As I made my way to the bridge I looked back on Equus far below, I would miss it, but not that much. I looked ahead of me again and noticed the warning sign that meant I'd be entering a portion of the ship with magic gravity, I adjusted my stance and walked past the gravity gradient. The ship was only partially outfitted with gravity plating to save power and to reduce cost, the gradient zones were only low gravity to allow one to walk between the zero gee and 1 gee zones without being violently slammed into the floor. I walked into the bridge proper, it sat on top of the ship and offset to the left, just behind me were 2 of the 3 SSWD nacelles, the third was on the bottom of the ship, each was about one third of the ship's length, to my right was the massive antenna cluster, ahead was the majority of the ship's livable space and aft was the fuel and main thrusters, all of it in could see out of the massive panoramic window of the bridge. I sat down in the pilot's seat and ran through the startup procedure; I activated the main magic fusion reactor and waited for it to spool up, watched the readout of the reactor until it displayed ready, retracted the solar panels that provided standby power and turned the rest of the ship's systems on, I heard whirring, clicking, and the sound of magic charging as the ship came to life with lights and sounds. I checked everything over, it all seemed normal so I started the undocking procedure.

On the news feed they were transmitting to me I could see the ship from a station camera as I pulsed the RCS to move away from the station, on the news I saw none other than Princess Luna standing on a podium giving a quick speech about how the ship was revolutionary, among other things, and a video feed of the ship, the crowd was smaller than the official launch of the Dawn, but it was still pretty large, I watched Luna do her thing for a couple seconds before I saw that the ship had gotten to a safe distance, I muted the news broadcast and activated the 3 plasma engines on the aft of the ship, i looked aft just in time to see the bright red glow of the engines running, I deployed the radiators soon after, they swung open and started to glow a deep red, I gave the ship more throttle and I saw the station move away as I accelerated.

Once I was clear of the station I throttled back and left the seat so I could get settled into the ship, I only had 4 hours to get used to the ship and get settled in before I would have to depart, from then on I would he free, due to the constraints on law enforcement, I was given the opportunity to govern myself in terms of how I do things, the only caveat was that I still had a mission to fufill. I walked to the back of the bridge toward a small door, behind it was the ship's android, it would as a helper and companion to me on my voyage, the Dawn had one made to look like Celestia installed a few weeks ago, the Selena had one that resembled Luna, each Android was an amalgam of golem magic and technology, it produced a suprisingly lifelike result, so much so, that any outside observer would probably not recognise it as a machine at first glance, the android also had an artificial conciousness, it was magically created and given a personality after the pilot was chosen, this allowed them to make the android's personality compatible with my own to improve efficiency, it essentially was the heart and soul of the ship, It had been programmed to respond to the name Selena or Luna. I looked through the little window inset into the door, I saw an indigo face silently sleeping behind it, I would activate it once I was under way. I walked back into the zero gee zone and went down to the main portion of the ship via minimallistic elevator, aka a plate to put one hoof on and a handle to hold, once at the bottom I looked for my room,

once I found it at the end of the hall I entered and strapped my sleeping bag to the wall, the room had gravity plating but it wasn't on, I left my room again and flapped down the hall toward the kitchen,

Using wings in spacewas more or less like swimming. I got to the kitchen and grabbed a granola bar for later, I shoved off back down the hall to the lab med bay combo. Once there I oriented to the gravity and looked over all of the supplies, everything seemed to be fine, I went into the med bay and checked one last time, after I'd satisfied myself with the visual inspection I went back to my room for a quick video chat with a school in Ponyville, then I'd be off into the vast inky darkness ahead.

I swung around the door frame and floated myself in front of a computer velcroed to the desk, I opened the program and waited for the connection to patch in.

"Hello down there!" I said with a cheesy grin as I saw the class appear on the screen.

"Hello Commander, I am Miss Cheerilee and this is my class, we just wanted to ask you some questions and wish you a safe journey,"

"Ok, what questions can I answer for ya? Ask away," I immediately saw the entire class raise their hands.

"Uhh, ok, umm yyou....the orange one with the pink hair, what's your name?"

"I'm scootaloo, and I'd like to ask how fast your spaceship goes!, Is it faster than Rainbow Dash?" she jumped up and down while I thought it over.

"Uhhm, I'm not sure how to explain how fast it is... , umm let me put it into perspective for you, if you shine a light at something it seems to instantly get illuminated, that's because light travels at some odd three hundred thousand kilometers per SECOND, so fast that we can't tell if it's instant or not, so now imagine the light and how fast it can go, my spaceship can go thousands of times faster by litterally bending the fabric of spacetime and riding it like a wave in an ocean, pretty crazy right?"

"Woooooow," the class said in in unison as the hands went up again

"Uhh you, the yellow one, you look like you're gonna have a heart attack?"

"Whut's yer cutie mark?" she asked in her honestly adorable country accent.

"Uhhh, kind of an odd question but I'll roll with it, Its a satellite-ish thing in space, here's a picture of it," I pointed to a patch on my jumpsuit and put it a bit closer to the camera."

"Waauuuu," she sat down again and I called on the next one.

"The brown and white one, what'cha askin?"

"How do you become an astronaut?" simple enough.

"Yep, kinda expected that, I ain't gonna sugar coat it and say that ya just have to believe in yourself to do it and bla bla bla, No, I busted my butt off, it ain't easy, and requires some blood sweat and tears, but I think it's worth it, so if ya want to do it then go for it, just don't say I didn't warn ya,"

"Thank you sir!" he had a thick trottingham accent that was pretty damn cute.

"Anything else?, uhh you, white and pink"

"How do you get by without anyone else?"

"Well it's just a matter of accepting it I guess, Its also part of an experiment on extreme isolation." I looked at my watch, "Sorry but I've got to go, I need to get this thing on its way out there, anyway, see ya later!"

"Goodbye Commander!" they all said it in unison as school fillies and Colts do.

I shut off the laptop and headed to the bridge. I strapped in and activated the interstellar guidance systems and input the parameters for the trajectory and distance, the ship swung itself around and carefully aligned on some unseen line to the target, in this case the edge of the system. I pressed comms and stated my intentions,

"This is the ESS Selena, I am departing, confirm?"

"Selena this is Canterlot, you are clear, safe travels commander."

"Copy, I'll see ya in a few years!" I pushed the drive arming button and pushed the throttle forward to one of the lower settings, I was the nacelles light up a bright swirling blue and white, the space around the ship distorted and I flashed to warp, the images of things outside the ship had little rainbow trails from the distorting light, I watched my home recede behind me as I barreled along at 10 Times the speed of light out of the solar system.

Author's Note

The first few chapters are done-ish, they will be posted soon enough.