Dash looked out her titan-glass window and saw the whole of Equestria sprawl out before her. Despite having seen her home from the sky a thousand times before, she had never seen it like this. There were no clouds; there were no winds. There was no atmosphere. From space, Dash could see everything, from the gleaming spire of the Crystal Palace to the tiny trails of smoke left by the trains.
Something floated by the circular sheet of glass. Triangular, with rounded edges, the science shuttle had finally arrived. Four scientists currently fidgeted in their seats somewhere within the thin metal carapace. Shuttles were uncomfortable - Dash knew, but the orbital construction platform was too high to be reached by conventional ground-to-orbit transport. At a high polar Equestrian orbit, even the half-inch-thick shutters couldn't keep out Celestia's gaze.
The shuttle's ionic engines had shut down now - it was just in front of the station, matching velocity with a quadruplet of reaction control thrusters. The tiny white jets stood out starkly against the pitch-blackness. Like many ponies down below, Dash would've assumed that the stars still shone above the atmosphere. Unfortunately the only bright things outside the window were Celestis, Equestria's star, and Luna, peeking over the horizon like a scared cat.
The docking port was only a few feet away from Dash, so she pressed the button that opened the heat shield. The three-petaled flower revealed its circular door as the shuttle did the same, its docking port located in between its four ionic propulsion engines.
Dash watched the ship slide closer and closer. The sun reflected off its solar panels, the light catching Dash's eye and forcing her to cover them. Tiny jets of nitrogen gas fogged up the observation window - the shuttle was much bigger up close than afar.
A satisfying click later, and Dash felt the station's reaction wheels spin into overdrive as everything briefly shook.
She reached for the port's lever, strapping her hooves into the velcro straps. She twisted her head to her right and grabbed the metal control stick with her mouth. The tiny air jets mounted on her wings snapped into action, twisting her clockwise around the circular door. After a few turns, the metal barricade slid open without so much as a whisper. The shuttle still hadn't opened theirs.
The familiar hissing of air jets permeated through the thick sheet of metal. Shuttle doors had to be thicker than station ones - after all, they didn't have heat shields.
Dash patiently floated at the receiving dock with her hooves crossed and a bent lip. Shuttles always took too long. She could open that door in five seconds if she wanted to - if she wanted to. Last time she did... well, she ended up nearly suffocating herself and half the shuttle crew. Fortunately the electromagnets had pulled the shuttle in that time or she would've been permanently blue in the face.
The door opened, and out came three unicorns she didn't recognize and an old friend from flight school. Dash's bored look instantly became a smug smile as Lightning Dust maneuvered herself out of the shuttle with her floatpack.
"Lightning Dust," said Dash. "Didn't expect to see you up here. Didya lost a bet or something?"
"That's Doctor Dust to you. And no, bets are more your kind of thing. After I left Wonderbolts Academy I went to college and got my bachelor's."
"College? Where, Fillydelphia Community?"
"As a matter of fact, yes."
Laughing fits weren't exactly practical in space, due to the fact that it was nearly impossible to throw yourself against a surface without either chewing on a control rod or using magic, but Dash managed to do so anyway.
"Then," continued Lightning Dust. "I got my master's in astrophysics from Ponytail Ridge Academy of the Sciences. Taking eight years of college doesn't seem so bad compared to you, stuck opening doors for scientists in space."
"Hey -," said Dash. "I'll have you know-"
"What? Found a way to make weather in space? You'll only make ice cubes."
"No," said Dash, furtively crossing her hooves. "I'm a pilot."
"Oh, so your year of college is enough for a shuttle pilot? Dash, get your facts right. Shuttles are automated."
Dash sighed. "No, I fly that."
She pointed at the door that led to the rest of the station, the door that (thankfully) wasn't locked.
"You fly a... door? Or are you just the station's janitor?"
Dust floated over to the door.
"Open it and see," said Dash.
The other three scientists had already disappeared through the door - Dust had to go through anyway. She flashed a skeptical face at Dash, who just smiled back at her smugly. She then swung open the door and had the air sucked out of her lungs.
