Friendship One

Chapters

A Dying Giant
Standing Firm
Test Flight
Persuasion
Race Against Time
The Truth
Aftermath
There And Back Again
Ticking Clock, Smoking Gun
Fight Or Flight
Incoming, Outgoing
Departure
One Final Sunrise
The Last Rocket

A Dying Giant

Iron, uranium, copper, zinc, thorium, magic ore and gems, nickel, cadmium. Plentiful fresh water, sunlight for solar power, wind and water for clean energy, masses of healthy farmland, technology, knowledge, wisdom, healthcare, education, security. Equis had everything a rapidly advancing civilization could possibly need to grow and thrive.

Everything except time.

The astronomers hadn't even noticed it. It was impossible; after all, the star in question was light years from the planet, ten to be precise, a nice and conveniently rounded number, easy for the public to remember. To remember exactly how far away death was from consuming them all.

It was the Princess of the Sun herself who had sensed the coming end. Attuned not just to her star, but through her divine magic, to every star in all the galaxies of the incomprehensibly vast universe, she could sense changes and problems. She was connected to every white dwarf, every red giant, every neutron star, at a fundamental level, like a particle linked and entangled at a quantum level with another, despite being separated by great distances (a concept that the astrophysicists had been eagerly studying in the preceding years, in the hope of being able to devise some means of interstellar communication). She could hear their solar heartbeats, hear the birthing pains of newly forming suns, the anguished cries of a dying giant.

Celestia knew something was amiss with the star known to Equestrian science as Sigma-225b. She had known it long before astronomy as a science was even conceived of, for the universe and the stars that dwelled within it operated on an almost incalculably vast timescale. The lifespan of ponykind, and even of their Alicorn rulers, was but a blip, a minuscule drop in an almost infinite river of time, compared to how long it took stars to form and grow. Sigma-225b had, for tens of thousands of years, been a sickly old thing, at the very end of its billion-year journey through the void which had seen it orbiting the galactic centre and slowly burning out all of its hydrogen fuel. Once that was exhausted, it had begun to consume helium.

That, in itself, was of no concern. The red giant was content to use up its reserves, for it had no other choice. It was a natural process in the life cycle of stars, happening in millions of places across the universe all at once. Sigma-225b's expansion into a supergiant had been the next evolutionary step, for as the star's core was compressed to greater and greater densities and temperatures, the outer layers expanded like a balloon, sucking in the extra heat being generated deep within the star. Once the helium was exhausted, the desperate star began to fuse anything it could find buried within its complex chemical makeup- carbon, beryllium, lithium, magnesium- to keep itself going.

But by then, Sigma-225b was on life support, burning up the very last of its precious fuel, for once it fused everything to iron, an element that required more energy to fuse than it would create in the process, there was nothing more that could be done. The star, with a diameter almost a thousand times that of Celestia's sun, was on the brink of death, unable to sustain itself, like a pony lost in a blizzard, forced to expend more calories searching for food than he could gain from consuming it. The end was inevitable, and had been for thousands of years. That was of no concern either.

Celestia had been aware of Sigma-225b's condition, and spared it no thought, just an unconscious knowledge deep in her mind, like that which concerned so many other billions of stars. The astrophysicists of Equestria were aware of its impending demise, too, for they studied the star in some depth as it was the closest red supergiant to Equis and of considerable interest as a result. They knew it was close to stellar death. But it was not the death of Sigma-225b which worried her. It was the manner in which it had chosen to die.

Devoid of fuel, burning the heaviest elements it could create, Sigma-225b's core grew denser and denser, until the pressures of gravity squeezing and squeezing upon it could no longer be balanced by the natural outward push of the degenerate matter at the heart of the star, which had always, up to now, been a natural quantum effect, keeping the star in relative equilibrium. Now, however, gravity was winning, crushing and crushing, choking the life out of the star until finally, one day, a sunny mid-week morning in Equestria, at a little past eleven, Sigma-225b collapsed in on itself completely.

Being ten light years from Equis, there was no way for astronomers to record the impossibly brilliant supernova that followed. It would take ten years for the light to reach their instruments, but when it did, ponies in the streets at night would theoretically be able to see it, up there among the billions of pinpricks in the heavens, burning brighter than the rest of the galaxy combined, more luminosity, more energy than almost anything else in the sky. The collapsing star threw off its gaseous shell in a monstrous explosion that produced more energy in a few seconds than Celestia's sun burned in an entire year. Despite the cataclysmic release of raw power, it was not enough to completely discard all of the former sun's mass. Many of the shattered remnants of matter began to fall back toward the core, drawn by the immense gravitational pull of what was rapidly imploding from a ball of extremely dense iron into a rip in the very fabric of space itself.

The collapsing core broke through the skein of reality, becoming so impossibly dense that it bent space around it, twisted it like a coiled spring or knotted rope, until it snapped, tearing a gash in existence, a place where the laws of science ceased to have any meaning, where gravity was so strong that time itself no longer functioned. Into this black hole fell the stellar remnants of Sigma-225b, and when they did so, they unleashed something terrible.

Through processes not entirely understood by pony science, the falling matter was hurled outward, annihilated by contact with the singularity and turned into a mighty burst of energy that covered the entire spectrum; microwaves, x-rays, visible light, and, in the largest quantities of all, gamma rays. Like a giant shotgun blast, the dead star fired a huge conical beam of radiation along its axis of rotation, and like the backblast from a rocket launcher, another answering jet was hurled in the opposite direction at the same time, blasting through the shattered remains of the outer layers of the star and heating the discarded gases until they fluoresced into a searingly brilliant light. This flash of energy and luminosity dwarfed even the supernova which had preceded it; it burned a hundred times brighter, and it cast off as much energy in its brief duration as Celestia's sun would produce during the entirety of its existence. Sigma-225b was no longer a star. It was a single point in space where physics broke down, and it was two gigantic beams of deadly radiation blasted outward at the speed of light.

And one of those beams was heading directly for Equis.

Standing Firm

The servants who found Celestia that fateful morning had found a pale and haggard Princess, as if she were a shell of herself, something they had never seen before. Something nopony had seen before. She told them in a shaky voice to rouse the Astronomer-Royal, the head of the Equestrian Space Exploration Agency, her military chief of staff, and the chancellor of the Royal Academy of Science. Exchanging concerned looks, the servants had hurried away to enact her commands, summoning the relevant ponies to the palace.

There, in no uncertain terms, she had explained to them what had just happened. There was not a shred of doubt in their minds that she was correct; they were loyal and devout followers of the royal sisters, and knew that Celestia's word was true. The news she bore was bad. Extremely bad. Now the nervous looks were not from mere maidservants, but from stallions and mares of science and security.

The death of Sigma-225b had inadvertently signed the death warrants for every living creature on Equis. The blast of radiation, known to science as a gamma ray burst, was hurtling through the void toward the planet. If not for their divine Princess, ponykind would have had no knowledge of the distant event, no chance to prepare. Not that there was a huge amount that could be done, in any case. The radiation was so powerful that it would simply fry Equis, like holding a chocolate bar directly in front of a military radar dish, or stepping into the core of a nuclear reactor. Bathing the planet in so much energy would strip away the atmosphere, boil the oceans, and kill everything. Pony, Griffon, Zebra, Changeling, rabbit and fly and grass and tree. Everything would be wiped out. That was what the science said about this theoretical event. Except now it was not so theoretical any longer.

