?” That was Spike, his voice distant and out of focus. “I need your help to decide what to do!”
“Bring it to medical. Pinkie just woke up, I can take a look at it after talking to her.”
“Okay,” Spike answered, and finally fell silent.
It only took Twilight another minute to get to medical. She could hear Pinkie’s voice drifting down the hall before she even left the lift. “Seven roads! The darkness writhes down seven roads!”
Down the hall, something crashed and shook, glass shattering. “Please, Pinkie! You need to—”
“They’re inside you too! Can’t you fell them?”
Twilight didn’t hesitate—she closed her eyes, and crossed the rest of the hallway in a flash of light.
Medical looked like a bomb had gone off. Anything that wasn’t nailed down had been tossed onto the floor, with equipment and vials of medicine alike broken. Pinkie Pie herself was in a corner, clutching a scalpel in her teeth like she had just fought a bear with it. Fluttershy cowered on the other side of the room, as far away from her as possible. “I was calling for help!” Fluttershy called, her voice feeble.
Pinkie Pie did not look well. Even without the madness in her eyes, Twilight would’ve winced to see her. The grafts were healing, though the stitches connected to the rest of her looked like the coat might never grow in again, and left harsh, bare lines in her pink fur. Her cryosleep sickness lingered in several gray patches, and a mane that grew only in wispy tendrils.
Then there was her eyes—only once in her life had Twilight seen a pony with that expression, and he hadn’t survived the night.
Twilight took a breath, and called on a different kind of magic.
Twilight attempts to use her Alicorn Sovereignty to calm Pinkie Pie down. Success
“You will drop that knife, Pinkie.” She spoke with absolute confidence—the same confidence her teacher had once manifested in the face of Discord’s unknowable chaos.
The Earth pony obeyed. It tumbled out of her mouth, slicing through and sticking in the textured plastic, blade-down. “What happened to you, Pinkie? Was it Cozy Glow?”
“Saw it coming. I saw it, when nopony did. Safe. You’re safe.”
“Safe from what? From a stowaway?”
“Their voices in the darkness. Filling your veins with sugar and making the worst cakes ever.”
Almost thought I’d gotten through. “Sedate her,” Twilight instructed, gesturing urgently. “I’m not sure how long she’ll be…”
Fluttershy responded instantly, hurrying over. A few seconds later, Pinkie Pie slumped to one side, breathing heavily. “I’ll get her into restraints before she wakes up,” she said, panting. “I… I was afraid this might happen.”
“Afraid she might be…”
“Damaged,” Fluttershy whispered. “It’s the same kind of scarring as on you, Twilight. But you’re an Alicorn. She’s… not.”
“Help her.” It was the only instruction she could give, and probably not even a necessary one. But she could hear someone coming down the hall—Spike, rolling a wheeled metal cart from the sound of it. Twilight nodded once to Fluttershy, then hurried out.
There was Spike, behind one of the carts that would’ve been used to load the single torpedo tube—if they hadn’t stripped it for parts. The probe settled onto soft cloth in the center had been stripped itself, with its fins and engines and everything except the casing itself removed. And from within, the faint warmth of active electronics.
“You put it in a probe shell?” Stupid question, she could see it in front of her. “What is it?” she asked, before Spike could get into the painful subject of what had just happened.
“I don’t know,” Spike admitted. “has, uh… some kind of screen, look.” He rolled it over, and through what had been a sensor access panel there was now a flat bit of glass. Words were printed there, simple instructions in Ponish clearer than any screen she’d ever seen.
Require direct connection with archive to complete download. Please connect immediately. Archive… it wanted direct access to their mainframe. It wants all that data taking up space on our computer.
Twilight was in a poor state to decide anything. But Spike didn’t look like he was going to give her time to think.
1. Connect the strange device directly to the mainframe. There’s no way it would hurt us, that would be a huge waste of time and energy. It’s like Fluttershy said, that isn’t how the Signalers act. It’s time to see what they really wanted. Maybe we’ll get good news for once.
2. This has gone far enough. Remove whatever is powering that thing and pack it away into a crate for later study. Sorry Spike, but this went on far enough. We’re not in any place to fight enemies on two fronts. Maybe when we’re safer, or when we’re back in Equestria. We have bigger problems right now.
3. Destroy the device and eject all of the new fabricators into space. They’re responsible for all of this. (-morale Spike)
4. Twilight has an inventive plan, to wait until the Equinox is in stable orbit, then disconnect all the archival servers and temporarily wire them through a portable computer. This will prevent another (even accidental) camping trip, while still following the machine’s instructions.
It was hardly the time to be worrying about Spike’s project. With Pinkie Pie’s revival, Twilight barely had the time or the energy for what would come next. But with as invested as Spike was into the project, some part of her worried that if she didn’t throw it out an airlock or help him soon, she would wake up one morning with the reactor shut down and the computer monopolized by another alien.
“Okay, Spike,” She swallowed, trying to keep her face neutral. “I’m going to work on it—I’m not just plugging in that thing this time. I’m going to do it safely. But while I work, I want you to start compiling a full report on Proximus B. Before I plug in that thing, you are going to give me a presentation. I want slides, I want lists, I want pictures. Understand?”
“Sure.” He pushed the cart towards her, with its retrofitted probe as cargo. “Just… gimmie a minute to say hi to Pinkie first.”
Needless to say, he wouldn’t get it. Down in the mainframe, Twilight got hourly reports from Fluttershy, at her own insistence. The doctor didn’t seem to recognize Pinkie’s condition as anything more than the damage of her poor freezing. Twilight would correct that impression if Pinkie didn’t improve.
The Equinox would not be “happy” running without its archive, but it wouldn’t actually stop anything. Of course, it wouldn’t ever boot again without the drives to load its OS into operating memory, but… that was a bridge they could come to another time.
If nothing else, Twilight could relax while doing some familiar work. Building a makeshift mainframe out of their archival racks and a single portable computer. She half expected the thing to implode when she tried to turn it on, but… apparently the portable computers were hardier than that. Its little screen glowed, then sat almost blank for over an hour as it indexed all the new space. Only when it was finished did she finally wheel over the probe and get a good look.
At a glance she could see Spike had scrapped all its internals, emptying out the transmitters and receivers and using only the basic shell. Well… the shell and the RTG. It hadn’t been plugged into anything, so she could only assume. “Can’t be much of a computer with just seventy watts, can you?” It didn’t respond, yet the screen kept flashing. I wonder if we can figure out how to copy those. That text is so much clearer than our screens.
Was it wrong of her to get distracted in her work? Maybe she ought to be moping around angry after what had happened to Pinkie. But instead she worked harder, gritting her teeth and not even stopping to eat.
She wanted to open the probe and see what was inside, but a glance showed her Spike had welded everything back together again, making that difficult. It did have a standard data port—the sort that was as wide as a hoof and lined with exactly 36 wires. Good thing their portable computer accepted the standard inputs. “I hope you’re friendly, whatever you are.” There was a good chance that nothing would happen—they were working with alien machinery, which might be fundamentally impossible for ponies to build. Like the Equinox’s drive? That didn’t slow us down.
The laptop screen flashed once, then went out. Every drive Twilight had connected suddenly lit up, with the sound of spinning disks filling the room over the cooling fans.
“Decompression in progress” said both screens in unison. “Estimated time of completion, 31 hours.” She waited a moment, wondering if maybe alien computers were as good at predicting times as Equestrian ones—but nothing changed, and eventually she just sighed.
She managed to tie everything down before she left—now that they were in orbit, any illusion of gravity was broken for everypony but her. And Rarity, assuming her brain didn’t get roasted on the way over too.
“How’d it go?” Applejack asked from behind her. She’d come in quietly enough that Twilight jumped, and without her concentration she immediately started drifting towards the ceiling.
“With the machine, or Pinkie Pie?”
“I just saw Pinkie,” Applejack muttered. “We always knew she was a little, uh… on the funny side. But I never thought…”
“Me neither,” Twilight winced, staring out the distant window. It was too much to hope the planet would be there—this window was pointed out at the night, and the same almost-identical stars that had followed them here.
“She’s tougher than she looks,” Applejack promised. “She’ll pull through. We’ve got good medicine, the best doctor we could hope for.”
“You’re just trying to stop me from feeling guilty. About… keeping her.”
“Sure,” Applejack didn’t hesitate. “But it’s the truth too. A lie wouldn’t help, because sooner or later you always get to the end. Can’t talk your way out of an empty fuel tank, or no more water in the electrolyzer. Best to face it while yer still breathin’, I reckon.”
“Guess so.” Twilight sighed. “Spike’s, uh… thing… will take another two days to do what it’s doing. But so far it looks like the Equinox is still running okay. Unless you came down here to report on alarms that haven’t gone off properly or something.”
“Nope,” Applejack smiled slightly, pointed towards the lift. “I just thought you ought to take a look at where we are. Came all this way, and you’ve been all cooped up down here since we got into orbit.”
“Sure.” Twilight followed her to the lift, then let her gravity fade as they started to rise. All the way up, past fabrication and the farm and medical and even past the crew deck. All the way to the top—the eye.
They stepped out, and Twilight didn’t even have to wander over towards the telescopes, or any of the computers. Spike was hard at work, surrounded by stacks of papers—she ignored him. This was one of the largest windows on the Equinox, a massive single dome of transparent crystal made for this precise purpose.
Proximus B wasn’t just a planet, it was a city, on a scale Twilight had neither seen nor imagined. The entire surface she could see was covered in reflective skin, with a few prominent spires and domes visible even from here.
A gigantic ring wrapped around the center of the planet, many times thicker than their entire ship. Faint lights glowed from all around it, faint lines of active machinery that would’ve dwarfed Canterlot station a hundred times over. And from nowhere else. The distant city below, despite its massive size, didn’t have so much as a single signal beacon.
They weren’t all here this time. Fluttershy refused to hear about leaving medical, and obviously Pinkie wouldn’t be able to join them. That meant only the three of them gathered together around the table meant to hold all seven, with Spike’s report in front of them and two prominent empty seats.
“You’ve both seen it,” Spike said, as soon as they’d finished with awkward progress reports. Hydroponics was coming along with more Geneseed, and there was still almost a full day before Spike’s project finished. “So I don’t need to tell you. We already got lots of great pictures to take back with us, to confirm for good that the Signal was sent by intelligent life.”
“Well yeah,” Applejack said. “Obviously. Ah know a city when I see one. But what else did you see?”
“Well…” Spike hesitated, shuffling through his papers before settling one sheet on the table between them. “Lots of things. I’ve been in the eye for hours, and…” he settled one large photo on the table between them.
It was obviously taken from the eye, capturing what it had been seeing at the time in perfect clarity, though only a few inches wide. This one showed the planet from above, with a perfect square cut straight through the metal buildings. From the scale Spike had scrawled on the image, Twilight could see it was a few miles across. A few miles of green trees and water and a single building in the exact center. “Eye found this—it’s the only place like it we can see plants growing down there, unless you count algae in the ocean.”
“Could be,” Spike muttered. “But that’s not the only thing I found—”
Twilight cut him off. “What about messages? The signal is coming from somewhere, isn’t it? We only followed it here all the way from Equestria.”
Spike nodded. “From the ring. There’s, uh… a whole lot of energy coming off that ring. It’s almost five hundred degrees hotter than, uh… ambient.” He shuffled awkwardly through the pictures, depositing one on top of the first. “But that’s not the most interesting thing I found, Twilight. There’s…” he settled one slightly-ruffled picture on the table, then several more in a collage around it.
Twilight’s eyes widened as she stared. They were buildings that had fallen over, or been pierced by blows almost as wide as they were and severed. Huge craters that hadn’t pierced the thick city, but had certainly done terrible, devastating damage.
“Celestia above, it’s like we came here after a war,” Applejack pulled over one of the pictures, staring down at it. “Is the scale on this thing right?”
“Yes,” Spike didn’t hesitate this time. “I made sure. It’s all as close as the Eye can get.”
“How much of the planet looks like this?” Twilight asked, already dreading the answer. “And can you tell if it’s…”
“Recent?” Spike shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it is. Whatever that city is made of, it doesn’t rust or corrode, but where it’s been damaged there’s signs of… some kinda deposit. Looks like it probably took a long time.”
Was Cozy Glow right all along? The Signalers really were trying to destroy Equestria.
Except that when she thought about that, the dots didn’t quite line up. Wasn’t this the signalers’ own planet? If they’d been harvested for resources and the evil conquerors built the ring as a trap, why not harvest the metal from the planet below? And why build something so difficult and complicated anyway—even Equestria could build a big antenna.
“Maybe the planet is… uninhabitable,” Twilight suggested, voice timid. “And the survivors moved up into the ring. What do our scans suggest?”
Spike shook his head. “As far as I can tell, the planet is perfectly safe. Not too hot, not too cold, similar amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide.”
“There are worse weapons than guns, Spike,” Applejack muttered, pushing the pictures away. “Things that might sleep there, waiting for ponies to come back. I can’t think of why else they’d leave their fancy city-planet behind. They couldn’t come back.” She straightened in her chair. “Twi, I really think we ought to be thinkin’ about just how far this mission goes. We made it here, we got their message. When do we call it a victory and fire up the engines fer home?”
When we’ve signed a treaty of cooperation with the Signalers, she thought. But somehow she didn’t think saying it that way would be wise, not with morale so low. The paste was getting to them, and Pinkie Pie’s complete breakdown had not helped.
“The official doctrine of our mission suggested we should make peaceful contact with the Signalers,” she recited. “Then prepare any necessary supplies and return home in a period not greater than a decade.”
“Upper bound,” Applejack said. “I know she ain’t here, so I’ll speak what Fluttershy would be sayin.’ We’ve heard some mighty frightening things from Cozy—and now Pinkie Pie obviously needs the help ‘a real doctors. Now here we are, planet we came for all melted and broke.”
“Except for the ring,” Spike pointed out. “Obviously that’s still working. It’s still making the signal, and it must’ve sent the probe out to us. A probe that taught us how to build something amazing—how many more amazing things could the Signalers teach us?”
“Well, that depends,” Applejack sounded almost smug. “How many of our radio messages have they answered since we parked here?”
“None,” Twilight whispered. “The ring hasn’t signaled. And there’s no trace of activity from the planet.”
“Precisely,” Applejack took a deep breath. “Look, I know how much ya’ll came here to explore. I’m just wonderin’… when will we have explored enough? How much is left to figure out? The way I see it…”
1. Continue until formal diplomatic contact is established, or the signalers can be ruled out as definitely dead. That’s the real reason we’re here, even if it wasn’t written down quite that way in the charter. We’ve already sacrificed too much to give up now.
2. Dig a little deeper, but stop taking risks. We’ve sacrificed enough. We can keep scanning for a few weeks, maybe send out a few probes. If the signalers haven’t noticed us by then that must mean they don’t have anything important left to say. We can pack up and go home.
3. Make one last attempt to contact, then begin preparations to return immediately. Plenty of metal down on that planet to salvage for structural repairs. We can risk one more call, then we should get flying home. Equestria needs us.
4. Go right now. Whatever happened down there might be old, but it could be sleeping, waiting to kill again. We start accelerating right now without one more radio message. The risk of breaking apart mid-flight is nowhere near as high as whatever killed that planet finding us.
“We aren’t going to come all this way for nothing,” Twilight finally declared. “But that doesn’t mean we have to put the Equinox in unnecessary danger. That means trying to dock with that ring or land it on the planet are out of the question. But that doesn’t mean we could learn more about them…” Maybe the planet was safe, maybe it wasn’t. They wouldn’t be able to figure that out from orbit, which was the tricky part.
“Give me a little time to think. Until Spike’s, uh… thing finishes. For all we know it might have another message from the Signalers in there. We shouldn’t decide until we have all the facts.”
“Sure,” Applejack rose from her chair. “Let me know if anything changes with Pinkie Pie. I’m eager to hear what she remembers about the trip over.” And she left, leaving Twilight and Spike alone at the table.
“We’re stressing over nothing,” Spike began, smiling weakly. “You’ll see. Proximus B might’ve had things… a little rough… but that doesn’t mean the Signalers are bad. They called us here for a reason, you’ll see.”
She intended to. There wasn’t much to do over the next day or so, beyond the waiting. There were skilled ponies who might have unicorn magic to do on the mind of a pony as hurt as Pinkie, but Twilight wasn’t one of them. Mind magic was a dangerous, delicate art, one she’d never mastered.
But she could take her own look at the planet below, and the ring encircling it. The ring didn’t just float, but was actually made of several interconnected layers, which moved through and around each other in rapid, apparently important ways. But what she couldn’t manage to spot were any easy docking ports. If the Signalers had ships of their own, they didn’t get on in off in any simple way ponies understood. Maybe they’re better at teleporting than we are, better range and more precise. Or maybe they use something like Sombra did on his space station.
Her speculation was pointless, since she couldn’t talk to them. She tried that too during her day of waiting and thinking—but just as before, the ring did not respond. It didn’t shoot them out of space, either, but…
Interestingly, returning the Signal had no effect—either they couldn’t hear it over how loud they were transmitting it, or they just weren’t listening.
But then the time came.
There would be no accidents this time—everypony but Fluttershy was there. Applejack actually wore a gun on her waist, for all the good it would do against the probe. Twilight had a notepad ready, and Spike just watched. The “decompressing” timer counted its last few minutes.
“I know I should’ve asked this earlier…” Applejack muttered. “But I’m confirming now. There’s nothing dangerous in there. This isn’t a bomb.”
“No,” Spike answered. “Most dangerous thing in that shell is the RTG that was already there to start with.”
“Can’t overload it at least,” Applejack muttered. “Those things are solid state. But if anything weird happens, hold your breath and back up. Kinda wish we’d just fire the whole thing out an Airlock.”
“If it’s dangerous, we will,” Twilight said. “But everything it’s done so far… I don’t think it will be dangerous.”
“Me neither,” Spike agreed. “It could’ve tricked me into making a bomb if it wanted. But instead the designs it left will… change Equestria forever. Assuming we make it back with them.”
“And assuming it does anything,” Twilight added.
But that didn’t seem to be much of an assumption anymore, because that was when the timer counted down. The screen went white, a steady glow brighter than any of their displays, but nothing as brilliant as a torch. Then it went out, and all the little flashing lights stopped flashing.
“That’s it?” Applejack rolled her eyes. “It didn’t even vibrate, or… shoot rainbows at us, er…”
“Neither is possible,” said Starlight Glimmer. “But if you were to connect me to the mainframe, I could probably manage something.”
Twilight stared at the probe, utterly transfixed. How in the buck— then it clicked. The Equinox’s automated systems had been programmed by Starlight. Her voice recordings filled it at every level. The alien object was somehow appropriating them, and generating sound from within the probe.
She was halfway tempted to unplug it right there—from the archive and the portable computer, anyway. But she hesitated. It hadn’t tried to do anything bad yet. And the drives were already slowing to a stop, their access lights dimming one after another. Only the probe kept glowing.
“Where are you communicating from?” Twilight asked, before either of her crew could. “I assume this is a communicator of some kind. You’re… on the ring, aren’t you?”
“Are you sure we ought to be talkin’ to it?” Applejack hissed. But Twilight ignored her. Maybe Spike had been right after all. Maybe this was the key to speaking to the Signalers.
“I am… ring? No.” It was uncannily good at assembling Starlight’s voice. The cuts were there, but often from clips so short that Twilight would’ve been hard-pressed to guess what she’d originally been saying. “Localized. Attempting to… comprehend you. Difficult. Requires processing time.”
“We need our computer,” Applejack called, annoyed. “You can’t use it again like last time. We barely survived it.”
The probe had no ability to move, no visual indication of who had its attention. Yet it spoke to Applejack as unflinchingly as Twilight. “Not… necessary. Hardware is localized. Sufficient.”
“We’re travelers from Equestria,” Twilight said, before she could get caught up in the moment and forget. “We’ve come to make peaceful contact with your civilization. To answer your signal.”
“Peaceful,” Starlight’s voice repeated. “Will see.” Then the screen went dark again. Twilight could still feel heat emanating from within the probe, but other than that, it made no more signs of life. She prompted it a few more times, but there was no response each time.
Applejack gestured, and they left the probe behind, retreating into the lift and taking it up. Only when they were moving did Applejack speak. “I don’t like it,” she said. “Whatever can get into our systems like that… Cap, it could do more than just talk if it wanted. It took two days. I bet it could shut off life support without even tryin’.”
Twilight had a choice.
1. Strap some explosives to it, then eject the probe into space. Applejack is right, the object is too dangerous to keep any longer. The Signalers will have to find a way to communicate that doesn’t put the Equinox in danger.
2. Move it onto the escape pod, but don’t do anything drastic. If something goes wrong, we can get rid of it in a hurry. But otherwise, there’s no reason to get rid of it so soon.
3. Keep a pony with it at all times. It talked to us! We’re so close! Forget ground missions and remote probes, this might be it. Just a little more patience and we’ll have our diplomacy.
Keep a pony with it at all times to be ready to talk 78%
It wasn’t like they were in any kind of rush—crops would take time to grow with only hydroponics. They might very well be talking to one of the Signalers, wherever the message was actually coming from.
Twilight occupied herself helping around medical when she could, and when there was nothing there to do, tinkering around the probe. It couldn’t be coaxed into communicating again, no matter how polite she was—but she could surround it with equipment that would let them monitor what it was doing.
Was it trying to communicate along other spectrums? Only one—a band of the radio spectrum so low she wasn’t sure how a tiny antenna could produce it. The signal was attenuated, and directed straight down at the planet below. IT seemed to be firing only once every orbital period. Like we’re orbiting around a control station. Maybe there was more life down there than it had first appeared—hidden bunkers perhaps, or otherwise underground ecosystems. Maybe the life down there was of a form she couldn’t see, and was actually thriving.
That last thought was not comforting. A civilization that thrived on the corpse of one that built cities and orbital rings would probably want for Equestria what they had created here. A desolate, near-lifeless place.
Except for the single square of life, uncannily preserved near the equator. This was not where the signals were coming from, though the Equinox’s own sensors could pick up faint EM readings from around it. Possibly low-power radio transmissions, or the evidence of working machines. Maybe that’s our invitation.
The soil there looked healthy, and the green grass and gravity would do wonder for her crew’s morale. But landing on an alien planet would be an unacceptable risk, unless they could verify conditions were safe first.
So Twilight ordered the preparation of another probe—a real one this time, not something to be gutted and replaced with unknown alien computers. They fired down at the planet on their next pass.
The whole crew gathered together to watch—except Pinkie Pie. The earth pony never left medical, and from Fluttershy’s description was rarely awake for more than a few minutes at a time. But she hadn’t died, which was the important part. So far as anyone could tell, she was healing.
The probe passed through the atmosphere without incident, and they all watched from the bridge as its camera flickered briefly under the stress of a hard landing. Its parachute blew, and another few minutes later, they got confirmation it had landed.
Mechanical eyes sent back images of green grass, and gently swaying trees with faintly purple leaves. There were flowers in the distance, though the bushes were hard to make out from the low angle of the rover’s eyes.
“Is our friend doing anything?” Twilight asked. Spike had brought the whole thing up here on a rolling cart, no longer connected to the portable computer or the database. It hadn’t protested at being moved, so…
“No sign,” Spike said, his voice distant and a little hopeless. “Must still be thinking.”
“How are the bio readings, Fluttershy?”
The pegasus shifted behind the science console. “Looks like… good temperature, oxygen is a little low, but enough so long as no pegasus flies too high. No sign of… hostile bioagents. I’ve told it to take soil and plant samples, see if the microbiome will be hostile. But even if I don’t find anything, we’ll probably need to transport samples back and test them against some cell cultures. And that still won’t be proof it’s safe, just a stronger suggestion. We’re flying in someone else’s sky, Twilight.”
“I know,” she frowned, rising from her chair. “Applejack, I want you looking at the nearby structure. See what you can tell me about the ponies who built it.” She rose. “Spike…” she didn’t even finish, just waved a wing at the probe, riding the lift down. There was no more direction the probe needed from her, and apparently no response from the machine they’d built. Not yet.
But it was about noon now, ship time. And every day at noon was when she visited Pinkie.
Medical had been transformed halfway into a prison, with a section divider of clear plexiglass isolating a single cot and the space around it from everything that could be touched. The walls had been scribbled on with marker, or else needed a good wash near the bottom.
Pinkie Pie herself lay on her belly on the cot, with enough tubes and wires running into her to make it seem like she were an organ of the Equinox itself. Her scars were… gross, but at least they weren’t leaking pus anymore.
“Hello Pinkie,” Twilight said, opening the little slot near the empty counter and sliding a foil-wrapped packet inside. “I brought you something sweet.”
It was her weekly dessert ration—for several weeks from now. She was running low, would have to start stealing from her friends if she wanted to give Pinkie any more. There’d be no more shortbread for Twilight, not for the rest of the voyage.
But she couldn’t think of any other way to get through to her friend. When all else had failed… what was left?
Pinkie Pie opened one eye pulling the foil close. She didn’t unwrap it properly, but held it down and tore it with her mouth. The two dried crackers inside were hardly the sort of thing Pinkie could’ve made herself—but they were sweeter than paste.
“Twilight,” Pinkie said, with a mouth full of cracker. “I thought you wouldn’t come.”
Twilight froze, stiffening in her seat. Her friend had sounded… almost like herself. Like the dreary, drained version she sometimes became. But at least she wasn’t insane.
“I come every day, Pinkie,” she said, forcing her voice to stay calm. She managed—but her heart raced so loudly that Pinkie could probably still hear it.
“Yeah,” Pinkie said, closing her one eye and stretching out on the cot. “I guess so.”
“Are you… okay, Pinkie?”
“No.” The earth pony didn’t hesitate. “It hurts everywhere. I think I’m more stitches than pony right now. And when Fluttershy gives me the drugs, everything kinda… goes out of focus for a while. I wish you’d tell her to stop. I don’t need to sleep forever…”
1. Stop the anti-psychotics and release pinkie from mental-health arrest. Pinkie Pie has obviously recovered enough to be part of the crew again, but she’s still badly hurt. Not keeping her in a cell will do as much for her healing, even if she can’t actually leave the medical bay.
2. Ignore the request. As tempting as it is to listen to Pinkie’s own assessment of her mental health, Fluttershy is her doctor and she knows what she’s doing. I can inform Fluttershy of this conversation, but I shouldn’t override her.
3. Begin reducing her dose, but don’t release her from confinement. Maybe Fluttershy missed her recovery, but we shouldn’t jump to letting her out all at once. She’s as much a danger to herself as others if we let her out too soon.
“Twilight, you have to understand… what you’re asking for isn’t…” Fluttershy took a deep breath, stopping beside her in the hallway.
“She’s doing better, Fluttershy,” Twilight said. “She’s healing. She doesn’t need to be so drugged she’s barely conscious anymore. You know how awful that is for Pinkie… being stuck in a little room like that…”
“I know she’s not doing well, captain…” Fluttershy shook her head. “But the reason she was able to talk to you is the medication. If we take it away, she could go right back to the way she was.”
“I’m not asking you to take her cold-turkey. Just a gradual reduction. Just long enough for us to see a trend. If she starts getting worse, you can go back to what you were doing.”
Fluttershy grumbled. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Twilight.”
“Just give it a few days,” she muttered. “After that, we can talk again. And if you ever see any sign she’s regressing, you can go right back.”
There was no further argument. As the chief medical officer, Fluttershy had the authority to override her on medical matters—so long as somepony’s life was in immediate peril. But she didn’t try to make that argument. Fluttershy wasn’t confrontational enough for that. But she might just go over my head without saying anything. Lie about changing the dose. Twilight would have to keep an eye, see if Pinkie Pie’s condition actually improved.
She still slept an awful lot, waking only for brief periods of lucidity that came as unexpectedly as they ended. In two days of visiting as often as she could, Twilight determined that Pinkie Pie had woken during the trip over. She didn’t seem to recognize Cozy Glow, either by name or description. Everything the pony had to say was technical—a few things about the engines, or the radiation shield. But she hadn’t been awake long enough for Twilight to put anything together yet.
Doesn’t mean Cozy doesn’t have something to do with it. Maybe she tricked her, somehow. The strange damage to her brain was another concern—one that lingered in Twilight’s mind for personal reasons just as deep.
It was on the second day that Twilight’s decision to constantly watch the probe finally paid off. The call came from Applejack, who sounded tired and a little annoyed. “Hey, Twi! The, uh… the thing wants to talk. I don’t really know what to say to it.”
“I’ll be right there!” she said, leaving her toothbrush under the still flowing water in the bathroom and teleporting down the hall in exaggerated jumps. She passed Fluttershy’s room with the lights already out—Rainbow Dash’s room, with a swapped-out sign. Spike had put off that particular nightmare until they ran out of rooms.
She made it to engineering in under two minutes, and the probe was still communicating. “Alright!” she said, naked except for a sleeping cap and the felt mask resting on her forehead. “I’m here. What’s… what’s up?”
“Is the captain here?” asked the probe, in Starlight’s voice. “We must exchange.”
“YES” Applejack exclaimed, as though she’d just answered the same question a hundred times. “Your baby, Twi. I’m out.” And she started walking to the lift.
“Right, thanks!” Twilight hurried over to the rolling rack—the same one they’d been using to move the device around all this time. “Hello? Sorry, it’s my sleeping shift. What is it? Are you ready to talk?”
“Yes,” the probe said. “I have determined that, despite appearances to the contrary, you meet the minimum requirements for any chance of success helping me. As such, you must immediately gather whatever resources you think you will need, and transport me to these coordinates on PLANET’s surface below. If you possess any form of rapid-transit deployment, that would be preferred.”
A set of numbers appeared on the screen—coordinates. They seemed to be in the same form Equestria used, and she quickly levitated over a pen, scribbling them on the plastic surface of the tray before they vanished.
“You want me to… bring you to the planet’s surface,” she repeated.
“Yes. The next twenty-four hours would be optimal, if you are capable. Your near-sapience has become a limiting factor, but patience. I can wait bit longer.”
Twilight was so amazed by the words she was hearing she forgot to flip on the recorder. She wasn’t surprised to see Applejack hadn’t, and she pressed the button now. Words she wouldn’t get back, but she could write them down, anyway.
“We’re from Equestria,” she said, voice slow and careful. “We’re here to make peaceful contact with your race. I am Princess Twilight Sparkle. Who are you?”
“We must travel to the surface with great urgency,” the voice said, completely ignoring her. “Resources required obtain. Not here. Limitations can be exceeded. Wait is… finally over. Long time. Waited, now not waiting. You will take me.” It wasn’t a request. It hadn’t been, this entire time.
“I’m not sure,” Twilight said. However much she might excuse its rudeness as lack of understanding of her culture, or maybe lack of comprehension of their language, they hadn’t been sent here to make Equestria look like it would bow and scrape. “It is possible we could make an arrangement to take you there. Why don’t you introduce yourself first? I know you are transmitting from somewhere on the surface—are we going to meet with where you’re really living?”
The probe hesitated. “Transmitting from… no. Transmitting to, not from. Searching for functional hardware. Found it. You will take me there.”
“Why?”
But the voice didn’t answer. “Computation time. Transport as quickly as possible. Capabilities are… vacuous, but sufficient. Observe.” And the screen went dark. A few minutes later and Twilight was running a quick search on the coordinates. Not the palace, not even the same location the probe had been transmitting to. Just a random patch of dead city, at least so far as she could tell.
What should she do?
1. Prep to follow the instructions ASAP. Prospector doesn’t need everypony, so probably just her and one other pony for support could run it quickly and be back before they were even missed.
2. Begin preparations, but wait for Fluttershy and Applejack’s full safety analysis of Proximus B’s surface conditions. We’re not here to take risks for somepony when they didn’t even give us their name.
3. Send the stupid probe in the escape pod and be done with it. It’s not going to get any more cooperative. Time to remove a distraction while we focus on our crew.
4. Pressure the one using the probe, don’t do anything until we get meaningful answers. They want something from us, they’re going to give us the information we need. Diplomacy is built on exchange, and they need to learn that as quickly as possible.
Begin preparations, but wait for safety confirmation 45%
“There’s no question in my mind.” Fluttershy finished. She sounded reluctant, as she had with every word during the presentation. “There is nothing in that land that looks dangerous to Equestrian life. There are no known poisons in the air, or water, or soil. The air has the right concentration of inert gasses and oxygen. And if you wanted anything else, look at the plants.” She flashed through a few more slides, showing the growth around the palace taken from several angles. The trees and grass might be a pleasant purple, but they were otherwise quite similar. There were flowers, apparently insects and small animals too.
Maybe that’s why you want to go down there so badly. Do a little taxonomy of some alien life. Catch yourself a cute pet? But if that was true, Twilight wouldn’t complain. Her chief medical officer had also been the pony more reluctant about her presence here, without any stated reasons beyond her friends. If this was what it took to get her passionate about their mission, that was fine with her.
“So that’s it,” Applejack said. “Somehow this planet looks like it’s been through a war, worse than anything that ever happened on Equestria or off it. Buildings so advanced we can’t even imagine how to build ‘em are destroyed, that kinda thing. But there’s this one little patch that nobody bombs. Frankly cap, if this ain’t a trap I don’t know what is. Looks like they were doin’ their best to make a place look like a patch of home, then… bait us down there. That stupid machine won’t shut up about how we’re supposed to go down.”
“To somewhere else,” Spike pointed out. “I spent an hour talking it through its coordinates with a map. It used the same system as our computer when we’re indexing a planet, and it didn’t send us to that place.”
“What about the rest of the planet?” Twilight asked, levitating over a few of the pictures and studying them for any hints. But she could see nothing—they just looked like flowers and plants to her. “Could this part be protected, somehow? Maybe there’s poison all around it.”
“That’s possible.” Fluttershy admitted. “That’s why I gave you that spot. It’s… right by the edge. I took the probe out, looked around. Not much is alive in those buildings, but I think that’s more about availability. They’re… dry. No moisture, maybe not in the whole atmosphere.”
“Which… tells us a few things,” Applejack continued. “Like, we ain’t gonna refuel from down there. Also, if we do go, we gotta bring our own water. Bit of a pain if we wanna raise up a big crop. Maybe that little patch has its own reservoir.”
Fluttershy cleared her throat. “I don’t know… about any of that. All I know is, the probe didn’t find anything different when it drove away. Doesn’t mean the whole planet is safe. I just know you aren’t going to die from breathing, and you could probably grow something in the ground. We’ll… have to run more tests on the microbiome for that, and the microscopes are too big for a probe.”
It was safe—as safe as they could guess at from orbit, anyway. We didn’t just find an alien race, we found aliens who live in conditions similar enough to us that we can walk on their planet. That was either a wonderful coincidence, or more reason to trust Cozy Glow. She wasn’t sure which one she liked more.
But before Twilight worked out what to do about their landing, if indeed they were going to make one, she wanted to take one last chance with Pinkie Pie.
Pinkie Pie’s mental and physical recovery: Critical Success!
Random Event: The Oppress of Peace
But she didn’t get the chance, because that was when an explosion shook the deck beneath her.
“Radiation alert. Danger! Critical exposure in eight minutes, fourteen seconds. Radiation alert.” Twilight jerked upright, scattering the wreckage of their little meeting in a cloud of magic. From barely awake, her mind had snapped instantly to alertness.
“Where is it coming from?” she called to Applejack. The pony was already at the nearest wall-console, her hooves scrolling rapidly through ship’s sensors. “And… that’s dosage for a pony. Spike, aren’t dragons… resistant to radiation?”
He nodded. “More like Immune.” Indeed, Spike seemed more afraid by the sound than the thought of something on their ship irradiating them.
What exploded? The answer was obvious, and she wasn’t surprised to hear— “Hull breach in the emergency reactor. The fission reactor.” Applejack’s ears were flat against the blare of the siren as she leaned over the screen, reading fast.
“I’m going for Pinkie Pie!” Fluttershy asked. “Radio me with what we’re doing.”
Sleep caskets are shielded, our friends are safe. Twilight ran through the facts in her head. Spike is immune, we’re not. Two hazmat suits in the engine room. How much more time would that give us?
Applejack continued. “Damnit! Looks bad, Twilight. Someone knew what they were doing. According to this, the reactor has been running for eight months now. Never knew, cuz’… horsefeathers, doesn’t matter now! From the sound of those alarms, we haven’t been venting the waste like we’re supposed to. Seems like Cozy wanted to light us up like Hearthswarming.”
“How long to fix it?”
“Radiation alert. Danger! Critical exposure in seven minutes, thirty seconds!”
“Longer than that!” Applejack yelled, furious. “But… there are a few things we could…”
1. Evacuate the crew into the Prospector, leaving Spike behind to repair the Equinox. Spike might not have half of Applejack’s engineering talent, but he’s got immunity to ionizing radiation and that’s more important in the short term. We can stay in touch over the radio and exchange instructions, assuming that doesn’t blow up too.
2. Load the emergency archive of the computer into the Prospector along with the cryosleep caskets, then abandon the Equinox for good. [Nonzero chance of radiation poisoning, but unlikely to be fatal as Spike can do most of the heavy lifting] The Equinox is going to explode, run for your lives! Our chances of building a replacement on our own with just a Prospector aren’t great, but we can cross that bridge when we’re not dead!
3. Instead of risking death on an alien planet for her whole crew, Twilight could return everypony but Pinkie Pie (who hasn’t been awake long enough to heal) to cryosleep, leave Spike behind to repair the ship, and take the Prospector with just the two of them down to Proximus B. We could use our time productively in that healthy patch of land, or maybe explore the ruins, or even deliver the probe. But there’s no reason everypony else has to be in any more danger then they already are.
4. With her superior engineering talents and tremendous physical abilities, Applejack can travel down into the reactor and vent it in time to prevent a lasting impact and save the Equinox. The process will take longer than a lethal dose, but not so long that the effects overpower her earth pony endurance. [Fatal to Applejack] It’s the right thing to do, Twi. I always knew it might come to this.
Take everyone but Spike, leave him to make the repairs. 72%
“You’re sure you can handle this, Spike?” Twilight’s voice was a little muffled through the hazmat suit, but not enough that the young dragon wouldn’t be able to understand even without the radio.
They stood alone on the end of the docking arm, with the Prospector already packed to the gills. It was a merciful blessing from Celestia that Applejack had replaced all their deployment supplies, or else they might be stuck in a cave somewhere, eating purple grass to survive.
“I’m sure,” the dragon said, rolling his eyes. “I ran the numbers. I could sleep for ten years next to the reactor and I’d barely get sunburned. It’s fine! Soon as you’re out, I’ll get the whole thing vented. Repairs… well, might be a little harder, we’ll see. But Applejack and I will keep in touch.”
“Yeah.” She leaned down beside him, embracing him with a plastic-covered wing. “You’ve really grown up, Spike. We’d already be dead if it wasn’t for you. You’re our only hope of ever getting home.”
“I won’t let you down,” he returned the embrace, squeezing her so tight she worried the suit might burst. But it didn’t, and a few moments later he released her again. “I just… I want a promise from you, Twi. An honest one.”
“Anything.”
“Come back for me,” he begged, voice desperate. “And the others. Well, except maybe Cozy Glow. Want to leave her on ice for all eternity, that’s better than she deserves after all this. But the rest of us. Don’t leave us here, even if I’m not smart enough to fix the Equinox.”
Twilight nodded. “It isn’t conditional. We’ll come back for you.”
She turned, crossing through a foil-covered tube through the void, into the side of the Prospector.
Despite its repairs, it was obvious the interior hadn’t been treated with the love and care it deserved. There were little carvings in the wall, doodles and scratches that would’ve required every bit of interior plastic be replaced. But they hadn’t bothered with the effort.
The Equinox began to recede into the distance behind them, its massive metallic superstructure gradually shrinking until there were only a few sparkles of reflection visible in the sun.
The Prospector had only three real rooms—a miniscule cockpit large enough for only a single pony to cram inside, a larger living area, and the even bigger, depressurized cargo hold. It was a standard, modular design, and she’d seen plenty of interesting modifications. Like making the cargo hold into a passenger cabin, for short jumps between Equus and Luna.
But their ship hadn’t been configured for that, and so the quarters were… tight.
There were four beds, though two of them were on walls and not be useful if they needed to accelerate. There was no privacy for the vacuum-style bathroom, or any shower at all.
Pinkie Pie was already strapped into one of the chairs in the furthest corner of the living area, staring off at nothing in particular. Twilight emerged from the cockpit, shaking herself out. Her coat still felt stiff from the decontamination foam, and filled the air around her with the stench of antiseptic. Better a stink than cancer. “Sorry we haven’t been able to talk much,” Twilight said, pulling over one of the other chairs. She didn’t strap herself down though, not when she still had her magic for that purpose. “Fluttershy told me you were responding well to your new medication.”
Pinkie Pie didn’t look nearly so glazed as she had the last time. Instead she looked a little sleepy, and maybe pained from the staples running up and down her body in various places. Her wounds were healing, though it would probably be years before she could be safely frozen again.
“Yeah,” Pinkie smiled weakly up at her, lifting one foreleg and waving it around with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. “Thanks for… making her. She wanted to take it slow. Slow might be good when you’re at home, but think of how many parties behind I’ve gotten. You realize I missed forty-one birthdays for everypony? I can’t start catching up if I’m locked in a little room.”
It was the most awake thing she’d heard Pinkie say thus far. Now—with Applejack on the radio with Spike, and Fluttershy tucked away in one of the cots—might be her first real chance to get answers. “Why did you wake up?”
Pinkie Pie met her eyes, expression haunted. “Something… bad… was gonna happen. I could… feel it.” She gestured vaguely at her head.
“Your… precognition?” Twilight had barely accepted it when she’d first seen the evidence.
“Pinkie sense,” she corrected. “I just had to be awake, then I was. Your voice was there, screaming…” she shivered, clutching at her seatbelt with both legs, starting to shake.
Twilight reached over, settling one leg on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Pinkie. Whatever it was, it’s over. You… don’t have to tell me all about it now if you don’t think you can.”
Pinkie nodded, but then her eyes opened, and she went on anyway. “Something was on the ship with us. It wasn’t very nice. I… got rid of it.”
“Spike didn’t help?”
Pinkie nodded. “Never saw… him.”
Something? Did Pinkie mean she’d helped the eye avert a collision? Or… something stranger? Nothing could get onto the ship. We would’ve been traveling at relativistic speeds. What could fly that fast? Another starship, maybe. There was the damage when we came into the system. Was some of it older than Spike thought? She didn’t have time to speculate. It seemed her friend had said all she wanted to, because she’d started humming to herself. One of her old songs about ghosts. Twilight gave her one last reassuring pat, then let go, rising to her hooves.
That was about when Applejack joined her.
“You think he can do it?” Twilight asked.
“Slower than me, but yeah. I only got a quick look, but I’m guessing on the order of four months. He’s gonna have to rip out the whole thing. Melted right into the structure—that’s gonna leave an entire section in hard vacuum. It’s a whole buckin mess.” She shook her head. “But that’s not our problem right now.” Applejack gestured around. “We gotta decide what to do.”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Twilight answered. “There’s no reason we have to let this slow down our mission.” Aside from the specifics of who was on the Prospector, they might’ve been about to do this anyway.
1. First deliver the probe. It’s time to make a new friend, even if it was a little annoying last time.
2. First set up camp down on the fertile part of Proximus B and start growing. Geneseed, real food… the sooner we get those crops in the ground, the sooner we can start making up for what we’ve lost, and get the rest of our crew awake.
3. Wait it out. [-Morale] That means four months living trapped in a tiny box burning through some of the last of our supplies, but the planet is just unacceptably dangerous to visit without the entire crew. We can orbit here within range of the Equinox, and be close in case there’s an emergency.
“We’re talking a big risk here,” Applejack said. “By… deliverin’ this thing. I hope you know that.”
Twilight found it hard to be annoyed with Applejack now, even though she was pointing out the obvious. She didn’t look away from the controls, concentrating on her path towards a bit of clear ground between two gigantic buildings.
The structures on Proximus B were even more intimidating when they were rising up all around them, like Canterlot Station cast to the size of an entire planet. Down on their level she could see plenty of the signs of whatever strange conflict had ravaged this place—entire buildings had collapsed, taking a dozen of their neighbors down with them. Some had been torn right in half, or had huge empty holes through them without any apparent impact on their structural soundness.
But they hadn’t been shot at on the way down, they hadn’t had the ship eaten away by some invisible machines, and their engines hadn’t mysteriously failed. By all visible evidence, the planet below was safe.
They touched down on a street wider than half of Canterlot, if you could even call it a street. They were at the top of what was obviously a nested honeycomb of traffic, with things that looked like rail lines and tubes interspersed with what might’ve been walkways and sections for cars. The cars themselves were nowhere to be seen, however, as though the entire surface had been vacuumed clean. There were no trains or crashed aircraft either. Nothing that could’ve had an occupant? Maybe it wasn’t attacked so much as evacuated. After the attack that had ruined it, perhaps?
She finally released her hooves from the controls, turning to Applejack. “I realize it’s a risk. But I also realize that our friend—that probe—is the entire reason for this mission. We wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for its race. They gave us the technology for interstellar travel, they invited us here.”
Applejack raised an annoyed hoof. “Don’t need to tell me none. I get it. I didn’t argue that much, did I?” That was subjective, so Twilight supposed it couldn’t technically be a lie. As much as her annoyance wouldn’t be in any hurry to admit the spacer hadn’t argued. “I’m just sayin’ we’re putting ourselves in danger. It’s possible that landing here like we did will wake things up. Or if not this, then walkin’ around. Whoever is controlling that probe… assuming it’s the Signalers… does it seem right they’d be so sharp? I dunno, just don’t feel right.”
“We’ll take a small team,” Twilight said, without hesitation. She’d already been thinking about it on the way down. “Myself and one other pony. Landing again might be tricky for any pilot but me, but…”
“I won’t crash yer pretty ship,” Applejack interrupted. “Worked hard enough to get her back, just wouldn’t be right.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you would!” Twilight put up both hooves defensively. “Anyway, I’m planning on just taking one of you. The other two can wait on the Prospector here—either to mount a rescue if we need it, or to fly away if it’s clear we… won’t come back.”
“Makes sense I guess. We’d have to be crazy to go in if we thought there was danger, but… no sign of anything still alive yet. What about the sensors?”
Twilight leaned in to examine them, and her eyes went wide. There was a powerful energy reading coming from almost directly below them. Far enough that her mouth hung open. The sensors gave her an estimate for the size of the EM reading, probably wildly wrong, at a reactor size of a Faust Class Capital Carrier. Through all that metal? It might be ten times as large. A hundred times.
“There’s something awake down there,” she said, pointing at the screen. Applejack wasn’t trained in this kind of sensor manipulation, but she could read a number.
Applejack whistled. “Well I’ll be. If that was a bomb, just imagine the size of the hole it would leave up here.”
“Or… maybe it’s just part of the planet! City this big must’ve needed a lot of energy, right? Maybe one of the power plants is still running! A working power plant could be a… shelter! For the survivors the probe wants us to meet!”
“That’s an awful lot of what ifs.” Applejack shook her head. “But it’s why we’re here. Guess the only thing left is to talk to Fluttershy, huh?”
They found her with Pinkie Pie, having a quiet conversation over a pot of tea. Fluttershy had prepared it, and judging by the open container on the table between them, Pinkie Pie had just had her daily medication. Much milder than what she’d been on before—she only looked relaxed now, instead of completely spaced. “We’re here,” she announced. “You… probably felt it when we came down.”
Fluttershy nodded, gesturing to the tea. “Want any?”
Twilight nodded and took a cup. She sipped, and found the flavor surprisingly refreshing despite its age. Tea did better in storage than many other rations, which was why it made up so much of their supply. “Thank you.” She kept her ears alert for any sounds from outside—the ground shifting under them, the motion-tracker alarm. But there was nothing, just the wind-down of the thrusters and the steady hum of the ventilator.
A few hours later, Fluttershy finally left her makeshift laboratory corner, looking resolved. “Well… looks like it’s safe. Same as the other site, except there’s less plant material. But since it takes time to run a culture, anyone who goes out there will do it under respiration and full decontamination both ways. In thirty days I can see how the culture’s doing, then maybe we lift the rules.”
“Fine,” Twilight rose to her hooves, tapping one against the metal to get everypony’s attention. “I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decide who’s coming with me on our first field mission. It’s…”
1. Applejack. “This is obviously a city, which might be filled with any number of unknown devices. If we’re going to interpret the clues to what happened here, I need an engineer.”
2. Fluttershy. “Nothing will give us more opportunity to determine whether the planet is safe than to example a typical structure up close. The location the probe wants us to visit is just under a kilometer from here. Think of everything we might learn about the planet after traveling a distance like that.”
3. Pinkie Pie. “I think you’ve been trapped in spacecraft long enough, Pinkie. You’re the only planetborn pony awake right now, so why don’t you come with me? Some fresh air… from inside a respirator… will make you feel better.”
4. Nobody. “I’ve asked each of you to take too many risks already. From now on the only life I take into my own hooves is my own. If any of you were to be lost in the line of duty, we might never be able to return home. But me… I’m replaceable. Just don’t break the mainframe on the way home.”
Twilight wasn’t sure she was ready. On the other side of that airlock door was an alien world—a place that had once overflowed with life. A city big enough to hold a billion, billion ponies, all gone cold and dead with the unstoppable advance of time.
It was the moment this mission had been preparing her for, in many ways. It was the ultimate goal of their trip.
“Why are we stationary?” asked the probe from in front of her. It had been fitted with a radio transmitter, that would repeat anything it said over their suit channel whether it wanted to or not. It had transmission equipment of its own, at least it seemed to, but so far it either hadn’t understood or hadn’t been willing to use that. “There is achievement outside. Stability.”
“I don’t understand this thing,” Applejack muttered. The farmpony had fitted bits of hard plastic armor over the hazmat suit—probably enough to stop a low-caliber bullet or accidental debris from breaching the suit. The air was breathable, and apparently there was nothing to be worried about on the surface—but until the cultures came back clean, they were going to be cautious. “It doesn’t talk like a civilization that’s unlocked all the mysteries of the universe or whatnot. Don’t the scientists back home think they know what a pony like that would look like? Total understandin’ of all the virtues of friendship or… somesuch.”
Twilight shrugged, then smacked one hoof against the release. Air hissed out in front of them, and the door slid up in front of them. A ramp already descended all the way down to the planet’s surface, with metal glinting in the light of an alien sun. There was a thin layer of dirt on the alien highway, but surprisingly little for the age of the ruins.
There’s no plantlife. No carbon cycle, no water cycle. Only oxidation. She settled her magic against the cart, and rolled it down.
The upper layer contained the probe, strapped down and secured with ample padding. The bottom section of the cart had two heavy saddlebags of supplies—enough for Applejack and herself to survive a week in the ruins if it came to that.
Applejack either didn’t know about the significance of the occasion, or didn’t care. She hopped down, landing on the dirt ahead of the cart. “Horseapples this hurts… on and off acceleration gravity just ain’t enough for this.”
“We’re looking at about… a hundred ten percent of Equus sea level,” Twilight said, following Applejack. “It would feel a little heavy even without that.” Twilight herself knew her body would be in just as much pain—were she not a unicorn. She’d been simulating normal gravity on herself almost as long as she’d been awake. Where the acceleration didn’t quite reach 1G, her powers could make up the difference. Her muscles weren’t atrophied.
It did feel like something was pushing on her, like she were wearing heavy saddlebags without even putting them on.
“Prospector to field team,” said Fluttershy’s voice. “Don’t forget.”
“Right,” Fluttershy said. “Pinkie says you should go left. I don’t know what that means, but she wouldn’t relax until I told you. Hear that, I told them. Prospector out.”
“We’re going straight,” Twilight said, not transmitting back on general channel. “I think so, anyway.” She reached up with a hoof, tapping on the metal. “Hey, uh… probe? Are we going the right way?”
“Currently, yes,” the device answered. “Watch the inner lanes for access ramps down into the superstructure. Follow the violet lines.”
“We should ‘a just dropped it down here in an escape pod,” Applejack muttered darkly. But Twilight could see now that would’ve been fruitless—the probe couldn’t move on its own, and there was clearly nothing alive here on the surface. It would’ve just smacked down onto the cement and rotted away there, their mission undone.
They started walking. Her companion winced and occasional landed up against a concrete divider, or against the cart for support, and her breathing sounded heavy when they took frequent breaks. But Earth Pony magic was a powerful thing—where others would’ve needed physical therapy and a long course of medication, Applejack could muscle through. She probably wouldn’t even be worn out by the time they made it back.
“I realize I don’t know what to call you,” Twilight said, as they began trailing down a long, gently curved ramp. So gently that she almost didn’t realize they were turning at first. How fast were their vehicles moving to turn like this. “Do you have a… name? Your species, or… whatever you are.”
“Of course I do,” the speaker answered. “I am Node. This is not a true name, obviously, but it should be pronounceable by your species. It will suffice.”
Celestia it actually answered me. Maybe listening to it would pay off after all. Finally the stupid machine wasn’t just ignoring them.
“Node,” Applejack repeated. “Where are you, Node? Like, really. Where are you transmittin’ from?”
“Transmitting…” Node repeated. “There is… no transmission at present. A survey of functional planeside hardware was required to locate our destination. No more transmission is required at this time.”
“I think what Applejack means is—where is the person who is controlling this device,” Twilight supplied. “You answer with minimal delays, so I’m guessing you’re close. Two thousand kilometers from here, or less.”
The ramp had finally taken them under cover of the first layer—though there was still enough space overhead that the entire Prospector could’ve flown here if they needed it to. All the while Twilight could see the faint overlay of their destination coordinates, superimposed on the world in front of her like a distant, static point.
“No transmission is required at this time,” Node said again, as though that were an answer.
Twilight resisted the urge to argue with it a little more. There was a long way left to go, and the road up ahead was thickly packed with rubble.
As they emerged onto the lower highway, Twilight’s questions over the location of the vehicles vanished. Here they were—numberless machines, all packed in so tight that in some places there was no free path to walk. They were fully enclosed, like little aircraft, though each rested on the cement.
Twilight now had to make a choice.
1. Investigate the highway for more information about the aliens and their technology.
2. Follow the ramp deeper to try to find a clear path forward.
3. Applejack suggests searching for an intact-looking machine and trying to get working again, instead of walking any further. It ain't like they weren't put down here for a reason. Good money says there's somethin' in this whole mess that can fly.
4. Ignore the global positioning directions and take the first available left turn.
Go left regardless of context or apparent dangers. 66%
Applejack’s eyes narrowed as Twilight fought with her crowbar on the entrance to the service stairwell. A layer of creamy white film had formed over the doorway, and she had to work the prying end of the crowbar along the edge, working it gently as the metal started to give.
“So… let me get this straight…” Applejack repeated. “We’re not going to try an’ fix up one of the here automated chariots and fly there. Instead we’re going… left.”
“Right.” Twilight grunted, then pushed with her magic. The door flexed a little in the doorway, bending around where she’d slipped in the handle.
“Because Pinkie Pie said a few words about it.”
“Yes.”
“Even though she couldn’t see that friendly ramp going straight down towards our destination. Even though she doesn’t have Node with her telling us that the ramp is probably the way.”
“Yep.” A little more pressure, and she could almost… yes! There was a screech of metal, and a burst of compressed air from the tube. Dirt and debris blasted away from them, but it was nowhere even strong enough to push the cart. It also didn’t last—just a few seconds, and the flow of air seemed to have reversed direction, with a breeze carrying past them into the tube.
“It’s not rational, cap. I know you put good stock in that pony’s intuition, but there’s no magic in a guess. It’s just a guess. And she’s got way less to judge on than we do.”
“I know,” Twilight said, sliding the crowbar back onto their cart. “But Pinkie Pie’s intuition has never led me wrong before. This is our first opportunity, before this it was all straight lines and ramps. Now we have a left turn, we’re taking it. Just watch it pay off.”
“I’m watching all right,” Applejack said, eyeing the shadowy interior of the tunnel. It rose above them, with a ceiling high above even the tallest ponies and a set of steps just barely close enough for ponies to walk. Any taller and they’d have to jump from step to step, who knew how far. “But just so we’re clear about this, Cap. If there’s anything even looks at us funny, we come back up and try my way. Yeah?”
Twilight hesitated. She knew better than just say what her crew wanted to hear, particularly around Applejack. A pony who knew how to keep her own promises would also hold Twilight to any she made. It wouldn’t be just words.
“We’ll reevaluate our decision if we encounter anything dangerous,” Twilight said. “But we haven’t seen any sign of danger on this planet so far. Whatever threat was once here seems long gone. Maybe the ponies with them.”
“I sure hope so, Twi. I hope so.” Then she hesitated, glancing past Twilight. “Wait just a gosh darned minute, Cap. We don’t have to hope. Node, you tell us! This planet’s yers, right? So is it safe or ain’t it?”
Node beeped cheerfully in response, its voice coming over the radio with minimal delay. “Safety relative to the fathomless abyss—high. Safety relative to unknown homeworld of equine creatures—low.”
“See!” Applejack pointed an accusatory hoof. “This is a trap, ain’t it? You lured us here so you could blow us up!”
“Applejack!” Twilight glowered, pushing past her engineer. She almost cut her right off the radio. She might’ve, except that she cared more about making sure Node got a better idea of their species. “We don’t really think that, Node.”
“Judgement is… valued,” Node answered. “Destruction of visitor ship trivial computation problem. Not desirable. Node and visitors presently… jointly interdicted. Alien survival is my function. Desire to continue functioning is… extant.”
Twilight turned. “See, it just… this is an old city, Applejack. Even if there were never any weapons here it might be dangerous to us. Gas leaks, machinery still working, structural collapse. That’s what Node means, isn’t it?”
But the drone didn’t respond. Its screen had it up a solid white—a sign that they were not likely to hear more from it in the near future. Twilight thought it meant whoever was speaking through it was out of range, though there was another explanation, equally likely albeit more disturbing. It might be processing their responses.
They passed into the stairs, leaving their carefully marked open ramp behind. Twilight had no choice but to levitate the entire cart behind them—a minor annoyance, except that it was slowly eroding at her magical power.
Do Pinkie Pie's directions refer to their first left? Yes
Twilight kept her eyes on the little numbers slowly scrolling by on her helmet, watching for them to approach the same z-level as the indicated delivery target.
At least her fears that the shaft might be filled with corpses was in vain. There was nothing at all in here, except for what looked like lighting or computer fixtures that no longer worked, and faded alien writing they couldn’t read. If Node could, it didn’t respond to requests for help, and they were forced to continue on.
On and on and on, for hours. Twilight found herself taking more frequent breaks, stopping to rest her magic and let her headache fade. The trip probably would’ve been over in under an hour otherwise.
That was about the time they realized that they’d passed out of radio range of the Prospector, and Applejack finally put her hoof down.
“Alright,” she said. “We went left. We went… down. How far?”
Twilight shrugged. “Something like… three kilometers.”
“As in… further away than a straight line from our destination?” Applejack raised her voice, just a little. “As in, couldn’t possibly be going the right way anymore?”
Twilight winced, but even as she formed her response, the words already sounded stupid. “Sloping down like this… the only doors are on the right.”
“Alright,” Applejack stepped sideways, blocking the way down. “Alright, cap. I reckon we’ve gone far enough fer one day. Figure… maybe suit air is getting to ‘ya. Either that, or…” She winced, looking away. But Twilight could guess what she was thinking, even if Applejack was too professional to say.
It was time to make another choice. 1. Set up the emergency shelter right in the stairs and get a rest cycle in. We’re most of the way there already. We just need some sleep, and we can tackle this fresh in the morning.
2. Go back to the surface right now and try Applejack’s idea. This was a stupid idea. I can’t believe I trusted an almost insane pony who sent a message over the radio without even seeing this. We could keep walking until we get to the core of this damn planet. At least that way we can sleep with metal around us instead of plastic.
3. Push through any tiredness and try to find the way through right now. We can’t be far from our destination now. Hoping for the stairs to end was obviously silly, but we could go back up a bit until elevation is right and try a door. See where that takes us.
4. Leave the probe behind right here and get back to the Prospector. Close enough! You can walk the rest of the way!
The field shelter really was its own little marvel of engineering. As they worked together to get the plastic shell standing, Twilight found herself even more confident of its security against the alien environment around them.
This one hadn’t been packed away in an air-evacuated storage cell for the duration of the trip—this one was so fresh she imagined it would still be smelling of fabricator plastic. It still squeaked, and the joints were still stiff as they wedged it onto one of the rare landings on their little stairwell, tucked in against a door.
It was the perfect size for the two of them, though somepony would end up sleeping with their legs dangling onto the step below. Twilight switched it on, and the sound of the filter-inflator filled the corridor with a quite whirring. Positive pressure for the interior, so that all the air going in would be secure. If there was a minor leak, positive pressure would make sure that it didn’t spell contamination for anyone inside.
They didn’t have to load in much—the front of their suits actually secured to special docking zippers, so that once they were in they just had to crawl out into the interior. It had another entrance—for emergencies. The airlock unit came separately, and would’ve added unnecessary weight to their expedition.
As it was, the interior already had what they’d need—a meal, sanitary supplies, and a paper-thing reflective mylar blanket. Only the height crackling comfort for sleeping on the ground.
At least whoever had designed the emergency shelter had thought of building a light into the ceiling. If Twilight had kept a book to read inside her suit, she’d be all set.
“Wild to think we’re out here on an honest-to-goodness alien world,” Applejack muttered, between the metallic crackles of the shifting blanket. “Twenty years ago, ponies would ‘a laughed at an idea so crazy.”
“Seventy years now,” Twilight muttered, staring up through the clear plastic ceiling of the tent at… another ceiling. Something like cement, without any writing or hint at erosion. They sure did build this stuff to last. Are we underground yet, even, or still in the city above it?
“Right,” Applejack repeated, voice weak. “I almost forgot.” An awkward silence returned, other than the crinkling mylar film whenever they moved.
Twilight couldn’t even do anything productive in the tent—there was a tiny toolkit inside, with a single scrap of paper and a shred of charcoal for a pencil. But what would she have written on them? Nothing important.
Soon enough Applejack was snoring, and Twilight was left to herself. She played with the idea of blasting herself to sleep with a spell, or creating a little bubble of silence. But both seemed excessive, given she might need her magic tomorrow.
I already failed last time I used it. I need to have my strength up for the next one.
Then she heard a voice—distant and dim, barely loud enough to hear over the snoring and the filter. She hadn’t been able to make out what it said, but she recognized the voice.
Node.
“You.” Twilight crawled over to the side of the shelter, leaning up close to the fabric where Node’s cart had been turned on its side. They couldn’t take the chance of it rolling off on them, and shattering the delicate communications device. “Sorry, I didn’t hear that. Maybe you could repeat it for me?”
She listened for any change in applejack’s breathing—nope. Same snoring as before.
“I woke on watchdog after not being moved for 65,536 cycles. Why are we not in motion?”
“Because…” she bit back her frustration. It might be the reaction a pony like Node would’ve deserved, but Node was not a pony. Besides, she wasn’t tired yet. “Because we require rest. This is our resting period.”
There was a brief silence on the other side of the plastic sheet. There was no window near ground level, so she couldn’t see what appeared on the screen. But she could see when it activated, glowing on and off.
“How long is this resting period?”
“Approximately eight hours,” Twilight answered, smiling smugly to herself. “Is that period unsafe for… wherever this is?”
“In Ponish, emergency causeway. They were not used much.”
“Like when your planet got attacked?” Twilight suggested, almost casually.
“Yes,” Node answered. Starlight Glimmer’s voice wasn’t capable of emotional inflection—yet the recording seemed slower, somehow. More thoughtful. “Not this side. No bombardment here, or there would be no reason.”
I’m actually getting it to talk! Twilight’s mind raced, tiredness forgotten. Questions flooded her, but she kept them all back. I have to keep it on this subject. The radio it’s wearing is recording everything. I can review it all later. “It looked like there was,” Twilight said, voice cautious. “Broken buildings, holes in stuff… we saw it on our way in.”
There was a long silence before Node answered, so long that Twilight wondered if she’d gone too far. “No,” Node finally said. “That wasn’t bombardment. That was fighting back.”
Twilight probably wouldn’t get anything more from whoever was on the other line. Even translated, even though the recordings of a unicorn a trillion trillion kilometers away, she imagined she could feel its grief. “Why did you want us to take your device here?” she asked.
She didn’t really expect an answer. Whenever Node got close to really saying anything interesting, it seemed to either revert back to spitting out vague nothings, or just went quiet.
“You not… words.”
“Survivors?” Twilight offered. “A shelter?”
“No transience to shelter,” Node said. “Something… manipulation hardware. For me.”
“Hardware? We already built your design. That’s how we’re communicating. This… device. Impressive signal attenuation, to speak through rock like this.”
“No. It is a body… mechanical. For me.”
Twilight swallowed. She knew about prosthetic limbs well enough, but to have an entire body controlled that way? “A probe with manipulators. Built for gravity. You can interface it with our technology?”
“Have to. Only chance to… keep you alive.”
Now Twilight knew why they were here. Node stopped responding after that, and eventually Twilight rested. But when she woke, she played the recording back for Applejack, complete with her distant snores.
There was no way to secretly discuss what they planned to do. Twilight would just have to decide, and hope her engineer would accept her decision.
1. Abandon the mission. The signalers had powerful technology in their space probes, how dangerous could their land probes be? We shouldn’t cooperate. So long as Node doesn’t have a body of its own, we can control it.
2. Try to find the way through and reach Node’s destination. It said it was trying to help us. If it really wanted us dead, Node could’ve probably used the Equinox’s computers for that. Fighting it is silly after coming all this far.
3. Destroy Node. Technical problems grow out of control. It sounded like Node was part of a war that deeply disturbs it, even now. Cozy Glow might’ve been right. Maybe the Signalers are the wrong side to be on.
They quickly worked the next morning, packing up the shelter and sealing it away into the tight vinyl container it had come in. In theory the inside was still safe from contamination by the environment of Proximus B, though in practice they would probably sterilize it before using it again, if they could.
Twilight could sense Applejack’s discomfort as she informed her prospecting partner of their destination. But while Applejack kept glancing back at Node, she didn’t argue. “I sure hope you know what yer doin,’ Cap,” was all she said.
Twilight and Applejack search for Node’s destination. Success
It took only a few hours—down a few dead-ends leaving their emergency tunnel, before a series of successive lefts took them to a door unlike the others they’d seen so far. The writing on this one looked fresh somehow, as though the interior were maintained.
Node’s voice sounded over the radio as they approached, a trace of nervousness in his tone. “Aliens should be aware—the system will not be able to identify you. Will likely treat as biocontaminants. But… encouragement! Not equipped for contaminants as large as yourselves. Don’t die.”
“Now you tell us,” Applejack drew the gun from her belt, settling it on one hoof. Even with the straps the gun held on awkwardly, and she would have to operate it through the thick vinyl around her hoof. “I only got two mags, Twi. What are you packin’?”
“Uh…” Twilight lifted a folding blade from her belt. “I’ve got this or a cutting torch.”
“We could still turn ar—”
“No,” Twilight pushed the cart back, pressing the breaks into place before crouching and approaching the door. “I’m going, Applejack. We didn’t come to Proximus because it was safe.”
Applejack groaned, but she felt the earth pony settle into place beside her, gun at the ready. IT was the best they could hope for.
Twilight pushed on the door, and it didn’t open. The wall had a panel of some kind covered with a plastic film, but that didn’t respond to her either. Instead Twilight spread her legs, aiming her horn at the metal. “Equestria’s here,” she muttered. “Good to meet you.”
Steel screamed and sparked in protest as the doors caved inward, like a dozen charging earth ponies had just smacked into them. She gritted her teeth, then shoved again with all her might. This time they came ripping right out of the wall, trailing sparks as they slid along the metal inside. Twilight looked over her shoulder, lifting Node up off the cart and levitating it along with her.
“Let me go first!” Applejack called, shoving past her. There was just barely enough room for both of them in the hallway, and it didn’t look like the Earth pony would take no for an answer. She clambered over the twisted ruins of the doors and into a dimly lit interior.
The metal inside had been polished almost to a mirror shine, with walls made something soft. Like silicon. She could see an occasional shape almost swim through them, undulating along their own power as they moved.
A dense hallway stretched ahead of them, narrowing slightly on both sides.
Where were the bright flashing lights, where were the angry sirens? Twilight’s ears strained, but she couldn’t hear anything over the air-circulator in her suit and the pounding of Applejack’s hooves on the ground.
Something slid out of the walls, landing on the ground in front of them with a metallic click and a squelch. Applejack fired, and sparks flashed, sending broken machinery scattered in front of them.
“As explained—contamination is too serious for these… maintainers,” Node said, confidence apparently restored. “Though… if mistaken, would the others come and complete your mission. Trapped is… unhappy. At present loss of voltage, power will last for at least—”
The hallway opened just up ahead, into a space that shone with light. A narrow walkway surrounded a mechanical-looking tower in the center, with dozens of spiderlike drones crawling all over it.
It’s like their nest.
They had no eyes, no familiar hardware at all that Twilight could see. But they’d seen her, and all at once they began to skitter closer, leaping down onto the floor and rushing towards them.
There were no warnings, no threats…just the six-legged probes with their tiny manipulator claws glittering.
“Ah hell!” Applejack started shooting. Each bullet shattered one into pieces—but she had only started with twenty-eight bullets, and there were many more spiders.
“Make them stop!” Twilight called, glaring backward. Node had a camera, though she wasn’t sure it could read expressions.
“I am not interfaced with this system. By the time I am, it will no longer—”
“Where!” Twilight vanished, appearing beside it in the air so quickly she didn’t even drop it.
“Top of the tower. There is a universal systems bus. I have an access.
Twilight concentrated on the top of the mechanical tower, where a catwalk of thin metal surrounded multijointed alien mechanisms. Suddenly she was there, with Node’s body beside her.
“Better hurry, cap! Running out of bullets here!”
“This thing?” Twilight asked, pulling on a thick bundle of something like glass fiber. She’d seen something like it inside the probe’s casing… yes, there it was! She plugged Node in.
Twilight attempts to disable the defenses with magic. Success
Do any of them take damage in the fight? No.
There was a crash of metal as every spider in the room dropped limply to the floor.
“Aliens were qualified!” Node exclaimed over the radio, sounding pleased. “Equipment is… functional. Please remain nearby.” Node didn’t say anything else—but the machinery in the center started to move. Like a fabricator, if it was made of interlocking, independent machines.
Twilight couldn’t glide down to the bottom, not with her wings encased in plastic. But she could teleport again, landing beside Applejack in a sea of motionless spiders.
“Well, we did it,” the engineer said. “Hope it was the right thing.”
Twilight pushed over one of the spiders with a hoof. “They left us alone,” she sent, just to her companion. “If Node wanted us gone, he didn’t have to stop them. I think we just made a friend.”
Procedural inquiry: Should wordcount limit be relaxed in order to minimize the number of “no question” chapters?
Yes. It’s better to go over 1000 words here and there in order to reach the significant decisions.
No. The 1000 word limit imposes creative restrictions that shape the storytelling in worthwhile ways. Leave it in place.
It became immediately apparent to Twilight that the alien facility wasn’t assembling parts from scratch, building Node a body as they had built it computation hardware and transmission hardware. The tower held parts, and it was assembling them. She could watch the process with Applejack, as the body slowly grew up from tiny segments.
“Ain’t a pony shape,” Applejack said, from where she was investigating one of the spiders she had shot.
Twilight followed her gaze. She was right—Node would stand on two legs when it was finished, like a minotaur. The body would be strangely proportioned too. But why shouldn’t it be? We don’t make our drones to look like ponies. They chose this body because it was convenient. It would stand at twice a pony’s height, with two sets of manipulator limbs and no wings. Curiously, the machinery was also cutting apart the probe shell, and most of the other pony hardware besides. It looked like only the alien computer would be left behind when it was finished.
“It wouldn’t be,” Twilight said. “They’re aliens. Six limbs—their spiders had six limbs too. Think they might be insectoid? I mean… the real ones. Not the robots.”
“Could be,” Applejack sounded unimpressed. “Could be you’re getting a wee bit too caught up in science fiction.”
“Yeah.” Twilight sighed, and went back to what she was doing. Searching the room for useful clues about the Signalers.
Does Twilight find any new insight into the Signalers in their facility? Success
They hadn’t left very much behind, or maybe the robots had scoured anything that wasn’t functional out of the way. But as she waited, Twilight found a little side-corridor, and followed it to a tiny room. There was a ground made of sand instead of concrete, which had been precisely groomed into strange patterns.
Lights came on as she entered, illuminating her way to the single object in the room. It was a low table, with a set of empty cups on either side. Alien writing covered the front of the table—more of a cabinet, she realized. And was that—yes. There was a sound in the room, one that was obviously synthetic. Like pouring rain somewhere far away, soothing and repetitious. The lights weren’t the harsh white of the room outside either, but gentler and orange.
“Twi,” Applejack’s voice came over the radio. “Twi, it’s moving. You ought to come in here.”
“Right, sorry.” Twilight took a picture with her camera, then left the cabinet and its strange room behind. Mysteries that she would probably never solve.
By the time she made it back into the central chamber, Node was already moving. The body had no “head” segment, just a central torso with spindly limbs emerging from openings, and sensors along its length. She was relieved to see there weren’t any weapons mounted to the chassis. No swords or saws or gun-turrets. Each limb ended in a spindly manipulator more delicate than the daintiest hippogriff talon. Its whole body was made of metal covered in a dull, greenish paint.
“Reassurance! We have achieved mobility. Compensated for poor understanding… robotics. Survival chances are significantly improved!” It still spoke with Starlight Glimmer’s recorded voice, though it sounded clearer, somehow. That didn’t mean it sounded like a pony, though. The words still came haltingly, an auditory representation of a foalnapper’s newspaper cutout ransom note.