She didn't see it during approach, because shuttles don't have windows. But now, the other three scientists were magically floating near a window mounted on the square room's "ceiling" They were intently taking pictures of the biggest spacecraft Dust had ever seen. Clad in white and orange, and mounted within a rectangular construction scaffold, was Equestria's and the United Equestria Space Exploration Bureau's first FTL-capable spacecraft. It was boxy and edgy, but within its three-inch thick steel shell was a whole array of electronic sensors and telemetrics, the latest in A.I arcanotechnology, the best lab equipment bits could buy, cold fusion reactors, and a massive titanium ring that mediated the exotic matter reactions that allowed the craft to literally warp space-time. And above all, the sun reflected perfectly off its freshly painted surface, hitting Dust straight in the eye.
"What? They told me I had a good pilot for my mission, not some uneducated Wonderbolt reject! Do you even know how to fly the thing?"
"She's called the Kestrel. And yes, I do know how to fly her. Maybe I should show you around."
"And who else have they not told me about is going on this mission?"
"Oh, you know, the usual ponies. Flitter. Roseluck. Gilda. An earth pony or two."
"Anypony else?"
"Spitfire's mission commander."
Lightning Dust stared at Dash with one eyebrow raised, then realized she wasn't kidding.
"Seriously?" Dash nodded her head.
"Well," continued Dust. "Unless you want to come all the way back to Equestria halfway through the mission, I'd suggest you stay out of the labs."
"Feeling's mutual. Don't touch my steering wheel."
"It's not a steering wheel up here, it's called a yoke."
"I call it what I like."
Dust nearly raised a hoof, but then lowered it. After all, a punch really wasn't the same thing in space.
"It stands. Stay out of the labs."
"Don't touch my steering wheel."
The station's exotic matter reserves were empty. Five years of charging had cumulated in this. Now, the ponies were just topping off the Kestrel's fuel tanks, catalyzing the matter-antimatter reactions, and making final conversation with the onboard A.I, Twilight. Dash hadn't met her yet, but had a strong feeling that she was going to be as bookish and geeky as the Twilight below.
The next time the station was over the Central Control Station, in Canterlot, Dash would finally be allowed out of the simulator and into the real pilot's seat.
Even though she had ran through punch procedure nearly a million times, Dash still was shaking in her null-grav bed. Nopony had ever done such a thing before. The unmanned sim-tests were fine, but the Kestrel wasn't automated.
Also, Dust was on board, and she sounded personally vengeful towards her. Dash could understand why, but space wasn't the best place to extort your rage on somepony. Unless you wanted them to die. Dash was sure nopony wanted to kill anypony else.
Then again, there was a reason why the airlocks were unlocked.
Dash tried not to think about it in the four hours left before the window began. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but the light from Celestis shone straight through the thin window shades. Her floatpack cast a shadow on her face as it drifted by.
Her squirming was held back by the sleeping bag's straps, but eventually even tossing and turning wasn't enough to lull her to sleep. The Kestrel was literally outside the window - she was sleeping in the prep room they had installed a week before. She'd thought that warmed sleeping bags were a good thing. Now, the warmth simply make her sweat. A free-floating glob of perspiration was already forming around her head, almost like a space helmet.
That was it. Dash ripped herself out the bag and grabbed her floatpack. Strapping the air jets to her wings, she whizzed towards the docking tunnel. Numerous sleeping ponies were strapped to the walls - Dash counted 14 of them. These 14 would be her companions for literally the next four months and a half.
Two bunks were empty. They weren't labeled, but Dash guess that they too didn't like the heated bags. Globs of sweat surrounded theirs too.
She slowly eased open the door at the end of the hall. Beyond that lay the prep chamber. Once loaded to the brim with boxes of mana batteries, deturium tanks, and freeze-dried apples, the room was completely devoid of anything. The stark arc lamps mounted on the "ceiling" reflected all over the steel walls. All that was left was the door to the docking tunnel (which was twice Dash's height) and the two ponies leaning on it. Well, one wasn't really a pony, but rather a griffon.