There was much discussion in the palace that day. Theories were proposed, then shot down. Ideas came to naught. The great minds of Equestria could offer no solution to their plight. The planet could not be moved out of the way. None of the Princesses had direct control over it the way they did over the moon and sun, and no amount of magic was enough to shift the planet from its orbit- a move which could bring its own calamaties even if it had succeeded- without a similar deep and magical connection as that which enabled Luna to move the moon and Celestia the sun. Even if every unicorn alive lent their utmost efforts to it, an attempt to use conventional, non-Alicorn magic to move the planet was also doomed to fail simply due to its mass. The Moon, despite Luna's influence over it, could not be moved to act as a shield, for it was simply not large enough to obscure the planet from the deadly bath of radiation.

Moving the sun was also not an option. Not only would it destabilise Equis's orbit and possibly cast it out into deep space, or perhaps tear the planet apart from tidal forces or burn away the atmosphere just as successfully as the gamma rays would, there was no true scientific consensus over what exactly would happen when the sun was struck by the interstellar blast. If any scientists survived the end of the world, they might be able to find out, because the gamma ray burst was going to affect not just the planet, but the entire solar system and its immediate environs. The barrel of this cosmic shotgun was many, many trillions of miles wide. This was not a laser-focused beam aimed at Equis, but a great swathe of irradiated and deadly buckshot flying through the void.

With those magical options dismissed, talk turned to science for salvation, but blanks were drawn there as well. There was no action-movie cliche to be found. The Air & Space Corps immediately made sure everypony in the know understood they could do absolutely nothing with their nuclear weapons, because far too often politicians tried to reach immediately for whatever metaphorical big red button lay within reach in times of crisis. Could a shield be erected? Science said no. Any shield strong enough to withstand the gamma ray burst would likely take millennia to construct and require all of Equis's natural resources, for it would have to surround the entire planet- at this stage, nopony could be sure where in the planet's orbit they would be when the blast struck, and thus which hemisphere was likely to take the brunt of the impact. Other options were considered- deflecting the GRB around the planet somehow like the bow wave of a ship, radiation shielding, seeding the atmosphere with ionized particles of some kind to dampen the effects. All were dismissed. Impractical. Impossible. Too time-consuming, too late.

The long meeting dragged into the night, and ended with despondent, downcast ponies trotting out of the palace, looking up at the clear, dark sky with trepidation. Somewhere out there among the stars, death was coming for them all.

The next debate was one for Celestia and Luna to shoulder themselves; the issue of truth. Should the world be told about their fate? Or should it be kept silent until much closer to the catastrophe, perhaps a year, six months, one week from impact? As rulers, the decision was ultimately theirs to make. The problems were obvious on both sides. Keep it quiet, and ponies would have no time to prepare, no time to say goodbye, to make their peace with the world and with themselves. Reveal the truth too early, and there would be panic, riots, uprisings. Probably at least one coup attempt against the Princesses and their government, advisors pointed out. It would not take much for other races, their nationalistic lust kept suborned by the sheer strength of Equestrian might, to find that spark again and demand their independence, a chance to take their own measures against the doomsday scenario which had been outlined to the planet. Wars had certainly started over less dramatic things than the end of the world, after all, and would it not be the ultimate irony if the world were to destroy itself through nuclear conflict, leaving a barren wasteland for the gamma rays to roll over when they finally arrived, their job already done for them by locally-sourced radiation instead?

"We must tell them, sister," Luna had sighed one evening, as the two Alicorns stood upon a high balcony, overlooking Canterlot, the pale neon glow of the city, the darkness of the mountain peaks. A siren wailed out as blue and red flashing lights edged their way through the traffic down below. A jet rumbled through the skies overhead, carrying ponies on business or on vacation.

"We must, but we cannot," Celestia had replied. "Not yet. There is too much at stake. Everything is at stake."

"Then if not now, when?"

"When we know what we can do about the problem," Celestia replied.

"But sister, there is no solution. Is there?" Luna questioned. "Science, magic...it has all failed us. We have failed our subjects."

"Luna...we have not failed them. This is not something we could have ever prevented," Celestia put a hoof upon her sister's shoulder. "It is beyond our power."

"And how will our subjects view us when they learn of that?" Luna lamented. "That some things are outside of our control?"

"They already know this, dear sister," Celestia answered. "Everfree magic, Changelings, Discord. All of those things, we could not and still cannot control. Contain? Yes. Defeat? Sometimes. But we cannot control them. We do not rule this universe, only this planet."

"Then what are we to do?" Luna's eyes brimmed with tears. "How can we save them? Everypony puts their trust in us, sister Their love and faith and devotion, and we...at the end of it all, we're going to let them down..."

Celestia pulled her into a warm embrace. "Hush, Luna...if this is how things must be, then it is how they will be. Our subjects trust us not because we have all the answers to every problem, but because we hold true to our beliefs, because we are strong, and because we never stop fighting for them. That is what we have done our whole lives, isn't it, sister? Fought to protect our subjects?"

Luna nodded.

"And that is what we will do, right up until the end, whenever that finally comes," Celestia assured her. "We will not simply give up. We will do anything we can to protect them, no matter what happens."

Luna nodded again. "Yes...yes, of course. You are right...but...what can we do? There is no solution."

"There may be a chance. A small chance, but a chance nonetheless. If we can stand as one, with Cadence, with Twilight, with Starswirl and Shining Armour and as many other unicorns as we can summon, then on the day of reckoning, we might just be able to hold the tide at bay with magic."

"A shield?" Luna blinked away her tears. "But the scientists said it was impossible..."

"Impossible for science, yes. But not necessarily for magic," Celestia replied, releasing her sister from her embrace. "When it comes, we will stand firm and try. All we can do is try. Perhaps our efforts will be wasted, but at least we can try. And if we fail, our subjects will know that we did everything we could to protect them instead of running away."

"There is nowhere to run to, sister," Luna pointed out. "The whole planet..."

"I know." Celestia looked up at the sky, the infinite void of space, stretching across an incomprehensibly vast distance to the very edge of reality. "But there are other planets out there."

Test Flight

The Equestrian Space Exploration Agency, or ESEA, had been established a hundred years earlier to put ponies into orbit. That simple mission had long since been accomplished, with Saddle Spur becoming the first Equinaut with his thirty-minute suborbital journey, and Ruby Star becoming the first pony in orbit when she made two complete revolutions around the planet in her tiny, cramped capsule. Hundreds of other Equinauts had followed since, in capsules, on board space stations, and even visiting the rocky surface of Luna's moon and establishing a base there, near to where the Princess herself had been banished and imprisoned.

It was a symbolic location, and Luna had been awarded honorary Equinaut's wings for technically being the first pony to leave the planet, albeit not by technological means. That moon base was now home to five hundred ponies, living their working lives near to where she had spent so long, only able to breathe on the airless rock thanks to her Alicorn physiology and magic. Ordinary ponies would die an agonising death rather rapidly on the surface if not for their spacesuits. There were, however, other bodies in the galaxy besides Equis and her moon.

Colonisation missions were something mostly from science fiction, though the ESEA certainly had theoretical plans on the drawing board. Now, however, the timeframe was being rather rapidly advanced. By royal decree, the ESEA was to plan, organise and map out a mission which would carry ponies beyond the stars, out of the solar system, and out of harm's way, outside of the line of fire of the gamma ray burst.

The problems began almost immediately.

It was impossible, the technicians cried. It can't be done with modern technology. That much was immediately apparent. The director of the ESEA informed Celestia of this fact himself in person.

"Your Highness, though a noble endeavour it would be, I fear that it is simply not something we are capable of accomplishing in the timeframe we have," he told her. "You see, even if we were able to launch today, it is questionable whether we could get a space vessel to travel far enough to escape the blast. The highest speed ever attained by one of our deep-space probes is approximately one-hundred and fifty thousand miles per hour, and..."

"I understand the technical difficulties, Director, but nevertheless, it must and will be done," Celestia had replied.

"But Your Highness...rockets and even ion drives cannot..."