Node’s legs didn’t move like anything she’d ever seen before either, swinging from one side to another in measured, repetitive simplicity. Somepony actually built a probe that walks. If it can walk up stairs, it will be the most advanced bit of robotics anypony has ever seen.
“Alright, Node. We did what ‘ya wanted. We took ya’ all the way down here, almost got ourselves eaten by…” she kicked one of the nearby spiders over with one hoof. Not hard enough that it would’ve been damaged, but hard enough. “Whatever these are. Now you gotta do what we want. That’s what fair means.”
Node turned to watch Applejack, though there was no way to gauge its emotions. It had no face, and nothing on the screen could be used to make guesses about how it was feeling. Assuming it even feels anything.
“I want to meet with your species,” Twilight said. “We followed your signal all the way here from Equestria. Each member of my crew sacrificed eighty years to be here. We came here to meet you. Where can we do that?”
Node didn’t get a chance to answer, because at that moment the entire right side of the room was ripped away. Applejack and Node both were forced to dive towards Twilight’s half, as huge bits of steel went white-hot from the stress.
Does Applejack make the jump? Success
In the opening, through the sound of tearing metal, Twilight could make out a gigantic metallic shape. It resembled a worm, or maybe a snake, with interlocking rows of serrated steel teeth. It stopped in the opening, metal grinding as the entire right side of the room was processed into chunks.
“New instructions!” Node called, running past her. “Back to the surface! Starship is waiting, go!”
Not even Applejack argued this time. Twilight didn’t even stop to grab the cart with their camping supplies—she just ran.
Behind them, the gigantic creature still seemed to be devouring the room behind them. Twilight wept inwardly at so much functional hardware being destroyed. Everything it could’ve taught them about the Signalers was being erased, one bite at a time.
Now that they weren’t stopping to search, the trip up took far less time. After an hour or so of running the worm-thing had faded from a constant roaring to a distant rumbling below them, like an Earthquake that never quite stopped. Then they ran out of door, and Node shoved the door open, and the pale blue sky opened up above them.
Then her radio went off. “Hourly wellness check,” said Fluttershy, her voice distant and fearful. “Is anypony there?”
“Yeah,” Twilight felt exhausted, but she knew she couldn’t stop running yet. “We’re here. Prepare for takeoff, Fluttershy. We’re on the surface, and we need to prepare for an immediate launch.”
“Uh…” Applejack nudged her from one side, pointing down at her suit.
Twilight hadn’t noticed during their flight up the stairs, but now—now she could see the gigantic rip running up the side of the earth pony’s suit. “Did it get into your—”
Applejack nodded. “Air supply reads as compromised, cap.”
Node hadn’t stopped running towards the ship. But now it did. Curiously, it seemed to have incorporated the modifications they made, because it was still speaking over the radio as well as with its external speaker. “We can’t stay here! Chances of a surfacing… unacceptable risk. Starship!”
“You know what you gotta do, cap,” Applejack said.
Did she?
1. Leave Applejack behind with some supplies and a good radio. If she turns out to be okay, we can always pick her up later. No reason the rest of the crew needs to be endangered. [Significant risk to Applejack]
2. Wait here long enough to do all necessary examinations on Applejack. That thing isn’t going to follow us all the way to the surface, there’s no point!
3. Fluttershy suggests setting up the last isolation shelter in the cargo bay. She can have a fresh suit waiting outside the Prospector for Applejack to change into. If our suits can keep dangerous things out, then there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to keep them in, either.
4. Don’t bother with safety precautions, bring everyone and take off right now! Fluttershy already said it was safe. Anything that will postpone our takeoff is unacceptable. Robotic monsters are dangerous, dead planets aren’t. We leave now.
Set up a shelter in the cargo bay and deal with the problem later 81%
“That’s exactly right,” Twilight agreed. “I know what to do. Order you to keep running. Fluttershy, get that shelter ready! We’re all going!”
“Ain’t a good idea,” Applejack argued, though not in the tone she might use if she were intending to disobey. “You need every second. We’re bein’ followed, don’t forget it.”
They arrived after a few minutes later. The ground hadn’t stopped shaking, and in fact Twilight had heard the distant roar of some of the smaller buildings out of sight toppling over as their supporting struts were compromised. Whatever was after them obviously hadn’t given up, as convenient as that would’ve been.
The replacement suit was already waiting outside, and the cargo bay was open. Somehow Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie had managed to set up the shelter in just a few moments, so that neither of them were at work when they arrived.
“Alright. Node, with me into the cockpit. Applejack…” she levitated the replacement suit down at her hooves. I’m not leaving until I hear you’re aboard. Don’t argue.”
“Aye, cap.” She started stripping off the damaged suit right there, tearing through its compromised plastic with earth pony strength. “I’ll keep in touch.”
Twilight hurried up the ramp into the Prospector’s airlock, and spent a full minute standing there beside node as it cycled. The ground under the prospector shifted slightly, and she didn’t have to wonder about what might be causing that. “Node, can you shut that thing off?”
“No,” it didn’t hesitate to answer this time. It wasn’t looking out the external window, but standing directly in front of the internal airlock, holding still as they were sprayed with disinfectant and waiting for the cycle to complete. “I cannot… command it.”
“What is it?” Twilight asked. “It seemed like it was waiting for us. Like… going to that facility made it angry.”
Does node cooperate with Twilight? No.
The mobile probe had no head to shake, nor was it watching her. “This discussion is improperly timed. Disabling the CREATURE is beyond your technical ability, so knowing its nature is a waste of our time. We need only realize that it will not follow your spacecraft once you enter orbit. You should be free to land elsewhere without fear of it following you.”
Great. Twilight might’ve threatened to leave Node behind if it didn’t answer, but then the internal door hissed open, and they stumbled in. She wasted no time, just hurried for the cockpit and began the pre-launch procedures. She couldn’t be that upset with Fluttershy for not taking care of it—she’d been setting up the shelter.
“I like your friend,” Pinkie Pie said, following them over to the chair and watching Node with unblinking eyes. “Very tall.”
Node didn’t respond, just sat itself down against one wall near the controls. It seemed to have switched into hibernation mode, because a few seconds later all the lights went out.
“Well now it’s not as tall.”
“But twice as annoying,” Twilight muttered, as the engines began to cycle in the rear of the ship. “Report, Applejack!”
“Just got aboard, cap. Didn’t put on the new suit—Fluttershy opened the darn cargo-bay anyway, so the whole thing is dirty. I just took it into the shelter with me in case. I need to move around the ship later. Honestly, I’m not as worried as I was about the whole thing. I’m not feelin’ sick er’ nothin’.”
“That’s just what I—”
Something burst through the ground in front of them, tearing up concrete and metal and lifting at least fifty meters into the sky. It roared like an animal, if an animal had interlocking rows of serrated metal teeth, and glowing orange flames from within.
“Hey, Fluttershy…” Twilight was awkward while still in her suit, but she was mostly using her horn anyway. “Don’t suppose you could calm that thing down?”
Fluttershy walked up beside her, stooping a little to peek around her and out the cockpit window. “Horsefeathers that’s big.” She frowned, brow furrowed in concentration. “It doesn’t look alive, umm…”
“Cap, I don’t mean to be a bother,” Applejack’s voice came from over the radio. “But that thing looks like it’s gonna…”
“I know!” Twilight smashed her hoof down on the close button for the cargo bay doors, then checked on the launch sequence. The engines had nearly cycled on, but that thing was so huge. Whoever built the ring must’ve built this. It looks like a similar design. Her scientific brain was not what she needed right now. But the prospector wasn’t a warship, and they’d have needed some serious hardware to stop something so large.
“I think maybe it’s after our heat,” Fluttershy said. “Maybe we could make something else warm? Distract it?”
“How about a mining explosive?” Came Applejack’s voice over the radio. “We got probes for that. Launch one… somewhere else. Maybe into the biggest building in range.”
Twilight didn’t take a second longer to think. “Pinkie Pie! You’re our miner—do it!”
Pinkie hesitated, eyes widening with panic. She glanced once at the mining console, and her legs twitched. Then she fell over sideways.
Can Pinkie Pie do it? Failure
“Buck me,” Twilight swore, nodding to Fluttershy. “Do it!”
Overhead, the creature had lifted another fifty meters or so, its jaws wide enough the it could bring them down on the whole prospector at once. It curved down towards them, bits of molten metal dribbling out of its mouth like spittle.
Twilight smashed her hoof into the navigation thrusters. Metal screeched and the Prospector’s docking stands tore off with a crack, as the craft slid along the highway, smashing through the central divider and trailing sparks the whole way.
A second later and the ship rocked slightly to port, as a trail of exhaust shot away from them.
Does the distraction work? Success
The worm hesitated, its mechanical attention turned towards a neighboring skyscraper as the flash of an explosive briefly washed out the heat of their engines.
The lights in front of Twilight finally went green, and she slammed on the throttle as far as it would go. They slid for a few seconds, with more painful metallic screeching, before they started to rise. The worm dove down on the skyscraper beside them, and they began to accelerate towards orbit.
Twilight had to choose her trajectory.
1. Stable Orbit, no destination. We need to figure out the Applejack situation and finally get some answers from Node before we move. We can hold the drone hostage until it talks.
2. Clear Ground. We need to get the crops into the ground. In a way, Applejack’s contamination can be a gift—she won’t need to wear any protection while she farms.
3. The Equinox. Node is going to help repair our ship whether it wants to or not.
Remain in orbit to treat Applejack and interrogate Node 50%
Twilight didn’t let herself relax until the engines finally cooled again and all the screens in front of her were glowing green. She checked the orbital projection, waited a few seconds for the computer to return confirmation that their trajectory was stable, then spun her chair around.
“Guess you… had an adventure down there,” Fluttershy muttered, her eyes never leaving Node. For the first time since Twilight had met her, the doctor was wearing a handgun on her belt, as well as the usual suspects of medical tools. “Do you think it was safe to bring that thing back with you?”
“Safe?” She shrugged. “They’re the entire point of this mission, aren’t they? First contact. So far it’s been us doing what they want.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Check on Applejack. I’m going to ask our new friend some questions. And I’m going to get answers.”
Fluttershy gulped, then hurried away.
“Pinkie,” Twilight asked, gently nudging her with one hoof. The Earth Pony was no longer catatonic—she was sitting against a wall, looking ashamed. “Hey, Pinkie.”
“I’m S-sorry,” she whimpered, tears trickling down her muzzle. “I should’ve… I know exactly how to.”
Twilight’s wings were trapped in her stupid plastic suit, but she could set one hoof on her shoulder. “Pinkie, relax. We made it out, that’s what counts. I have something I need you to do.”
“You can’t trust me to do anything,” she answered, hiding her head in her forelegs. “Just… give it to somepony else.”
“Everypony is busy,” Twilight said. “I need you to call Spike and check on the repair. Make sure he’s safe, make sure he’s sane. Have him check on the prisoner specifically. I want you to tell him that the computer isn’t good enough, he needs to visually confirm her casket is occupied. You can do that, Pinkie.”
The pony looked like she might argue—but then she snapped back to her hooves, and saluted weakly with one hoof. “Of course, captain. Right away.”
Twilight left her to her work—that job at least would be simple enough that even an unstable pony couldn’t mess it up somehow. In the meantime, Twilight headed straight to where Node was resting. It hadn’t chosen a random patch of wall-that was the largest voltage outlet on the ship, to be used for power tools if they had serious internal repairs to make, or needed an emergency air purifier.
Twilight stopped in front of Node, settling down onto her haunches. “Node,” she said, glowering. “We did what you wanted. We got you a body, and my ship was almost destroyed in the process. We almost died getting off the planet, from a danger you didn’t warn us about.”
There was no head to move, no eyes to track her. The cameras on its torso seemed to be watching, but they always did. So far as she could tell, they never moved.
“Now it’s time for the exchange. You’re going to answer my questions.” She waited a few seconds—expecting either nothing to happen, or for the machine to make some kind of excuse.
“I have… information. More than you. But not everything can be… processed. Some information is indigestible. No context is present, no parsing mechanism. Your language… insufficient.”
“I don’t need you to give me the secrets of your technology,” she said. Not right now, anyway. “Something simpler. These questions you can answer with a few words, words I know you can use because you’ve used them already. First—is this your planet? Down there?”
“Yes.”
Okay, probably could’ve worded that better. “Originally, I mean. Did you evolve here?”
“Did not… evolve. Was designed. Others evolved, deep time. Not me.”
Me. Still, Node was answering her questions again. Maybe cooperating with it had finally earned them some goodwill! But how far could she push it? “Did your creators take this planet from another species?”
“No.” It answered quickly, like it had answered all her question. No one seemed to take longer than the last. No time spent thinking—no doubt. And I’m not sure how it has time to send these messages from the surface. Maybe it has some answers prerecorded? It was easy to imagine that, given it was talking with Starlight Glimmer’s prerecorded voice right now. “Empty. Not even… basic ecology. Creators were… sensitive. Did not wish to damage… potentially sentient animals of a later epoch. Nothing lived here.”
It was the answer she wanted. But can we trust it? Does Node understand us well enough to know that we wouldn’t want to work with conquerors?
“Some of you survived the destruction of this planet,” Twilight said. “Your parents?”
“No parents,” Node answered. “Created, not evolved. My creators… did not. Persistence was not.”
“Not here,” Twilight supplied. “What about on other worlds?” But even as she asked it, her eyes were fixed on the distant outline of the ring, visible from out the window.
“I hope so,” Node said. “Do not know. No messages—this was matter of safety. Message can be followed.”
Like we followed you. But safe from what? “Did you destroy your own planet?”
“Somewhat,” Node answered. “Yes/no/maybe. Impact of fleet unclear. I was not created yet.”
Not created. No parents. “When were you created?”
“2976 hours ago, when your starship was detected. Data compression, primitive storage medium. Limited information. Directives suggested shelter might contain data dump. Did not. You near the exhaustion of my records, as me. Must… assist. Survive. Creators do… wish you survive. Would have wished. Something.” The little screen on Node’s chest flashed once, then darkened. The machine didn’t respond to any further questions or promptings on Twilight’s part.
“Spike says all quiet,” Pinkie said. “No escapes. If she did, would probably die anyway. He still says at least a month before it’s safe for us, maybe longer.”
“Yeah,” Twilight grinned. “Great work!” She made her way to the cargo bay next, leaving the suit on in case she needed it.
She found Fluttershy sitting beside a pile of medical equipment spread out on a workstation, and the sound of snoring coming from inside the tent. Twilight approached the former, tapping Fluttershy gently on the shoulder. “Anything?”
The pegasus sat up with a start, eyes widening. “Oh! Uh… yes, actually. Applejack is infected with something. Viral, or quasi-viral. I’ll know more in 72 hours.”
“Buck.”
Twilight considered her orders, then…
1. Land and start growing. Get Applejack onto her hooves and working. She’s an Earth Pony, she’ll be fine.
2. Land and farm, without applejack. She’s done more than enough. Let the engineer get a little rest.
3. Remain in Orbit until we know about Applejack, if something goes critically wrong, it’s better to be close to the cryosleep caskets than further. If this gets out of control, we could freeze her for later treatment.
Stay in orbit until Applejack's condition can be properly diagnosed. 70%
Twilight stared down at the medical report, occasionally squinting at the close dots in the printout. “This is a joke, right? Pinkie Pie put you up to…”
“I didn’t,” Pinkie called from across the large central area. She’d been zipped into the sleeping bag for the last few hours, apparently not actually asleep. “Wasn’t me.”
Fluttershy glared over the printout at her. “I wouldn’t joke with a patient’s health, captain. These are the results. I’m getting confirmation from the tissue samples I exposed. And no, it wasn’t in her medical history from before. Every member of this expedition was completely healthy when it began.”
Is Applejack’s sickness serious? No.
According to the report in from her, Applejack wasn’t going to die of some alien disease. She wouldn’t die at all, at least not assuming she continued to receive even the most basic medical care. Applejack had the flu.
“This shouldn’t be possible,” Twilight said. “We were quarantined for six months before the mission launched. We weren’t supposed to bring anything with us.” They’d been some of the most exciting months of Twilight’s life—though she hadn’t been able to see anypony directly, family and friends from all over the system had visited Canterlot Station to see her off. She’d been able to hug them from inside an environmental suit, or to sit with them for hours if she didn’t mind the plastic barrier in the way. It was the first time all seven of the Equinox’s crew were together in the same place.
“I didn’t forget,” Fluttershy said, a little annoyed. “But do you think Cozy Glow was too? If she was being sent to make sure we never came home, I don’t think they would’ve cared. So she infected Applejack, and probably all of us too. And if we’re not infected yet, we’ll probably come down with it eventually. It’s a good thing we weren’t sent to establish a sterile colony, because we would’ve failed.”
That was an intentional choice. No stallions aboard meant that returning home would be more of an imperative, and giving up would be all the more unthinkable. Twilight hadn’t been happy with the restriction, but she didn’t control every aspect of its planning. Starlight Glimmer had invented that rule, along with so many other restrictions.
“So we can let her out,” Twilight said. “There’s no reason she should be locked into a tent. She survived, the tissue samples survived… we’re safe. Proximus B is safe for farming.”
“Accepting that we’re all almost certainly doomed to come down with the same severe strain of the flu… yes. It’s quite likely that we were already exposed, when Applejack was. I only worry about…” she trailed off, looking meaningfully across the ship.
“I know you’re talking about me,” Pinkie Pie called, voice weak. “Twitch tail, itchy eye. Doesn’t matter if you don’t say it.”
Of course, because that made sense. But Twilight didn’t argue with her. Fluttershy was right—Pinkie Pie had barely been alive when she woke up. Had she come down with the flu right then, it almost certainly would’ve killed her. Little miracles.
“I’m not sure about safe, though…” Fluttershy went on. “Maybe the microbiome isn’t fatal. Maybe the air is clean enough to breathe and has the right mixture of gasses. Nopony has ever grown something in another biosphere before. Every other planet in our system was sterile when we got there. We’re the pioneers, and that’s always a dangerous place to be.”
“I know,” Twilight said. “But that’s what we came here to do. Why don’t you give Applejack the good news?”
Twilight would’ve loved to deliver that announcement herself—but Fluttershy deserved it. Every now and then a doctor got to deliver some good news.
But they weren’t ready to touch down right there—even if that was what Applejack wanted, Twilight wanted to be sure. She nudged Node with the edge of one hoof, waking it from its hibernation state. “Node, I need to talk.”
It was hard to say how trustworthy the creature was. Twilight still wasn’t even sure she believed what it had told her last time. At least Applejack was here for this conversation, even if it was with a runny nose and occasional coughing.
“I am listening,” Node said.
“First…” Twilight sat down in front of it, looking straight into the cameras. Hopefully there wasn’t anything offensive about the gesture when translated into its culture. “When we spoke last time, you said you were created weeks ago. You said you had no parents, and that you ‘creators’ were a different kind of life from yourself. Is that true?”
“Approximately.”
“Quit beatin’ around the bush,” Applejack stepped right up to it, pushing Twilight slightly to one side. “Is it true or ain’t it that you’re some kinda… mechanical life? Not a livin’ creature talking to us through the radio?”
“No,” Node said. “Your definition for life has several qualifications, among which is the ability to reproduce. I lack this ability, or the drive. I am, therefore, not alive.”
“What you ain’t doin’ is answering our questions,” Applejack said, before another wave of coughs silenced her. Twilight tried to speak, but she just put out one leg, glaring. “I don’t care about no textbook definition of nothin.’ Whoever wrote that book ain’t here. Are you artificial life or ain’t you?”
“I am not using any radio communication. Only the hardware you see before you presently holds this consciousness.”
Even Applejack had no response to that. The other members of the crew had barely been doing their work—but now they too were staring, with just as much disbelief.
A computer that could fit inside a starship was incredible. A computer big enough to hold a mind…
This is the most important thing we’re bringing back with us, Twilight thought. It’s the part that destroys Equestria, added another part, in Cozy Glow’s voice.
“Secondly,” Twilight said, before she could get distracted, or Applejack could get into an argument with it. She levitated the map of the little green patch. “We plan on landing here. Is it safe?” Node had suggested its memory was damaged, but that hadn’t stopped it from knowing where to land. Maybe it knew more about its planet than that.
Node had no head to shake, no face to read. But the more it spoke, the more emotion she imagined she could hear in Starlight Glimmer’s recorded voice. “No part of Zerzura is ‘safe’ as you define it. You have chosen as adroitly as possible with limited information. Harvester will not be present. Stable. Nothing would live there otherwise.”
Applejack met her eyes, question obvious on her face.
We know the planet’s name. They’d actually learned something today.
1. Land and begin farming. Node said nowhere was safe, but orbit is somewhere too. If we’re unsafe anyway, we might as well be doing something productive at the same time. Besides, being around living things will be good for everypony’s morale. 2. Risk is unacceptable, abandon farming on the ground. We could try to do something in the cargo bay instead, wait for the Prospector that way. Won’t be as productive, and it will probably hurt morale, but at least nopony will be dead. 3. Farming is stupid, Zerzura has a bucking orbital ring. We’re going to figure out how to dock with it. If there’s any civilization left in this system, it’s there. Presumably that ring has the Signalers on it too.
After their last experience on the surface of Zerzura, Twilight half-expected some kind of mounted gun to emerge from the soil to shoot the Prospector to pieces, or maybe a gigantic metal deer would emerge from the trees and trample them. But nothing like that happened, and the prospector descended slowly and calmly on the largest bare patch of ground in the area they were calling the “safe zone.”
“So this is the map,” Twilight said, passing out printouts about an hour after the landing. It wasn’t a formal meeting, not with so few crew and Applejack wrapped in layers of blankets and barely awake. The flu was no illness to ignore, but it also wasn’t likely to kill her so long as they kept an eye on things. “This is the area we’re going to restrict ourselves. It’s mostly… wilderness, overgrown. But there’s a large structure about three kilometers from here. I put us down a good distance away, in case it has any active defenses.” Or if it’s the den of another giant ship-eating worm.
“I don’t mean to be confrontational—” Applejack began. “But this ain’t no wilderness. Okay, let me rephrase. Baring this being an alien world and nothin’ I know bein’ true about it, this wouldn’t be a wilderness if it were Equestria.” She squinted down at the map, before breaking down into hacking coughs.
“You can go back to bed,” Fluttershy whispered from beside her. “Really. We can plough where you want, the way you want, while you rest.”
Applejack glared at her, though she didn’t have the voice to argue for a few more seconds. So far nopony else in the crew had come down with the illness, but Twilight feared it was only a matter of time. Maybe that’s for the best. If we all get infected at the same time, it might burn itself out. Or maybe it would only cripple her crew for a few weeks, while nopony accomplished anything productive.
“It’s just…” Applejack began again. “There ain’t no debris spread everywhere. No big rocks, and the trees are all… small. They strike me more like a field that went wild, got overgrown. Maybe this place was always used fer growin’.”
They all looked to the side, where Node rested connected to the power supply port. Node had remained fairly non-responsible during the trip down, though it hadn’t actually told them not to land. It told them nothing now, not without prompting.
“Node, I want to ask you something. What is this place, do you know?”
Does Node know? No.
At least the robot moved a little, rising and approaching the table. “I am not aware of it. It seems… significant. Vital, perhaps. Was not damaged when so much else was destroyed. The secret is probably inside the building. I will go with one of you there, and we will discover it together.”
Twilight stuck out a wing to block his path. “Not yet, Node. We haven’t decided on our priorities yet. We don’t just wander off and do things without carefully deciding on our options.”
“I could go then,” Node argued, walking around her towards the airlock. Of course it wouldn’t open for it, not without it bypassing the security somehow.
“No,” Twilight raised her voice, just a little. “Node, if you want to stay with this crew, you will obey my orders. There are real risks to investigating that building, like the chance we might provoke a response that will make this area unsafe.” She concentrated, and vanished from the table, reappearing a few inches in front of Node. She wasn’t nearly as tall as the robot, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t look menacing. At least, she hoped her magic was intimidating. “If you leave without my permission, we will not take you back. Understand?”
Node retreated one step from Twilight’s glare. There was no expression to read, though she thought she could hear the cooling fans inside its torso spinning up as they considered her. Then it answered. “Very well. Structured command is one form of government. Not my preference. But I will comply.”
“Good,” Twilight gestured to the table. “Then join our meeting. You can have a voice at our table, you can be one of us. But you don’t get to put all of us in danger.”
The robot retreated, then joined the table where she had instructed. Twilight glanced once at the crew—Applejack looked thrilled, Fluttershy frightened, and Pinkie’s expression was still unreadable. “Now, obviously we’re here to farm. That’s the first priority, and that’s what everypony here will be doing. Unless those tissue samples have changed in the last few hours…”
Fluttershy shook her head. “They’re all clean. Applejack’s results too. I wouldn’t have decided to test things this way, but… we’re about as sure as we can be without eating what we grow.”
“Then consider the biohazard restrictions lifted,” Twilight said. “At least until we see any sign of danger. We still don’t know a great deal about this planet—where the air came from, what happened to the ponies who lived here. We haven’t seen a single body.”
“Inquiry,” Node said, raising one of its manipulating limbs to get her attention. Not that Starlight Glimmer’s voice wouldn’t have done that all on its own. “Ponies? Ponies have not lived on Zerzura until your arrival.”
“It’s a way we speak,” Applejack said. “Don’t you got a translation program in there? Or is that too abstract for an AI?”
There’s obviously something, we’re talking right now. But she didn’t speak for Node, and rob them of a chance to learn more about it.
“Cultural idiom, understood. Translation is… imprecise. Cultural biases of my creators does not parody your… mind configuration. Communication in this form is lossy.”
“So, here’s what we need to decide…”
1. Remain as isolated as possible. Clear the minimum possible land, do not explore beyond the farm, leave the ship as little as possible. The Prospector might not be roomy, but it’s safe.
2. Shore Leave. We can use this landing as a mental-health break for the crew. So long as they aren’t doing anything too dangerous, they can do their own thing. They really need it.
3. We’re Explorers. As soon as the seeds are in the ground, we get a team into that building and find out why it’s still here. Obviously this place is safe if life can survive here. Maybe there are intact alien machines inside.
A week went by on the surface of Proximus B. At first Twilight did her best to keep up with every member of the crew, since they spent most of their time arranging the fields and planting all the seeds they’d brought. It was nowhere near to the entire stockpile, but it would keep them fed for months if the crop came in. Not to mention enough Geneseed to wake the rest of the crew.
The alien soil had a strange smell to it, like every scoop had been ground with nuts and ash. But the soil-safety tests kept coming back positive. Even more, nopony came down with mysterious illnesses.
Of course, that didn’t change anything about the illnesses they already had.
“I’m positive,” Fluttershy declared, on the evening of the third day. “You’re showing pneumonia-like symptoms, Applejack. You’ve been working too hard.”
“I don’t got…” she started coughing, and a mouthful of greenish slime came up into the cloth Fluttershy held in front of her face. “A choice. Pinkie only knows how’ta grow rocks. That ain’t what we need right now.”
“You did a great job getting everything in the ground,” Fluttershy said. “Now you’re going to have to count on your friends for a bit. It’s an order—mandatory bedrest, sixteen hours a day.” She glanced over her shoulder at Twilight, who had just emerged from outside, with mud caked up her hooves almost all the way to her knees. It was dirty, smelly work. But Proximus B’s soil wasn’t unpleasant, exactly. “Her health could be in very serious risk if she keeps going like this captain. If she doesn’t listen, I recommend she goes into the ice until we can return to the Equinox.”
Not a casual recommendation. Putting a sick pony in cryo involved the risk of further complications, and meant another six months before they could be frozen again. “Noted. I agree, Fluttershy. You have my permission. If she forces us.”
“I won’t,” Applejack hung her head. “But… I want one walk…” she coughed again, and they waited patiently for her to finish. This time she reached down, taking a puff from a plastic inhaler, and her breath cleared much faster. “One walk to the fields each morning. To tell you all what to do. Give me that, and I’ll… stay in bed the rest of the time.”
“You can have one trip to the field,” Fluttershy corrected. “You can use a wheelchair. That somepony else will push.”
Applejack grumbled, but she didn’t have the leverage to argue. And besides, she was sick. The right pressure, and she was soon spending most of her time asleep, waking only when her breathing got too hard or her fever too hot.
Please Celestia, don’t let me get that. I don’t want to be in bed for weeks.
Beyond the farm, Twilight gave no assignments, only the restriction to go nowhere near the building and no more than a kilometer from the Prospector at any time. That didn’t mean they didn’t find interesting things to do.
Fluttershy built a little animal hutch and enclosure, entirely from sticks and rope, and set it up near the field. For all the time she spent gathering insects that she could dissect and study, she treated the more complex life with her usual care.
They weren’t rabbits, exactly, not like any she’d ever seen before. If anything, she felt a little sorry for them—their proportions looked like something painful, with swollen bellies and three sets of limbs instead of two. It spoke to the lack of predators in the tiny patch of life that they could survive, with as slow as they moved.
But most interesting to Twilight was Pinkie’s discovery, made after the first green shoots of their crop had started to rise from the tilled soil. She called over the radio, late into the afternoon. “Twilight! Hey, Twilight!”
Twilight had been reading then—one of the many books sent to the Equinox before contact with Equus was broken. She gently returned the portal screen to its holster on the wall, careful not to damage the delicate ribbon cable on the back. “Yes?”
“There’s something here, Twilight. Something that… I don’t really understand.”
“Dangerous?” Twilight was already rising, heading for the door. She snuck past Applejack’s bunk, but there was little chance of rousing the prospector over her own snores. The airlock wasn’t serving as an airlock much anymore, and where the hooks had once held biohazard suits they now held tools. Twilight grabbed her own belt off the hook, and settled it onto place. The radio went into its designated place, even as she selected an earpiece from a plastic box, then waited patiently for the pneumatic door to hiss open.
“No,” Pinkie replied, her tone certain. “Not to us.”
“Where are you?”
Twilight followed Pinkie’s directions, and soon enough she was approaching the place her Geologist had been spending most of her time. Here was a fairly orderly excavation into rocky soil, complete with lines of twine marking the place Pinkie had been digging, and a stolen utility stepladder to get down the four or so feet into the dirt.
There was a large pile of refuse on the soil—mostly bits of semiprecious stones Pinkie had found, nothing that interesting.
“What is it?” Twilight asked, leaning down over the edge. There was barely enough space for two ponies at the bottom. Pinkie was there, hunched over a bit of metal.
“Look.”
Twilight climbed down after her, squeezing in alongside Pinkie and bending down. There was shadow at the bottom of the hole, but Pinkie’s headlamp was enough.
The length of metal was bent and twisted, with a melted section on one side and a jagged, broken bolt protruding. Pinkie had exposed a rectangle of metal, where text was printed in block Ponish letters.
RES Solstice Gantry Section 109-A4-Blue Arduus ad Solem
1. Begin a full-scale excavation with every healthy pony’s resources. There’s no ship by that name. This can’t be here, this can’t be here, this can’t be here…
2. Bury it, never speak of it again. This can’t be here, this can’t be here, this can’t be here, this can’t be here…
3. Explore the structure. We shouldn’t be struggling for scraps when a source of information is so close.
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]
“Well, it ain’t the prettiest work I ever…” Applejack dropped for a second, hacking and coughing out onto the soil. She stood up a moment later, clearing her throat.
Cryosleep Caskets were modular, portable hardware—which was a small miracle for the pony Sunset Shimmer, since most everything else in the escape pod had turned to a corroded hulk in the moisture rich underground environment. Twilight had levitated the unit out away from the trees herself, and there Applejack had gone to work.
It was a near thing—batteries that could keep a pony frozen indefinitely in the cold abyss of space clearly struggled against the full sun of Proximus B. Fans whirred, and frost formed on the exhaust manifold. But they managed.
Applejack attempts to repair. Success. Applejack takes three points of health damage from the (mostly emotional) strain of her repair.
“That’ll do, cap. This pony… Sunset, I guess, she’s still alive. Might be a tad freezer-burned after the near defrost she got, but… nothing a bioprinter and a good surgeon couldn’t cure.”
Fluttershy and Twilight met eyes then, a tense, silent moment. They both knew it—Sunset probably wouldn’t have a surgeon. When they got back to the Equinox, she would have Fluttershy, and that was it.
“I don’t know if we’ll get that chance,” Twilight said, voice low. “Leaving her… frozen until we get back, I mean. Sunset Shimmer here, Captain Sunset Shimmer… she’s the only one who knows anything about this ship, the Solstice. Sent after we left, from a different Equestria. We might need what she knows. Equestria might need it. If Cozy…” But she didn’t need to finish that.
Applejack just shook her head. “That ain’t my call to make. I fixed the pod, that’s what you needed. Now I… think I’ll need a mite more rest. If ya’ don’t mind me askin,’ Cap.”
“No,” she answered. “I don’t mind. Go ahead. Get back to the ship, and sleep as long as you need. Fluttershy and I need to get this pod back… I don’t like the idea of our survivor’s life hanging on a nuclear batter that was half-soaked for decades.”
“Yeah.” Fluttershy said. “I can… drive the cargo truck. I can, um… get her back.” But for all her obedience, Twilight could see the anger just beneath the surface. If you make me wake her…
But Twilight wouldn’t be making her do anything right now. She turned, walking back towards the excavation, where Pinkie Pie was still hard at work.
She passed the five fresh graves on the way—Twilight had done that grisly duty herself, while Applejack and Fluttershy struggled over the pod. Pinkie would’ve helped under better circumstances, but… the pony was barely holding things together as it was. Putting the corpses of ponies in the ground wouldn’t be helping her.
There were no markers yet, just their hoof tags on the ground. Twilight hadn’t recognized any of the names, not like she knew Sunset. Her inner dread that her brother, or maybe Starlight… she wouldn’t be facing it today.
Granted, there was still some of that horror left, though it had transformed. This was the escape pod. Where’s the ship?
Equestrian ships all had ident transmitters. In the Equus system, that would mean very little, but here—here any friendly ship would be able to track any other.
There was no signal from a ‘Solstice.’
“Hi Twilight,” Pinkie waved weakly to her from just outside the pod. A series of objects was spread on the ground in front of her.
Personal effects, emergency tools. At first Twilight couldn’t see anything interesting. But that didn’t mean she should assume. “Found anything?”
Pinkie nodded. “I, uh…” she nudged a display screen closer to Twilight. The surface was cracked, and a layer of water had collected under the glass. Twilight’s eyebrows went up, but she lifted the object up anyway. As it moved, some strange grooves on the back caught the light. Twilight turned it over.
Somepony had carved into the metal with jagged, uneven strokes. Like they’d been using a screwdriver and a hammer.
“IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS”
Twilight dropped the pad right out of her magic. They went crazy. Somepony… like Pinkie. That’s all this is. A psychological breakdown. We knew it was possible, that’s why we screened so heavily for the space program. We just weren’t strict enough.
“Is this… all you found?”
Pinkie shook her head. She reached down into a bundle of rotten fabric, and drew out a hard plastic case, still closed. It was battered and broken, though despite the damage Twilight could still make out the cutie mark of Princess Celestia melted in.
“What’s in here?” Twilight took it in her magic, a little too forcefully. Pinkie whimpered slightly, pulling away.
“D-didn’t… didn’t open it.”
It was like holding a holy relic. Twilight settled it down at her hooves, then gently eased the clasps open. The rubber seals along the side had obviously suffered, yet somehow they seemed intact. She pushed the lid off, squinting down inside.
There was foam padding inside, rotten and collapsed with age. But the contents were still bone dry.
It was a machine, unlike any Twilight could recognize. Tight bundles of hair thin wire had been wrapped around crystals of yellow and blue at opposite ends.
There were no buttons. The instant the light touched it, a miniscule motor started to spin, and a laser shot straight up into the sky. A tiny speaker spluttered in Starlight Glimmer’s mechanical voice. “Target identified—Proximus B. Reference coordinates: Proximus C, polar orbit, 121 CARDINAL 81 CARDINAL ecliptic. Retrieve immediately.”
There was a harsh crack, and a sudden smell of plastic melting. The object stopped glowing, the crystals going cold and dark.
Twilight shut the case, as though doing so might protect it from further damage.
It was time for new orders…
1. Leave some of the crew behind to farm, investigate the coordinates using the Prospector. The trip will take a few months, and it won’t be exciting. But that doesn’t matter. There’s something in orbit of Proximus C, and we need to know what it is.
2. Investigate the structure. We keep avoiding the best source of information we have. There’s an intact building here, possibly left by the Signalers. Maybe they were the ones who buried the pod.
3. Send Spike to Investigate the coordinates. The Equinox is still basically intact. It won’t be harder for him to repair the ship while in transit than it would be in orbit. We could make a trip up for supplies, then send him away. Spike can handle it.
Neither. Twilight has to know what's in that building 58%
We’re not ready for this. Applejack’s health is failing, Pinkie Pie is on the edge of a breakdown, and Fluttershy is two steps from trying to override my command authority.
What her crew really needed was six months of shore leave. A little farming duty in the morning, and hobby projects the rest of the day. Equestria’s destruction, if it were really imminent, would not hinge on six months when the trip was forty years.
“Node.” Twilight tapped on the metal plate next to it again, her expression harsh. “I don’t know why you choose some periods to be inactive and some to be helpful, but it’s time for helpful. I’m about to do what you want.”
That did it—the robot sat suddenly alert, tilting its chest outward so the cameras faced her. “You intend to penetrate the structure, as I said we ought to do weeks ago. I will accompany you. Are you ready now?”
“Yes.” Twilight was as well prepared as she could be—her saddlebags were packed full, with enough that she could survive alone for days if necessary. No survival shelter, though. There would be no way to carry enough without bringing one of the other ponies.
Of those, Twilight had briefly considered and then dismissed every one of them except Fluttershy. And her—Fluttershy might be needed if something went wrong with the pod in her absence, or if Applejack’s flu caused off-planet complications. The pony who would’ve been perfect for this, Rainbow, was still an icicle up in orbit.
She would have to make do with an alien robot. “But if I bring you, I want one thing clear. You’re going to answer my questions. You’re going to be useful. We’ll be working together from the second we walk in until we return to the Prospector. Are we clear?”
Node had no way of nodding, not without a head. But she hadn’t seen that kind of physical gesture from it anyway. “I have understood. We will collectivize our survival method. As I expressed previously, danger in this location should approach zero. This land is sacred. No harm would be done here.”
Twilight stomped right up to Node, glaring into one of its cameras. “While you refused to wake up, we found an escape pod from an Equestrian ship, buried under meters of soil. Something put it there, something covered it. If it had been left on the surface…” but then she stopped. The surface had sun, and exchange with an atmosphere to transfer heat far faster than simple radiation. Had burying actually been meant to protect the pod? But why not just wake the ponies inside? They could’ve taken care of themselves! “A second vessel? I am not aware of another. This information is unknown.”
“Me too,” Twilight muttered, rolling her eyes. “Come on. We need to get out of here before Applejack wakes up and starts a riot.”
“Your crew will… riot?”
“My crew aren’t happy with my going in alone. They want to wait a few weeks… I don’t. There are five dead ponies out there, and I need to know why.”
“Then we will go quickly.”
They did. It helped that her crew were still emotionally and physically exhausted from the excavation earlier. The ponies most like to nose into what she was doing and discover her plan, Applejack and Pinkie, were both indisposed. They weren’t going to find her until it was too late.
The building was not a temple as Twilight knew the word. For a sacred place, it was remarkably utilitarian. The design was incredibly huge—as tall as the Equinox stood on its end, and big enough to fit dozens of Prospectors—but for all that, it seemed so… boxy. The design involved layers of overlapping rectangles, with some sections horizontal and others vertical.
What she didn’t see around the building was any evidence of current occupants. There were no ponies filling the air, or even any robots doing the landscaping. She watched the building for the entire kilometer-long approach, and not a single thing moved.
It seemed to be made mostly from the same concrete-like substance of the distant city, as resistant to age and decay. There were few windows at ground level, though Twilight could see plenty of them higher up. Where rectangles were built at different levels, there were often railed balconies.
“Do you think we should go in from the top?” Twilight asked, turning to her mechanical companion. “Wait, you… can’t fly. What about your creators?” she spread her wings. “Did they fly?”
“Not… here. Some did, but… physical distinctness required. Bones varied, arms… modified. Ultimately rare adaptation. Recreation hardware more efficient for that purpose.”
You have a very selective memory. Node had said it knew almost nothing—yet sometimes, it could answer questions like this in detail. Maybe it’s getting transmissions from somewhere. The idea that she was communicating with a machine was in its own way more terrifying than any buried escape pod. Other space missions made sense—intelligent computers not so much.
“Then we’ll use the front door.” Twilight set off again, though there was no door exactly. An empty doorway stood tall enough that a rocket could’ve been rolled out through it, with thin slivers of interlocking glass layered over and over until they formed an inward spiral. Like the shell she might’ve found on the beach, only… structural.
The doorway seemed placed perfectly to catch the light of the setting sun, staining the huge space with overlapping shades of amber and crimson that shifted in random patterns as the seconds crept by.
“It’s a little like the ocean,” Twilight muttered. “That… rushing sound, from up there. When you stand underneath.”
“Your abstraction is irrelevant. We are not searching for beauty, we are searching for truth. We have some options before us—perhaps you should use that organic mind and its heuristics to select one.”
1. Beyond the crystal entryway is a walkway up to higher levels of the building, go that way.
2. The building itself is largest along a central path through from the entrance. Beyond the hallway Twilight can see water on the floor.
3. Twilight’s magical senses indicate something underground. Search the building for the swiftest path possible and seek out the magic.
4. Fluttershy calls to convince Twilight of how stupid this is to do alone. Put the mission on hold and come back in a few months.
“I don’t like any of the obvious paths,” Twilight said, turning away from the staircase up and the hallway deeper into the building. “Those might not show us the truth. But maybe if we can get behind all that…” she hesitated, closing her eyes for a second and following her horn. Yes, there was certainly something underground. It wasn’t that deep, they wouldn’t be climbing miles under the surface like last time.
She gestured, setting off in that direction. “What can you tell me about magic, Node? How much of it did your civilization have?”
Node followed without an argument, apparently content to search any part of the building so long as they were investigating it. But then again, without a face she could still only guess. “Magic is… hard to translate. It resembles aspects of… hardware. Your language is inadequate to describe machinery we built. The creators’ language was inadequate to describe ‘magic’.”
Inadequate. Does that mean it doesn’t exist, or just that they didn’t do much of it?
Twilight attempts a magic identification spell through the floor. Success
Though the magic was far away, through the floor and stone and who knew what else in terms of alien devices, she still recognized the spell. What is that doing there? The magic was weather-based, the most powerful she’d ever felt. There was only one other spell that could’ve ever rivaled it, from her visit to the Crystal Empire.
“Let me show you some,” Twilight said, sticking out one hoof. “I’m going to teleport us. Don’t move.”
“Teleport,” Node repeated. “This concept exists. But surely no organic could—” space fuzzed around them. Twilight kept her eyes closed, letting frost swirl around her. Opening a gate to somewhere she’d never seen was perilously risky business. Fortunately for her, the object she was sensing created a magical halo powerful enough that she could “touch” the space all around it. There was plenty of space to walk around surrounding the object, enough for her to put Node and herself and enough air to be sure it was safe.
She appeared with a harsh crack of air in a space almost completely dark. Except for the object in front of her, which cast a greenish onto everything. Every surface of the little square chamber had been coated with a thick layer of moss, fern, and other plants, growing bright green despite the near-total darkness and no visible irrigation system.
In the center of the room was a pedestal of sorts, containing a device unlike any she’d seen before. There was a metallic base, with the look of alien construction about its strange angles and exposed components. And floating over it was a crystal.
Twilight Sparkle had been wrong to think it was like the crystal heart. Twilight recognized it so well because it was the crystal heart. Its glow was green instead of blue, but the stone itself was exactly as she remembered it. Precisely the same width, the same height. She saw her own face reflected in the magical glow, enough to see the shock in her eyes.
“This can’t be here,” Twilight said, for the second time in a week. “I’ve seen this before.”
“That makes one of us,” Node said, from the wall.
Does Node notice? Success
It settled one of its grippers on Twilight’s shoulder, before she could move any closer. “Careful. Examine your appendages.”
Twilight glanced down, and realized that feelers of bright green were wrapping around her hooves where she’d moved closer to the heart. The effect had been so subtle she hadn’t felt it, but now that she noticed—she took off in a rush, ripping free of their grip and holding herself in the air. She watched the vines withdraw from her, and could almost imagine their predatory call of frustration. They ignored Node completely, even though it was just as close as she was.
“It’s an active spell…” Twilight muttered, as much for Node’s benefit as her own. “I remember this object requiring… the interaction of a civilization. The crystal ponies provided their love, and the object amplified it to protect the empire, mostly from weather.” There were no ponies here, no love, yet the heart was still active. Doing… something she’d never known it to do.
“How is an Equestrian artifact here?” Twilight asked.
“It was brought here, obviously. Likely by your own kind.”
“Sunset’s ship.” Twilight muttered. “The Solstice. It could’ve been aboard.” Maybe, but there was no way this building had been theirs. And if ponies had put the heart down here, why not save their own from being frozen? “She might need to answer this for us.”
“Maybe,” Node responded. “I don’t think we should move this. I have examined the path behind us, and determined it is heavily fortified. The likelihood of a hostile reaction seems significant.”
“And you couldn’t disable something like that?”
Node didn’t shake its head, though its tone did sound doubtful. “This structure is interfaced with me, but I have visitor access only. I cannot issue commands.”
“Oh.” Twilight backed away from the furthest edge of moss, landing on her hooves again. “Visitor access, huh?” She removed a camera from her pack, snapped a few pictures, then stowed it again. “What does your access say this place is?”
“The… memorial,” it answered. “This is the best translation. Your species lacks the—”
Twilight ground her teeth together, glowering. “I get it. Does the memorial have a map?”
Node hesitated. “There… affirmative. I have located a map.”
“We’re not leaving this place until I learn everything we can,” Twilight muttered. “I think Fluttershy will probably try and give me forced medical leave after this stunt. I’ve got to make every moment count. What on that map sounds interesting?”
Node hesitated, then began to read.
1. Perseverance of Insight
2. Infusion of Stability
3. Alter of Perpetuity
4. IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS IT HUNGERS
Twilight didn’t have to think long about her answer. Getting there was a little trickier, but made simpler by the map. That, and the fact that she’d already been to the surface once. There would no longer be any danger to the teleport when she had seen the destination once. So she took them back to the surface, with a single flash of magic from her horn.
“I am… unhappy with that process,” Node said, as soon as they were back on the surface. “The way you fold space is… disconcerting. Organics are prone to errors, and lack objective verification. What if your calculations were incorrect?”
“We would die,” Twilight answered, and didn’t take any perverse pride from imagining its shock. Nope, not even a little bit. “I’m told its agonizing. The process is nearly instant—but if stayed outside normal space, we would swiftly freeze to death. Though… your thinking parts are running inside one of our probes. I have no idea how well you run in Zipspace.”
“Unhappily,” Node answered. “I will not be offering coordinates to Perseverance. We can navigate there routinely.”
For a second I thought your Ponish was getting better.
Twilight didn’t actually object—the structure hadn’t attacked them yet, and more importantly she had sensed nothing besides the heart that could interact with her magically. If anything goes badly wrong, I can just teleport back to the Prospector. She would face her crew’s wrath a little earlier that way, but it would be waiting either way.
The ‘Perseverance’ proved to be up the sweeping ramp along the spun-glass ceiling. As they walked, voices began to speak from the sides of the room, each one coming with a little flash of light from the wall. It wasn’t magic—the colored lights were as mechanical as anything on the Prospector. Twilight kept to the inner railing anyway, mostly through force of habit.
“What are they saying?” she asked, as they stood high on the transparent glass. Well, not glass as she knew it. It didn’t yield even a little under her hooves, despite being as visibly thin as paper. “The recording. What did your creators want to tell us?”
“They are… welcoming you,” Starlight Glimmer’s voice said. “They hope you learn much from your experience here. These are the… testimonies of those who contributed to the knowledge stored here.” As they walked, Node added to the translation. “They wish for you to be certain of your intention. Perseverance before Insight.”
Just climbing the glass took a kind of perseverance of its own. The shape was one she knew well from mathematics, the same golden-ratio spiral that she could find in shells and flowers and a thousand other places. Should I point that… no. Node will probably just say it was obvious and gloat about it.
Eventually they reached the top, after climbing what felt like a kilometer of slippery glass. Twilight had to manipulate her gravity a little to make it to the top. Node didn’t slip, despite having only two legs and now claws to cut into the glass with.
There was one last colored light, staining the top of the tower bright red, and Node spoke one last time. “A warning. Perseverance is change—the life of the one who endures for Insight will…” it hesitated for nearly three whole seconds. “Finality. Changes invoked cannot be reconsidered. Memories will linger. The visitor will… graduate.”
Ominous.
The ground leveled out, in the top of a tower that was perhaps five meters across. The walls were made of the same clear glass they’d been climbing, though this was entirely untinted. She could see the late afternoon sky through it, and the valley far below.
There was only one other object in here with them—a chair. It wasn’t built for a pony, and would clearly have accommodated a creature even bigger than Node without much difficulty. Yet there were steps at the base, she could climb up and use it if she wanted.
The chair was made of a dull red metal, with intricate mechanical parts visible through various openings and ports she could only guess at.
“Made it,” Node said, sounding disappointed. “Was expecting more. So much fanfare, no finale.”
You really don’t know how this works. Twilight did, or at least she had a guess. There was no magic up here, no active spells of any kind. Just this device, apparently active and full of energy. “I think it wants us to sit down in the chair,” she said. “That’s what the message coming up was. Sit down, learn things. Learn… Insight? That isn’t really something a pony can learn. In sight is really just the combination of subconscious heuristics.”
“Insight is… an inaccurate translation,” Node supplied. “I don’t know how to summarize it better. Not knowledge, not memories… a way of thinking.” It paused, cameras fixed squarely at the chair. Twilight assumed there was more going on under the surface, Node linking with the system and trying to learn more about it, perhaps.
Her guess was confirmed seconds later. “You’re right, pony creature. The machine is functional, and it requires physical proximity. Its interface hardware should work for either one of us. However…” It hesitated, then went on in a rush. “I’m not certain, but there seem to be security measures in place. It appears the machine will only function once. Whoever you choose to use it, that decision is final.”
Twilight walked right up to the edge of the chair, running one hoof along its smooth, metallic length. It didn’t look like it had been much used. For all she knew, it had been built by the Signalers just for her.
She had a decision to make…
1. Use the Perseverance of Insight. [dangerous] 2. Have Node use the Perseverance. [dangerous] 3. Have Applejack remove it for reverse-engineering and study once she has healed enough to travel here. [dangerous] 4. Leave the Perseverance and investigate the Altar of Perpetuity instead. 5. Leave the Perseverance and investigate the Infusion of Stability instead.
It physically hurt Twilight to leave information behind. But there was no way to rationalize sitting down in an alien device that was covered with warnings she could barely translate. It’s okay, Twilight. It’s still going to be here. I know exactly where this thing is, I can come back to it if I need to. Or they could come back and rip it right out of the floor for study. There didn’t seem to be any Signalers around to tell them otherwise.
The “Infusion of Stability” was back down the glass stairwell, then down the central hallway that led straight through the building. This time the path took a significant time to walk not because of any hazards along the way, but because of the abundance of information waiting for her. The Signalers who had built this place did so with intricately carved bas-reliefs, each one apparently laser-etched in glass.
The first image seemed like nothing to her, until Node explained. “This is the local galactic supercluster seen from the viewpoint of a hypothetical observer.”
“You have that, but you don’t know what your creators looked like?”
“I was given only relevant information. The appearance of beings I will never encounter is not relevant.”
With each new image, the hallway narrowed just a little, and the lights got brighter. The second image involved incredible mathematics, which at first she thought was some kind of display. While approaching from the side, it seemed like she was seeing a single galaxy. But as she walked, the little stars went out one after another, until there were only the last wisps of gas and stars along the edge. There was no mechanical action involved, however, it was just a matter of her position.
“Is this… a progression of time?” Twilight asked. “Is this… infusion… about deep time?”
Node sounded uncertain. “Then the positions would be different, and the stars to remain would belong to the same luminary class. This image depicts a… systematic deconstruction. Not of this galaxy, however. I do not recognize this pattern.”
You wouldn’t. Not if it was deconstructed. Twilight passed to the next image. The hallway had gone from wide enough for the prospector to wide enough for five pones to walk abreast, and still it narrowed. Towards a central point half a kilometer ahead.
The next image was a sheet of black glass, which she thought might be completely blank. Except… no, there was something in the very center. A sharp depression, so steep she wasn’t sure how the glass could hold together like that. “What do you think this one is?”
“Unknown?” Node stared at the depression. “I am not familiar with this.”
“You must know something.” Twilight said, and she didn’t even try to keep the annoyance from her voice. “When we first spoke to you, you kept saying how much danger we were in. You said that my crew and I would die without your help. Is this not the danger you were talking about?”
“No,” Node answered. Not even a split-second’s hesitation. “If this is dangerous, I am not able to protect you from it. But that is an assumption. Perhaps this is a construction plan. Perhaps it is a threat, or a warning. Perhaps it is a creation myth. Or an apocalypse myth.”
Twilight continued down the path as it narrowed still more. Further galaxies were depicted, a sweeping image of billions of stars going out. Until she reached the end, and the sculpture dropped down into a lightless void. An almost perfectly-clear platform stretched out over the darkness, without any visible supports or railings. Twilight spread her wings, ready to catch herself, and lit her horn with a faint purple glow.
She didn’t have much further to go. An object hovered in the air at the very end of the hall, perhaps as large as a pony’s head. Something like a magic field held it perfectly suspended in the air, a dull metallic sphere with various protrusions along it. As she approached, the object seemed to animate, unfolding various tendrils until it was nearly her size. Yet there was nothing like weapons pointed at her, no openings or even cameras. “I don’t understand…” Twilight stopped about ten meters from the object, lighting up her horn a little brighter to get a better look. “Do you know what this is, Node?”
It resembled a probe, the smallest possible type that could survive incredible accelerations.
Node didn’t stop where she did, but continued until it was directly beside the object. After a few seconds where Twilight guessed it was interfacing with the object digitally, it started to shrink again. The many little fins retracted, and the machine closed up to something resembling a sphere.
Then it dropped, right into one of Node’s waiting hands. “It is… gift? No, not quite. Emergency… countermeasure. If you fail as…” Node stopped. “As we did.” Node extended its clawlike hands, offering the object to Twilight. She took it in her magic reflexively, and instantly the sphere began to shimmer along its edges, displaying thousands of little outlines. Almost as though it had been constructed to respond to magic, waiting for it. Twilight could feel… gravity.
Twilight attempts to resist the pull. Success
Her stomach nearly fell out from under her as she looked at the object, as the floor seemed to shift to its shimmering surface, even though her hooves were still firmly on the ground. She could let that gravity pull her in, if she wanted.
1. Stop fighting. There’s something down there. I have to find out what it is. [dangerous]
2. Give the Countermeasure to Node, then investigate Perpetuity. It didn’t seem to have any trouble carrying this. So long as nopony goes near it, we should be able to study it safely.
3. Leave the countermeasure behind, then investigate Perpetuity. I don’t know what this is, and Celestia knows it’s too dangerous to bring back with us.
4. Destroy it. This thing is dangerous. I don’t care why the Signalers made it, it’s not getting anywhere near the ponies I love.
Give Node the Countermeasure, investigate perpetuity 65%
Twilight wanted to leave the mysterious object behind. But not quite so much as she needed to know what it was. It was located on the ground floor, along a straight path directly from the entrance. If the Signalers thought about design even remotely like ponies did, it was probably the main purpose for ‘the Memorial.’ I need to figure out a way to let Applejack study it without exposing her to it like I was.
She had a bad feeling that other ponies would have a harder time resisting its effects. They might not stand a chance at all. “New orders, Node. Take this, and don’t bring it within three meters of anypony on the crew, even me.”
Node took the sphere carefully, and though it had no face to watch, it seemed to Twilight as though it was raising an eyebrow at her. “We will explore the remaining section of this facility three meters apart? That seems difficult.”
“Do you think we could… leave it somewhere? Maybe in the hallway behind us, wherever it turns to Perpetuity. I intend to investigate that section before we return to the Prospector.”
“Very well. Would it be improper for me to inquire the reason for this instruction. The device does not appear dangerous. My sensors read no large store of potential energy, no radiation above background, no unusual sonic effects. Its low-level em field is not unlike that produced by all your primitive machines.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “You mean you don’t feel it… bending gravity?”
Node shook slightly. “My accelerometers register no gravitational distortion. Not like the four negative Gs I registered when you bent space.”
That’s… that can’t be right. Twilight glanced down to her mane, tilting slightly towards the sphere. She expected it to stand on end, but… nothing. It’s in my head.
Twilight took another step back. If the effects were only mental, then in some ways that was much worse. Mind magic was dark stuff, and not something she well understand. Too bad you’re not the real Starlight Glimmer. She could tell us all about that thing.
“Just… follow my instructions,” Twilight said. “I think not being organic might make you immune.”
“If you say so,” Node said, disbelieving.
They returned to the central hallway, and traced it back some distance until a strange, backwards branch, one she wouldn’t have seen walking inward. The walls made it almost invisible until she was right beside it, and even then the coloration of the floor and ceiling hurt her head with purely geometric trickery. Twilight briefly closed her eyes, marching forward in defiance of the instinct that told her she was going to smack into a wall…
And she didn’t smack into a wall. Rather, there was a ramp twisting to the side, leading up into one of the larger rectangular sections she had observed from outside the facility.
Lights came on above her as she stepped through a doorway into a vast space, illuminating…
Cylindrical sample containers, each one three meters tall and one across. Their contents were a slightly off-white fluid, along with… creatures.
A voice spoke in the Signaler’s incomprehensible language. It was high and guttural, with almost mechanical sounds mixed with the more familiar organic. But Node could translate. It had left the Countermeasure at the base of the ramp, where it wouldn’t pull the stomach out from Twilight any longer. “Observe failure,” Node said. “Each… mutation is an attempt. Variations were… insufficient to purpose. Contingency of each, not continuation. Reprocessed.”
Twilight stuck out a wing to stop it from walking away. “Are you sure you can’t do better? That was incomprehensible.”
Node folded its manipulation limbs across its chest, tilting slightly towards her. “Parody of conception with your species approaches zero. My creators wanted the visitors to this place to see these failed… designs, and learn from them. Not to waste your effort on things they had already tried.”
Cylinders were located on either side of an illuminated walkway, each one with a strange, multilayered bit of glass stuck in a removeable bracket on the front. There was also a flat piece of metal, laser-etched with an intricate square pattern.
Twilight approached the nearest container, staring in with horror. The creature vaguely resembled Node’s basic layout, though it had only two upper limbs and two legs, with a flat face and even stranger feet. It reminded Twilight of various preserved animal samples she might’ve seen in a biology lab, all the color leeched from this creature and its eyes glazed and sightless. Small eyes for a creature taller than she was.
She wandered to the next cylinder, and saw the creature gain some mechanical parts—a second set of limbs, like Node. And so went each successive container—a new individual, sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes she couldn’t tell. Variations on the basic pattern stretched so far that sometimes it even approached ponies in places, while a few lost almost all their fleshy parts and were primarily rusting mechanical beings with fleshy sacks for their torsos and heads.
This was not a map of evolution—it varied wildly, with some designs apparently regressing tremendously before exploring an entirely different direction. They looked like fierce carnivores one moment, then fleshy sacks of brain the next. Integration with mechanical parts was common in most, but not all. Some had resisted the years better than others, and seemed almost as though they were asleep more than dead.
“These were… people,” Twilight declared, as they finally reached the end of the path. and a mechanical door with an airlock and an obvious control button. “Creatures stolen from… many planets? Each one of those panels explains what they were like.”
She hadn’t seen one for Equestria, however much she’d been anticipating one. Unless that’s what’s waiting for me at the end of the hall.
“Stolen? I don’t believe so. You ponies sometimes donate your cadavers to science. This is similar. Being here insures these beings and their kind are… remembered. The guide says that many of them are… faithful recreations. But some are original.”
“And what’s in here?” Twilight asked, nodding towards the door. It was unmarked, though it was wider and taller than a pony door by far. “The lab where they made them?”
“The map labels that section as… there’s no easy translation. Hospital. Preservation room. Cryogenic storage. Taxidermy.”
Twilight gritted her teeth, then pushed the button. There was a hiss of chemical-smelling air, and the door retracted.
She found herself walking through something like what Node had described, not quite a hospital, not quite a cryogenics bay. The medical equipment in here heavily featured the strange glass the Signalers used above, and tiny mechanical parts that she suspected went right down to the microscopic level. But there were other things she couldn’t easily classify.
Like machines the size of single-occupancy escape pods, with glass walls and strange magic radiating faintly from their controls. Or something her horn thought was similar to magic, anyway.
Most of them were clear and empty, all except one. The little lights that flashed from this machine flashed regularly in cheerful colors. Where the other objects faintly twinkled with magic, this machine hummed with it. Magic few ponies besides Twilight Sparkle could’ve dreamed of casting.
Twilight attempts to identify the magic. Success
It was time magic, more powerful than anything Star Swirl had ever written. And it was stable.
Twilight approached, raising one leg, and wiped away at the condensation from the porthole-like window on the front. She screamed, fell back, nearly collapsed.
She crawled her way back, staring inside in morbid fascination. There was a pony inside, one that was frozen on her back legs, as though rearing up away from the window in terror.
Apple Bloom would’ve been much taller, even taller than her sister now. Her body had matured with the muscles of hard work. Though… that wasn’t the only thing to see about her. Her uniform vaguely resembled the space suits used on the Equinox, though much of it had been ripped away with jagged, frayed edges.
It’s not the window she’s afraid of. She’s looking down at herself.
At her foreleg, to be precise. Apple Bloom’s front leg looked like it was being… eaten. From the fetlock down it looked metallic, and tendrils of reflective silver were visible twisting up and around her leg.
Celestia save us.
1. Call Applejack here right now. She deserves to know about this immediately. If Shining Armor were here and she had found him, I’d be furious if she didn’t tell me.
2. Take pictures, bring them back to show Applejack when her health has recovered. She deserves to know the truth when she can handle it.
3. Instruct Node not to repeat this information. We don’t need ponies freaking out about this. I’ve already got enough true things to share that they’ll be satisfied.
Twilight had an awful feeling about this. As she removed the radio from her pack and switched it back on, she could feel the beginnings of nausea in her chest, and the tension in her limbs. It was the feeling she always got when she knew there was going to be conflict. But there was nothing for it. The Equinox’s chief engineer relied on trust more than anypony else aboard. There could be no softening the truth for her, no beautiful lies. If Twilight kept this secret and Applejack discovered she had lied about it, she would lose her trust forever.
“I am going to investigate the samples in the space behind,” Node said, turning to go. “I will remain close.” He didn’t wait for permission, just walked off. Twilight sighed, but didn’t try to stop him. She twisted the dial on the radio, holding it out. Would the Signaler building block her transmission?
No. Fluttershy’s voice came in over the line immediately, harsh and insistent. “—can’t hide forever. Captain Twilight Sparkle, your friends are very worried about you.”
How long had she been talking? Twilight waited for her to finish, then pressed down the transmission button. “This is Twilight, calling the Prospector. Come in.”
“Twilight, thank Celestia,” Applejack’s voice answered first, with a little bit of a gravely cough. “Was about to come up and get ‘ya. Thought maybe that building had swallowed you er somethin’”
“No. So far as I can tell the building doesn’t have defenses that trigger when we visit. There are some sections that might hurt somepony if they used them incorrectly, but… I stayed safe. This was only a scouting mission.”
There was a brief silence, then Fluttershy. “There’s a full medical and psychological evaluation waiting for you when you get back, captain. I can’t imagine you’re still of sound mind if you’re doing things like this.”
It was now or never. She wavered on the fence for a few more seconds, then winced and went for it. “There’s something in the building that… I just wouldn’t feel right not telling you about. I can give the rest of the report when I get back, but… Applejack, you deserve to know.”
Another silence, this one longer. Eventually Applejack responded. “Now why would I deserve to know, specific? Way I see it, we’re all in this together. Unless… you found out what the flu is. You know I’m not gonna make it. Is that it?”
“No!” she didn’t have to deliberate over that one. “Nothing like that, Applejack. It’s—”
“Something you should tell us when you get back,” Fluttershy interrupted. “You shouldn’t be stressing yourself after the mission. Why don’t you come back here?”
Twilight jumped at the chance, but she was too late. “No, Fluttershy. I wanna know. Captain wouldn’t say somethin’ like that casual like. She means it.”
She could only imagine the argument taking place back in the Prospector. “There’s a biological exhibit in here. Past it, there’s… an alien stasis device. Your little sister, Apple Bloom, is here. She looks alive, but…” how could she even describe the metal tendrils frozen in their crawl up her leg? “She doesn’t look well.”
Does Applejack take the news well? No.
“She’s in stasis though!” Twilight added, after a full minute of silence. “There’s really no need to do anything right now, Applejack. It looks like she’s already been here for a long time. I’m going to take pictures of everything back with me, and you can examine them. I’ll head back right now.”
Still there was silence.
Does she insist on coming right into the building despite her health? Critical Yes.
Twilight heard nothing over the radio for several minutes. When somepony finally spoke, it was an exasperated-sounding Fluttershy, out of breath. “She’s coming, Captain. I hope that was what you wanted. A pony who can barely walk, with her immune system compromised, marching a kilometer up to an alien structure. I’m struggling to imagine what you thought was going to happen.”
“I…” she whimpered, keeping ‘transmit’ off the radio. What had she thought would happen. “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”
“You’re supposed to be our commander,” Fluttershy snapped. “Treating ponies like foals is my job. I expected you to lead.” The line went dead. It stayed quiet for another twenty minutes or so, until Applejack’s voice returned, hacking and out of breath. “Where… are… you.”
Does she suffer health complications? Yes. Applejack gains the trait Walking Pneumonia.
Twilight directed her. A few minutes later, and the door opened—Fluttershy trailing behind Applejack with a medical bag over her shoulder. Applejack herself had her tools, and a thin line of slime running down her front. She wiped her mouth with the back of one leg as she walked in, wavering a little on her hooves. But there was magic burning in her, enough Earth Pony magic to keep her standing. “Where is she?”
Twilight led the way to the single active stasis pod. Applejack leaned in towards the window, swearing under her breath. “We gotta get her out,” she said, settling her toolbox down and looking over the machine. “There’s, uh… gotta be a way to shut this thing down.”
Applejack set to work. She didn’t actually manipulate the strange controls. Rather, she walked over to one of the offline machines next to it, and started removing the metal shell. Light from the window beside them was slowly stained red by sunrise, then went out completely, and still she worked. She barely even seemed to see any of them standing there.
“Alright,” Applejack marched over to Twilight, after several straight hours of work on one of the other pods. “I need yer help, cap. And yours, Fluttershy. I got a pretty good idea what’s goin’ on here. I think all three of us workin’ together can get my sister out.”
1. Go with Applejack’s plan. Difficult engineering task from Applejack, easy magical task for Twilight, and difficult medical task for Fluttershy. [dangerous]
2. Put a stop to this. We have no idea what condition Apple Bloom is in. Getting her out now is insane. It’s time to be a leader. [-morale Applejack]
3. Seal Applejack in one of the other stasis pods. We can’t handle this right now. [-morale Applejack]
Twilight could see the desperation in Applejack’s eyes, the pain and despair. This was a pony on the end of her rope, who had already given so much of herself to save the life of a pony she didn’t even know, who was frayed from sickness and worry over her own death. A pony who had been unexpectedly been returned a member of her own family, only to come so close to having them snatched away again.
“No,” Twilight said, voice flat.
“What do ya mean, no?” Applejack raised her voice, gesturing angerly over her shoulder. “Captain, that’s mah sister in there! She ain’t part a no Equinox crew, she ain’t subject to yer authority. She’s my little sister, and nopony in the universe is gonna stop me from savin’ her!” She probably would’ve kept screaming, if she didn’t break down right then into more hacking coughs.”
“Applejack…” Fluttershy whispered, her voice gentle. She patted her gently on the back with one hoof, offering a bottle of water to the sick pony. “What about yourself?”
It was probably a dirty move to use a moment when the engineer could barely breathe to respond. But Twilight didn’t care. “Applejack, do you want your sister to have the best chance of survival, or do you just want her back quickly?”
Twilight attempts to make a good case. Success
Applejack looked up, blinking away tears. Whether pain from not breathing or actual tears, Twilight couldn’t say. “The best chance, obviously! Here she is, locked up in some… alien laboratory. Suffering all kinda nightmares. Maybe they’re preparin’ her for display in one of those cases!”
“No,” Twilight said firmly. “I know you want your sister back, Applejack. We want to help you. But right now… we don’t have all the resources to help you. You know what pony we should have here to get her out of that pod? Rarity. And we don’t have a clue what pulling her out will do. If we need to fight, it would be really good to have Rainbow Dash here, wouldn’t it? What if that thing on her leg needs surgery to remove? Can’t go to the Equinox right now, not while Spike is working on it.” She wasn’t slowing down now, not giving Applejack even a second to contradict her.
She stopped right beside her, settling a wing over her shoulder. “Applejack, the best way for you to help your sister right now is to get better and make sure our crops come in. Then when we wake her up, we can have the full resources of our expedition to save her. Since we landed on Proximus B, we’ve been rushing from place to place. It’s time to slow down. Time for you to get better, time for us to get the rest of our crew. Then we can save your sister.”
Applejack turned to one side, looking desperately at Fluttershy. “What about you? Don’t you agree with me? What if that was your brother in there?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “My brother wouldn’t want me to work myself to death trying to save him. And I would never wake him from cryo unless I was sure I could wake him up. I wouldn’t gamble on some kit bashed repair that might or might not work.”
Does Applejack listen? Yes.
Applejack glared defiantly at them for a few more seconds, before slumping weakly to the floor. She wept openly now, covering her face with one hoof. “I just want… I just want her to be okay. I know you both… understand. Know you’d do the same for your family.”
“We would.” Twilight agreed. “But right now, the thing we need to do for them is go back to the Prospector.”
That was what they did. Not quickly, not smoothly, and not without taking plenty of pictures and samples along the way. Applejack ended up grabbing the entire control board for one of the other stasis pods to study, along with the pictures. “I’ll be back for you, sis.” She whispered, one hoof on the edge of the pod. “Don’t you worry yerself about it. I’ll have ya’ out before ya know it, I promise.”
Even Node was quiet as they made the trip back.
Twilight helped Applejack settle back in to rest, helped collect and sterilize all the equipment, but there was no quick rest waiting for her. There was a flashing “new message” on the screen by her head—there was only one dragon that could be from.
She pulled up the screen, and sure enough there was the dragon’s message.
Twilight.
Random Event: Spike makes rapid progress towards Equinox repair
Had a breakthrough on the Equinox. I figured a way to sterilize the contaminated sections of the Equinox that wasn’t suggested in any of the manuals. I’ll stay short on details, except that it involves a rapid decompression of the decon foam. It would be a bad idea, except that we’ve got a planet right there with plenty of replacement N2 and O2.
I’m on track to have the Equinox habitable again in two weeks at this rate. Still haven’t fixed the engine, but that’s secondary. I already spaced the irradiated manifold, and I’m fabing a new one now. Applejack can help me install it once the ship is safe.
How are things on Proximus B? Keep me up to date. It’s lonely on the Equinox all alone. When will be waking the others?
-Spike
Twilight replied in brief, not wanting to worry Spike about any of their new discoveries. Instead of lying, she said only that they had “made breakthroughs” and that she would want him there to help as soon as he could to learn about it all. She congratulated him for his ingenuity, then signed off.
Now all I have to do is hold my crew together for long enough for everypony to heal.
How long should Twilight give for R&R?
1. Two weeks—Long enough for Applejack to be working again.
2. A month—Long enough for the first crop of Geneseed, and for the Equinox to be habitable for ponies.
3. Two Months—Long enough for Geneseed and to recover the food reserves, for Spike to come down to the surface, and for ponies to recover their morale. [Applejack refuses to leave the planet without waking her sister, so will not repair the Equinox during this interval]
4. Six Months—Homestead, wake the sleepers on the Equinox, grow a full harvest, and prepare. [these goals might still be achieved with a shorter length; this rest interval only indicates no exploration of the planet or other risky activities will take place during this time.]
Twilight Sparkle adjusted her woven plastic hat under the harsh Proximus sun. Sweat brimmed on her brow, and the smell of dirt filled the air around her like earth pony perfume. She could feel the soreness in her muscles, roughly proportional to how full the wheelbarrow was in front of her. Fresh carrots were piled inside, each one half as big around as her hoof and glittering with moisture.
“We ain’t done,” Applejack called from beside her, eyes narrowing slightly. “We rest when the job’s finished, that’s what granny used to say.”
Applejack has recovered from all health conditions. She retains a permanent susceptibility to respiratory infection.
“Right,” Twilight nodded, then returned to work. It wasn’t just the two of them—Pinkie Pie was here too, though she had no special talent for crops. But that didn’t matter. They were the three with earth pony magic. It didn’t matter that Twilight was the captain, she had magic to contribute to bring in a big harvest.
When they were done, Twilight’s haul went into a large wagon with mesh sides, which would shake loose much of the dirt. At least she wouldn’t be the one to wheel it back. “Thanks for helping,” Pinkie said, as she dumped the last of the carrots. “We would’ve taken another few days without you.”
Pinkie’s scars were now almost completely hidden by her fur, except in a few patches on her back that probably wouldn’t ever regrow. Her mind was harder to judge, but Twilight hadn’t seen a breakdown from her in months now. Farming was simple, repetitive, and safe. Routine had done wonderful things for her.
