Equestria That Was

Chapter One: On a Wing and a Prayer

The depths of space were a calm, beautiful darkness shot through with hard points of light from distant stars. Hanging in the void was a swirling blue-green orb, basking in the light of the system's primary, a tranquil and serene sight.

A serenity disturbed by the roar of starship hull aerobraking, the red hot glow of plasma forming as friction heated ceramic tiling. Retro burn added a dull thrumming in the deck-plates as the ship slowed and descended through the atmosphere.

"Ground side in twenty five-" the pink pilot started as a loud bang echoed throughout the ship, "make that five minutes. Captain to the bridge!" The deck jumped and the pony felt the bottom fall out from under her as the ship entered ballistic freefall. Her hooves danced across the control boards as the ship entered a lazy roll, the ship's drive pods sputtered and then went silent. The humming in the deck stopped abruptly as the drive system finally failed completely.

"Pinkie, darling, are you crashing my ship?" asked a white unicorn as she stepped onto the deck plating. Her eyes widened slightly as she looked through the windscreen and saw far more ground and far less sky than she'd typically have liked.

"I'm not crashing the ship," Pinkie declared with a nod of her head as a faint rumble thrummed through the deck-plates and the ship started to nose up, before another loud bang echoed through the ship and it pitched forward again. "The ship is crashing itself!"

The ship's captain rubbed at her temple; she could feel the migraine forming. "And why might the ship be crashing itself, Pinkie dear?" she asked the pilot as she braced herself against the bulkhead.

"What's this about crashin'?" a new, accented voice asked, its owner introduced by the clip-clop of hooves on metal decking. The orange mare stared passively out the windscreen, "That ain't right..."

"Pinkie was just about to explain that very thing, weren't you dear?" the captain interjected with a severe look at the pilot.

"Applejack? The engines are down, thrusters, control surfaces, everything!" the pink one exclaimed with mounting panic as she twisted control knobs and pulled on the control yoke, to no avail.

"Ah... I'll go... deal with that... then." the accented mare answered as she turned and retreated through the hatch she'd entered from. Her hooves clunked heavily on the deck as she sprinted through the corridor. She stumbled when the ship lurched, the hum of the engines trying to start and then shutting down again did little to distract her sprint.

A feathered head popped out of a side hatch at the end of the dimly lit corridor and turned to face the sprinting mare, "Hey, AJ, are we crashing? Cause don't wanna crash."

"Ya could always get out and push, Gilda!" the mare yelled over her shoulder as she sprinted past and jumped over the hatch-lip into the galley, she sidestepped the table and launched herself down a curving staircase. Her hooves slid down the railings at the edge of the steps before she kicked off and jumped through the door to the engine room.

She heard the sound of tools being used and muttered cursing as she slid to a stop just short of the engine reactor. "Applebloom, ship's crashin ya know."

"I know about it, workin' on it," the young mare said as she strained against a wrench, "aw come on now!"

"Pinkie's mighty upset about it, Cap'n Rarity didn't look too pleased either," Applejack continued as she knelt to look under the reactor at her sister.

"Almost there sis, just gimmie... a couple seconds, and it should work... probably," the slightly smaller yellow pony answered from the maintenance crawlspace, "or we might just explode... but it'll probably work!"

Applejack pressed her forehoof against the intercom switch on the wall, "Cap, Applebloom says she's got somethin, might work, like to save us if it does."

"Only might work? That doesn't sound very promising, Applejack," the captain's tinny voice echoed from the speaker grill.

"Well, if it don't work... well you have been saying you wanted to get away from it all, cap'n, think of this as your chance," the orange mare said with a smirk, "Tell pinkie it's just bout ready."

"I hear ya AJ, hit it!"

~~

"I am a leaf... on the wind..." Pinkie said softly as she closed her eyes, she rested her hooves on the controls and gently, precisely, turned the dials. Suddenly, the deck started to vibrate, and then hum. Quiet at first, a slow rumbling low frequency groan that rapidly grew to a soft but powerful thrumming.

"Pinkie?" Rarity asked hesitantly as the ship continued to fall through the sky, despite the soothing hum of the engines.

"Hold to something, I'm going to save the day." Pinkie said quietly before her eyes snapped open. The mare firmly grasped the thruster pod control levers and pulled them back, reorienting the pods before she shoved the engine throttles to the locks. The roar of the thruster pods at full burn drowned out all other sounds on the flight deck.

The entire ship jolted as the abrupt thrust altered its trajectory, turned her ballistic descent into an arcing glide-slope. Rarity felt as though her bones were trying to come out through her hooves as the g-forces shoved her down towards the decking.

As abruptly as it had begun, the strain relented and the roar of the engines died down. Rarity opened her eyes, unsure of when she'd closed them, and turned to face the pink pilot, "Pinkie... how close was that?"

The mare grinned back sheepishly, "You... probably don't wanna know." She turned her head back to the windscreen and keyed up the radio, "Roan control, this is Heathspike-class transport Harmony, requesting berthing at Wit's End."

Rarity snorted, "Wit's End, I can relate..."

~~

Far away and on the ground, the lavender mare stood on the rough dirt road, staring at the cargo ship flying in the distance. It was headed towards the docks that she herself was heading for. She'd been watching it since shortly after re-entry, watched it nearly fall to the ground.

She watched it recover at the last possible moment, as if by pure dumb chance. Luck, she decided, was something to be sought after all. She smiled as she lifted her bag, "Alright Twilight, whoever is flying that ship is one lucky pony, and Celestia knows I could use some of that right about now."

She eyed the grungy buildings, run down shacks that had no former glory. She'd taken refuge in a hovel, not the safest neighborhood by far but what was unsafe was also unlikely to get her caught. Still, it was time to leave and as she walked towards that ship she felt no regret at what little she was leaving behind.