"You will not be using ion drives," Celestia informed him, much to his surprise. "You will be using magic."

And so the sketched theoretical designs for interstellar craft, with their huge hydrogen ram-scoops or frictionless drives, were hastily re-sketched to have no engine at all. Not for the cruise phase of the mission, at least, the time when the ship would be travelling between solar systems, through the inky void of space. A new design was presented to the director, who shook his head in disbelief that such a thing could ever work, but showed it to Celestia anyway.

"Should we not fit ion drives as well, Your Highness? In case of any...unforeseen issues?" he had asked, for magic had never been used to power anything larger or more complex than a train. No aircraft or spacecraft had ever been produced that would rely on magic for propulsion. It was not even known if magic was definitively a product of pure biology, or whether it was, in some way, tied to Equis itself, and if leaving the planet too far behind might result in a kind of 'loss of signal' as a unicorn moved too far from whatever it was that gave them their magical prowess. The thought of a ship becoming stranded in the void was one that filled the director with concern, but then ion drives would be of little use in such an event either, as although they could push the ship to a top speed of perhaps two-hundred-thousand miles per hour, it would still have been billions or trillions of miles from its destination planet, the identification of which astronomers were working feverishly on even as he spoke to the Princess.

"If you deem it necessary," Celestia had nodded loftily from her throne. "You are, after all, the ones in charge of building the thing."

"If I may..." he paused. "Your Highness...this, ah...venture...I must tell you categorically that we have absolutely no idea if it will work," he stated bluntly. "We do not know if magic can power a ship in space, or if it might cease to be effective at a certain distance from Equis, or how tiring such a thing might be upon the crew...nor do we know how fast it might be able to push the ship. You must understand...ah, as I'm sure you do..." he corrected himself, given her knowledge of stars that existed not just close to home, but also billions of light-years away, "that the distances involved in this mission will be vast. So vast as to be essentially meaningless to most ponies. An impossibility to visualise. Even our fastest shuttles and probes today would take centuries at a minimum to reach another planet. Our nearest neighbouring star system is some two and a half light-years away, and we already know that none of its three planets are inhabitable..."

"That is why you will test the idea first, Director," Celestia informed him. "A short journey, perhaps from Equis to the moon. Whatever you and your staff deem to be safest. Consider it a proof of concept flight. Do not tell anypony why you are testing it, of course, but..."

"Ah...yes, about that issue, Your Highness..."

"You believe your staff should know the true purpose behind their mission?"

"Yes, Your Highness. And...also no, Your Highness. In truth I am not sure, but I will of course do as you instruct me," he assured her. "I fear that the truth might shake them...some might resign, some might spill the story to the media...some might even take more drastic action."

"Such as?"

"Suicide, sabotage...my team in Interstellar Operations are the best you will ever hope to find, Your Highness. I would hate to lose even one of them for any reason. But on the other hoof, knowing the importance of their task might motivate them to greater heights...overcome any doubts, push them into late nights and extra meetings and more effort all around. And that might be critical, given the timeframe we have...ten years to design, build and test an interstellar craft is...really not something I had ever envisaged as being realistic. I still don't."

"You have your doubts, then? About the success of this project?"

"Very much so, Your Highness," he nodded. It is one thing to draw up an outline of a plan for some unspecified date in the future when funds become available But now that those funds are available...I am not sure how to proceed."

"Proceed as you would with any other project," Celestia suggested. "Only faster."

Six months later, with the news of doom still contained among the inner circles of government and the relevant agencies and the veil of blissful ignorance still draped across the general public like a comforting blanket of snow, a shuttle, one of the routine transports that carried a dozen or so ponies and not-insignificant quantities of cargo between Equis, the three space stations orbiting it, and the moonbase, was launched from the equatorial launch complex near New Zebrica. This mission carried seven Equinauts, all unicorns, thus marking an incidental first, the only mission with a multi-pony crew to consist entirely of unicorns to ever be launched. Pegasi were the preferred candidates for spaceflight, especially in the early days, as they were the ones who had the most experience in operating fast combat aircraft, once considered a vital prerequisite to being employed as an Equinaut. That fact in turn had come about because Pegasi were built for flight, for fast turns and g-forces, rapid acceleration and deceleration. Their lungs could cope better with thin atmosphere, their wings enable them to guide themselves around a zero-gravity environment inside a spacecraft more easily than clumsily grasping at railings by hoof. Their physiology, it had always been noted, was the most suitable for adaptation to space travel. Earth ponies with their robust and strong musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems were next on the list, able to cope very well with the rigours of launch and splashdown and the effects of long-term spaceflight such as loss of bone density.

Bottom of the pile came unicorns. They were physically weaker than the other pony races, less well suited for the stresses of combat or high-speed flight. What they lacked in strength, however, the unicorns did make up with magic, which allowed them to perform several tasks at once during a mission, or operate switches from across a cockpit without moving, or even aid in the safety of a spacecraft. One capsule and both its crew were saved by magic, projecting a magical barrier as a replacement heatshield when the real thing had been damaged by a micrometeorite strike. Magic also gave unicorns great dexterity for complex tasks such as maintenance, spacewalks and conducting scientific experiments, which was why they tended to feature more heavily on more recent crews compared to earlier ones, when the rigours of spaceflight were more thoroughly understood, the risks were lower, and the mission was more about science or construction than it was about simply getting ponies into orbit and back home again.

This mission was all about magic, an odd dichotomy given the high-technology used to put the ponies in space, blazing rockets and thundering boosters carrying the shuttle to orbit. From there, instead of using its main engines as normal, the crew would attempt to use magic to propel them into lunar orbit. It worked surprisingly well, until it didn't.

Three of the unicorns blazed beams of magic out of the rear of the shuttle, bypassing its metal and composite skin, and emitting a stream of magic particles in a similar fashion to how an ion drive worked. The shuttle moved, and moved, and moved faster and faster until they were at the same speed that it would have achieved using its main rocket engines. Two of the other crewponies used similar spurts of magic to rotate the shuttle about its axis instead of the thrusters, flipping it into position for an orbital insertion burn- or rather, not a burn, but another magic deployment. The same three unicorns who had sped the craft up now acted to slow it down. Technically it wasn't even necessary to flip the shuttle, because the unicorns could have simply moved to the front of the craft and used their magic, but it was a traditional part of every mission- the shuttle engines needed to be facing their direction of travel to slow them down again, after all, in every other mission at least.

They were even more necessary this time, but unfortunately it was too late. The unicorns used their magic to slow the craft, but for some unknown reason, deceleration did not seem to be quite as efficient as acceleration had been. They were slowing down, but not fast enough. The engines were ignited, silently blazing in the blackness, but they were too close to the moon by that point. A rapid recalculation was made by mission control, a desperate series of automated radio signals sent to the onboard computer, which engaged in a lightning-fast combination of actions, firing the thrusters automatically, cutting the main engines, then igniting them again, then cutting them again, all in an attempt to orient the shuttle for the inevitable. They were not going to be in orbit, but rather plunging into the moon's gravity well.

The mission had been timed to coincide with the moon's rotation, so that the moonbase and its miles-long runway carved from the regolith would be available in case something went wrong. It had taken a long time to make the runway, flatten the anorthosite and clear away the lunar dust. It had taken even longer to convince the powers-that-be that a runway on an airless moon was even possible. Without an atmosphere, landing shuttles had to rely on their wheel-brakes to slow down. Flaps and spoilers in the wings and the big orange-and-white parachute that blossomed from the base of the tail upon landing back on Equis were entirely useless with no air to act upon them. It would also require a very precise approach, computer-controlled for the most part (like most things in spaceflight) unless something went wrong, because a shuttle could not glide through the air the way it did on Equis, but had to first perform a de-orbit burn, some precise thruster manoeuvres, and a radar-guided long range approach, following an incredibly long and shallow 'cone' that required a satellite in orbit to relay the guidance signal over the horizon, so lengthy was the necessary approach. It also needed a lot of runway. That was why the runway at the moonbase was ten times longer than the runway at New Zebrica, an absurd length of almost twenty-five miles, just to make sure there was enough of an overrun that a shuttle coming in at any speed could still be slowed to a safe halt before it reached the end and rumbled off into the boulders and thick dust of the lunar surface.