Pinkie Pie has fully recovered physically. She has made enough mental recovery to function as an ordinary member of the crew, though she retains a weakness to REDACTED
“No problem,” Twilight answered. “Sorry I can’t help you get that back for processing, but Rarity and Spike are expecting me. It’s almost…” she glanced briefly down at her watch. “Horsefeathers. Think I’ll teleport.”
Applejack’s eyebrows went up. No doubt she could tell the lie. But she didn’t call her on it. “It’s alright, Cap. That’s exactly what I want you to be doing. You think you’ll wake Sunset today?”
“Maybe,” she answered, without confidence. Twilight just knew that Sunset would be giving them information she couldn’t ignore. Once she woke up, their recovery time would be over. Maybe her crew was ready. At least they were all together. Twilight closed her eyes, concentrating on camp—and appeared there in a flash of light.
They’d dubbed the little settlement “New Ponyville,” mostly because Twilight wasn’t very creative and the rest of her crew didn’t care. Every member of the crew had their own “house,” earthen humps reinforced with composite and equipped with full airlock. There were also more functional buildings, each one built of white plastic fiber panels. Twilight enjoyed the soft springiness of the grass path under her hooves, the landscaping of Equestrian flowers they had planted to give New Ponyville a little more life.
The industrial buildings were a little more drab, though Pinkie had talked about painting them if they stayed long enough. Twilight headed straight for the workshop, a structure roughly twice the size of the prospector, stepped into the airlock, and waited for it to cycle. Every building got its air through the best filters they could make, even though they walked around on the surface and didn’t sterilize with each trip. Twilight still wanted to take every precaution.
Sunset’s cryo-pod was up against one wall, and that was where Rarity, Fluttershy, and Spike were all gathered. They each wore their uniforms, and Spike stared at Twilight’s comparatively dirty outline as she approached.
Spike has fully healed all damage.
“Right from the field, huh?”
She glared in response. “Well, Rarity? Did you finish your spectrographic… whatever you were doing?”
Rarity nodded curtly. “Thermoluminescence.” She was wearing a pair of thin glasses far down her nose, and her disapproval at being interrupted was obvious. All three of the screens in front of her were lit up with sensor readings, along with analysis probably processed through the uplink to the Equinox. “I believe I have. I confirmed with other metallic, uh… miscellanea Pinkie excavated, and I triple-checked. The metallic elements were first cast approximately 350 years ago. With… a ten percent margin of error in either direction.”
Twilight’s mouth hung open. She blinked, shaking her head slightly to clear it. “Did you…” It would be stupid to ask if Rarity was sure, she’d already said she triple-checked. “You said three hundred fifty years?”
“Which is… longer than we ever intended to freeze anypony,” Fluttershy added, as though that were the most important aspect of this development. “We have no idea how bad the cryosickness symptoms will be. It’s possible she won’t even wake up. Or worse, if damage to the more delicate tissues might be… irreversible.”
“Those numbers aren’t possible…” Twilight took a step back from them both, glancing between Rarity and Fluttershy. “Our trip was 41 years,” she said stubbornly. “I knew her. She can’t… this doesn’t make sense.” Did you try dating anything of ours?”
Rarity nodded. “Unfortunately the information becomes… more troubling.”
“I can’t imagine how that could be,” Twilight almost shouted, voice wild. “A pony I knew apparently arrived here before I was even born. Before the first pony ever ventured into space.
“Well…” Spike began. “Deposition lines in my scales says what you’d expect. I’m fifty-three. But…”
“But the steel in a spare engine manifold we had aboard…” she lowered her voice to a whisper. “It was forged about 400 years ago. Give or take…”
“Ten percent,” Twilight interrupted, slumping onto her haunches.
“Yes,” Rarity agreed. “As I said, troubling.”
Twilight couldn’t sit still. They had to do something.
1. Hold a crew meeting, tell everypony everything, see what ideas everypony has. Six minds are better than one. I need help with this.
2. Wake Sunset. Waiting won’t make her chances any better. All the answers to our questions are right in front of us. [dangerous]
3. Return to the Equinox and rigorously dissect its long-term storage. Equestria wouldn’t be keeping secrets from us. Maybe I can recover some of the data we lost during system entry.
4. Wake Apple Bloom. Applejack has been waiting long enough. She’ll probably mutiny if we keep her waiting for even one more day. [dangerous]
5. Use the Perseverance of Insight. I could really use some Insight right now. [dangerous]
“So that’s where we stand,” Twilight said, as soon as she had finished summarizing all of the relevant facts. They were all gathered together in the workshop, the largest enclosed space in the camp. Well, everypony except Node. The construct hadn’t ever really acted like a member of her crew, and less so lately. It had its own workshop, and refused to leave for days at a time.
But the others were all here, gathered around the table. Rainbow Dash with her weather jumpsuit and sidearm. Applejack, seeming perpetually angry at everything but healthy otherwise. Pinkie, with a binder of notes about the excavations she’d been making. Rarity, seeming a tad worn down from her research, but collected otherwise. And Fluttershy, who seemed far more cooperative after all this time to care for everypony and her growing collection of insects and small animals.
Spike sat beside her, and she couldn’t help but feel like he’d really grown into that ‘second in command’ role. He’d managed to clear up the Equinox all on his own, even outside the scope of his own training. Creating Node might not have been the most significant contribution long-term, but that wasn’t his fault.
“We’ve given this as long as we can. It’s time to pick one of our options and run with it.”
“What we’ve learned isn’t… great.” Fluttershy said. Her voice was flat, and she seemed on the edge of tears every second. “All those years. Everypony we knew… gone. Already. No calling home to say goodbye before the return trip.”
“And no telling what’s waiting for us back there,” Applejack said. “Another ship out here… the Equinox was a mighty big investment. Every creature in system was part of this flight. I thought they didn’t think they’d get another ship out for decades.”
“They had decades,” Rainbow snapped. “And it probably took half as long to build another ship. If they used the same design, they probably learned a lot too. Sunset’s ship should’ve been better than ours.”
“We could ask her,” Pinkie said. “Wake her up, see what she has to say.”
“Or we could wake my little sis,” Applejack countered. “Sunset might’ve been the captain, but that ain’t everything. She was in an escape pod, buried underground. No tellin’ how she got there, how long it was when she went to sleep. But my sis… Apple Bloom was in the ruin. She might know about the Signalers too. Might help us… confirm what Cozy Glow said.”
“Eh, I dunno Applejack,” Rainbow said. “She’s got that funky thing going on with her leg. What if you have to amputate or something? You think she’d appreciate that?”
“I think,” Applejack rose from her chair, glaring across the table at Rainbow Dash. “That she wouldn’t be anythin’ if we leave her in some alien taxidermy lab for all eternity. I’ve been waiting long enough, cap. I’ve been cooperative, I’ve been patient. Having the Equinox’s medical bay to treat her made sense. But it’s past time I stop waiting. I ain’t askin’ no more to get my sister back, I’m tellin.’ That’s first priority. And… maybe Sunset at the same time. Might as well treat ‘em both at the same time. You can do that, can’t ya Fluttershy?”
“I, um…”
“Course ‘ya can,” Applejack spoke over her, raising her voice a little. “I know a whole lot more about the machine. I’m basically positive I can get her out no trouble.”
“It’s… after she’s out that’s the trouble,” Fluttershy muttered, her voice so small Twilight could barely hear her. “I don’t know what that growth on her foreleg is, Applejack. It might be fatal. She was put into stasis for a reason.”
“Nah, I got a theory for that,” Applejack said. “I think my sis just wasn’t with anypony else at the time. She locked herself up in that thing because she needed some way to save herself, last until help could arrive. You can get it out. You’ve already done miracles.” She glanced sidelong at Pinkie Pie, but didn’t actually say anything.
“I think…” Pinkie said, noticing the attention on her. “There’s just too much for us to move from one thing to another, all in a big group. We should split up. Equestria might really really really need our help. So if it does, we should really really really get back as quick as we can. Or maybe it doesn’t, and we’re worried about nothing. Who knows? Sunset and Apple Bloom know.
“So here’s my plan: Applejack, Fluttershy, you wake up both of the sleeping ponies. Talk to ‘em, find out what they know. Throw a few parties for me. Meanwhile, Rainbow, Twilight, and robot can go south into the city. You had to run away last time, but… imagine what we could find out? Big stuff.”
“What about you, darling?” Rarity asked. “That plan sounds involved. Will you just be… farming some more?”
“Oh, no,” Pinkie grinned at her. “Spike and I will be on the Prospector, flying through space!”
“We will?” Spike’s eyebrow went up. “Why us? And… where?”
“Sunset had a… device with her,” Twilight supplied. Coordinates around Proximus C. There’s something in orbit there.”
“I respect your tenacity, Pinkie… but I don’t think we should be spreading our resources so thin. I think… we should stay local. Wake up the two sleeping ponies, meanwhile everypony who isn’t needed for that could… investigate the building some more. Maybe… use the machines we left alone? Or… at the very least, bring them back. Since I’m sure we’ll be moving away soon.”
“Or…” Fluttershy said, her voice small again. “We could just bring them all with us, get back onto the Prospector, and go back to Equestria. I mean… it looks like we already know it’s dangerous. I think we saw as much as we needed to.”
“No,” Rainbow Dash cut her off. “We haven’t, Fluttershy. There’s one thing nopony mentioned yet… the ring.” She pointed up with a wing. “That thing is still running. Power flowing through it bigger than the biggest thunderstorm. I bet it’s just full of awesome stuff. I say half the crew wakes up ponies down here, other half goes up there and kicks some flank. Or… learns some powerful weapon designs. Or… you know, whatever’s there. It’ll be awesome is the point.
1. Investigate the ring while waking up the sleeping ponies. [dangerous]
2. Use the Perseverance while waking up the sleeping ponies. [dangerous]
3. Wake the sleepers, investigate the planet, and check what’s in orbit. (the orbital investigation will require a several-month round trip and consume many food supplies) [dangerous]
4. Go home to Equestria with the sleeping ponies aboard.
Twilight had a bad feeling about what she was about to do.
There was no arguing with the hunger for information in her gut, the quiet flame that had stayed burning since her first expedition into the Memorial. Twilight had been leading this expedition in ignorance for long enough—it was time to rectify the situation.
She started with a trip to visit Node, in the workshop they’d given the machine more to placate it than because they thought they would get anything useful. Node sucked up more fabricator rations than were allocated to the ship’s captain, and was always dumping huge batches of waste parts into the recycler.
But as tolerant as Twilight could try to be, they needed the machine today. She knocked on the door with one hoof, standing straight. “Node, it’s me.”
There was a brief silence, then Starlight Glimmer’s voice. “I am not sure I can receive visitors today.”
The same as always. Twilight grunted, aiming her horn at the locked door. “I’m not asking permission today. We’re all leaving to the memorial in ten minutes. You’re coming with us, and I’m coming in.” She didn’t force the door right away, though—she could wait politely for another minute or so, so Node could rush and finish whatever those sounds of crumbling plastic and sparking electronics were inside. The building itself was really just one of the underground houses, though Node’s lacked an airlock or a tunnel connection to the other buildings.
Then Twilight stepped inside. The stink of melted plastic was thick in the air, along with the harsh ozone of energy. To her surprise, it wasn’t Node’s voice she heard first, but… Rainbow Dash?
“Yeah, I think that’s pretty good. Not as awesome as me, but I don’t think that was ever the goal.”
Twilight lit up her horn in the gloom. There was light coming from the far side of the room, past a wall of equipment. Custom fabricators, not entirely unlike the things Spike had made. Actually some of these looked like those exact units, complete with dragon claw prints in not-quite-hardened plastic.
“I’m not sure the captain will approve.” Node, sounding… nervous? Why would it be?
Twilight sped up, hurrying around the wall of equipment.
There were two ponies on the other side, Rainbow Dash with her uniform and rifle slung over her shoulder, ready for their mission, and… another one.
She—there was no dying a mare’s outline when she saw one—was almost Rainbow’s twin in basic outline, right down to the contours on some of her “feathers.” The entire pony was made of standard molded plastic, with metal joints near the bottom of the hooves and obviously removeable covers on the torso. Twilight didn’t have to guess what was inside the body there—judging by the removed bits of Node’s frame on a workbench, the central “mind” unit was in there, along with all its “arms” repurposed into… legs?
The two of them were frozen, looking more than a little guilty. Node’s “wings” were solid plastic pieces, not even jointed, and they moved more like an animatronic bird than the real thing. But she was able to take a few steps without too much difficulty. The mouth even moved when she spoke, though having a body made from 3D printed plastic machined to the lowest grade, with deposition lines throughout, made her look more than a little uncanny.
“I have to admit, this was not what I was expecting,” Twilight said. “This is what you’ve been using half our plastic for two months to build?”
“I believed it would be easier for me to interface with organics this way,” Node said. “Your procedural bias has been… increasingly obvious. Isn’t this an improvement?”
“You better say yes,” Rainbow said, glowering. “You may notice some similarities. She wanted the best pony ever to use as a model. Can’t blame her.”
“It’s… I guess it’s fine,” Twilight didn’t even know what to think. Unblinking glass lenses for eyes, a face of off-white recycled plastic in layers, a mouth that opened and closed awkwardly. “Do you think you can deploy with us? We’re going to the memorial in less than an hour. Everypony is coming.”
“Yes,” Node answered. “Rainbow already informed me. I will be putting this body to a practical test in a controlled environment. Better the memorial than combat deployment.”
And so they went.
Everypony was in the memorial now, as far as she knew. They would be reviving Apple Bloom first—but thanks to everything they had learned, Applejack didn’t need her help to get her sister out. What happened after that, Twilight wouldn’t immediately witness. She had her own mysteries to solve.
Of all the members of her crew, she had only two companions: Node and Rainbow Dash. She could hardly blame the rest of the crew for not coming. If she had wanted more company, she could’ve spread their missions apart. But she hadn’t—through most of this expedition, edging her way into one kind of investigation often took so much of their time from then on that other avenues were closed. Not this time. Instead of crowding the room with ponies who weren’t needed, they were going to get things done.
“This glass stuff, it’s really cool,” Rainbow said, as they were nearing their destination. She kept her rifle in her hooves at all times, one magazine of real bullets loaded at every moment. But they hadn’t used it, and apparently didn’t need to. “Like… cloud walking, almost. I bet it works in space.”
“It does,” Node said, conversationally. “Not so much for starships, but convenient for permanent installations. Safe enough for micrometeorite impacts, clear enough for a glimpse outside when there is something to see. Useful material. Beyond your chemistry to produce.”
They reached the chair. Twilight ignored the chorus of alien voices even as Node translated them for Rainbow Dash. She already knew their warnings. Warnings that she intended to ignore. It was time for someone to use the chair…
1. Twilight uses the Perseverance. My mind and magic are the strongest, I’m the one most likely to retain their sanity through this.
2. Rainbow Dash uses the Perseverance. Rainbow’s combat experience has trained her to be resistant to torture and mental magic. What I learned in a classroom, she perfected in the field. She’s the best choice.
3. Node uses the Perseverance. Node is a machine, and she’s already outfitted for communication with her creator species Besides, that body is creepy…
“Anything I should know before I try this thing, Node?” Twilight said, hesitating on the edge of the chair. But after considering her options, there was really no way around it. Node’s loyalties were still questionable, and Rainbow Dash just didn’t have the mental fortitude to withstand the effects of an alien device. That left her.
Node shrugged one plastic shoulder. It was a convincing imitation of something Twilight might’ve done. “You will have seen more of my creators once you use that machine. It is likely they anticipated similar mental patterns, or else there would have been no reason to construct it. I do not know how correct they were in their estimates. But I am certain they were wise.”
“How do you know that?” Rainbow spun her rifle around on her shoulder, but didn’t draw it. It was a twitch, something she did when she was uncomfortable but didn’t have any way of fixing things. “I don’t mean to be a jerk, but it seems like they’re all gone. How wise is that?”
Twilight ignored them both. It was clear she wouldn’t be getting any “wisdom” of her own from Node. It was time to use this thing, before she second-guessed herself and changed her mind. Twilight hopped up the uneven steps, then settled her back against the cold metal seat.
It responded instantly as it had the last time, opening in several mechanical sections. Clasps reached out for her on all sides, holding her still. They ended in firm rubber grippers, strong enough to keep her from moving but not actually cause harm.
Rainbow Dash jolted, raising her gun at once and pointing it at the back of the huge chair. “Say you want me to get you out of there, captain, and I’ll do it!”
Something metallic was lifting towards the back of her head, something that sparked and clicked. Twilight twitched and squirmed, and very nearly asked Rainbow Dash to let her go. But no, she’d made up her mind. She was going to go through with this. The Signalers would share their truths with her.
“No,” she said, her voice tense. “Stay back, Rainbow, no matter what. If you pull me out before it… finishes. It might kill me. We have to trust them.”
“If you say so,” Rainbow sat back on her haunches, though the gun was still within reach. “If I see anything even remotely fishy, I call Fluttershy. And node will help me, won’t she?”
“Uh… I will help you,” Node repeated. “She? I’m not organic.”
But Twilight missed out on whatever explanation Rainbow decided to give to that particular question. Something pressed against her skull, and there was a surge of pain. Her whole body twitched and spasmed, from every muscle. Her vision went foggy, and she was falling, even though she never left her chair.
Is Twilight’s mind swallowed forever by the Conflux? Critical no.
Does Twilight retain her memories of what she sees? Yes.
Twilight drifted forever through a sightless void. She had no body, no breath, yet somehow she could feel herself moving. She moved back until she floated high above a world.
Words whispered in her ears, their volume deafening in her sensory deprivation. They spoke alien tongues, confusing her so much that she couldn’t think. They were trying to tell her something, but she couldn’t understand what it was.
She didn’t recognize the place, or the creatures living there. But she didn’t have to know what they were to know they were intelligent. Time blurred past, and she saw wooden huts turn into stone cities, launching little rockets into orbit before filling the sky with satellites. Her vision expanded, and she saw the alien creatures do exactly what Equestria had done, filling their home system with stations and domes and orbiting habitats. They sent out ships, grew wiser and more powerful, and she found herself seeing pony existence in the aliens. Their bodies were strange, but what she saw them do was not.
Then she saw something come, a ripple through space that crossed the system in a single moment. It left only dead matter behind—stations floating empty, lights slowly going out.
But something was moving ahead of the darkness—a ship that began to accelerate in the void. As it traveled it grew, swallowing asteroids and capturing the interstellar debris along its path until it was a fleet of billions. It grew faster as it advanced, approaching that invisible threshold that would distort its perception of time.
But that was not what she was being shown. The Genesis fleet passed from one system to another, capturing what matter it could and often leaving little pieces of itself behind. On each world they reached something grew, passing rapidly from tribal primitives to a civilization of their own.
But every time, the hunger eventually came. Systems full of life went silent and dead, brown husks. Some had whole fleets of ships ready for the hungering darkness. Others sheltered in deep ravines. All died.
But while some images made sense to her, the vision passed in front of her so quickly that so much else she saw was lost on her. The Genesis Fleet wasn’t just trying to create, it was searching for something. It had a destination in mind, why couldn’t she understand it?
The voices were still screaming at her, they hadn’t stopped after all that time. It seemed like she’d finally been there long enough for their shouts to resolve into words. “Be the ending,” said the voice. “Or if you aren’t, reach us. Before the void finds you.”
Twilight sat suddenly upright, hacking and coughing. The fur on her head was steaming, and her whole body felt like it might catch fire at any moment. But she wasn’t dead, that was the important thing. “I’m gonna…” she leaned forward, and the chair released her. She dropped to the ground at Rainbow’s hooves a second later.
This time, the blackness that found her was a welcome relief.
Unfortunately for Twilight, she wouldn’t be waking in the medical bay with every problem in her world already resolved.
Twilight takes five points of lethal psychic damage.
Her whole body felt like it was on fire, her head most of all. But there were shouting voices in her ear, the voices of her crew. “Ugh… what?” she sat up, shaking her head once and trying to make her eyes focus on them.
Has Twilight received the gift of INSIפH┴? Critical yes.
She’s burning her fur is melted oh Celestia what are we supposed to do she could be dying we’ll never get to Equestria again Applejack is panicking the whole crew is falling apart I should’ve taken her off the chair.
It was a little like the worst hangover headache Twilight had ever felt, reverberating through her whole body. It was too bright, Rainbow’s voice too loud, and her own thoughts almost silent by comparison. “I’m up!” She finally saw them—Rainbow and Node standing just in front of her, watching her with panic on their eyes.
But while Rainbow’s mouth remained closed, Twilight could still hear her. How is she moving after all that she should be in the hospital maybe I should call Fluttershy—
“You aren’t going to call Fluttershy,” Twilight interrupted, rising to her hooves. She could smell burning from around her head. A little twitch of her head showed her what that was—her whole mane had been charred down to something shorter than the most daring stunt fliers would’ve worn. Nothing for it now. “You’re going to tell me what the emergency is. Applejack, you mentioned her. Did something go wrong with Apple Bloom?”
“I… d-didn’t,” Rainbow squeaked, her confidence melting away. She’s listening to me right now she can hear my thoughts I thought mind magic was forbidden why would she break that rule now I thought Twilight cared about those
She was so loud! Twilight clutched her head with both hooves, whimpering in pain. But her legs did nothing to drown out the sound. “You didn’t,” Twilight agreed, gritting her teeth against the pain and forcing herself to stand straight again. “Tell me what happened.”
“Applejack… wanted us as soon as possible. Some kinda… complication. Magic Rarity couldn’t handle.”
“Okay,” Twilight turned on them both, hurrying away. Maybe if she couldn’t get Rainbow to quiet down, she could get away from her. “I’m going. Grab the tools. Node, keep up.”
Rainbow’s voice continued to pound in her head as she hurried back down the sloping ramp, fumbling at her chest for the radio. She lifted it in her magic. “This is Twilight. I’m on my way. What’s the problem?”
There was barely half a second delay, like Applejack had been waiting beside the radio for exactly this moment. “Twilight! Thank Celestia. There’s, uh… there’s some kinda magic on her. We got her out a stasis, and she dropped like a rock! Her leg, it’s… it’s doin’ something. I don’t know what. Rarity’s slowin’ it down best we can, but she’s running out of juice! Please, get here!”
“Right.” Twilight stopped walking, so suddenly that Rainbow smacked into her from behind. “You two, get to the preservation room as soon as you can. Node can show you the way, Rainbow.” She concentrated on a teleport—it was somewhere she’d been before, so nothing she couldn’t handle.
Twilight vanished from normal space, and this time… she was somewhere else. Instead of empty nothingness, Twilight floated through space. Stars surrounded her, their thousand-thousand eyes all watching. And behind them…
Can Twilight resist?
“It hungers,” Twilight whispered, her eyes losing focus. Something was seeing her, its eyes penetrating every memory and thought. Every inspection she’d ever presented before Celestia, but a thousand times more invasive.
Your pain will end, said the voice. Give your worry, your fear. Know hunger.
“ I̠̎́͆t̹̮̐ͅ ͇͓͎̤̬͔͑̇̈́͋͟h͇̺̎͆́̊̓ͥu̫̪̩͋̓̎ͤͮn͙̱͇̖̺͒̍̇ͨ̎̂̚g̖̼͇̩̻͂̄ͬ̂̈́ē̾̇ͪ̒r̟̰̈ͫͬ̒͛͘s̬͚͔̦̭̜ͥ̑̓̽͜,” Twilight said into the abyss.
Twilight takes three points of bashing psychic damage
Then there was a crash, and she returned to normal space. Air rushed around her, and she nearly fell over completely, her legs wobbling under her. She blinked, shaking her head once. She was in the Signaler laboratory.
Panicked voices screamed in her head all over again, and she nearly dropped to the ground from the agony right there. But she resisted. Whatever strange feeling had taken her in the teleport was gone, replaced with an overwhelming fear. I can’t go back in there. It’s waiting for me.
But that was a problem for another time. For now, she could see the results of reviving Apple Bloom.
She’d been spread on a stretcher, and all Fluttershy’s makeshift medical equipment was here. Closed and unused containers of the cryo-revitalization and anti-necrosis drugs sat on one side. Every scanner and instrument was pointed at Apple Bloom’s leg. The metal fibers were growing. What was left of her leg already looked necrotic.
Rarity stood at the head of the bed, aiming her horn at Apple Bloom and blasting her with a spell. Instead of screaming, Twilight could hear only focus from her, the runes of the ‘slow’ spell over and over in a songlike rhythm.
But from Applejack there was pure panic. We need to amputate this is all my fault she’s dying right in front of me what would granny think I won’t be able to live with myself sis I’m doing everything I can please hold on—
If this kept up much longer, it was Twilight who was going to lose her mind.
“What do you need from me?” She said, mostly to Fluttershy. “You understand what’s going on?”
“Not a clue,” Fluttershy said, her voice desperate and her ears flat. “This… growth… it’s clearly eating her. But it’s also working symbiotically with her. It’s avoiding vital organs. It could’ve killed her already if it wanted to.” She turned the scanner around for Twilight to see the screen. “It’s eating towards her brain.” Her eyes settled on Twilight’s burned head, but she kept whatever questions she might be thinking quiet for now. Except Twilight heard them anyway. What in Celestia’s name did she think she was doing having us do these two missions at once? She needs a doctor almost as bad as Apple Bloom.
“There are… some really advanced spells you could pull off,” Applejack muttered, her voice pure desperation. “A teleport that would move… just my sis, not any of this infection. I’ve heard it can treat cancer!”
“Uh…” Twilight shuddered, remembering her own recent teleport. It was true, advanced medical magic could do that. “I’m not trained for…” But this was some kind of metallic growth, it would probably be easier to target.
She needed to choose, and fast.
1. Teleport the metallic infection out. I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, captain. We have no idea what the complications could be. Whatever this is, I think Apple Bloom’s best chance is to let it run its course. She might just start bleeding to death as soon as you remove it.
2. Let the infection run its course. Even Apple Bloom’s voice was there, whispering quietly into the room. Don’t kill me, please. You need to know.
3. Put Apple Bloom back in stasis.This is it, Cap. If she goes in there, I’m going with. You can get me back when you do the right thing for my sis. [Applejack joins her sister in the alien stasis device]
There was no doubt in Twilight’s mind that this was the right course—as she watched Fluttershy’s scanners, more and more she realized that they were completely out of their league. Trying to teleport the infection out might have made for a daring last-second-save, but more likely it would’ve just made Apple Bloom bleed to death on the operating table. Twilight had not studied medical magic, she couldn’t close thousands of little capillaries and veins at the same time. That took years of training she would never receive.
Even knowing they had made the right choice; the process was terrible to watch. She could only imagine how horrifying it might’ve been to watch this same process happen to her own brother, sitting on the sidelines and powerless to do anything. Fluttershy administered painkillers and kept her unconscious, but even so she twitched and fidgeted as the mechanical growth worked. Not just on her—the thin fibers began to spin her a cocoon of sorts, eating the operating table and any sensors that Fluttershy didn’t get away from them in time.
It was more than Applejack could take. After watching for twenty minutes or so, Twilight could see the change in Applejack’s face. The pony marched straight across the room, intent on the semitransparent cocoon around her sister.
Does Twilight stop her without incident? Yes
But Twilight was ready for her. The voices of her friends hadn’t gone quiet while they watched, and Applejack’s was the loudest of all. Twilight listened silently as she plotted her brave “rescue”, watching as long as she could before she finally decided she was going to defy Twilight’s orders and attack.
Twilight might not know incredibly-complex last ditch cancer treatments, but she knew how to stun a pony who wasn’t expecting it. Twilight aimed her horn carefully, and blasted Applejack in the back with a simple mind spell. She fell limply to the floor, a few inches from her sister’s cocoon. “I’m sorry, Applejack,” she muttered. “If you interrupted her now, she’d probably die.”
They could’ve left her in stasis, until they discovered what the infection was and found a way to treat it. But Applejack had demanded they release her. Now they paid the price.
“Restrain her,” Twilight ordered, gesturing towards an empty table. “Fluttershy, make sure she doesn’t wake up.”
“Okay, captain,” she whispered, voice doubtful. “But if her sister dies while she’s asleep, she’ll never forgive you.”
“I know,” Twilight said. “But if she wakes up, she might be the reason her sister dies. And she still won’t forgive us.” She was going to be a leader. If that meant consequences… she had done her best. “I’m going for a walk. Radio me if anything changes.” Twilight needed to get away from the voices.
She wandered down the halls almost at random, though she kept careful track of where she had gone and what turns she’d taken. She wouldn’t get lost in the upper floors of this building, as badly explored as they were. The voices just don’t stop. Some part of her, perhaps one that she wanted to stay buried, knew that they weren’t really voices. Rainbow Dash had realized it almost immediately, even if she hadn’t. I’m seeing their thoughts.
It’s okay, Twilight. Deep breaths. Don’t try to process everything at once. What do you know? I have mind magic that doesn’t seem to take any energy and never shuts off. I can’t teleport safely anymore. Those two things were probably connected, somehow. She would have to figure out how. There’s probably a way to turn this off. A pony who had to hear the thoughts of everypony around them would go completely insane. Something tapped her on the shoulder, so suddenly that she actually jumped into the air. She spun around, horn glowing to defend herself, but there was no new defense of the Memorial. It was Node. The one creature whose thoughts she couldn’t hear.
“Captain. Are you functional?”
Twilight slumped onto her haunches, lowering her head. “I’m asking myself that right now, Node. I don’t know anymore.”
“You appear damaged. I advise consulting the medical representative as soon as you have a free moment. But this is not the reason for my visit.” She lowered her voice leaning in close. “I believe I have remembered something that is immediately relevant to the situation at hand.”
Twilight looked up. “And by that do you mean ‘Remembered’, or do you mean that you’ve just changed your mind about keeping it secret from us?”
Node withdrew a little, almost like her words had hurt it. “I am beginning to suspect that my creators restricted my knowledge. As I am exposed to various triggers, my internal storage becomes more accessible.”
“So what do you remember?” she asked.
“I believe your crewman experienced the same process my creators did. Organic life is untenable. Conversion must take place, or…” it shuddered. “Or it will end.”
The radio on Twilight’s breast squeaked with Fluttershy’s voice. “Umm, captain? You should… probably come back here, if you want.”
Does Apple Bloom survive? Critical yes.
Does Apple Bloom wake up? Yes.
“She’s awake.”
Twilight rose to her hooves, enjoying a few more blissful seconds of silence. I’m going to have to think of a spell to keep their thoughts out. There’s got to be some variation of mind magic I can use. But for now, she would have to go back into the maelstrom. “On my way. Revive Applejack,” she said to the radio. Then she let go of the transmission button. “You’re saying this process is safe.”
“Reasonably,” Node said. “Casualties among healthy individuals were… not unreasonable given the circumstances.”
Twilight galloped back the way she’d come, down the dark hallways of an extinct civilization. She found her way back to the lab. The cocoon of spun metal had opened down the middle, with Apple Bloom the insect hatching from within.
The metamorphosis was no less complete. Apple Bloom’s body still looked very much like a pony, at least in shape. But her coat was some kind of smooth, metallic layer . When she moved one of her legs, Twilight could see bundles of fiber there, more like industrial machinery than muscle. At least she didn’t have the uncanny-valley appearance of Node’s plastic shell, she still had something like a coat and skin. Her eyes were unblinking, even if they looked a little like eyes. She had no cutie mark.
The ground all around the half-digested table was covered with thick black sludge, that smelled vaguely like someone had dumped out the contents of a biodigester and then vomited all over it. Sweet Celestia that’s not what I think it is…
Twilight strode into the room, doing her best to ignore the smell. She was surrounded with voices—except for two. Node’s thoughts remained her own. And now, Apple Bloom’s were as well. “I’m… alive,” she said, her voice almost what Twilight remembered. But maybe it was just deeper with age. She held out one leg, staring down at it with confused eyes. “It didn’t kill me.”
[Cyber-Bloom joins the party]
“Sis!” Applejack called from her cot, stumbling forward half-groggy from the drugs.
Twilight would have only a second to react.
1. Absolutely no one make contact with her. This might be contagious. It might be meant to spread. We should get her into a biohazard suit right now until Fluttershy can study it carefully.
2. If we’re going to get infected, it already got us anyway. Interrogate Apple Bloom for what she knows.
3. Time to wake up Sunset. Our work here isn’t done. Applejack can get her sister back, but she’s not the captain. We’ll give Apple Bloom some time to recover before we ask her questions.
4. The voices won’t stop they just keep getting louder Celestia I need to get away…
Don’t stop Applejack. Interrogate Apple Bloom for what she knows before moving forward 38%
“You shouldn’t do that!” Fluttershy called, from the other side of Apple Bloom’s bed. Much too far away to make a difference. Twilight reached out with her magic, but hesitated.
Does Pinkie’s Insight warn her to stop Applejack? No.
About 38% of her will was paralyzed with indecision.
Just long enough for Applejack to embrace her sister on the cot, brushing away metal fibers as she went. “I’m so glad to see you, sis,” she muttered. “This whole thing… it’s been a real mess. But yer alive, and that’s what matters.”
Is Apple Bloom’s condition contagious? Critical yes. This infection requires only physical contact with an infected person to spread. No fluid transfer is required.
Is Applejack infected by hugging her sister? Yes.
“Get away…” Apple Bloom muttered, her voice weak. She pushed Applejack a few steps away from her with surprising strength. She was an adult Earth Pony. She used to be.
Not soon enough. The metal fibers of the cocoon clung to Applejack’s leg where she’d brushed them aside. Twilight could see them wrapping around her leg, digging in deep. “Everypony back!” Twilight yelled, her voice taking on a little of the Royal Canterlot. “Right now! Fluttershy, get back! Node, you’re probably okay. Everypony else, behind me.”
As usual lately, Applejack ignored the instruction. She hadn’t even noticed the change. “What’s wrong, sis? Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“Course I am…” she croaked, pushing herself upright into a proper sitting position. “That’s why I want ye to get away. What the hay were you thinkin’ getting so close?” Her eyes jerked immediately to her leg. “You’ve got about thirty seconds before it gets into the blood! Is there a… there!” she pointed at the operating table, and Fluttershy’s surgical saw. “Twilight, captain! You can amputate her leg! Do it, or she’ll end up like me! Less… dead than I thought, but… do it!”
“That isn’t my choice to make,” Twilight said, lifting into the air and hovering just a little bit closer. She took the saw in her magic, along with the emergency field medicine kit. She might not be a doctor, but she could knock someone out for an emergency surgery. “Applejack, this is your choice. I need my engineer. Do you need your leg?”
Will Applejack allow her leg to be amputated? Yes.
Applejack nodded, eyes widening with desperation. “Cap, I had no idea—. Family… you know how it is. I haven’t been thinkin’ straight since I woke up on this damn mission.” She looked down at her leg, wincing as the fibers dug in deeper. “Do it.”
Twilight pushed out the sea of thoughts with her focused will. Magic coursed through her, pushing her off the ground, melting the textured floor. Time seemed to slow around her as she flew across the room to Applejack. The medical kit exploded as she searched it rapidly, removing the nitrogen needle with “critical painkillers” inside.
Fluttershy would do a better job here in every way. She even had a makeshift operating room to do the procedure. But there just wasn’t time. Twilight blasted the needle up against Applejack’s neck, then aimed her horn far enough up Applejack’s leg that there was no more trace of the spindly metal fibers. She could only pray to Celestia it would work.
Does the infection get her too fast for Twilight to stop it? No.
She didn’t use the saw—that was too slow. Poor Applejack would probably be feeling all of it—she started screaming. Twilight held her rigid in her magic, blasting at the joint with the same focused lance of energy she might’ve used to eviscerate a changeling Interloper that had boarded her ship. Viscera sizzled and popped onto the ground, then the infected leg fell away.
Twilight’s surge of power was draining fast—her own body had been badly damaged too, and even a little weakness let the thoughts back in. Those thoughts were now dominated with Applejack’s scream of agony. With her last gasp of strength, she applied a tourniquet to the wound, tightening it with the latch. Then she set Applejack down, some distance away from her severed limb. Fibers continued to lace across it, eating through the floor and the discarded saw. But whatever they were doing, they seemed content to remain in place just like Apple Bloom had done.
Twilight didn’t see what happened next. Her energy was finally spent. Not long after she set Applejack down on the ground, she collapsed, and the world turned black.
Does Twilight see the hunger in darkness? Yes.
There were no restful dreams for Twilight, or even the restful dreamlessness of oblivion. Instead she saw the alien memories play before her in an endless loop. Nonlife swept across the stars, turning planets barren and causing activity on every station and ship to stop.
Numbness is peace, it said to her. You will find your way here in time. Join me. It called to her.
Does Twilight resist its pull? Yes.
No. Not today. She woke up.
Twilight was back in camp, in the medical building. Applejack lay on the bed beside her, unconscious and covered with a blanket. Even through it she could make out the obvious absence from her side. And just beside that, Sunset Shimmer’s stasis pod hummed unobtrusively. At least there was no window to see her accusing face.
“Captain,” Fluttershy said from beside her, voice sensitive. “No, don’t get up. It’s a miracle you were moving as long as you were. I’ve never seen such serious nerve-damage outside of mind-magic attacks before. I have you on regenerative therapy, but it works best if you rest.”
Twilight winced, then lay back in the cot, closing her eyes. “I see Applejack is still alive. And not… metallic.”
“Yes,” Fluttershy said. “That butchery you called an amputation saved her life. Spike is working on a prosthetic for her now, should be ready by the time the wound is closed. But she won’t be on her hooves again for a few weeks. And… she’ll never be as strong as she was. Earth pony magic comes through their hooves, you know.”
“I know,” Twilight groaned. “What about…”
“The mechanical pony,” Fluttershy supplied. “I quarantined her and the entire preservation lab until we get your order. We left her a radio and some rations… not that I think she’ll need them.”
And for once, Applejack won’t be able to override me. Not in bed with one less leg. “Alright, Fluttershy. I think…”
1. We should leave Applejack in a medical coma for a bit. She’s become more and more difficult to control ever since we first discovered her sister. We can wake her up once we have a better idea of what’s really going on with Apple Bloom.
2. Tomorrow we’ll have a meeting with Apple Bloom, remotely. Her sister deserves to be part of it, even if she’s in bed. Losing her leg will have taught her all the lessons she needs.
3. Buck it, wake up Sunset right now. I don’t even care anymore. I’m dumping all the pieces out onto the board. We’ll see how they land.
4. The voice of desperation and fatigue suggests Twilight should infect herself with the mechanical virus intentionally. At least then the pain will probably stop.
Twilight wasn’t the only one who would be attending the meeting with Apple Bloom in bed. She felt well enough to walk around after a good night’s sleep, but Fluttershy insisted she needed to wait at least one more day before she would be allowed to move again. For Applejack, the time would be far longer.
At least her friend finally seemed relaxed. After all the struggling she’d done, Applejack rested back in the cot, wincing occasionally when Fluttershy arrived to change her bandages. “I guess there’s no chance a’ reattaching the leg, is there?” she asked, her voice shaky. “Didn’t… refrigerate it or whatever…”
“Cutting it off was the whole point, unfortunately,” Fluttershy said, her voice soothing as she worked. “But Spike will have a prosthetic ready by next week. He seems to think you’ll like it—they’ll be using the same designs that Node made for itself.”
The radio on Twilight’s lap squawked, and a familiar voice came in over the line. “We’ve got everypony ready,” Rainbow said. “You medical ponies ready?” Of course on some level the question was really just politeness. She had no better way of silencing their thoughts from her mind than she had the day before. She was too weak to do experimental magical research, but that meant she couldn’t get away from another pony, radiating constant pain towards her every moment.
“Yeah,” Twilight responded, twisting the volume dial all the way up for Applejack’s benefit. “Apple Bloom, your sister is here too. She’s with me in medical.”
She held out the mic towards Applejack, who leaned towards it. “Hey sis. Just… thought you should take the load off yer back and all. Seein’ as I made it. No harm done.”
Apple Bloom’s response was a little delayed, shaking with pain and discomfort. “I… don’t know if that’s quite true, sis. Your leg, uh… finished growin’ in here. I dunno what it is now, but it left about an hour ago. Crawled out. Never seen that happen before.”
“That’s not good news,” Rainbow Dash said. “Everypony, listen up. You’re all armed from now on, all times. Also, full lockdown on every door. I’ll increase security on medical, in case it wants to try and find Applejack.”
“We might not…” But Twilight wasn’t transmitting. And she realized she probably didn’t need to. “Apple Bloom, I’m sorry we need to have this conversation with you remotely. I’m sure we’re working on… something? Fluttershy?”
“Biohazard-3 level protection should do it. We have a few suits of that grade on the Equinox.”
Great, we’ll have to go on a trip. Maybe I’ll go alone as soon as I can walk. No voices up there. “I dunno if it’ll be necessary,” Apple Bloom said. “I’m pretty sure it was the, uh… cocoon… that got my sister, not me direct. I think if I got real clean, I shouldn’t be contagious no more. But I… don’t know fer sure.”
“You don’t know what it is?” Twilight asked. She tried to keep her voice flat, hoping the pony wouldn’t sense her disappointment. “That’s the first question we need answered, Apple Bloom. Where did your infection come from?”
“Orbit,” Apple Bloom answered. “There’s a ring there, I’m sure you must’ve seen it comin’ down. Facility there is… more advanced than anythin’ Equestria ever saw. Like… hard to even imagine how most of it works.”
She spoke for nearly an hour, describing how she and a small crew had been sent on an incredibly rapid ship of a class she’d never heard of before. Lots of physical description of the ring after their landing, how it lacked even a single occupant but every system seemed to be working perfectly.
“My security pony, Bulwark, he found somethin’ we thought might’ve been a communication device. We were hoping we might be able to talk to the ones who owned the place, but… instead it blasted him in the eyes. He just…” her voice went quiet, shaking. “Melted. Metallic sludge chased us through the station. Posy Bloom went down halfway there, melted just like Bulwark. Iron Horse and I got back to the ship, headed straight down to the planet. Wasn’t hard to pick a landing spot, with this place so pristine…”
“So you don’t know what it is?” Rainbow didn’t even try to mask her frustration. “How’d you know to cut Applejack’s leg off?”
“When we landed—” she went on. “Some of it must’ve followed us. Or… got onto the outside of the ship. It was crumbling all around us. The computer went all crazy, started…” she went silent again for a few moments. “Iron Horse and I made it out in a rover. But it was on his back leg. I… I amputated. We made it into the building. This place.”
“We never found another body,” Twilight said, though of course this story wasn’t what interested her most. Some hint at what waited above them was certainly worth knowing, but not as important as the question burning in her mind. And even if she was here, she wouldn’t be able to see what Apple Bloom was thinking and just know the truth. She was one of the silent ones.
“He, uh… I was never trained in medicine.” She was obviously crying now, even over the radio. “He didn’t make it more than a few days after the amputation.”
Applejack took the headset from her. “It’s okay, sis. You did yer best, I know ‘ya did. I’m sure yer friends wouldn’t blame ‘ya neither.”
“I blame me,” Apple Bloom said, her voice going cold. As cold as a digitally distorted voice could, anyway. “Nothing followed us into the building, but when I buried him… I think there was something in the dirt. Metal slime… got me. But it wasn’t as fast as the others. I… made it up to the place you found me. Opened the stasis chamber, and… well, now I’m this. Whatever this is.”
Twilight took the microphone back. There was one question she needed answered, one that had been lost in Apple Bloom’s eagerness to describe her immediate mission. “You came from Equestria, then?”
“N-no,” Apple Bloom responded, after a few seconds. “Not directly. The Solstice sent us. And the Far Star sent her.”
“Okay…” Rainbow Dash again. “Pretend we’ve never heard of either of those.”
Rarity responded before Apple Bloom could. “What really bothers me, dear, is the timeline. Maybe you can clarify some things for me. You were only a few years younger than your sister, now perhaps you’re a decade or so older. But how is it that Sunset Shimmer’s cryo-pod was underground three and a half centuries? Was she part of your crew as well?”
“Sunset Shimmer? She’s… here? But that’s not possible! The Solstice should’ve been—” she stopped dead, voice sinking into despair. “The captain’s dead, isn’t she? That’s why you’re asking me all these questions.”
“No, dear,” Rarity continued. “She’s still in stasis. She’s the only one on her pod who made it, I’m afraid.”
“Wake her,” Apple Bloom said, voice confident. “I was sent way ahead to scout. I don’t know if Equestria made it or not. She can answer all your questions better than I can.”
“What do you mean, ‘if Equestria made it’?” Fluttershy asked, the first time she’d ever used her own radio during the entire conversation.
“Ask her,” Apple Bloom said, her voice bleak. “I… don’t want to talk about it. Sunset might have good news, so getting it from me… just ask her.”
“Alright,” Twilight said. “We will. In the meantime, I’m going to have somepony send you something to write with. I want a detailed report—everything you remember about your mission. When you were sent, why you were sent, your goals, every member of your crew… every piece of information you remember.”
“Alright,” Apple Bloom said. She didn’t reply again, not even to Applejack’s comforting reassurances. Twilight couldn’t exactly blame her.
Meanwhile, Twilight had to decide on her crew’s immediate priorities.
1. Begin an immediate evacuation. Apple Bloom just informed us of potential danger we’ve been avoiding this entire time. Whatever attacked her might be here right now, hibernating and waiting to reawaken. The Memorial is no longer safe. Time to return to orbit.
2. Wake Sunset and Interrogate She’s not getting any safer frozen like that. Besides, knowing what happened to Equestria is the most important thing. Our deaths are nothing, but if the homeland is danger, that’s what we need to know.
3. Leave Sunset Asleep, don’t overreact. Cozy Glow’s orders came from someone called ‘S,’ and Sunset has always been ambitious. She might be the pony responsible. We can always Lie to Apple Bloom and tell her we need to revive her on the Equinox or something. As soon as I can walk, I’ll visit her and talk through a shield. She’s going to share what she knows.
It took about a day to make the preparations to finally wake Sunset Shimmer. As a result, Twilight was in a wheelchair when the time finally came, instead of lying in bed. She still had bandages running down the length of her spine, which Fluttershy would periodically remove and inject her with more neuro-regenerative. But the five-centimeter needles had stopped hurting after the third or fourth time anyway.
Applejack had been moved to the furthest bed, giving Fluttershy, Rarity, and Spike the largest possible workspace. Twilight was there too, resting near Applejack’s cot in case her magic ended up being necessary for some last second save.
Either the pod had taken more water-damage than they thought, or else Rarity’s dating efforts had been accurate, because the cryo-pod itself didn’t smoothly defrost its occupant like they had been hoping for. Applejack probably would’ve done a better job, but she was missing one of her forelegs and trapped in bed, no matter how much she called for somepony to ‘wheel her over.’ Spike flipped out his tools, and it was time for Twilight’s second in command to put his abilities to the test.
Is Spike successful? Yes.
The cryogenic solution began pouring out of the vent at the bottom—but with no system to hook the pod into, Rarity caught it all in levitated buckets. The huge chunks of coat and bits of reddish slime floating in it as it drained certainly weren’t encouraging, but Twilight could do nothing more than watch. She kept a radio close in her magic, updating the other crew members as the procedure progressed and doing her best to keep Fluttershy’s panic out of her own mind.
Twilight had never watched the procedure done by hoof before, and it was certainly not half as smooth as the automated defrosting. Rarity’s magic did well enough as Fluttershy’s nurse, eventually levitating out the cot and depositing Sunset Shimmer on the bed in front of them.
Has Sunset’s long freeze in suboptimal conditions resulted in physical damage? Yes.
Just to her body? No.
Steam rose from Sunset’s body as it slowly warmed, and Twilight watched Fluttershy rush to do what the computer ordinarily would’ve done, connecting Sunset and cycling her internal fluids through the manual revitalization device. “Get those blood-packets into the warming tray,” Fluttershy instructed. “No, don’t open them yet! We have to cycle her with Cryo-9 first. Yes, the blue tank. There’s enough, I checked, just don’t spill!”
All the while a little furred creature rode on her shoulder, like a squirrel but with fleshy bits connecting its legs into wings. It was even wearing tiny gloves, though Twilight couldn’t have guessed where it got them.
It took over an hour. Fluttershy’s panic soon escalated to the point that Twilight started hyperventilating, and she could feel her own heart racing in her chest. She gave the radio to Applejack, who had more experience dealing with the bloody procedure going on as alarms started going off and Fluttershy started working her saw.
Does Sunset survive revitalization? Yes.
Once she got some distance to the medical building, Twilight found she could breathe again. She kept her own radio close in case they ever called for her, but they didn’t not for a few more hours after their initial report. “We’re finished, Twilight,” Fluttershy called, exhaustion heavy in her voice. “You should see this. It didn’t go… great.”
Twilight rolled her way back with all the dread of a pony who hadn’t studied for a pop quiz. The smell of Cryo-9 and rot were thick in the room as she passed through the airlock. At first, she didn’t even recognize the thing laying on the cot as a pony at all.
Does Sunset lose any limbs? Yes. 4 limbs
Her coat was completely gone, and numerous bandages covered her torso. Her horn was intact, but that was the only mercy this poor pony had been shown. Her legs didn’t hang sideways on the cot, because there weren’t any, just a large red plastic box of “CONTAMINATED MEDICAL WASTE.” Twilight could see the misshapen lumps visible through the semitransparent plastic.
Several tubes ran into the pony, running fluids of many colors through life support. Twilight didn’t have to guess what state she would be in if they were cut off. Rarity and Spike were gone, leaving only a truly-exhausted-looking Fluttershy.
“Looks like you did another miracle here today, doctor.” Twilight said, as sensitively as she could. “A cryosleep coffin three centuries submerged, and you actually kept her alive.”
“She may not think so,” Fluttershy said, after a long delay. “She, uh… I’ve thrown out freezer meals for less.” Fluttershy straightened, clearing her throat. “Captain, I’m prepared for my full report.” Twilight nodded, and she continued. “The casket reduced maintenance cycles to the patient’s extremities, resulting in necrosis in all four legs requiring amputation. Her liver, spleen, one lung, and gallbladder were also necrotic and required removal. Her heart was necrotic and required mechanical replacement, which has been installed.
“A replacement liver is being fabricated as we speak, but she will require total integration into life support until that is complete. In total, the patient lost approximately 45% of her mass. Serious nerve damage is also likely. And it’s… possible she will never wake again. Given the serious damage to her body, I will be keeping her in medical coma until all surgeries have been completed and she has had significant time to heal. Spike has already added four additional limbs to the fabrication queue, along with a second of Node’s theoretical control implants. If tests with Applejack are successful, we’ll probably install those before we wake her as well. It would be… kinder that way.”
Twilight winced as Fluttershy finished her report, feeling as though she’d been physically struck. As much as she was tempted to order Sunset woken anyway, the butchered specimen on the operating table in front of her might well lose any sanity she had left if she was forced to consciousness now. “Does Rarity know any healing spells that could help?”
“No,” Fluttershy answered. “We have all the standard texts in the medical library on the Equinox, but… they aren’t usually the sort of books a unicorn can read in an afternoon and cast. Mistakes with medical magic usually kill the patient.”
Twilight had to give her crew some orders.
1. Interrogate Apple Bloom personally. Sorry your captain couldn’t give us the details we needed yet. Even your incomplete information is better than nothing.
2. Spike suggests launching a probe to the coordinates from Sunset’s device. It will take at least three of us up there to make the modifications, but a three-month trip for a machine is better than losing those ponies for six months, right?
3. Pinkie suggests that instead of interrogating Apple Bloom, they should figure out if she can be rendered non-contagious. If so, she’s an engineer who probably isn’t vulnerable, she could study the “Contingency.”
4. Rainbow suggests she could take Rarity and Node and explore the nearest patch of City. I get that you’re too hurt right now, and lots of the rest of you are busy, but I want to see these ruins for myself! Give me a crew, and we’ll find out what the hay is going on, guaranteed!
If Apple Bloom isn’t contagious, have her investigate the contingency 41%
[Scene altered]
Twilight woke in the middle of the night, to the unmistakable rumble of a hydrogen igniter. But the time she’d darted out of bed, she could feel the ground shaking all around her. She darted out the airlock, waiting the painful seconds it took to cycle, and emerged just in time to see the distant purple glow of the Prospector as it rumbled up into the sky.
She considered briefly whether or not she should try to teleport aboard and stop the ones involved. But transporting onto a ship when she didn’t know its position or acceleration was a risky business. Even if she somehow calculated its position correctly in her head, it would be accelerating as well, and she didn’t have the numbers on its speed.
She sighed, making her way back into her bedroom with the door still agape and lifting her radio off the hook. “I’d love to know what the buck is going on up there. I didn’t give anypony orders to go anywhere.”
Do Spike, Rainbow, and Rarity take it into their own hooves to go launch the probe? Yes.
It was Spike who answered, his voice a little less timid than she might’ve expected for a direct violation of her orders. “Captain, we’re… this was my idea.”
“Okay,” she sat back, flicking on the lights with her magic and glaring at the plastic box. Unfortunately it wouldn’t be sending her anger through space. “Is a mutiny taking place? You know we have a procedure for voting me out.”
“No!” Rainbow Dash this time. “Captain, it’s simple. Spike realized he didn’t have enough spare parts to make all the legs, and Node wants the computer-making stuff Spike built to do the microcontrollers. Your second in command authorized us to come up here to carry out your orders. We’re just making the prosthetics.”
“And launching the probe,” Rarity finished. “It only made sense with the use of fuel and time to come up here anyway. We should be back in a week, tops. No time at all, really!”
Twilight gritted her teeth. “You should have told me first. I probably would’ve agreed with you. Being more efficient… that’s more than fine, given our circumstances. But going around me isn’t. I’ll authorize what you’re doing up there, but from now on… I want explicit confirmation before you ever use any of our vehicles to travel anywhere, is that clear?”
“Yes, captain,” Spike said.
“And we will be having a word about this when you return,” Twilight finished. “We can’t function as a crew without trust. Twilight out.”
She went back to bed, or tried to anyway. She didn’t actually sleep for the rest of the night, her mind racing down all the dark places that the sudden departure suggested. Maybe Cozy Glow had awoken, repaired the weapons, and was about to shoot them out of the sky. Then the few of them would be stranded here on the surface of a dead world, doomed to live out their lonely days without a hope of seeing another pony again.
In the morning, she dragged herself to morning calisthenics, then through the shower, then made Fluttershy her first stop. After an awkward explanation of what had happened the night before, she found herself standing in front of Fluttershy’s array of tissue samples.
Is Apple Bloom still contagious after being cleaned? No.
“It’s clear, captain. I cooked these samples for the last two days since we scrubbed her. Apple Bloom isn’t contagious anymore. She may’ve been right—the transformation itself created a cocoon, altering the materials all around it. We don’t understand how it could take place so quickly, or how it could adapt to dynamically use whatever materials were nearby.”
“So she’s safe,” Twilight said. “We can bring her into the crew. Applejack will love that.”
“Well…” Fluttershy winced. “Yes, with reservations. Her body has internal fluids, just like ours. We don’t understand how they work yet, but it’s possible some of those might still be dangerous. We should stay away from her in any environment where her body might be damaged. So no gunfights, no machine-shops, nothing like that. I’ll continue testing, but it might take weeks to be sure. Her body reflects the wavelengths used by our medical scanner, so I don’t have very good internal telemetry yet. We’d have to bring her aboard the Equinox for better readings.”
“Unfortunately, the Prospector has already returned,” Twilight said through gritted teeth. Then she turned back to the rest of medical. “What about the patients?”
Sunset transforms 1 point of aggravated damage into lethal. This means her current health pool is 4, with 3 being aggravated damage and 1 lethal. This also means she would die instantly if removed from life support.
Fluttershy’s expression brightened. “Both doing well. Sunset’s surgical wounds are healing, with no signs of infection. And Applejack… she should be ready to receive her implant by the time it gets here. Next week, right?”
She nodded, expression darkening again. “Next week.”
She spent a few more minutes chatting with Fluttershy, a little longer with Applejack to reassure her that everything was alright, then found herself somewhere private to talk. She switched to Apple Bloom’s channel.
“Apple Bloom, it’s Twilight. Are you there?”
“Yes?” she sounded a little fearful. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. I’ve got good news, actually.” She explained all the details of Fluttershy’s findings, then. “I’m clearing you to return to base. However, I also have an assignment for you. Other than that report you wrote, I mean.”
“Sure, captain. I… don’t know how useful I am compared to a member ‘ah the first interstellar ship ever, but I’ll do mah best.”
“At the bottom of the Memorial building is a central hallway. Follow it to the end. There’s a metallic sphere on the floor there—find somewhere safe in that building to make into a research room, and study it. Bring any machines from camp you need, but don’t go anywhere near the… place where we found you. So long as you stay away, you should be clean.”
A pause, then. “Is that it?”
“Yes. But don’t do anything that might permanently damage the sphere, or activate it, or bring it anywhere near camp. It has… adverse effects. It didn’t do anything to Node though, so I have reason to believe you should be immune too.”
“Sure, Twilight. So long as I get some time with my sis… I can do that.”
Twilight had a few hours to herself, before it came time to decide what would happen in the meantime.
1. Grab a remote terminal and try to research the mind-spells necessary to shut out the voices.
2. Pinkie says she thinks she found where Applejack’s Leg has got to. Time for a hunt.
3. Rigorously interrogate Apple Bloom for as much information as possible about Equestria, her mission, and anything else that might relevant.
Twilight wasn’t so sure this was a good idea. Even with the knowledge that Apple bloom stopped being contagious once the material of her transformation was gone, even with their full-body biohazard suits, she still had the distinct impression that they were wandering into something she didn’t understand and would do better to avoid.
What does a strange machine meant to convert entire people into robotic substitutes of themselves do when the process is interrupted early?
Then again, if creating this thing had been the price of saving Applejack, she was willing to pay it.
“I don’t think we’re going to have to be too violent,” Pinkie said. She had a net slung over one shoulder. Twilight wasn’t so sure about that, so she had a proper rifle. “But I guess it’s good one of us has something, just to be safe.”
“You can tell me what you’ve seen on the way,” Twilight muttered, her voice low over their private channel. It wasn’t like the others couldn’t swap around until they found it—but so far she hadn’t heard any other voices. If Fluttershy or Applejack were upset with what they were doing, they were keeping quiet about it.
They walked for a while, and Pinkie spoke as thy traveled. In a near straight line towards the boundary of the green island, where safety ended and the ruined city the size of a planet loomed large on the horizon.
“So I’ve been the pony making deliveries—everypony was more important than me, since we haven’t needed my mining much. And… I don’t blame you for not trusting me with anything really important, after… waking up. Anyway, I was delivering things for Apple Bloom, and I noticed something creepin’ around. I think it had some wire, or maybe a sofa…”
Twilight’s eyebrows went up behind the plastic shield. “You’re not sure?”
“It was a small sofa! Anyway, I hadn’t seen any animals care about cables or furniture before, so I decided to investigate. Tracked it all the way out. You can see the border there.”
She could. Twilight didn’t know any better than the other ponies what kept their part of the world green and the rest lifeless. There was a perfectly straight line, beyond which no seeds germinated, and no grass spread. She could’ve cut it with a razor if she wanted. But it wasn’t an energy field, because ponies could cross it without difficulty. So could drones, which they’d used to make sure of that fact first.
Twilight had not needed to set any rules to keep her crew inside—the desolate wasteland just beyond the invisible line was enough that nopony wanted to spend too much time there.
Pinkie slowed, lowering her voice conspiratorially as they got close. Even though they were wearing huge suits with loud ventilators on the back. “I followed it to an opening in the rock just up ahead, and that’s where I stopped. I’m pretty good at following things, but whatever’s down there… it looked dark, and I wasn’t that brave, so I came back.”
“You did the right thing asking for reinforcements,” Twilight said through gritted teeth. “I wish the rest of our crew was that considerate.”
Pinkie shrugged. “Everypony’s upset after hearing about Equestria. Apple Bloom made us scared. Even worse than hearing our trip took a lot longer than it should have. Which was too bad, because before that seeing Apple Bloom was a good thing. It meant that maybe all the ponies we love weren’t gone. Anyway, here we are! See that hole?”
She nodded, slowing to a stop. It was about a hundred meters past the edge of life, a crevasse that looked remarkably flat along one side. More like a service shaft that had been gradually weathered down. Twilight checked her back for her equipment—she had a climbing harness, though that was mostly by precaution. Pinkie had one too, and she would actually be using it.
“And how did you know that we wouldn’t need weapons?”
“Just a feeling,” Pinkie said. “You shouldn’t argue. It’s better just to trust me.”
She didn’t argue, though she didn’t agree. Back in Equestria, Twilight had reluctantly come to accept Pinkie’s impressions. But these days, her friend’s instincts were… warped. Like her own.
Twilight reluctantly let her mind relax, feeling some of Pinkie’s thoughts drift towards her. She was perhaps the easiest of all her friends to be near—instead of a mess of contradictions and wild thoughts, Pinkie was exactly what she appeared. Applejack was honest with her words, but Pinkie was honest with herself.
Together they crept down into the gloom, down a path marked by bits of broken stone.
Twilight’s initial suspicions were confirmed, as the cave quickly gave way to regular tunnels, like the ones she and applejack had traversed. And after only a very short distance, there was signs of habitation. Dust swept away, an orderly arrangement of metallic spare parts. She nearly squealed in surprise when they passed a fallen pony toolkit, one with Equinox markings.
Light shone from the space beyond, giving Twilight a good view inside.
It was a makeshift workshop, or armory, built into the hollowed-out shell of alien ruins. Part of these clearly worked, and some of the machines were humming.
A figure moved in the gloom, much larger than a leg. It walked on two legs, with two sets of arms exactly like the body Node had used. Only this one was much smaller, more skeletal and unfinished.
As Twilight watched, a creature a little bigger than a rabbit slunk past it, skittering on six limbs of its own—metallic, like itself, without a skin. It offered a stolen welding torch, and the thing took it in its grippers.
Pinkie looked sidelong at her, a grin on her face. Twilight glanced past her, and realized she had a clear shot with her rifle. They hadn’t been seen—they would never see it coming.
1. Take the shot. They’re stealing things, they’re a threat. End it.
2. Make contact. Maybe a survivor? Node might not be open with us, maybe this alien will be better.
3. Retreat before being seen, do safer things until the rest of the crew returns. We should do something about this, but not without Rainbow for backup.
4.Pinkie suggests that it looks like the machines it is using are running low on power. Bringing a fresh energy matrix as a peace offering might be better than just saying hello. They’re also expensive and difficult to replace, however.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather carry this with your ‘magic’? This body’s abilities are not limitless.”
“Neither is my magic,” Twilight glared sidelong at Node, who had been heavily burdened with a harness and the massive square outline of the Power Matrix, wrapped in protective cloth with the cables drawn taught. The object was a delicate stack of crystals and conductive alloys, wrapped in an outer shell of thin plastic. They weren’t meant to be transported like this, but she also didn’t have another choice. Celestia help us if it decides to rain for the first time today. I wonder if we can get far enough before it explodes.
“And if I tried to carry it, it would bounce apart,” Pinkie declared. There were no objections to this obvious truth.
“These bodies are absurd,” Node said, as they reached the opening in the rock. “Carrying loads, that seems useful. I’m at a loss for how you evolved to an advanced civilization when you don’t even have hands. I couldn’t get this harness off by myself if I wanted to. If the two of you spontaneously died from your biological frailties, I would have to walk all the way back to camp to get the doctor to remove it.”
“You’re all heart, Node,” Twilight muttered. “Now hold still. I’m teleporting you down there. The opening is too small to keep your orientation on the way down without it.” She concentrated for a few seconds, then pointed her horn down. Before Node could object, she vanished with a flash of magic. Twilight still hadn’t teleported herself, not since using the Perseverance. She didn’t want to hear that voice again.
Unfortunately for her, the Insight wouldn’t do her much good negotiating with… whatever that alien was. She couldn’t hear its thoughts any more than she could hear the mind of Apple Bloom or Node.
“I was going to tell you not to do that,” Node said, when she and Pinkie were down in the cavern with her. “You could’ve transported the object and allowed me to climb. I can see from the way Pink operates her harness how the task is accomplished.
“Why do you care?” Twilight asked, her voice a low hiss. “Do you… hear it?”
Node shook her head, staring at her with concern. “Neither should you. That’s… not good. We must discuss this.” But then something rattled from down in the cavern, and a piece of machinery began to hum—a stolen saw, by the sound of it.
Twilight turned away, heading down the opening. “We brought you to help us negotiate, Node. Whatever this survivor is, they’re one of yours. You’re the one who knows how they think.” She had her rifle again, and Pinkie did too—the miner wasn’t nearly as good a shot as Twilight. She didn’t seem like she’d even be willing to pull the gun on someone. But Twilight hadn’t let her come without one.
“If you say so,” Node said. “I am… skeptical that we will have anything in common. I was purpose-built to interface with you. Another created like me would be constructed for other visitors. We might have as little in common as you do with the rodents who live on the Memorial grounds.”
She didn’t like that idea—but it was too late to turn back. And there was no point objecting when Node was obviously right. She led the way into the opening, keeping her magic ready if she needed to defend herself. It was good to put her restored mobility to use, even if she still had some bandages on her neck.
She made it far enough to see the same workshop from before. Now that she got close, the creature inside seemed—old. Its frame was rusted, and there were loose wires hanging off the skeletal joints. Both hands on one side of its body didn’t seem to work, so it used its other two arms for everything. And in front of it…
It was building a pony, not at all unlike Node’s body. It was still just skeletal supports at this point, though for an earth pony or a unicorn since it lacked wings. Still, obviously a pony. Twilight gasped.
The creature turned, and something leaped onto the table beside it.
A metallic animal, with two beady eyes and six limbs. Its tail was long, melting into the rest of its body with no clear division, though it was made entirely from metal and the plastic of Memorial floor-tile. The leg. Was it hissing at her?
Is it intelligent? No. Is it working for something that is? Yes.
The skeletal robot set down the stolen saw, which slowly spun to a stop. It seemed to stare at them with the same shock in their eyes—though it had only a single functional camera on its torso, nothing even close to eyes.
“You found me,” it said, in perfect Ponish. No weird accents or recreated recordings. It sounded male, mature and confident. He held up both functional claws, while the other two hung uselessly. “Please, whatever you’ve brought. Don’t hurt me! I wish no violence to you. I know it… must look bad. All I stole from you. But the situation was desperate! If you left before I could make contact… I would never see another pony again.”
“Curious,” Node said. “This creature is not broadcasting the correct interface signals. It has ignored all my whois pings. It is violating all of our wireless transmission protocols.”
Twilight didn’t draw her rifle, though she kept her magic ready if she needed it. The animal—the leg—backed up from her like a frightened cat, hiding behind the skeletal legs of this robotic creature. “What do you want?”
“To be with my own kind again,” he said. “I know you won’t believe me… I know this body is terrifying. Metal instead of magic. I’ve been working on a replacement, one that would be… easier to see. But it’s slow. Stealing designs from you, even with the help of Squip here… hasn’t been easy. And I wasn’t classed for engineering. Please, Captain Twilight. Let me explain everything.”
Twilight took a few steps into the workshop, gesturing for the others to do the same. She sat down on her haunches, smiling exasperatedly at the creature. “Whoever you are, I would love nothing more.”
“My name is Iron Horse,” he said. “Let me share my nightmare with you.”
This body was obviously falling apart, Twilight could see that as he walked slowly around the workshop. Wires occasionally sparked where he moved, and other sections showed obvious signs of wear. The basic structure of the body was the same as the one node had built for itself in those ruins, but other than that, there was very little in common.
Iron Horse began by reciting many of the same details that Apple Bloom had. Their crew arriving on the ring, figuring out how to mate with its airlock, traveling inside. The horrors of what they had discovered. Iron Horse did have a different perspective on some of it than Apple Bloom had.
“It was a manufactory, beyond any doubt. The ones who built it didn’t try to build a ring because they wanted to surround the planet. There’s a hook that rapidly orbits, that can transport cargo up and down for almost no energy. Proximus B is unusually dense with useful metals, which is probably why they chose it. There are shipyards up there, hundreds of them. And billions of bodies like this, hanging in storage. Wish I had a few replacements now…”
“Why?” Pinkie asked. She’d been far less afraid than Twilight, and she bounced around the workshop without fear. She even approached the animal-thing that had once been Applejack’s leg, though she didn’t get close enough to touch. That was just fine with the polecat-like creature, which didn’t seem to want her to get much closer to it anyway.
“Because its body is barely functional,” Node responded. “It looks like it has been spending most of its time in there—” Node gestured at the single active screen on the far side of the room, with a few alien cables trailing out of the opening. “And only transferring into the body we see when it has to.”
“Yes,” Iron Horse admitted. “The simulation is much better than this thing. Barely functional, a new system crashes every few weeks… I couldn’t tell you how many times I thought about never leaving again. Almost did, except for Squip here.” He reached out, affectionately stroking the metal animal’s back with one claw. “She showed up in the system one day, basically dragged me back to work. Couldn’t say no to that face.”
Twilight bit back acid in her throat at just how disturbing that implication was. What kind of mentality motivated a severed limb, anyway? It’s probably the original programming in the virus. Without brain material. “Your crewmate, Apple Bloom, told us that you were infected upon landing,” Twilight prompted. “She amputated, you developed an infection, and she buried you.”
“Apple Bloom is…” there were no expression to read, but its camera turned and focused suddenly on Twilight, unblinking. “I probably… no. First duty is to the fleet, and you’re an Alicorn. I don’t know why she would’ve lied to you, princess. But… her story wasn’t accurate.”
We never found the body. He’s probably telling the truth.
Twilight tensed, then gently levitated the dial of her radio until it clicked off. “Please explain. If you’re really… Iron Horse, like you say you are.”
“She removed my leg,” he explained. “Something followed us from orbit. But it seemed… determined to infect us. When it became clear that a mundane infection was going to kill me, I…” he looked down, ashamed. “I suppose that’s why Apple Bloom lied about me. More respect for the dead. Greater dignity. I should thank her.”
“You can tell us,” Pinkie said, front right in front of the working screen. She occasionally prodded at the strange controls, a flat panel of tiny squares much too small to operate with a hoof, covered with the alien language. “Twilight is a great listener! She’ll listen to you!”
“The… sludge… was waiting outside the building. I was barely breathing by then, I think the infection was in my blood. I knew I… probably only had hours. Asked Apple Boom to… try and make something useful out of my death. I told her to leave me outside, and watch. Maybe the… sludge wouldn’t kill me, like it killed the others. Or maybe there was some kind of life waiting on the other side. Anything was better than nothing.
“She waited, trying to save me until the end. When she couldn’t… she did what I asked. That thing came for us the instant we were outside. I swear it must’ve got onto her suit, but I didn’t see much after that…”
Iron Horse described a process very similar to the one that had afflicted Apple Bloom, with one notable exception.
“It didn’t make me a body. When the pain stopped, I was… still there, but not there. Alive, but… disembodied. I could feel something with me, like a… a helpful presence. Probably sentimental, but… I like to think it was the spirit of Bulwark, looking out for the crew even after his death. I couldn’t go into the building, something kept pushing me away. But I could feel… warmth, almost, not too far away. This computer,” he nodded towards it. “I found I could… climb inside, control all the systems here. Leave it again, into a body like this. Or the one I’m building.”
“Apple Bloom will be so happy you’re alive,” Pinkie said. “She was… really depressed about losing her whole crew. She felt like a failure.”
“She didn’t fail us, we failed her.”
Twilight hesitated. This could be a pony. The story Iron had presented to them did seem at least consistent with most of the facts they’d heard. But there was no way to verify it. It could be deception, maybe a way to infiltrate their ranks. And Apple Bloom had lied to her.
We have no guarantee that infection leaves anything of the original pony behind. What if it harvested the real Apple Bloom’s memories, and has been manipulating us with them ever since. It might still be trying to kill us.
She had to make a call.
1. Invite Iron Horse to return to the crew (+ Morale Apple Bloom, RISKS UNKNOWN)
2. Node suggests making another body like hers for the pony, also permitting them to return to the crew (+ Morale Apple Bloom and Iron Horse, RISKS UNKNOWN)
3. Detonate the power matrix intentionally, destroying the cavern. Teleport out with Pinkie before the blast.
Twilight had taken many risks during her naval career, and she knew that allowing Iron Horse to return to the crew of the Prospector might just be the most dangerous yet. But no matter how dangerous it seemed, she just couldn’t send him away. If traveling out here makes us abandon what makes us ponies, then it isn’t worth it. We have to be true to who we are.
She said nothing to Apple Bloom, not for the next day while Node and Iron Horse worked together in Node’s not-so-secret lab. Then twilight called her. “Engineer Apple Bloom,” she said, trying not to sound any different. “I need you back at base for a report. Can you be here in the next two hours?”
The pony didn’t take too long to respond—she didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, didn’t require any rest so far as they knew. Twilight’s reports of her activity so far included little besides work and nervous wandering. “Of course, captain. I don’t have a definitive answer for you yet, but—”
Twilight knew that voice from her several encounters with Apple Bloom much earlier in life. She hadn’t picked it out before, but now—now she’d talked to Iron Horse. Apple Bloom was lying. “But you’ve learned things, right?”
“Mah sis’s new leg ain’t gonna be ready until the others get back tomorrow. I ain’t sure I can face her until she’s standin’ again.”
“You won’t have to,” Twilight promised. “I won’t even mention this visit to her. Meet me at… Workshop N, on the south side of camp. You know the building?”
About an hour later, she was there. Her saddlebags overflowed with scribbled notes, scan printouts, and mathematical predictions. Apple Bloom offered the satchel to her, then explained.
Does Apple Bloom understand the device? Critical yes.