The pony next to Gilda was flame-yellow with a wild orange mane. Spitfire, once a Wonderbolt, had successfully passed the UESEB's entrance examination with the best score in her class (Dash was around tenth or eleventh) and had been chosen to lead the FTL mission based on her charisma, expertise, and past mission commanding experience. Dash had flown with her before - she was the over-the-shoulder type commander, barking orders and screaming in your ear while your hooves flew over the haptic controls. Fortunately Gilda was flying with her too or Dash would've pre-purchased a hearing aid, to be delivered in-flight, specifically for this mission.
They would've had to build another FTL-capable ship to do that. Even the bravest cross-eyed member of the EPS couldn't catch up to the Kestrel in time. Even if she was riding a rocket.
"Hey Dashie," said Spitfire, out of the blue. "Get over here."
That was then that Dash noticed the large amount of empty squeeze-bags floating around her mission commander. Spitfire always liked to get drunk before a dangerous operation. This was no exception - she had overloaded herself on powdered cider mixed with onion soup. Gilda was casually sipping water from a clear plastic bottle-bag. She greeted Dash with a nod and a twitch.
"Dashie," said the drunk Spitfire. "You - you ready?"
"Yes ma'am. Ready for anything."
"Rainbow's always ready," said Gilda. "She ran through the sim a thousand times more than me."
"Then, wait... so, are you ready then?"
"Relax, Spitfire," said Dash. "I'm flying, remember?"
"Yeah, yeah sure. Sure. Now, uh..."
Spitfire gently rose into the air, knocking her control stick on her flared-out right wing. Her left wing was still retracted, causing the air jets to send her spiraling away into the empty loading bay.
Gilda rose out of her cross-legged sitting position and jetted over to the flailing Spitfire.
"I'd better take her back."
The griffon lugged the fiery pegasus back into the crew storage. She was mumbling something incoherent about how the Fillydelphians made freeze-dried whiskey. Dash could only imagine the hangover from those.
Eventually, Gilda floated back into the loading bay with a fresh bottle of water. She threw it in Dash's general direction, the plastic container corkscrewing through the air like a drill. Dash deftly swerved to the side with her floatpack and caught it in her rear hooves.
"I see you're still not drunk on space." said Gilda.
"Heh. More like space is drunk on me."
Gilda smirked. "Hah hah, you and your lame jokes. Just don't do it on the ship."
"Do what? It's my ship."
"Our ship. I'm your copilot, remember? You couldn't possibly fly the thing without me."
"Yeah, whatever. It's not like I have administrator privileges over your console or anything."
"That was temporary, remember? They installed Twilight today."
Dash groaned.
"Hey, she's not so bad," said Gilda. "At least she has a sense of humor."
"And an endless supply of brainy quotes from your favorite alicorn."
"She's really not so bad. You wanna go meet her?"
Gilda gestured at the docking tunnel, with the Kestrel on the other side.
"Wait, seriously?"
"Yeah, I helped install her. Flight college had computronics as a course - you should look into it."
Dash sheepishly grinned at Gilda while she typed in the access code. After a few seconds, the huge metal door split down the middle, revealing a second door, which rose steadily upwards. Beyond that lay a wide, featureless tunnel, lit with arc lamps. The Kestrel's portside airlock stood waiting for its occupants. Gilda's floatpack brought her through first, followed quickly by three quick bursts of air from Dash's.
There was no keypad on the airlock.
"Now what?" asked Dash.
"Now this," said Gilda. "TWILIGHT!"
"Reporting."
The metallic voice came from a small speaker mounted on the airlock door. Despite the speakers on the station being static-filled and noisy, this one carried no trace of background sound. Dash recognized the voice - the same bookish, slightly annoying voice of a flashcard-obsessed Princess of Friendship.
"Twilight, open the portside airlock, please."
With a hiss and a bang, the massive steel doors slid aside, and Dash found herself face-to-face with a pile of empty supply boxes. As soon as she stepped close to them, the artificial gravity took hold, bringing Dash towards the ground in a near-perfect simulation of Equestria's gravity.
A thump later and Gilda was rubbing her head muttering "Damn arc-tech."
"What, are you still not used to space?"
"It's why I drink the water."
"Is it also why you brought extra sick bags with you?"
"Flight Lieutenant Gilda suffers from disorientation due to being inexperienced with a zero-g environment."