The runway was equipped at half a dozen different points with extremely strong and extremely stretchy arresting gear, wires strung across the runway like the deck of an aircraft carrier. A hook at the rear of the shuttle would catch these wires and use them to bleed off speed until the computer released the hook, ready to catch the next wire and slow down some more, and so on until they finally came to a halt. There was a very good reason for this unusual setup- namely, a vertically-landing craft would need to carry a vast quantity of propellent for itself in the form of rocket fuel, which would hugely reduce its carrying capacity for cargo or passengers. Building a runway for landings and a mag-ramp for takeoffs was far more economical, though somewhat more dangerous, than tail-landings like the early exploratory rockets, and the only reason the moonbase had been able to be constructed in the first place. The runway had been cleared by drone-robots and the first pony crew with their rover, a little dune-buggy cousin, so that the first shuttle could land with the heavy gear necessary to begin the establishment of a permanent settlement.

None of that mattered this time, because they came in too fast to even orient the ship toward the moonbase at all, despite the best efforts of the flight computer and then the mission commander with his hoof on the joystick. While the ground crews prepared their crash tenders and rescue gear, the shuttle raced in over the empty landscape miles from their landing strip. The ground out here was rocky, all sharp edges and jagged boulders, and not ideal terrain for a landing attempt to say the least, and the results played out exactly as might have been expected. The disadvantage of the horizontal landing option was that the shuttle, not oriented toward the heavens, could not simply engage its engines to blast clear of danger, for that would just drive them across the landscape below at a higher velocity.

Nor were their thrusters powerful enough to push them back into orbit. Once they were below a certain altitude- which they already were- they couldn't even use the thrusters to orient the ship vertically and then engage the engines, because they would not have enough propellent left in the tanks to get back into orbit, which would leave them stranded in a suborbital trajectory until they hit the far side of the moon. Once committed to the landing run- which they had been, by virtue of coming in too fast and too steep to enter into an orbit first- the shuttle had no choice but to execute that landing, preferably on the prepared runway. The crew tried their best to use their magic to get the shuttle into a stable orbit, but it was no use. The time for that had already passed, if it had even been possible at all. They were well inside the moon's gravity well, and accelerating the craft too hard with their magic might send them pinballing off into deep space or slamming into the surface below even harder than they were about to do anyway.

The rocky landscape below was the antithesis of the prepared, smooth strip with its friction-generating regolith which improved braking and its arrester gear. It was essentially impossible to land in such terrain, whether coming in vertically or horizontally, barring a miracle. Unfortunately, the Princesses that the crew worshipped were unable to provide one, and once they ran out of altitude, drawn in inexorably by gravity, the shuttle nosed in to a long crevasse of rocks and boulders. With no air, and thus no oxygen, the shuttle did not burst into flames upon impact, but merely crumpled up like a tin can, bursting open under pressure and venting its internal atmosphere, spilling bodies and equipment out, which went cartwheeling away cartoonishly thanks to the low gravity. Only once the fuel tanks with their liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen were punctured and both products mixed together as though they were inside the engine did the shuttle explode in a spectacular fireball, blazing like a sun upon the surface for only a moment before being snuffed out by the void.

Though it had cost the lives of seven brave Equinauts and a 100-billion-bit spacecraft, the mission, paradoxically, was deemed a success. The concept of magic-powered spaceflight had been proven, at least in principle, and that had been its only real goal. The seven ponies had died to prove the basic bare bones of a concept- a concept that would later be relied upon to save the legacy of an entire species.

Persuasion

Following the first successful failure, two more attempts were made to complete a full space mission using magic power once in orbit. They were both successful, applying the lessons from the first disaster. One applied magic braking much earlier in the mission to successfully enter a stable lunar orbit, while the other, for the sake of completeness, used the engines to slow down in a traditional manner. Safe landings followed at the moonbase, before the shuttle was connected to the mag-ramp and refuelled for the return flight. The mag-ramp used magnetic acceleration to shoot the craft into the heavens on a ballistic trajectory, before it engaged its own engines for an extra boost to orbit. The same principles of magic acceleration were then applied to get both shuttles back to Equis.

While these flights were going on, feverish work was underway on another project, much larger and infinitely more complex, which had come into being mere days after Celestia first learned of the gamma ray burst. This was Project Rebirth.

Some argued the name was too grandiose, too depressing, too prophetic, too religious, not religious enough. It should be Project Alicorn, or Project Salvation, or Project Solaris, or something less provocative and more secretive, like Project X. Everypony who knew of it had their own opinions on the name, but they all had the same fervent, infinite desire to see it success. Project Rebirth would be the saviour of ponykind, or it would be an ignominious and silent failure. There was nothing in between.

In factories with Equestrian government contracts all across the land, mysterious orders began to come in for components. Aluminium, steel, titanium, copper (lots and lots of copper). Producers of rocket fuel were ordered to double their output. The government would pay. Price no object. Subsidies if you needed to expand your production capacity or buy new tools. Microchips galore, circuit boards, oxygen cylinders, carbon dioxide scrubbers, engine parts, radars. The rumours circulated among the business owning community, stock market speculators and investors. Equestria was preparing for something. Something big. It had to be a war.

The only other nation on the planet that was not under the banner of Equestria as a satellite state or ally was the Kingdom of Griffonia, proudly, even fiercely, independent, never bowing to the Sun and Moon even when they were all freed from Discord's chaotic clutches by the Princesses thousands of years ago. Today, Griffonia was a rival power to Equestria in most senses, though their relationship was not hostile so much as merely that between two nations on a roughly equal footing, who kept each other in check. There had not been a war with Griffonia for one hundred and eighty years, and even that had been a border skirmish. With both sides now possessing nuclear weaponry, that status quo seemed unlikely to change any time soon, but now speculators and internet chatter could see no other likely reason for such a big increase in Equestrian government spending on commodities. Everything they wanted was something which would be needed in a war- circuit boards and microchips for smart weaponry, missiles and computers; copper for electrical circuits in tanks, planes and ships; engine parts and radars for obvious reasons. What else could they possibly want them for?

To assuage doubt and forestall any possible moves toward an actual war, shortly after the second shuttle flight went up, Princess Celestia had contacted King Grissom of the Griffons, in a private conference call, to inform him that she had a matter of the utmost importance, and could she meet with him face to face?

The King, intrigued by her tone, agreed, and two days later they had met in the Grand Palace of Griffonstone. There, Celestia had laid out the facts to the King. Everything she knew about what was to come, she relayed to him. There could be no scientific proof offered, save for the fact that astronomers had been keeping watch on Sigma-225b for decades and had seen that it was a star in the late stages of life and a definite candidate for a supernova at some point in the very near future. There was no evidence of any impending catastrophe directed toward Equis. The only proof was Celestia's solemn word, the things she had seen deep within her mind. The things she knew beyond a doubt, but the things nobody else would be able to see until it was too late.

Grissom laughed at her

She pleaded with the King. Combine your resources with ours. Save your species.

He refused, claimed she was trying to be some kind of messianic figure not only to ponies, but now attempting to spread her claims to divinity over other species as well.