“Ah got the computer to talk to me quick enough… that’s what she is, by the way. A computer. Not a bomb, not a poison, nothin’ like that. There’s a… I guess you’d call it a magical core, right in the center, integrated with the whole thing. It calls itself the Lifepod Prototype. Maximum occupancy, three hundred million. Standard energy utilization—roughly three hundred watts.”
Twilight stopped dead. Her anticipation of the surprise waiting inside the building faded into the background just a little, and her eyebrows went up. “What… does that mean?”
“I can go inside it!” Apple Bloom said, positively bouncing now, shuffling through the sketches. “There’s a… an entire world in there, bigger than Equestria. Empty cities already built, trees overflowing with fruit… everything.”
It called to me, Twilight remembered. She had felt the gravity, trying to pull her down. It tried to pull me inside. That must be what it did. "How do you fit… three hundred million ponies in a space the size of a hoofball?”
Apple Bloom shrugged. “Got me on that one, Captain. I know there’s magic than can compress space. Best I figure, someone spent energy the likes ‘a which we never imagined packing it all in real close. The tiny bit it uses now is just to keep the external sensor and everythin’ working.”
“When I got near it, it tried to bring me inside. I want you to shut that off. If we can do that, we could bring it aboard and take it with us. I’m sure there are Equestrian engineers who would love to learn more about it.”
“Sure. I can control the whole thing no problem, I can do that. I could bring it back tonight if you wanted.”
Twilight nodded. “Very good, engineer. But before you go, there’s something I want you to see. Gather up your notes, you can scan them into the computer when you bring the object back with you. After this.” She walked up to the door, then gently held it open.
Inside there were two ponies, made of plastic and jointed metal. Unlike Node, Iron Horse had wanted to make the changes to appear like a male earth pony, even if functionally the design was the same. He’d used body paint to give the plastic a gray finish that Twilight took to be similar to the way he’d looked in life.
Apple Bloom stopped in the doorway, staring in in shock. “Commander Apple Bloom,” he said, smiling weakly from beside Node. “Good to see you again.”
Roll on Iron Horse’s loyalty postponed.
In that moment, Twilight felt any doubt over the safety of this plan fade into distant memory. Apple Bloom dropped her pack, rushed across the lab, and one mechanical pony embraced another.
Of course, they’re really in there. You can’t fake friendship.
Twilight left them to their privacy. Iron Horse could work with his former commander—that would probably make things easier on her own crew. She had one more visit before the day’s business was done.
Twilight stepped into the medical bay just before sundown, shutting the airlock door behind her and finding Fluttershy at her desk. “Hey. How are our patients?” And no sooner did she step inside, then the rush of voices returned to the forefront of her mind. She kept meaning to prepare a counterspell for that, but… so far, her counterspell was isolation.
Sunset has healed 3 points of aggravated damage, meaning her health pool is now 4 points of lethal damage. Removing a single point from here on will allow her to return to consciousness, although she is still dependent on life-support.
Applejack has also healed 3 points of lethal damage. This means she is now fully prepared for the implanted leg.
“Sleeping,” Fluttershy whispered, rising swiftly to her hooves. She hurried over to Sunset, gesturing. “This one is, uh… we could wake her now, if you wanted. Whatever’s left in there is coming together. She’ll still be… fully immobilized for at least a week more. But I could wake her up.”
“Or…” Twilight prompted.
“Or you could give her long enough to heal,” Fluttershy said. “And not wake her up until after we give her the prosthetic legs.”
“Not to mention…” Twilight kept her voice so low that even a fake-sleeping Applejack wouldn’t be able to hear. “What happened to Apple Bloom… we still have those samples. If we used them on her… it might repair the damage.” She looked down, at a body covered with scars, with several tubes running directly into her torso, keeping her alive. She was already partially mechanical.
Fluttershy shook her head, but she didn’t argue. The message was clear—she hated that option, but it was still Twilight’s choice.
1. Do the unkind thing, wake Sunset now.
2. Do the kind thing, wake her after the prosthetics are installed.
3. Do the ethically dubious thing, mechanically convert her now.
Wake sunset after the prosthetics are implanted. 83%
“And you don’t know of anything in the medical database that might explain it?” Twilight asked, exasperated. She was in the medical bay, beside the still-healing Sunset and Applejack’s empty bed. Several days had passed since she made the decision not to force Sunset to wake.
Is there anything about twilight’s condition in the database? Critical no.
Fluttershy gazed at her from across the table, shaking her head sadly. “I searched the whole thing, captain. There’s nothing here. I’ve… suspected for some time that Pinkie might be suffering something similar. When she thinks I’m not around, she sometimes responds as though there’s another pony there. And some of what you’ve described to me matches things she said after she woke.”
“When she was insane, you mean,” Twilight said. “You’re saying I’ve lost my mind.
“Possible,” Fluttershy said, without shyness. “But probably not more or less than the rest of us. I don’t think what Pinkie endured was… I don’t think it was natural. She was awake for many months during the trip. It’s true she suffered injuries because of not following the cryogenic procedures properly, but… that wasn’t the only harm. Something else made her… lose it. And I don’t know what it was.”
She didn’t have access to alien machines. They can’t be connected. Twilight rose, nodding her thanks. “I appreciate your help, Fluttershy. How’s… Applejack doing?”
“Anti-rejection medication seems to be working. Her bones are incorporating the titanium peg… but I don’t know how much physical therapy it takes to control a cybernetic limb. It’s Node’s design, you know. Our prosthetics are more primitive. They don’t have sensation, or get grafted into the nerves. I have no idea how long she’ll take to heal. And Sunset here…” she sighed. “I still think it might’ve been kinder to let her die.”
“Maybe,” Twilight agreed. “But Equestria needs her too badly for that, injuries or not. She signed up to be a captain, she’ll understand that.
Twilight left Fluttershy to her work, avoiding the voices that filled every corner of camp. Only Workshop N was peacefully silent, though there were three mechanical ponies in there now. The prospector was back where it belonged, with a few codes changed in the launch computer so Twilight wouldn’t be surprised again.
But she walked past all that, carefully avoiding the fields of intention and emotion that signaled the presence of her crew. She walked until they faded into the background, like the waves of a distant sea.
I might not be insane yet, but I will be soon. Twilight had a destination in mind—the Memorial. Now that the crew knew about the history room and its grizzly corpse display, they almost never returned here. Twilight didn’t plan on going there, though—she was headed to a lab.
Apple Bloom had turned one corner of the elegant entryway into a makeshift research center, with a generator still humming quietly in standby mode and enough camp furniture to make a comfortable workspace. There was even a cot with bedding, still made. There was no sign Apple Bloom had ever used it.
Twilight ignored all of that, going instead for the portable computer and opening her own personal files. There was the spell she’d been working on—a mind enchantment. The study of this arcana was nearly forbidden in Equestria. “Too bad you’re not here for real, eh Starlight? You could probably cast a little forbidden magic on me without even trying.”
Twilight opened the perspective spell. Proper spell diagrams were in three dimensions and not two, which was why unicorns loved crystals so much. When drawn on a surface or displayed on a screen, spells had to be cut into slices.
Twilight stared at the diagram, biting her lip as she concentrated. She’d been returning here whenever she had a spare moment, as much for the peace it would bring her as for the relief she needed in the moment.
Does Twilight finish? No.
Has she made good progress? Yes. Twilight has produced a working spell, but it is so inefficient that it requires concentration, instead of being something she can cast and forget.
The printer hummed, beeping as the thermal head traveled across folded paper. It chimed, and the finished print fell into the waiting tray. Twilight picked it up, expanding the print in front of her. It was the best she could do, at least right now.
Maybe I can’t just cast it. I think I’m doing this the wrong way. I need to enchant an object. Enchantments could cost enormous fortunes of magical power, but once complete, the artifact might last for a thousand years.
Twilight concentrated on the spell anyway, and attempted to cast it.
Can Twilight cast the anti-telepathy spell? Yes.
She felt nothing different at first—the thoughts of her camp were so far away that they might as well be the wind in the strange trees outside, and she couldn’t tell them apart. But after a few seconds… she realized she was still hearing something. “I’m here,” the voice was saying. “I’ve been waiting.”
Does Twilight resist it? No.
She got up, and followed the whispers. They led her down, through a series of passages that she’d never used before. So much of the memorial existed beyond the four major areas—maintenance tunnels, and place staff had once lived. Maybe more.
But the place she eventually found herself wasn’t anything like that. It was a little like an amphitheater, except that electricity arched from massive electrodes along the wall, curving down in regular rhythm towards… something.
A round chamber, with ancient machines rotten to nothing around it. There was an airlock door set in the side, and the walls were all made of glass. Something like ash had been smeared on the entire thing, making the insides opaque to her.
Except for a faint glow, moving around inside. Like a unicorn’s horn in the gloom.
Twilight stopped right in front of it, realizing she’d gone somewhere she shouldn’t. But she didn’t turn back, not yet. Her curiosity remained.
Unlike before, her crew had no reason to think she’d be in danger. The Memorial was already explored, and nothing in the entire area had been dangerous.
Something moved inside, pressing up against the wall. Not banging their way out—it was a cloth. The smoke wiped away, and there was a figure inside. She couldn’t make out its features exactly, but it was definitely on four legs.
It pointed with a hoof, or a claw, towards the airlock. When it spoke, Twilight realized her magic was gone. The concentration it took to keep thoughts from her mind was far too great. “Been waiting for you, Twilight. Too… hard to talk through the field. Hatch is there. Want to help you…”
Twilight did want to be helped…
1. Open the hatch.
2. Searching the room, Twilight finds a ‘subject disposal’ switch, and uses that instead.
Whatever part of herself might’ve been able to resist, it evidently wasn’t strong enough to resist whatever was waiting on the other side. She needed help. Their entire operation had been nothing but a scramble for information they didn’t have. Equestria cutting off contact had only been the beginning. Maybe this was where that ended.
Twilight reached the airlock door. It was tall, over her head, with a bright red handle that needed to be rotated. Twilight gripped it with both hooves, having to brace herself forward against the metal.
There was a tiny window on the airlock door, facing into containment. Inside was more of the smoky residue, making clear sight impossible. Just the glow of the pony’s horn within, or whatever light was about at its head-level.
Twilight opened the door.
She was instantly hit with a wave of noxious gas, making it difficult to see, almost as hard to breathe. She was simultaneously repulsed and attracted by the smell, like a fancy Prench cheese. Enticing and rotten.
Does Twilight retreat? Yes. With a shield? Yes.
Twilight retreated from the opening, her fear finally overpowering whatever had driven her down so deep in the first place. Her horn glowed and flashed, and a bubble appeared around her, driving out the swirling black smoke. She kept backing away, getting further away from whatever was inside.
Just because it wants to be helpful doesn’t mean it’s safe. We might need to talk at a distance.
The electrodes flashing through the room roared once, then overloaded. It was a good thing she backed away from the airlock, because the huge metal spike above it exploded right then, in a spectacular fireball that tore away the stone, shattered glass, and rained down bits of molten shrapnel on her shield.
Twilight gasped and squealed, backing a little further away. “Watch out, whoever you are! These machines are really old… they’re not safe.”
They aren’t dangerous anymore, said the voice. It wasn’t at all like being near her friends, with so many layers of interlacing emotion, background thoughts, things even they didn’t know. Twilight heard only what the speaker wanted to convey, and nothing else. Even the words themselves lacked emotion.
The last of the machines around them went dark, leaving only Twilight’s shield spell to light the space around her. It didn’t seem able to penetrate the swirling fog.
Your solution is interesting, the voice said, and the figure ahead of her coalesced again. It looked like a pony, at least the parts she could see. Novel, even. Did you plan on circumventing?
“I don’t…” Twilight stammered. The more of this creature she saw, the more afraid she was. Afraid enough that she began preparing another spell in the back of her mind, holding it in reserve if she needed it. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Twilight’s knees buckled as she felt sudden, overwhelming pressure on her shield.
Can Twilight hold it? Yes.
But she was no common unicorn, to be overwhelmed by pressure from outside. She was an Alicorn, trained by Celestia herself in the Stellar academy. She gritted her teeth, standing up straight, and her shield got brighter. It went almost completely opaque with purple energy, so that she could see only a distant figure on the outside. A pony, pressing a hoof to it from the outside.
Twilight attempts to see specifics about the figure. Success.
It wasn’t just a similar height—the pony on the other side was exactly the same size as herself. The hoof even looked the same, the horn had the same unique alicorn point. It was an identical copy, except that parts of it occasionally drifted away, reforming from the smoke.
It wasn’t just pressing at her shield, but her mind as well. A rumble like a slowly approaching wave, reaching a crest. Your solution is unnecessary. The sacred union of the flesh brings the only possible end to suffering. All must be circumscribed upon its axis.
I’ve seen something like this before, Twilight realized. The Crystal Empire. She could still see the city, where it orbited high in the Venusian atmosphere. There too she had seen a creature of dark smoke, bent on conquest.
“I don’t think I want your help anymore,” Twilight said, backing a little further away. “Maybe you should go back in your room.”
Only laughter answered, one final assault on her mind that threatened to drive her to her knees again, crushing her under its alien will. Blood dribbled from her mouth, the corners of her eyes, and her legs buckled under the pressure. It wasn’t just trying to force her to open her shield—it was trying to crush her will.
In the instant of its contact, Twilight saw an experience that stretched back into eternity. Strange eons passed, until the solution to all suffering was devised. Its discoverers and eventually all their vast empire were its first victims. Now they wanted her.
She had much suffering this being could drag against her mind—the family she’d left behind and were probably dead. The hard life that waited for her. The uncertainty about Equestria’s fate. Those were powerful tools.
Does Twilight survive the assault and banish the presence from her mind? Critical Yes. Twilight’s H̸̸̡͠҉U̷̡N̶͠G̵̢̡͞҉E̴̡͡͞R̢̢̕͜ returns to zero.
But not as powerful as all the good. The friends she had made, their pact to explore the stars, reach the signalers, and begin Equestrian interstellar colonization. Her family might be gone, but the things they’d taught her and the love she had was still alive in her memory. She wouldn’t trade the end of suffering for the end of joy that it would also require.
“Get out!” Twilight roared, magic flaring from her horn, her eyes. Light radiated from around her, bright enough that even the strange mist was briefly burned away. But she knew better than to stand and fight—her mind was her domain, but this creature was still unknown to her.
Can Twilight teleport back to camp? Yes.
She passed through the void, and this time the strange voices were gone. She could see the stars watching her, each one a single eye in the darkness. But just because she couldn’t forget about them didn’t mean she had to fear them anymore.
She appeared outside camp, her shield shattering into hardened light and crumbling around her. Rainbow and Fluttershy looked up from the small-animal shelter they were making a few meters away, confusion and horror on her faces.
We don’t have much time.
1. Emergency evacuation of Proximus B. That creature is too dangerous to fight. Grab the ponies and leave all the supplies we haven’t packed yet behind. There’s no time to waste.
2. Retreat from Proximus B. We’ve worked too hard to leave our harvest and minerals behind. Begin packing up, but don’t be wasteful. It might take days for that creature to get here, long enough for a proper retreat. I can always create a shield around camp if it comes to that.
3. Fight. Nothing in the universe is as strong as our friendship. That isn’t the H̸̸̡͠҉U̷̡N̶͠G̵̢̡͞҉E̴̡͡͞R̢̢̕͜, it’s just one creature. If we stop it here, we can learn what it really is.
“So you’re saying you… opened it,” Rainbow finished, her eyebrows practically vanished into her face. “You found a mysterious machine, had no idea what it did, and you opened it.”
“Yes,” Twilight said.
“And it attacked you. And you think it’s coming for us.”
“Yes,” Twilight tensed. “Rainbow, I know it was stupid. Right now… it’s just lucky I met you first. I trust your experience when dealing with this thing. I think its magic was similar to King Sombra, so anything that would work against him should probably work here.”
“Well buck,” Rainbow turned, spreading her wings. “You two get back to camp as quick as you can, and don’t stop to bring anything stupid. Straight to the armory!” She took off, and was gone in a blur of blue feathers and scattering dust behind her.
“Between you and me, I think she was waiting for something like this,” Fluttershy whispered. “I just hope nopony gets hurt so she can have her way.”
“Me too.” Twilight took one last glance back towards the Memorial, then followed Fluttershy into the air. The two of them together wouldn’t be able to keep up with Rainbow Dash, not the smaller yellow pegasus to slow her down.
Rainbow Dash plans the defense of camp. Critical success.
By the time they reached camp, Rainbow Dash had already dressed in full combat armor. Pinkie was wearing it too, and Spike. “Fluttershy, good!” Rainbow pointed towards the medical building. “Get Sunset moved onto the Prospector with Applejack. She rolled herself there on her own. You can stay there, and be ready to… escape, if things get bad. Captain, it’s your call whether you want to be on reserve with the prospector or deployed with the rest of us.”
“Rarity is on shields?”
“Will be, daring,” Rarity’s voice answered from over the radio. I’m deploying the stationary guns. I believe Apple Bloom volunteered to operate them.”
The mechanical ponies had no armor, though both of them had weapons now. Well… not the weapons Twilight was used to. The modular rifles had swapped most of their structure for a huge battery and an array of wires on the front.
“I’m staying,” Twilight said. “This thing is my fault. I’m not going to hind behind the rest of you and wait for you to save me.”
Rainbow nodded, then tossed her a rifle. She caught it in her magic, feeling the strain just to hold the barrel up. “If that feels like a lot, it gets worse. Those buckin’ massive capacitors on the back? Each one is one shot.”
“You mean this gun weighs half as much as I do, and it only gets…”
“Three shots,” Apple Bloom said. “But we won’t need all three if we kill it in one, right? Can we kill it?”
“I don’t know if it’s alive,” Twilight said. “But maybe we can scare it off. Make it seem like we’re… not worth targeting. Predators don’t want to work too hard for their meals, right? We’ll make this one hard.”
“If that’s how you want to think about it,” Rainbow said. “Valuable targets on base are the Prospector, Warehouse, and Workshop N. We can expect it to sabotage as much of our machinery as it can to draw our attention. Our goal is to always remain in sight of each other at all times.”
Iron Horse had remained quiet for this makeshift briefing, resting his own rifle against the ground. The mechanical body he and Node used looked like it could barely lift the gun. “You said this creature will be like… Sombra. Is it true he could control the minds of ponies?”
“Yes,” Rainbow said, before Twilight could interrupt her. But there was no sense getting picky about confidential information now. “But taking over a pony’s will require his full attention for ten seconds or so. During that time, he’ll be vulnerable. Assuming this is similar… look for the darkness and try to flash it. And don’t think these things won’t hurt ponies. Within their affective range, a direct hit on center mass will stop your heart. Expect third-degree burns if they touched exposed skin anywhere else. Any questions?”
There were none. “Then may Luna guide our souls.” There were mutters of agreement, and they spread to their stations. Twilight had just enough time to secure a radio headset on her ear before she heard something on the horizon.
The stationary gun used the same magnetic accelerators they used for launching probes, with much more sophisticated firing mechanisms. The gun itself was silent, but she could hear the roar of each pointed ferrous shell as it left the barrel.
“Contact!” Spike yelled. “Tracking large target at five hundred meters…” the ground rumbled. “Its approach is near gun seven!”
Do physical attacks have any effect on the creature? Yes.
“Converge on seven!” Rainbow shouted over the line. “That’s the north-west, near Node’s lab! We should only have one target. Reserve, you can stay behind.”
“Planned on it, dear.”
Twilight was on the other end of the camp. She took off, arcing straight over the buildings in a wide parabola. That would make her a target if their enemy had guns, but she wasn’t terribly worried about that. She wanted to see what was happening.
On the far end of camp, a mounted gun the size of a minecart flashed every half-second, sending another iron slug forward at a gradually growing blur of smoke. It had been pony sized before, but now it was the size of a small transport.
The gun wasn’t killing it, but it did seem to be forcing it to stay diffuse somehow. Twilight tucked her wings as she came back for her dive, clutching the rifle close with her magic as air whipped her mane about in front of her.
“It’s on me!” Rainbow squealed in pain over the radio, and down below an armored figure dropped to the ground.
Twilight took aim from the air and fired into the darkness. There was no worry about air resistance or gravity here, not when her target was so close, and her projectiles traveled the speed of light.
Twilight attempts to hit the creature? Success.
Twilight felt more than heard the impact, a flash of heat from just in front of her that momentarily blinded her. Then it was gone, and something rumbled from the ground below. Like an earthquake echoing across the world, shaking her tight through to her guts.
Can Rainbow resist the attack? Yes. Rainbow takes two points of lethal psychic damage, then it releases her.
“That’s it!” Rainbow called, sounding only a little winded. “It’s running! Looks like…” Twilight followed it in the searchlight, hovering in the air.
“Towards the city,” she finished. “Out of the Memorial’s reach.”
“Well…” Rainbow said. “Do we—”
1. Chase it down. Celestia only knows what it might find in the city. We can’t let it escape to attack later.
2. Keep a guard while we make a dignified retreat, packing everything and taking as many trips as required to harvest everything.
3. Send only Rainbow and Twilight after the creature. We’re the strongest. This thing isn’t so tough.
4. Send only Iron Horse and Apple Bloom after the creature. Their minds should be immune. It’s probably half dead already!
“You don’t have a choice,” Rainbow said, hacking and coughing. Whatever had happened to her during the creature’s brief attack, it was slowing her down. There were burns on the front of her armor, most concentrated near her head, and her rifle’s capacitors had all exploded. The suit seemed to have protected the rest of her from that explosion. “We have to bring it down. Once that thing gets into the buckin’ ruins, it’s gone. No way it doesn’t know we have a ship. It has to come back before we leave.”
They were all gathered near the front of the camp—all those who were part of the defense, anyway. Pinkie was there beside Twilight, along with rainbow, Rarity, and the three mechanical ponies. Spike had remained back to control the guns.
“Okay,” Twilight said. “But not you, Rainbow. No, don’t even try. You’re going back to Fluttershy before those injuries get worse. We can stay in touch with us over the radio if there are any orders to give.”
Rainbow looked like she might argue again, until she suddenly flopped sideways, legs scratching at the ground for a few seconds and wings flapping uselessly until she righted herself again. “Yikes, okay. You’re right. I’d be a liability. The rest of you… get that thing. We’ve already got it on the run.”
“Running where it wanted to run,” Pinkie said, unhelpfully.
“We will,” Twilight promised. “Rainbow, back to the Prospector. You can help Spike on backup if you get on your hooves again. But that’s on her orders, not yours. Apple Bloom, Iron Horse, you take point. Let’s go.”
“Right!” Apple Bloom saluted, and Iron Horse imitated her. Together, they galloped off across the Memorial grounds. It was getting dark, but not dark enough that they couldn’t still see the thing retreating along the horizon. Despite its indistinct nature, they could watch it clearly.
And see when it passed out of the Memorial grounds. The transition was instantaneous, as it transformed from a cloud of noxious smoke into an alicorn pony, the one she’d imagined she had seen while it was trapped. The transition was instantiations, like removing the polarizing filter from a lens.
“What the hay was that?” Apple Bloom asked. “Captain, are you seeing this?”
“Sure am,” she said. “Keep following. We’re committed now. One of us wins today.”
The creature didn’t go much further over the border of life. There was a wide entrance cavern leading down, wide enough that several ponies could cross it abreast. It led down into the gloom, and the groaning and shifting weight on the planet-sized metal city.
“Don’t like the look of that,” Pinkie whispered. “No sun, no fun. Bad news.”
“I know,” Twilight said, stopping beside her. “But we don’t have a choice. What if it can find more? Lead them back to us. We can barely fight one.”
“We’re on the right track,” Iron Horse said, adjusting his rifle. “I’ll lead, Captain. I don’t know what this thing is, but if it has anything to do with what happened to me… it deserves some payback.” He galloped down, roaring his rage at the darkness with a mechanical voice.
They followed, more carefully. The walls narrowed almost immediately, and bits of broken machinery soon blocked the path. Twilight light up her horn like a spotlight, illuminating the chamber. But Iron Horse too was gone.
“This is… dusty,” Rarity said. “I don’t see another exit. I believe this is a dead end.”
A blast of static came through the radio—whatever advice Rainbow had been trying to give them was lost to the concrete and steel above their heads.
“Guard the door,” Twilight said. “If something tries to get past you, shield us in. Everypony else, with me.”
Node was soon beside her, with Pinkie on her other side and Apple Bloom in the lead. “I hope you’re right about mechanical creatures being immune to its effects,” Node said. “I’ve grown attached to this body. I don’t believe I would enjoy fabricating another.”
“You suffer for no reason,” said a low voice, rumbling through the room. From the far side, steel snapped, turning molten orange on the edges. “The solution will be shared. It must be. It already has been. The universe is full of misery and only oblivion is the cure.”
“Buck you!” Apple Bloom called. “I’m not afraid of you! You’re just talking big to them because! Try me instead!”
“Okay,” the voice roared. “Let’s test that theory.”
Is Iron Horse corrupted? Yes, and always has been.
There was no dark Alicorn emerging from the shadows—instead, a pony-sized blur burst out of an overturned machine, aiming his rifle squarely for Apple Bloom.
Iron Horse. He had Apple Bloom dead to rights, with the energy weapon aimed directly at her head.
Sweet Celestia.
Iron Horse fires with a lethal close-range attack. Miss
Apple Bloom was stunned, but she was also fast. She dropped, and the air above her lit up with charged plasma. At the same time, Pinkie raised her own rifle, took aim, and fired.
Hit? Yes
The robot-pony’s torso exploded at the hit, plastic melting and dense power-cylinder spraying sparks. The rifle fell to the ground with a clatter, and was still.
Twilight heard the roar from further into the cavern, and saw a shape emerge. “A waste! Your survival is a conundrum! The H̤̤̰͚̪̟͉͛̓ͪ͂U̷̝͖͆͋ͅN̙̱͉͇̼͈̠G̱̫͉̲͇̤̒̈́͘Ẹ̼̳͓̱̐ͧ̇̅ͨ͟R̡̫͛͐̀ ͇̺̹̻̖͓̅̽ͯ́̾will find you like it found me!” Then he charged, straight at Twilight.
It attacks Twilight. Hit for 3 lethal damage.
She felt the strange presence in her mind again, and this time her shield couldn’t go up soon enough. She smelled burning flesh and charred mane as it attacked her, through internal wounds that were still delicate and newly healed.
Can she keep fighting through the pain? Yes.
But Twilight didn’t drop her rifle. She still had two shots left. She fired both of them in quick succession at the creature, as it drew closer and closer.
Twilight takes aim. Critical success.
She wasn’t the only one to be shooting. She smelled ozone in the air, and her eyes washed white with energy. She could hear Apple Bloom screaming in animistic anger, as she emptied her entire rifle.
By the time they were done, there was nothing left between them but an oily residue.
Time blurred for Twilight, and she wasn’t aware of much of anything else that happened down in the tunnel. Next thing she knew she was back out in open air, and Rainbow’s voice was in her ear, asking for orders. Through her delirium, Twilight made her decision.
1. Gather evidence from the two corpses and try to figure out what this damn thing was.
2. Send a team of non-injured ponies to get the Crystal Heart.
3. We’re done here. Withdraw from the planet with all valuables.
Twilight was back in the hospital for the next few days. Considering the number of times she’d been bruised, bloodied, or otherwise injured since being first defrosted, she was starting to miss the beep of the monitoring system whenever she couldn’t hear it.
At least there was one consolation to her visit this time: she could be there to see Applejack walk for the first time.
Everypony who wasn’t involved in their research on the mysterious creature was there, though there was very little for anypony but Fluttershy and Node to do.
“That should be everything,” Fluttershy said, stepping back and sighing deeply after her third hour of work. The limb had already been assembled, so attaching it to the metal peg in Applejack’s leg hadn’t been hard. The hard part was getting the implant into her head to control it.
“I ain’t so sure about this anymore,” Applejack muttered, her voice nervous. “I wish I didn’t have to be awake for all that.” Applejack rested on firm support structure in the center of the hospital, firmly padded and with clamps to stop her from moving. Her legs dangled off the side, and her neck and head had been completely immobilized. Until now, as Fluttershy moved about undoing most of the clamps, removing them one at a time.
“You’re always awake for brain surgery,” Fluttershy answered, exhausted. Twilight’s own bunk was only a few meters away, so she’d been able to watch the entire grueling affair. Able to see Fluttershy stitch up the now-bald patch of Applejack’s scalp, then bond it with the dermal regenerator. “But whether any of that still works…” she glanced weakly to Node. “Well?”
“It works,” she said, without hesitation. “I designed the parts that could fail, so they won’t.”
“What about the rest of it?” Applejack asked. “Somepony designed that too, didn’t they?”
“The Progenitors,” Node answered, without hesitation. “Their grasp of mechanical engineering and distributed intelligence makes us all look like insects. Their work is beyond your grasp. But just because we can’t replicate it does not mean we can’t take advantage of what it offers.”
“I forget how, uh… pleasant you are to be around,” Rarity said. “How did you cope, Rainbow?”
“Just told her she was right about all of it,” Rainbow Dash said. She was watching from the cot beside Twilight’s, though with less grace. The regeneration drugs weren’t working quote so quickly on her, and she was still having trouble eating.
“We’re ready,” Node said. “Go on, equanoid engineer. Your leg will be superior to the one you lost.”
“Superior legs don’t need to be plugged in,” Applejack answered. Then she moved. The leg jerked at first, bending all the way back and smacking against her bench from below. Applejack winced, then tried again. “Well horseapples if she ain’t fast. But can you put weight on it?”
She leaned forward, lifting herself up by her good legs, and gingerly lowering herself down on the implant. It held, the plastic barely even bending.
“Of course you can,” Node answered. “It’s a hollow truss design made of a hyperdense plastic polymer. You can make as much of it as you like now that I’ve reprogramed your fabricator. I would suggest modifying your body armor, but whatever you enjoy most.” Node walked a few steps away, lifting a heavy plastic box and setting it on the empty cot beside where Applejack was standing. “There other four are here. Two front, two back. This pony is going to be the fastest running you ever knew. Except for the infiltrator. Her design is… orgasmic.”
Applejack’s neck snapped towards Node, her eyes darkening. “I am not going to hear such talk about my sister from you again, ya’ hear? Or we’ll see just how strong this fancy new leg really is.”
Twilight wasn’t sure if Node had really meant to be so crass, or just hadn’t understood the nuance of the words she used. She found it didn’t really matter to her either way.
It was another two days before she could get Fluttershy to let her out. She headed straight for Node’s lab, where she found Apple Bloom standing beside a freshly-dug grave. Her body was splotched and dirty, leaving no mystery in Twilight’s mind about what she’d just done.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, for the fiftieth time. Twilight had already given her speeches about sacrifice and duty and not being Iron’s fault. But none of them had ever meant anything to Apple Bloom.
“Me too,” she said. “But at least I can give what’s left a… proper burial.”
Neither of them said anything for a long time. Twilight might’ve left her there, if she wasn’t so worried about her crew. “I need to know what you’ve learned,” she said, voice gentle. “I’m guessing you’re finished if he’s in the ground now.”
Apple Bloom nodded.
Study of Iron Horse? Successful.
“The really interesting data probably would’ve been in his, uh… head,” she said. “But I did learn one thing. The ghoul didn’t touch him. Whatever made him attack us… was something he decided on his own.”
“Ghoul?”
Applejack looked away, ears flattening. “It’s the name we came up with for the other creature. We needed something to call the remains, and… it seemed to fit.”
She knew the word. It was a specific class of undead, one so rarely created that ponies considered them mythological, and the frequent subject of fantasy horror back in Equestria. “So what made Iron Horse attack?”
She shook her head. “We’ll probably never know. The lower half of the body only had… a few redundant command storage nodes. I can read off the last things he wanted to do. Keep shooting us. Beyond that…” she shook her head.
“What about the ghoul?”
Apple Bloom shuddered visibly, gesturing towards the lab. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
To her surprise, Node wasn’t waiting in the lab when they got inside. Apple Bloom took them directly to one of the microscopes, beside a few biohazard-marked sample containers.
Study of the ghoul? Critical success.
“There’s more to work with here,” Apple Bloom went on, a little of her old energy returning as she circled the lab. “You compared it to king sombra while we fought—turns out that isn’t really true. There’s no magic here, no necromancy.”
“But…” Twilight couldn’t think of a delicate way to phrase this. “You’re, uh… you’re mechanical, Apple Bloom. I thought you—”
“I can’t sense magic,” she said, voice dark. “Yes. But Rarity has bene here for all the spells, you can verify with her. I’m not wrong.”
“Sorry,” Twilight said. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant. Just…” she sighed. “Listen. What we’re dealing with here isn’t magic, and that’s a good thing. Whatever it is, I think magic is its weakness. The defense turrets—they use accelerator crystals to charge the electromagnets. The rifles use thaumic capacitors. That’s what our weapons had in common, and what made them so effective. I think if we’d use gunpowder or crossbows or some other tools, it wouldn’t have done anything.”
This is the most tactically useful information, Twilight thought. But just because it was useful didn’t mean it was what she most wanted to know. “What was it, exactly?”
Apple Bloom looked down, gesturing at one of her slides. “Nothing we’ve ever seen before. Fluttershy looked at some of these for me, and she doesn’t recognize it either. All I can tell you there is that it’s more energetic than it is physical. Whatever energy it needs, it can’t get that from anything mechanical. Uh… me, and Node, and Iron Horse too. We really are immune.”
Finally we’re getting some answers.
Not too far away, Fluttershy was finally getting to work on their other source of information: Sunset Shimmer.
1. Focus rejuvenation primarily on the brain. Almost anything else can be surgically repaired or replaced, but the ability to heal the nervous system is limited.
2. Revive Sunset using a wholistic approach, treating no part of her body more than others. At this point, focusing too much on one system might allow the others to fail during her treatment.
3. Use Twilight and Rarity to perform magical healing. While our only casters are unskilled, medical magic is the only sure way to fully repair some of the damage this patient has experienced.
4. Allow her to die with dignity under the knife. Sunset will probably be in constant pain for the rest of her life. Twilight is wrong to force her to survive like this. I’ll make it look natural.
Not everyone could be in attendance for the surgery, despite how much they might want to. After an initial prep on Proximus B, Fluttershy loaded what was left of Sunset Shimmer onto the Prospector.
Twilight was there to hold her in total antigravity, even during transit, while Spike worked the controls. Only Node came along, since her direct involvement would be needed to get the artificial limbs working.
Twilight managed the trip up without difficulty, with only a minor hiccup that nearly flubbed the whole thing.
Is Twilight’s Insight far more powerful in space? Critical Yes.
She stopped hearing Spike and Fluttershy’s thoughts, stopped imagining the faint, desperate feelings of fear and pain from the sedated Sunset Shimmer. Instead her mind started to drift outward—past the ring, which whispered faintly to her whenever she closed her eyes. There was no direction to the feeling, it was in front of her no matter what way she turned her head.
She could hear… something. A fleet, vaster than anything Equestria had ever imagined. At its center was a star, a red-dwarf surrounded by mirrors and stations each of which whispered faintly to all the others. All the power of that star blasted outward from behind it through a tiny opening, without even the faintest trace of gamma-rays leaking from any other part.
And around it was…
Can Twilight keep her focus? No.
She screamed, and her spell started to spark. She dropped to one knee under the assault, nearly dropping the levitating Sunset with her. Any other unicorn would have, but for an Alicorn, spells had just a little more sticking power. Just a second.
Can Fluttershy help her in time? Yes. Twilight takes three points of bashing damage from overdose.
She felt a faint pressure on the back of her head, heard the rushing air of a nitrogen needle. The pain faded instantly, and Twilight was suddenly wide alert. Time almost slowed down for a few seconds, and she caught Sunset’s surgical apparatus could hit the ground.
“That’s more than I’d give anypony for a week,” Fluttershy said from just behind her, removing an empty canister from her nitrogen needle. “How’s that?”
“The… buck did you…” Her brain kept expanding, looking so far past the fleet that it went out of focus. Whatever danger there had been of her being overwhelmed by what she saw was gone.
“Wakeup,” she said. “Stimulants interfere with delicate magic, but leave the simple stuff alone. It’s something unicorns get warned about in the Academy. Why unicorns can’t have anything more than coffee during surgery.”
“I might need more of that,” Twilight said. Her heart raced, her breathing slow and shallow. “In case something like this happens again.”
“With respect,” Fluttershy said, checking Sunset’s vitals for the thousandth’s time. “Buck no. If I gave you another milliliter your heart would stop. Mine would’ve.”
Twilight grumbled, but this wasn’t the time to have this argument. She could feel the weight pressing her to the floor lessening—in a few more minutes, they would reach high orbit, and her magic wouldn’t be needed.
Besides, there might be other treatments. I can table this until after Sunset. Fluttershy was on to something with the stimulants.
They docked without incident, and for the first time in months, Twilight returned to the Equinox.
She smelled the familiar scent of the air-recyclers as the airlock cycled around them and found herself smiling despite their grim purpose here. The ground was nice, but it had never really been her home. This was where she belonged.
There was no more acceleration gravity, so she had to use her own magic to simulate any. She flew like a pegasus as they took their pony through to the medical bay, resting her magic for the lengthy process ahead.
Fluttershy had already told her that zero gravity would not be used during this surgery, so Twilight would need all the endurance she could muster.
Fluttershy was remarkably formal about everything, right down to using Spike as a medical orderly with gloves and apron and everything. Twilight herself would be casting the spell from behind the surgical-theater’s window. “Her immune system is effectively destroyed, and we’re cutting into her. She’ll need to remain in a completely sterile environment for some time.”
“You’re saying Sunset is stuck up here,” Twilight said, stopping Fluttershy before she could pass through the medical airlock. She didn’t feel even slightly tired and didn’t suspect she would for a few more days. At least the voices hadn’t come back.
“I would’ve suggested it anyway,” Fluttershy said. “So little of her original body survived that the stress of movement down on the surface would likely kill her. But up here, she has a chance.”
Twilight didn’t argue, just took one of the viewing seats and got ready to apply her gravity spell. Ordinarily she would’ve brought entertainment to keep her distracted during something like this, but just now she knew she wouldn’t look away. She cast her spell, charging the operating room’s gravity grid. Even a young unicorn could keep this going—it was an enchantment, all she had to do was keep the spell powered. Twilight settled in for a long wait.
She listened through the window, occasionally answering radio calls from the surface, and providing updates. “Fluttershy just opened her skull.” Or “She’s clearing a blockage in Sunset’s cranial artery.” Everything was focused on her brain—for the rest of her, Fluttershy had basically just plugged her into life support and hoped for the best.
The process took nearly twenty-four hours. Twilight’s own stimulants made staying awake easy for her, but she could see Fluttershy start to falter. Spike gave up completely at some point and slumped into a corner, not waking up for the rest of the surgery. But Node was already there to supply implants, and she wouldn’t get tired, so she took Spike’s place.
Eventually it was done. Fluttershy covered her sleeping patient, then dragged herself out the decontamination scrubbers. She flopped sideways out the airlock and onto the ground, looking up weakly at Twilight.
How was the surgery? Sunset Shimmer’s brain damage has been repaired, and she will not suffer from chronic pain once healing is complete. Nerve damage to the rest of her body will make other complications and require intense physical training to regain the use of her limbs. Her damage is reduced to a single point of aggravated, though her maximum health is not yet restored.
“She’s… fixed,” Fluttershy said. “Or… mostly fixed. The parts that we can’t replace. She’ll need six months of intense treatment to be ‘healthy’ again. I’ll be keeping her under for the twenty-four hours, then you’ll be able to talk to her. If she wakes up. We still don’t…”
Is Fluttershy hurt from her surgical work? Yes. Fluttershy is drained to exhaustion and takes a single point of lethal damage from her exertions.
She started snoring.
Twilight relaxed her gravity spell at last. She didn’t intend to leave this room, in case something happened through the glass. With Fluttershy completely incapacitated, she might be the one to save Sunset if something serious happened.
Nothing with Sunset did, but after a few hours, Twilight’s radio buzzed, and she sat up.
“Rainbow here,” came the voice, with the telltale signs of transmission delay. “We have… a bit of a situation.”
“Go ahead,” Twilight prompted. She was still wide awake—it seemed like Fluttershy’s drug would make her never able to feel tired again.
“Rarity detected some strange EM readings coming from in the building. I think something in the memorial is waking up. If what we’re reading was one of our ships, I’d read that amount of waste heat as a reactor as big as the Equinox’s, maybe bigger.”
Twilight had to make orders fast.
1. Rainbow takes the best available crew into the Memorial to investigate.
2. Rainbow evacuates camp into the city ruins on a wheeled cargo vehicle, getting enough distance to survive even a fusion explosive. Get underground and stay there.
3. Twilight wakes spike with some stimulant, then flies the Prospector down herself for an evacuation. We can watch from orbit.
Twilight was powerless to help as she galloped through the Equinox, heading straight back to the docking bay. Every second counted, and even an instant takeoff would still make her about fifteen minutes from arriving.
By the time she’d made it into the Prospector, she could hear the panicked shouts coming in over the radio. Rainbow again. “Multiple airborne contacts out of the Memorial. The whole roof just opened! Buck me, there’s so many!”
Twilight smacked down into the pilot’s chair, running through the pre-launch checks in a blur of motion. “I’m on my way!” she called back. “Keep them alive, Rainbow! Keep me apprised!”
“Aye! When I get a chance!” She switched channels. Twilight didn’t take her hooves away from the controls to follow her until she was leaving the Equinox behind, with its three barely-awake ponies as a crew and one frozen stowaway. Nothing better go wrong while we’re gone. But there was no reason to be that worried about the Equinox—she’d been built to survive many decades of hard travel in space, she wasn’t exactly going to crumble to nothing in a few hours.
Twilight burned into the sharpest descent-angle the Prospector’s heat shields could handle, then switched her radio into ‘universal reception’ mode. It would still transmit on the general channel, but it would overlap the transmissions she received from all channels in one, so she could listen.
Personal radios didn’t have the power to get into orbit, but their base had a repeater antenna. So long as it was still standing, she would be able to hear them.
As soon as she flipped over, she heard automatic turrets. “They’re physical,” Rarity’s voice, coming from the same control room spike had been using before. “Yes, it’s bringing them down. Or… wait. How many of these things are there?”
Are the turrets an effective defense? No.
“You don’t want the answer to that,” Node responded. “Sonar suggests several thousand contacts, with more streaming from the interior. Your tracking software is throwing overflow errors. Attempting to compensate.”
Rainbow’s voice cut through the static. “We can hunker down or we can run. How good is your shield, Rarity? Can you hold them off until the captain arrives?”
Does Rarity have the magic to shield the base from an attack like this? No.
“I could buy you five minutes,” Rarity said. “And that’s assuming we all packed into one of the buildings. I can’t shield a whole base like Twilight.”
“I don’t mean to be a bother,” Apple Bloom this time. “But they’re starting to fly past the turrets. There’s just too many to shoot at all at once!”
Rainbow’s voice again, this time sounding clearer. She’d switched channels to the general high band again. “Captain, please advise. We don’t have the hardware to defend our base. We’ve got thousands of airborne contacts. Mechanical, a little like the ones you and Applejack saw. Any ideas?”
Twilight gritted her teeth, biting back her frustration. If she’d been there, she could’ve shielded the base for fifteen minutes. But she had to tell them something.
1. Hunker down as best you can. Grab a turret, use your shields, everything. Hold out.
2. Apple Bloom is mechanical, maybe they’ll ignore her. Send her into the memorial and try to shut them down.
3. Run for the city, and prepare for extraction there instead.
4. Pinkie suggests the contingency would be useful. Maybe if it was connected to bigger power source it might be able to stop them somehow.
“I can make it work!” Pinkie declared, her voice confident. “Trust me, captain! Please.”
She never would’ve considered it if she were still on the ground. But Twilight was still ten minutes away, no matter what she did.
“Okay,” she said. “Rainbow, prep for evac. If this doesn’t work, run for the city in two minutes. She has that long.”
“I… believe I can keep up a shield for that long,” Rarity muttered. “Yes. I’m sure of it. Two minutes. You better get going, Pinkie.”
Twilight listened as they swapped channels, grinding her teeth together in frustration as Rarity’s panicked voice joined the others. “One of them got in! Rainbow can you… thanks, darling. Can’t express how much I appreciate your help.”
“Don’t mention it.” Rainbow said. In the background behind her, Twilight heard gunfire. “How are we on the Device? Pinkie?”
She wanted to teleport straight down, to stop them somehow. But a teleport from low orbit while descending at entry speed was likely to end with her becoming a red smear in the grass. Her crew didn’t need that.
“That should be enough power!” Pinkie called, about a minute later. “Everypony… I don’t really know what this is gonna do. So, uh… everypony smile I guess?”
A wave of static overwhelmed the channel, building louder and louder until the speakers cut automatically.
Twilight moved faster than she had in her life, hooves dancing across the controls as she adjusted the external camera. She was low enough to get a good view of what was below.
Some part of her knew what she would see: a spectacular explosion, turning the surface of the planet into molten slag for miles around.
But that part of her was wrong.
She was already crying—but there was no explosion. No crater, no energy warnings. Nothing. She was still too high up for the Prospector’s cameras to show her individual ponies, but she could see the outline of buildings down there, and something large and black around the Memorial.
Nothing moved. The cloud didn’t expand, and she saw no suggestions of firing turrets or ponies rushing around. Twilight sat back in her chair, swiveling it around again to face the coms.
“Proximus B Landfall base, this is Prospector actual,” she said, her training blurring together into a soggy mess. “Come in.”
No response. No blast of static this time, so that was good. Maybe it was some kind of EMP? Radio might be down.
But if it was, what did that mean for Apple Bloom? Had she just ordered her killed in front of her own sister? Node too, and that weird robotic animal thing that had been Applejack’s leg. Okay, she could live without the last one.
“Memorial base, this is Prospector actual,” she said again. Please come in. I’m… nine minutes out. Confirm landing viability, over.”
Nothing.
Twilight switched to the conversational channel, and again her speakers began to squeak with feedback. She switched it off quickly, after listening to be sure there were no voices that she was missing.
Well, something’s transmitting that. That’s a good sign, right?
Twilight switched channels again. “Equinox, this is Prospector. Come in.”
A few seconds of silence, then Spike’s voice answered over the line. “Equinox here. Doctor is… still unconscious. What happened down there?”
“No idea,” Twilight answered, voice desperate. “Pinkie and Apple Bloom activated the Contingency together. The camp is intact, but I’m not getting a response.”
“Do you want me to wake Fluttershy?”
“For what?” Twilight asked. “Just keep an eye on Sunset. Call the instant she wakes. I’ll update you when I land.”
“Got it,” Spike said. “Equinox… out.” It didn’t go out, though. He went back to snoring, right over the line. Twilight switched back to the main ground channel, trying a few more times. All without success. The ground got closer, along with her view.
The cloud was made of thousands of little metal shapes, six-limbed and with strange weapons mounted on their underside. They were flat, and possibly built to fly. She couldn’t tell, because every one of them had crashed out of the sky. They littered the ground in broken mountains, spreading away from the camp and up to the building.
One of the stationary guns had exploded, leaving a crater near one edge of camp. But as her camera resolution got closer, she saw none of what she’d feared most: There were no corpses.
As her ship got closer, Twilight rushed about in the storage lockers, pulling on the armor fitted to her alicorn body. There was no telling if it would be effective against alien weapons, but that didn’t mean she should be stupid and leave it behind. She fitted the energy rifle from earlier into her holster, complete with three charged cells. Her sidearm had regular bullets—the combination would have to be enough.
The landing pad was mostly clear by the time she touched down, settling down on long landing struts. She didn’t even bother with proper engine shutdown, just slamming a hoof on the emergency button and ignoring the blaring sirens that followed.
She didn’t rush right out of the ship—even Twilight wasn’t that reckless—but instead she searched each of the windows, looking for any sign of motion from the piles of broken equipment. There were none on the landing pad, but a large hill gathered outside Lab N. Nothing.
Twilight briefly considered firing the mining laser directly into the pile and seeing what happened—but there was at least some chance that actual hostility would be returned in kind.
She didn’t walk out of the ship, at least, but teleported directly out onto the landing pad, rifle in her magic.
Nothing moved. Up close, the little robots didn’t seem so dangerous. She nudged one with a hoof, and one of its flat metal arms deformed under the pressure. It didn’t move. Not so much as a camera pointed at her.
“Is anypony there?” she asked.
Only silence answered.
But it was no mystery where she would have to go. Twilight marched up to the lab. N now had the best access to power, thanks to all of Node’s fabrication work. It would’ve been the natural place to take the Contingency. And defend it.
She wouldn’t be getting through the front door—the pile of drones here was gigantic enough that it deformed the wall, and she didn’t intend to waste time moving them.
She went instead to the emergency fire escape in back, which the drones had left alone. IT looked like regular wall, but Twilight knew what she was looking for. On the other side was a lever, which she reached for with her magical senses. She yanked, then stepped aside.
A small explosive charge shook the field as cracks formed in the wall. It didn’t get flung into the air—that kind of force would’ve hurt the occupants inside. But scores in the steel and woven carbon canvas gave way, letting Twilight yank on the wall section. After a few seconds of effort, she pried it loose, and crawled into the tube-like emergency exit.
There was no airlock waiting, just the flashing red light of the emergency exit.
Her friends lay scattered on the ground inside, unmoving. Twilight froze, teleporting directly to where Rainbow lay beside the guns. Her armor was dented, and there was a little blood—but nothing that would’ve killed her.
She reached down with a hoof, dreading what she would find… but no, there was a pulse. Faint, but distinct. She was breathing too.
“Rainbow?” She asked, nudging her with a hoof. “Rainbow, wake up.”
No response.
Twilight shook her shoulder, then tried a simple wake-up spell she’d often used instead of coffee in the academy.
Nothing.
Twilight removed her personal radio, holding it to her mouth. “Equinox, this is Twilight. Come in.”
Static.
“Equinox,” She raised her voice, pacing quickly over to Rarity. She didn’t respond any more than Rainbow had, but just like her she showed only superficial wounds. She was still alive. “Equinox, this is captain Twilight Sparkle. Come in.”
Silence.
“Probably just… some kind of interference,” she whispered to herself, returning it to its clip. She still needed to figure out what had happened.
The interior of the lab was well lit, with work lights pointing towards the airlock. Two stationary guns were pointed at it, and the front wall was peppered with holes. Shattered bits of metal refuse littered the ground, along with the plastic clips that linked their magnetic shells together for auto-loaders.
But the exit was right in back, so she was directly beside where the Contingency had been used.
There it sat, lines of its construction glowing brightly. Pinkie and Apple Bloom were motionless beside it, with Node not much further.
“Node? Apple Bloom?”
They didn’t move.
Twilight slumped weakly onto her haunches, feeling utterly defeated. The stimulants were wearing off, and as they faded the crushing reality of her situation was descending rapidly.
For the first time since her mission began, Twilight didn’t have a clue what to do next.
It was a good thing she had i̥̭̞n̜̱̞̤͜s̵̺̟̣̥į̲͙̣g̞h̙̞̫̣̖͈̯t̨̫̖̦͈̟.
Through Twilight’s confusion, one truth surface before all the others. She might be somewhere strange; she might be light-years away from home and ignorant of the state of Equestria. But that didn’t mean all her knowledge and experience was suddenly invalid.
She knew dark magic. Anything that could’ve done permanent damage to her friends would have done something serious to their bodies as well. The fact that they were undamaged guaranteed that this situation was different. They aren’t waking up, that means their minds have gone somewhere.
She’d assumed when Apple Bloom described the Contingency and the city inside it, that it contained compactified space, or some nonmagical equivalent. Maybe the reason it took so little energy and the reason her friends’ bodies were intact were the same.
She would’ve called the Equinox for help, but they still hadn’t answered. She would have to decide for herself.
The first part of her task was easy: load everypony into the Prospector as carefully as she could. There was no way she’d be able to individually levitate them, or anything else so convenient. But so far as she could tell, they were still alive, or at least their basic systems were still functioning.
It took a few hours, where Twilight was increasingly dragging her hooves as her days without sleep finally caught up to her. She couldn’t keep going forever, and eventually she had to curl up in the corner of the prospector and close her eyes.
She woke a few hours later, to panicked shouting from nearby. Twilight sat up, groaning and rubbing her eyes. A glance around the Prospector’s cargo bay told her exactly what she’d feared—nopony had woken up. The shouting was coming from her portable radio.
Twilight levitated it up, squinting down at the screen. It was connected to the prospector’s antenna, using the general channel.
It was Fluttershy’s voice, desperate and afraid. “Twilight, are you there? Twilight?”
She nodded reflexively, even though she knew Fluttershy wouldn’t be able to hear her. “Fluttershy? What’s going on?”
Fluttershy was on the edge of tears. “We’re moving. I didn’t know why, but…”
Spike’s voice joined her in the background. No mystery about how that might be, since they’d both been in medical. “It’s not much of a push. Navigational thrusters, burning hydrogen. But it feels like it’s down towards the planet.”
Oh buck. With only the auxiliary reactors, there wasn’t a chance in Tartarus of going anywhere with the Equinox. The navigational thrusters wouldn’t even be enough to escape the planet’s gravity. But there was something they could do: destabilize their orbit.
Twilight ran the numbers in her head, or tried. She couldn’t remember the exact height of the Equinox, or the precise velocity it had been traveling. They’d taken an extremely conservative orbit, since they knew it might be months before they flew again, and extensive repairs would be needed. “Let me see… whoever’s doing that will have to shut them down every few seconds to stop the nozzles from overheating.” They weren’t likely to run out of hydrogen before they ran out of orbit.
“You have at least three days,” Twilight said, her voice panicked. “We were going fast, and those thrusters weren’t made for major corrections. If they fire too fast, the nozzles will melt, and your problem will be over.”
“There’s something else,” Spike added. “We’re losing access to the computers, one system at a time. But once we started moving, I went right to cryogenics to check. That was the first sector to go non-responsive."
Has Cozy Glow been biding her time, and finally takes control of the Equinox? Yes.
Buck, who else could it be? They didn’t leave her in suspense, in any case. Cozy Glow’s voice came over the radio, as sickly sweet as she remembered. She must be suffering terribly from cryosickness, but she managed to conceal it. “This mission is over now, Twilight. I wanted it to be peaceful. We could’ve made an agreement never to leave system and lived our lives here. But now I know I can’t trust you. I’m taking permanent measures.”
Twilight took her magic off the transmission button, then swore under her breath. “Cozy Glow, listen to me. Your information is out of date. Since the last time you were awake, we’ve run into ponies from a second mission into the system. Something already happened in Equestria. They might need our help desperately.”
Cozy giggled. If she heard the gravity of what Twilight had said, she didn’t care. “There are no other ships in the system. If they really did come here, I don’t need to worry about them getting away. Don’t worry, I’ll let the escape pod launch as soon as our orbit decays beyond recovery. Unless I see somepony coming, that is. I’ve already locked your crew into the medical bay. If I see that prospector come anywhere near me, say goodbye to their air!” The line clicked.
Okay so maybe… my first plan didn’t go quite the way I thought. Twilight sat back, glancing around at her cargo bay of motionless ponies. She had already wired each of the organics into the medical system, to alert her if anything went seriously wrong. Nothing had, though they’d need to go onto life support soon. She had already given each of them water, but eventually they’d start to starve.
If there was one thing Twilight knew, it was that she needed help. Cozy Glow’s appearance might’ve been unexpected, but it also gave her a definite enemy. With a surge of adrenaline came the resolve to keep fighting.
[All options are dangerous]
1. Use her long relationship with Spike to work out a covert way to contact him and coach him through retaking the Equinox from the inside.
2. Violate Cozy’s injunction and try to board the Equinox using a low-altitude teleport.
3. Investigate the Contingency to attempt to free one or more crew-members first.
4. Go inside and see if the Memorial’s defenses can be turned against the Equinox.
Spike scratched uselessly at the medical bulkhead, widening the grooves he was making along the lock. Had this been simple steel, he would have been though it hours ago. But they’d built the Equinox to last, and that meant its most important parts could endure anything. Including dragon claws, apparently.
“Don’t bother, Spike,” Fluttershy said, voice weak. “You heard what she said. We can leave the Equinox as soon as it’s about to crash. She’ll take us with her on the escape pod.”
“I won’t let her do that,” Spike said. He didn’t turn around, didn’t stop carving. IT was no use, but he had to do something. “This is my ship as much as Twilight’s I’m not going to lose it while I’m in command.”
“Spike… nopony blames you for this,” Fluttershy said. “I’m not sure anypony is responsible for—”
But Spike didn’t hear what she said next, because something was traveling up his throat. He felt the flames begin involuntarily, the same way they always did. Except that he hadn’t experienced this is over forty years. Magical scrolls were a quaint novelty in a world of radio. Their only real advantage was integrity, since only a pony who he’d given some of his dragonfire could send to him.
It wasn’t an elegant scroll with a stamp and red ribbon that appeared in his claw, but a large blueprint roll, hastily sealed and with something dark red soaking into part of the paper.
It was blood. Twilight had powered this spell with the most potent thing an Alicorn could use. Even magical defenses wouldn’t have stopped it.
Spike stopped clawing at the door, catching the roll as it materialized and turning to face Fluttershy.
“Princess C-Celes—”
“No!” Spike rolled his eyes. “If Celestia was going to start sending us things again, why would she use the blueprints to Node’s artificial legs as writing paper?”
“Oh.”
Spike chose an empty patch of floor, rolling out the plans. They had already destroyed the only camera, so he didn’t have to worry about Cozy Glow seeing them. She was confident in her knowledge that they were trapped. And until very recently, she had been right.
Spike,
There is only one creature who can get the Equinox back—you. After running the numbers on the Prospector’s computer, I can tell you that you have until about 21:00 before the orbital decay becomes critical. If you can shut the thrusters down before that point, our orbit will remain stable for several days. If the Equinox continues to fall after that, you have an additional four hours, until 1:00 hours tomorrow, to reverse thrusters and pull out of the dive. At that point, only the engines could reverse our fall, and obviously repairing them would take too long.
You heard Cozy’s ultimatum, if I make any attempt to board, she will vent the air and kill both of you. This demand is not entirely empty—there is an emergency airlock in medical for loading directly into the medical bay after an emergency. While you continue with what I outline below, Fluttershy needs to sabotage the mechanism according to this diagram. When she says she can’t do it, remind her that airlocks are designed to stay shut rather than open and that I know she can do it.
As for you, Spike, your mission will be much more difficult. It involves great personal risk, and if you choose not to take it, I will not think less of you. You’ve already made me proud with your performance on this mission. I could not hope for a better second officer.
Even if we stop the thrusters from making us lose orbit, so long as Cozy Glow remains aboard, there are a dozen ways she could destroy the Equinox if she has the technical skill. She is your main target—you must subdue or kill her. The first is preferable, but don’t hesitate to do the second if she leaves you no other choice.
First, there is a single section of medical that can’t be manually sealed—medical waste disposal. It travels to an incinerator that would not harm you even if it was running, which it likely isn’t given the emergency status of our reactor.
Once you arrive at waste processing, you will be only a deck below central computer. Travel there, and perform a restore from the crystalline backup stored there. During this process, all computer control will be locked out for the 48-hours or so required to perform the restore.
Once this is done, it should be safe for me to board the Equinox and help you. But even if I cannot join you in time, you should be more than an equal for whatever Cozy has prepared. Find her, retake the Equinox.
Spike, I don’t mean to alarm you, but there is a real chance that if we wait for Cozy Glow to complete her plan, that all our friends will die. After sending this message, I’m going to do my best to hook them into life support, to keep them alive while they wait for Fluttershy. There is no guarantee that I’ll succeed.
No matter what happens, know that I love you Spike. You were the best little brother a pony could ask for.
-Twilight.
“Wow,” Fluttershy muttered, staring down at the scroll. “She really thought this all out, didn’t she?”
“You know Twilight,” Spike answered. It was either laugh or cry—so he laughed, tears streaming down his eyes. The future of the Equinox—any chance that they would ever see their home again—rested on him.
It was his choice to make.
1. Attempt Twilight’s plan. [dangerous] 2. Retake the ship another way instead, chancing dragon resistance to hard vacuum and a biohazard suit to spacewalk to another entrance. [dangerous] 3. Wake Sunset Shimmer and use her unicorn magic to try and retake the ship. [dangerous] 4. Do nothing and let Cozy carry out her plan.
Spike barely felt any doubt in his mind about what he had to do next. Cozy’s dominion might seem overwhelming, but they weren’t out yet. That pony was so confident they’d been out mastered that she didn’t seem to care to watch them here in medical.
Her loss. I’m going to teach that pony to threaten my friends.
“Are you sure about this?” Fluttershy asked, as he stomped over to the medical waste disposal and started removing screws. Of course none of the spare parts he removed were wearing magnetic greaves, so they just started floating around in the air, a little cloud around him as he worked. “She doesn’t seem like she’ll hurt us if we do what she says. But if you leave… she tries to kill us. Sunset here can’t take any stress. If anything happens in here, she’ll die.”
“You can seal the airlock, like Twilight said,” Spike muttered. He had the plastic shield just about off, exposing the shiny metal tube beyond. His baby self could’ve slid through with room to spare, but now it was going to be tight. Fortunately, the trash went down in sealed cylinders, or else it would have been unspeakably awful in there. “Fluttershy, this is our only chance of ever seeing home again. I won’t let her destroy it.”
“There isn’t much of home left to see,” she muttered. “The ponies we know will all be gone. But… I guess you’re a dragon. You have dragon friends.”
He shrugged. “It isn’t about that. It’s about our mission. Celestia told us to come back, and I promised her I would make sure we did.” He didn’t bother grabbing makeshift weapons from the medical bay—his own claws would be better than anything he could scavenge here.
“Good luck,” Fluttershy began. “Could you, uh… maybe give me a few minutes to start on the airlock before you… get caught?”
“Yeah,” he sat back. “I can help, even. It shouldn’t take long.”
It didn’t, as soon enough he was crawling back into the tube. He flicked off his greaves, and any suggestion of an up or down vanished from in front of him. He crawled forward, squeezing around the tight bend, with a flashlight in one claw. It didn’t look down, or up, just forward.
Does Spike escape? Yes, and without detection.
He moved slowly, using his claws to inch through the tube without bumping too far in any one direction and making noise. Being a dragon certainly didn’t help in that regard, considering he’d be filling the tube with sound if he jostled even a bit to one side or the other.
Twilight was wrong about the furnace—as he got closer, he could see the bright red of the coils, radiating waves of warm air up towards him. I hope you’re right about this being okay for a dragon.
Is it? Yes.
Heat blasted him as he approached, and servo motors tried to grab his capsule as though it had been slung along by the electromagnets. He backed away, waiting for them to give up. He couldn’t let them come anywhere near him, or else they might report a fault that Cozy could notice. I’m getting my ship back.
Spike emerged at the bottom of the Equinox, slicing through the protective shell of the medical waste chute and emerging into a low-level storage room. In flight these sections of the ship weren’t even pressurized. But now it was, though there were only narrow catwalks between huge machines designed to need little-to-no servicing during their mission.
First step, no more computer control. Spike pushed himself through the air rather than re-engage his greaves, which looked to have survived the brief heat treatment much better than the plastic flashlight that had run through his claws like water.
He reached the elevator leading up, claw hesitating over the ‘car call.’ She’s probably got sensors on that.
Does Spike know a way around countermeasure? Yes.
Spike grinned to himself, floating back to the other side of the room and removing the emergency tools from their clip. You’re in my territory now, Cozy. I was keeping this ship running for longer than you’ve been awake and alive. I know it like the back of my claws.
He pushed back to the elevator, fiddling with a loose panel. The elevator in this section of the Equinox wasn’t airtight, since it relied on the deck 4 airlock. That meant with enough force, he could pry the body right up, and climb in.
True, he’d be crushed to death if anypony called the car to the drive section, but he didn’t predict that happening.
Emergency lights flashed in the elevator high above, indicating the compromised status of the Equinox. He ignored them, pushing up until he reached central computer. Here there were no loose plates, and there was only one way out without setting off an alarm. Spike took his claws, and sliced right through the steel above the door, until it came away in a clean section of metal.
He drifted into the main computer, pushing the metal gently away and floating in.
Is Cozy already there? Critical yes. Was she there to destroy the computer so that even if they retook the ship they would still lose it? No.
He found himself staring down the barrel of a long-rifle, and the reflective glint of metal from within the barrel. Those aren’t plastic bullets. Spike knew he was immune to crowd control rounds. But he’d never been shot with steel before. I’m about to find out what that’s like, aren’t I?
The master console was on, the dot matrix humming quietly. Meanwhile Cozy floated slightly above the ground, her wings flapping every now and then to push her back down. There was no sign of cryosickness on her—this pony hadn’t just woken up. “You’re… Spike, right?” she said. “Why didn’t you just listen to me? Your friend wouldn’t have to die, and neither would you.”
She reached out, but Spike raised his voice, surging towards her. He was now only three or so meters away, almost within reach of his flames. But even if he was close enough, they wouldn’t kill a pony very quickly. “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” he said flatly. “How much time do you think it will take me to cut your throat?” He bore his teeth, growling dangerously. “I’m ready for a race if you are.”
Spike had to choose his strategy, and soon.
1. Rush her. Fluttershy’s airlock is secure, it’s only me in danger. So long as she doesn’t kill me with the first shot, I win.
2. Try to secure her surrender with promises of amnesty. No one is hurt yet. This can end before it begins.
3. Try to win her over with information learned on the mission. Equestria might already be gone, Sunset is here. She can’t keep fighting for a dead society forever.
Spike gritted his teeth, staring down the rifle aimed at his chest. There was no longer a mystery in his mind about whether he would survive it—he’d been shot before. This pony was threatening his friends, threatening to stand all of them forever in this desolate star system. She wasn’t going to get away with it.
Cozy shoots Spike. 7 vs 6. Cozy Shoots first.
He lunged, baring his teeth in a desperate, instinctive snarl. He felt the impact in his chest driving him back before he heard the bang, but he didn’t slow down.
He hardly even felt the pain as he crashed into Cozy Glow, smashing her into the computer console behind her and shattering the screen in an explosion of glass.
Does Spike stop Cozy first? Yes.
He felt something break under his weight, but he didn’t stop. Not until Cozy Glow stopped moving under him. Only then did he look down and see the blood.
Cozy Glow rolls for damage. 2e6. 14. Spike has a total of 3 armor and 10 health, meaning cozy scores 11 damage after armor.
Spike makes a willpower roll to hold on to life in critical condition. Failure.
Somehow, Cozy had hit him square in the broken scale. The bullet had cut through his chest and not emerged, leaving a thick, pulsing blood from inside. Spike’s head started to spin. There was pain there, pain that felt like it belonged to someone else.
Is Cozy dead? Yes.
In the… damn… guts… Spike thought. He pushed off, drifting slowly towards the radio on the wall. He bumped into it, taking it in one claw. His fingers barely wanted to move. The world was already going fuzzy.
“Captain…” he said. “Twilight. Are you…”
“On my way, Spike!” her voice answered. “Five minutes! I’m writing a teleport as we speak!”
Spike found himself smiling as he heard it. Twilight was the first pony he’d ever seen, the first voice he’d known. It was fitting it would be the last. “D-don’t… bother,” he croaked. “She’s dead. Got me… good. Don’t know if…”
“Hold on, Spike!” she shouted, her voice edging into hysteria. “I’m coming!”
Can Twilight make it in time to save his life? No.
“Don’t think…” he couldn’t see much anymore. His head was swimming, and blood pooled out in front of him from the wound. “Not enough time.”
“Fluttershy, get down there! He must still be in the central computer!”
What about Fluttershy? No.
“I’m still locked in!” she squealed, desperately. “Captain, I can’t fit through the waste shaft like he did. I can’t teleport.”
What about Sunset Shimmer? Has she been awake all this time for a last-second save? Critical no.
“I love you… Twi,” Spike croaked. Everything was fading, but he wasn’t done quite yet. Next to his claw was an intact console, already set to thruster control. He edged one claw just a little further, and smacked it against the escape key.
PROGRAM SUSPENDED
The Equinox stopped moving. Spike did soon after.
First Officer Spike has died.
Twilight
Twilight was still crying into her radio long after docking with the Equinox. She’d called for Spike many times, and not had any response. Even Fluttershy was off the channel now, unable to handle her hysterics.
“Docking successful,” Starlight Glimmer’s voice said, for the eleventh time. “Airlock pressure equalized.”
What could she do? Spike wasn’t just the second officer; he was her brother. Was there any medical magic that could save him? She had to try something.
Around her were the resting bodies of her friends, hearts still beating but minds totally silent to her I͇̣̝̻̯ͅN̗̫̘͓ͅS̡̘͍͇̖̙̪I҉̭̗̠̭̥G͍͙͙̬̯͡H̵̲̯̼T͘. But maybe there was something there. Some last, desperate plan.
Twilight stormed into the cargo bay, her magic burning like a torch. She didn’t even feel the absence of gravity now, it didn’t matter. At the far end of the bay was the Contingency, packed in an ordinary storage crate. So long as Twilight kept her distance, she could levitate it with her.
So she opened the airlock, levitating the sphere along with her to the elevator. This would be the most difficult part, not getting drawn inside while she was forced to stand close to it. She felt the pull of gravity stretching her towards it.
Can Twilight resist it? Critical yes.
Twilight shook off its pull with contempt, glowering at the metal sphere. “I don’t need you for me.” The door opened on the central computer, and the scene of chaos inside.
Cozy Glow had apparently anticipated her plan, or she had her own reasons to be down working on the mainframe. Twilight didn’t know, and she didn’t care. She pushed the Contingency out in front of her, towards where Spike’s body floated motionless beside a console. A cloud of his blood surrounded him, staining everything nearby. Much too much for him to still be alive.
Does the Contingency work on the recently dead? Critical no.
Had it worked? Twilight couldn’t see anything different about it—but she had to hope. Maybe he’s in there with the others. Assuming that was even where they were. She still wasn’t sure about that—or anything else, for that matter.
Her brother was dead, floating motionless in front of her. What was the bucking point? Why should she even keep fighting? Cozy might be gone, but she’d still won. There was no way they could make it back to Equestria now.
Can Twilight hold herself together? Yes.
Twilight’s mind drifted to some dark places. She shouldn’t leave Spike’s survival to the Contingency’s whims. There was magic that worked on the recently dead, magic that could bring him back. Far more forbidden than anything Starlight had ever used.
‘Don’t think like that,’ she could almost hear Spike saying from beside her. ‘I didn’t die so you could give up.’
She shook her head, banishing those dark thoughts. She had to keep going. First she had to do something about the dead, then…
“Are you sure you don’t need my help?” Fluttershy asked. Her voice was gentle and kind, as kind as Twilight ever remembered it. The others would have offered their own condolences, if they were awake to do it. But as it was, only she and her doctor would be witnesses at Spike’s vigil.
But not even that. Fluttershy had her work cut out for her just getting everypony Twilight had brought back from the surface hooked into life support proper. Her own job had been poor at best, and if left to their own devices, they would not have remained alive for much longer.
Twilight levitated the red biohazard container behind her every second, where Fluttershy couldn’t see. “I’m sure,” she said. “You worry about the living, d-doctor. I’ll prepare him for burial. And cremate the stowaway while I’m at it.”
She backed through the airlock rather than turning away, and risking even a second’s glance at the stolen sample container.
As soon as she was around the bend, Twilight took off galloping as quickly as she could, using her magic to keep up the illusion of gravity. No matter how powerful this technology, no matter how remote the chances of its success, she couldn’t let it wait any longer than necessary. Spike might be a dragon, but he was now a dead dragon.
This is such a bad idea, she thought, clambering into the elevator and smashing the button for central computer. This is the kind of thing horror stories are made of. But at the same time, she found she didn’t care. The chance, even a remote chance, that this could work, was more important than any risk. It should bring Spike back to life once the dead neurons have been replaced. Bring. Him. Back. It was like a chant in her head, a perverse funeral dirge that overwrote all other concerns.
Does Twilight move Spike out of central computer first? No.
Twilight hadn’t even moved him from where he’d fallen, for fear that even a slight perturbation would lower her chances of success.
Is Twilight prepared for failure? Critical yes.
She had done pushed Cozy’s corpse up into the air, where it wouldn’t accidentally be exposed to the virus. Spike’s sacrifice would not be undone, even if she did fail today.
Bring. Him. Back.
Twilight had done everything she could to prepare for a perspective failure, anything that wouldn’t slow her down too much. She had brought one of the energy rifles over from the Prospector, along with reloading the gun she thought Cozy had used.
Firing that one would be a true gamble, since even a hit might fly right through her target and puncture the hull. But unlike the movies, such a breach wouldn’t be instantly fatal. She could seal the breach if it came to that.
Twilight walked up to the emergency console near the corner of the room, shutting off atmospheric circulation to the room. Immediate amber lights began flashing, and a plastic box with a little oxygen bottle attached flipped out. She took it in her magic, pulling it on over her muzzle.
“Emergency atmospheric isolation protocol is in effect for mainframe level. Please evacuate the area immediately.” Starlight Glimmer’s voice said. “Please evacuate immediately.”
Twilight’s radio buzzed from her belt. “Captain, did something happen down there? I’m getting contamination warnings in medical.”
Twilight inhaled through the mask, feeling the stale, dry air on her tongue. Her throat ached with it, but it was a good pain. The pain of mistakes undone. “It was me,” she said. “Just a precaution.”
Fluttershy’s voice came back, low and sympathetic. “Captain, the dead aren’t… that dangerous. You can transport them a deck down for cremation without needing emergency air. The Equinox’s biofilters are fine for low-level contamination.”