Dash looked around the airlock room - she finally found the speaker Twilight was talking through - mounted on the ceiling.
"Come on," said Gilda, still rubbing her head. "I'll take you to the A.I mainframe."
The door to the rest of the ship opened instantly.
"Doors have been opened to allow access to the mainframe."
"Is she always this... efficient?" Dash asked as GIlda led her through the whitewashed corridors.
"Eh, it's not like I know. I heard that she hates Spitfire though."
"The one you refer to as Spitfire spilled an alcoholic beverage on one of my RAM chips. Configured memory was reduced to 64 gigs."
"Hey, relax pal, I have your new chip on me." She flashed a long rectangular computer chip at the camera mounted on the airlock wall.
Gilda turned left and walked past a row of cabins. All the ponies' personal belongings had been stored away within their respective rooms - Dash, being the Kestrel's pilot, shared the frontmost room with Gilda. The scary thing was that around the corner was a wide door labeled with a radiation symbol and the words "A-M INITIATED COLD FUSION". The door directly after it was open. Gilda let herself in - Dash looked left before doing the same.
Down another door-lined corridor was the cockpit, with its titan-glass windows. Dash couldn't wait to feel the warmth of the haptic interface as the six radiation engines roared behind her.
Gilda was talking to a bright purple hologram when Dash walked in. WIth wires shrewn everywhere, and numerous exposed circuits and data chips, the A.I core was most likely the most unkempt room on the ship, barring Dash's room. The only uncluttered surface was the holo-projector, a squat, rounded cylinder with wires flooding into its bottom and a fuzzy purple hologram of a unicorn coyly smiling at her.
"Greetings, Flight Commander Rainbow Dash," said the construct. "My name is Twilight."
There was a transient moment of silence as Dash waited for her to properly introduce herself. But there would be no "Sparkle" after this Twilight.
"I was kinda hoping you'd be more... life-like, close up."
"Yeah," said Gilda. "She doesn't really have much of a personality. Yet."
"My personality cores are disabled for the duration of my trial period. When I have proven that I will not attempt to cause harm to the personnel of this ship, they will be activated. I suspect that you will find me much more agreeable when they are."
She had the same snarky voice as the original Twilight, just completely devoid of any emotion or feeling. Dash couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong with the thing. Maybe it was right. Maybe she should wait for the cores to come online before judging.
"As of now, while I am unable to converse properly, I can offer you basic information about the ship and her systems."
Gilda slotted a new RAM card into the empty bank. Twilight's hologram fizzled for a second and turned a more life-like shade of lavender.
"Okay, so, can you tell me what you actually do on the ship?"
"Like most management A.Is, I run repetitive tasks and maintain basic computer systems on board the vessel. I also provide in-flight course adjustment and corrections, calculate burn times and resultant trajectories. When needed, I can also fire specific thrusters to provide the best and most efficient means of in-space velocity alteration. However, unless specifically directed, I cannot take direct control over the ship's systems."
"That basically means that she isn't an autopilot," interjected Gilda.
"Correct. There are autopilot sub-routines that I can indirectly activate, however they require manual confirmation in order to come into effect. These safeguards were put into place to ensure I cannot hijack the vessel should anything become damaged, nor can I cause any form of discomfort to the crew within the ship."
The A.I left it at that. Dash's bain felt completely wiped. Many ponies would honestly say that talking to real Twilight was a bore - talking to a brain scan of her left to develop without a personality was apocalyptic.
"Can you tell me about yourself?" Dash said in a futile attempt to communicate.
"She'll only tell you facts about her systems... brace yourself."
"I am a Harmony MK-VI System Management Intelligence, created from a brain scan of one Twilight Sparkle. I am currently the only system to have achieved MK-VI operating parameters. The others are currently under construction. I am capable of solving upwards of fourteen trillion arithmetic functions every second, with a point-zero-zero-zero-zero-one percent chance of error. I also have control of the oxygen generator, in case you were interested. " she said when Dash began to look bored.
"You have a sense of humor?"
"All A.Is do. It is programmed into our basic algorithms in order to ward off neural network degeneration and promote positive thinking. In a sense, laughter makes us live longer."