"Griffonia will never bow to your absurdities!" he informed her. "A thinly veiled attempt at a power play, Princess, nothing more. Your babble is meaningless. You said it yourself. Science cannot detect this event, not now, not until ten years in the future. Yet you expect me to believe your visions and fall in line behind you?"

"Not behind me, Your Majesty. Beside me. Griffons and ponies, together," Celestia had replied, as the grey-maned old King sat upon his throne with a look of disdain. "We must work together. If we do not, then there will be no salvation for Griffonia, for your kind."

"You speak as though you rule over us already!" he scoffed. "You speak like a false goddess. Well, you are not the goddess of Griffons!"

"But you are their King!" she had cried despairingly. "I am offering you a chance to preserve the lineage and the future of your entire species. We have a plan, that plan is in motion, but if you refuse to take part in it..."

"Plans. Pah! Waste your time and energy on this vision of yours," he waved her away with a dismissive talon. "Act like the seers and so-called wise ones of the past, stumbling in the dark, trying to interpret dreams as reality instead of driving your own path into the future. Griffonia will play no part in whatever charade you are attempting here, Princess. If you are building up your forces for war, be warned that we will match you step for step."

"There will be no war, Your Majesty. Not unless you instigate it," Celestia assured him. "I will offer you one final chance. Equal partners in our project. The only chance you will have of saving your species from extinction."

"Nonsense!" Grissom roared. "Try as you might, you cannot predict the future. You are wasting your time with a fiction, like the wizard who imagined he could fly. Do you know the story? He dreamed of flight, some spell that would carry him aloft without wings. He built a tower, hurled himself from it, chasing that dream. It took his slaves two days to hose the stones where he landed clean of his blood."

With that cautionary tale ringing in her ears, Celestia had departed the palace. Her attempt at diplomacy had failed. If the Griffon Kingdom would not help preserve its own genetic and cultural lineage, then so be it. But she would not let that race, however stubborn and antagonistic they might be, go extinct. If it could not be done through official channels, it would have to be done on the quiet, behind the scenes of Project Rebirth.

The ESEA assembly complex near Baltimare was a vast, sprawling city of warehouses, hangars, administration buildings and rail lines. From here, every space rocket ever launched would be transported, either in pieces or as one whole, to the launch site at New Zebrica. In the past two years, a huge expansion had taken place, with contractors working around the clock to open four new hangar and a new berth at the small port which served it, as well as a number of new outbuildings and workshops. The frequency of launches from New Zebrica had ballooned, from approximately two shuttles per month to two or even three per week. This, naturally, had drawn great interest from locals, space reporters, news commentators and, of course, Griffonian spies. What were the ESEA doing with all those extra flights?

More interestingly, at least to the Griffons, what was going on at Ponyburg Airbase? This was the Equestrian Air & Space Corps' main launch site, out in the western deserts. Here, too, the frequency of rockets ascending to orbit had increased. In addition, while most military launches from Ponyburg took a northern trajectory, toward the pole, for deployment of satellites, most of these flights were arcing away to the southwest, toward an inclined orbit, offset by about 30 degrees from the equator and following a similar trajectory to those from New Zebrica.

Theories abounded, but most space nerds, and the Griffonian Missile Corps, the military formation responsible for nuclear and space operations, agreed, that the Equestrians were building something up there.

The only question was what?

A space station was the first logical answer, but why? The ESEA already operated three, sometimes staffed with all-pony crews, and sometimes with a mixture, including Zebras and even, oddly, Griffons. The one thing Griffonia lacked was a true space programme of its own. They launched satellites, yes, but no crewed mission had ever flown from a Griffon launch pad. Griffons living in Equestria who wanted to go through the training, however, could fly on board an ESEA shuttle or capsule. A dozen had done so, and about fifty Zebras, but the vast majority of Equinauts were ponies. Interestingly enough, there had not been a non-pony Equinaut for the past year. A coincidence? Or something more sinister?

The Griffonian Missile Corps worried that it was not a space station the ESEA was building, but a battle station, an orbital weapons platform beyond the reach of ground-based weaponry, even, potentially, beyond the range of Griffon nuclear missiles, or perhaps equipped with defences to intercept them. Whether the platform was to be used for bombarding ground targets or merely as a sophisticated missile defence system, it would change the balance of power on Equis, for it could allow Equestria to negate the Griffon's nuclear arsenal, either by countering it or by blasting it to ash from orbit. The inclination and positioning of the orbit made the Griffons suspicious, because it was out of reach of the all-seeing eye of their ground-based telescopes, as whatever was up there never crossed into Griffonian territory (Griffonia was a geographically small, compact nation, though very powerful militarily and economically). Indeed it never came anywhere near the border, staying well clear thanks to its canted orbit. It looked very much like the ponies were trying to hide the construction of something that could be a potential weapon or countermeasure, built out of sight and then moved via inclination and velocity changes into a new orbit where it could be brought into action.

The reality was something altogether different. But only a select group of individuals knew anything of the true nature of the project. Something was being built, but it was a tool of survival, not destruction.

Race Against Time

Another six months passed before the Griffons made any formal protest over the alleged construction of a battle station, something which they possessed no proof of. The protest, lodged directly with Canterlot via a telephone link, did not go through the media in the usual way. That meant that Celestia's explanation remained out of public knowledge. For the King's ears only.

She explained that, as only seven years now remained until catastrophe, work was proceeding according to plan on a solution to the issue, and, as she had explained before, Griffonia was most welcome to join with Equestria in providing funding, equipment and personnel to help combat the issue and save their race.

The King demanded proof of what they were building up there, and Celestia granted his request by permitting two members of the Griffonian Missile Corps, mid-ranking but trusted intelligence officers, to be trained as Equinauts and launched into orbit to observe for themselves, up close. They were the first Griffon military members to go to space, though several Griffons living as civilian scientists and engineers in Equestria had, in previous years, been permitted to take a ride and spend a couple of weeks aboard one of the three orbital stations, nicknamed Earth, Pegasus and Unicorn.

The destination of these two intelligence officers, however, was somewhere altogether different.

Blasting off from New Zebrica, the shuttle carried them, two Equestrian Air & Space Corps pilots, and three unicorn science specialists into orbit, on an unusual trajectory, the same trajectory that the Griffon over-the-horizon radars had been able to track and which had piqued their curiosity, heading west with the planetary rotation for fuel efficiency, but staying around the equator rather than pitching to the north or south as flights to the space stations, the moon, or for satellite deployment would often do. The launches from Ponyburg airbase headed to the same general area of space, on a southwesterly trajectory. The two launch sites were clearly related, pursuing the same goal.

Only once they reached orbit could the Griffons see for certain what that goal appeared to be. They peered from the viewports of the shuttle with undisguised curiosity and amazement, for what they were seeing was no space station. It was a vast orbital construction project, like a skyscraper laid on its side, hurtling at seventeen thousand miles per hour through the void two hundred miles above Equis, all scaffolding and pipes and bundles of wires hanging loosely, suspended in the sky.

Upon approaching closer, more details revealed themselves to the eager and confused eyes of the Griffons. It was a true building site, some kind of armature suspended within a metallic grid, like the skeleton of a skyscraper before the outer walls are installed, but with another, smaller skeleton ensconced within it, like a baby in the pouch of one of the marsupials from the southern deserts. Flickering purple lights marked locations where arc-welding was taking place, bonding metal to metal in the pursuit of some unknown goal. A hub of some sort, a bunch of connected modules that looked like any of the other space stations, floated at one end of the great construct, a command centre, presumably, for the whole operation. That was where the shuttle was heading, to a docking port at the end of one spoke, a long cylindrical module with an airlock.