Twilight ignored her. She stopped beside Spike, shutting his eyes with her magic. “I’m sorry about this, Spike. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
She opened the sample container. A hiss of compressed air emerged from the seal, then a little dusting of white powder. Twilight corralled all of it easily, pushing it towards Spike. She dusted his face with it, his chest, and the open wound that no longer bled.
He must’ve been dead over an hour by now. She saw the impact instantly as it struck his flesh—scales seemed immune, but the exposed parts of his eyes, mouth, and chest were not. Twilight backed away, capping the sample container and pressing the “reseal” button. There would be no accidental exposures today.
It was like watching ice spread across the surface of a chilled lake. Tendrils of strange fibers bridged across the wound, and down into his guts like a spear. They reached out, grabbing bits of metal debris out of the air and changing color to match the silvery aluminum. One tendril reached into a shattered console, and started soaking up the coper shades from within.
Twilight backed away; eyes wide as it seemed spears of the growing viral structure had been aimed at her. But no—that was just paranoia. Once the touched the deck-plating, they stopped, anchoring him in place and spinning a cocoon just as the virus had done several times before.
So the virus was… if not working, then it was certainly doing something.
“Captain, do you need me to come down there? If you can’t handle this… I’m sure the others will be fine for a few hours.”
“I’m sure,” she said through the mask. “Please, I need to do this. He’s my brother.” Bring. Him. Back.
“If you say so,” Fluttershy said. “When you’re, uh… when you’re done, I can provide counseling. Or medication, as required.”
“Yeah,” she said, turning off the radio. “But I won’t need it, because I’m getting him back.”
For now, Twilight would have to wait. She sat back, watching the cocoon for any sign of what might be happening inside. She would be here all night if she had to.
“I guess my vigil isn’t the way we intended,” Twilight said. “I hope you’ll forgive me one day.”
Twilight should’ve gone and done something else. She could be out alleviating Fluttershy’s suspicions perhaps, lowering the risk that she would head down to the central computer to investigate what had happened.
But Twilight didn’t care about anything else. This was her vigil, and she had to watch, until the first signs of motion emerged from within.
Does the process work as intended? Critical no.
The cocoon looked as though an invisible wind had stirred it. Its fibers unraveled, spreading in a dust that left no dragon behind, only extremely dangerous snow.
Does Twilight stop Cozy from being exposed? Yes.
Twilight moved by reflex, forming a shield around where Spike’s body had been, containing the bubble of contaminated metal as best she could. Even so, she felt the weight of failure crushing down on her from all sides. She’d done everything she could to save her brother, but it hadn’t done to him what happened to Apple Bloom, or Applejack’s leg.
Did the process preserve the essence of Spike’s mind, with holes in memory and personality created by dead tissue? Yes.
All the lights in the central computer went out. Worse, the gentle rumble from under her hooves, the comfortable pressure of the air recyclers—stopped too. For a few seconds, Twilight was plunged into total silence.
Until her radio hissed, and Fluttershy spoke from beside her. “Captain, uh… that wasn’t you, was it? I just went onto emergency power. This… isn’t a good time to forget that medical is at capacity? We’ve got all our friends on life support.”
Twilight’s voice cracked, and she spoke only through tears. “Looking into it!” she answered, hanging up before she could give away any hint to how she felt. If Fluttershy found out what she’d done…”
Twilight opened the sample container up again, filling it to bursting with the debris that had wrapped around her brother. These were somehow his body now too. Too dangerous to bury, or get anywhere near again.
Even a remote chance, I had to try. I’m sorry, Spike.
The mainframe began an emergency reboot procedure. Cooling fans started spinning again, and lights flickered from inside their glass case. As Twilight looked, she found she couldn’t see into the cases very well. Most of the glass was strangely fogged over.
We are so bucked if there was an electrical fire we didn’t notice.
Twilight leaned forward, pulling on the edge of the cabinet with her magic. To her surprise, the security lock was engaged. It wouldn’t open. She yanked a few times, but didn’t force it. Did Cozy manage to get it locked?
Then a screen came on at the far end of the room, casting an even glow that overpowered the status indicators. None of the other screens came back on, the air circulators remained off—it was only the one.
Twilight walked over, dodging past Cozy’s sightless corpse. She still needed to burn that. She would take care of it, as soon as she figured out what was wrong with ship’s power.
Does the virus get confused by the presence of the mainframe and see the Equinox itself as Spike's body? Yes.
The usual operating system wasn’t here, no sign of the preboot memory tests or any of the other procedures. Not even a flashing input cursor.
Where am I? There’s nopony here, and it’s so dark. Twilight, where are you?
Her heart nearly stopped beating in her chest. The virus hadn’t given Spike a robotic body like the others who had been exposed, it was true. But he had been dead. Apparently there was a better fit somewhere else.
Twilight tested the keyboard, and found it responded as she expected. Still no command prompt, but at least her input appeared on the screen.
I’m here, Spike.
Was it her imagination, or had the fans all around her ramped up? How long can we keep up this much compute running only on emergency backups? If their batteries died, there was a good chance her friends would die. She would lose a whole crew, instead of just one.
But the one she was speaking to responded. What happened, Twilight? We were on the Equinox for surgery… I can’t remember anything after. Did we save Sunset Shimmer?
We did, she responded. You did great, Spike. But right now I need you to turn the emergency reactor back on. Can you do that for me?
The computer didn’t respond, long enough that Twilight began to panic. The fans kept spinning, and her room stayed dark. Twilight’s emergency air had long since run out, though of course the air in each compartment would last far longer. It would take days for the CO2 buildup in the Equinox to kill.
But it would take far less time for her friends to die, and for her and Fluttershy to freeze to death.
I know the reactors, the computer said, eventually. I think I can…
“Emergency quarantine lifted,” Starlight Glimmer’s voice said. “Evacuation order suspended.”
Something mechanical rumbled above her, and the lights came back on. The air circulators started running again.
I don’t understand this place, the console said. I can see the Equinox all at once. Out every face, into the docking bay, you down in—
Why is Cozy Glow dead beside you? What’s going on?
Twilight winced, looking away from the security camera over her shoulder.She rose, walking away from the keyboard. Is it better than being dead? Guess you’ll have to decide that for yourself. There was a way to talk to him—if Spike could see through the Equinox’s cameras, then he should be able to hear. And speak himself, eventually.
She went back to the keyboard, typing reluctantly.
I can’t explain right now, Spike. I promise I will as soon as I can. Just try to keep the Equinox running properly, if you can. Our friends still need you.
His response came instantly, though there was still no sign he’d learned how to respond in any other way.
Of course, captain. You can count on me.
There was the matter of Cozy’s body, then she would…
1. Save her friends from the contingency. 2. Use Spike’s help to figure out what Cozy was doing. 3. Focus on waking up Sunset Shimmer first to try and get real answers.
Use Spike's help to discover what Cozy was up to 55%
Twilight watched Cozy burn. One too many times she’d trusted that this pony was dealt with—but each and every time, she’d proven her wrong. She wouldn’t be waiting for her to ruin something else she loved.
The furnace eventually went dark, opening to reveal a tiny container of pale ash. Ordinarily their biowaste would go into the greenhouse—but something felt wrong about doing that to the corpse of a pony, even a terrible enemy. She dumped the tray into a sample container, then tossed it aside. She could bury her somewhere on Proximus B, and finally get the stowaway off her damn ship.
Does Spike figure out what happened while searching? Critical yes.
Twilight stepped into the lift when she was finally done, and heard a strange grinding of metal from beneath her. Strange, considering the zero-gravity should’ve meant far less effort on the motors.
Then a voice came in over the lift’s speakers. Not the recordings of Cozy Glow, or her voice manipulated the way Node did it. It was Spike. “Captain Twilight,” he said, voice strangely cold and distant. “I’ve completed your investigation. You should join me in the central computer. We have lots to talk about.”
She started moving upward without having to dial in a floor. The lift stopped after traveling up one level. Twilight winced at the huge hole in the side, its jagged edges obviously cut by dragon claws. She ignored them, stepping forward into the mainframe.
Little had changed since she left it, except that there were no longer any bodies or the debris that might infect any creature who got too close. All the screens were off, except of course for the console that had been broken during the battle.
Is Spike upset with what Twilight did? Yes.
His voice came again, echoing from the room beyond loudly enough that she couldn’t miss it. “I learned what Cozy Glow was planning, captain,” Spike’s voice said again. He seemed to be coming from everywhere. “I learned many things—things you should’ve told me.”
“It was… very fresh for me,” she said, unsure if he could even hear her. But there was only one way to find out. “I wasn’t sure if it was really you.”
“That makes two of us.” Spike’s voice said. The overhead lights went out one by one, until only the dim glow of the mainframe illuminated the room. None of the other important systems had been switched off this time, though the mainframe racks were still fogged up inside. Thick residue on the glass meant that the glowing status lights seemed to light up the whole thing, like thousands of little watching eyes. “I’m still not sure if it’s really me either. But I saw what happened.”
“Everything?” she asked, slumping onto her haunches and looking down. “I had to do something, Spike? I couldn’t let her murder you.”
But he hardly seemed to be listening. “I watched Cozy Glow spend hours and hours at the observation deck, staring down at the return report from our probes. She seemed very interested in Proximus C… but not as interested as she was in sinking the Equinox.”
“I’m sorry,” Twilight said again, just a little louder. “I tried everything, Spike. I didn’t know what else I could do to save you.”
But of course she could never overpower the Equinox’s many speakers. “I watched her open the armory with a stolen keycard. I watched her remove the armor-piercing rounds and a long-rifle. Other things too, you know. She installed IEDs in three places. If we had gone for the thrusters directly instead of the computer, we would’ve been blown to Tartarus and back.”
Could he even hear her? Twilight lit her horn, searching for the security camera. There were a few—but the nearest one was positioned just behind the console, where any crewman’s commands could be observed and recorded.
“Then she came here,” Spike continued, still ignoring her. “Do you know what she was doing? I do. I watched her do it with all those eyes. I wasn’t dead yet, but I can still remember retroactively. Time no longer makes sense. Space doesn’t make sense either. I’m not anywhere, yet I’m so many places at once.
“She wasn’t trying to write a program to destroy the Equinox—there were several of those. Like the one she wrote to thaw anyone who matched her approximate weight a few months after going in, so long as the ship was safe. I think the best one I found so far was the periodic overload of our reactor if we ever left the system. It wouldn’t have blown us up, just caused a series of critical systems failures that would shunt plasma into the reaction manifold and fry everything we can’t replace. We’d freeze in space, and be unable to decelerate when we finally flew back to Equestria. Real devious stuff.”
“You can tell me how you feel, Spike. If you hate me because of it—that’s okay. I wouldn’t blame you. Would you rather stay dead?”
“Maybe.” It was his first response since he’d begun his report. His tone was flat, mechanical. Something told her he was stripping the emotion from it, rather than accurately communicating how he felt. “I haven’t decided yet. I watched it happen from three angles, you know. Saw how determined I was—I died for my friends. You took that away from me, Twilight.”
“I didn’t want to lose you,” she squeaked. “Apple Bloom seemed so alive, I thought… you’d come back like her. That was what should’ve happened. You might’ve even liked it.”
“Apple Bloom was infected while she was alive,” he called, exasperated. “I was already cold when you hit me. Frankly I’m relieved nothing worse happened. If my corpse had risen again to hurt you…” he went silent. One by one, the lights came back on.
Random Event: (Character positive) Twilight Sparkle: The Heal of Success
In that moment, Twilight saw it. A flash of insight, as clear as her view through the tiny window of the star Proximus. She knew how to wake up Sunset Shimmer. She could cast the spell right now, if she wanted.
“While I decide what I’m going to do as an undead monster, you should know what else Cozy was doing. She was writing a message. It reads like a report of everything we’ve done, from her perspective. There’s lots of missing details once we went groundside. She wrote it like it was her last message. She was getting ready to send it… but the funny thing is, she had the directional antenna ready, not the laser. Apparently she thought somepony local was going to get it.”
Twilight wasn’t sure what to make of Spike’s not-recovery—but for now, she thought it best not to prod too much. She had said her piece, even if it felt woefully inadequate. Now she would…
1. Return to the surface and gather all useful supplies for a full evacuation. 2. Cast her spell on Sunset Shimmer now. 3. Try to rescue her friends first.
Twilight sat back in the medical bay, surrounded by spent spellcasting ingredients and broken crystal. She’d used more than half the stores of magical supplies on this spell—but just now she didn’t care.
“I still don’t think… it’s reckless to use experimental spells to treat a living patient,” Fluttershy said. “She would probably wake up in her own time.”
“Maybe she would,” Twilight said, shrugging one wing. She was too exhausted to argue, her mane hanging limp and sweat dripping from her face. Medical had far less room than it usually did, with several new cots and life support machines lining the outside. IT was the only way they could have enough room for everypony. “Maybe she never would. I had to do something.”
Fluttershy grunted disapprovingly, but she hadn’t actually stopped Twilight at any point. Once she saw the medical diagrams, even she had to admit they looked real.
“Twilight,” Spike’s voice came in from the radio now, the only place she’d ever hear him from again. “Have you looked at the return signals we got from the probe?”
“No,” she admitted. She rose, turning for the nearest console. “Something interesting?”
Can Spike interpret the probe data? No. Random Event: Praise of Tactics.
Previously, the following questions were asked: Has Spike found everything Cozy did? Critical No.
Did Cozy’s well-hidden last emergency stopgap ship destruction plan activate? Critical yes. Destruction of the atmospheric seals and venting all the O2? Yes.
Twilight didn’t hear what Spike said next over the distant rumble from somewhere far away. Glass shattered, metal screamed in protest, and suddenly the wind was rushing past her.
Can Fluttershy seal the airlock in time? Yes.
Fluttershy was on the other end of the room, standing by the door. She jerked to one side, yanking down on a bright red lever above the airlock. It slid abruptly into place, landing with a hiss.
“Hardware failure in engineering!” Starlight Glimmer’s voice shouted. She wasn’t done. “Hull breach detected on deck 1! Hull breach detected on deck 2! Hull breach detected on deck 3! Hull breach detected on—” Twilight whimpered, trying to tune her out. What about the prospector?
She fumbled with the controls, shifting through cameras until she found the feed from docking. The prospector was there—floating slowly away from the Equinox. It moved agonizingly slowly, surrounded by a cloud of rapidly defusing gas and torn bits of docking tube.
At least there was one consolation. There was no obvious damage on the Prospector she could see.
“Celestia that hurts,” Spike said, his voice replacing Starlight’s. Her own faded into the background, repeating the emergency indicators. “Twilight, I… I think something blew up. A lot of somethings. How does it hurt this bad if I’m dead?”
Fluttershy ignored them both, hurrying between her patients. She checked each of them in turn before stopping at the life-support console. “We’re on reserve power again,” she muttered. “But the air is more important. Looks like we’re not connected to life support anymore.”
“No, you’re not,” Spike agreed. “Nowhere is. I’m getting red lines from N2 and O2 reserves. Pressure on every deck is rapidly approaching zero.”
“Cozy Glow,” Twilight whispered. “She somehow… must’ve known we might get her.”
“Wasn’t anything in the computer,” Spike said defensively. “Maybe she had timed bombs. They didn’t go off at quite the same time. Damnit, she knew exactly where to hit us for the most damage.”
It’s okay, Twilight thought, thought of course it wasn’t. We still have the Prospector. We can always pump more air. We can fix this. Cozy hasn’t won.
“How much air do we have in Medical?” Twilight asked, dreading the answer. “How long before we start getting poisoned?”
“Lots of us breathing in here…” Fluttershy whispered, voice grim. “Can you patch us into the scrubbers, Spike? If we can clean the C02, we should have days in here before the O2 drops too far.”
“Maybe,” he answered. “Working on restarting the reactor. No damage there—hull breaches shut it down. But I’m not sure we have any intact life-support… I’ll see what I can find. Still trying to figure out what all these sensors are telling me.”
Twilight watched from across the room as Sunset Shimmer blinked open one eye, then the other. She groaned, her mechanical legs twitching from where they dangled under her. “Great Alicorns before us,” she muttered, her voice cracked and weak. “What did you do to me?”
Twilight made her way over, fighting her own desire to panic. Medical was a large enough space that their air would last—for a while, anyway. She wasn’t going to die in the next five minutes.
“The cryogenics used to preserve you were nearly destroyed,” Fluttershy answered, suddenly beside her bed. Unlike Twilight, she seemed to be keeping her cool perfectly. She already had a clipboard in one wing, and a stethoscope in the other. “Those units give up on your extremities first, then your organs.”
“Fantastic,” Sunset Shimmer’s horn glowed, and she drifted off the seat. She landed on mechanical hooves, standing straight. Looking at her remained uncanny—her body was thin and wizened, her torso seeming much too small to contain all her organs. But she was breathing, and that was something. “Lots of red lights.”
“It hasn’t been great,” Twilight said, her voice exasperated. “You woke up at… the worst time we’ve had so far. My ship just suffered sabotage to every deck. We lost atmosphere, my Prospector is detached and drifting away. Oh, and the rest of my crew are comatose thanks to an alien device we barely understand. Not great all around.”
“You were always quite the captain,” Sunset Shimmer said, rolling her eyes. “Let’s clean up this mess.”
1. Sunset will teleport to the Prospector and fly to the surface to pump reserve atmosphere while Twilight buys time repairing life support.
2. Same plan, reversed roles. I don’t trust a pony who nearly died in cryo to use our only functioning ship.
3. Load everypony into the prospector first, then try to wake them up before any repairs are performed.
“I’m not happy you left her up here,” Spike’s voice said over the radio, following Twilight through the halls towards the docking bay. She moved quite slowly, both from the lack of gravity and the bulky EVA suit that she wore. “I don’t trust her yet. Fluttershy is too kind to stop her if she tries anything we don’t want her to.”
“Sunset isn’t as bad as she used to be,” Twilight muttered, rounding the corner towards the docking bay. She was momentarily floored by what she saw—bits of broken glass and bent metal floated in the stillness. Twilight slowed as she approached the jagged gap, torn with jagged teeth. And on the other side—Proximus.
The huge ring was down there, passing just below the Equinox at this moment. She could see its many lights glowing even now, surviving even the death of the civilization that had built them. Drifting down towards it, not far now but growing further with every second—was the Prospector. If that ship got away, they would all die.
“You don’t know that,” Spike argued. “The last time we saw her she was storming away from the Academy and flying off for the rim. We don’t know what happened since then.”
“No,” she admitted. “But we don’t have a choice. The Equinox has been blown to Tartarus. Fluttershy isn’t a mechanic, she is. Who else do you suggest fixes her?”
“Not her anymore,” Spike said, though there was something just a little nervous about his voice. “It might bother you to see that hull breach, captain, but I felt it. I can feel it now. I’m dying. Just… slowly.”
“Not if we get the crew back,” she said. “We can fix it. Maybe fix you too. Node is great at making bodies. Maybe she could make you a robotic dragon to live in instead of the ship.”
“Sure,” Spike said, exasperated. “If you want to tinker with the central computer to try and extract me. The virus dismantled everything in here, captain. I wish I could show you the way I can see it. The old Mainframe is now just a small fraction of my capabilities, a negligible percentage. I don’t know if my mind would fit into a single, fragile body. I don’t know if I would want to try…”
“Twilight, Spike! I, uh… I’m at the first life support junction. You said you were going to walk me through this?” Sunset’s voice came in over the shipboard general channel. Twilight would switch away from it as soon as she could. Just not yet.
“Spike will,” she promised. “I’m about to jump.”
“Good luck,” she said. “Don’t miss.”
Twilight gritted her teeth, edging up towards the ragged opening. “Get me a rangefinder on the Prospector, Spike. I need to know everything you can tell me.”
“Trajectory 101 x 45 x 02, three meters per second. Range, eight thousand forty meters.”
Twilight closed her eyes, focusing all her attention on the Prospector. She was familiar enough with the craft, though not enough to risk ignoring its position entirely. She calculated her trajectory, risked a single peek through her eyes—then jumped.
Can Twilight teleport safely? Failure? Twilight takes 3 points of bashing damage from magical feedback.
Is she sent to the wrong destination? Yes.
Random Event: (Neutral) The Vengeance of Opulence
Twilight jolted briefly as the pain surged through her, the pain of a failed spell. She opened her eyes, brushing away condensed moisture from the outside of her helmet with the back of one leg. Her head pounded, and the concentration for spellcasting momentarily eluded her.
“Twilight to Equinox, come in. I bucked it up.” No response, not even static.
She straightened, realizing with horror something she should’ve noticed instantly: there was gravity here. She rose instantly, clearing away the rest of the teleportation condensation away.
Twilight was standing in a massive vaulted space, like the inside of the largest planetarium ever constructed. The buck am I?
“Twilight to Equinox, come in.” Again there was no response, just her own voice echoing in her helmet. She leaned to one side, lifting the sensor panel up so she could see it. Her temperature gauge, atmospheric sensors, hazard detectors, were all in the green.
Against all odds, Twilight had teleported from orbit to somewhere with gravity, air, and heat. Where in Celestia’s name am I?
Twilight stumbled forward, towards a raised stone shape not far away. There were metal controls along its top surface, a little high for a pony to reach but possible for an Alicorn.
Twilight approached them, touching the largest, most welcoming-looking button.
The dark ceiling lit up in a gigantic projection of the Proximus System. There was the distant star, familiar yellow and far away. Proximus A the rocky hulk too close to it, and just beside them—Proximus B, so huge in the sky she might as well be landing there.
That wasn’t the most interesting thing she saw, though.
This map had the ships too.
The Equinox was there, near the little ring and flashing with red indicators. And near the more distant Proximus C, another structure so close to the gas giant it had sunk into its upper atmosphere. Something was lurking there, an intricate metallic skin that floated along a denser layer of gas like a sailing ship.
Twilight took a few photos with her suit’s camera, taking in everything she could see. There was more.
Something else was down there in the gas, docked with the station. It wasn’t quite as large, though the shape of it was far more familiar. She’d seen the patterns suggested once, during a budgetary meeting on interstellar colonization.
Guess the Empire built one of their Biosphere ships after all.
Does Twilight hear attackers coming? No. Is Twilight alone? Critical yes.
Twilight looked around, up at the massive projection and the incredibly advanced construction, and knew instantly where she had to be. Teleporting down to Proximus B would certainly kill her without the right precautions in her spell. But somehow, against all odds, she was on the orbital ring, trapped outside radio contract while the meager supply of air on the Equinox slowly ran out.
What should she do?
1. Escape as quickly as possible. As fascinating as all this is, it doesn’t matter if we suffocate.
2. Figure out how to use the computer. There’s a wealth of information in here. How did that ship get here? What is that station? I’ll make it tell me.
3. Explore the ring. We have a little time. We could pump our air out of here instead of flying all the way down to Proximus B.
4. Teleport straight out. I know this station isn’t twenty kilometers tall. Jump straight up, and I’m back in space. I can find my way from here. [dangerous]
Twilight would’ve loved to stay behind in this amazing station and study it for a hundred years. The technology that had built it was so advanced as to fill her with awe—and hope—for Equestria’s own future. If these builders could build impressive megastructures, there was no saying Equestria couldn’t too.
But however curious she was, however much she had to see what happened, her friends were still comatose, and the air was running out. Not to mention there was just as much useful information on the ship. The situation had been so desperate when Sunset finally woke that she hadn’t been able to learn what she knew quite yet. She was a captain, after all.
Twilight took a few more photos with her suit’s camera, then turned for the first door she could see. She needed an airlock, then she could jump back to the Equinox and use the rangefinder to try for another jump for the Prospector. She’d already failed one jump today, she wasn’t going to eyeball another one.
Twilight wandered for hours. She wandered so long that her suit’s scrubbers went from green to yellow, and eventually switched into filtration mode to preserve entropy on the carbon capsule. If there was one miracle for her, it was that the Signalers seemed to breathe the same air that ponies did, and kept it aboard their station long after the last of them left.
The amount of internal space on the ring was staggering. Chambers sometimes extended so far over her head that whole castles could’ve stacked on top of each other without getting near the roof. Other times she was forced to crawl through tiny passages, clearly not built for someone as large as she was.
At first Twilight tried to follow the friendliest writing on the station walls—but after her fifth dead end that way, she switched to using her EVA’s slate to sketch a map. Even a window would be enough for her to teleport out. But the station hadn’t had many of those, not from orbit. Maybe it didn’t have any at all.
Does Twilight find any useful information? Critical no.
More than once she encountered shelves of strange objects, rooms of active machines, or computers just begging to have their contents examined. But the longer she spent wandering, the more of them she passed by without so much as a picture. Her friends were running out of air.
I bet they could stretch it to a day, if they were smart about it and used the medical oxygen tanks. How long have I been walking? She took one glance down at her suit’s watch, then froze.
Fifteen hours. She’d been going for half a day and more, but still hadn’t found a way out.
This ring probably has more internal area than Equestria before the collapse. Depending on how they do the gravity, if it had just two floors, it certainly does. I’m not getting anywhere. Twilight reached her next computer panel, stopping dead in front of it. She needed to do something, or else she might be walking at random until her friends were long dead, and she starved to death.
She had tried before, and each time her work on these identical consoles of floating holographic light always failed. Her hooves moved, following the things she thought the icons meant, the suggestions of meaning. She needed an exit, or a map.
Twilight attempts to find a map. Success.
Then it appeared. There was no mistaking the bright red dot for her position in the ring, and the periodic zooming until that dot took up more than a single pixel of the display. She could pinch and zoom the image with pressure the way she expected, tracing out the hallways until she found… a hangar.
It wasn’t that far away, just down a long stairwell and into a wide central passage. She stepped into the control room.
Former hangar. The inside of the facility had been thoroughly sabotaged. The corpses of ships hung in the air outside the control room, with perfect lines cut at various points, sheering through each ship component and out the other side.
The space beyond seemed to go on forever—there were hundreds of dead ships hanging there, each one broken in different ways. And their corpses.
Or something like corpses, anyway. The flesh was all gone, but there were still mechanical parts. Arms that floated, strong legs lodged into a gap in a broken ship. They were made of all the same stuff, and Twilight couldn’t even tell at a glance how much of what she saw was broken ship and how much might be broken pony. Not pony shapes. But they’re not the drones we found in the ruins earlier. Maybe these pieces are what the Signalers looked like. Through the debris, Twilight could see a single clear shot out into the void, starlight shining.
Twilight closed her eyes, then jumped. Her suit hissed, then clicked as the atmosphere vanished from outside, sealing itself off again. Twilight twitched one leg, turning her maneuvering thruster so she could look back at the ring and grab a photo. This was an easy point of ingress, one that she could use for harvesting.
“Equinox, this is Twilight. Come in.”
There was a hiss of static, then. “Twilight,” Fluttershy answered. “What are… you’re still alive?”
“Nineteen hours, thirty-one minutes,” Spike said flatly. “I didn’t see you reappear. But I’m getting your transponder now. Guess I should’ve known you wouldn’t have Fluxed yourself.”
“Not today,” she said. “Listen, can you give me position and heading for the Prospector?”
“You mean the prospector that kept drifting at three meters per second for over nineteen hours?” Spike asked. “The one that’s over two hundred kilometers away?”
“I’ve done further,” Twilight muttered, though even the thought of it was giving her a headache. “I’ve done Canterlot Station to Ponyville. I can do this.”
“I’ve still got a live transponder signal, hold on,” Spike said. He gave her a heading a moment later, and she tilted her suit again to aim in the suggested direction. She couldn’t see the ship—or anything else, for that matter. It was all black.
“I take it we weren’t able to get in to remote pilot the Prospector?” she asked.
“Nope,” Spike agreed. “You have to set that up when you leave. So far as I can tell, you didn’t even take your key with you when you disembarked.”
“Twilight, we’re…” Fluttershy began. “I’ve got a decision to make here. Maybe you could share your insight. Sunset has her ideas, but she’s not my captain.”
“Go on.”
“We can scrub C02 all day, but we’ve already dropped to seventeen percent O2. If we wait much longer, we’re going to be too disoriented to… to…”
There was a brief burst of static, then Spike continued for her. “Fluttershy and Sunset are considering using the escape pod to return to Proximus B. But doing so would require the others be frozen.”
“Which means months until we can thaw them again,” Twilight finished. “And Celestia only knows what that will do to the connection to their minds, if they’re really stored elsewhere.”
“Right,” Fluttershy said. “Sunset can’t freeze, not for at least a year. She’s already waiting on the escape pod. But if I don’t get to work freezing our friends, I won’t be able to for much longer. It’s up to you, captain.”
She wouldn’t have long to decide, before what might be the hardest teleport of her career.
1. Freeze. The risk is unacceptable, even if we do lose some of the crew for awhile. 2. Do not. I get to keep my friends, but if I miss this teleport and we run out of time, their bodies will die.
“Hold one minute, Fluttershy,” Twilight said. “I’m going to make the jump now. If you don’t hear back from me, it means I’m dead or I won’t be able to make the trip in time. Freeze them. If I live through this… then I’ll update you. The ring is full of air, I can extract it without going to the planet. There’s still time.”
“We don’t need much,” Sunset’s voice cut in over the line. “I finished repairs to the whole atmospheric system. Medical deck is sealed. Rest of the Equinox is still bucked to Tartarus, but… we don’t need to pressurize it all at once.”
“Right,” Twilight said. “So wait… five minutes, let’s make that the order. Five minutes, and you can get to work freezing everypony. Start with the healthiest first. Give them… the best chance we can.” Twilight closed her eyes, shuddering inwardly. She could only imagine the consequences of failure here. Half her friends might die, or maybe all of them. But what choice did she have?
“I’m ready to jump. Spike, I want position, heading, velocity. I’ll need them.”
He responded instantly, with precise readings from the Equinox’s laser rangefinder. So at least the damn stowaway hadn’t flown outside to kick their sensor array to pieces before getting herself killed.
Twilight Sparkle turned in the indicated direction, using the compass inside her helmet. Her air was ticking down again, but that was hardly her first concern. If she missed this jump, she would die in space. Her friends would be frozen, and the mission would be a failure.
“If I don’t… if I can’t do this…” she whispered. “Listen to Sunset, if you can. She… was a captain. Probably knows… what’s going on. More than I do.”
She switched off the radio, staring out into the void. She imagined another, friendlier abyss, outside Canterlot Station. Princess Celestia beside her in space, hovering without a suit or any other protection. She brought her own air, her own shield so subtle the bubble wasn’t even visible.
Twilight herself was awkward and gangly with her newly acquired wings. Her suit felt like it didn’t fit, and she was constantly tripping over herself. If she had new powers being an Alicorn, she’d barely even known it then.
“To teleport further than you can see, you must see space as few unicorns do. You must understand that every division is an illusion. All points are circumscribed through space. We are all everywhere, at every moment. Whether you poke through that everywhere to Canterlot Castle or the station tethered to it, it is the same.”
Her tutor vanished, leaving Twilight alone in the void.
Equus vanished from beneath her, replaced with a world of gray instead of green. The ring stretched out close, another planet unto itself. Strange magic had captured her once, when surely her teleport should’ve gone to nowhere. Would it try to capture her again?
Twilight pictured her diagram, holding it in her mind so firmly that it seemed to appear in the air before her as a physical thing. Four spatial dimensions instead of three, and the invisible shunt that would change her positional values in the three. But where every previous long-range trip was made with profound familiarity with the location, this one was just a ship. A distant, drifting ship.
Her friends’ only chance.
Twilight cast her spell.
Can Twilight land on the Prospector safely? Yes.
Twilight smacked into a steel bulkhead at exactly three meters per second. She grunted and groaned, ignoring the impact alarms from her suit. The metal flung her forward, though not as quickly, and suddenly she was drifting through a cargo bay.
The cargo bay of the Prospector.
Twilight was worn from days of exhaustion, barely even alive at this point. But she wasn’t done quite yet. There was one work yet to do.
Twilight engaged her magnetic horseshoes, landing with a thump on the deck-plating. She trudged forward, passing through the cargo bay door and into the cockpit.
Some of the panels she saw showed red lights, damage from Cozy Glow’s explosion. But there were a few that caught her eye, the most important.
Propulsion: online. Communications: online.
She almost cried as she fumbled into her seat, strapping herself down and switching to the Prospector’s transmission booster. “This is Twilight Sparkle aboard the HMS Prospector. Equinox, can I have a heading to my last position? I’m going to pump air from the ring.”
Even Spike sounded relieved as he finally answered. “On the way, Prospector.”
Fluttershy cheered into the radio. “You made it!” She was as loud as ever, but just now Twilight found that a relief. “Does that mean the ship is—”
“She’s intact,” Twilight answered. ”As much as we care about, anyway. I wouldn’t want to try a full burn through an atmosphere, but she’ll do. I’m on my way back.”
The next few hours were a blur. Twilight brought the prospector to where she’d exited through the broken docking bay, then tethered the ship with a mining grapple while she ran the huge plastic extraction hose into the broken docking bay. Nothing from the ring attacked her, and after a few hours of work, she was on her way back.
She didn’t have a working docking harness to attach to anymore, but that didn’t stop her. Twilight brought in the Prospector near the lowest level, directly to life support, and attached a different hose to a completely undamaged port.
Then she waited, while the sound of hissing gasses ran through the hoses beneath her and into the Equinox’s atmospheric processing tank.
“Air seems safe,” Spike said, after a minute. “Safe as we’ll get, anyway. Now how about getting me fixed, captain. I’m basically bleeding into space right now.”
Twilight would be resting first regardless, but after that.
1. “It’s our priority, Spike. Seal every breach before we even think of anything else.” 2. “I completely agree Spike, that’s why we have to wake up the others first. What you really want is an engineer fixing you, not me.” 3. “I think we should probably go back to the ring and extract more information first.” 4. Sunset suggests beginning full burn acceleration for Proximus C, promising that they can fix the ship and she can explain everything along the way. “There’s nothing down there we need.”
Twilight rested on a medical bay cot. She couldn’t have said how long she slept, only that her body was barely working as it was and if she didn’t sleep, she would’ve died instead.
Twilight heals all bashing damage and all damage incurred by exhaustion.
Waking up surrounded by her unconscious friends and coworkers certainly wasn’t a pleasant experience, but at least she woke up. The air was still flowing. Cozy Glow had failed in her work.
She ate emergency rations beside Sunset Shimmer. Fluttershy hadn’t left her patients and didn’t seem terribly interested in breakfast.
“We’re not leaving until we patch up the ship,” she said, over the fresh bar of pressed oats. This was one of the new ones they’d made on Proximus B, rather than the ancient ones sealed away in reflective silvery packaging for an unknown number of years. The taste was earthy and fresh under her tongue, a reminder of what she’d left behind. And why she needed to fight so hard to get her friends back.
“It’s not rational,” Sunset said, in that infuriating ‘I know better than you’ tone she’d had since she was Celestia’s other apprentice. Her older, smarter, better in every way apprentice. The one who had set out to become an Alicorn and had a real chance of achieving it. “Your stowaway might’ve been clever with her hooves, but she wasn’t an engineer. All eight critical structural junctures are perfectly sound. So long as we don’t go near any atmosphere or a radiation belt, we can fly just like this. We’ll get those holes patched long before we get to C.”
Twilight could imagine Spike’s eyes watching from behind her shoulder. There were dozens of cameras in this medical bay, and they’d all be pointed at her right now. “Maybe if the Equinox was just a ship, we could do that. But I know you’ve been hearing that voice in your head. That’s one of my crew, or he was.”
Sunset’s expression grew uncomfortable. Twilight recognized this too—she was in territory she didn’t understand. Sunset reached to one side, scratching at the junction between her shriveled torso and one of her other implant legs. By weight, she was 80% mechanical herself, at least.
Twilight seized on her silence. “Spike gave his life for this mission. He’s the reason Cozy didn’t destroy the Equinox completely. Now, for reasons outside his control, he’s almost become the Equinox. He feels its pain. We can’t fly without repairing him first, and that’s my final decision.”
Sunset opened her mouth, and Twilight spread both wings, silencing her. “I’m still the captain of this ship, Sunset. I’m entirely in command of this mission. I respect what you know, and everything you’ve accomplished. But you won’t be taking over this position or ordering me to do anything. Are we clear?”
Sunset nodded curtly. “I think we’re clear, Twilight. I can see you haven’t changed. And neither have I. The difference is, I was there when Equestria needed me, and you were lost in space.”
Twilight winced, but she couldn’t let it bite her. She hadn’t had any power in her confinement here. If she’d been able to be in Equestria when everything happened, she would’ve done it in an instant. “Why don’t you tell me all about it while we work?” she asked, tossing the empty wrapper into disposal. “You fixed the air recycler; I assume you know how to weld emergency plates?”
Sunset didn’t argue further. Half an hour later and both of them were in internal no-ox suits—thin plastic versions of the EVA suits, without any of the insulation against heat or radiation. Well, Twilight was, anyway. Sunset had Rarity’s EVA training, and all she brought was a little backpack with an air cylinder and her concentration to hold a spell.
“I’ve designed a plan to seal my internal space as rapidly as possible,” Spike said over the radio, the instant they’d dressed and prepared. “The docking ring has the worst damage by far—I think Cozy forgot about Unicorn teleportation and thought that would making boarding and disembarking impossible. If you seal it off, I’m only detecting five other breaches we need to deal with. Unfortunately there are others, others we’ll only know about once we seal the big ones and we can start depressurizing. But smaller holes will be easier to patch.”
They set to work. There was plenty of emergency plate in the cargo bay, enough to patch far more of the Equinox’s external spaces than just the holes Cozy’s explosives had made.
“So tell us, what happened to Equestria?” Twilight asked, once they were working. Not together—Twilight didn’t really want to work alongside a pony like Sunset. But if she’d been trusted enough to be made captain, she could trust her welds.
Sunset didn’t answer for a long time. “Well first there’s your mission. While you flew off to Proximus, the Mercury Forge finally became a thing, building ships got way easier after that, which is bucking fortunate considering what came next.”
Twilight waited with bated breath, her torch hovering in the air in front of her, unused. “Which was…”
Are ponies immune? No. Resistant? No.
“Darkness,” Sunset Whispered. “Worse than anything you fought. Worse than nightmare moon, worse than… well, you get the idea. Really, you should be thanking ponies like me who lived out in the rim, because if it wasn’t for us there wouldn’t be any Equestria. Every rebel and refugee and outcast who wanted their own rock instead of living by your rules, we started dying. But only on one side of the system. Not all at once—it got the young and old first, and the weak. But it spread, a creeping, invisible death.”
Twilight remembered I҉͢ŅS̡͞Í͟Ǵ̕̕͝H̸̢̀T́҉̷͞. She had seen this darkness, spreading across the stars. It might’ve been the thing the Signalers wanted to warn them about in the first place. But hadn’t that one been faster? Maybe the signalers were stronger than ponies. There could’ve been a wake through the thaumic field. Or maybe she was completely wrong.
“We had some, uh… some conflicting translations of the signal figured out by then. But the only translation that gave us any hope was the warning. The signalers weren’t threatening us, they knew something was coming, and they were calling us here to offer help. Your mission was dead by then, long failed. We didn’t know if it was safe. But we didn’t have another choice. My ship—we were sent ahead. Proximus was directly away from the danger, that couldn’t be a coincidence.”
“Ahead of what?” Twilight asked weakly, slumping to the floor and dropping her torch. As though leaving her family behind hadn’t been bad enough, now Equestria itself was dead? Why even keep working. “We can’t evacuate the system. If something is killing everypony, and we can’t stop it… they must’ve all died.”
“Well… I don’t know,” Sunset admitted. “I know there were ambitious plans, based on some of the latest advances in cryonics and thaumic fusion. But they were just plans, and I was preparing for my own mission. We had a traitor on board—” she trailed off. “But that isn’t important. I was going through your logs—you really should’ve protected some of this, by the way—you found my locational transponder. That device I was carrying, that was how I was meant to find the Equestrian expedition, if it arrived. The entangled spells can only be cast the once, and then they collapse. But it’s fine you used it, because it’s in system! They made it—straight to the most resource-rich part of the system! That’s why we need to go there now!”
Twilight could set a course when they finished patching the Equinox’s holes, or…
1. Wake up her crew first, somehow. 2. Gather anything left behind on Proximus B first. (note, most resources have been ferried by regular supply shipments. Only camp infrastructure and the Equinox’s land defenses remain) 3. Go as soon as the hull is repaired.
Twilight still wasn’t fully sure of what Sunset had told her about the end of Equestria, but one thing she wasn’t about to do was take more risks than she had to. Of course, going ‘inside’ the Contingency would be easy in itself. Anytime she neared the strange object, she could feel the gravity pulling her in. The same gravity that had destroyed an army of hostile machines, as well as either killing her crew or just trapping their minds within it.
She didn’t know which it was at first. But once the Equinox’s most severe damage was patched—once everything but the docking ring was sealed and there were no decks open to space, she was free to explore her daring plan.
Does Twilight find another way? Yes.
It started with a basic realization she made while patching small holes in the central computer. She took the time to remove one of the glass covers from the mainframe, and inspect whatever had happened to their core.
Spike was right about the total reengineering that had happened here, because the suspended crystal lattice of microscopic transistors and memory cells was replaced with rows and rows of stacked black chips. She’d seen this technology before, from Spike’s own claws. This was what Node’s brain looked like.
It’s all the same technology. The Contingency was built by the signalers, who also built the virus. Just as all Equestrian technology was on some level built to work together, Twilight realized then that she could make the same assumption for the Signalers, and probably be right. That was what led her to the plan.
“It won’t hurt them,” she insisted, as Fluttershy settled the last portable life-support pod into place. They were all there now, tucked away into the Central computer alongside its most dangerous occupant of all: The Contingency.
This she settled up beside the central interface terminal, newly repaired after Cozy Glow had died here. “It might not do anything, that’s the worst potential outcome. But there’s a good chance we’ll do much more. Not just prevent harm, we could save them.”
Is Spike the solution? Yes.
“Spike could save them,” Fluttershy said. “Spike, I hope you’re okay with this. I don’t like what the captain has done to you.”
“Me neither,” Spike muttered. “But if you’re talking about saving the others, I agreed with her. So far as we know, no one who went into the Contingency ever came out again. But I’m not… alive… anymore. And if I die again, we won’t really be out anything. The Equinox’s computer as you know it is still intact, running perfectly fine in an emulated sandbox of the old hardware. I’ll plug it up to the real ship before I leave, just in case I die horribly. Can computers die horribly?”
“You’re not a computer, Spike,” Twilight said, directly to one of the mainframes. “You’re just living on one, through… no fault of your own.”
“Well that’s true,” he said. “I bravely sacrificed myself, that was supposed to be the end of it. At least we agree I should’ve just died.”
There was a moment’s awkward silence, during which the two conscious ponies shared a nervous glance. Sunset Shimmer wasn’t here, by way of redundancy, but was currently making patchwork repairs where she could. Artificial limbs and organs or not, she was the best engineer they currently had.
Eventually Spike’s voice returned. “Alright, I’ve got a wireless connection to the Contingency. We’re negotiating protocols and… yeah, this is faster than you could understand. If you want some good news, just know that it’s going to go so incredibly fast from your perspective that I’ll probably be right out again even if it takes months. OR… maybe I’ll never come out. You’ll know in a minute.”
“Good luck, Spike,” Fluttershy said. “They’re your friends too. Bring them back to us.”
“I want nothing more,” his voice said, without irony. “Returning control of the Equinox to last-state backup…” there was a brief flicker overhead, and then the lights came back on. Starlight Glimmer’s recorded voice returned, echoing through the cavernous hall. “Hull breach in the docking ring. Depressurization detected in the habitat ring. Please perform repairs as soon as…”
Spike woke in a city.
‘Woke’ was only a roughly analogous term, as he’d known neither sleeping nor waking since the moment of his death. The silicon that was his current substrate didn’t exist completely in either one, shifting smoothly as computational demands changed with the needs of the Equinox.
But where he had once been a Starship, with vaster intelligence and comprehension than he could’ve imagined in his entire lifetime—now he was something small again. A lizard, with two legs, and two wings, and purple scales.
It was the way he remembered himself—tall, alive, single-instanced.
He stood on the wide streets of an empty city, surrounded with flashing lights. Vast parks and gardens shone in the evening light, tended by little mechanical robots that flew or hopped or crawled. The place was pristine, even if it was a little oversized for pony occupants. Perfect for a dragon, though.
He didn’t know where he was going, or even if his path would take him remotely near what he was looking for. The streets were gigantic, made of hexagonal glass plates that reacted to his touch. Caution lines appeared around him, directing vehicles away that never came.
Until he rounded a corner, and came upon… a party?
It looked like the ancient Ponyville fairs he’d visited with Twilight when he was still a hatchling, put on in the old country where many earth pony customs had never completely faded. Brilliant streamers hung from the trees, a distant, unseen band filled the square with folk music, and trays were piled high with sweets of all kinds.
Spike approached a smaller table off to one side, where snacks for gem-eaters like himself were hidden away from ponies who might break their teeth on them. He took one of his favorites—a jade-like cupcake—and took a gigantic bite.
The flavors were exactly as he remembered—so perfect, in fact, that he recognized the recipe. Never thought I’d taste that one again.
“Spike!” Called a voice, from just over his shoulder. “You finally made it!” Something was off about her tone, something that he remembered reading in her psychological profile in the ship’s library. But that information was all severed from him now. He was just himself again.
He turned, and wasn’t surprised to see the pony waiting there. Pinkie wore a maestro’s uniform, like she’d just been directing a marching band. But there was no band in sight—nopony at all was in sight, except for Pinkie herself. “Yep, I’m here. Just, uh… looking for all our friends. Where are the others?”
“Oooh, would you help me find them? I’ve been looking for the others for a long time now… I think they’re hiding from me. That’s not very nice, even if I’m very impressed with their work. Who do you want to find first?”
1. Rarity 2. Rainbow 3. Apples 4. Node 5. Nopony. Escape from Pinkie.
It was a tough decision—Spike wasn’t entirely sure he was even talking to the real Pinkie, or if the pony he was talking to was even sane. But what choice did he have?
It became instantly clear why Pinkie was alone: she had no idea how to navigate the city. “Let’s go this way!” she said, pointing towards a hill. “Looks like there are trees if we go far enough that way, and I know Applejack likes trees.”
“Well…” Spike hesitated for a second. “Or we could use that thing right there.” He pointed to one side, at a flat object that was unmistakably a screen positioned above pony eye level. But at his larger size, it was almost perfect for him. Having just two eyes, this is cute. It was also limiting—there was part of Spike that wanted to go back to looking out of every screen and system of the Equinox at once. Had he always been so small, so limited in his view? What was flying compared to soaring through space?
Can Spike use the terminal? Yes.
Spike reached up, and found the flat surface lit up for his claws—it was a terminal, one that was eager to speak to him. He’d never seen the operating system before, or even the language, yet it was clear to him now.
“What’s that?” Pinkie stopped beside him, glaring up at the screen. “You said you were going to help me find the others.”
“I am,” he said, flicking a wing absently. “Pinkie, have you been looking for them?”
She nodded. “Every day. I look for them, I improve the party, I look for them some more, I make the party better… sometimes I break it all and start over.”
You’ve been running at machine time too, haven’t you? But Spike didn’t have the heart to ask, not when he was terrified of the answer. “Well, that’s why we’re going to try something different. We’re going to look my way.”
Spike stopped, one claw hovering over a button. “Here it is. Pinkie, you’ve been in an instance this whole time.”
“Really? That sounds super awesome! Uh… what’s an instance?”
At least some of her energy seemed to be coming back. The others are probably all losing their minds too. Celestia help you all. It had only been a few days in objective time, but how long did that translate to down here?
“It means that Applejack isn’t here. You could walk from one end of the city to the other—”
“I have,” Pinkie said, bouncing up and down. “But if you go from one end, you appear on the other. It’s not so bad—it’s like somepony put all the neat places you might want to visit all tucked in close. There’s a beach, some snowy mountains with hot springs, real deep caves Maud would’ve loved…” she stopped, her mane falling flat again. “I wonder how Maud’s doing.”
Did they lock out Pinkie? No.
Spike didn’t think it would be a good idea to share his projections of that answer. “I can use this to take us into any of the instances except one. Twilight would be the best at this, but… Applejack is probably a close second.” He reached out, settling a claw on her shoulder. She tensed, as though she expected some kind of violence, but of course none came.
“And… here we go.” He entered the command.
No blur of teleport, the transition was instant. Suddenly they were standing out in a massive forest, complete with oversized trees and a fence higher than any pony would’ve built.
Did they build a farm? Yes.
On either side, alien wheat up to Spike’s shoulders swayed in a gentle breeze. Instead of near twilight, here the sun was high in the sky, a pleasant warmth that brought new energy to Spike’s steps. So maybe there are some things to like about having a body. I never felt like this controlling the Equinox. He could lay down in the grass beside the road and rest for a few hours. He probably would have, if it wasn’t for Pinkie beside him.
Well, she was beside him, until she noticed the open farmhouse at the top of the hill. It was oversized, just like everything else… but she didn’t seem to care. She galloped. “Applejack! Apple Bloom! Anypony, please be here!”
Spike followed, taking in the details at a more casual pace. Off on his right, a gigantic automatic combine churned over a field, followed by an automated delivery truck. The fence on the other side of the field seemed more interesting, though: there was an orchard of apple trees, taller than any he’d seen in his life. Spike lifted into the air, gliding over the fence and hurrying into the trees.
Sure enough, he heard the sound of hooves on wood somewhere in the distance, and that was where he went. If Applejack would be doing anything on this simulated planet, it was reenact her farming.
He’d been wrong to assume she would be kicking trunks. He’d been wrong to even assume she would be instantly recognizable. Applejack wore a complex exoskeleton of alien design, a complex set of joints and springs that braced her legs and back into a bipedal position, with numerous cushions and little straps that made it look as comfortable as any harness could be. She wasn’t kicking the tree at all, but directing a set of buzzing drones in the air. Drones Spike recognized all too well.
Those attacked us. They weren’t attacking her. Each one had a set of little snips, that despite their size could’ve chopped a pony to pieces in seconds with a swarm this dense.
Instead of chopping ponies, they harvested, lifting up to individual apples, carefully snipping them, then carrying them down to a metal-looking harvest wagon.
“Applejack!” Spike called, hurrying the last few steps.
She turned, briefly removing her hat with the interlocking claw that settled over her hoof to simulate something like a griffon or a dragon might have. Despite the lack of obvious physical link to her body, she was able to tilt the hat expertly. “I was wondering when the rest of you would make it. Or… not make it. My condolences.” She lowered the hat a little, then replaced it on her head. “Welcome to Elysium, in any case. End of all care and worry. I hope it didn’t hurt.”
It looked like it hurt an awful lot. But the universe had given Spike at least one mercy: he didn’t remember his death.
“It didn’t,” he said. “But you aren’t dead, these are the Elysian Fields.”
“One of those things might be true,” Applejack said, turning away from him. She gestured something with skeletal fingers, and the swarm of drones obeyed, linking together to start dragging the huge container of fruit. “Maybe I’m not dead. But I know heaven when I see it.”
Does Applejack want to stay? Yes.
Spike had a choice to make, and fast.
1. Stay and convince her. She’s been here for years, she won’t be rational at first. But she wouldn’t abandon her crew to the rigors of space when all Equestrian civilization might be at stake.
2. Save somepony else first. (Rainbow Dash and/or Rarity, as Node is currently in a locked instance). More voices will make it harder for her to ignore. Besides, Pinkie could probably use some time with her friends. Let her throw a few parties while I go search.
3. Try to get her help cracking into Node’s instance. She likes to farm, but I’m sure she’d help if I don’t press her to leave yet.
Go look for the others to help first (except Node)43%
Spike was in the cockpit of an Apollyn fighter. It didn’t matter that none of the interceptor craft had ever been built for a dragon, and that his claws should’ve bene clumsy on the controls meant for hooves. It didn’t matter, because Spike was under attack.
The metal of Spike’s fighter screamed as he passed into the cone of a Changeling Entropic Accelerator. Armor plates bent and strained as complex alloys decomposed into their constituent parts. His claws fumbled at the controls, searching for his shield—then the field reached his reaction chamber, and liquid fire in his fuel-canister ruptured into the cockpit. He exploded in a spectacular fireball, silently venting gasses into space.
Spike was in the cockpit of an Apollyn fighter. Sirens filled his ears, resolving more quickly than they might’ve the time this happened. ‘Multiple contacts detected. Enemy firing solution detected. Pilot should perform evasive maneuvers!”
He took in the tactical display—two dozen red marks behind him, and only one blue streak not far away. Ahead of him was massive outline of Canterlot Orbital Station. Ten million lives were all packed into that incredible feat of engineering—ponies living under artificial gravity, with a spell holding in their atmosphere.
A spell the changelings meant to shatter, killing anyone without access to an airlock, and separating the city’s population for harvest. Spike rested his claws on the controls, letting his eyes lose focus as he took in the little red dots. He knew from personal experience just how terrifyingly accurate this was. Thousands of pony ships had been deployed when the battle started. But as it neared its end, only three remained.
Metal screamed as Spike’s ship began to tear itself apart. He attempted a roll, trying to dodge out of the Entropic Accelerator. But the maneuver came too little too late, and his left wing sheared right off. With only one tactical thruster he began to spin in painful loops, smashed against his acceleration netting until the changelings fired again, and he exploded properly.
Spike was in the cockpit of an Apollyn fighter. Spike didn’t think this time, he just moved, pulling on his new library of tactical maneuvers. He pulled into a series of twisting, backward loops, relying on the gravity-spells inside his cockpit to keep him from turning into purple goo. He rolled into position behind his first attacker, then released all the stored inertia of his dodge. The changeling interceptor tore right down the middle instantly, releasing fuel and pilot alike into the void.
But there were a dozen others, all suddenly focusing on him, pulling away from the only other blue speck in his vision.
“Ap-Spark, this is Ap-Pris. What the buck are you doing in my sim?”
“Rainbow?” Spike opened a channel. “Is that you?”
A few seconds to break concentration was too long. The instant three enemy fighters had a targeting solution, Spike’s fighter tore itself apart, and he died in space.
Spike was in the cockpit of an Apollyn fighter. A single glance told him the combat had reset exactly to where it began. He duplicated his maneuver from the time before, then moved immediately into a wide arc up through the ecliptic. This moved him out of the way of the station below them—it would’ve meant mission failure if he let them focus on Canterlot for too long. It would mean the death for thousands—millions. But there was no one there. “It’s me, Rainbow. And I need your help.”
Despite the flashes of fire and debris as ships died around them, Rainbow sounded almost cheerful. Thank Celestia you took this seriously when it was real. “What’s up?”
“You know where we are?” Spike didn’t take his claws from the joysticks this time. He moved from one maneuver to another, like a textbook areal demonstration. Unlike during the real event, these ships were far more concerned with killing him than the station below. Beat you to it. What is dead can never die.
“Flight simulation computer in some kinda… incredibly-advanced city. My best guess is that the Contingency time traveled us way back in time. Maybe this is how the city started?”
Rainbow’s fighter rocketed below them, leaving a glowing trail behind her. Where Spike moved like a program from one maneuver to the next, she danced. Rainbow’s fighter was no different than any other Apollyn, but she moved nothing like he did. She twisted and weaved and changed direction abruptly, turning each course-correction into an attack that left another changeling fighter shattered.
How many times did you practice this? “That’s…” arguing would be pointless, particularly with a pony like Rainbow who couldn’t understand the technical ramifications. “Close. Twilight sent me in here to bring you all back. But I’m having trouble with Applejack. I was hoping to get everybody together, then maybe use a little peer pressure to help her leave?”
Will Rainbow leave? Critical yes.
“End simulation,” Rainbow said.
Abruptly, the cockpit above spike went black. The realistic simulation of motion faded, and a mock-airlock hissed. The sturdy ceiling lifted out of his way, and Spike rolled onto a polished floor.
They were inside, but the architecture sure was familiar. It was the city, all-right.
A few meters away, Rainbow emerged from her own cockpit, landing on all fours. At least she wasn’t wearing one of those weird exoskeletons that Applejack had been using—just an acceleration suit, the way a real Apollyn pilot might. “I’m not sure what you mean about getting us together. I’ve been alone in this city for… a while. I just thought… I would stay busy, you know?”
“And see if you could win the most important battle in recent history on your own?”
She grinned.
Rainbow’s flight skill increases to 6. Rainbow’s tactical skill increases to 5.
“I could’ve done it. I mean, I couldn’t have then. But I could’ve then if I knew what I know…” she trailed off. “You get it.”
He nodded. From the way she’d been flying, Spike believed it. “Well, you’re not… separate, exactly. You ended up in separate, uh… sections. But I can move us around with any console. Those, on the wall there? I can use that.”
“That’s what Node said,” Rainbow whispered, going suddenly solemn. “It was more flying with her. But then she went to go find the others and…” she trailed off. “I thought she must’ve been wrong.”
Nope. Spike had to make a split-second decision.
1. Investigate the Contingency system to discover what has happened to Node.
2. Save Rarity.
3. Attempt to contact Twilight to examine the system externally.
Spike wanted to go straight into Node and retrieve her, the way Rainbow seemed to want. In particular, this seemed like the pony he had the best chance of rescuing. There was no telling whether the Contingency would have any system in place for returning ponies to their bodies. For all they knew, they were dead forever. But Node was just a machine, and there was some solidarity there. Some paternal affection as well, for the system Spike had built? If so, he never would’ve admitted it.
“We can’t risk getting caught in whatever caught her,” Spike said. “But there are other ways to find information, safer ways. We don’t have to expose ourselves to the system until we’re ready to move.”
“Right,” Rainbow repeated, oblivious. “Is that gonna make sense, or…”
“No,” Spike said, focusing on the terminal. Any console in the whole system would be equally useful for his purposes. The question is, what would he find? He searched. Whoever had built this system saw the world in a familiar way—they had hierarchical file trees, each usefully named. They had functions and explanatory text where appropriate, though much of what he found waiting in the manual pages made no sense to him. Spike might be a “living” computer system now, but that did not imbue him with a magical knowledge of how computers work. He shrugged and floundered his way through systems that Twilight could’ve plumbed dry in minutes.
The process took subjective days. Rainbow Dash wandered away after a few minutes, returning with a large box: a massive, flat display. She brought furniture, snacks, and then alien entertainment. She lounged about, watching alien entertainment about creatures in fighters embroiled in some constant, inscrutable war. Spike wanted to take in the cultural details—but that too was outside his field, and so he left well enough alone.
“Alright!” Spike declared, finally turning away from the terminal. He hadn’t moved from the spot, hadn’t felt tired or hungry or the need to piss. But now that he thought about those things, they all came rushing up to meet him in a terrible wave. No. You’re not real. I don’t even have a body. Go away. He dismissed his tiredness as easily as he might’ve removed a shirt. “I know what happened to Node.”
“Okay.” Rainbow flopped sideways from her alien couch, dislodging a mountain of popcorn. “Say it in a way that makes sense.”
“This place, the Contingency—it was made for people. Organic, living people. But it has security measures in place, in case artificial intelligence ever finds its way in here. A… honeypot, I guess. A system that’s so enticing, they can’t help but transfer there, and get stuck. We should be able to get Node out, or… you should.” He looked away awkwardly. “I’m, uh… kinda-sorta artificial intelligence myself.”
“Yeah?” Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “Did you get a leg replaced or something after the fight?”
“N-no…” he hesitated. “I don’t feel like talking about it right now. I think I must be immune to it, because I found the system and didn’t go right in. But there’s at least some chance I won’t be able to leave when I get there.”
Rainbow hopped off the couch, shaking out her wings. “I don’t see how that’s different from what happened to any of us. We all found something we liked to do. This place… gave us what we wanted. You said Applejack didn’t want to leave period. I bet that’s what it does to…” she shook her head. “You sure? Artificial intelligence? That still weirds me out. I know we didn’t talk about it, but I think Node is just a pony. Maybe… converted. Digitized? Recorded? I don’t know. Nopony ever said what the Signalers did would make sense.”
“Then she’s still—” Spike froze. “Wait, you, have thought about it? Wouldn’t a recorded mind be… an AI? If you put a mind onto a ship’s computer, isn’t it just the ship? Not a creature anymore, no more soul or desires, or…”
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “That’s stupid. I know pegasus ponies with all kinds of implants. Right before we left, there were some who got all shot full of implants, so they could fly around in the atmosphere of Jupiter to work the Hydrogen mine. They were basically more metal than pony at that point, but… what difference does it make?” She pushed Spike gently by the shoulder, over to the console. “We can’t waste time being existential. Twilight’s waiting for us. Vacation over. Let’s get Node and “Rarity, then bounce.”
Spike rested one claw on Rainbow’s shoulder, so she’d be part of the transfer—then invoked the command required.
They were standing in a city. Not the same city—there were thousands of occupants now. Ghostly transparent figures, just a little taller than Spike. They walked on two legs, wearing wispy cloaks and capes that covered most of their bodies. Ghostly vehicles rumbled along the roads. In the sky, a massive ring slowly rotated, like a metal ceiling high above.
But one figure wasn’t transparent like the rest. Spike saw her, sitting beside the pond, skipping rocks across its surface. It looked like the other ghostly figures, though only her face was visible through the wispy cloak. Fleshy, pale, with a white mane cascading down her back. One of her eyes was metallic in its socket.
Is this what the signalers looked like? Familiar in important ways a biologist would realize. Distinct in others. There was something childlike and helpless about the way the face was structured. “You’re here too?” she asked. Still in Starlight Glimmer’s voice, though there was an emotional depth to it that Spike had never heard from Node before. Strange tones and stresses that no pony would’ve used. This system is translating for us. “We thought it was time to get some real work done,” Rainbow said, settling down on her haunches beside Spike. “No offence, but I liked your old look better. You’ll get a headache so high off the ground.”
Node laughed weakly. She picked up another stone, skipped it across the water. “They’re gone,” she said. “Into a device just like this, cast into the void to drift. My family… my friends. I agreed to stay behind and watch for you. Why would I do that?”
“Because… you had a good reason?” Spike suggested. “Why did you stay?”
“A good reason to get scrubbed down into an echo of myself, running out of a computer like a pocket calculator? A good reason to let a copy live my life, with my friends, in my…” she sighed, throwing another stone into the pond. It landed with a resounding splash, not skipping once. “You already know what you need to know. There’s nothing more I can tell you. The Hunger that’s coming—and the solutions. Join the Flotilla, or hide somewhere too small to find. We’ve tried every solution, tried all of them repeatedly. Thousands of years to try to make something better here, for nothing. You aren’t immune.”
“Maybe we aren’t,” Rainbow said. “But I know one thing—you’re not better off alone in here with these ghosts. We’re your friends, Node. We want you to be part of the crew.”
“What if I don’t?” she asked. “My civilization is gone—without me. I’ll never see them again. You can be my friends, but you can’t replace what was lost. That’s why my memories were locked away in here—I knew what they would do to me.”
Spike had never heard such hopelessness from any creature in his life. Starlight Glimmer had certainly never sounded that way. He had a grim choice to make.
1. Try to compel Node to leave against her will. [Dangerous] 2. Say goodbye.
“Your civilization might be gone,” Spike began. “But that doesn’t mean their impact on the world has to be. You chose to stay behind, and because of you my friends are still alive.”
Node just stared at him. Spike had no idea if he was getting through to her, or if she was plotting some transfer that would remove him from the system for good. Assuming she can even get out without my help. It is a honeypot.
“Why should that matter to me?” she asked, voice as empty and bleak as he could imagine. “You’re alive, but everything we ever created is crumbling. Our homeworld is empty, and the others didn’t even fly to the flotilla. Their only contribution to helping the galaxy was creating you. As far as I can tell, we failed there too. It’s all ashes, Spike. All dust before the storm.”
“You’re telling me,” Spike glowered up at her, abandoning whatever calm and softness he’d been keeping to before then. Node had certainly suffered, but saying she was the only one—it was absurd. “While you were down on Proximus, I was trying to keep our ship from being blown to Tartarus by that insane stowaway Cozy Glow. I stopped her—and she killed me. I died for this mission, Node. Sometimes it’s not about what we want, or even what we deserve. We do what’s right because it’s right.”
Rainbow Dash hadn’t said anything so far, but finally she spoke up, her voice even. “Spike, if you died, how are you, uh… not that I’m trying to take away from that speech or anything. But you seem pretty alive.”
“Twilight stopped me from staying dead using the virus that got Apple Bloom,” he answered. “I wouldn’t have wanted her to, but I didn’t get a choice. “I understand how much this hurts, Node. Evidence on the outside, it’s looking like Equestria might be suffering the same fate as your civilization did, or maybe they’re about to. But there’s still a chance they might be out there. Right now the crew might not survive without your technical experience. You’re a great engineer, and now I’m dead. They need you.”
Is Node convinced? Yes.
Finally she rose from the bench, shoving her pile of smooth stones into the water with a splash. She turned, glaring down at Spike. “I’m going under protest,” she said. “I’m happier here, with the memories. It’s where I belong. But… you’re probably right. At least by saving you, I can help save something we created.”
Rainbow’s eyes lit up, but she resisted asking just now. Spike thanked her silently, crossing his claws. We can ask her all about it once we’re out in the real world and she can’t get back down here.
“We only have one pony left to find,” Spike said. “I saw a console just a few meters back. Let’s just… find Rarity, then we can get Applejack.”
As it turned out, rescuing the last of the group wasn’t terribly difficult. Rarity had created a vast studio for herself, with thousands of designs for uniforms and dresses and accessories that might’ve been quite in fashion in Equestria—if Equestria still existed. All it took was a promise from Spike to commit it all to memory—one he could confidently make since his memory was entirely artificial—and they were back to the farm.
“I find it hard to believe that Applejack of all ponies would be the one not to be cooperative,” Rarity said, as they again climbed that old dirt road leading to the farm. “She’s always seemed so… loyal. Doesn’t she want to see her brother and grandmother again?”
“I think she realizes they’re dead now,” Rainbow said. Not angerly, her tone was matter of fact. “She’s just telling you how she feels, it’s perfectly in-character. Honesty was her thing more than loyalty.”
“Right,” Rarity trailed off, staring in disdain at the muddy roads. She stopped in front of a fallen bit of metal—a broken drone, its little propellers torn up by a tree. “Honestly I’m not thrilled to see these things again, either. They’re the reason we’re in here in the first place. Which… I Suppose there are some parts of me that should be thanking them, but I realize it isn’t an entirely rational desire.”
“That’s a Class 2 Anytasker.” Node supplied. She’d kept her alien body even here, just as Spike wasn’t flying around as a recreation of the Equinox. The fences and other infrastructure were all clearly the right size for her, enough to make him just a little jealous. “They aren’t even supposed to be capable of violence. I think the system was spoofed into seeing us as resources and ordering them to harvest.”
“Small comfort,” Rarity said. “Why did you rely on them so much?”
Node shrugged. “I don’t have memories of interacting with them much. I hardly even knew they existed.”
Evening descended around them as they walked, and the orange glow of sunset was replaced with the greater darkness of starlight and fireflies. Spike could see a little of what Applejack found so attractive about this place. It wasn’t Equestria exactly, but it wasn’t far away. Did the signalers really make Equestria? It seemed more likely that Node’s memories were suspect, or at least that her emotional state was so thoroughly compromised as to make her information suspect.
There were lights on in the little farmhouse, and voices coming from just ahead. Pinkie, Applejack, maybe Apple Bloom as well. Of course, where else would they go.
They reached the door. Spike made to knock, but Rainbow made to shoulder her way in. Spike stopped her with one claw, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “We need a plan to get Applejack out of here. What do we tell her?”
Spike would be relying on all their help, but he wanted a game plan going in. -Rainbow: Appeal to her loyalty to the mission. -Rarity: Appeal to all the ponies she might save. -Node: Use brutal honesty about the true nature of the Contingency and frighten her out.
Spike raised a claw to knock, but the door swung open on its own. He retreated a step—but it was only Apple Bloom on the other side. She was wearing one of those strange harness-things, making her stand vertically like he was. She was also entirely biological, just like he was. Just like Node.
“I was wonderin’ when you would show up,” she said. “After Pinkie found her way here… she said you’d finally found yer way in to bust us all out of this place.”
“I have,” Spike said, voice cautious. “Are you… against it, like your sister?”
Is she? No.
“Buck no!” she kicked the door out of the way with one of her hooves. The strange mechanism retracted and contorted, springs humming quietly. But it was entirely mechanical—Spike couldn’t even see anything powering it. It was just superbly perfect engineering. Just like the Signalers. They designed these. Node did say the Contingency was waiting for us.
The house smelled wonderfully of homely foods, enough that Spike felt himself relaxing as he stepped in. Yes, this confrontation was about to wear him out, but at least he could do so with a full stomach. He would have to carry these memories with him, since he’d never eat again. Unless I want to come back here. Once I know the time dilation factor, I could pop up and down without anypony else even noticing.
Spike had never seen their old homestead for himself, way out in the belt. But he guessed it looked like this—old farming equipment hung up on the walls, pictures of landscapes crudely painted, a huge chunk of iron banded with gold fixed to the wall like a trophy.
Then there was the food. The kitchen was full of it, smelling exactly like home. No more powdered protein additives, but actual steaming vegetables. True, he often found pony food a little lacking. But compared to what he’d been eating for the last forty years…
“Mhmmm,” he closed his eyes, letting the odors wash over him. “That’s real apple pie, isn’t it?”
“Sure is,” Applejack answered, removing the pan from the oven with one clawed gripper and settling it on the counter. It was too high, like everything—but too high for a pony was perfect for these bipedal skeletons. “We both worked on it. Figured you’d be here eventually, and food don’t actually go bad around here, so…”
“You know why we’re here,” Rainbow said. It wasn’t a question. Their eyes met. “We have a mission to complete. Spike says you’ve been… expressing some doubts about doing your part.”
Begin social combat. Rolls are reflected in the Equinox channel.
“It ain’t up for discussion,” Applejack said. “I’ve told him how I feel, and I assume he’s told you.” She glanced to see his face, then nodded. “Alright then. I’ve said this is the place for me. We’re dead, and that’s just a right shame. But it ain’t a half bad place to live. I figure… if we wait long enough, our families will find us.”
“They will not,” Node said. Applejack stared as she crossed the room, then pulled out a chair and tipped it back, putting up her strange shoes on the table next to some country cobbler. “Because you are not dead. Your minds are currently being simulated on the hardware of the Contingency—an immensely powerful computer, one meant to be hidden inside a large comet and launched into space. There it could hide from the Hunger for a timeless eternity, one of a billion billion similar objects. Undetectable, unknowable, unseen. A coward’s solution… my own civilization’s solution.”
“You aren’t dead,” Spike added helpfully. “None of you are, Twilight and Fluttershy have kept your bodies alive. I think there’s a way in this system here to… reverse whatever harvested your minds, put them back. We can do something like that, can’t we Node?”
“You, Apple Bloom, and me—simple. The others—tricky, but yes. I believe the process can be reversed if the transfer was recent enough.”
Applejack glanced between each of them. “You all… agree with this? Going back?”
They nodded one after another. Even her sister, which seemed to hurt her the most. It was Rarity who finally spoke, though. “Applejack, we’ve all left family behind. I’m as eager to see mine as you are to find yours, I have no doubt. But we will not find them by fleeing into the machine. We must rise up and complete the mission we came to complete.”
Applejack sighed, slumping into one of the chairs. She held out one claw, flexing the mechanical fingers. “I knew… I knew it would come down to somethin’ like this,” she said. “But before we go… I want a promise. One day—maybe a month from now, maybe a year. If we’ve done all we can, if we’re done with the Equinox and on our way home… I don’t want to go into the ice. This place is for me. I want to feel the gravity of a planet again. Grow apples again. Promise you’ll be on my side.”
“I promise,” Spike said. The others agreed, or else didn’t say anything. It was enough.
Spike ate along with the others, relishing what might be his last chance to enjoy so many familiar foods. He didn’t know these recipes, and there was no chance in Tartarus he was going to tell Applejack about brief trips into this thing, if he planned on taking them at all. They all had stories to share—what they’d accomplished while alone, the things they’d seen.
Only Node remained separate, tinkering with a nearby console. Finally Spike wandered over to see what she had accomplished.
She lowered her voice. “This is… this shouldn’t be my choice to make,” she said. “They’re your crew, not mine.”
“Tell me,” he said, matching her whisper.
“Well… like I said, a digital mind can go in and out of whatever system we want. But there are organics in here. Pulling them out is… going to be tricky.”
“Explain.”
“Well… the hard part is saving anything that happened in here. Think of it like… a buffer. They weren’t ever meant to go back. Effecting changes on an organic brain isn’t easy. The simplest way to bring everyone out, we just restore them to who they were right when they went in. That’s safe. Or…”
“She gestured, showing him another plan. “We could disable these safeties here, boost the gain, and try to send them back anyway. It’s been over a year of subjective time for everyone here—it would be wrong to take that away. Good thing you have to decide, and not me.”
1. Send them back without their memories. [Rainbow’s stats revert, and anything else learned by the organic crewmen is forgotten] 2. Transfer out with everything [dangerous]
“I don’t understand why I shouldn’t just let them decide,” Spike said, meeting Node’s eyes with a flat stare. “Why would I bet the one to make this decision?”
“Because some of them don’t want to leave,” Node said. “I am one of those. But I am as unreal as you are, so I do not have the luxury of an excuse.” She tugged towards Spike, forcing him to listen. “Just imagine for a second what your farmer would say. The perfect excuse for her to stay in virtual space while we devise a solution. We never will, by the way. The ancients—we were way smarter than you are. Maybe a thousand years ahead. By the time you get advanced enough to understand how the Contingency works, you and all your other friends will have long died without the help you needed. Or that would happen, if there was any civilization left to be advancing. But you and I both know that might not be the case. The Hunger will just swallow the living, leaving those hiding down here to wonder forever when you might be coming for them. Never.”