Gilda stood back up from the computer console with a soup bag in her claw. Some powdered cider was still covering the bottle's neck. She made a face at Dash and made for the door.
"Your transfer window opens in exactly three hours and twenty-two minutes. I'd suggest you get get some sleep."
T minus 1 hour.
The temporary sleeping quarters was already buzzing with excitement. Aside from those who had the sun shining on them throughout the entire night cycle, the ponies were already sipping powdered champagne and wishing each other good luck. Celestia has appeared on the vid-screens to wake them up, and the mission commander at Central was uploading the warp waypoints now.
Dash was sitting in the Kestrel's cockpit for the first time, feeding Twilight the coordinates that periodically appeared on the haptic interface. The warmth of the orange holo-panels almost lulled her off to sleep. Twilight kept her entertained with the occasional bad joke or two. Dash only learned to deal with it when she reasoned that the A.I was slowly lengthening its life span.
Princess Sparkle was currently broadcasting her message over the orbital network. Aside from the A.I's occasional comments about why the speaker sounded like her, Dash could not be happier about the fact that her alicorn amigo was personally congratulating them from Central.
"And to Rainbow Dash, Flight Commander. May you be remembered as the best spaceship pilot of all time, and seen as a symbol of bravery to all the future generations of space explorers," she was saying.
Dash's hooves flew across the haptic buttons with a flourish.
"Oh, and, also, the Triarchy of Equestria has agreed to grant you your personal holiday on the day you return. Dash-mas, was it?"
Dash-mas it was. Applejack had come up with that. Dash liked AJ's ideas - they were always simple and reasonably complicated, unlike Rarity's swirly combinations of Equestrian and Prench and Fluttershy's constant interjected ums and uhs.
"I still do not understand who that is," said the machine.
"It's you. Or, the pony whose brain is technically yours."
"She is not a machine. How could she be me? Maybe if I stuffed her in the next available empty expansion slot..."
"I'll take that as a joke," Dash said, going back to the ever-growing list of coordinates.
Twilight was rambling on about somepony else on the ship now. Suddenly, a blob of pink hair appeared on the lower left. The Princess's coy grin was quickly covered up by four smiling faces - pink, yellow, orange, and white.
"Hey Dashie!" said Pinkie.
"We just wanted to let you know, dear," said Rarity.
"We're always...um...here," mumbled Fluttershy, already halfway out of the camera.
"And that, no matter what," said Applejack.
They turned towards Twilight, who nodded.
"Don't you ever give up!...if that's...um... okay with you."
T minus 45 minutes.
Coordinates were in. A.I Twilight was busy revving up the warp ring with its exotic matter fuel. The drive required nearly all the power the fusion generator could produce, so the haptic interface was, unfortunately, off. Dash, who had loaded her personal belongings in last night, watched the others lug their carry-on-sized suitcases on board. There was artificial gravity - another benefit of arc-tech, but Dash floated in the air as if she was still in null-g, her cyan wings beating casually.
And then came Lightning Dust, lugging along the biggest suitcase Dash had ever saw. She was nearly off the ground - her wings were nearly invisible. She scowled at Dash before collapsing into her cabin, the suitcase still partially outside.
Her door closed. From inside, Dash heard the loud noise of a zipper unzipping, then a majestic *pomf as something soft came flying out. A few seconds later, Lightning Dust, still lugging the suitcase and with a white shirt in her mane, trotted past Dash towards the room marked "LAB STORAGE". She then unceremoniously unzipped the suitcase and dumped its contents into the room. Dash caught a few sparkles of light as glassware and chemical beakers found their way out of the plastic box on wheels.
There should have been a long and loud crashing noise, but instead there was only the hum of magic as it organized the flasks Dust had just dumped inside. Arc-tech at its finest. Dust smirked as she walked past Dash again and back into her room.
T minus 30 minutes.
The warp drive was charged and ready to go, so Dash had Twilight execute a series of translation maneuvers to test her accuracy. The RCS jets didn't fire, but the signals sent were near-perfect, and Dash, for once, looked at the cockpit hologram with a smile instead of a frown. She had barely used 10% of her processing power in the simulated maneuvers.