Once aboard, the Griffons were given a short briefing on the particulars of the project, everything that Celestia and the military brass had permitted them to know, enough to inform their king of the basics without revealing too many details. The next day, they were allowed to go on a spacewalk of sorts, riding a small three-pony platform at the end of a robotic arm attached to the station, usually used for cargo deliveries from automated capsules sent up from the planet. The platform carried them close to the patchwork grid of scaffolding, great aluminium girders forming a framework to which Equinauts could attach themselves while working on various aspects of the construction. More welding was going on on the inner frame, suspended by cables and carbon nanotube struts, allowing precision work on all sides of the project. From here, they could notice, there was another small station at the other end of the mile-long structure. That was what all those launches were about, then- building two entirely new space stations and then constructing this- thing- in between them.

And what was this thing?

Their report to the King the following weekend detailed everything they knew, everything they had been told, and everything they could glean from their close encounter. It was, they surmised, entirely true what Celestia had told him. They were trying to build salvation out of carbon fibre, tungsten and aluminium.

Project Rebirth was a grand design to solve an impossible problem. The gamma ray burst was going to wipe out all life on the planet in seven years. Celestia and Luna doubted they could stop it. The scientists knew that science could not stop it. Weapons could not stop it. Ingenuity could not stop it, nor shield the planet from its deadly rays, unless magic could leap to their salvation.

If it could not, then magic would need to be the saviour of ponykind in a different way- by carrying a torch for the entire species into the future, to safe harbour among the stars. Project Rebirth was an interstellar ark, a colony ship that would transport the few lucky chosen survivors of Equis to another place, a far away planet that they could one day call home, where a new Equestria might be formed under the light of a distant star.

Or it would be, if they could build it in time.

Such a vast construction project had scarcely been attempted on the ground before, let alone in outer space. The ship would have to be bigger than any skyscraper, longer than any ocean-going oil tanker or supercarrier. It would have to be a city in the sky, a self-contained ecosystem for however long it would take them to reach another planet capable of supporting life.

That was why the idea had immediately been dismissed by much of the scientific community (those few who knew of its existence, at least). Vague concepts for such things had been drawn up before by theoretical scientists, but most such plans that were more than a mere outline came, paradoxically, not from scientists but from filmmakers and authors of hard science fiction novels, who needed a setting for their 'lone Equinaut wakes up from cold sleep, has alien company' or 'pony-in-a-bottle goes slowly mad from being trapped aboard ship' kinds of stories. The idea of a colony ship was a fascinating one, mostly used in fiction as a kind of analogy to early Equestrian settlers making first contact with other species, such as the Griffons, or sailors discovering distant islands or visiting the poles. Most of those stories were about discovery, about pushing the frontiers of science and equine endurance.

Project Rebirth was about survival.

With current technology, it was essentially impossible for such a scheme to actually work, so distant were even the closest potentially inhabitable planets. The only two ways for a crew to reach one alive were to enact some kind of cryogenic deep-freeze using extremely expensive and unreliable 'stasis pods,' the kind which rich ponies could pay to have their almost-dead bodies entombed in in the hope of future science being able to cure their cancer or dementia, or to use the concept of a 'generation ship,' where the crew would live out their lives on board, give birth to foals, raise them to be the new crew, and so on until the ship arrived.

Both methods would take centuries, if not more, to get anywhere, because the main limitation was speed and propulsion. As the Director of ESEA had explained to the Princess, even ion engines, nuclear pulse propulsion or interstellar hydrogen ramjets, the most advanced designs that could conceivably be built with current technology, would fall far short. It would take a long, long time to drive to the stars with them, and in parallel with that, the technology simply did not exist to build a ship that could transport enough ponies and equipment, and keep them alive, for the length of time required. Ships aged; seals wore out, metal (on the pressurized, oxygenated interior, at least) would corrode, wires would fray, pipes would leak. Micrometeorite impacts could damage the ship from the outside, too. If spare parts for life support- oxygen production plants, carbon dioxide scrubbers, wastewater recycling systems- ran out, everypony would die. If they ran out of fuel, everypony would die. If they ran out of food, or could not produce enough, everypony would die. If they were not adequately shielded against cosmic radiation, everypony would die. If they were too slow to outrun the gamma ray burst, everypony would die.

In short, it did not leave many realistic scenarios where Project Rebirth carried anything to the stars except a giant metallic coffin containing the last pathetic remnants of a once-proud species. That was why, at Celestia's direction, the ESEA had begun research into magic-powered spaceflight with the shuttle tests. Every possible option had to be investigated, and fast. It had taken six months to attempt simple proof-of-concept tests with high-altitude rocket planes within the atmosphere, assign a shuttle, and assemble and train an all-unicorn crew.

Even before that concept was proven, Project Rebirth itself had begun, with the first flights into orbit carrying modules for the two base-stations that now lay at either end of the huge armature. Time was critical, and the ESEA had the theoretical plans for a working interstellar spaceship- so long as it did not have to support life for millennia, but merely for days, weeks, months, or even a few decades. To build such a ship would take a vast amount of resources, hence the sudden and rapid buying-up of strategic metals, minerals, fuels and equipment by the Equestrian government. It would also take time. Nothing on such a scale had been attempted before. Even the lunar base and the three space stations that already existed would be dwarfed by the complexity and size of this task, but the ponies of the ESEA and the Air & Space Corps jumped to it with a will.

They, like most ponies working on the project, had not been told the truth. They knew they were building a particularly large spaceship, but not the purpose behind it. It was disguised as a mission to carry ponies out of the solar system for the first time, for the sake of exploration and nothing more. They had a base on the moon- this was the next logical step, to go beyond the heliopause of Celestia's sun and bravely turn their faces outward, to look across the ether and to go boldly and bravely into the darkness, just as those explorers who had crossed the seas centuries ago had done.

Once the Griffon King had decided once and for all to have nothing to do with Celestia's delusions, having read and digested the report from his officers, that was how it was explained to the public, and to the amateur astronomical community who had been eagerly feeding the message boards and chatrooms with their backyard telescopic observations for the last two years. Not a battle station, not a covert military platform or orbital missile base, but a colony ship. Fascinating! When Celestia gave the speech announcing the mission, the message boards were filled with a different chatter. A few ponies had predicted it was something of that nature, but the skeletal scaffolding which surrounded the ship had been deliberately obscured with reflective aluminium foil on its underside, to limit how much could be seen of the construction from the ground. This had, naturally, been one of the things which had fuelled the speculation about its covert, black-ops nature in the first place, and its removal once the nature of the work was revealed delighted observers on Equis, who could now watch with great scientific curiosity how the construction of this huge ship was progressing.

The chatter now turned from what was being built, to where was it going to go, how long would it take, and how do I sign up to ride on it? A lot of hopeful ponies now pictured themselves as being among the gallant crew, conveniently ignoring that it had been announced as a joint ESEA-military venture and no mention of civilian colonists had been made in Celestia's announcement. That did not stop ponies dreaming, however. Travelling to distant stars had ignited the imaginations of generations of young foals, and now those dreams seemed closer than ever before.

If those ponies knew the true reason the ship was being assembled, those dreams would have turned to nightmares.

The Truth

With five years gone, and five years still to go, Project Rebirth was making good progress. The superstructure of the ship had been mostly completed. The vessel was to be named Friendship One, a public poll had decided, with the joke answer of Spaceballs, a puerile visual pun based on the two large and rotund oxygen storage tanks and their generating equipment located partway along the ship, mercifully only coming in fourth place. Now it had to be fitted out, loaded up with all the equipment, systems, wiring, plumbing and power that it would need on its journey.

That was a huge task in and of itself and would take years, but the basic framework, at least, was in place. Training for the crew had begun, preliminary steps, mostly classroom instruction for Equinauts. Every member of the Equinaut corps, both military and civilian, was being given extra training and refresher courses on extra-vehicular activities, radiation shielding, space medicine, orbital mechanics. There was no guarantee all of them would be chosen to actually board Friendship One and be part of the crew, but it fostered healthy competition between them. None of them knew the reality behind the mission yet.