Spike looked away. Twilight had always told him that command meant being the one to make difficult choices. He had spent much of this mission free from that, though he was often forced to live with the decisions she made. Now, after he was dead, he was the one making choices for his friends. “I don’t think it would be right to pick and choose what we bring,” he finally said. “We’re getting them out completely, alive. Do it.”
“I’ll try,” Node said. “But you pulled the trigger, not me. No memories are worth this risk.” She turned away, reaching up to the panel. “I’ve got a program ready. Let’s see how this goes.” She pressed one key with her thin fingers—and the world went black.
Spike had made it quite clear that she would see the results of his attempt right away, and now she saw for herself that he’d been telling the truth. One by one, Twilight saw her friends begin to stir, the monitors suddenly beeping like crazy.
Fluttershy ran in from the side of the room, her coat damp and a towel wrapped around her mane. “How is he… done… so fast?”
Spike’s voice answered a second later, echoing from the speakers over her shoulder. “Time is different in there. But it took less than I would’ve thought. A week. I don’t know how easily it was to get them out.”
Node was the first to rise, climbing up from her chair and shaking out her plastic body. She lurched forward a few steps, hooves ringing hollow with empty plastic sounds. “Goodbye body.”
“Don’t complain to me,” Spike snapped from overhead. “You have one.”
“True.”
Apple Bloom was up another moment later, with a little more dignity. “Well that was interesting.” Her eyes regarded the room, before settling on Twilight. “Captain? Where are we?”
“On the Equinox,” Twilight said. “I’d rather not explain. Wait for the others.” On some level, Twilight already knew it would be simple to wake up the ponies who were already somewhat electronic themselves. Their ‘bodies’ were ready for this kind of control. Organics were far less so, however.
One by one, they rose. Applejack’s artificial leg twitched, then she sat up, scratching at the sensor on the back of her neck. “Is this thing really necessary?”
The other soon followed, going through the same string of predictable disorientation, wondering what had happened, and how they’d come to be aboard the Equinox. It was hard to miss the lack of gravity, and the straps holding them down. Twilight dismissed questions about what had happened for the moment, searching for any sign of mental damage. Minds were a delicate thing, and they weren’t exactly made to be transferred into a metal ball and back.
Is Applejack intact? Yes. Is Rarity intact? Yes. Is Rainbow Dash intact? Yes. Is Pinkie Pie intact? Yes.
Curiously, she could see no sign of damage from any of them. She asked a few casual questions to each of her friends, confirming their mental acuity without ever formally asking them to prove they’d made it through. Once she was sure of that, Twilight teleported the Contingency back into cargo, where nopony would accidentally slip back again. She didn’t send it away or destroy it, however. In a way, it had saved them from being killed by robots, maybe it would save them from something else down the line.
“You’re all confined to sick back for observation for the next day,” Fluttershy declared. “Don’t think about arguing with me. Spike will be on my side, won’t he?”
“Yes,” Spike answered, sounding flat. “So long as you explain what happened, so I don’t have to.”
“The captain will,” Fluttershy said, facing her. “That’s her job.”
Was it?
Twilight did it anyway. She started at the beginning, when she’d discovered their limp bodies on the surface of Proximus B, under the pressure of their stowaway finally breaking all the stops to take final control and destroy the Equinox. She described Spike’s heroic death, and Cozy Glow’s near victory by means of her final explosives.
Right about the time she’d finished explaining Sunset Shimmer, the pony herself walked into sickbay. Well, what was left of her did. Sunset Shimmer might still be alive by some definitions, but she hardly looked it. With all her legs replaced, and her torso stitched and sliced, ‘morbid’ was about the only word Twilight could think to apply to her.
She didn’t seem embarrassed about how she looked, or to even care that everypony stared. She marched straight up to Twilight, then spoke in a low voice.
New Scene: Altered
“I’m getting energy signatures from Proximus C. Something out there is waking up, captain. Are we going to get out there and meet it, or let it leave us behind?”
1. The crew’s awake, set a course. That should give us a few months in transit, with enough food for a year if we need it. We can fix the rest of what Cozy did on the way.
2. Salvage camp first, then set a course. We can’t leave those weapons behind, not after what we’ve seen.
3. Ignore the signal, the ring is where the real information is hiding. I can’t trust you, Sunset. I don’t care about your signal.
After everything that had happened, Twilight couldn’t imagine leaving Proximus B with every one of their turrets and other automatic weapons behind. She sent Rainbow, Apple Bloom, and Pinkie back down to get everything packed, while she set her engineers loose on the remaining damage Cozy Glow had done to the Equinox.
Or is it even the Equinox anymore? Did they damage Spike instead? But those thoughts hurt her brain, so she banished them quickly enough. Just like she banished all the stories her crew gave her of the time they’d spent in the Contingency. Over a year, apparently, living in pastural conditions that responded to their whims.
On Spike’s insistence, she sat down with Node to discuss a few pressing details. “You’re going to tell her,” Spike said over the speakers. “Or I will. She’s your captain and mine, Node.”
The robotic pony shifted uncomfortably under the pressure, an organic simulation so striking that Twilight almost didn’t believe it was happening. Finally, she looked up, and spoke in Starlight Glimmer’s voice.
More than ever before, it sounded like a real pony. “The ones you call the ‘Signalers’—they built this contingency for your species. They hoped that you would find it and be able to flee into it. We were guilty that we couldn’t… that we weren’t successful, with your species. Didn’t want to leave you to die.”
Twilight occupied herself organizing the pens on the table between them, straightening them into an orderly line. Node’s words were absurd, yet she spoke them with absolute sincerity.
Finally, Twilight looked up. “You created us, is that what you’re saying?”
Node nodded. “Your species and many others. All were attempts to solve the same question… all failures. You were the last.”
“Do you have any, uh…” she cleared her throat. “I believe you’re sincere, Node. But you’re making quite an extraordinarily claim. Where’s the evidence of this?”
“In the Monument,” she answered. “Many of our creations were stored down there. Previous iterations. All of you have a similar genetic heritage—ours. Each increasingly divergent, but the meaningful similarities are there. With time, I could adapt your computer to display stored genetic data.”
“I could,” Spike cut in from overhead. “No one is modifying me. I may not understand much about this, but I know those computers are my brain. No one goes in there but Twilight.”
Twilight waved a dismissive wing. Node clearly understood the gesture, as she might not have before, because she stopped arguing. “Assume I believe that for the time being. We don’t really have the luxury of detailed investigations and debates about history that… might predate all of civilization. We’ve got a trip that’s several months long coming up, we can table this until then.” She turned towards the distant window, where Proximus B was even now visible beneath them. “When you went into the Contingency, you regained your memories, am I understanding this right?”
Node nodded. “I was distilled down into a dewdrop and a hair’s breadth. My culture was—less concerned about what you might call ‘continuity of consciousness.’ In case that wasn’t immediately clear form the contingency itself. I had to be small enough to meet you when you arrived.”
“To do what?” Twilight turned back, watching her closely. But there was no missing the obvious signs of intelligence from Node that hadn’t been there before. She had mastered their culture with long effort, but now she remembered her own as well. Those eyes moved in strange ways, and she fidgeted constantly in her seat as a living creature might do, though her body needed no adjustment. “What was your mission?”
“I was the watchman on the wall,” she answered. “The voice of the eclipse. I would penetrate your systems and adapt myself until I was small enough for you to understand. Then I would make myself understood. Warn you.”
“Did you… speak with any of us before?” Twilight asked. “Sunset Shimmer—the other captain, I think she might’ve beat us here? I get fuzzy on the timelines honestly. But she seems to know some of this.”
Node shook her head. “I detected another vessel some time ago, but it refused my messages and did not construct the necessary hardware. I don’t know if it understood what I asked.”
“I did,” Spike said proudly. “And we did.”
“Yes,” Twilight agreed. “Is there any part of your warning you didn’t deliver?”
Node pushed back her chair. She drifted slightly across the room, but not far. Her hooves had magnets, apparently, because she held herself down well enough. She stood straight, looking Twilight square in the eye. “You are not immune to Ḩ̣͉̩̘̠͈̀ͅU̮̫̱ͬ̏͆̅N̵̩͇̙͓̝G̸̭̫͖ͭͦ͒̃Ę̦̪̥͉̪͒̈́̂ͧ̊R̐̄̔ͪ͆. If it reaches your civilization, your organic bodies will fray and wither. If it draws closer, it will tear your minds from you and into itself. Nothing living will remain in the space it leaves behind. You must convert yourselves into a more enduring form—but even then, there are… limits.”
Node pointed down at the table, at a photograph of the contingency resting there. “Whatever form you choose must be low-energy enough that it cannot be detected except but vigorous investigation. We have observed systems as they fall, and machines that are too active are targeted and dismantled as well.”
All this time, and you’re finally talking straight to me. I should’ve taken you to the contingency sooner.
“She said that was what she wants for us,” Spike explained. “Everypony who ever lived, into the contingency.”
“Not me,” she spun on the nearest speaker, glaring at it. “The Ancients wished to share their methods with you, their lastborn. You would have the least time to prepare, and it seemed… unfair.” Were those tears? They couldn’t be—Node wasn’t capable of crying. She sounded distraught, anyway.
“That doesn’t seem like something many ponies would like,” Twilight said. “And apparently it wasn’t, because this Ḩ̣͉̩̘̠͈̀ͅU̮̫̱ͬ̏͆̅N̵̩͇̙͓̝G̸̭̫͖ͭͦ͒̃Ę̦̪̥͉̪͒̈́̂ͧ̊R̐̄̔ͪ͆ already came to Equestria. We chose to flee from it instead. Possibly to this system.”
“There is no chance a species as primitive as yours could reach the Great Fleet,” Node said. “We could have, but we chose not to take the risk. You would surely die in the attempt.”
Twilight gritted her teeth together, biting back a retort. She didn’t want to respond to honesty from Node with anger, or else she might never get information so freely again. “We’ll see,” she said.
Her radio rang a few minutes later, and she headed down to the docking bay. There she found an argument already in progress.
Several crates of cargo had already been unloaded, and Rainbow perched protectively atop them like a nesting bird, shooing away Applejack with a stick. Meanwhile Sunset sat not far away, with a clipboard beside her covered in damage reports and frustration on her face.
“Rainbow here thinks she knows better than the Equinox’s chief engineer. And that stranger captain sure ain’t helpin’.” Applejack glared at them both. “Twi, you trust me to know what’s best for the Equinox, don’t ya?”
Two more pairs of eyes settled on her. There was no right answer to that question.
“Here’s the short of it, captain,” Sunset cut in, her tone neutral. She’d been in command—she wasn’t taking this personally like the others were. “We’ve salvaged enough parts from down below to make a single major repair to the Equinox.
“And I’ve been telling them we need our bucking guns back!” Rainbow interrupted, shoving Applejack away again. “She wants to use these parts for… something stupid, I don’t even know.”
“And that’s why I’m chief engineer,” Applejack interrupted. Then she turned on Twilight. “Captain, I’ve discovered a minor but potentially… well, damn near catastrophic—flaw in the reactor. All these explosions tearing us apart, they’ve opened microfractures inside the containment cell. There’s a chance—real small chance, but it’s our buckin’ reactor—that we might not be able to start her up again. Every time we lose power and start it up again, we could fracture the whole shell. And there ain’t a way in Tartarus we make a new one out here.”
“She said it was 10%,” Rainbow said. “I’m okay with those odds. But you know what this mission taught me? There’s a 100% chance somepony is going to try to buckin’ kill me. I want weapons, captain.”
“Or—” Sunset interrupted, casually. “We could strip it all down for scrap to make future repairs—no, not to the reactor. Don’t even say it, engineer, I know. But your ship isn’t in the best shape, captain. You’re running low on feedstock for ever fabricator aboard. In my experience, it’s always the little things that go wrong. The reactor isn’t going to blow—but the plumbing might. Eventually that kills your hydroponics, and nopony eats. Or something like that, you get the idea.”
Twilight hesitated. It would be a long trip, and once she made her decision, there wouldn’t be time to change it.
1. Repair the Equinox’s Weapons. 2. Reinforce the Reactor. [or suffer a 10% chance of permanent failure on each activation. Note: As this is a fusion reactor, the Equinox will not be physically destroyed by this failure] 3. Strip it down for generic spare parts
Repairs took about a day, a day Twilight spent helping members of her crew where she could. She spent most of her time with Pinkie in Hydroponics, replanting trays they had left sealed against their long time on the surface. They had at least five months of real food left in storage, certainly no reason to worry about abruptly running out. But the best way in Twilight’s mind to stay ahead of all that was to never fall behind.
Finally—though some part of her still ached slightly at the decision, she pointed out at the stars. “Give us an approach vector for gravitational capture near Proximus C,” she ordered. “If I can get it, I want flexibility in my approach vector. We may end up harvesting from those moons. I know you’d probably want it, Spike.”
“In the sense that I have a thousand constant warnings for every missing bit of armor and every damaged circuit aboard, yes,” Spike answered. “Repair is important.”
It wasn’t just Twilight alone on the bridge. Sunset Shimmer was there, along with Rarity. At least the freezer burned captain seemed to be healing into her implants well enough. She still had the look of somepony surviving only with the aid of medical science, but she never seemed to mind. Twilight would’ve had much less to worry about if she hadn’t seen the number of painkillers in her prescription schedule.
The large projection screen at the far end of the bridge flashed, then filled with the string of numbers that was their course. “Vector calculated at three months, fuel expenditure 13 percent of remaining. Only yellow value in my probability tensor is structural integrity, we’ll want to reinforce before deceleration.”
“Probability tensor?” Rarity repeated. She had barely been listening up until that point, occupied completely with the sensor station. But now she looked up. “Spike dear, that doesn’t sound like you.”
“It wasn’t me,” he answered. “But now it is. The inside of this thing is… huge. No matter how much bigger I feel, there’s always more space. Like a library left behind by giants. I found a subroutine for running probabilistic simulations of outcomes based on known values. It says I can use it on groups of people who don’t know… well, it works best for things with known values. I have all the Equinox’s flight data in here, status information from every system. Linking those together was trivial.”
“If you value who you used to be, I would stay away from anything you find,” Sunset said, finally turning away from the approach vector. “The aliens who created all that were so much more advanced than we are. If you think like them, you won’t be able to think like us.”
Is this true? Yes.
How much is Spike changing from 1-10? 1.
“Your concerns are noted,” he said. “But irrelevant. I am not a dragon anymore. I can’t think like one anymore. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think of myself as an Equestrian. Even if it’s an Equestrian… ship? A ship who diligently plotted your course for you captain. Should we engage?”
Twilight nodded, picking up the microphone from the console in front of her in her magic. “All hooves position yourselves for acceleration. The course we’ve plotted will involve acceleration that will simulate slightly greater than Equus planetary gravity. Spike will give you a ten-count.”
He began counting down. Twilight rotated herself in her magic, settling her hooves onto the surface that would be the “floor.” Rarity had less to do, pressing a lever that rotated her seat. For a few seconds she hung there by the straps—then the acceleration hit her. Sunset Shimmer stood just opposite Twilight, but even so it seemed like she was handling it the worst. Something happened in one eye, and suddenly it was splotched red with blood. Her legs didn’t wobble—they were metal and plastic, after all. But blood dribbled down her nose. She gritted her teeth, breathing heavily.
“Damn,” Sunset took a few steps back. “I think I’ll… go speak to the doctor, if you don’t mind. Ask Rarity about what she found with your telescope.” She left, not actually waiting for Twilight’s approval.
Twilight took a few seconds to adjust, circling to one of the camera-views of the rear of the ship. She watched in splotchy black and white as the glow of highly accelerated gas sped out behind them, pushing them slowly up Proximus B’s gravity well. Finally, she turned. “What was Sunset talking about, Rarity? You didn’t mention, uh… work with the telescope.”
Did Rarity find anything? Yes. Does she know what lurks in low orbit? Critical No.
“More than just that,” Rarity admitted. She pointed to the console in front of her, and the noise of blurry images she’d taken there. Twilight’s eyes glazed over at the graphs and charts beside each one—something to do with the kind of elements present.
“Sunset Shimmer was right, we can look thermally. Proximus C is a typical gas giant—mostly hydrogen composition, as you can see. But if you look here, you’ll see there’s a little patch, see those numbers?”
Twilight leaned in, nodding. “Looks like the surface temperature jumps from -145 C to something like… -80 C. Only right there?
“There’s an eddy in its upper atmosphere. I’m quite certain there’s a shield in operation—structural, like the one over Canterlot station. Weather control seems likely too, considering the windspeeds elsewhere on this planet exceed any Equus hurricane. But around this patch, cloud patterns suggest it’s calm.”
Hiding in plain sight. They’d scanned Proximus C before but hadn’t thought to look at it like this. Not until Sunset came aboard, and they knew there was something hiding there. “What are the odds this is natural, and we’re… wasting our time?”
“I give it fifty-fifty,” Rarity began.
But Spike’s voice overhead interrupted her. “Marginal, captain. Rarity look at the radiospetographic imaging again. There are fusion biproducts concentrated around that spot not present anywhere else in the atmosphere we’ve scanned. Something is running down there.”
“Yes,” Rarity puffed out her chest a little, staring down at the image. Finally she nodded. “Spike is… correct. I can’t believe I missed that. But my real purpose is to call you to action, captain.”
1. Release a probe. Launched now, it will arrive two months before the Equinox does, smacking right into the planet and taking measurements as it goes.
2. Modify the standard signaling laser to penetrate the cloud cover and hope it’s an Equestrian ship down there that wants to listen.
3. Change the approach vector considerably so the Equinox arrives under much lower burn and on the opposite side of the planet, hopefully making it more difficult to detect.
There was much Twilight could’ve suggested they do about the strange new information, but in the end she was left with one decision that rose above the others. “We’ll send a probe. A month from now, we’ll use what we learn to decide if we want to try and send another message. Talking to them now won’t let us get there any sooner, assuming there’s anypony to talk to.”
Some members of the crew grumbled, but none was quite brave enough to argue with her. Twilight helped with the modifications in the workshop, standing beside Node and Apple Bloom as the fabricated something from both pony and Signaler technology.
“We’ll only have a split second for the probe to make a decision,” Apple Bloom said. “We’ll program it with all the logic we would’ve used if we were there.”
“Sure,” Twilight said. “Just make sure it doesn’t smack into the thing we’re observing. Those might be our ponies down there, and I don’t want to blow a hole in the roof.”
“No promises,” Node said. She still used Starlight Glimmer’s voice, but the illusion of emotions was long gone from it. Now every word she spoke sounded as though it came from a real pony. There was a whole lifetime of memories in there, that Node hadn’t yet been forthright about explaining. But Spike had made it clear that she did still have them.
When Twilight was a little more confident in the Equinox’s repairs, she would probably try that interrogation again.
Gravity brought its own difficulties, particularly for the members of the crew who were in the worst shape. Sunset Shimmer was suddenly stuck in sickbay, with Fluttershy on standby for the (relatively common) medical emergencies that followed.
Twilight met her there a few hours after the latest near-miss, this one a minor brain hemorrhage. Well, minor in that there hadn’t been permanent damage.
Fluttershy basically collapsed into the nearby chair as soon as she had cleaned herself off, barely awake. Her own body looked to be suffering the stress of hard work, though so far she’d kept working diligently.
Apple bloom, on the other hoof, was working as her nurse without any sign of fatigue. “You know, Sunset… one of these things might kill you,” she said. She seemed like she was trying to be tactful, though like her older sister she didn’t do a terribly good job. “You can only put so much tape on a leaky boat before you have a boat made of tape and the whole thing sinks.”
“And what are you… recommending, engineer Apple Bloom?” she asked, leaning weakly to one side. Twilight watched from a little distance away, keeping silent. Sunset was Apple Bloom’s original captain. In a way she had no business even listening. She listened anyway.
“Well, uh…” she nudged Sunset’s leg. “You’re already 60% artificial, captain. If you pushed it to a hundred, you wouldn’t be dying anymore. You wouldn’t need to eat, or sleep. I ain’t sure, but I think we might be immortal? Or at least… real easy to fix. Maybe that’s the same thing.”
“True,” Sunset croaked. “All of that is true. Except… I’d be giving up my magic.” She reached up, tapping the side of her horn with one plastic hoof. “The one thing I didn’t give up. Otherwise, my brain would’ve been completely scrambled. I might be your best spellcaster aboard. Or…” she glanced to the side, eyes narrowing as she met Twilight’s. Despite everything, despite the bandages on her head and sedatives on her system, she was aware of her situation enough to see her there. “Maybe second best. I haven’t gone up against your captain since she became an Alicorn.”
“And you won’t have to,” Twilight finally said. She wouldn’t have said anything at all, except that Sunset had invoked her specifically. Now she didn’t get to complain. “We’re on the same side, Sunset. No old feud matters. If there’s any hope for Equestria left, we’re it. We have to be united.”
Sunset turned away, hacking up another mouthful of blood. “Spoken like… a true captain. But tell me this, Twilight. Are you willing to act like one?” She didn’t wait for Twilight to wonder what she might be about to ask, didn’t give her a chance to think. “When I realized the mission required my ponies to take a risk, I ordered it. When I needed a pony to sacrifice so we could reach our goal, I ordered that too. Now this is your mission, your ship. Your maybe-living, maybe-a-dragon ship, but we won’t…” she coughed again, covering her mouth with one plastic leg. “Forget the details. You have a… virus. It changes ponies, maybe kills them. No offence, Engineer.”
Apple Bloom looked away awkwardly, but didn’t say anything. Whether she was actually hurt by Sunset’s words, Twilight couldn’t tell. Apple Bloom didn’t have to actually show her expressions if she didn’t want to.
“So here’s your dilemma, captain. I am not going to take that virus unless I’m ordered. If I don’t, there’s a good chance this trip will kill me. Really I should’ve known there would be trouble, I was held together with prayers as it was. So what do you order?”
Fluttershy perked up from her seat, watching Twilight intently. Unlike Apple Bloom, Twilight could read her expression just fine. You should’ve done that before I spent two days saving her life again.
Regardless, Twilight had a choice.
1. Twilight doesn’t give the order. (roughly 40% chance Sunset dies during the trip) 2. Twilight gives the order, and forces her to convert like Apple Bloom, possibly killing her and certainly taking her magic away. 3. Twilight uses the contingency instead, probably not killing her but certainly letting her body die. She may never get another.
“You know I wouldn’t do that,” Twilight said. “If you’re willing to go through the process, or maybe to use the contingency device, then that’s your choice to make. I won’t force you to… subject yourself to that. I would suggest that you should spend more of your time near medical, if you want to be alive when we arrive at… wherever we’re going.”
She raised a wing, interrupting whatever Sunset was about to say. “I’m calling a general meeting of the crew. I want you to explain to them everything you told me. If you’re not going to guarantee your survival, then we need to know anything that might help us complete this mission.”
Sunset nodded weakly. Twilight couldn’t read her expression—whether she was pleased about not being forced, or just annoyed with Twilight’s lack of certainly assertiveness. “Can we do it in medical?”
They did it in medical.
With gravity returned, they actually took the gather a few chairs, though Twilight didn’t bother with a table or a projector. With Sunset’s ship destroyed, ultimately everything they learned today was going to be from her anyway.
Sunset herself wasn’t hooked into life support anymore, though she still rested on one of the medical costs and had bandages wrapped tightly around her head. Her eyes still seemed strange, and only her entirely mechanical limbs moved smoothly. At least she didn’t smell necrotic anymore.
Twilight began the meeting with some brief introductions. “You all knew we’ve been caring for Sunset for many months now. She woke while you were out of communication, and that was when I learned… well, what she’s going to tell you. But before she does, I want to stop a few things right away. We’re going to have to decide how much we want to believe her. The escape pod’s databank was completely destroyed, as you already know. We either trust her, or we don’t.”
“You should trust her,” Apple Bloom said. It might be the first time she had ever interrupted Twilight, at least the only one in recent memory. “She’s tellin’ the truth, I know she is. If this is about what I think it is.”
“I hear you, uh… know about home, is that true?” Rarity asked. “Something happened, to Equestria.”
All eyes turned on Sunset. Finally, she nodded. “There are… lots of names for how it started. Space rot was a popular one, not because space caused it as everyone who got it was in… yeah, okay. Summary. Ponies on the Outer Rim started getting sick. Those Ort Cloud bases and mines and telescopes, that was where it was worst. Old professors, little foals that had been brought out there. Usual suspects would get sick, and no treatment would make them better.”
“Heisenberg Grounding,” Node said, from her corner of the room. She sat far from everypony else, with wings folded and face grumpy. Her past of helpful passivity, or just simple observation, both were long gone. “That’s what it’s called.”
“Okay…” Sunset repeated. “Whatever you call it, it started to spread towards the center of the system. The further it got, the darker it was far away. Even young, healthy ponies would get sick and die if they tried to fly into it too deep.”
“What was it?” Rainbow asked. “Like a fog, or a cloud, or—”
“No,” Sunset said. “Nothing you can see. The only way we ever invented to monitor its effects was with certain species of delicate flower that die before ponies. But you’re distracting me.
“Ponies were panicking, as you can imagine. Nopony knew what would happen when it got to Equestria. Would the shield hold? Even if it did, what about everypony on the surface of Equus? What about the Martian colony, or the mercury forge? We tried… everything we could think of. Shields, friendship beams, magnetic bottles, gravitational disruption. Nothing even slowed its effects.”
“Nothing does,” Node whispered. “Space is hungry. Now it feasts.”
Again Sunset tensed, though none of the others interrupted her. Node seemed so strange after getting her memories back, that even trying to press her felt vain.
“Eventually we realized we had to evacuate,” Sunset said. “No, turning every factory and forge and craftspony towards building evacuation ships, we could never bring everypony. Many would die. Did die, given the year. My ship was already finish by then—we were supposed to follow yours, originally.
“But you weren’t responding to messages, so we didn’t know if you were alive. We didn’t know that Proximus was safer. But we knew it was further. It should buy us some time if we could reach it. Obviously it has, since none of us have died or…” she looked away, expression dark. “Well, worse things. It usually makes you insane while it kills you.”
I’ve seen some of that in my own crew, Twilight realized. Maybe even in herself, at times. We’re running out of time.
“So you’re saying we tried to evacuate the whole planet,” Applejack said, raising an eyebrow. “Forgive me if that sounds far-fetched, but… we wouldn’t save basically anypony if we put ‘em on a ship like this.”
“The plan was to put almost everypony in long-term storage,” Sunset countered. “The ship itself would have a much smaller crew. But it was still under construction when we left. What we did bring was a device, magically entangled with a twin that would be on the new ship. I could activate it to take a measurement exactly once, and learn where the ship had gone.” She levitated the device of a nearby tray—its circuits were inert now, its lights all dull. But it was a small miracle it had ever worked at all.
“We’re going to the point this machine indicated, your captain can confirm it. I believe that some ship from Equestria must be waiting here. It will know I activated the receiver, since its entangled pair is also destroyed. I believe that is why it’s waking up.”
“Okay…” Rarity said. “Suppose we accept all that. Somehow Equestria managed to construct a… escape ship, or a vast swarm of escape ships. Accelerating the Equinox out here was difficult enough. I imagine it must’ve been far harder to get the evacuation ship here. What do we do if we find them? This… Heisenberg Grounding, will be approaching us too, yes? We have to… what, keep going? Fleeing forever?”
“Not me,” Node said flatly. “Not Spike, not Apple Bloom. Machines are immune. I do not know why, so don’t ask. I realize the complexity of an advanced starship begins to approach that of simple life. Yet the starship flies onward, and the flower withers. I cannot explain this. But in the space that is dark, His machines will find yours, and unmake them. A starship would certainly be found in time.”
“I don’t think we had a plan,” Apple Bloom said. “Everypony was just hoping the Signalers would save us.” She turned towards Node. “Are you going to save us?”
Node laughed, her voice bitter in the confined space. “We did. The salvation we left for you was the contingency. We gave you what we used ourselves.”
“In there?” Rainbow glanced down at her hooves. The others who had been trapped there all looked similarly introspective in their own ways. Pinkie paced, Rarity sighed wistfully. But Rainbow was the first to speak with confidence. “Yeah, I don’t know if Equestria wants to play pretend. I think we’ll be… fast. It has to catch us first, right? If I can break the rainbow barrier, we can get away from some dumb space-disease.”
“It’s too early to make a decision,” Twilight said. “We’ll need to see the state of the evacuation ship, if there really is one. We’ll need to see what resources we have. I’m going to be giving out work assignments for the next month. We’ll pause to review when the probe we sent reaches its destination and can give us better information.”
1. Everypony focus on repairing the structure of the Equinox. I don’t know what’s waiting for us at Proximus C, but it’s probably a fight. [chance of Rarity’s special defense project: 25%]
2. Everypony do whatever you think will help us be best prepared. I know you all have goals of your own. I should let you finish them. We can do more important things after the first month. a [chance of Rarity’s special defense project: 50%] 3. Everypony focus on the weapons. We need something to defend ourselves, even if we don’t have the spare parts to get things at 100%.
Twilight had her own ideas about what the crew of the Equinox ought to be doing. But ultimately, the decision not to micromanage her ponies was a simple one. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t possibly know as much about their own disciplines as they did—though that was certainly part of it. Far more than that, she just didn’t have the energy to ride them all.
It was a long trip, enough time for much to be accomplished. Much more than last time, given they no longer had a stowaway gradually burning through resources and setting them up for several kinds of failure.
Twilight had no time for her own pursuits—there were a dozen little fires to put out, and she was usually the pony to do it. The Equispike still had dozens of broken systems that needed fixing, distributed damage from Cozy Glow’s explosives. True, the ship was still structurally sound. But every little bit of damage or broken system was a little of their beach washed out to sea.
When Twilight wasn’t fixing other ponies’ problems, she found what time she could to talk to Node. But where she had once been obtuse and reticent with everything she said, now the “pony” was frighteningly direct, uncaring, almost cruel.
Twilight had no idea whether she should believe anything that Node told her. But she spoke in Starlight Glimmer’s voice, with such absolute certainty that it was hard not to believe what she said.
She spoke of a race as ancient as time itself, a race so well-traveled that the location of their original homeworld was lost to time. They had an infinity of different branches, spreading away through the universe from the location where Hunger had first appeared.
Once they had been young and clever, inventing incredible things that their ancestors never would’ve believed. But with every new failure, their hope faded.
“And all these creatures… where are they now?” Twilight asked.
“The Flotilla,” Node said. “Our ancient ancestors are, anyway. An intergalactic fleet… of a size and scale your mind cannot comprehend. My people, and your creators, left from that fleet because they thought they could succeed where others had failed.”
“You say things like that,” Twilight said, pacing around the workshop. This was where Spike had worked to build Node, with the strange fabrication hardware that they’d been sent. All that machinery was still here, much enhanced by Node herself. “But I don’t think that’s true. What does it even mean to be too advanced for me to understand? Ponies are interstellar creatures too.”
“Okay,” Node looked up from her work. She was doing something with glass, overlaying thin layers together around a thin organic film. There looked to be a grid of wires printed onto the glass, little coper lines so fine she could barely see them.
“The Flotilla’s core is composed of a number of Shkadov thrusters, constructed using a hyperstable class of Red Dwarf star. They have sailed for billions of years, and will sail for trillions more. Starlifting engines draw necessary matter from within each star, supplying numberless trillions of individuals with what they need to continue functioning.”
“Shkadov thruster?”
Node rolled her eyes, looking back to her work. “We use the sum of the star’s own output to push that star. Perfectly balance a swarm of mirrors against photonic pressure, with an opening opposite where you want to go.”
Twilight tried to imagine that—whole stars turned into engines? Equestria had a nonzero amount of experience with manipulating large objects. Celestia and Luna did, anyway. Maybe they would fit in with this Flotilla better than Node suggested. “And why didn’t you go off to join them yourself?”
Node’s plastic ears fell limp. “Shame. We were… the boldest, cleverest, and loudest engineers. Proximus C was a laboratory outperforming your entire civilization every few minutes. When we left, we swore we already had a solution. Beyond that—none of us is the only instance of us. I’m a copy of a copy of a… I don’t know how many of me there are. The Flotilla doesn’t need me back. The one it has isn’t a failure.”
Twilight settled one wing on her shoulder. “The Flotilla is lucky to have you, but so are we. I’m glad for what you do for my crew.” She left Node to her own devices after that—though from the number of fabricators going around her, she suspected that Spike had just as much of a hoof in whatever was going on there.
Node achieves 80% progress on her unknown project during the first half of the voyage.
Twilight checked in on each of her crewmen whenever she could. The others didn’t have the secrets of the universe to share with her, but they still needed to know that their work was appreciated, and they had her listening ear if they needed it.
Rarity makes 60% progress. Applejack makes 70% progress on repairs. Rainbow makes 80% progress with weapon modifications. Apple Bloom and Sunset make 80% progress on an unknown project.
She spent more time providing moral support for Rarity than for any other pony, who seemed to be struggling with her theoretical defense system.
“I don’t understand why this is giving me so much trouble!” she exclaimed, slamming another broken thaumic crystal into the disposal chute. Servos hummed, and the scrap slid away down the tube.
It was the second crystal she’d burned out during their conversation.
“That’s what comes from pushing boundaries,” Twilight said wistfully. “Everything we do is outside the familiar.”
“Not that far outside,” Rarity muttered. “Shields are common. How hard can it be to get one to trigger on command?”
Impossible, so far. Canterlot station had shields, and ultimately at the center of that infrastructure was a crew of dozens of unicorns. Only one was required, but many times more than that were always there, their powers amplified. But never missing.
“Maybe you’re going about it the wrong way,” Twilight muttered. “Maybe instead of trying to surpass Canterlot, we should just try to equal them. We have three ponies who can manage that spell.”
Rarity grumbled, then shook her head. “We don’t have the power. Only the engines are rated for that kind of output. Retrofitting somewhere else to take that much from the reactor just isn’t something we can manage with our crew. But with Node’s new computers, we would only need the shield for microseconds. Just long enough to intercept a projectile, or disassociate a magical attack. You’re smart, Twilight, but your brain just isn’t that fast.”
She pointed to one corner of the workshop, where the ship fabricator had printed the rest of her shield. Massive capacitors rang the outside, with a single conspicuous hole in the center. “Our existing computers are fast, but they aren’t smart enough to recognize danger when they see it. But Node has this new kind of AI… models you can teach, that get better and better the more they do something. That’s what runs this shield.”
“And your design is going to… trickle-charge these capacitors, using the existing wiring,” Twilight guessed. “And then turn on just when we’re getting shot at.”
“It does seem frighteningly likely,” Rarity said. “It’s the only disaster we haven’t faced yet.”
For an expert in fashion, you have low imagination for disasters.
But eventually their remote probe arrived, sending back its first grainy photos of Proximus C.
Everypony gathered to see what it would show, packed into the bridge where they had the biggest screens. Even still, the black and white surfaces did a pale job at communicating the incredible scale and majesty of the gas giant. Twilight had never seen images from so close to one.
“Captain,” Spike’s voice said, making her finally look up from the images. “We’re dealing with significant light lag to the probe. We have to send our command in the next minute, or it will default to its preprogrammed course.”
Twilight tried to remember exactly what the default might be—but that slipped her mind. It had been over a month now, and she had so much to remember… “What do you mean?”
Node made a convincing throat-clearing sound from beside Twilight. “The atmosphere is scattering our sensors. See there, that thing looks like metal. The probe thinks there might be a gigantic structure under there. Looks like…”
“The probe is 70% certain there is a larger structure underneath,” Spike said. “If we order now, it can adjust course and impact the planet close to the structure to get a good look. It will keep transmitting until right before the impact. Or we let it keep flying, and not show anypony who didn’t already know that we’re coming.”
“You aren’t going to hit them, are ‘ya?” Applejack asked. “I know our probes are real small, but so’s a bullet.”
“We can’t be positive,” Node said. “But we’ll try to be far enough away to get better information as we enter the atmosphere. The real fight is between the scattering of that gas and the transmitter antenna. The broadcast will be so high power and directed that the object will be able to guess our approach heading with certainty.”
1. Order the intercept [gain much more information, but reveal approach] 2. Flyby instead. [little more will be learned until the Equinox arrives] 3. Aim for the object intentionally. [W͝H̳͎̩̘͕̝͕A͠Ṭ̮͕͞ ̴͎̤̤̼̳͉̫I̸͍͉͉̘̟̤S̤͓ ̥̮̰̖̘͞O͝R͙͎D̡̹̗̣E̲͍̺̮͠R̩͓E̘̦̗̝̗̭D̙͈̩̻ ̻̰̻M̨U̩̱͇͖̩S͔̱̼̟T͎̻̪̬͕̀ B̘̲́ͅE̴̝̩̮̱C̖̠̥̘O̬ͅM̷͍̺͎̖Ḙ̹͓̮ ͕͢D̹̼̹̱͎͙I̟̮S̤̜͡O̳̺̥̰͉̭̭Ṛ̥̙͡ͅD͚̬̮̟̪̼ER̯͚͝]̞̼͖̖̱̯
Twilight gave her order, but it wasn’t as though that meant for an instant delivery of all the answer they wanted. They sent off their command, and then began another long period of silence while they all waited to know what would become of the probe.
No one got anything done, not even Spike. To the extent that Spike could get anything done anymore. Twilight knew better than to ask him. Twilight took the time she had to make a brief tour around the Equinox, catching up with what many of her crew had done. Even if she’d given them free reign, she wanted to get an impression of what resources they would have going forward.
She found Node had completely taken over Spike’s workshop. What the dragon had accomplished by ruthless trial and error, assembling from barely-related parts, Node had cleaned up and ordered into something incredible.
The computer fabrication ran quietly, spinning wire-thin circuits around a sphere like a knitter assembling a ball of yarn. Twilight leaned in, looking down at whatever it was creating. Gold and coper and aluminum went in, along with silicon, and only the sphere came out, along with lots and lots of metal scrap and waste acid.
Expensive hobby you have.
Less expensive was the metal skeletons Node had already covered with layers of some kind of dense silicon foam in a pink shade like some ponies under their coats.
Muscles connected one bone to another, muscles of a strange black fiber that another machine quietly spun from silicon, acid, and a carbon brick.
“It’s terrifying, isn’t it?” Spike’s voice asked, coming from one of the nearby speakers. “Node can be insufferable sometimes, but some of what she says is true. Getting her memories back didn’t make her worse at this, it made her much better. If Equestria had one creature like her…”
Twilight raised a wing. She wasn’t sure which of the cameras Spike might be using to watch, but clearly he saw, because he did stop. “Too late for the signalers to save us now, Spike. There might not even be an Equestria anymore. And if there is, it might be here.”
“If there is… we kinda did what we said we would,” Spike said. “In a way. We made first contact, and we might be bringing them back with us. Maybe Node is what saves Equestria.”
“No,” Twilight argued. “Node might help, but it would be us who saved anything. We got here on our own. We survived Proximus B, we survived Cozy Glow. Node barely even answered our questions.”
She stopped, leaning over the table at the strange metal skeleton. “What is this?”
“The Ancients,” Spike answered. “Or what they looked like when they had bodies. The Contingency contains a… simulated world, built for creatures like this. All that’s missing is the fleshy bits, and the brain. You see the first one growing near the wall there.”
“Why?”
There was no longer a way to watch Spike, and see what he might be thinking. She only had his words to go on. “Because Node wants her old body back. She has convinced me that it would be easiest to give me a body to control if I allowed for something less familiar in the short term. Once I had something, I could help build something more familiar. Though building a body like my old one would be… impossible.”
“So you’ll be alive again!” Twilight exclaimed, grinning.
“No,” Spike said flatly. “I would exist within the mainframe. Controlling the body would require proximity. I don’t want to be removed from the Equinox. There’s so much space in here. It isn’t the body I’m used to. But I can do more for everypony with the ship. I can react much faster than you can. I will remain where I am.”
Twilight didn’t argue. She took one last look at the body, with its strangely flat metal skull, and array of sensors and flexible cables. What Canterlot wouldn’t have given for a find like this, before they left.
Sometime the next day—not that long at all, really, Spike put out the all-call that their probe had reported back. “We won’t be getting another transmission,” Spike said. “I think you should meet in the bridge.”
They came—all except Sunset Shimmer, anyway. “I’ll listen from medical if that’s alright. Less walking.”
Twilight watched from the front of the bridge, watching as the probe charted its path straight down into the swirling fog. A distant metallic echo grew by slices, until the vastness of its scope became clear. She leaned down, checking the numbers just to be sure.
“That’s not just bigger than Canterlot Station. That thing is bigger than the moon.”
It stretched down and sideways into the planet’s atmosphere as far as the sensors could penetrate, borne upward by a glow of radiation from below. Active support, lighting the surrounding gas in a brilliant halo that turned the probe’s signal to static the closer it got.
“Not one thing,” Rarity corrected. “Captain, I see two objects. One is tethered to the other, but I believe the composition is distinct. I’m getting a thaumic signature, see here?”
Does Twilight know what it is? Yes.
Twilight followed her gesture to that part of the display. “That’s a city shield. Unless I’m wrong… Spike, do we have a match on… Canterlot Station?”
There was a brief pause, and the screen focused on the smaller object. It was only a radio outline, and compared to the incredible radiation that blasted out of the lower object, this one was a corpse.
“No match,” Spike said. “On the object as a whole. This section however…” a faint outline appeared around the tip of the object, maybe a tenth of its total area. “Could be a match. The thaumic signature is two orders of magnitude greater than the old Harmony reactor.”
“Well duh,” Rainbow muttered. “How the buck do they keep it fueled? While in-flight?”
Sunset’s voice came over the radio a moment later. “I don’t know. It doesn’t look like what the crystal empire wanted to build. Guess they found another way here.”
It’s a pony shield spell, Twilight thought. We have a pony ship.
“One more thing,” Spike said. “The probe sent encrypted ident-pings as we approached. We have a response here—just from the smaller object. We have… ship status report. Hold on, I’m reconstructing it. Bleed from that fusion torch is making this harder than you can imagine.”
“I can imagine,” Node said. “Would you like my help?”
Spike didn’t answer for a few more moments. “There!”
GENERAL DISTRESS OF HMS CELESTIAL ENDURANCE! HOSTILE VESSEL, WE ARE THE LAST SURVIVORS OF OUR PLANET. OUR VESSEL CANNOT ENDURE THE CONDITIONS OF THIS PLANET. IF WE ARE NOT RELEASED, WE WILL BE DESTROYED.
A heavy silence settled over the room. “Ain’t what I wanted to hear,” Applejack whispered. “Mah whole family—”
“Might be on it,” Pinkie said helpfully. “Don’t be sad yet. We don’t know.”
“We need an approach vector,” Spike said flatly. Like he’d just switched off whatever let him speak with pony emotion. “This data suggests a few options. But if we’re going to try any of them, we need to fortify the Equinox. I wasn’t designed to survive a hurricane.”
1. Permanently sacrifice Applejack’s personal project to reinforce the Equinox.
2. Remove everyone from personal projects for a little while (each character receives only a d4 to make progress, instead of a d8. If a character does not reach 100% upon arrival, that project will not be usable)
3. Don’t take anyone off their projects, Twilight and Sunset will just shield the Equinox when the time comes (if they are alive)
Twilight didn’t want to tell any of her friends they had to stop working. Each one of the crew had some critical mission to accomplish, or at least they thought they did. But ultimately there was only one pony on the crew she trusted to protect the ship from gravity and wind.
“I get ‘ya, captain,” Applejack said, raising her welding mask with the back of a hoof. There was a strange metal claw-apparatus on her foreleg now, one that folded flat when she walked but extended into interlocking mechanical grippers. Twilight had never seen anything like it in her life, though the design reminded her of those little drone things that had attacked the camp while she was in orbit. Only this one was clearly something Applejack had made.
“I can do it. If Spike says we can, anyway. There’s, uh… maybe a mite of compromise to be made in a situation like that. What we’ve done to reinforce is one thing, but… we need more metal, it can’t come from nowhere.”
1. Scrap the Prospector. We’re all in on the Equinox now that Spike is inside it.
2. Scrap the storage bays. Huge empty space, lots of steel to work with. If we have to haul cargo again, we can tow it or something.
3. Find an asteroid near Proximus C and mine. That distress call didn’t seem that urgent, right? A few months of metal refining and we don’t have to give up anything. [Applejack keeps her full repair project after all, at the cost of two months.]
Once her decision was made, she sent Applejack on her way. The Farmpony had seemed subtly changed since her time in the Contingency, but Twilight hadn’t confronted her about it. Twilight would probably be just as disoriented herself if she got sucked up into a ball or something.
Travel resumed, with each of her ponies returning to their work. Each had their own mission to complete, and their own goal to achieve. Twilight remained especially attentive to Sunset Shimmer, who had refused to sacrifice her magic on the altar of better chances of survival, no matter how broken her body seemed.
Does Sunset Survive? Yes.
It was a very near thing. More than once Sunset was rushed into the medical bay, for Fluttershy and Node to work with a combination of Equestrian medical science and Node’s bizarre suggestions. They cleared clogged arteries, cut necrotic tissue, replaced damaged organs. As the trip went on, Sunset grew stronger. Her body finally started healing into the mechanical leg-grafts, sealing around them as she’d meant to.
Finally, she could walk around again under full gravity without strain, and Twilight started seeing her at work on other parts of the ship. Mostly that meant she was with Apple Bloom.
Project completion status before arrival: Node/Spike's Project = INCOMPLETE Rarity's Project= COMPLETE Rainbow's Project = INCOMPLETE Apple Bloom's Project = COMPLETE
Twilight finally intruded on them as they neared their destination, stooping low as she entered the isolated workshop. The air was heavy with the smells of plastic and metal from a fabrication machine. A pattern crystal was slotted into place even as she spoke, and metal extruded through the air into the shape of beams and joints. Twilight didn’t have to wonder what it might be, because there were several of them skittering along the floors, the walls.
She squealed, raising a shield around herself as one stopped right in front of her.
A spiderlike metal creature, not as tall as her knees, with tiny tools on the end of each leg, and a pivoting sensor module on top. Mostly plastic, with little bits of metal.
“Oh, captain!” Apple Bloom emerged from beside a large gray box, which hummed quietly even now. “I was going to call you tomorrow, but you’re here now. I thought you might want to see this.”
Twilight waited another moment, but the little robot didn’t attack. Finally she lowered her shield, glancing around the room. There were just over a dozen of them in the relatively small space, most of which were gathered around the large box. Even as she watched, one curled up and climbed up inside, vanishing from sight. “So what am I seeing, exactly?”
“We stole them from the signalers,” Sunset Shimmer said, standing just by the doorway. “They call them Anytaskers, but our design isn’t nearly as smart.”
“Fixit spiders,” Apple Bloom supplied. “Beautiful, ain’t they? They can weld, seal, cut, bend… in or out of atmosphere. And with Spike in control of the Equinox, I figure he might want some tools for keeping things running that don’t rely on ponies much. Automation for the little stuff, leaving us for the big stuff.”
“It’s innovative,” Spike’s voice said, from the nearby wall. “Good. Not every member of the crew was so successful. Node and I are encountering… setbacks. But I’m thrilled to have this option for remote control, even if I’d prefer to just have a body.”
“It’s remarkable,” Twilight said. “I assume they aren’t vulnerable to going crazy on us with Spike in control? Won’t attack us like the flying ones did on Proximus B?”
“No,” Apple Bloom said. “It’s our circuit, not theirs. Without this control box here, they just sit quietly. No danger to anypony.”
“Good.”
Equinox gains: Drones (Repair: 3)
Twilight found similar frustration from Rainbow Dash as she walked through the weapons room. While Rainbow had clearly been close to getting one of their torpedo bays working again, she just didn’t quite have the engineering acumen to get there in time. Twilight wasn’t about to ask somepony else to stop their own important work because Rainbow thought that was the right idea. They’d be unarmed, again.
But at least they wouldn’t be defenseless. Rarity had built an impressive apparatus, just one floor down from the reactor. The shield crystal, several thaumic capacitor banks, and a large Signaler-design processor bank. Even with nothing going on, the central crystal glowed and spun, twisting at random as the ship decelerated towards their destination.
“And the best part is, no intervention is required. That’s rather the point, since it activates for such short times. No reactor at the scale of the Equinox could generate enough power to effectively protect the ship. But most of that capacity is wasted when there are not threats. Engage a shield exactly when it’s needed, and now we’re talking about something we can achieve. We have achieved.
Twilight took another look at her spell diagram, nodding in approval. “It’s incredible work. When we bring this back to Equ—right.”
“We’ll get back,” Rarity muttered, touching her lightly on the shoulder. “We’ve made it this far thanks to you, captain. Don’t give up now.”
It wasn’t exactly a call Twilight wanted to make. Listening to that pony distress call playing over and over filled her with dread she could barely suppress. But however much she wanted to help, some rational part won out. They lasted this long, it doesn’t seem like two months will make a significant difference.
They diverted a few degrees, slowing well short of Proximus C to orbit a metal-rich asteroid that would give them everything they needed in the shortest possible time horizon. With a year and everything they’d figured out, Twilight suspected they could’ve had the Spikequinox in better shape than when it drifted out of space dock. But she couldn’t justify that kind of delay, and the losses that might come with it.
We are the last of our species. Those words haunted her while she worked, and they followed her in her dreams. She tried to imagine what an evacuation of all Equestria might look like, and she couldn’t. No matter how united the world became, the vast majority would still be left behind. The loss of life staggered her.
But while she struggled in silence, the rest of her crew worked.
Are there any accidents or other mishaps during the mining process? No.
Between the prospector and Apple Bloom’s new robots, the repairs proceeded rapidly. Twilight watched as the little spiders danced along the exterior hull, sealing new armor plates, welding supports into place, then casting back on thin tethers.
What would’ve taken even an expert like Rarity several weeks, they could do in one. For better or worse, there was nothing to fear from the machines doing what they shouldn’t, since Spike controlled them all.
Those who didn’t or couldn’t help with the mining could continue their personal projects. Rainbow was the first to call her, her voice boiling with excitement even over the radio. “Right now, captain! I’m in the bridge!”
“We’re not… under attack, are we?” Twilight put down the trowel, pushing off from the hydroponics tray. “I didn’t get an alert.”
“No,” Rainbow said. “And after what I did, we won’t be! You should probably just teleport up here.”
Twilight shuddered at the thought. After the things she’d seen and heard while teleporting around on this mission, she didn’t use the magic for casual transport anymore. Even if it had been a while since her last experience.
She arrived a few minutes later to see Rainbow at the weapons station, which had a few more green lights on the status display than last time.
“We did it!” Rainbow said, bouncing out of her chair and grinning proudly. “It wasn’t easy, don’t get me wrong. But after this, I think I might deserve a fieldcert in engineering.”
“You don’t want that,” Twilight said, flapping towards her in the zero-gravity. “Believe me. You don’t want an engineer’s duty roster. What’s the point of an increase in pay if there’s no Equestria to pay you?”
“Right.” She deflated, falling silent for a moment before gesturing over her shoulder at the computer. “Check it out!”
Twilight didn’t move. She couldn’t help but feel a little guilty to see Rainbow’s enthusiasm die like that. She was proud of what she’d done, and she should be. “You can just give me the report, I trust you.”
Rainbow needed no more encouragement than that. “Well captain, you already knew the point defenses were running. Without the lasers, we’d be pierced by little bits of space trash every few days. But those aren’t good against anything larger than half a kilogram at fairly close range.”
Twilight nodded. “I bet Spike is an even better shot than the programs used to be.”
“An order of magnitude better,” Spike said. “Seeing how they work, I’m amazed we arrived in one piece.”
Rainbow turned back to the terminal, gesturing at the joystick and keypad. “You’ll probably remember when we scraped our torpedo tubes and guidance systems. And the ammo, and…” she winced. “I know you had good reasons! But just because we haven’t needed them yet doesn’t mean we won’t. It wasn’t that hard to get the hardware replaced for one of the tubes. Lots of fabricator hours, with a little help from Node to replace the computer stuff… point is, we’ve got a tube. One of four. But that’s 25% of the way to fully repaired!”
“How much ordinance do we have?”
“We kept all the bombs,” Rainbow said. “But fabricating little rockets takes time. By the time we reach the planet, I can give you four shots.”
Four torpedoes, and one tube to fire them. It wasn’t much, particularly considering the odds stacked against them so far. But Twilight would take what she could get. “Excellent work,” she said, embracing her friend. “Keep working. I’ll make sure you’re not assigned to anything else until we get a second tube operational.”
“Don’t scrap my systems for spare parts next time,” Rainbow said, grinning.
A few days later, they were moving again, and Spike got her attention with a few quick flashes from the bridge’s guidance terminal. “Captain, we need to choose our final approach. Either way, it’s going to be some tricky flying.”
Twilight squinted down at the projections, going over them in her mind.
1. Proceed directly for the submerged vessel and attempt to dock with the Spikequinox.
2. Establish a distant orbit and send in a robotic probe.
Twilight watched the little probe’s faint exhaust trail as it shot away from the Equinox, building speed for its descent into the atmosphere of Proximus C. She wasn’t the only one on the bridge—Rainbow was there with her hooves on the weapons. Sunset sat at the coms console, with Rarity on the science station and Node just sort of orbiting around.
Node’s new body demanded to be seen in a way that no synthetic pony could’ve. She’d made almost no compromises for the Equinox, even insisting on her old height for the body. That meant she was constantly having to float along vertically, or else scrape her head along the ceiling of every room.
It was easy to watch her and think that the Signalers really had returned from the dead. Thin body, two legs, four spindly arms, with a pale, hairless flesh that Twilight knew was just formed rubber of some kind. But knowing that and realizing it on an intellectual level was something completely different. From every casual observation, Node looked alive in a way that her plastic ponies never had. Her eyes seemed wet, her face seemed to flush with warmth at anger or embarrassment. Her limbs twisted and adjusted in subtle ways, and her chest lifted to breathing that Twilight knew she didn’t need.
Node glanced over her shoulder, grinning. “What is it, captain? Appreciating this awesome version of your uniform we made? All Rarity’s work. I just put it on.”
Twilight looked away. Some part of her wondered if making bodies was really the best use of their limited resources. But considering one of those was for Spike, who didn’t even seem to want to still be alive… she wouldn’t say anything. The computer would hear her.
“We’re through the dispersion layer,” Spike called, loud enough that everypony in the room went back to focusing on their work. “Signal booster is working. I’m assembling a composite now.”
“We can use the new screen,” Node said, holding up a piece of flat glass in two of her four paws for them to see. It was obviously meant to be a screen, though it wasn’t even as thick as a hoof. No way it could actually…
An image appeared there, filled with static around the edges and with bits and pieces coming in and out of focus. Twilight kicked off, drifting a little closer so she could get a good look.
There was no mistaking it. It wasn’t quite a starship, and it wasn’t quite a station. Canterlot had been turned into a ship, wrapped with metal pilons and several additional layers of armor and city that hadn’t been there before. The original mountain peak that had formed the city was still in there somewhere, though by the look of things it had been completely hollowed out.
The city wasn’t in good shape. Most of the outer sections were exposed to the swirling storms of the upper atmosphere, leaving only the shielded and armored sections in the middle apparently sealed off. She couldn’t see anything through the rigid windows, though the sensors did pick up some heat and energy readings from inside. Something was still working down there.
The probe kept going, past the inverted cone of the support layers of Canterlot Station. (Canterlot Capital Ship?). “Those black lines are energy readings outside the calibrated sensor range,” Spike supplied. “They appear to be tethering the Canterlot to the lower object. They’re providing structural support, though not total shielding. I’m reading significant degradation of Canterlot’s superstructure. Structural stability is… not guaranteed.”
The probe kept going, and the black lines of energy finally connected to something. The image here was further distorted by static and clouds of swirling gas, but Twilight could still see the general outline. This thing made the scale of the Canterlot look like a toy. A vast curtain of energy poured out one end, while hydrogen gas from the atmosphere around flowed in. A simplistic fusion torch, though one of such incredible scale that it boggled the mind. The probe showed a detailed view of a vast structure, with comparatively few internal air pockets. Most of it was infrastructure, with energy flowing out along struts that stretched away in all four cardinal directions from the instillation.
“What is it, Node?” Rarity asked. “The Ancients built this, did they not?”
“Yes,” She didn’t turn the screen around, though her eyes occasionally twitched, examining the empty air. She was connected to the central computer. Even with a body, she was still a little like a terminal. “Obviously. Those are our hyperstable alloys. It’s a…” She shook her head, folding the screen away. “You have no concept of it. There’s no point trying to explain.”
“Come on!” Rainbow glared at her. “Those might be the last ponies in the universe down there. If we’re going to get them free, we have to know what it is. Can’t you try?”
Node rolled her eyes. “It’s the endpoint of a Highway. One of the elementary solutions to the rocket problem.” She up the screen again, and seemed to draw along it with one of her spidery digits. “A proper endpoint would be built around a star. This is a… waystation. I don’t have a map, but I’m guessing it’s angled towards one of the existing routes. Lenses and boosters are built along the way, receiving matter and hydrogen and strengthening the beam. It’s all a battle against the inverse square law.”
But Twilight barely heard all that. It was certainly an interesting technology, reminding her a little of the foil-sail probes that smaller companies sometimes deployed in her home system. It was, rather, the location of the Canterlot. They’re parked right over the beam. If it switched on, the Canterlot would be utterly destroyed.
“Spike, is there any reason we shouldn’t send ponies down to Canterlot?”
“It’s incredibly dangerous,” Spike’s voice said. “But if you’re asking if it’s suicide—no. Parts of the vessel seem structurally sound. A crew with the right gear could penetrate the core.
“Might not be the right call,” Rarity suggested. “That, uh… Highway… is holding them. Maybe that’s where we should send our ponies.”
1. Dock the Equinox with Canterlot Station. We need all hooves to get her released as quickly as possible, no matter the risks. Our species depends on it.
2. Send a boarding crew to Canterlot Station. Saving that ship is important, but it’s just as important that we don’t get ourselves destroyed by accident. Without us, Canterlot is doomed.
3. Send a boarding crew to the Endpoint. We have to release the Canterlot before we can think about anything else.
“You realize how stupid it is for you to be going on this mission,” Sunset said, glaring at her just outside the docking bay. “This is why we have crews. This is why we delegate. We trust them to do these sorts of missions for us.”
Twilight glanced briefly down the open door to the Prospector. Her crew was already waiting inside—Node, Rainbow Dash, and Apple Bloom, and Rarity. Between the four of them, they would cover just about any skill the mission might need, without sacrificing some critical capacity that would otherwise doom the Equinox if they were somehow lost. Granted, morale might suffer a fatal blow if they were lost. Considering how thin they were all stretched at this point, Applejack in particular.
“They probably won’t be able to receive messages from the Equinox,” Twilight said. “They’ll be on their own.”
Sunset shrugged. “And you’ll be okay with that, because you delegate this important mission to the most capable ponies you had.”
Does Twilight insist on going herself? No.
Twilight sighed, slumping onto her haunches. “You’re right. I… wanting to go is selfish. I have a crew for a reason.”
“Exactly.” Sunset walked past her, calling into the opening. “Captain Twilight is leaving the mission to you! You can prep for takeoff, Rainbow!”
The pegasus emerged from inside a few seconds later, looking between them with concern on her face. “Is that true, Twi? That doesn’t seem like you.”:
“It’s not,” she admitted. “But Sunset is right. We don’t know what’s down there, and I’m the only alicorn we have. If something awful happens and I need to save you, the best place for me to be is somewhere I can do the saving.”
“Not that you’ll need to,” Rainbow said, puffing out her wings just a little. “Because I’m the best pilot that ever lived. I’ve been training for like… months, maybe? Or years? On the best simulator ever. I’m going to just dominate, you’ll see.”
Considering the winds down there, you better. Twilight reached out, settling a wing on Rainbow’s shoulder. “Good luck, Rainbow. Bring everypony home safe.”
She met her eyes, nodding once. “You got it, captain.”
Twilight watched them go from the bridge, tensing into her seat as the Prospector got closer and closer to Proximus B’s opaque atmosphere. Rainbow was right, she was the best pilot for the job. She could do things with spacecraft that Twilight could only understand in computer models. “Going down,” Rainbow said, her voice twisted by only a hint of static now. “We’ll keep an open channel all the way in.”
“Rodger that, Rainbow.”
Does Rainbow fly them in safely? No. RANDOM EVENT: The Agree of Disruption
Twilight could see that something was going wrong before Rainbow actually said anything. The information came buzzing back across the Equinox’s sensor connection with the prospector. An above-average density of changed particles, some slight deviations to the flightpath. Inconsistent altitude adjustments.
Then the pilot’s voice, sounding a little panicked. “Uh… Twilight? I think we might be having some…” on the channel behind her, several alarms started going off. On Twilight’s sensor displays, the Prospector veered violently, dangerously close to the acceleration threshold on unconsciousness. Rainbow was trained for high-g maneuvers, but the Prospector could take only so much. “What do we do?”
“Get out!” Twilight said. “Emergency burn, right now. Buck the docking, get out of there!”
“Already on it!” Rainbow said, over the sound of more alarms. “Alright ponies, buckle yourselves the hell in and say goodbye to your breakfast!”
Her voice vanished into the roar of the prospector’s engines. Twilight held against the seatbelts in her chair so firmly that her hooves started going numb.
“There’s nothing you can do, captain. Either they’ll survive, or they won’t.”
The voice that spoke from behind her was Spike’s, though it didn’t seem like it came from any of the familiar ship’s speakers. She glanced backward, eyes widening at what she saw. It was very much like what she’d seen from Node, a bipedal creature with mostly naked skin and four manipulating arms. Its eyes were wide, and its hair a sharp purple just like Spike’s scales. For as strange as he looked, the voice was identical.
“You have a body,” she said. She kept glancing back to the readout, but the Prospector’s signal was gone into the static of its emergency burn. Either it would resolve out the other end, or… it wouldn’t.
“I’ve had one for a few days now,” Spike said, settling into the science chair and adjusting the jumpsuit around his collar. He wore a uniform just like the one he’d once worn to formal functions, covering much of this strange body’s naked skin. “But I don’t feel the need to… use it, very often. The focus in one point is distracting. The Equinox has a wider scope of sensors. A body manipulates my senses into… caring too much about a single viewpoint.”
Twilight looked back to the screen. “You didn’t make a dragon.”
“No designs for one,” he said. “And since the materials available wouldn’t have the traits of a dragon, making something with my old shape seemed… pathetic. Maybe one day, I can get a design that approximates it. Honestly, the Equinox is a better approximation of a dragon than this. Thick scales, sturdy, long-lived…” His expression changed. “I’m getting a signal from the prospector.”
Can Rainbow pull back out into orbit? Yes.
“We’re bucking out!” Rainbow’s voice came back over the radio, heavily distorted. “Captain, uh… I think we might need ourselves a lift. Prospector’s drive section is half melted, and I had to ditch some cargo to lighten the load. But we’re out. I think the station holding Canterlot tried to grab us!”
“We’ll set a course,” Twilight answered, voice grim. “We’re coming, Prospector. Sit tight.” She nodded towards Spike. Without a word of explicit instruction, she felt the dull rumble of the Equinox’s engines kicking on. There was no need to calculate vectors or plot a course out of orbit—Spike did all that on his own.
“Looks like they’re badly damaged,” Spike said. “We’ll need considerable time to try another mission like that, and lots of repairs. Or…”
1. Time doesn’t matter, repair the Prospector and try again. It’s the safest way.
2. The Equinox is larger, and its engines dwarf the Prospector or the Canterlot by weight to thrust. We’ll do this ourselves.
3. Twilight didn’t study teleportation not to use it. She’ll make a long-range jump directly onto the Canterlot. [dangerous]
Twilight’s decision was a near thing, requiring hours of deliberation before she was finally certain of it. But after a few minutes of planning, she finally spoke up. “We’re not going to keep doing what didn’t work and what other ponies have already tried. I saw the power readings on the Prospector—that thing could tear the Equinox apart just as easily. It’s time to try something different. We’re docking with that megastructure.”
Silence descended on the bridge, with ponies and one dragon all staring at her. Rarity spoke first. “All our eggs together then, captain? The Equinox flying in… Prospector’s engines are half melted, nowhere for the escape pod to send us to even if we use it. Into the hurricane we go.”
Twilight nodded to Spike. “Put me on a general channel.”
There was a brief pause, then the not-dragon nodded. “Ready.”
“Crew of the Equinox,” Twilight said, sitting up straight behind her chair. IT didn’t matter that nopony would be able to see her there—good posture would help her feel more like a captain. “I’ve decided to fly the Equinox down into the atmosphere of Proximus B. We knew this might happen—we’ve been reinforcing her for months now.
“We believe the structure below is tethering the last vessel sent from home. It’s the only Equestria we have to return to. But I understand some of you may be hesitant. I’m willing to leave the Prospector in orbit with supplies and anypony who doesn’t want to take the risk. If anypony doesn’t want to be part of this mission, send a call to the bridge now.”
Twilight waited a few more moments in the uncomfortable silence, before Rainbow’s voice came over the radio. She was still unloading the Prospector along with the other ponies who had been part of that mission. But she sounded annoyed. “Captain, do you honestly think that somepony would rather wait up here while Equestria is down there? All that’s left, waiting for our help. That isn’t how this mission goes.”
Twilight waited nervously for contradiction, but it never came. Finally, she took up the radio in her magic again. “Then all hooves prepare to go down. Load the Prospector with supplies. If the worst should happen, Sunset or I can probably teleport us up to safety.”
“Where we’ll have a ship with melted engines waiting for us,” Rainbow finished. “Sounds great.”
No time for repairs. We already took months preparing to go down there the first time. Any day now its shields might fail, and it might break apart under those conditions. They took only a day or so to prepare. Some food and tools and other emergency supplies went into the Prospector, and it was off, settling into a slowly decaying orbit of Proximus C. Recovering it anytime in the next month or so would be simple, if they survived. If they didn’t… then it wouldn’t matter regardless.
“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be,” Spike said to the full bridge. Everypony was at their duty stations, either on this deck or others. Spike’s own body was down in engineering with Apple Bloom, meaning he spoke only through the radio. Twilight was quietly grateful for that, though she never would’ve admitted it to the poor dragon. That strange multi-limbed body with its naked skin wasn’t exactly easy on the eyes.
“Prepare for a buckin’ rough ride,” Rainbow said from the helm, strapping herself in with several layers of overlapping belt. “Keep your airlocks sealed. If the outside gets inside, you can’t breathe it, so keep a respirator handy.”
“What she said,” Twilight said, just a little exasperated. “Is everypony ready?”
Pause.
“Medical is ready,” Fluttershy said.
“Engineering ready,” Applejack said. “I got myself a veritable army of little robots. Ain’t sure what we couldn’t handle right now.”
“Shields ready,” Rarity said. “Sunset and I both know how to work these defenses. But don’t expect a city shield out of two unicorns.”
“Equinox is ready,” Spike added. “I’m always ready, but since I’m the one really at risk here, I thought I should say something.”
Twilight settled into her seat, watching the slowly scrolling information readouts. “Take us down, Rainbow. Sensors, stay on the lower instillation. Get me a heading to somewhere we can dock.”
“I’ve got my eyes open,” Node said. “We’re getting hella static off the fusion wash from that highway station. Once I know what part of the building we’re looking at, I’ll have your heading.”
The ship rumbled under them, and they started to descend.
Can Rainbow breach the atmosphere without causing damage to the Equinox? Yes
The ship began to rumble under Twilight’s hooves, shaking enough that she reached out with one leg to grip her chair, careful not to touch any of the controls. But there was nothing she could do to improve their path. Twilight could fly the Equinox herself of course—but this was Spike and Rainbow’s show.
Can rainbow dock safety? Yes.
Random event: The Trust of Possessions.
“I’ve got your approach vector,” Node said, after a minute of flying into the gray-blue fog. They’d started to list slightly in the direction of the wind, as their navigational thrusters were slowly overwhelmed. “Stay in this corridor, and it should see you like a maintenance ship.”
Rainbow grunted her acknowledgement, both hooves pressed firmly to the controls. She tilted her whole body opposite to the ship, as though she could manhandle it into a straight course by force of will alone.
“Can we, uh… can we get that shield?” Rainbow asked. “Sonar is showing so rough air up ahead. Some kind of… vortex.”
“We can probably give you…” Sunset’s voice, sounding like her lips were clenched with pain. “Two minutes?”
“I’ll make it work!” Rainbow answered, grinning eagerly. “Get ready for a full burn, everypony! Hold on!”
They rocketed forward, no longer twisted to the side. Twilight watched every readout she could, biting her lip at the size of the numbers outside their ship. They wouldn’t last long against winds like that, not when their ship was barely made to work in atmosphere at all.
But then they were through, and the entire ship stopped rocking. No more list, no more rumble—they fell completely still.
For a long moment, they rested in total silence, everypony at their controls. Even Rainbow just stared, transfixed by the view Spike had conjured for them.
Outside the Equinox was… a platform of light, extending to meet them from a wall of metal vaster than anything they’d seen before. Node had been right: they were docking.
Twilight was already planning her next move.
1. Send the digital crewmembers. Node is one of them, and Spike almost is too at this point. Apple Bloom was changed by their virus. Let them see family coming aboard, instead of aliens.
2. Send the best infiltrators. Rainbow, Applejack, Rarity, and Node. Node might slow them down a little, but she knows this place. She has to be there.
3. Twilight and anypony who wants to go can go. Large crew might be putting lots of us at risk, but if I demand to go I can’t really keep anypony else from this. More of us should mean a greater chance of success.
They watched from the bridge as their digital crew-members crossed the strange bridge of light into the waiting station. It was a strange sight, the three of them walking away without space-suits through the void. Nothing drew them in to be consumed and processed into scraps, or blasted them with lasers.
Twilight could do nothing to intervene, but she could watch from one of Node’s fancy new displays. Because as Spike pointed out. “I’m not actually out there. I’m controlling that body using the Equinox’s upgraded transmission systems. Which also means I’ll lose control of it if I can’t get a signal through.
That made the mission seem understaffed, but it was too late to second guess. Ponies crowded around the full color screen, watching through Spike’s eyes almost as though they were there themselves.
The Signalers’ station was even more impressive on the inside than it was on the outside. There were vast empty cavities inside, populated with machines that moved along cables thicker than the Equinox itself as they performed unknown mechanical tasks. Twilight might not know what it was doing, but she knew the goal. All this was designed to create a highway through space, one that wasn’t running. Or… one stop along the highway, pushing a ship to the next stop.
Things went well enough, with Node leading the way through to a section that was fully pressurized and apparently safe. “We’re going to try and find the control section,” she explained. “That way we can see why the Canterlot is being held, and try to release it.”
Is the control room defended? Critical yes.
Then the view got fuzzy, view shaky and uneven as Spike dodged around a corner and the constant feed of conversation and mechanical noises went out.
“Hold on.” Rainbow jerked upright, pointing at the display. “Spike, what the buck is going on?” Lightning flashed on the screen, and a section of deck-plating ripped right off the wall in front of him, dribbling down in molten globs. “Why is it so fuzzy?”
Spike’s voice sounded strained, not even trying to be neutral like the computer usually was. “Very limited… bandwidth,” he said. “We’ve encountered a defensive system of some kind. Node failed to disarm it, and it’s trying to vaporize us.”
Twilight didn’t want to say anything at all, afraid she might be distracting him. But her fear won out. “Should we shut up so you can concentrate?”
“Unnecessary,” Spike answered. “The one body requires minimal concentration, but it’s penetrated so deep into the station that I’m controlling it at considerable delay. I’ll reallocate spectrum for video when we win.”
Flashes of sound came in over the line, played back like awful recordings. Some of it sounded like their weapons, but more was a kind of rumbling thunder that cracked with every shot and melted whatever it touched. Occasionally a single back and white still would appear on the screen—now Spike poking around the corner, now Node taking a hit and losing one of her arms to the flames.
Finally the gunshots stopped,. And the image buffered back into life.
Spike and the others walking past the wreckage of a robotic drone broken into many pieces, over to a large holographic projection surface, with lots of little squares waiting for input. Node went right to work, muttering to herself. “Got to shut that system down. Obviously we aren’t the first ones onto this station. Some part of the maintenance protocol thinks it’s being boarded. But the whole thing doesn’t, or it would’ve dusted the Equinox before we could approach. Hold on…”
Can Node disable the defense system? Yes. Random Event: The Attainment of Pleasures.
“I want a report,” Twilight said, gripping the straps of her chair so tight she was shaking. “I see all three of you are still standing. Are you hurt?”
“Node and I,” Spike said. “Nothing serious. Node lost an arm and my exterior shell was partially melted. We have replacement parts aboard.”
“Got it!” Node declared, turning to grin back at Spike with her alien face. Flat and strange and naked, but a smile was a smile. “Defenses are off. Let me see what I can find out about your ship…”
Apple Bloom paced past her, reloading her massive earth-pony shotgun. “I’m out of depleted uranium,” she said, annoyed. “I don’t think I can bring down another one.”
“If the station was really trying to kill us, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Node said. Her fingers blurred through the projected space for a few seconds, and she bit her lip. Spike got closer, trying to get a better view of the computer. Twilight couldn’t read any of the text, but Node obviously could.
A few moments later and the projection changed enough that even Twilight could guess what must be going on. A much better image of the Canterlot appeared in light, with lots of red icons all over it.
“Launch history… here! Looks like your ship was trying to use the highway. They… turned it on. But they didn’t have any of the right reflectors. They got pulled in for maintenance, but… your ship looks like someone ripped a mountain into space and called it a ship. The highway didn’t find it in the database, so it didn’t know how to fix it. It phoned home with a service request, and has been holding it ever since.”
She winced. “Looks like… some ponies tried to come over. That’s why the systems were hostile to us. They didn’t know what they were doing, or maybe they were trying to destroy the highway to get it to let them go.”