The window for warp activation was approaching. Even though they theorized that Equestria's gravity well wouldn't cause any problems with the ring, they still wanted the ship on escape velocity before attempting anything out of the ordinary. They were right to be afraid, but Dash reasoned that if there was nothing to worry about why worry?
Twilight had affirmed the decision for a warp window at least four times by now, but her circuits were programmed by the very people who were afraid of such a thing. It wasn't like there was any risk - from what Dash could understand about the warp ring, it bent space-time in a bubble just big enough to fit the Kestrel and little else. In a sense, they were taking the space they were in and moving it somewhere else at one point one times the speed of light.
Alicorn Twilight said that they could phase through planets if they wanted to. In fact, the only thing that the warp drive couldn't do was stop mid-flight. It was one of the things that Alicorn Twilight had said they tried to integrate into both the drive and A.I Twilight's programming, but the algorithm for doing so surpassed even the A.I's fourteen trillion calculations per second upper limit.
What they could do was install a glorified spell-check subroutine into A.I Twilight's mainframe, so not only did she not understand slang, but was also furtively going over the coordinates Dash had punched through.
It was why Dash had been scowling at the hologram for the past fifteen minutes while the warp window steadily approached.
"Your first five coordinates are deviant from the main path," she kept saying all throughout the thruster test.
She said it again. Dash's smile evaporated.
"For the last time, Twi, the co-ords are correct."
"I insist you double-check."
Gilda popped into the cockpit, bag of water under her wing. She still had her floatpack on. She took a long sip from the straw while Dash and the A.I bickered over what seemed like a bunch of senseless numbers. The griffon collapsed into the co-pilot's chair, to Dash's right, and began reading e-mails through the haptic interface.
"T minus 20," said Gilda. "Better get ready."
T minus 5 minutes.
The docking scaffold was folding down. Dash's sweaty hooves rubbed against the warm controls nervously. Outside the window, Equestria sprawled out before her, balanced in perfect harmony with the endless blackness of the void. Celestis smiled through the titan-glass.
Hoofsteps echoed down the hallway. Spitfire, dressed in a gray and blue jumpsuit, laid her front hooves on Dash and Gilda's chairs.
"You guys ready?" she asked.
Dash merely nodded.
"Ready to go." said Gilda.
Twilight's hologram was balancing on one hoof as if meditating. For an emotionless A.I, even she got nervous sometimes. Dash licked her lips and tried not sweat as much. If there was no gravity, there would've been a blob of liquid surrounding her already.
The radio began to crackle. Central was trying to ping through. Dash accepted the transmission, and a brown unicorn appeared on screen.
"This is MC Hooves, contact established. Hello there, Kestrel."
"Reporting," said the Spitfire.
"Okay, this is Central. ...Um, you're cleared for undock and apogee adjustment.
"Roger dodger," said Gilda, moving the RCS control hologram closer to her.
"Twilight," said Dash. "Prepare to initiate undock sequence on my command."
The lavender hologram got down from her meditative position and blinked twice. She nodded silently to the cyan pegasus.
"Good luck," said the mission controller. "Celestia be with you."
"Celestia be with you," said the rest of the mission control room, invisible behind their workstations.
"Okay Twi, initiate undock protocol."
The haptic display in Gilda's claws glowed brightly to the right for an instant. It was shortly followed by the ship shaking slightly as the docking tunnel detached itself. The faint sound of hooves banging against metal could be heard from both within the Kestrel and inside the station. Dash caught the eye of a workpony stomping in the temporary quarters - her floatpack pressing her against the wall so she could do so.
Gilda fingered the haptic interface, and the bottom-mounted reaction control thrusters set jets of combusted monopropellant towards the ribs below. The ship began to slowly rise above the now completely flat construction scaffold.
Dash's hooves flew over the keyboard as she typed in instructions for the engine burn. Twelve seconds, using less than 1% of the fuel onboard, was enough to get them out of Equestria's sphere of influence.
"Clear for engine burn," said the mission controller.