That would change, however, with the hardest speech of Celestia's life.

An office, Canterlot Palace. Celestia's personal study, with a fine mahogany desk, now sporting an array of microphones from a dozen broadcasters. A similar number of news cameras were trained upon its smooth, polished surface, feeding the image live to every station and every network, in Equestria and beyond. The Pony News Network, Canterlot Broadcasting Company, National Pony News, Zebrica TV, Griffonian State Television. Over the airwaves too; Radio Free Zebrica, Equis Global Radio, Ponybeat. Every local station and network affiliate carried the broadcast. The armed forces radio and tv net carried it. It was broadcast for free on every internet streaming and video hosting site. The image of the empty desk was projected on huge neon billboards in Manehattan, and the sound was played over loudspeaker systems in airports and rail stations. A signal was even beamed to the moon so that the Equinauts on the lunar base could listen and watch, albeit with a second or so lag due to the distance.

Tonight at 8pm Canterlot Time, Her Royal Highness Princess Celestia will make a very important announcement. Everypony is urged to tune in via tv, radio, or internet, the message had read, sent to every international broadcaster and every pokey little small-town outback radio station. This message is of great consequence and concerns every citizen of Equestria and every citizen of Equis. Please watch or listen, wherever you may be, whether at home or at work. Employers are urged to temporarily close their businesses during the duration of this announcement so that everypony may hear it.

Billions of ponies, Zebras, and even a few Griffons listened in, watching the empty desk and waiting. What could be this important? Was she going to declare war on Griffonia? Had aliens come to invade? Was she going to abdicate?

At eight o'clock on the dot, the cameras briefly cut to a shot of the Princess trotting into the office with a stoic expression, her ethereal mane and tail gently blowing in an invisible breeze. She wore her full regalia, crown included, and moved to sit behind the desk, her magenta eyes boring into the camera lenses and into the hearts of every member of her captive audience.

"My loyal subjects," she began. "Our friends, and our neighbours. Our antagonists, our competitors. Every citizen of Equis. Today, I speak to every single one of you on this planet."

The cameras remained firmly rooted on her, reporters keeping silent behind them, microphones and recorders in hand, notepads at the ready to scribble down relevant questions as she talked.

"I am speaking to you all because what I have to say this evening concerns you all," Celestia continued. "It will affect every creature. What I am about to reveal to you has been kept from you for some time. For that, I offer my apologies, but I also ask for your understanding. What I am going to say will shock you. It will frighten you. It was important that this information was released in a timely fashion, when it was appropriate to do so, in a controlled and official way. This is that time."

A few of the reporters exchanged glances with each other as they waited for her to continue. The Princess took a few moments, pausing the teleprompter with her magic, an almost invisible touch and the tiniest quantum of light from her horn. Once she let it resume, she continued speaking.

"Five years ago, a star in a distant solar system, named Sigma-225b, exploded. In scientific terms, it underwent a supernova, collapsing in on itself to form a black hole. That explosion and collapse also triggered something. Something vast and powerful. Scientists know it as a gamma ray burst, an enormous blast of radiation more powerful than almost anything else in the known universe. We detect, on average, one of these bursts every two days. They occur in distant galaxies and have taken aeons to reach us. That usually renders them harmless, as they will disperse over distance and weaken, much as a sound can be extremely loud when the source is nearby, but almost imperceptibly weak if it is far away. Due to the speed at which the gamma ray burst travels, when one is directed at Equis, we cannot normally detect it until it reaches us. Due to my unique relationship with the sun and stars, however, I am able to feel and sense what is happening in very distant places at the moment it occurs, rather than when the light reaches us. That is how I am able to inform you of these facts today."

Even ponies without scientific interests were listening intently now, all across Equestria.

"Sigma-225b was ten light years away from Equis," Celestia continued on, her voice measured, her pacing perfect as always, despite the gravity of the words she was about to utter. "That means the radiation, travelling at the speed of light, has been travelling for five years already. It means it has another five years until it reaches Equis. And, my loyal subjects, everyone watching and listening..."

She paused, just for a second, though for emphasis or momentary fear, none could say.

"It is my grave duty to inform you all that Equis is directly in the path of this gamma ray burst. Our planet will be struck by it in exactly five years' time. I must tell you that there is nothing we can do to prevent this from happening. Physics tells us that, once this gamma ray burst has occurred, it cannot be reversed, cannot be deviated from its path, cannot be stopped. Our scientists have been working day and night on this issue for five years. They cannot see any possibility of protecting Equis from the impacts this radiation will have."

A slight ripple ran through the reporters, disconcertingly audible to the billions glued to their screens or radio sets.

"I must inform you all of the reality we now face," Celestia ignored the disquiet in the back of her office and carried on. "The gamma ray burst, one of the most powerful phenomena known to science, will have profound effects upon our world. Life...life as we know it will most likely no longer be possible upon the planet's surface."

There were gasps from behind the cameras now, and the furious scribblings of a dozen or so dedicated journalists penning follow-up questions. The rest had gone slackly silent, staring at the Princess disbelievingly.

"I will put this as bluntly as I can, so that there is no misunderstanding," Celestia continued. "This will be an extinction-level event. It will mean the end of Equestria, the end of Zebrica, the end of Griffonia. It will mean the end of civilization, and there is a high chance it will mean the end of our species."

More gasps and a few mutterings of panic behind the cameras. Almost the entire world was silent and still as they listened to the Princess.

"There is nothing that can be done to prevent this from happening, but I want you to know that we are already making what preparations we can. Underground bunker complexes are already being dug. They have, until now, been disguised as military installations, but they will become civilian refuges in due time. Friendship One, many of you will know, is a space mission currently being prepared in orbit. Some of you will have seen its lights twinkling in the night sky, or observed the work through telescopes from your own gardens. This ship, Friendship One, will be the best hope for the survival of the varied races of this planet. It will depart our solar system and carry brave colonists to a new world, far away from our own, where the gamma ray burst will not affect them. That is why we have been building this vessel. It is not merely for exploration, but for the very survival of civilization. I must, however, inform you all that there is no guarantee this mission will succeed. There are great dangers and difficulties, some of which have been overcome already and some of which lie in the future, but our scientists, Equinauts, military personnel and all relevant government departments have been working tirelessly for five years already to make this happen."

The reporters had all gone silent again. Not even a sniffle or a sob disturbed the air of the office, only the ripples from Celestia's voice, spreading out not just through the room, but through the entire world.

"I also want to make this point very clearly," Celestia stressed. "Friendship One is for all sapient species. It is not just for ponies. Though it is ponies who are constructing it, we are constructing it for all of you. Every species will be invited to send representatives to be part of the crew. However," she cautioned, "this is not a lifeboat for everybody. Alas, there will be room aboard her for only a few thousand at most. This is deeply painful to relay to you all, but this is not a means of escape for the general population. We can only send our best and brightest. The details of crew selection will be released at a future date. I merely wish to add one additional note. That is, I shall not be part of the crew of Friendship One."

Now there were gasps and cries of astonishment from the reporters. Surely she could not be serious?

"I will not be boarding the ship, because I will be remaining here, in Canterlot. I will be staying for one very good reason. I believe there is a chance, however small it may be, that magic might be able to protect Equis. I must stress, however, that this is not a reason to relax, to believe everything will be alright, that these other preparations are not necessary. It is a chance, nothing more. An emergency measure, but one which will require Alicorn magic if it is to stand any chance at all. Therefore, myself, Princess Luna, Princess Cadence and Princess Twilight have engaged in frank discussions over these past years. We shall all be remaining here in Canterlot, because we want to try. We want to try to protect you, our subjects, our neighbours, our fellow inhabitants of Equis. We want to try because it is our duty. It is the oath we swore, the truths we uphold, the very purpose of our existence. We want to try because the cost of not trying is astronomically high. If we must give our lives to try and protect you all, then we are willing and ready. If we succeed, then all our preparations will have been an unnecessary effort. But if we fail...if we fail, my loyal subjects, then we will at least be here with you when the time comes."