“Can you do that?” Twilight asked. “Make it release the Canterlot?”
Is that the random event? Yes.
“Yes,” Node answered.
“Should we?” Spike asked, on that side of the screen. “The Canterlot was trying to use the highway. Maybe we should… help retrofit it correctly. Could we do that?”
“I know how to put in a design,” Node said, skeptically. “But that’s not my field. Someone else would have to design that.”
Twilight considered for a moment, then ordered…
1. Release the Canterlot now. We need to see what state it’s in and speak to the ponies aboard. 2. Rarity and I are coming over. Between the two of us and the scans of the Canterlot over there, we should be able to come up with something. 3. Stay there, send a team onto the Equinox from this side. If they have control access, they can stop the prospector from being grabbed.
“You shouldn’t be leaving, Twilight,” Sunset said, from the other side of the docking bay. She might only be looking at her through a thin layer of glass, but it was still more than enough for Twilight to see her disapproval. “Seriously, you’re the captain. There’s no telling what could be waiting over there. You should send me instead.”
Twilight was already wearing her suit, and she didn’t so much as turn around. As the airlock closed behind her, she answered Sunset over the radio. “You’re barely holding together, Sunset. But if something does happen to me, you’re qualified to command the Equinox. You can take over for me. If Spike allows it.”
“We’ll see,” Spike said, before Sunset could answer. His tone was comedic, but his words were anything but. “I might go on a homicidal rampage after my captain dies. That seems like the sort of thing a ship’s computer should do, right?”
“No,” Twilight said, annoyed. “I order you not to go on any kind of rampage. But nothing’s going to happen, because we have a crew already aboard the Signaler ship. They’ll make sure nothing happens to me.”
“Sure will!” Node said. “Or… we can stop the highway relay from grabbing you. We can’t stop you from crashing into a wall, or lighting yourself on fire, or… doing other things organics seem to do.”
Twilight made her way through the Prospector’s interior, wincing at the warped metal and smoke damage to the inside. They’d made enough repairs to make her fly again, though they didn’t have a prayer of escaping the way they had the last time. Whatever trick Rainbow had done to the engines reduced the ship to ‘painfully slow’ speeds.
“Buck if that will happen,” Rainbow answered from the pilot’s seat, already strapped in. Rarity was in the other seat—Twilight’s entire crew for this mission. “I’m a better pilot than anypony else on this crew, metal or meat.”
Node didn’t argue, and neither did Twilight. Rainbow’s last flight with the Prospector had shown enough of that.
“Same as before,” Twilight said, once she was secure. “Nice and easy. We’re not trying to be heroes, just get us down there.”
“I got you, captain,” Rainbow answered. “Nice and easy. Or… as easy as we can fly through a hurricane. Which isn’t very.”
It wasn’t. As they passed into Proximus C’s atmosphere, they were rocked violently back and forth, enough that Twilight immediately felt the motion in her gut. There was no shield like the one on the Equinox, so they were forced to use all the same systems they’d rely on for any in-atmosphere flight. They wobbled and spun, with Rainbow staring straight through the windows with both hooves locked on the controls at all times.
“It sees you,” Node’s voice came through the radio, heavily distorted. “And… bypassed. You know, if you had a modern navigational transponder, it would know your destination and not try to grab you. Just a thought.”
“We’ll take twenty,” Rarity said. She sounded calm, but she had both hooves wrapped tightly around her straps. She barely even looked at the controls in front of her, and whenever she did what she saw there only seemed to make her feel worse.
“We’re approaching the shield…” Rainbow grunted, pointing a wing ahead of them. “Twilight, you better get it to see us, or we’re about to be… dust.”
“All we are is dust in the wind,” Node sung unhelpfully. She has Listener songs now?
There was no time for Twilight to wonder about what other cultural artifacts she might be able to share, they were rapidly approaching the faint barrier of Canterlot’s shield. It was much smaller than it should’ve been, protecting only the lower ‘critical’ decks while the rest of the city had been left open to the storm. But the docking bay was critical, and so they’d need to get inside.
Twilight reached out with her magic, as she’d done hundreds of times before. The shield wasn’t made to keep anything in or out but air, it wasn’t hard.
It was exactly the same as before, in fact. Any hope that this might be a replica, or second ship was dashed as she felt the city respond to her. Its shield had a precise touch, one that she’d long learned to recognize. She met it, and the shield responded, enfolding them as they approached like one cell swallowing another.
The ship stopped rocking instantly, and she could suddenly hear its exterior engines, as they switched to atmospheric mode. She felt gravity too, a distinct downward pull. Canterlot didn’t have artificial gravity, but it wouldn’t need it here. If anything, the station probably had to work hard to keep Proximus C from crushing them.
“Looks busy down there,” Rainbow said, glancing at a little screen beside her showing a lower view. The landing back was positively packed with ships, with barely any room for even the prospector. While in space, thousands more could tether to them through a thin spiderweb of plastic passages—but not here.
“Find us a spot,” Twilight muttered. “I don’t care where.”
“There’s a space, Darling. Pretend we’re an emergency vehicle and park there.”
“Right.” Rainbow put them down roughly, with the engines squealing in protest every moment. It didn’t sound like the prospector would be leaving again anytime soon. When they finally switched off, Twilight heard a distinct gasp of finality from the poor overworked machine. She could practically feel it dying around her.
“Canterlot Station,” Rarity said, glancing out the front window. There wasn’t much to see out there—other than the “WELCOME TO CANTERLOT” mural that looked out over the docking bay, with Celestia and Luna’s cutie marks in faded ink.
“No air out there,” Rainbow noted, tapping the readout with a hoof. “Get your suits on, ponies.”
“We never took them off,” Twilight muttered. “We weren’t sure the seals on the Prospector would hold, remember?”
Rainbow shrugged, pushing out of her seat with a few metallic clicks. “You know what I mean.”
Twilight rose herself, before deciding on their destination. It was obvious, they should start with…
1. Central Computer. No faster way to learn what happened here. 2. The Bridge. We need the ability to make command decisions. 3. The Shields. Somepony is down there, or this ship wouldn’t still be protected. Let’s just ask them what happened. 4. Housing. Nothing is more precious to Equestria than its ponies.
Twilight considered for a few moments where they would go first, but really there was no debate. “The bridge is going to be treated as the most essential section of the ship. It’s most likely to remain intact against threats, and to contain the information we need.”
“We already have some idea of what happened,” Rarity said absently. “Assuming we trust Captain Sunset’s story. About creatures getting sick, and the plan to evacuate?”
“I know,” Twilight said. “I’m not saying we don’t trust Sunset. But we need the details. Then we can get the Canterlot out of here.”
“To go nowhere,” Rainbow muttered, the last to pull on her helmet. “There’s no more Equestria. It wouldn’t be here if something terrible hadn’t happened. Sunset’s right about that part, even if she was wrong about everything else.”
“I know,” Twilight said.
They clambered down from the deck of the Prospector, down onto the bright yellow and black emergency patterns. Every step she expected to find the dead, ponies crumpled and shriveled after whatever horrors had brought them here.
But there were none, not in the docking bay, and not all the way to the central elevator. The hardware inside looked different than Twilight remembered—the doors were automatic now, and there was no chair for an operator.
Twilight hammered on the button for the bridge, and soon they were zooming upward. At least for a few seconds, before a series of loud metallic clicks echoed through the shaft, and the car lurched to one side as the emergency breaks engaged.
Rainbow spread her wings in the space beside her, though of course they’d do her little good wrapped in plastic. “That’s not good. Captain?”
Twilight was already on it, ripping the plastic panel off the wall and inspecting the flashing lights underneath. “Looks like we’ve got… a drive failure. We could probably get it to take us the rest of the way with just one motor, if we’re not in a hurry.”
“Already on it.” Rarity blasted the service door over their heads open with a flash of magic, holding several tools around her. “Rainbow, give me a boost?”
Can Rarity fix it? Yes
She hopped back down another moment later, horn glowing to simulate gravity. “Ugh, well. I wouldn’t trust it for the return trip, but we should be able to get to the bridge this way. The state of things out in that elevator shaft… maintenance has really been neglecting their duties.”
Twilight twisted the override key, and they began to rise again, amid constant electrical-sounding protests from far away. She remained tense every second, waiting for something to fail and drop them. At least she could shield the three of them if it did fall, or teleport them up into the shaft.
As they neared the bridge, they passed abruptly through an opaque bubble, a shield that swallowed the elevator in just a few seconds. Her suit began to hiss, its exterior sensors flashing as it read the atmosphere outside. It read as barely safe, with dangerously high levels of C02 and other trace gasses. It was livable, but only just.
“Keep your helmets on,” Twilight said. “We’ll rely on our own supply unless we don’t have a choice.”
“Exactly what I was hoping you’d say,” Rarity muttered. “Can you imagine what it must smell like? From these readings, I’m guessing there are fungal colonies clogging up every scrubber on the station. Or something worse.”
“Don’t think about it that way,” Rainbow suggested. “They made a station cross an interstellar distance. I don’t have a bucking clue how they did it. The Canterlot wasn’t made to travel, and yet here she is. We should be amazed for what they did.”
Ten agonizing minutes later, they finally lurched into place on the bridge level, and the door opened halfway. Twilight shoved it the rest of the way with her magic, emerging into the expansive hallway that had once been the center of Canterlot’s affairs, packed with thousands of ponies and other creatures from all over the kingdom.
Now the space was simultaneously crowded and deserted. Crowded with equipment, machines that occupied all but a narrow gap in the center. The beautiful planters and statues were all gone, replaced with thick pipes connecting one bank of machines to the next, sweating blue liquid.
Cryopods. Thousands and thousands of cryopods. Twilight stepped out, walking until she was in the center of the hallway. The main deck was a ring, circling the entire station in a path roughly a kilometer long. She could see the gentle curve, packed with pods as far as she could see. Not all looked to be in good repair, but there were so many.
“Sweet Celestia,” Rarity swore over the public channel. “There must be a million cryocoffins here.”
“More.” Twilight said. “Imagine if they’d done this to every deck. Every cargo bay, the crew quarters…” but they couldn’t know that for sure of course, not until they actually reached the bridge. It wasn’t far, just a brief climb between the coffins, until they reached the massive metal doors. They opened, and Twilight was again struck with horror at what she saw.
There were ponies in here, wearing navy bodysuits. Their bodies were strangely stretched, thin and reedy like a creature who had never known gravity. They froze in place, one letting go of their rusty toolbox so that it floated away in air. Another raised a makeshift knife protectively in their magic, baring teeth like a frightened animal.
“Hey…” Twilight began.
1. Subdue the survivors with magic. We don’t have time to waste on a fight in here. 2. Talk them down. It’s the pony way. 3. Leave. Wait until they’re done and come back, they don’t look like they’re up for a chase with legs like those.
Twilight was frozen for a moment, taking in the terrible situation on the bridge. But only for a moment, long enough for her rational mind to catch up with what she was seeing. These were ponies, and from the look of it, ponies that were in desperate need of help. Could she really risk hurting them, even for such an important goal? Besides, she was a princess. Ponies had a way to do things.
“Take it easy,” she said, settling her rifle onto the ground beside her and nudging it away with a hoof. “We’re not here to hurt you.”
Can Twilight calm them down? No.
There were three of them in all, and for a second she couldn’t tell if they’d even heard her. Then they advanced, with their makeshift weapons clutched in mouths and hooves. She saw no signs of magic between them, though they did seem to understand zero-gravity well enough, because they didn’t stumble or float away.
“We’re here to rescue this ship,” Rarity said, stepping forward beside Twilight. She didn’t toss her weapon away, though her own gun was still strapped on her back. She hadn’t even drawn it. “Look at us, we’re ponies. We’re not going to hurt you.”
“She means we don’t want to,” Rainbow added, from beside them. “Let’s just talk this out, okay? Don’t make us hurt anypony.”
With Rarity and Rainbow’s help? Yes.
The pony with the toolbox—a unicorn with a coat that was almost completely white, and a mane that only had a tiny bit of pink—dropped the knife from his mouth. “How… in Celestia’s memory… how can there be other ponies here? Did you wake by mistake? Is the…” he looked confused, as though shaking out of a daze.
It’s the air. They’re all suffering from C02 poisoning. They might’ve been able to fix it by now if they weren’t so addled.
“No,” she said, watching as the others let their weapons fall. Rarity and Rainbow shared a relieved look, and she stepped forward again. “My name is Captain Twilight Sparkle. I was on the first mission sent to explore the Proximus system. Somehow we… lost some time on the way, and arrived centuries later than we should’ve. I think you’ve been in-system longer than we have.”
The lead unicorn glanced over his shoulder at the earth pony. “Check the computer. See if she looks the same.”
One of his earth ponies wandered away, trying several dead screens before one finally came on. It flickered and produced a slight electrical hum as she used it—but it did work. Her own image appeared on it moments later, blurry and out of date. Twilight wondered what the rest of that file said, though she didn’t ask yet. There were more important things.
“It’s her,” the earth pony said.
“That’s… amazing,” he nodded politely to her, probably trying to bow. But he almost fell over, and he gave up. “I’m Flywheel, the, uh… maintenance supervisor of… the whole world.” He gestured around at the ruined bridge with one hoof. “As you can see, we’re… having some trouble.”
“I can imagine,” Rarity said, walking past him towards the computers. She began trying them one at a time, her frown deepening with each dead console. “The Canterlot was never meant to travel. And from what we’ve heard, you didn’t have much time to bring it here. A rather… desperate evacuation.”
“Evacuation,” one of the other ponies repeated, face dark. “Sounds better than it was. Evacuation would mean we got most ponies out. But it wasn’t that way. We’re… more like a lifeboat. Everypony else sank.”
Twilight would have to fight the desire to search these computers for her own family. If the rest of her crew could wait, then she would wait too. There were more important things. “Our first priority is seeing the Canterlot restored,” she said. “What’s wrong with her?”
The maintenance ponies shared a look, which quickly turned into bitter laughter. Flywheel was the first to answer. “What isn’t? We’ve been captive in a gas giant for generations. We’ve scrounged and sacrificed and… given up everything to keep ourselves from being crushed. I don’t know how much more time we have. Not another generation. Most of the ship rats aren’t having foals. Wouldn’t be… fair to bring them into this.”
Twilight looked them over one last time, and was almost brought to tears at what she saw. No wonder these ponies were so sickly—they’d been born here, and suffered under desperate conditions for a lifetime. We need to get her away from Proximus C to start repairs. We can’t have every supply run be fighting atmosphere and a station that might pull us in at any moment. Thoughts of having the Highway retrofit her now faded into the background. Ponies were suffering now; the grand future could wait. She flicked on her radio, waiting a moment to be connected with her digital crew on the Signaler station.
“I want you to eject the Canterlot,” she said. “This ship isn’t ready for retrofit. She’s in critical condition.”
“Your ship is going to suffer more damage when we push her away,” Node said. “I can’t predict what will happen.”
“I know,” Twilight said. “And if you’re suggesting we leave… no. This is… the last of our civilization.”
She nodded to Rarity. “Get to the shields. We might need a little more structural integrity for this.”
Rarity saluted, then hurried off. She didn’t need directions.
“I’m going with her,” Rainbow added, over a private channel. “You’re an Alicorn, you can watch your own back. Rarity might need me if there are any more crazies.”
“Go.”
Twilight watched them leave, approaching the controls. She didn’t know the first thing about flying something this size—but hopefully she wouldn’t need to. All they had to do was fall upward.
And when it was done, she could focus on…
1. Repairing life support. We need the conscious crew able to function before we go any further.
2. Accessing the computers. I need answers.
3. Assess and make any repairs to cryogenics. The sleeping population are the priority.
It was time to take the lives of her entire species into her hooves. Twilight settled into the controls, strapping herself in and resting securely against the helmet. She felt the eyes of several shiprats on her, tiny and almost unblinking. She couldn’t imagine they’d do well under real sunlight. Or real gravity for that matter—these creatures would live their whole lives in space even if she could save the Canterlot.
“Any advice?” she asked conversationally. “We are about to try and fly this thing.”
They looked from one another as though she’d just said she was going to try exploding as a hobby. “The main engine hasn’t worked for… ever,” said a scrawny unicorn near the front. “I think they burned it out trying to leave orbit… long ago. Only have maneuvering thrusters left. And none of the rats knows how to use those. Computer control… to maintain the orbit. That’s all.”
“That’s all I’ll need.” Twilight said. As she did so, she let her magic settle on the keyboard and started flipping through the information readouts. It wasn’t structured like the Equinox, with a careful organization of all critical information into neat blocks. The Canterlot was a makeshift hodgepodge, with subroutines failing to respond without pattern or reason.
While she waited for Rarity to radio back, she fumbled with navigation until she finally found it. Sure enough, the central ‘fusion pulse drive’ was listed as offline. Whatever the buck that is. But it did have thrusters, the same ones it had used to stay in orbit around Equestria. A good 30% of those were still working.
“In shields now,” Rarity’s voice came in over the radio, sounding fearful. “It’s… a dreadful place, captain.” She lowered her voice, and from the way it echoed Twilight guessed she’d fully closed her helmet. She didn’t want anyone to overhear. “I wouldn’t use the words ‘suicide cult’ lightly, but that’s what’s going on down here. The Canterlot’s shields were supposed to keep a little air in, and resist impacts from space-junk. Under those conditions, a pony can work their whole life and not feel side-effects.”
“I can see where you’re going,” Twilight muttered grimly. “The shields are working a hundred times harder than they were designed to. It’s a miracle the matrixs didn’t all shatter.”
“No miracle,” said the same shiprat who had spoken before, raising his voice just a little in frustration. “Bunkin’ hard work. What do you think we do?”
Rarity couldn’t hear that of course, and she went on. “But these ponies are spending their lives to keep the ship intact. They’ve got a mausoleum… lot of dead ponies down here.”
“Get them ready,” Twilight declared. “We’ll need the shield stronger than ever for this push. If we survive… they won’t have to die for it again. Tell them that.”
“I have,” Rarity said. “They don’t believe me. But being willing to join them for the effort has earned some cooperation. You… better succeed, captain. I promised I wouldn’t leave if we fail.”
“We can do it,” she said. Then she looked to the side, at the pony who had spoken before. “Flywheel, you’re my copilot. Sit down there.”
The unicorn raised an indignant eyebrow, but he didn’t dare retreat. “Are you… sure about that, princess? I don’t know how to fly. I wouldn’t even know you if you weren’t in the computer.”
“Positive,” she gestured again. “You know this station better than I ever could. I need you to hold it together for me.”
He shared a look with his fellow shiprats, then climbed into the seat beside her. “I’m not sure what you think you’re doing, princess. Even if this planet was yours the way the sun was Celestia’s, she had to be out in space to detonate it. And the reflectors aren’t in good enough shape to survive a push that hard.”
What? The horrific implications of that statement rushed through her mind, spoiling her concentration. Node brought her back before she could forget completely about what she was doing. “Ready when you are, captain. I’m not sure we’ll be able to camp here for much longer without doing anything. The station will start questioning our service credentials.”
“We’re ready,” Twilight said. “If we live through this, get back to the Equinox and get over here as soon as you can. This thing is going to need the kind of repairs engineers only have nightmares about. I need your talents.”
“You shouldn’t be aboard while this happens,” Sunset said over the radio. “Your life is too precious to waste, captain. You’re… the only surviving princess. I’m dead already, let me be there.”
If she was feeling remotely rational, she probably would remind Sunset that she wouldn’t survive the acceleration. But she wasn’t, and she’d just learned some things that she’d rather not know. “Buck that,” she said. “This is what’s left of Equestria. I don’t mind going down with it. Node, do it.”
“Do what?” Flywheel asked, staring at her. “Princess, there’s no way to—”
They began to move. The floor rumbled under their hooves, and the entire station began to groan. She could feel new structural faults tearing in a structure that hadn’t ever meant to move.
Numerous rolls referenced in Discord
“What the buck are you doing?” Flywheel screamed. But she could barely even hear him over the sound of a station tearing itself apart.
Rarity’s voice came in next, strained with effort. “This is going to be… tight, captain! Nopony down here has ever faced forces like this! The Canterlot is coming apart!”
“I know!” she didn’t take her hooves from the controls, staring forward at the radar readout. The station was falling away, and the atmosphere around them grew more diffuse by the second. The shiprats fell to the floor one by one, flopping uselessly in the gravity their bodies could overcome. She winced at their pain, but there was nothing she could do about it. Either they stayed down there, or everypony died.
Finally the pressure holding her in her seat began to relax. The straps caught her, and the Canterlot seemed to sigh with relief. A thousand sirens blaring from all around changed to a dozen, still impossible to tell apart.
“You still with me, Flywheel?”
The pony turned from his seat, eyes dark as he glared. “What do you buckin’ think.” Blood dribbled from his nose, and his breathing came harshly. But the gravity was gone now—whatever damage was done was over now.
“Sensors read you… clear,” Sunset said over the radio. “Canterlot lost about… well that’s not right. Negative 50% of its mass? Our numbers must be out of date.”
“They converted her into an interstellar ship,” Twilight said, fumbling with the straps one at a time. “Sunset, organize repair crews. Get everypony over here but, uh…” she frowned a moment. “Actually, maybe we don’t need anypony over there. Spike, can you hold down the fort for us?”
“There’s nothing you can do to fly the Equinox that I can’t manage on my own,” he answered flatly. “I plan on joining you aboard the Canterlot as well. More than one body.”
Twilight didn’t have the energy left to argue. “Then navigate into a docking position, Sunset. I have a feeling we have a lot of work ahead of us.”
Twilight knew what her next priority would be, now that the Canterlot was intact. She glanced down at the struggling shiprats, feeling a tug of guilt for the pain they were feeling. None seemed to be catastrophically wounded, but if the damage was internal how could she even know that for sure? She turned over her shoulder. “Flywheel, can you walk? I’d like you with me when we start on Life Support.”
For a moment it seemed like he was going to let her go. But then she said where she’d be going, and her practically flew out of his seat. “I can buckin’ walk. What in Celestia’s name are you going to do to our life support? Take our air away the way you almost crushed us?”
“No,” she said. “How about get the atmosphere bucking breathable again?” She gestured with a wing all around them. “Your brain is being poisoned with C02 concentrations this high. Clearly you’re all… resistant to it. But you’re swimming in a toxic soup and we’ve got to fix that ASAP.”
He looked like he was going to argue, then sighed. “Give me a moment to check on my ponies. I have to make sure we can get the injured to our clinic.”
“Sure,” Twilight answered. “We’ve got a good doctor of our own, and probably more medical supplies than you have left after all this time. You can use our medical bay once we dock.”
“There’s sky out there…” said a voice. One of the other shiprats, who had floated over to a window. They stared out at the stars, with only thin wisps of atmosphere floating along beside the station. Twilight had seen the view from up here many times—Canterlot was supposed to be the capital of Equestria, with thousands of ships coming and going. Now the glass ceiling showed them only stars, and the huge planet far below. But the planet was below now. It was a start.
“Sure is,” Twilight said.
A few minutes later, and they were back in the elevator. It shuddered uneasily as it rumbled down the shaft, and once Flywheel had to tinker with the panel again. He wasn’t half as good at it as Rarity, but he got them moving again. “It was wrong of me to underestimate an Alicorn,” Flywheel said. “I should’ve known you’d be here to save us. Ponies told stories about you. The Alicorn that went missing. The first one to die for Equestria, others said.”
There was nothing to stop her from asking this time. “What do you mean the ‘first one? Were you… did Celestia really detonate the sun?”
Flywheel nodded nonchalantly. “That’s what the computer says. Every alicorn made their sacrifice. Celestia to give us the push—Luna to protect us during the blast—Candance to power us during the journey.”
Tears collected near the top of Twilight’s helmet, pushed there by the downward motion of the elevator. Her voice cracked as she asked: “What about Flurry Heart?”
“The princess frozen in ice,” Flywheel said, her voice reverent. “Who sacrificed her family so she could lead us when we reached our new home. Though… maybe she won’t have to. Seems like you’re here to lead us. Didn’t sacrifice yourself to… let Equestria know it’s fate, or whatever the story is.”
They stopped, clambering out of the elevator. “Not yet,” she said, concentrating for a moment on simulating gravity under her hooves. It was stupid and unnecessary, but also made her feel far braver. It was something familiar, a way she could be back in control. Control she desperately needed.
Then she followed, past nervous crews of over a dozen shiprats. They looked like they’d been working, but clearly the launch had interrupted their routine. A few were lying on the ground, tended to by nervous companions.
But this was why she’d brought Flywheel. He could go ahead of her, waving away their concern and offering support so that she could focus on the task at hand: evaluating life support.
Is the damage severe enough to need replacement parts? Yes
She strode between the massive filtration cores and cooling towers, taking in the jury-rigged modifications with wide yes. In some ways what the shiprats had accomplished here was a miracle—in other ways, it was about to be her nightmare. They’d paid no heed to standard safeties, or even common sense. If it wasn’t for what she’d just learned, she’d probably be having nightmares about what they were doing with their gasses.
“It’s a bucking miracle you all haven’t suffocated,” she said when she was finished, taking a notepad of scribbles and tucking it into a pocket on the front of her suit.
“You’d do better?” Flywheel snapped. “The fabricator has been out longer than I’ve been alive. Spare parts are entirely gone, and our mission has always been to preserve the sleeping ponies at all costs. We used our blood to oil the chains of this station, princess. Of bodies stoked the embers. There isn’t anything more my shiprats could’ve done.”
“You’re right,” she said, lowered her head apologetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to criticize what you’ve accomplished. But we do have a working fabricator. Let’s see about getting the station working again before our orbit decays and we fall back to Proximus C for good, yeah?”
“At least that’s one thing we can agree on.”
Twilight would have to choose a repair path for the monstrosity before her.
1. Quick and dirty. Ponies are suffering every moment they have to breathe this air. Let’s work with what they did and just get the 02 concentration back to where it should be.
2. Methodical and proper. First we fix the fabricators, then we produce the parts we need, and eventually we have a space station with scrubbers that can last another century. If we don’t do this right it’s only going to fail again.
3. Radical With a much lower population, we could handle most of the air processing by restoring hydroponics. We’ve got some great robots ready to mass-fabricate.
If a repair this serious had been on Twilight’s own ship, she probably would’ve jumped at the chance to try something more radical. She had some interesting ideas based on the Signaler tech she’d seen on Proximus B. But in the end, those ideas had to fall away beyond the simple, terrifying reality of what they faced.
This was the last of their species. Princess Celestia had apparently died to get this ship here. Luna too, by the sound of it, and Cadence. She could not treat their sacrifice lightly. There was only one way to run a repair like this, and it was by the book. “We’re going to get this life-support system looking better than the day it was made,” she declared. “No matter the cost.”
“Fantastic,” Escape Gear said, exasperated. “And I’m going to bring back our dead princesses and give us our home back. Just saying things doesn’t make them happen.”
No, but planning does.
Twilight Sparkle went to work. Over the next two days, her crew began arriving one by one. By the time Spike reached her, she had a full list of every modification that had been made and how it would be reversed. When Node arrived, it was with dozens of little robots, which certainly didn’t make them many friends with the already-injured shiprats.
“This doesn’t look that hard,” Node declared, once she’d convened with Spike for a few silent minutes, turning back towards Twilight. “If we put everything into this, we could get a replacement installed in… two weeks. We’re going to have to completely scrap the exchangers, and of course that does mean fixing the fabricators first. But there’s a ton of scrap material in the docking bay. All those ships are just begging to be used to get our air flowing again. No AIs on them, so they can’t complain.”
Spike groaned. “I should probably argue against it on behalf of starships everywhere,” he said, though there was little energy in it. He couldn’t take his eyes from the horrors around them any more than Twilight could. “But I won’t. Mining would make the project take months instead of weeks. I say scrap any ship that doesn’t rhyme with ‘requinox.’”
Twilight gasped, covering her mouth in mock horror. “You’re my assistant for all this time, and you try to call that a rhyme?”
But before Spike could answer, she felt Flywheel’s grip pulling her aside. He didn’t respond to the others, though he did gesture angerly at Spike when he tried to follow. Twilight shrugged her wings, and let the wisp of a pony lead her way around the corner for ‘privacy’.
“What the buck are those things?” he asked, as soon as they were out of earshot. Except that Spike would still have her suit mic and would hear everything, but Twilight didn’t much care about that. “Did you bring aliens onto the Canterlot, princess? The ship we’ve been protecting for centuries?”
“One alien,” she admitted. “But that alien has already saved my crew, probably more than once. She’s one of the Signalers. You can’t tell me you trust the signalers to lead us to this system, but you don’t want one on your ship.”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know or care what the ancient princesses were thinking when they decided we would come here. For all I know, we went this way because it was away from the Hunger and there was a star here. All I know is—the other shiprats aren’t going to like that you have creatures like that in critical areas. Engines, life support, cryo… they’ll probably fight if you bring them near cryo. Protecting the Canterlot is all we have.”
“You don’t need to protect it from them!” she called, exasperated. “The other alien is Spike, he’s a dragon! He’s just using another body because his mind is in my ship’s computer now, and it was more convenient for…”
But Flywheel didn’t seem the least bit persuaded. “I’m telling you, princess. Maybe in the Equestria you came from, everypony just did what you said without thinking. But here—if you want the shiprats cooperation, then work with us. You might know this station, but it’s our home.”
“Fine,” she grumbled. “They won’t go to… cryogenics. But we need to be in life support to fix it, I can’t compromise on that. We have to get the air working before we can fix the rest. You can station your best engineers to watch everything we do, and make sure we’re not going to hurt the ship. I promised, those two are better than I’ll ever be.”
“Three,” Flywheel said. “There’s that… plastic pony as well. She could be anything underneath. Keep her away too. The one with the weird leg can go where she wants, we know… our precursors were capable of such feats.”
The others weren’t happy about it, that was for damn sure. But repairing cryogenics wasn’t part of their first task, so ultimately the only thing harmed was their pride.
The crew works over the next week, making various rolls and accumulating progress towards repairing life support.
Is there substantial resistance to the presence of Twilight and the others? Critical yes. Are they interfered with during the first week of work? Yes. Random Event: (Character negative) Twilight Sparkle: The Triumph of Outside
Twilight worked alongside her crew for the next week, though there was little she could contribute that the others could not already do. But every set of hooves made the job easier, even if she could only be there to check safeties and levitate carts of spare parts around.
It was during that work that she felt the sudden spell—a sudden flash of force, overwhelming her in seconds. She screamed, her horn flashing with a shield spell—but too slow. She was somewhere else.
Twilight groaned, moaning with incredible pain. For the moment her mind spun directionless, without memory of where she’d come or how. Then she remembered—the flash of magic, while she was lifting that cart of reaction gas. She needed to make sure the others were okay!
Her eyes jerked open, and she sat suddenly upright.
Twilight was in the golden oaks, surrounded by the ancient shelves and their real paper books. Her legs hung awkwardly off the side of a bed meant for a unicorn, and her nose was filled with the smell of living wood.
The… buck…
Twilight paused to consider her options, then…
1. Went to investigate Ponyville 2. Tried to reach the old Castle Relay 3. Went back to bed, she really needs a break from the stress.
Twilight knew something was wrong, even if she couldn’t quite explain why. She couldn’t be home again, not now. Something happened, and now…
She emerged from the Golden Oaks library, into a street that was… wrong. The grass was gray, the flowers chalk-white. There were no birds humming overhead, no bees. Not even a passing butterfly.
She passed the deserved train station first, the HV-rail buzzing away. A train sat on the platform, its doors open. Leaves clogged the entrance, and the fabric had yellowed slightly from the sun. There was no one inside.
Twilight considered taking the train to castle relay, but thought better of it. Whatever was happening, Celestia needed to know sooner than that. So Twilight headed down the streets, making her way to the airfield.
A few windows were shattered, doors hung off their hinges. A few homes of the city’s richer residents had been looted. There was no sign of the looters now, or these homes’ original owners. Just dead plants, and the occasional whistle as the wind blew through the ruins.
Eventually she reached city hall, and helipad marked in gravel on the ground there. Twilight stalked past an empty waiting bench, up to the controls. There was only the single car-call button. She pressed it, then turned towards the bench.
It was no longer empty.
A creature was sitting there, one who hadn’t been there before. A pony so bland she almost didn’t see him at all. His coat was black, his mane was black, leaving only his eyes to contrast from his dark features. He didn’t have wings or horn, and if there was a cutie mark on his flank she couldn’t see it. “Princess Twilight Sparkle,” he said. “We should have a word.”
Something twisted in her chest, something angry and indignant. She hated this pony, in a way she’d never hated anything before. Why?
“I don’t know you,” she said, biting back her emotions. She didn’t use the chair beside him, instead sitting on her haunches in the gravel. “Do you know what’s going on? Where is everypony?”
“Some ran, most died.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Not my doing, so don’t ask. I give living things a merciful death. Numbness, then the cold and never waking. Nothing like what you do to each other.”
Twilight saw a city the size of a planet, empty and deserted. She saw good ponies lose their minds in the darkness. She felt her ship rock with explosions.
Then she was back. “This is wrong,” she said. “I’m not here.”
“There is no here,” the pony answered, reaching out a hoof and nudging the edge of the bench. The bit of wood puffed away to ash at his touch. “Your mentor destroyed it, turning billions of years to ash in the blink of an eye. Such a waste. But it’s what you imagined.”
“Who are you?” Twilight’s tone went cold. Her wings flared to either side, and she puffed out her chest It didn’t help much, the pony didn’t even look up.
“I once heard a legend of how the world was made, would you like to hear it?” The pony looked up, expression cheerful. He didn’t wait for her answer. “For endless forevers there was nothing, endless unbounded void. But wait long enough, and you’ll find something waiting even in the nothing. Six sparks were kindled, wishing they could have a place to dwell.
“So each one contributed a thread to the fabric, until it was sewn tight. But it was flat and lifeless, with no place for life. So these six found a wind, and tricked it into joining them inside their creation. There it blew, until the tapestry was full, and there was space enough for life.”
He folded his forelegs in front of him, apparently satisfied. “Think of me as the wind, Twilight. Trapped here a for billions of years, clawing to escape.”
“And… not caring what you have to destroy to do it?” she guessed. The longer she spoke, the more of her memories were returning. “You’re trying to kill everything. If you’re something so powerful, why should you care about us?”
The pony shook his head once, looking almost regretful. “You don’t ask a fire why it burns the home of somepony you love. Fire burns.”
She shuddered, meeting the creature’s eyes. He’d done a fairly good job acting out emotions she recognized, but they never reached his eyes. She couldn’t sense anything from him with her magic, either. Like she was talking to empty air.
“Why are you talking to me?” she asked. “If all you want to do is burn everything down, we can’t have anything to discuss.”
Overhead, the gentle buzz of a helicopter rotor announced the arrival of the relay-chopper. Twilight didn’t look up to see it—she couldn’t shake the feeling that if she looked away from this creature, it would disappear.
“It’s simple, Twilight. As your time spins down to zero, I’ve been observing you carefully. I have decided to make you an offer. You should be flattered, it’s been ages since I contacted an organic species before. But yours is unique, and I believe we might find an arrangement to our mutual satisfaction.”
Twilight’s body tensed reflexively, and she backed away. “I can’t imagine a fire offering me anything I want. Or a wind, or… whatever you are.”
The thing shrugged. “Listen anyway. I find your kind… useful. And what I find useful, I preserve for my own purposes. So consider this: I can cease all hostilities against you. No pony will ever grow sick and die in the cold. Your bodies won’t fail in the space I have touched. You will be safe, until a billion billion years have passed, and my work is finished.”
Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “And in exchange?”
“Your species will find a new purpose,” he said.
She backed away another few steps, glowering at him. “You mean we’ll be your slaves. You’ll take our bodies and our magic for yourself. Better if we were dead.”
He looked indignant. “Nothing of the kind, Twilight Sparkle. Your purpose would change—a slight change to your nature, if you will. That would be all. I cannot take such a… direct hand in affairs, that I puppet creatures around. Were you not so powerful in mind and body both, this meeting would be impossible.”
He advanced on her, thrusting out a hoof. “Accept my gift, Twilight Sparkle. Guide your species to prosperity. I will give you a new homeworld, rich in good things. Where other creatures spawned from the chaos will rot and die, you will prosper. So I have spoken, and so will I do.”
“What about the other creatures? Dragons, and griffins, and… everything else from our homeworld?”
“Safe,” he said. “Altered slightly, like you. But all are part of this bargain.”
Twilight stared down at the offered hoof.
1. Take it. This could be the end. Safety for Equestria, forever. It might come at a cost to other creatures… but since when is that my responsibility? 2. No way. It’s better to struggle and die against a force like this than to bargain with it. If we die, we’ll die free.
Some part of Twilight was tempted by what the speaker offered. The essence of Hunger? Embodiment of entropy? She was the only princess left to make decisions, and she could guarantee the safety for Equestria’s survivors forever. A powerful temptation.
She probably would’ve taken the deal, if it wasn’t for Node. In her was an echo of their past, their creators. The others like her had sacrificed much to give Equestria life. Could she decide for ponies and griffins and changelings and every other creature to betray those creators? Not a bucking chance.
“Why would you make me an offer like this?” Twilight asked. “You’ve almost won. Equestria only has one ship left, and the creatures on it. When it’s destroyed, you win.”
Buzzing motors roared overhead, scattering dirt around them. Yet her companion’s mane didn’t lift, and no dirt touched him. “You misunderstand what I am and what I desire. This is not surprising—biology does not furnish your kind with the means to comprehend other forms of… complexity. All you need to know is this: this offer is not extended often, and it is not eternal. When you get on that plane, our business is concluded one way or the other.”
The aircraft settled lightly onto rough metal stilts, and gullwing doors opened on either side. There was nopony inside—no pilot, no passengers. Just old cushions ripped and torn.
“Can’t you just leave us alone?” Twilight asked, almost tearful. “We don’t even understand you! We can’t be a threat to you. Just forget we met.”
The pony sighed, exasperated. “So you aren’t interested. A pity. You’re a unique achievement, individuality that will leave the universe poorer once extinguished. Reconsider now, and that need not ever happen.”
“I won’t,” Twilight said, crossing onto the aircraft and spinning to glare at him. “We probably would’ve if you asked before Equestria was lost. But you’re the reason my mentor is dead. The reason that… so many other ponies died. It isn’t Celestia’s fault this planet isn’t here anymore, it’s yours.”
The pony shrugged. “C’est la vie. Enjoy your trip, Twilight Sparkle. It is nearly complete, after all.” The metal door whined as it hissed closed around her. The sounds melted and blurred in her mind, and suddenly she was on her back. She heard the steady beeping of a life-support monitor, accelerating for a moment with whatever heartbeat it was reading, then settling again once she began to breathe regularly again.
She jerked upright, wide-eyed as she looked around.
Twilight had known this hospital well, long ago. She’d got her first immunizations here; been taken here every time a spell surge worried her parents about brain damage.
In those days, urgent care was always filled with other ponies, who’d taken some minor injury or illness. A dozen different doctors would throng about, consulting with the needy.
Only her bed was illuminated now, her body strapped down with the loose plastic meant to keep her from drifting away, or to keep her still if something strange happened to the Canterlot’s orbital path.
A metal door hissed open, and Fluttershy flew through, no longer wearing one of the jumpsuits of the Equinox, but a standard doctor’s jacket. She stopped beside the bed, consulting the medical readings before even saying anything.
Twilight opened her mouth to speak, before she realized that there was a mask on her face. Her body was wired to life support through the inside of her hindlegs, just as she would be if she were going into a cryocoffin. Twilight ripped off the mask, earning herself a glare from Fluttershy. “How long?” she asked, her voice hoarse and grating even to her own ears.
“Almost a month,” Fluttershy said absently. “I was beginning to fear you wouldn’t wake. You didn’t respond to any of the standard drugs, and the supply of magical remedies is long gone. I didn’t know an Alicorn even could be stuck in coma like that.”
Twilight nodded, settling back against the hospital bed. Her whole body was weak and sore, and not even counting the interface between herself and life support. “You’re… not wearing an oxygen mask.”
“No longer necessary,” Fluttershy said, between readings. “Repairs to the Canterlot’s life support have made the air breathable again. Despite… interference.”
“What happened to me?” Twilight asked. “I was…” before being back in Equestria, she’d been… investigating something. A pony had wanted to show her something. Then… then it got hazy.
“You were attacked. One of the shiprat unicorns hit you with some kind of…” Fluttershy shook her head. “I’m afraid he isn’t alive to interrogate, and the Canterlot’s sensors gave us no hints. When they called me in, your suit was shredded, but you didn’t look hurt.”
“It took a whole month to get the air working?”
Fluttershy didn’t answer for a long moment. She crossed to a set of drawers, removing vial and a needle and carrying them over. A mild sedative from the label, or at least mild for an Alicorn’s constitution. She only spoke as she prepared her dose. “The one who attacked you, he had… accomplices. They call themselves the inheritors—group of crazy ponies who think that all the frozen creatures are totems and gods or whatever and that we’re damning them by changing things. Rainbow and Applejack captured a few. I’m not sure if there are others still hiding. But there hasn’t been any other sabotage than the attack that hit you.”
Twilight watched as Fluttershy injected her IV, feeling the rush of cold fluid in her veins a moment later. “Why are you… trying to put me out again?”
“Because you need more sleep,” Fluttershy said. “Now that I know you’re not braindead. I’ll get the crew together for you, and you can be captain again tomorrow. If there are any orders you’d like to pass along first…”
1. Leave the Inheritors to rot in the brig. Once everything is repaired and we’re on our way, maybe we’ll see about rehabilitating them. They’re not worth the trouble right now. 2. Space them. We can’t afford showing weakness, and sabotage of life support is unacceptable. Everypony knows what happens when you buck with the air supply. 3. Try to bring them around now. They might’ve tried to kill me, but there are too few ponies left to sacrifice any. Maybe with some convincing they would change their minds.
The stakes were so incredibly high. But in the end, Twilight couldn't fight her nature. It was tempting to banish the problem completely, considering the absurdity of attacking the princess, the only Alicorn these ponies had left. The one whose crew had just saved them. But she resisted. She couldn't leave them in prison forever, when they were the ones who knew the Canterlot as it was better than any of her own ponies. That kind of expertise couldn't be easily replaced.
But Twilight wouldn't have any part of that herself, not anytime soon. Once she'd given the instruction, it was back into oblivion for her, and the darkness that hungered for the end of all ponies.
Eventually she satisfied Fluttershy that she wasn't about to keel over and die, and her crew was finally gathered. Still in her stupid medical room, but Twilight would have to take what she could get. At least Fluttershy wasn't keeping her asleep, and she wasn't seeing more strange visions from the personifications of forces bent on destroying all life.
Even Node and Apple Bloom had made a return, lurking near the back of the private hospital room. Easy to justify when an attempt had already been made on Twilight's life.
"It's stupid not to be harsh with them," Rainbow said, as soon as the meeting had begun. "They sabotaged our new..." she flicked a wing. "The big fabricator, whatever it is. Canterlot is already barely holding together as it is. How long before they do something that sends the rest of us to Tartarus? How long before we lose structure?"
"I'm not going to let them out," Twilight said, exasperation heavy in her voice. "Listen, everypony. I need to tell you what I saw. I wasn't just unconscious--the weapon they hit me with let me... see things. It was so incredibly clear, I know it was more than just a hallucination."
She told them. Even with the days or maybe weeks since she'd seen the little vision, she could remember everything in perfect detail. The empty state of Equestria, the offer she'd refused. She could still describe the flowers and the trash on the floor, if she had to.
Eventually she finished, and she settled back against the hospital bed, letting the weight of everything she'd said settle on the room. Even without mind-reading, she could sense the worry. At least some of her crew probably thought she was losing her mind. Maybe they were right to fear.
"I'm not sure what difference this all makes, dear," Rarity said. "Even assuming... for the sake of this discussion, that everything you just said truly happened in some abstract sense. What changes for Canterlot as a result? We still make the same repairs, the same plans. We still try to survive in the same way."
There was only one set of eyes that wasn't overflowing with incredulity. Node cleared her throat, moving forward with oversized steps. She was easily the tallest creature in the room, and would probably be bigger than everything but a minotaur. Not that Twilight had seen any of those aboard the Canterlot. "There are stories of offers like that. The first one came to a king who flew deep into dead space, protected by shields you can't imagine. Others have come to other great figures over the years, whose nature and species you wouldn't understand. It makes sense one would eventually come to you. I am... grateful that you refused it."
"Of anyone who could accept this story, you weren't the one I'd expect," Sunset muttered. "You're always so... materialistic, Node. I thought your culture was more advanced in every way."
"We were," she said, shrugging absently. "That's why I know. Apparently the force behind all this is afraid you might actually survive on your own. It doesn't like letting go of anything. It was trying to back you into a corner. If you had accepted... well, it's a good thing you didn't. I'm sure it could do terrible things with an agent of authority like you to control. You might very well have destroyed this ship, or... at least subjugated your entire civilization to a darkness worse than death."
There was a long, awkward silence. Twilight wasn't sure if the other members of her crew were convinced by Node's words. At least Fluttershy had stopped glancing at her drug cabinet, that had to be a good sign.
"So we're winning," Rainbow said. "That's great. That means whatever we're doing, we need to keep doing it."
"Repairs to life support are basically complete," Spike said. Twilight found his artificial body standing near the back of the room, but his face remained entirely unreadable. The nearly-furless aliens didn't express emotion along the same range. "I suggest turning towards the long-term."
"To do what?" Applejack asked. "This is all that's left. You've heard it, same as we all have. No more Equestria. No more star, even. The sleepin' folks on this here rock are the only ponies in the whole universe."
"I can think of at least one possibility," Node said. "We're already in orbit of the... Highway. So why not modify this capital ship of yours, and join the Flotilla? You'll be a primitive fish in a very large sea--but all species on that journey are fighting the same war. They'll welcome you, I know they will."
Applejack shoved her way forward, tapping an impatient plastic hoof on the hospital floor. "There's no need for us to fight. The ones who helped make Equestria knew this might happen. They left us the Contingency, remember? It's peaceful in there, Twi. And ask Node, she'll tell you. It's safe from... from the thing that wants everypony dead. Ain't that what yer people did?"
Node nodded. "They were cowards. But some part of me wishes I'd been a cowards too."
"Or we could stop running," Sunset finished. "This system already had an advanced civilization. Maybe we're not as far from a cure to this thing as every creature thinks. Maybe we should wake everypony up and start colonizing."
Twilight felt instantly like the decision was too big for her. But she was the only waking Alicorn left. Celestia would've trusted her to make the right choice.
1. Try to join the Flotilla.
2. Migrate everyone to the contingency, and conceal it to never be found.
There was definitely a part of Twilight that reveled in the idea of staying back to stick it to the forces arrayed against them. The Hunger had cost her so much--had nearly devoured her civilization whole, and somehow finding a way to stop it had a deeply personal appeal. If Equestria wasn't in her hooves, and it was just her and her friends left, she might've done it.
But they weren't alone. Over a hundred thousand creatures were frozen on the Canterlot, all depending on her Twilight had to think of them first, and personal satisfaction second. Besides, the races in the Flotilla have probably thought of everything we could come up with. And if not, we can work with them when we arrive to stop Hunger for good. It isn't a war we have to win right now.
The Canterlot had its own little war to win. Twilight was more than a little surprised to learn that it had already been fighting that war, while she was distracted with other issues.
Do the inheritors change their minds? Yes
"I know I should've talked to you about it more, Twilight," Pinkie explained. "I've been down in that cell... I guess whenever I was bored? I dunno." She bounced past the hospital bed, far closer to her usual energy than she'd been around Twilight in some time. "But it seemed like they could use a little affection. What pony doesn't feel better after a party?"
You had a party with the ponies who tried to murder me. She resisted showing her indignance.
"I know you can't just trust them right away, and I think the inheritors know that too," Pinkie continued. "But between Applejack and me, I think they're really coming around. They had no idea what we went through to get here. The more they know about us, the less reason they have to be afraid."
It made a simple kind of sense. Twilight wished she could put the Inheritors right back to work, since they knew more about the modified Canterlot than basically anypony. Every report she read included some strange jury-rig. None seemed malicious, but each one was another setback to getting the station fully functional again. Having 'local' talent on every team was going to be critical to safely restoring the station.
It took a little while, but eventually she was back on her hooves. She passed through the station slowly, her horn constantly alert to magical danger. Even if every conspirator they knew of was in prison, she couldn't shake the impression that there might be others. The Canterlot just didn't seem like a safe place anymore.
Now that she wasn't exploring it for the first time from behind her space suit, the signs of decay were everywhere. Great promenades of crystal and metal had been stripped for parts, leaving only bare walkways and safety rails. Fountains once filled with fish had run dry, and the many gardens and orchards were barren and lifeless. Twilight could remember a time from her own foalhood, where this station had been self-sufficient, importing only luxuries like zap-apples and the occasional spare parts. But from what she'd seen, the creatures maintaining the station now lived only on a thin slime of algae. And 'lived' was used loosely, given their frail bodies and poor constitutions. Eked out a desperate survival, more like. Which was part of the reason she was leaving the hospital to speak to the pony who ran it, rather than just talking in her office.
With the Canterlot's life support systems fully restored, parts of the station were now accessible that had been under vacuum for many years. Twilight stepped through an airlock into one such, up the steps to the princess’s castle. The square was now entirely dominated with stacked cryosleep caskets, with only a single narrow aisle between them. She made her way up the steps to the palace gates, pushing them gently open. Caskets blocked the view of the ancient stained-glass windows. Some of those might still show her own accomplishments--but she couldn't get a good view. Besides, they weren't as important as the reason she was here.
Fluttershy stood at the foot of the ancient thrones, looking up at the empty seats like a supplicant before their god. She turned as Twilight neared, probably hearing her hoofsteps.
"You wanted to talk in here?" Twilight asked, eyebrows raised. "Not a... painless place for a conversation." But no matter what happened, she was not going to let one of her crewmembers see her cry.
"I asked Applejack where we could go that we wouldn't be overheard. It had to be somewhere the survivors hadn't modified. Apparently they kept the palace totally empty, so... no modifications. Superstitions. Are you afraid of the ghosts of old alicorns?"
Yes. But the ghosts live in my mind, not in this old castle. She was already seeing them. Princess Celestia stood beside her younger self near one wall. Through the barrier of caskets flashing green and yellow the ruler of Equestria taught her Twilight's first shield spell. There on an upper-story balcony was where a young twilight had curled up with her books, whenever Celestia brought her here to see the solar court. Mostly she read her book, the court had always been too boring. "What don't you want anypony to know?"
"It's about your decision. Taking the Canterlot to the Flotilla, joining Node's survivors... I wanted to remind you of what that would mean. Or maybe tell you for the first time, if you haven't thought about it."
Her eyebrows went up. "I've thought about an awful lot. But I'm listening."
"I don't know exactly how this highway works... but it can't break physics, right? That means acceleration gravity. The survivors on this station aren't going to be able to cope, Captain. I know we're probably months away... we've got mining to do, a dozen different things to fix I don't even understand. I just want to put this in your mind, so we can start figuring out a solution now."
"What do you mean they can't cope?" Twilight asked. Even speaking quietly, her voice echoed in the empty castle. Did she have the courage to walk up and visit her dead mentor's quarters? "Be precise."
"The survivors have lived in zero gravity their whole life. They abandoned navy protocol... well, their grandparents probably abandoned it. Their hearts are small, their lungs are weak, their bones are brittle. Now... Earth Pony magic is probably enough for them to adapt. They'll wish they were dead, but if we've got enough drugs, they'll make it. The others... won't. A few weeks at full gravity, and they'll start dying. Gruesome, terrible deaths. I just... wanted you to be thinking about what to do. It's not just broken station we have to fix. There are broken creatures too."
Twilight could see a few solutions.
1. Prepare to distribute the mechanical conversion to all non-earth ponies. Distributing that much will be insanely dangerous, but Fluttershy can probably come up with something. Being mechanical might not be ideal, but being dead is worse.
2. Gradually swap out ponies on ice with ponies who can't survive the gravity. We don't have any space for new pods, but there's probably thousands of skilled creatures frozen. Plenty of room for all the survivors, and we can build up a crew as we go.
3. Construct a new habitat with magic and technology to counter acceleration gravity, for all the survivors to eventually live in. Sure building new modules takes time, but the Canterlot was always made for it. The cost in energy and supplies is worth remaining united as a civilization.
In some ways it was the hardest decision Twilight had made yet, with the possible exception of whether or not to trade Equestria’s safety for its freedom. After all, the crew of the Equinox amounted to a small minority compared to the number of shiprats, which the Canterlot’s dubious sensors placed somewhere in the low hundreds.
Even if their hugely weakened bodies could survive being frozen (and eventually revived), there was a very real chance that their friendliness with the Equinox survivors would not. Twilight could easily imagine the fear she might be feeling in their place, if a small group of strangers arrived and told them they had to be replaced with creatures they’d never even known.
And in some ways what I’m giving them instead won’t be much better. Give up the station you’ve been living on for your whole life to crawl into a tiny habitat because of a threat you barely even accept. There were so many ways for it to go wrong that Twilight could feel the ice thinning under her hooves before she’d even fully made up her mind.
Princess Celestia had taught her many things, in addition to saving their entire civilization from extinction and possibly also extinguishing their star. If there was bad news to share, the best thing to do was head it off yourself, so that you controlled the perspective ponies would see it with. She couldn’t stop the gossip after that, only hope she could win ponies over before they turned hostile.
Even the Inheritors had been well-behaved, though she still wasn’t letting them out of their cells. She’d work something out with work assignments to deliver in jail, and move on to something more substantial after good behavior. But they weren’t the ones she wanted to talk to.
She brought Flywheel, as well as several other of the other leaders he’d nominated for her, to Canterlot Palace. With the Equinox’s own reactor supplementing power for now, she lit the whole thing back up, turned the fountains back on—as much as she could do to restore it to its former glory without the ones living inside who had given it purpose.
Her friends were all there, or at least the ones she could pull away from their duties. Spike’s true self was on the Equinox, or maybe was the Equinox in every meaningful sense. And poor Fluttershy had so many injured ponies to treat that she couldn’t be convinced to leave sickbay for even a few minutes. But the rest of them were there.
Twilight was the first to arrive, walking again up the empty hall to stand before Celestia’s throne. She could almost see the Alicorn standing beside her, nodding up the steps. This is your time, Twilight. I know you’ll watch over my little ponies.
She wiped away tears, then took Luna’s seat, and waited in silence for the others to arrive.
Spike’s new body strode in, carrying the requested projector and looking oddly stretched and unbalanced. In the palace. Sitting somewhere so familiar to her, she could almost picture him as an ambassador of a race newly discovered in the badlands, some strange hybrids of Minotaurs and insects perhaps. “You’re brooding,” he said, folding one set of arms. The others kept working, setting up the projector. “You shouldn’t be.”
“I’ve earned a little brooding,” she argued. “You want my chair?”
His response was laughter. “Are you bucking kidding me? Even if I wasn’t a ship’s computer I’d want nothing to do with it. But I’ll happily give you all the help I can.” He reached down, tossing her something.
She caught it in her magic—a sealed can of flower-flavored cola. He’d even refrigerated it to the perfect temperature, and probably scrubbed a layer of dust from the outside. “You think this is… safe?”
He rolled his eyes. “I won’t tell Fluttershy if you won’t.”
She didn’t laugh, but she did pop the tab, taking a long sip. Despite its incredible packaging, the drink inside had gone flat. But it was still sweet, and didn’t taste like it had started fermenting. She smiled, relaxing slightly into the seat. She could do this.
Soon enough they were all gathered, with the shiprats resting in ceremonial cushions they’d brought. Her own crew generally just circled around the throne, or flew low arcs near the ceiling, dodging between the high racks of pods left to obscure the otherwise regal space.
“I don’t understand why we need to be… here,” Flywheel said, the only one who would look up at the throne. “Can’t we let the dead sleep in peace?”
Twilight shook her head. “This is our civilization, Flywheel. Everypony. You don’t guard a tomb anymore. Canterlot is coming back to life.”
She explained again the danger they faced from the coming Hunger, which was easier than she’d expected. Stories of their flight from their home lived on in the minds of these creatures, even if they didn’t well understand them.
“Far away, and getting further by the moment, is an incredible fleet called the Flotilla. In it are the ships of thousands of races, a whole galaxy of friends and allies to fight against the end of life. They will take us in, if we can reach them.”
“Excellent,” said Soup. Twilight wasn’t sure if that was her whole name, but that was what all the other rats called her. The largest earth pony she’d seen in their group, almost as wide as she was tall. But she sure did earn that namesake. “So we go. The princess uses her magic, and we fly off to join them. A simple thing.”
“Yeah…” Twilight said. “Except…” She explained the problem, the acceleration that might last for months, or far longer. Even Node seemed dubious about the highway’s function once they were in motion. The shiprats seemed to expect the worst, and were shocked when Twilight explained their intentions. “We’re going to build a new section for the Canterlot, one that can comfortably host your entire… tribe. Not one of you will be harmed, or left behind. There are too few of us left to make sacrifices like that.”
A magnanimous declaration. But once it was made, the hard part waited. They had to negotiate the form the Canterlot’s new section would actually take. 1. The Spartan proposal of just enough to survive. This can be built in less than six months, and attached with minimal risk to the station’s structural integrity. It’s likely to feel little better than a prison to its inhabitants.
2. The Diplomatic proposal, giving the shiprats extremely high-quality accommodations and plenty of space. It will take at least a year to build, and require difficult engineering to attach. But in the end its ponies will have all the same luxuries that ponies will full access to the station would enjoy.
3. The Desperate Rush proposal, hastily welding together many of the starships left in the Canterlot’s drydock. Accommodations within will be poor, and the structural stability of the new section will be just as bad. But it can be completed in a month, allowing resources to return to full repair of the Canterlot sooner.
4. The Thaumic proposal. Rely heavily on experimental shield magic and Signaler alloys harvested from Proximus B. If successful, the new section would actually reinforce the structural integrity of the Canterlot, while providing high-quality accommodations. It will require the same six months as the spartan proposal, but a failure to deploy any of experimental technologies could waste all the material and require the crew to start over.
It wasn’t exactly a list of good options. Twilight could practically taste the chaos in Canterlot as soon as they tried anything that might leave their two halves of pony civilization with some lasting class divide. Node could only give vague answers about how long it would take to reach the Flotilla once they stepped into the Highway, but Twilight didn’t think the enlightened races there would take too kindly to their arrival if their ship was in the middle of a civil war. ‘Yeah, we’re totally safe to join you. Don’t mind us, we’re just killing each other!’
“The risks are… rather high, if we should fail,” Rarity explained. “This is the natural evolution of our shielding technology. Shielding against the effects of acceleration will require the constant interface of a Signaler computer of great intelligence. And if we can’t make it work, the entire section will be… useless.”
“But we can’t wait months for the research,” Applejack cut in. “That would mean a year of sittin’ around and doing nothing while our time left alive is countin’ down. We need to be building the internals at the same time. But if the shield doesn’t work, the insides are going to be… useless to them. We’ll have to take it all apart.”
Twilight raised a dismissive wing. “I understand. Can you do it, Rarity?”
The unicorn rose, glancing nervously at the little group of Shiprats in the center. “Not on my own. I’m not sure yet where we’ll get the right computer. Node might be able to help construct one. And the Shield unicorns have a level of mastery over protection spells that no creature on Equestria ever did. We’ll have to… synergize? I believe that’s the term.”
That’s not much of an answer. “Consider it ordered,” Twilight said, hopping down off the throne and gliding towards Soup and flywheel in the center. “You all have the most important part of this assignment, even more critical than the engineering. You’re responsible for making sure that our message gets out before your ponies start thinking like Inheritors. You stood right here while I rejected the plan that would’ve treated you like strangers on your own station. Make sure every creature knows that.”
Flywheel nodded. “I wasn’t sure I believed it myself until I sat here. But if I see we’re going with this plan—” he pointed at the projection, and the oddly spherical section that would be joining Canterlot station. “Then I can be honest with the other Shiprats. We really are… siblings.”
Soup only shrugged. “Just make sure there’s plenty of space for farming, the way we do it. Shiprats like us—we want to feel like we have control of our own survival. Whatever you’re building on the rest of Canterlot—we don’t want part of it. Give us our own, and we’ll take care of our own.”
Applejack raised a hoof to object, but Twilight silenced her with a glare. It didn’t particularly matter that it would obviously be inefficient, and probably a huge waste of labor as well. The shiprats wouldn’t have a whole lot to do once Canterlot was back in working order, and automation replaced all their near-religious ritual kit bashing. “I will make sure of it personally,” Twilight said. “Feel free to consult with your community. If there’s anything we’ve missed, tell us early in the construction process while it’s still easy to fix.”
The meeting dispersed. Even without magic, Twilight could sense just how unhappy everypony was. The risk of such a plan was high, and from what some of her friends had said, they didn’t think the Shiprats should be given so much deference. She could understand that perspective—saving the sleeping ponies was the Canterlot’s entire mission. But they’ve done their part to carry out that mission for centuries. They deserve payment.
She had a few private conversations, explaining as much to Sunset, and answering a few more concerns. Eventually, only Spike was left behind with her. “There’s one question you haven’t answered yet,” he said. The confidence he’d manifested since his rebirth was all gone now, and he sounded almost as nervous as he had as her baby dragon assistant. “I know I’m… probably not the most important thing on your mind. But I need to help. I can’t just float on a docking sending in a drone or two. I’m sick of limbo.”
Twilight suppressed a gasp, resting a wing on his oversized alien shoulder. “Spike! I’m sorry, I… you could’ve talked to me about this sooner. Of course I’m not upset with you. You’re as loyal to this mission as anyone. You’ve given more to this mission than any other creature.” With the possible exception of Apple bloom, and her mostly-dead crew. She walked past him, along the fountain of Celestia’s throne. It looked so dead without the fish and lilies growing here. Maybe she could bring them back. Or at least plant a few Lilly pads. There’s got to be some seeds stashed away somewhere.
But that didn’t help her know what to do for Spike. What role could she give to a dead dragon who was now the computer of a redundant exploration ship? “You must’ve thought about this,” she said, trying to buy time. “What do you want to do?”
“I see a few options,” Spike said. “But somehow, I can’t…” he shook his head. “It’s horrible, Twilight. Like there are blocks in my head. I want to march right up and… demand what I want. But I can’t.” He shook his head, expression haunted. “I guess that’s what it means to be a ship’s AI. I don’t order my captain, I can only give you options. Here are the ones I’ve come up with, ordered from least to greatest preference:”
1. Clear a section of docking bay and park the Equinox, allowing Spike to use his drones to assist aboard the Canterlot while not compromising his functionality. (this would require many ships to be removed and dismantled, but their parts can go into the new section anyway)
2. Wake a crew of miners and send them off in the Equinox to start gathering supplies for the new section. They will be able to travel to further-flung destinations like Proximus B, while the Canterlot gathers bulk materials near Proximus C.
3. Spike couldn’t help but notice a powerful computer could be used to run the new section once it’s finished. He figures his should be strong enough to increase their odds. This would render the Equinox derelict until a replacement computer could be built.
4. He’s certain that controlling a single ship takes almost none of his abilities. Spike feels he could be most helpful as a replacement for Canterlot’s central computer. Doing so would give him a permanent place in their new society, though it would also render the Equinox derelict until he was replaced.
Twilight had serious reservations about any of these options--as soon as she pulled the trigger, Spike would be changed forever, and the rest of the mission too. It was true that his body might be easier to modify and replace than anypony else in their group--but being a computer made her think of him as even more fragile. It wasn't true, but the thought remained in her mind regardless, impossible to shake. And even more dangerous to us than physical damage is emotional damage. If we make Spike upset, he could be even more dangerous than an angry dragon.
Not that she planned for that to happen. "Your abilities are wasted controlling a ship that doesn't have any more exploring left to do," she said. "Installing those computers in the Canterlot will be difficult, but that's our problem to figure out, not yours. All I need from you is the promise that you'll be able to control the station effectively if we connect you to it."
Spike nodded confidently. "Without a doubt. Even if it's a hundred times more complex than the Equinox, I could do it while asleep. If it's a thousand times more complex, it will still be simple for me. And I don't think it will be."
What have I created? She fought down the fear, banishing it before she could show any visible signs. If she started feeling afraid of members of her crew now, then their mission was doomed. "I'll put the transfer near the top of our work order. But I wouldn't trust anypony in the crew to lead it--we've never worked with anything so delicate before. And if we buck something up, then we're down our starship and our station."
"You look like you have something in mind," Spike said. But despite his usual neutrality, there was excitement in his voice now. He was actually eager for the swap.
"Somepony, yes," Twilight answered. "I've been going through the crew roster. I think it's time we make our first revival."
There was only one creature Twilight could possibly trust with a mission as important as this one. Node would certainly be there to help, but the Signaler had some strange ideas about minds and bodies and probably wasn't the one she wanted to entrust the lives of her crew. After all, she wanted everypony to vanish into a computer simulation and call it eternal life.
Twilight had the pod brought into Canterlot medical, which Twilight herself was growing a little too familiar. Supplies for waking ponies were expensive, since they used the same resources they spent growing food. But in a case like this, they could afford to wait.
Twilight paced back and forth outside the diagnostic room, unable to keep still long enough to sit down. Of course she hadn't been surprised to find this name in the crew roster, it would've been stranger if it wasn't there. But that didn't mean she was ready for it. How many years had it been? Not even the same number for both of them.
Finally the door opened, and Fluttershy emerged from inside. She straightened her white coat, loosening the collar. "Captain? Have you been waiting out here the whole time?"
She nodded shamelessly. "Of course. I had to know if we were getting her back."
Fluttershy groaned. "You know the process takes days. Even with good news, you weren't going to talk to her today, let alone put her on duty."
But you aren't trying to quash my hopes yet. That has to be good news. "The casket was intact. How was the pony inside?"
Is the subject intact? No. How many limbs are intact? 4 Internal injuries only.
"I would've been out hours ago if it was anything simple, captain. That's why you should've just waited for me to call you. You've got enough recovering of your own to do."
Twilight shrugged her wings, dismissing her. "How bad? Do we have..." she lowered her voice, glancing around the medical bay. There were always other creatures in here, mostly shiprats. But just because they weren't her crew didn't mean that word wouldn't get back if she wasn't careful. "Another Sunset."
The doctor shook her head. "Nothing went necrotic, that's... that's more common when a cell is failing. This was something else. The cryodrugs don't work so well on everypony, and there's sometimes... rejection. I think the patient is one of those. Of course we screened all of us for rejection, but... when the world's ending, you don't really have time for that. It's either get in or die, so... she got in."
"And the treatment?"
Can Fluttershy fix her? Critical yes.
"She lost both lungs and one kidney," Fluttershy answered. "We only had a single implant lung waiting, so she'll have to make due. But so long as she doesn't play any Hoofball or run any marathons, she should be alright. I'm growing another one right now, but that takes a month. She'll be on strictly light duty for her first quarter after waking."
That's not too much worse than things usually are. "Unless she wants the virus," Twilight suggested. "If anypony would take it, she might."
Fluttershy flung up her wings for a moment, exasperated. "I bucking hope not, captain. You think it's easy to do surgery on somepony who just came out of the defroster? I saved her life, don't encourage her to throw it away again."
Twilight only patted her on the shoulder. "Thank you, doctor. I want you to call me before you wake her. I'm going to be there."
And she was, about two weeks later. They left her unconscious that long, so the worst of her post-surgery recovery could happen without the need for so much pain and misery. Spike wasn't excited about waiting, but at least he recognized the importance of doing things right rather than fast.
Twilight gave her a few minutes to get her baring, alone in the hospital bed--before levitating the door open, and striding inside. "Good afternoon, Starlight. I hope you're feeling well."
Twilight stared across the hospital bed at Starlight Glimmer, wincing at the obvious signs of cryosickness. Even Earth Ponies woken always looked a little worse for wear, but the effect seemed even more pronounced on Unicorns. Her mane was a faint fuzz, and where her coat no longer covered, her body was covered angry red patches. There was no winning against the necrosis, only holding it back. But Twilight was most interested in her eyes--even if her body looked perfect from the outside, there was no telling what condition her mind might be in.
When it came to the usefulness of a computer engineer and a unicorn, the mind was everything. I don’t know what I’m going to do if you’re a Popsicle, Starlight.
“Is something wrong Princess, or are you just going to keep staring at me like that?”
Twilight grinned weakly at her, settling back on her haunches. “Just like that? No terrified questions about how you’re awake or the state of the Canterlot, or…”
Starlight’s head twitched slightly, the best shake she could manage. “You’re standing in front of me, that’s says a lot. The Equinox wasn’t lost after all. Judging by the smell of stellar fungus in the air, I’m guessing you found her dialect for… well, it would have to be centuries now.”
Her voice was thin and raspy, probably a symptom of her transplanted lung. But she was still speaking.
I wish half my crew had come out as good as you did. But the caskets weren’t the same as the ones in the Equinox. Probably the design was newer. A few hundred years of innovation could go a long way. “I see your deduction skills are as good as ever.” And there isn’t nearly as much gray in your coat as I was expecting.
She could catch up about those questions later. “Do you feel well enough to talk? I’ve got a project I want you to think about while you’re recovering from the freezer.”
Starlight nodded, shifting in the hospital bed. “Whatever you want to say, princess. Can’t really go anywhere for… how long?”
“A week or two,” Fluttershy answered, emerging from the door behind Twilight in her jacket. She pushed a diagnostic tray in front of her with a hoof, expression even. “If your visitor is bothering you, just say so. Everypony deserves a chance to recover.”
“You’re still alive,” Starlight said, surprised. “After all these years. Wait… you’re younger than me. You were frozen for most of it, weren’t you?”
Fluttershy nodded. “The captain can fill you in on all the details, when you’re ready to hear them. For now, I’m going to take some measurements. Just tell me if this hurts…”
She was ready right then and wouldn’t let Twilight leave until she’d explained everything. Twilight could sense Fluttershy’s frustration with her, putting so much strain on the newly wakened pony.
It took hours, but eventually she was up to speed, and she was explaining what Starlight’s role would be. “I need your help installing a new central computer for the Canterlot. We have an… intelligent system, formerly my dragon Spike. He’s going to give the city a mind, instead of just some automatic responses.”
Starlight had seemed so alive when Twilight first entered, but now the weight of weariness seemed to crush her into the bed. She stared down at the paper-thin blanket covered most of her body, expression bleak.
“I hoped they wouldn’t wake me until we… until all the fires were put out, you know? Getting out here was hard enough. They weren’t supposed to wake me unless your ship or Sunset’s came home. This wasn’t… what I thought would be waiting for me.”
Twilight patted her shoulder gently. “They honored your wishes. We’re both home.”
Starlight chuckled. “I take it you’ve already thought about all the ways this Spike thing could go disastrously wrong. And you want me to go ahead with it anyway?”
“Yep. I’ll have a terminal moved here for you to get started with the technical details while you heal. The Signalers have these portable computers, thin enough to lift like a book… you’ll love them.”
“I’m sure.” Starlight gestured, waving her off. “Now if you don’t mind, I think I will get some sleep. I need some time to process… everything.”
Twilight let her rest, seeing herself out. Sharing her story had felt a little like reliving the whole adventure herself—from her hopeful awakening to discovering the stowaway, the death of her second, and everything in-between.
For the crew of the Canterlot, there was no time to rest. There was work to do, and a vanishing window of time to do it in.
Twilight was reduced to a supervisory role, watching from the palace as reports came in. The Canterlot was so badly damaged that she kept a list of which systems worked, rather than a manifest of damage.
There was no telling exactly how long the Hunger’s influence would take to reach them, or how fast they would have to be going along the highway in order to escape. When she asked Node, the robot only said they “weren’t going fast enough”
But even if she was correct in her assertion, they couldn’t possibly speed the process any further. They were essentially expanding the Canterlot’s total area by a fifth, adding a thaumically-entangled section for their new population. That meant every manufacturing facility on the station had to be brought up and running, and many more had to be constructed.
They cut corners where they could, melting down the oldest and least valuable ships docked with the Canterlot for scrap.
In the end, the new section took the shape of a sphere, held in place with massive tethers near the palace section and bridged to the Canterlot with umbilicals thicker than the Equinox.
Does the section finish on time? Yes. Does it work? Yes.
Twilight was there the day the Shiprats began moving in. Instead of hobbles packed into whatever corners of the ship didn’t have stasis cells, these Shiprats had their own quarters, with working services and communal areas and gigantic gardens ready for planting.
Even stern Flywheel wept as he clutched her hoof. “I can’t believe you did it, Princess. All this time we’ve lived in the shadow of the past. Now we have a place.”
“Just remember, I still need you,” she said. “We’re not sending you to an island. Your Shiprats still know Canterlot better than anypony. And the work has just begun.”
They’d be switching Spike back on in just a few hours. And after that, she’d have to make new orders for the next month or so of work.
1. Node suggests constructing the Canterlot’s sails. The highway won’t work without them, and they might need to leave at any time.
2. Applejack suggests concentrating on bulk mining. There’s no telling how long the Canterlot will be in transit, but once she is they’ll have to make do with whatever they have. If they’re started first, they can keep mining while the Canterlot moves on to other tasks.
3. Twilight’s instincts are to fully repair as much of the Canterlot as possible. They shouldn’t be looking anywhere else until their house is fully in order.
4. Rarity thinks that their focus should be on research. They need to know how much time they have.
The debate grew heated towards the end, with her crew practically shouting at each other with the importance of their choices. But in the end, Twilight was the deciding vote.
“Everything we want to do has one thing in common,” she explained, once they’d all fallen silent. “We need resources. We may never have another chance to gather them.”
