Twilight flies down for a rescue 38%

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.

(Certainty 230 required)

Author's Notes:

This chapter's poll:

https://www.strawpoll.me/17831988

What you’re reading is a CYOA-style adventure story, fully driven by its user feedback. This story is written using a system called Mythic, a GM-simulator that allows me to be fully in the driver’s seat for the prose, without actually knowing what will happen next. Success or failure in this story is fully governed by the fickle hand of fate, as well as the wisdom of those who chose to vote on it.

You can go ahead and vote in older polls if you want, but obviously they won’t retroactively change the text going forward, so the links are left behind mostly because I’m lazy and as a record of previous decisions.

If you’d like to take a look at my semi-regularly updated blog post with character sheets and stuff, go ahead and visit here: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/834930/voyage-of-the-equinox-resource-page

And if you’re curious about the dicerolls and the system, you can see all of it for yourself and verify that I’m not cheating on my discord here: https://discord.gg/mQfUn75