Faster Than Light

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.