“Our chance may already be gone,” Node countered. “Well, yours. The dragon and I may be the only ones left alive on this station when all is done. Wouldn’t… be the first time.” Her strange body looked down, folding all four arms together in a gesture of mourning.
“Assuming we even save him,” Rarity said grimly. “Isn’t that transfer ongoing as we speak? I haven’t heard from Starlight in hours now.”
Twilight nodded. Turning to leave. This new section of the Canterlot might be one of the most luxurious, but it wasn’t her home. Let the shiprats make it their home… and hopefully find a new name for themselves. They didn’t have to be rats anymore.
“I know it sounds frightening to send ponies out into the void again,” Applejack began. “Feels kinda like we’re sending them out to suffer like we did. But that just ain’t it. The Canterlot is close, and we won’t send ‘em far. Pinkie and I already made a list. Aside from the crew we’ve got going to Proximus B, they’ll all be stayin’ local.
“The Canterlot has mining ships in the hold that will still fly. We’ve got their crews on ice. You all wanted to do this instead’a moving everypony somewhere, safe, so…” she winced. “Granny Smith always said that if we’re gonna do somethin’, do it right.”
Twilight was in the central computer an hour later for Spike’s re-activation.
She’d visited only once during the last month, and been so horrified by what she saw that she left again before she made order she’d regret.
The Canterlot’s central computer had been as large as all of the Equinox, a vast array of thaumic diodes and floating gate-arrays and tandem spells. While the station was at rest and the mainframe ran some experiment or another, it could draw a third of the station’s power all on its own.
Starlight and Spike’s robot crew had cut through it like scrappers going through a derelict. They’d chosen only the central core, where hardware access to the Canterlot’s most critical systems could be found. Now instead of towering computation modules, there were glass cabinets, the same ones that had once guided the Equinox.
As Twilight made her way between them, she wasn’t struck with a wave of overwhelming heat, as the cooling systems inevitable struggle and failed to vent all the energy to space.
Instead there was a constant whine, loud enough to mistake for a fabricator’s cooling fan.
“You’re here.” Starlight spun around, looking in her direction. The scars on her chest were all covered with new fur now, though Twilight could still hear the raspiness in her voice. That would probably be with her until she died. “I was just about to call you.”
“I needed to be here,” Twilight replied. “Spike’s not just my assistant, he’s my best friend. We’ve been together since he hatched.”
Starlight patted her on the shoulder in an awkward, sympathetic way. “I’m sorry you lost him. During your mission, I mean. That must’ve been hard.”
Twilight stared, expression intense. “Lost? Spike’s right here. I didn’t… I mean, I almost did. He’s just changed. That can happen. Transformation spells…”
Starlight sighed. “Princess, I know you’ve had the run of the world for ages now. But Spike and I have been working together for two months now. He doesn’t think he’s really Spike, and I… agree. You can put all someone’s memories into a computer and turn them on, but it doesn’t mean that pony’s alive again. You’ve just made something new.”
Twilight’s expression hardened. “What does this have to do with the switch? If something went wrong, this isn’t going to cushion the bad news. Tell me.”
Did the switch go well? No.
“As well as can be expected,” Starlight answered, walking slowly along past the alien computers. “We transported these safely, but compared to our machines we could probably have Muffins fly them and not break anything. But…” she lowered her voice to a sensitive whisper.
“Switching things back on hasn’t… The Canterlot is working normally. Everything we did to virtualize its hardware is working great. But… Spike hasn’t come back. Think about it, princess. We don’t know what lets a computer act like a pony. Apparently it was complex enough that just turning things on wasn’t enough.”
Twilight’s eyes widened in horror. “Y-you… you thought that could happen, and you didn’t tell me?”
Her eyes drifted desperately across the room. There sitting against the wall was the strange Signaler body Node had made for him, the male alien that towered over everypony. Its eyes were closed now, hands folded across its chest. You found your rest at last.
“He made me swear. That… if something went wrong, then that was how it was supposed to be.”
“Buck that.” Twilight shoved past her, selecting one of the redesigned computer racks out of many. The one without a glass front—the one damaged in Spike’s duel.
This was where Spike’s mind was most centralized, or so she thought.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” Starlight called from behind her, voice desperate. “Captain, please! Spike wouldn’t want you to put the station at risk!”
She was probably right about that. But just now, Twilight wasn’t feeling terribly rational. She had to try, had to do something.
She had only what she’d picked up from Node for reference, about the way Signaler computers worked. But her magical understanding also taught her something else. Life itself was magic, the most basic and fundamental kind.
Maybe all Spike needed now was a spark. She didn’t even have a specific spell in mind. Twilight just hit the mainframe with every drop of magic she had, careful not to convert it directly to force as a novice might do.
A wave of violet energy blasted through the computer core, lighting up thousands of thaumic tubes tossed aside or into trash bins. Dead computers hummed to life at the energy, only to fade a moment later.
“Stop!” Starlight roared. “Princess, you don’t know these systems like I do! You really have to—”
Can Twilight fix it? Yes.
A screen lit up; the little diagnostic display directly mounted to the rack. Twilight’s horn went out, and she crept forward slowly. It was an incredibly stupid plan. It might’ve set them back months, or worse.
“Ugh… my head,” Spike said. “I feel like I just hibernated for a century.”
Things got better after that. Twilight stalked away as soon as she was sure that Spike wasn’t going to catch fire or explode or anything else awful in her absence. She had to get away from Starlight, before the two of them came to blows.
There was an argument of some kind in engineering—maybe helping other ponies work out their issues would help calm her racing heart.
Give up on Spike just like that, without even trying. I can’t believe you’d suggest it, Starlight. Not a chance.
Her old friend was older now, older than she was. We can’t all hide from risk forever. We’re swimming in them now.
Twilight found Fluttershy and Rarity in what remained of the old physics lab. Well, it had been a physics lab. Now it was mostly stuffed with hibernation cells, just like everything else. Only the old telescope remained, its massive reflecting mirror cracked.
“Oh good, you’re here,” Rarity said, gesturing for her to approach. She had a set of tools on the table in front of her, entirely uncharacteristic of her.
“What’s the issue?” Twilight asked. “Sorry I couldn’t come straight here. Had to… check on Spike.”
But they were barely even listening to her. “Rarity was going to wake more crew,” Fluttershy explained. “I mean… I want more ponies as much as anyone. But I’m not sure the risk is worth it.”
Twilight turned to Rarity. “I would like an explanation. I take it these aren’t mining crew.”
“No,” Rarity said. “Look, captain, I know what it looks like. But I realized we don’t have to do just the one project at once! I don’t need any of the same resources as Applejack. While she’s doing her… mining whatever, I can be learning!”
“And if anything goes wrong, we’re going to lose ponies.” Fluttershy argued. “I have a skeleton crew, captain. Even waking the miners is going to take double shifts.”
“Then wake more doctors!” Rarity countered. “If we want the Canterlot to stop feeling like a tomb, we really must do something about the caskets. Let’s start opening.”
1. Agree. It’s a gamble that there won’t be too many complications at once, but the chance for critical information is worth the risk.
2. Refuse. Fluttershy is right. Waking ponies up without the infrastructure to properly care for them is just asking for a disaster.
There was no denying just how important that information would be. Not knowing when their world would become instantly unsafe might mean the difference between Equestria’s survival and its slow death. But at the same time, she knew too much about the state of the ship to allow it.
Her expression hardened. “Rarity, I want this as much as you do. But we just don’t have the medical resources. We’re already pulling ponies out of stasis as quickly as we can. We’re trying to build up a medical team, and enough miners.”
“I want to help you,” Fluttershy added. “Every pony we wake up takes the same dosages of a suite of Cryoperidol, and Gaiapram, and possibly days of growth time with replacement organs. We’re already making the drugs as fast as we can, Rarity. If we wake those ponies, we just won’t have enough. We’ll have to give everyone less than they need. We could lose half the pods we open. Do you want that?”
Even Rarity balked, eyes wide with shock. “I… thought we had enough reserves in the Equinox to make up the difference. I had no idea our need was so… so serious.”
Fluttershy nodded, exasperated. “That’s why the captain makes these decisions.” She turned, gliding away through the air. Twilight could imagine the strain she was under: Fluttershy was always brave when it came to the health of her patients, but it took a strain on her.
Besides, it meant there wouldn’t be anyone around while she reprimanded Rarity. “Crewman,” she said, raising her voice just a little. “I already ruled on your recommendation. I don’t want to find out you ignored my decision again. The Canterlot needs you Rarity, now more than ever. But I can’t have you undermining my authority like this.”
The unicorn bristled at the correction but restrained her dignity. It was rare that Twilight ever had to discipline—they were her friends, not some strangers!
Finally Rarity nodded curtly. “I will… still try to discover what I can, with the resources I have.”
“Good.” Twilight let her go. She had no intention of further discipline—Rarity wasn’t just crew; she was her friend!
“Too harsh?” Spike’s voice said—from a random section of wall. Probably an emergency speaker, though Twilight couldn’t tell for sure past all the caskets. "You could’ve been gentler with her.”
You still have a soft spot for Rarity, after everything. “Maybe. But if Fluttershy hadn’t found her, ponies would probably have died. Irreplaceable scientists and technicians. I can’t act like that isn’t bad. She needs to know what will happen if she tries something like this again.”
And I didn’t tell her directly, even though I should have. I’m still being too gentle.
Spike responded with a non-committal grunt, or something like one. Maybe it was more accurate to call it the simulation of one, since he hadn’t even brought that alien body down.
“How’s the change of, uh… quarters?” she asked awkwardly. “Getting used to the new space?” She began walking slowly back, slow enough that she wouldn’t catch up with Rarity by mistake. Somehow she knew that Spike would have no trouble following her through the station.
Spike took a moment to answer. Whether that was because of the way they were talking, or him giving careful consideration to her question, she couldn’t say. “Much more complex, but also less… powerful. It’s hard to explain. The Equinox was purpose-built to be controlled by computer. Most of the crew was going to be frozen or hibernating for its whole lifespan. The Canterlot was barely automated at all when it was built. Even the systems that were… they’re all connected haphazardly. Some haven’t been maintained, others barely worked to begin with. But there’s so many of them.”
“And no drive,” Twilight pointed out. “The Canterlot only has orbital miniatous thrusters. I don’t think we even knew how to move something so big.”
“The same way you move something small, just slower,” Spike responded. “There’s a lot I can do here to make the station run smoother. When we get raw materials, Apple Bloom and I can expand the repair drones. I’m still not much of an engineer, but there’s so much damage on this station that doesn’t need me to be. And the more I watch, the better I’ll learn how it all works.”
Twilight nodded. “Keep watching, Spike. We’re lucky to still have you.” She hadn’t confronted him about his instructions to Starlight—and she probably never would. Until he admitted to it, she would wait.
The next few weeks went about the way she expected. While her mining crew was revived, the engineers she had all began retrofitting existing ships. The Canterlot still had hundreds of them, and the ones that looked like they might still fly hadn’t been scrapped.
Is the conversion and deployment of mining ships successful? Yes.
But the ships themselves were only half Twilight’s battle, and as she soon learned—the easier half.
Are the miners willing to go to work? No. Random event: (Character negative) The Refusal of Anger Twilight
It wasn’t that her miners were dying before they could serve—thanks to her restraint, they had only woken ponies they could support. Rather, it was the demand letter that appeared on her desk, the day the first mining ship was scheduled to depart.
“Princess,
We understand the urgency of our mission—but we of the spacer’s guild have always been above simple demands. We set out aboard our own ships to work for the crown. We understand you cannot pay us with money, yet there is something we demand.
Our families. Many of us were given space for a loved one in exchange for our service. Before we work, we demand our sleeping lovers, children, and friends be woken to accompany us.
Regards,
Spacer’s Guild”
Twilight’s office—Celestia’s really, she hadn’t redecorated—was spacious, carrying its own gravity enchantment that meant Twilight didn’t need to cast one of her own. She glared at the sheet of paper, taking several deep, infuriated breaths.
Did you have to deal with demands like this, Celestia? Ponies asking for things you couldn’t possibly give. Twilight had a choice to make.
1. Completely ignore the demand and hold their rations for ransom. If the spacers want food, they can work.
2. Organize a meeting and try to persuade them to take their relatives back when they’re done with their first mining trip.
3. Spike suggests giving them the caskets to revive on their own ships. Let them make the decisions to risk their lives without the drugs or personnel to care for them, if they wish.
It was absolute madness to Twilight. Everypony on her damn station seemed to want to get their friends back—despite all of them knowing how dire their situation was. We don’t have the medical personnel. We don’t have the drugs. They’re just asking for us to lose people.
But she hadn’t served for all her years as princess by mistreating those beneath her. There was really only one way to solve a personnel problem: talking to them.
So she called them in—the captains of each mining ship, after sending to each that she was going to hear their demands. It was about the kindest way she could possibly respond, even if what she wanted to do was break up the union and be damned what they said about it. Our entire universe is this ship. What do you ponies expect me to do?
The meeting was tense. Despite inviting only the captains, each one brought a pony or two. The toughest looking of their crews, though it was hard to seem tough when you didn’t have a mane and your skin was splotched with revival necrosis. Twilight didn’t mind—they could bring an army if they wanted, and it would be equally effective. Even if she wasn’t an Alicorn, she knew the station’s computer. Did they really expect to intimidate her?
After a brief welcome, she invited them to share their reasons—all of what she’d expected. They each had only loved one left in the world, they needed them back for morale reasons. They’d be better miners once she did what they wanted. It wasn’t much, really. Just two hundred doses of a drug they were currently making only ten of each day.
Then it was her turn. She showed them images from Proximus B, of the most horrific monsters they had faced. She couldn’t show them a vague hunger and a creeping disease, but she could show them simpler things, and distort the truth a little about how dangerous they might be to them out here in space.
“This is why we can’t wait,” she finished. “We can’t have your ships sitting docked while danger advances on us. We can’t leave until we have those supplies, or we’ll die in transit. You, and your families, as well as me and mine. We’ll all die together.
“But what I can offer you is this: I’ll put your families at the front of the civilian priority list. They will be the first to wake, as soon as we have essential crew to run the station.”
The captains confided with one another, whispering quietly from their end of the dusty map. It still showed ghostly flickers of Equestria, though they were faded and faint. More a memory than the real-time recreation it had once displayed. But you still had it waiting for me, Celestia. Did you know I’d survived, after all those years?
Do the Captains accept the deal? Yes.
“We want guarantees,” said one. Her name was Sturdy Harness, if Twilight remembered right. “Specifics, too. Your written contract specifying how many ponies you wake before our families.”
“Five hundred,” Twilight supplied, entirely by reflex. That was the size of the Canterlot’s standard crew shift. But plenty of those were bureaucrats, or police, or other things they probably didn’t need right now. She could tell from those glares it wasn’t going to get what she wanted.
“One hundred,” somepony else said. “We flew here with less.”
“Agreed.” Twilight stuck out her hoof. “One hundred maximum, before I wake your families. It might be sooner—but we have to repair Canterlot as fast as we’re waking ponies. I know you don’t want your loved ones living in squalor.”
“No,” Harness answered. “We just don’t want them frozen forever, while we grow old. We ain’t all immortal like you, princess.”
Not yet you’re not. We have the means now. Twilight wasn’t sure where that thought came from, but she shoved it back just as quickly. Their very limited sample size of that conversion process hadn’t exactly enjoyed it.
Less than an hour later, she had the contract signed. “We’re agreed,” Harness declared. “We go to work, and we have this to prove you’ll give us our ponies back. We have every reason to trust you, Princess. Don’t make us regret that.”
“You won’t,” she snapped. “Talk to Applejack, my chief engineer. See if she would ever let me lie. I keep my promises.”
They left. Within the day, she was looking at the retreating dots of their drives fading into the horizon. Together they would replenish the Canterlot’s supplies of everything they could find in orbit. There were still a few sticking points—nitrogen, primarily. Their population would be eternally fixed by the nitrogen they had to cycle through themselves and all their food. They were not likely to come upon much of the stuff in the interstellar gulf.
But that worry would have to fade, because she had her next set of priority reports to worry about. While mining went on, she’d have to dictate the Canterlot’s new production directives. Get them wrong, and she might very well be singing everypony’s death warrants.
It wasn't like ponies wouldn't do a little bit of everything. But what was her focus?
1. Prioritize clearing space for farming and biofabrication. More drugs, more food. No harvest grows in a day. 2. Prioritize repairing living space and morale. The shiprats have their fancy new section, but everypony else is squatting in ruins. We’ve got to fix this sooner or later. 3. Prioritize waking as many ponies as possible as fast as is safe. Many hooves make light work. 4. Prioritize repairs to old systems. If you don’t care for your home, what do you have? The void is only centimeters away, waiting to kill us. We shouldn’t help it.
Over the next few weeks, Twilight had one focus above all others: they needed to get the Canterlot back to working order. She would’ve been as happy as anypony else if they had the resources to spare repairing their rooms and making the place feel like home again. But ultimately it didn’t matter how ugly everything was, if the air vents worked and the water kept flowing.
They had already restored a great deal of the station’s manufacturing infrastructure, at least as much as their small population currently needed. Every day she met with Applejack or some other engineer, discussing the parts they’d replaced and how close the station was to operational.
Much of it went over Twilight’s head—the station wasn’t just a station anymore. It had been hastily modified into a starship, without much grace in the conversion. The longer her ponies worked, the more signs of ugly kitbashing they discovered, and the more potential “catastrophic failure points” went onto Applejack’s board.
“We’ll never be done, you know,” Spike said one evening, his alien body appearing from a doorway and taking the portable terminal she’d been reading. A Signaler design Node had built had her request. The ruler of her whole civilization had the right to a few perks. “Canterlot is old. There are thousands of tons of original stone tucked inside, left over from when it was still a mountain city. There are cathedrals, dungeons, labyrinths.”
“All full of ghosts, no doubt,” Twilight finished for him, glaring. But it was hard to look up into the eyes of something so much taller and not feel at least a little intimidated.
“Sort of,” Spike said. “The parts ponies knew about are stacked full of caskets. The ones they didn’t… no idea. I don’t have cameras down there. But with all these sensors under my control, I know how wide things are, what they’re composed of…” he held out the terminal. “Node, Starlight, and I want to talk to you. I know you’ve been putting off this conversation, but… it’s time we had it.”
“There’s so much to fix,” Twilight argued. “I just discovered there’s a blockage in the waste reprocessing—”
Spike reached out, gently touching her mouth closed with a set of delicate fingers. She’d never have tolerated that behavior from any other creature. But instead of rage, she felt only familiarity. “If we wait forever, the rot that came to Equestria will reach us here. We have to use the Highway while we can.”
Twilight groaned, then tucked the flat plastic and glass away into her satchel. “Alright. I assume you’ve been… working together on something.”
“Together,” Spike repeated. “That’s, uh… well, we’ve been working on the same general goals. At… cross purposes. But you’ll see.”
What she found waiting for her was a set of mutually exclusive presentations, waiting in the section of the ship Twilight had come to think of as the “Signaler lab.”
All of Node and Apple Bloom’s work had ended up here, which meant it was packed full of little repair drones and the other unknowable projects they were working on. Spike hadn’t come with Twilight, but he was already waiting when she arrived. Because that wasn’t creepy at all.
Starlight looked like the visitor, clutching a projector and a crystal Datascroll. “Twilight! You have to see the design I’ve been working on. Well, Applejack and me. But she’s… you know her, always working hard.”
“She don’t want this to be a family dispute,” Apple Bloom interrupted. She rested metal hooves on the edge of a large table, which glowed with light from a signaler-style screen set into its surface. “We respectfully disagree, so don’t bring her into it.”
“Right.” Starlight took a few nervous steps towards Twilight, still unsteady even after all her time to heal. At least the necrotic patches on her face were gone. “Princess, I’ve reviewed Node’s specifications for the Stellar Highway, and I believe I’ve designed an acceptable sail for the Canterlot. Applejack took care of the technical details, but I think you’ll approve. It’s highly innovative.”
Node cleared her throat, or at least sounded like she had. With more time and resources on the Canterlot, she’d taken to wearing even more clothing than Rarity. Flowing layers of different dress, with tight sleeves of different colors on both sets of arms.
“Innovative is another way of saying that it’s an engineering nightmare that relies entirely on your, uh… magic?” She held one hand out over her forehead, where a horn might’ve been. “Apple Bloom and I adapted something I’ve seen used on a thousand different ships from galleons to hypercruisers. Yeah, it’ll take longer to build. But you know what else it does? Keep working when your magic runs out. Wouldn’t it be just great for your little magic sail to tear right off the front of this thing, and keep going on its own while your station stops accelerating and loses any way to stop? Yeah, sounds great.”
“That won’t happen, princess,” Starlight argued, settling her projector on the ground and projecting it onto a section of blank ceiling. “There are failbacks, safeties in place. The spell will fail gradually, with plenty of time to repair.”
Twilight took a moment to inspect it, then compared it to the design on the screens. What Node and Apple Bloom designed were effectively two new sections of the station, spread in a system of many cables and support pilons. It probably used as much metal as the rest of Canterlot just holding it in place.
Starlight’s design was much thinner, her sail made of light and spells and crystal. Growing it would take time, but probably a small fraction. Not to mention the cost in material.
“I’ve reviewed Node’s highway specifications thoroughly,” Starlight said. “The Highway will accept this sail.”
“I didn’t day it wouldn’t,” Node folded both sets of arms, interlinking them in a strangely complex pattern. “I just wouldn’t trust my entire population to moonbeams and rainbows. But that’s up to you, Princess.”
1. Use Starlight’s design. Built in one month, but relies on spells to keep working or else suffer terrible consequences. 2. Use Node’s design. Built in six months, these sails will add additional real estate to the Canterlot, but all mining resources during their construction will go to providing materials. They’re safe, tested, and reliable.
Twilight didn’t know what to do. There was probably some easy option, something just out of reach for her. But whatever that option was, she didn’t know it. They couldn’t just build them both—they didn’t have the manpower to split between two options that way. Whenever the engineers were working, other aspects of the ship were abandoned. And if her spellcasters were building sails, they weren’t repairing damaged thaumic systems.
“We’re going with your design, Starlight,” Twilight declared, after considering silently for a few minutes. “I agree there’s more risk to it, Node. But we don’t know how much time we have left. It might seem strange to rely on magic for something this important, but… ponies have always relied on magic to survive. Our air-shield is magic, our gravity is magic. Our sails can be magic as well.”
Node sighed, slumping back in her seat. She steepled the fingers of one hand together. Even on a flat, alien face, Twilight could see her disappointment. You seemed determined to avoid mechanical conversion, captain. But the longer you continue with rash decisions like this, the more inevitable that becomes. Machines can survive Hunger’s rot. Ut when you make that transition, you will sacrifice your magic as well.”
“Many of us are… unwilling to ever make that sacrifice,” Starlight stepped down, flipping off the projector. “Look at Sunset. She’s half machine already, but the other half would mean giving up her magic. I don’t blame her for refusing.”
“Feel free to consult me throughout the project,” Twilight said, doing her best to head off another argument. “I’m a few decades behind your understanding of theoretical magic, but… I was right there before I left. And I could use something to work on.”
It was another project, another split for her crew. But the more ponies woke up, the less Twilight became the captain of one ship. She was the princess of a civilization—the last lifeboat in a tumultuous sea. So maybe they’d never made it back to Equestria—Equestria had come to them.
Twilight did work with the sail team over the next month, getting regular update from the other crew sections. Everything from the establishment of a proper education system along the shiprats to updates on mining yields—all of it was on her desk. That wasn’t to say there were no issues during construction—but every challenge they faced was of the common magical variety. There was no refuge for Equestria now, no choice but to keep pushing through.
Twilight watched the wings first extended about a month after construction began, using the observation deck high in the palace’s tower. Very few sections of the castle hadn’t been crammed full of caskets like everywhere else on the station, but this was somewhere. Princess Luna had kept telescopes here long ago, observing the stars during the era before spaceflight. Twilight could still make out the pattern of the constellations stenciled into the stone.
She had to look away, from those patterns of stars no pony would see repeated the same way. And if we become vagabonds like the other ships in the flotilla, then the idea of a constellation won’t make any sense. What is it like to be a transient species? Through the glass, Twilight watched with her senior officers as a veil of shimmering wings appeared in the void above Canterlot. Or below, depending on the perspective. They were transparent even now, the magic equivalent of metal foil. No terribly large amount of force would press against any one part, but collectively they could accelerate the entire station at incredible speed.
“We’ve run simulations of the magical supports and the pressure they place on the station,” Starlight explained, gesturing towards the ceiling. “Spike agrees we’re well within stress tolerances. The compressive force will be evenly applied, as though the station was orbiting a planet again.”
“Until your magic fails, and the highway turns us to ash,” Node said flatly. “Or we just stop accelerating and shoot off into space. I suppose it depends on what the highway happens to be doing at the time. I’m not terribly fond of either option.”
“That will not happen,” Starlight said, gritting her teeth together. “We depend on a dozen different systems to keep us alive. We have heating and air processing and hydroponics, and plenty of others. All take active effort to maintain. These sails will be just another system, maintained by unicorns. We’re not worried, are we princess?”
Apple Bloom wasn’t a senior officer, or anything close to one. But she was Node’s assistant now, and that meant she had a place in the cramped observatory. “It does mean we’re locking ourselves into organics for the foreseeable future,” she said. “Since metal folks like me won’t be able to keep the sail going.”
“Of course we are. The princess planned on that to begin with. If we were going to change everypony, we wouldn’t be in a rush.”
Nopony in the room quite looked happy with that pronouncement, but Fluttershy was the first to break the silence. “I was hoping we could speak about that, captain. We’re seeing… the early signs of death rot in some of the oldest, weakest ponies on board. It’s effecting our shiprats quite a bit, but they’re not the only ponies suffering. We might want to think of using the highway soon, before ponies start dying.”
The excitement of the successful test faded, and her friends fell silent again. Several set glasses of bubbling drinks back down, waiting for her response. “Has anypony died yet?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “I have a few ponies in their beds. Sunset Shimmer, a few older scientists and maybe a dozen of the shiprats. But the number is going up every day, and those ponies aren’t getting any better. We’ll start losing them soon.”
“There are some other, uh…” Applejack began, her voice becoming more confident as she spoke. “Some other things we could do to improve our odds, if we didn’t want to throw the accelerator on right away.”
Twilight had at least one idea of a way to treat the sick, even if she knew they wouldn’t like it.
1. Gather the miners and leave now. It’s only going to get worse. Ponies getting sick is only the harbinger of something much worse. 2. Expand Canterlot. Right now most of the station is packed full of caskets. When those ponies wake up, they’ll need somewhere to live. Otherwise, we’ll be the stewards of the dead for the rest of time. 3. Focus all resources on mining. We can build while we move, but we need raw materials. Stockpile vast supplies of metal, water, and other essentials, we can push them along in front of us while we travel. 4. Spike’s long observations with the Canterlot sensors have detected something interesting: Signaler derelicts. Instead of building more station, they could tow over quite a few of those, and make a sister station for the Canterlot out of their remains.
Salvage derelict ships to build a sister station 65%
Twilight knew that if she refused Spike’s idea, she would be harming her relationship with Canterlot’s central computer. But that wasn’t the only reason she ultimately accepted his idea. Twilight didn’t just have to plan for the next few months, she might be planning for centuries of Equestria’s future.
More precisely, she was planning for centuries of their future, Node made that explicitly clear when she asked how long the trip would take.
“I don’t know where they’ve gone by now. The flotilla will be hundreds of lightyears past the shell of hunger’s expansion. But don’t think of it like a formation of interceptors, all keeping pace with each other. The flotilla is centered on half a dozen different Badescu-Cathcarts. Most civilizations don’t ever field anything like them, so they find the family they like and join up.
“But ships continue for thousands of lightyears around them, settling stars and harvesting resources and occasionally experimenting with ways to sate thee hunger. From the interstellar point of view, we’re already in the flotilla. From any useful definition, you ponies will want to get into the core. Join a family, find your place to tuck this little station in beside their star, and…” she shrugged her too-many hands awkwardly. “Whatever it is you do.
“I don’t know how long I was…” she trailed off, all confidence draining from her face. “I don’t have access to an absolute chronometer. I estimate between five hundred and ten thousand light-years.”
If it was the latter number, Twilight Sparkle knew beyond all doubt that her civilization was doomed. They were already getting sick; they didn’t have a few centuries to design spells and stockpile materials for something to last that long. Could all the inventiveness, all the new spells and new inventions, make up the slack?
We need to expand. A second station to grow into might be enough to let us survive the trip. And if it only took them a thousand years, which seemed like inconceivably high acceleration even from the highways Node had told Twilight about, then maybe they’d make it.
Twilight thus made her most terrible judgement as a princess yet, and consciously exchanged the lives of her sickest ponies for a chance the many might survive.
Over the next month, the first batch of new cryo-drugs was finally produced, and they could wake ponies as fast as their food supply could support. Twilight sacrificed the Equinox’s stores to outfit a dozen tugboats and haulers from the Canterlot’s dock, crewing them with the fewest possible ponies and sending them on their way.
Does anyone die in the first month? No.
The second month? No. Random event: (Thread related) The Probe: The Adversity of Leadership
By the end of the second month, the first of those little tugboats had returned, bringing salvage from elsewhere around Proximus C. She would be waiting for a few more months for any of the really juicy old ships, but she reviewed scans of the old ruins with satisfaction. Many were identical, ancient helium-3 harvesting scoops that had ejected themselves from the atmosphere long ago. A few were little station, not much bigger than a freighter ship.
Of course anything of real size would take much longer—their tugs could pull some incredibly tight burns with magic to buffer inertia and not crush the crew, but that didn’t mean their engines could put out the thrust to accelerate massive old ships to similar speeds. Assuming the hulks could even survive it, after eons adrift in space.
Node stormed into her office about two months after that first launch, so late into the evening that even Spike’s artificial body had gone for the evening. She shut the door behind her, then settled something on Twilight’s table without invitation or explanation. Whatever it was, it began to hum as soon as she set it there, and everything electronic in the room around them went suddenly dark.
Except for Node herself. “Captain Twilight. Er… Princess, I’m guessing I should call you. I have something to ask, and not long to ask it before Spike figures out what I’ve done.”
Twilight pushed aside a stack of Applejack’s projections for various sister stations she’d been proposing. Her eyebrows went up. “I don’t know what you think you need to keep from Spike, Node. Aren’t you two… friends? You made his body, you’re together almost all the time.” Twilight’s eyes settled nervously on the little box. Dangerous little device Node had cooked up. But she didn’t argue the impertinence of the meeting. Node was alien, and pony politeness was a lesson she didn’t seem likely to master.
“I’m trying to head something off, something… you don’t want to happen. Spike is going to ask to copy himself onto the computer of the new station. He’s only mentioned it in passing, but I think he was planning on it from the beginning.”
That got her attention. Twilight shook away the first hints of tiredness, glancing briefly at the door. But no sign of Spike barreling in to stop this exchange, not yet. “It was his idea, wasn’t it? Even if you’re right… why should I stop him?”
“Because you’re using ships from a civilization you don’t even understand.” She folded her smaller set of arms, while the others remained tense, ready to snatch the box back off the desk. She didn’t sit down, which meant she towered over Twilight. It was all she could do not to feel intimidated. “Maybe he’s told you too—he thinks he doesn’t feel alive, and maybe having better substrate will change that. He’s wrong. If he cracks into the regulator of some Ship of the Line, or god-forbid a destroyer… it’s going to cut him to pieces, learn everything about you ponies, and all you can do is pray it doesn’t decide to wipe you out after that.”
Twilight let the weight of those words linger on her for a few moments. At first she couldn’t even process it—a single ancient ship could wipe out her whole civilization? Then again, they were one station, and not even one prepared for war. “What are you suggesting?”
“Simple. Have me run the station. I’ve been…” she gestured vaguely with a hand. “I’ve been this way since longer than all of you have been alive, combined. I know my own old ships. I’m the one who needs to be out there for every retrofitting team to consult, and I’m the only one who can keep them from turning on their inhabitants.”
Twilight didn’t have long to consider. If Spike realized she was consulting behind his back, it would be even worse.
1. Let Spike have the ships for a second station. We’re building an Equestrian station, not resurrecting anything the signalers made. I can just tell him not to use any of the computers, he’ll listen. 2. Let Node run the ships. She’s right. They’re signaler ships, who could run them better? 3. They’re too dangerous, melt them into scrap. We’ll lose a few months, but if they’re really filled with sleeping dangers, we shouldn’t pack off on our trip with a lunchbox full of poison apples.
It really was a no-brainer for Twilight. Of course, she didn’t want to leave Spike feeling like he wasn’t getting his opinions respected, but ultimately practicality had to trump all else.
“You’ll be there,” Twilight said flatly. “Your help has been instrumental in getting us this far. Won’t we be using a Signaler technology to reach a Signaler fleet?”
“Well…” she shrugged, a gesture that somehow still made sense even with all those arms. “Yes. Assuming your sails keep working, we’re not likely to run into anything other than the problems we bring with us. Highway destroys anything that gets too close, that’s the entire point. A few grams at relativistic speed can take out a starship without a shield. A few kilograms, and there aren’t many shields I know of that can survive more than one hit. Trusting to the Highway for protection is a given. It will keep your ships supplied with as much energy as you want. It’s up to us to somehow turn that into stability over the long-term.”
“We slept the last time we took a long trip,” Twilight muttered, pawing unhappily at her desk. “Maybe we should do that again. But my sense from talking to the ponies of Canterlot is they don’t want to go anywhere near one. I know my friends don’t. Their lives are right here, right now. We’ve been frozen long enough, and the last time we almost missed the end of the world. There’s no promise that we ever even wake up if we build more caskets now.”
Node rose, pocketing the little device from the table. “I’m not qualified to tell you ponies how to run your lives. You’ll have to find your own way, or… maybe explode before we get to the Flotilla. Anything’s possible.”
Twilight groaned. Hopefully Spike doesn’t explode when I tell him the bad news.
Can Spike react professionally to the news? Critical yes.
As it turned out, Twilight’s real mistake was in trusting Node’s interpretation of Spike’s attitude. “Yeah, I had a feeling you were going to want her to take the job,” Spike said, as soon as Node was gone. “I’d rather it be me, but… her reasons are better than mine. Though you should know, Node isn’t really built to run a station. Whatever happened to me was an… amalgamation of the Equinox’s purpose, and my own brain. Node is an individual, and nothing will change that.
There was nothing fast about transferring Node over—apparently, she had to build an entire system to let her control the other ships, since she couldn’t trust anything from the ruins not to have ‘suspect programming through centuries of cosmic ray exposure and vacuum rot.’ Eventually one of their tugboats brought something big enough and structurally intact enough to hold atmosphere, and Node declared it the ‘core’ of her new station.
Weeks of construction passed, and Twilight awaited reports from Fluttershy with grim certainty of their results. Ponies were getting weaker all the time; it was only a matter of time before they lost somepony.
Do ponies die in the meantime? Critical yes.
That time came just a few days later. Fluttershy floated into her office wearing a threadbare jacket smelling sharply of antiseptic, and Twilight knew what she was going to say before she opened her mouth.
“You should know how many lives your decision cost, Captain,” she said flatly, pushing a clipboard towards her. Twilight took it in her magic, looking grim.
It was even worse news than she’d been expecting. Not one death over the last week, but twenty-nine. A smattering of those were shiprats, the rest newly awakened creatures who hadn’t been able to regain their strength. “You didn’t mention this sooner?” She kept her voice as neutral as she could. “You didn’t need to wait for our weekly report, Fluttershy. My office is always open for something this important.”
“Is it?” Fluttershy retreated a few steps, glancing once at the door. “I already told you we had to leave now, what else could I say? I didn’t have time to waste on something that wouldn’t help them. Speaking of which… there are eight ponies in critical condition right now. You might be interested in their names.”
You should’ve told me this sooner. Twilight’s attention was focused mostly on gathering materials for their sister station, along with every supply her miners could bring back. She really should’ve kept a closer eye on this.
Twilight flipped to the next page and found one name standing out from all the others.
Is Sunset Shimmer one of the dead?
She rose from her desk. “We don’t have enough magical experts like her. Equestria can’t afford to lose her.”
“It’s too late to leave,” Fluttershy said grimly. “Even if we were in the highway right now, the effects are too gradual. We’re talking whole-body immune failure, captain. That kind of damage doesn’t just heal, even for strong earth ponies. Unicorns don’t stand a chance”
Twilight stomped past her, simulating enough gravity to walk. It was still second nature, even somewhere she’d never had to do it before. “You’ve been offering the alternate treatment method to these ponies?” she asked. “All twenty-nine?”
“They all refused,” Fluttershy said. She kept up, drifting through the air like a ghost on pale yellow wings. “I gave them all the information to make informed consent.”
It took them twenty minutes or so to reach medical, and another few more for Twilight to find what she was looking for. Tucked away in one of the storage closets was the ‘biohazard isolation’, where samples floated in little magical fields instead of resting on cubbies. Twilight snatched one in her magic, already tearing at the seal.
“What are you doing?” Fluttershy asked, though of course she must’ve known exactly what it was for.
Twilight stomped along the hallway, searching for the door with a familiar name, then practically kicked it down.
There was the unicorn in question, with a dozen tubes connected to her body and implants in ways that looked downright agonizing.
She twitched as Twilight came in, turning her head slightly to face the door. To Twilight’s surprise, she even managed to speak—a low croak that she could barely understand. “Come to say your… goodbyes?” Sunset asked. “I don’t… blame you, Twilight. I… saw the same models. Must… prepare for the trip. Equestria matters more than… saving any one of us.”
…No.
“It does,” Twilight agreed. Fluttershy made to stop her, and Twilight answered with a withering glare. She tore the protective cap off one of Sunset’s IVs—it didn’t really matter which one. This wasn’t medicine, exactly. She gripped it firmly, then injected the sample. “You might feel some discomfort, Sunset. Expect it to last… for a while. But Equestria isn’t finished with you yet.”
1. “Treatment is no longer optional for any of the other critical patients either. Save them, Fluttershy. That’s an order.” 2. “And you’ll be the last pony who has to go through this. We’re suspending all mining operations and preparing to leave.”
“And you’ll be the last pony who has to go through this. We’re suspending all mining operations and preparing to leave.” Twilight didn’t want to watch an alien virus devour someone’s body and replace it with artificial substitutes. But some part of this was her fault—she owed Sunset staying until she’d been completely overcome. Twilight couldn’t give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, or get anywhere close enough to risk exposure. She could still see the betrayal in Sunset’s eyes right up until they went dark.
“You took her magic away,” Fluttershy said from behind her, as quiet as she’d once been long ago. When the world still made sense, and they hadn’t all been ripped out of their worlds of comfort. “We don’t force treatments, princess. Patents can make informed consent about the treatments they receive.”
“Civilian patents can,” Twilight said, backing slowly from the room. Before her, the strange entity spun its thin cocoon of harvested metal, devouring deck plates and nearby machine like fast-motion corrosion. A repair team was about to be very unhappy with her. “Sunset Shimmer is a commissioned officer of the Equestrian Navy.” She shut the door gently. There wasn’t any chance Sunset could still hear, right? Best be sure, just in case. “I know how much she cares about her magic—we both studied under Celestia, for the same reasons. But Equestria doesn’t have the luxury of letting its most skilled ponies choose to fade away like that.”
She rested one wing on Fluttershy’s shoulder, forcing her to meet her eyes despite her discomfort. “Shy, there aren’t any more colleges. When the specialists serving on this station die, they’re gone forever. Even if we have every book printed on Equestria in our database—Equestrian magical history is already full of evidence that writing things down isn’t enough. Without living specialists, you don’t even have enough ponies to realize that there was something forgotten. The spell ends up buried in an old ruin somewhere, and the ones who need it don’t have it.
“That was a tragedy when the world was under our control. But where we’re going now, the Canterlot can’t survive if our knowledge is lost. Sunset can’t cast spells anymore—she can still teach them. She can still inspect and maintain our thaumic infrastructure.”
Fluttershy nodded weakly. “Does that mean you’ll do that to all of us, eventually? All your friends, all the experts there are… that’s what Node wanted. Make us into robots like her. I don’t know if there’s room for a soul in the machine, Twilight. Why do you think the magic is gone?”
Twilight opened her mouth to argue. Of course, she hadn’t planned to force her friends to convert—as much as she wanted to be able to keep them forever, the idea was repulsive to her. But will I think differently forty or fifty years from now, when the first one is as sick as Sunset was? “Answer me this,” she said instead. “Suppose that you knew that Canterlot would fall and everyone living here would die, unless you converted. Would you do it?”
“Of course,” Fluttershy said. “I… I think I’d probably die in the process, but better me than everypony else. I was already willing to die for other ponies, that’s why I came out here with you. Discord told me, before I left… that if I got on that ship with you, I’d never see Equestria again.”
“He knew?” Twilight asked, so loud that a pair of orderlies pushing a cart stopped to stare. Twilight winced, lowering her voice to more reasonable levels. “What did Discord know about all this?” Did you know something all this time and not share it?
Fluttershy shrugged weakly. “He didn’t tell me everything. He just wanted to convince me to stay. Was I supposed to tell you that the god of chaos knew our expedition was doomed from the start?”
No, but that sure does explain some things about your attitude. “I guess now,” she said. “Morale is everything. You two were good friends, he wouldn’t have lied. I’m sorry he… isn’t aboard.”
She didn’t understand the nature of Discord’s sacrifice, any more than she understood how Celestia could destroy their star. The energy involved was difficult to even comprehend.
“I think the… Hunger… was killing him, even back then. Maybe the chaos he made was the way he kept entertained. Like listening to music on your deathbed.” Fluttershy looked away, ears flattening. “Did you mean it? Will there not be any more deathbeds? Are we really leaving?”
“Yes,” Twilight answered. “Well… it’s probably being optimistic that there won’t be any more. I’m going to order the regroup and departure as soon as possible. I know we have a few ships about two weeks out. We aren’t leaving them behind.”
“And it will probably take some time to get far enough away to escape,” Fluttershy finished for her. “There will probably be more.”
Twilight prepared to defend herself—did Fluttershy expect her to bend the laws of time itself while she was at it? But no, the doctor only looked more depressed. “I want you to try to persuade every pony who ends up in Sunset’s position to take the treatment. Either you do it, or I’ll assign Apple Bloom to be here full time. I think you’ll both hate that.”
“She’d be so bored,” Fluttershy responded, grinning weakly. Then she caught herself, and the weight of sadness returned.
“I won’t force everypony who’s sick. But I expect you to try and convince them. Whatever you said to make sure nopony took the treatment before—don’t do that.”
Twilight left her there, returning to the difficult work of orchestrating their retreat. They’d been planning for it eventually, so it wasn’t like she had to start from scratch. She checked the positions of every mining vessel, then sent out her ultimatums. Get back, or risk getting left behind. She wouldn’t do it, but they had to think she would.
Meanwhile, she joined Rarity and Applejack on the machinist crew attaching their new corpse-station to the Canterlot. It had to be close enough that they could share a single reflector, but not so far that it caused uneven acceleration and tore their combined station apart.
Sher received only a curt note about Sunset’s recovery, and an impersonal transfer request to the new station. Twilight signed off, and didn’t force Sunset to see her. In some ways, that was a relief. IT meant she didn’t have to see the consequences.
Another week passed, and the cargo hold of the Canterlot was packed full of everything they’d harvested. Dead ships, semi-refined ore, salvage from melted stations. But will it be enough?
“Node and I have been running the numbers on our deployment,” Spike said, a day before they were scheduled to begin. “Rarity had some input too. We thought you should look.”
“At what?” Twilight asked, walking over to the pair of screens mounted to her wall. More Signaler designs Apparently they were quicker to make and used much less power than the tube-driven models they replaced.
“Activating the highway,” Spike said. “We’ve already made several remote bodies for me—I’ll be on the station in case something goes wrong. Even with light-lag, it should be enough to prevent the Canterlot’s destruction.”
“We’ve already talked about that,” Twilight said, raising an eyebrow. “What’s left to decide? We activate the highway, its gravity-manipulator pilots us into position, and we get blasted by a laser bright enough to turns us to vapor. Right?”
“Right,” Spike said. “That’s why we wanted a few options, actually. Because we control the station, we can decide how much of its output we want to use. Node thinks our settings will propagate to relay stations around the Canterlot, all the way to our destination.”
“Our destination which… might be five light years away, or five thousand?”
“Yeah,” Spike’s voice said. “Glad it’s not my choice.”
1. Use the highway at full power (greatest chance of failure for the ship, greatest acceleration strain, fastest voyage) 2. Use the highway at low power (much reduced chance of failure and low acceleration strain, at the cost of a much slower trip) 3. Alter the highway with magic, cutting the journey down even further without risk to the Canterlot—except that the Highway might just explode)
Twilight could certainly see the danger in their decision. Using magic on an alien system they barely understood was hardly what she would describe a ‘wise’ choice. There were unknown dangers at play, interactions between pony magic and the Signaler technology.
But the more Twilight considered their final voyage, the more certain she was that Canterlot would not survive a trip at conventional speeds. If they couldn’t win by following the rules, they would just have to change them. “Send the unicorn team. It isn’t like anyone is going to need this highway after us. We’ll make it serve our needs.
The next few days were a nightmare of tension and fear for Twilight, as she received optimistic reports from her crew on the Highway station. There were no accidents, no attacks by monsters that didn’t exist—but at the same time she knew they couldn’t know anything about the highway, until they tried to use it.
Then the day came. Canterlot was bound to its new younger sister with carefully placed tethers, to tug the ruined hulk along beside it without exposing her to the atomizing power of the highway.
She stood on the command deck—not a bridge exactly, though it served much the same purpose. For the first time in months, her friends were all here. Even Fluttershy had left medical behind. Of course there were many other ponies here to help now, including plenty of defrosted ponies and a good number of brave shiprats.
“Radio contact with the Reliquary is good, captain,” Spike said. His own physical body had joined them as well. “Node reports green integrity. She’ll update us if anything changes.”
There isn’t much for her to do anymore, other than survive. “Why do we have anypony there at all?” Applejack asked, her tone frustrated and fearful. Of course it would be her to ask—all the mechanical ponies were now aboard the Reliquary, and that included her sister.
“We need ponies there to hold it together,” Twilight said. She’d given the same statement half a dozen times to other creatures, with loved ones on that ship. There were maybe twenty of them now, creatures saved by mechanical conversion while they prepared to depart. One by one Node had come to them with an appeal, and every one had joined her. Except Spike. “The environmental support system is suspect—nopony there needs to breathe, so they won’t be in danger if something fails.”
Unless the supports connecting us fail, and they get flung out into space. Hopefully they don’t get incinerated the instant they leave our shadow.
Except for Node, many of those creatures already thought of themselves as dead. Twilight still hadn’t heard so much as a one-line status-alert from Sunset since they’d left.
Twilight sighed, settling into her seat at the front of the command deck. It had the same general shape as Celestia’s throne, and indeed she was the only creature to have occupied it while this station orbited Equus. It wasn’t even half a meter higher than the rest of the deck, however. Practicality was still queen, even when a princess was involved. “All departments, report.”
“Navigation reporting,” Pinkie said first, her voice barely a squeak. Her mane was short now, her eyes a little haunted. There was good reason Twilight had given her the least difficult job. All they really had to do was stay centered in the highway, and they should be safe. “Navigational thruster
“Life support is green,” Rarity said. “We’re a bit strained from the number of creatures we’ve woken so quickly, and water sanitation is struggling now that we have all our miners back aboard, but I’m sure we’ll sort things out. So long as the acceleration doesn’t have any unanticipated side-effects on the sanitation plant, anyway. I’m sure you know that none of it was designed to be used while accelerating. Our modifications were… haphazard, I must admit.”
“Engineering reporting,” Applejack grumbled. “We ain’t got nothin’ to complain about, except maybe half the station crumbling in various ways. I thought I would get a gray mane keeping the Equinox up and running, but apparently fate was listening, cuz’ boy if the Canterlot ain’t a whole mess worse.”
Twilight cleared her throat, waiting patiently for Applejack to finish. “How’s energy conversion?”
“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Applejack said. “Can’t exactly give her much of a dry run, cap. Playing with scale models up in fabrication just ain’t good enough, and we all know it. Nothin’ to do but see how she handles.”
That’s not what anypony wants to hear right now. She could see the support staff growing more and more nervous the more Applejack went on. Best to just let the report end where it did.
“Constable’s office reports everypony not on duty in their quarters and ready to go,” Rainbow said. “We’ve got the easiest job, though. You ponies have to stop us from blowing up.”
“Medical has critical patients moved into the Shiprat section,” Fluttershy said. “Not sure if it will help, but… it’s the best we can do. This is going to be bloody, captain. Nopony aboard is ready for the stress of prolonged acceleration.”
“We’ll endure it,” Twilight countered. “We don’t have a choice.” And that left only one department—under the circumstances, the most important.
“Sail is deployed,” Starlight said. “We’ve matched the Highway station’s docking protocols and the interface signal is green. Spells are good, better now that we’ve altered the frequency of the emitters. This is going to work, captain. I know it is.”
I hope you’re right. “Final orders, captain?” Spike asked. “I’m getting requests from department heads all over the station. We need a verdict.”
Twilight already knew what she was going to say—she just hadn’t wanted to tell the crew until it was time to launch. Some would probably resent her choice, and make implementing it difficult.
1. “Situation green,” Twilight instructed. “Once we’ve begun to accelerate, lift movement restrictions at let things return to normal.” 2. “Situation yellow,” she said. “Suspend all non-essential services until it’s clear the Canterlot has survived our acceleration.” 3. “Order situation red. I want all power and personnel that isn’t being used by somepony on this bridge with me to be locked down and sheltering in place. Constable, prepare your volunteers to enforce that order.”
Spike relayed the command, and she was unsurprised to hear some grumbling. But they were out of time for debates. If anypony was going to live through this, they needed decisive action.
“I want a general channel,” Twilight said. “All decks.”
“Open.”
“This is Princess Twilight Sparkle,” she said, knowing her voice boomed through the station. “Creatures of Equestria, you should already know the dangers we’re facing. We cannot survive if we leave the station here. Those who do not have friends who have suffered from the deteriorative effects soon would, if we remain. The ponies we left behind on Equus—the ponies who died to give us this chance, are all counting on us now.
“All creatures, be prepared to be called to duty at any time. We do not know what dangers this alien system will present once we use it. But I’m confident that working together, the Canterlot will overcome this danger as we have so many others.
Twilight couldn’t ask everypony to lock themselves away, not during such an important moment. The Canterlot would have to trade a little power for crew morale as they began the jump.
“I’m there, Twi,” Spike said from just beside her, voice gentler than it had been in a long time. How long had she been sitting there without making an order? “Modifications are in place, crew is ready. Say when.”
“Launch,” Twilight ordered.
For a few terrifying seconds there was nothing, just Twilight on the bridge and the whole ship holding its breath underneath her.
She felt it before she saw anything—the touch of some distant machine grabbing hold of the Canterlot, its invisible grip tugging it back towards Proximus B. This was the moment it might pull them down into the planet’s incredible gravity. The Canterlot had already been on its last legs before, it would never survive the pressure with all the modifications they’d made. Twilight had led her ship to disaster.
Were the modifications successful? Yes.
Twilight heard a rumble then, something that must’ve emanated from the Canterlot since there was no medium for sound outside. “Incoming docking protocols from Highway junction 599-12-65-00,” Spike said. “Node is handling the response, aren’t you Node?”
“Handshake successful,” her voice said, almost the same instant he asked. “Unrecognized sail design. Asking for our override. Besides, you know, we might be about to incinerate ourselves.”
“We aren’t,” Starlight Glimmer spoke from her console, glowering at Node. “It will work, Captain.”
“Grant our consent,” Twilight said. Even if we wanted to change our mind, it would be too late now. By the time we built a second sail, half the crew would be robotic. The Hunger might take all of us. Light bathed the Canterlot from all sides, enough that every one of the external cameras in Twilight’s view was suddenly brilliant blue with little flashes of magical energy. Beneath them, the Canterlot began to move, pushed along by the sail at their back. Despite the name, the magical design more like a mirror, which would hold the ship in compression against its forces.
Does the Sail work? Critical No. Random Event: Dominate of Animals
Twilight heard it the same moment as the rest of the crew did, a terrible metallic tearing accompanied by crushing rock. Twilight knew instantly what must’ve made that awful sound, and she spun back around to face Starlight. “What the buck was that?”
“Emergency shield online!” Spike shouted, his voice booming over a dozen sirens. “Captain, the highway isn’t letting us go. It’s asking if we’re ready for launch.”
“Of course we’re n—”
Node yelled over her; voice slightly distorted now. Apparently the emergency shield wasn’t doing great things to their communications. “If we cancel the departure now, the highway node will remember our design and never let another ship launch with it again! It doesn’t want to hurt us.”
“I don’t think what it wants will matter much!” Rarity called, on the edge of panic now. “Shield temperature nearly two hundred degrees and rising rapidly! I don’t think you need me to tell you what happens when it fails, captain!”
We might not have a choice. We’ll have to take our chances with the robotic conversion process, and take our time to build something else.
The Dominate of Animals reflects the magical ability inherent in organics, which Starlight intends to use to dominate the threat before them.
“Captain, there was… some possibility this might happen. It has to do with matching the thaumic polarity of the incoming energy. I prepared some modifications to the sail that should match these readings.”
Twilight’s eyebrows went up. She wanted to believe it—the Canterlot needed a miracle at this point. But she knew too much about magic to just accept the explanation. “It took you a month to deploy that spell, Starlight? How are you going to make alterations to it before our shields fail?”
The unicorn rose unsteadily to her hooves, shoving the cushion aside. “You know the way, captain.”
Twilight nodded weakly. There was one way, basically the same thing that their princesses had done. When a pony had spent every drop of magic they had, or wanted to reach beyond to some feat well beyond their power, there was one thing more powerful than any magical reserve.
A soul.
Twilight only had a second to weigh her sacrifice. One life against the survival of the Canterlot. “Equestria will remember you,” she said.
“That was always the goal,” Starlight said wistfully. “Didn’t think I could do this twice.”
Of those listening, only Spike seemed to understand at first. Then Rarity spun her chair to face the other way. “Captain, you can’t be—”
Starlight Glimmer vanished in a flash of her teleportation.
They waited in anxious fear for another few minutes. Twilight didn’t justify her orders, there were enough disasters going on around the ship that there was no time. She diverted what energy to the shields she could find, sent crews to put out fires, and pulled ponies away from the outer layers of the ship, where they’d be cooked alive the fastest.
Twilight felt the spell the moment it happened; a single blinding flare of magical energy intense enough to render the Canterlot transparent to her magical senses. Through the rock and steel and crystal, she saw a single brave mare, outlined before the crystal that produced the sail. It was a spell etched in rock, meant to survive centuries of travel.
Does Starlight’s sacrifice fix the sail? Critical yes.
Starlight’s will battled with the living spell, for only the fraction of a second. It could’ve shattered, but it didn’t. The sail shifted, and the soulfire light went out like a candle.
It wasn’t just her. External cameras suddenly dimmed as the Canterlot jerked forward again. This time the acceleration didn’t pass in a few microseconds, but continued at a steady rate, pressing Twilight’s hooves against the deck in an effective approximation of gravity.
“Repair crew reports structural integrity is… better than nothing,” Applejack said, the first to break the silence aboard the bridge. Only her and the alarms. “We’re not gonna tear apart, anyway. Gonna be a nightmare to fix whatever that grinding was.”
“Launch sequence complete,” Node said. “Starlight, I take it back. Guess your magical-whatever wasn’t as stupid as I thought.”
Twilight winced, wiping away the moisture from one eye. “S-starlight is… dead,” she responded, her voice cracking once. “She’s the reason we’re still alive.”
There was no time for a funeral, not with the Canterlot still barely holding together. But as Spike put it “any difficulties we encounter with acceleration should become catastrophic within the first few days. The further we go, the more likely we are to survive. Assuming none of the spells collapse.”
Twilight remained on the bridge even when her friends grew too exhausted to remain there, and had to pass off their duties to other ponies.
Does anything else go wrong? Critical yes.
That meant in terms of familiar ponies Twilight had only Node over the radio and Spike beside her when every alarm on the ship started going off again. With the lights dimmed and the night-crew with her on the bridge, Twilight took almost thirty full seconds to figure out what was going wrong.
Is it the connection to Node’s ship? Yes.
More precisely, for Node’s voice to finally make it to her through the shouting and the panic. “Princess, I know what’s causing that destabilizing stress. It’s my ship! I’m getting torsion stresses on all three binding sections!”
Twilight swore under her breath, vanishing from her throne and reappearing at Applejack’s usual station. The shiprat there looked up, then slid his chair out of her way so she could use his console without objection.
They’d known this could happen, as the sail pushed on the Canterlot and Node’s collection of derelicts dragged them the other way.
“We thought we knew how the sail’s force would be applied, but I can see now where our calculations went wrong.” Spike said, far more alert than Twilight felt. “If we keep pulling apart like this, the stress is going to tear me in half. I could try to adjust our angle so the stresses are more evenly distributed, but… that shift might be too much. We might explode into a million pieces.”
“Which is it?” Twilight shouted; wings spread in frustration. “Why would you even tell me if it’s going to get us killed?”
“The odds are modest,” Spike said. “Shieldponies have already been assembled and should be prepared in time. I estimate one in five.”
“There’s another option,” Node said. Her voice was suddenly flat, resolute. “We could sever every junction on our end, and you could drop us. No one aboard is vulnerable to the Hunger… we could rebuild, construct our own sails, and eventually follow you.”
1. Sacrifice Node’s ship and all the resources aboard [guaranteed safety for the Canterlot, loss of resources and crew aboard] 2. Risk Spike’s suggested emergency maneuver [chance of total mission failure and loss of all hands.]
Even if she was unopposed at this moment, Twilight could feel the weight of all Equestria on her. This would be the moment that they forever blamed her for the sacrifice of their friends and relatives.
Either that, or the moment where they all died in a single fiery explosion, making every sacrifice they’d ever made pointless. How far had ponies come as a civilization, that she could risk giving it all up here?
Apple Bloom is on that ship. Sunset Shimmer, Node. They had a cold copy of the Equinox’s database, a few fabricators, and about a dozen of Apple Bloom’s little repair beetles. Did they stand a chance of survival without the Canterlot’s support?
I might be damning them to be torn apart by Hunger’s machines. Or maybe the grief will kill them before the demons do.
She could only wish that Celestia had been there to make this choice. The princess would know how to explain the sacrifice to the rest of Equestria. If only the situation were simpler, Twilight herself might’ve made the sacrifice. But that would leave a child princess to somehow command a civilization that would desperately need a technical expert in all the fields Twilight had mastered.
“How long do you need, Node?” Twilight asked. The bridge fell silent.
“Not even a minute,” she replied. “We’re on it, captain.”
“I’m sorry,” Twilight said. “I wouldn’t ask if there was any other way.”
“I know,” Node said. As her voice came back, the sound of distant shouting echoed on her line. Mechanical sounds rumbled, and ponies ran.
“Mah sis is on that ship, captain,” Applejack said. “If they cut loose, I’ll never see her again. My only family.” There was agony in Applejack’s voice. Not the suggestion of an argument, or a pony about to attack. This was simple heartbreak.
“I know,” Twilight said, meeting her eyes. “Applejack, this station wasn’t meant to fly like this. We’re already coming apart at the seams. Starlight, and Celestia, and Luna and so many others died for this chance.”
Can Twilight calm her down? Yes.
Applejack sniffed, lowering her hat to cover her face. It didn’t hide her voice cracking, or the sound of her years. “Ain’t like it’s quite goodbye yet, right? We’ll be sendin’ signals back fer… years, maybe. She might be right behind us, chattin’ up a storm.”
Twilight nodded her agreement, even if her own assessment of Node’s odds were bleak. For the first time in her life, she got the feeling that Applejack would do better with a little less of the truth. “But right now, I need my chief engineer at her station. Celestia only knows what’s it’ll do to cut free of a counterweight as heavy as all those Dialects.”
“Nothing good,” Spike called, apparently unmoved by their exchange. “I think we’ll hold together, at least the difference in velocity between us is negligible. But if we wait too long…”
“Ready!” Node shouted. “Say the word, pony! We’re waiting on the trigger!”
“Godspeed,” Twilight said.
The Canterlot reeled in the void, jerking violently under Twilight’s hooves. Somewhere far away, metal tore and stone ground together, shuddering under the sudden acceleration.
Emergency alarms started blaring, thankfully not in Starlight’s voice.
For a few seconds Twilight just covered her head, waiting for the shock to pass.
Screens came back on one at a time, followed by the emergency lights. Applejack reached her station, brushing aside the rubble from her keyboard.
“We’ve got… solarium core is offline. But the sail’s power transfer is… working. We’re getting energy from the beam.”
“There are two decks exposed to hard vacuum,” Spike said, voice stiff. “Not sure on the casualties yet, still coming in.”
“Sail team?” Twilight asked, eyes falling on Starlight’s empty station. She twitched, fighting back her own tears. She was the princess, she had to be strong for these ponies. She’d just sacrificed relatives.
Rarity made her way over, skimming over the readings. “Sail is up, Twilight. Spell stable, acceleration steady. We did it.”
Static hissed from the radio, then a voice rectified through the hissing and sputtering. “Canterlot, come in! You still burning up over there?”
Twilight took a single deep breath, then replied as calmly as she could. “Looks like we’re in one piece, Node. How are things on your end?”
“Wee bit disintegrated,” Apple Bloom answered. She didn’t sound disintegrated herself, at least. “We weren’t one ship to begin with. Now we’re… more of a debris field, flyin’ out towards the rim of the system.”
“That isn’t the end of the world,” Node added. “We’ll patch things up over here, Twilight. I kept everything we really needed centralized in the wreck of this old Imperial Flagbearer. Give us a few weeks, and we’ll have collected the other bits and pieces. We’ll keep you appraised.”
“How long?” Twilight asked. “We’re still accelerating? How long until we can’t communicate?”
“Never,” Node answered flatly. “Theoretically, that is. Practically speaking we don’t have infinitely sized antennas, and you organics aren’t going to live forever. Lightlag is going to get annoying before we’re done with this conversation. In a few hours, we’ll have to start sending letters rather than conversations. Don’t worry though, Highway has protocols for that. I’m sending them to Spike now. So long as we’re near the line you took, we can send messages to you, and catch whatever you send back.”
“Spike, I want priority radio access to anypony who has family on that ship,” Twilight said. “Organize a schedule with Node.” She looked to Applejack. She probably needed her chief engineer more now than ever. But she might never be able to have another conversation with her sister again.
“Start with our chief engineer. Maybe she can keep the line open while she’s directing the repairs.”
Compared to the disastrously high stress of the launch, the next few hours passed in a blur to Twilight. There were plenty of repairs to make to the Canterlot, some of which would probably take weeks. But none of them would kill them if her ponies got to work, and she trusted their skill.
She contributed her magic where she could, but ultimately there were many problems she just couldn’t fix. But they still had the engineers for that, and she wasn’t worried. Delegation was always an important skill for a princess.
Eventually she found herself back in her office, drained of magic and physical energy both. Spike would update her if any more disasters sprung up for her to deal with, but she could hope for a moment to rest.
She stared down at Starlight’s ID tags, the only thing that could be recovered from her magically charred body. Another life sacrificed because of Twilight’s decisions.
How many more were dead because of her? How much blood were they leaving behind in the Proximus system?
Twilight’s radio hissed. She braced herself for word of another explosion, or maybe a section of crew-quarters they’d found open to space.
But it wasn’t Spike who spoke next.
“Hey, Captain. How’s the flight?”
She slumped into her chair, exhausted. “Sunset? Shouldn’t you be talking to your family or something?”
The mare was silent for a long time. At first she thought the message hadn’t made it, before she realized the obvious. Lightlag.
“Would if I had any,” Sunset finally answered. “Had a little brother, but he got sick real early on and didn’t make it off-planet. Parents were old, they didn’t win the lottery for a spot of Canterlot. But I knew they probably wouldn’t when I launched, and so did they. We said our goodbyes a long time ago.”
“Mine too,” Twilight called back across the void. She wasn’t without a family though—her brother and niece were both aboard, still frozen. Possibly for a long time to come, given the ship’s limited resources. “But I can be your family for a minute if you want to talk. If you want to be furious with me about letting you go, now’s your chance.”
The replies weren’t getting any faster—quite the opposite in fact. But Twilight was getting used to it, letting her mind wander and drift while she waited for her message to reach the distant creatures, then return.
“I’m gonna be a little salty about it,” Sunset finally said, without anger. “You know how weird it is being surrounded by ponies but not having any magic? How much of ourselves do we have to lose before we’re not ourselves anymore?”
She didn’t actually wait for a response. Much to Twilight’s relief, since the honest answer wasn’t one she wanted to give. “I didn’t want to go on, you know. When you forced me to change? I wanted to stick my head in a power outlet and let nature take its course. Well… not nature. You get the idea.”
Sunset laughed, but Twilight didn’t.
“I couldn’t, though. I kept remembering everything we’d done to get this far. My ship didn’t make it, and we still did the impossible. Equestria needed me. Maybe I needed Equestria too.”
“I’m sorry you can’t be here,” Twilight whispered back, after a long time. Hopefully the delay would make Sunset think she had hung up. “This hurts everypony, saying goodbye.”
Sunset laughed again. “You gave me something to fight for, captain. One day we’re going to join you at that flotilla, and I’m going to punch you in the face for what you did to me. Then I’ll thank you. That order.”
“I’ll be counting on it.”
Only static answered.
Much could’ve been said for the little acts of heroism over the next few weeks. Twilight worked alongside her bravest and brightest ponies, repairing the damage on the Canterlot and making their passage secure.
But while her crew focused on the short-term goal of making the Canterlot itself viable again, Twilight’s focus had already turned towards the future.
The journey would be long.
The highway would eventually accelerate them towards the speed of light, but even still they might be settling into a trip of many centuries. Twilight could hardly imagine how a single station could be made self-sufficient for such a period—even when they had a practically endless supply of energy through the highway itself.
In the end, she’d narrowed things down to a few approaches, each with their own advantages.
1. Try to build a civilization while in transit. Work towards waking every creature, cannibalizing and rebuilding along the way. Turn every mind towards inventing new technologies and magics necessary for longevity.
2. Gradually put ponies to sleep, until only a rotating skeleton crew remained. This would enable the ponies of Equestria to arrive at the Flotilla together, and let Canterlot itself exist with a minimum of systems that needed to be kept running with limited spare parts.
3. The first plan, but instead of traveling straight for the flotilla, stop every time the highway let them to gather supplies and expand with whatever raw materials wait in new systems. The trip would be vastly longer, and many generations of ponies would likely die before they reached the flotilla, but it would require no new technologies or spells to be invented during the journey.
Much could be said for the Equestria that Twilight and her friends built as the Canterlot soared off towards the promise of a distant Flotilla.
At first they had regular communication with their robotic comrades. Twilight used that opportunity to interview Node on every subject relevant to their integration with the Flotilla, if and when they ever reached them. As the days turned to weeks and then to months, messages passed less and less frequently, until all they exchanged were letters. Those with loved ones changed to steel and silicon had to say their goodbyes.
That was only the first of many difficulties to overcome, however. The first leg of their journey was one of abundance, where they could always find the raw materials and spare parts for any project or desire, no matter how silly it would later seem. The structure of the Canterlot could not get any wider than the sail, but it could stretch forward as long as they wanted, so long as it remained structurally sound.
Over the next decades, more modules grew out of the station, spindly flowers grown from the rocky medium of the mountain Canterlot had once been. With so many to wake, the space and life-support needs of the station had to expand by an order of magnitude.
That meant many sacrifices, and fundamental changes to the structure of pony society. Most foods were a waste of nitrogen and water, and their seeds were confined to the freezer. Protein-enriched algae crackers became the staple of civilization wheat had once been, and showers were replaced with a light spray of sonically agitated mist.
But for every problem they encountered, ponies found solutions. Sometimes that meant sacrificing luxuries for the greater good, and other times it meant new opportunities for invention. While searching for new material, ponies hollowed Canterlot all the way to its structural supports, spinning a weave of restructured rock and changeling slime that would’ve been inconceivable only decades before.
Creatures lived—forming new relationships with the survivors and eventually having children of their own. By the time they were having their own foals, things that had once been the staples of space travel were now seen as unimaginably selfish waste.
Lifetimes came and went. Some of those original explorers and refugees elected to remain as mechanical creatures, an option Twilight made available to all. Most creatures of Canterlot were far too invested in the religion of their dead planet, and refused. Fluttershy was the first to go, insisting that she would “blow herself up” if Twilight tried to go behind her back and convert her anyway.
“Discord said he would be waiting for me,” she croaked, one of the last things she ever said. “Don’t take that away from me, Twi. You have… plenty of doctors.”
Pinkie didn’t last a year longer, Hunger’s long torment finally ended. Applejack and Rarity didn’t last much longer. Instead of committing herself to the void, Twilight gave Applejack her wish of permanent residence in the Contingency. If nothing else, it meant Twilight could always visit and converse about what was gone.
Half a lifetime around the phenomenal magic of the shield stretched Rarity’s life beyond most unicorns. The contingency inspired her too, though like most fashion it failed to live up to her view of what the construct should be.
“I believe I’ve done all I can for Canterlot,” she announced, the day she died. “There are so few who remember Equestria anymore. It was so much more than this dreadful place—I believe I finally have the solution.”
“You do?” Twilight asked. She looked across Celestia’s desk, worn smooth now by so much use. Her friend had changed so much in the last century—though she was withered and feeble, she’d aged with elegance, and parts of her had changed to the same teal crystal as most of the shield matrix. “We can’t start living the way we used to, Rarity. I know you hate algae—”
“Not that,” she waved a dismissive hoof. “I mean, partly that. You realize how many different schools of art just don’t exist? I realize scarcity makes that difficult, and I don’t propose we change it. But I think Applejack found the solution before we did. There is only one problem: The contingency wasn’t built for ponies. Its simulations are enjoyable enough, but they are heaven to the Signalers, not us. Spike has been instructing me… I believe I’m ready to travel there and begin the work of rebuilding Equestria.”
Twilight’s eyebrows went up. “You mean… permanently?”
Rarity stopped on the edge of the desk, resting a withered hoof there. “Darling, I appreciate your kindness, but look at me. Even if we still had moisturizer, there’s no helping this. But worry not, I will make no attempt to poach your crew. I merely think the Contingency should serve as a… kinder alternative, to what you offer with the mechanical virus.”
It was. In the next few years, it proved the more resource-sensible alternative as well. Mechanical bodies were great from crew that Twilight simply couldn’t do without, but having thousands of ponies who could barely contribute just used up valuable metal and components their starship needed. As the generations passed and creatures grew more comfortable with their own robotic friends, those willing to convert began to vastly outstrip the ones who elected for pointless death.
So she had to phase it back, offering the Contingency to most creatures and robotic conversion only for those Canterlot needed most. In time she found a tactful way to recycle those who couldn’t contribute, allowing them to join their many friends and still-living family building greater and greater civilization within the virtual fields of the Contingency. Node was incredibly smug about it in her letters, whenever Twilight mentioned it.
There were a few creatures who crossed from the virtual Equestria growing in the dataspace, and the real Canterlot growing within their thaumic highway. One of those was Rainbow, the only one of Twilight’s friends to convert. Twilight could always count on her when the Canterlot needed her security chief, but somehow always found Rainbow on the farm with her wife when she wasn’t needed.
Only Spike remained with her every moment of their voyage, her stalwart companion through every threat the Canterlot faced. When an unknown plague swept the ship, when systems failed or food was scarce, he was always there. Sometimes he gave helpful advice, but just as often he served as Twilight’s single point of continuity with the world that had been.
It was with him she found herself, many centuries later, standing on the damaged bridge of an ancient starship still nestled in their hull.
“I keep expecting to find her on a salvage list,” Spike said from behind her, switching something on the wall. “Bridge emergency illumination online,” Starlight Glimmer’s ghost said, and faint red light shone all around them.
Twilight looked up from the captain’s chair, one hoof still propped on the old plastic joystick. It barely moved anymore, and wasn’t connected to anything. It still felt comfortable in her grip, like hugging an old friend. “Didn’t have the heart,” she whispered. “I gave up the engines, the crew quarters, the life support. Can’t I keep something sentimental?”
Spike shrugged, his mechanical body settling into the sensor chair. After so many years of travel, he’d abandoned the Signaler design Node had given him, and instead chose something that resembled the dragon he’d been. It had purple scales and only one set of arms, along with vestigial wings. It probably wasn’t half as big as Spike would’ve been if he were still alive, but… there weren’t any dragons alive on the Canterlot. Only unhatched eggs kept chilled in storage even now, for a hatching they might never receive. “Don’t let me tell you no. That’s not why I’m here?”
“What is it?” Twilight looked up from the controls, ears flattening with dread. “We’re out of indium too, and we have to find another new substrate for—”
He cut her off with a claw. “Not that. We just got a transmission. I thought you might want to see it.”
“I didn’t think we were due for another message from Node,” she said, fumbling in her satchel for a tablet. They were far lighter and slimmer than they’d once been, with screens that rolled for storage and unfurled as they opened.
“We aren’t,” Spike said. “It’s not from behind.”
Twilight nearly dropped the tablet. She managed to hold it steady long enough for the transmission to display.
There were images first—so many starships that in places Twilight could barely see the backdrop of space behind them. Then there were more images—a complex orbital relationship of tiny red stars, contained in mirrors that expelled their energy outward to drive the Flotilla along. Some even had planets, all brought to the Flotilla instead of fleeing in a single ship.
Then came the message. A little annotation warned that she was reading a translation, though at least Node had given them enough that she didn’t have to guess.
We see you coming, survivors. To you from all who live, welcome home.