Dash slid the thruster control lever forwards. She was instantly pressed against her seat as all six nuclear engines sent their exhaust flames back into the station's bowels. The welded-together network of tubes and cubes that was Dash's home for the last month quickly disappeared in the distance as the Kestrel flew forwards. A few strands of static crossed over the mission commander's video stream.
"Twenty-two minutes to escape," said Twilight.
Exactly twelve seconds after Dash had fired the engines, they automatically shut off, and the Kestrel stopped gaining velocity through its own means.
As Equestria disappeared behind them, Dash shut off her haptic interface and laid back in her seat. Gilda kept flinging around the orange panels. Spitfire intently stared forwards at the window.
The bright blue sphere that Dash spent nearly all her life on slowly disappeared behind them. She rubbed her tired eyes.
T plus 17 minutes.
For the first time ever, Dash, Gilda, and the crew of the Kestrel were orbited around Celestis instead of Equestria. The blue orb was directly above and in front of them, a mere dot on a massive dotted black blanket. The transmissions from Central was barely audible now. The orbital communication satellites didn't reach this far into space.
Dash looked through the titan-glass and suddenly felt very small.
A small green light on the haptic console signified an incoming signal. Central couldn't do two-way comms anymore. Instead, they were periodically sending recorded messages. This one was timestamped from two minutes ago.
The haptic vid-screen flashed to life. Only Gilda and Dash were there to see it - Spitfire, who hadn't slept a wink, was already in her cabin with the seat straps on.
Celestia was on the screen. The low-quality recording was the best Central could offer - anything else would take too long to upload.
"Hello, my little ponies. Allow me to be the last one to say farewell to you as you go where nopony has ever gone before. You are truly the bravest of us, the strongest of us. You are our sunshine and our moonrise, and I wish that you would remember your heroism throughout your journey."
"As of now, at midday, Central has authorized me, as your Princess, to say these words. May you say them with me, so that you could know them as I do."
Dash held her hoof to her heart, as did Gilda. She didn't know the words, but Dash did. It was an ancient writ of harmony, scripted when pegasi, unicorn, and earth pony first came together as one.
"Together, my brothers, my sisters."
"Together we are."
"Together, we will overcome any foe, any circumstance, any enemy."
"Together, no evil, no hardship, no burden will ever destroy us."
"Together, in our darkest time, together, in our brightest light, together today and together tomorrow, and together we will stay as one, one united."
"ONE UNITED!" shouted the rest of the ship, and Dash could hear the cheering from the cockpit.
"With this vow, Equestria came to be. Now and forever, you will always be united with us. Never forget. We will never forget you."
"This is mission command actual."
Celestia gulped. Her mouth opened, and suddenly everything flashed green.
"Clear for punch."
Dash snapped out of her seat, as did Gilda. Claw and hoof found the haptic displays. The A.I hologram sitting idly between them sprang to life, ready for her orders. Nodding to each other, griffon and pony flared the reaction control system, turning the ship to face just one of many faraway stars that lay waiting for their arrival.
"Warp drive fully charged and ready for activation. Green to go on first waypoint."
A new haptic screen appeared on both Dash and Gilda's interfaces. It was a simple authorization protocol - both pilots, plus at least one pony in the crew section, needed to authorize the jump within seconds of each other. There was also a large abort button that deactivated the warp ring and applied full power to its containment fields.
Dash pressed her button, as did Gilda. A second later, Spitfire authorized the jump and the window disappeared.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, a loud, wailing siren sounded as the warp ring monitor's power bar stretched upwards towards terminal height. Flickers of energy formed outside the boxy ship, shimmering with bright light. In an instant, it became a solid white dome.
Silence. True silence. No sound found its way into the ship. There was nothing.
Then, Dash felt an insurmountable pain in her gut as the warp field fully came into effect. There was a reason why they called it "punch". It was a literal punch in the gut.
Dash turned her head left and saw Gilda straining to keep out the pain.
Down on Equestria, all of Central's massive tracking satellites were locked onto the glowing anomaly that was the Kestrel. The ponies gathered there held their breath as the temporary star in the sky suddenly flew forward as if shot from a gun.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, the nation of Equestria and all nations around the globe began cheering in a simultaneous round of applause.