Somepony, one of the reporters, was now sobbing, a plaintive whimper in the background, a solemn soundtrack to the end of the world.

Aftermath

Celestia's message had ended with a fade to a pale blue screen and a rousing blast of the Equestrian national anthem, Sun And Moon United. In the streets of Equestria, ponies stood in confusion, exchanging deep and knowing glances with complete strangers they had never met before and might never meet again. There was no doubt in the minds of the vast majority of listeners that Celestia spoke the truth- she was their Princess, their protector and their leader, the Sun Goddess they worshipped. She would not lie to them. She would not twist the truth or conceal things from them. She would not have- had not- sugarcoated the reality, however grim it may be, but she would help her subjects accept the future with peace and calm.

This was bad. Very, very bad. But the Princess, it seemed, had a plan. That gave some comfort to the trembling masses who now knew they were faced with their own mortality in a very direct way. Their planet had an expiry date, and so did each of them. Provided they lived long enough, they would die in fire in five years time.

Not everybody listening had the same deep respect for the Princess, however. To the Griffon King, it was just further evidence that Celestia had gone insane, and for whatever reason, her sister and her ministers were going along with it. Something not entirely dissimilar had happened in Griffon history once, long ago. An ancient King, Garland the Great, suffering from dementia or some similar disease, had given increasingly outlandish orders to his generals and ministers- build this enormous wall protecting the kingdom from nothing, arrest that maid because she uttered the name of my predecessor, burn down the town of Griffonham because they were infested with giant worms that only the King could see- as a kind of sad litany that illustrated his decline. By the end, everybody around him was just nodding and carrying out the orders he gave only when he was there to witness them in person. Pretending that the other things he commanded had been done. Too afraid to overthrow him, yet too loyal to tell the King of his own failing faculties. Even his son, the princeling who was to take the throne after Garland, could not summon the courage to tell his father the truth. Eventually, Garland ordered his own son executed in a blind, paranoiac delusion, convinced of an imaginary plot against him. Only then did the plot become reality, as his son and his generals finally did the mad King a favour and put him out of his misery.

The parallels, so far as King Grissom were concerned, were obvious. Celestia, never his favourite creature in any case, had succumbed to the arrogance which was in her nature- the nature of all ponies, in truth- and believed herself to be some kind of saviour figure to the entire world. She delusionally claimed to be able to predict the end of the world through some event that, conveniently, only she could sense, only she could know of. Her delusions, according to his intelligence officers, had now taken physical form in the shape of this huge orbital craft she was forcing her minions to construct. Grissom had laughed when he had heard her speech, reminded not just of old King Garland, but again of the cautionary pony tale of the unicorn wizard and his tower. Hurling himself from it, convinced he would fly- a conviction at first shared by the slaves who had toiled to build the tower- only to be met by the realities of physics. Only then did the scales fall from the eyes of his slaves as they realised they had wasted their lives labouring to build the pointless, hubristic edifice. The same, Grissom was sure, would happen with Celestia's spaceship.

As evening gave way to night, police and Royal Guard forces prepared for civil unrest, riots, looting, panic buying in stores. Hospitals were ordered to brace for an influx of patients, either from the riots or from a sudden epidemic of attempted suicides. But none of that happened. Not yet, at least. The night was quiet, still, solemn. Squads of riot cops stood around in the parking lots of their stations, waiting for orders that never came. There were no riots. On another day, perhaps there would be. But not tonight. Tonight, Equestria was a nation in mourning for a future that would never come.

Celestia and Luna stood together on the high balcony of the palace, overlooking Canterlot, its gently twinkling lights an artificial parallel of the heavens that watched over the city from above. Distant stars, thousands or millions of lightyears away, a window into the distant past. Light emitted from some of them before Equis had even formed from the primordial clouds of dust and gas was only now reaching the planet, such were the distances involved. Anything farther from them than the estimated age of the universe- about 14 billion years, thus 14 billion light years- could never be observed, for the simple fact that the light from such stars had not yet had time to reach Equis. Only Celestia could know anything of stellar objects so distant.

Luna rested her head upon her sister's shoulder as the city silently wept below them. Her sister's speech had been perfectly weighted and measured, her delivery impeccable. That might, at least, have soothed a few nerves amongst her audience. The storm of questions hurled at her by panicked reporters at the end of her speech would not have.

Your Highness, are we all going to die?

What chance do you think we have, Your Highness?

Your Highness, what about the line of succession?

Your Highness, is there any hope?

None of the questions had easy answers. Some of them had no answer at all, and so the Princess had declined to comment further, the reporters being ushered out of the room by Royal Guard. More information, they were told, would follow. There would be technical briefings by the scientists on the nature of the gamma ray burst threat, on Friendship One, on the statistical probabilities involved. There would be briefings by the military on the bunker programme, on crew selection for the colony ship, on maintaining order and civil protection functions. There would, no doubt, be more speeches and press conferences by the Princess herself. But no amount of talking could disguise what she had just told every creature on the planet. Barring a miracle, they were all likely to be dead in five years' time.

The riots came later, the following year. Oddly enough, and unusually for riots, they occurred in late autumn, rather than the height of summer. They were triggered by a spike in gasoline prices. The Griffons, controllers of a large amount of the oil supply, were tired of Equestria guzzling up most of their surplus. Celestia had ordered stockpiles of gasoline to be established in case of future disruption- caused by war, supply chain failure, or indeed the gamma ray burst, should any kind of functioning civilization survive- and the national and military reserves had been heavily bolstered. Now, however, with the Griffons jacking up the price to extortionate levels, the price for ponies wanting to fill their tanks was reaching almost comical levels. The Griffons were having a great time of the end of the world, making hay while the sun shone and practically extorting the Equestrians who seemed so desperate to buy up their oil.

Let them panic, was the official directive from King Grissom. Let them panic, and let us benefit.

Griffonia maintained a position that they would simply allow the ponies to continued in their mass delusion. The world was not ending in five years, but if Equestria wanted to believe that it was, Griffonia, biding its time, would sweep in and seize whatever remained of their old foe. The foundations of the pony nation were already creaking- why wouldn't they? If everypony believed they were to die in five years, why should anypony bother turning up for work? Why should anypony bother paying their mortgages? Why not just kick back in the sun with a cold glass of something and enjoy your last few years, or else go nuts and do the things you've always dreamed of doing.

For some ponies, it seemed, one of those things was to take part in a real, honest-to-Celestia riot, for the numbers who turned out were quite astonishing. It started in Manehattan, a city notorious for having few enough gas stations at the best of times, a precious commodity for those who- despite impending doom- still had to work to make ends meet. As the queues grew at one particular station, and the price began to, quite literally, rise before the very eyes of those waiting in line in their cars, somepony broke a window, climbed through, shouting and swearing at the clerk inside. He hit the panic button as two more ponies climbed through the window, scooping up armfuls of candy bars and snacks without paying. Ponies at the pumps began to simply drive away once it became clear the staff were busy with the intruders. Several ponies ran into the street, shouting and pointing.

Free gas over here!

Somepony made a sign with a bit of discarded cardboard, holding it up. Free gas, then an arrow. Cars began to pull in from left and right, descending like a swarm of Parasprites on the gas station. Among them were two police cars, drawn in by a radio report of an armed robbery in progress. When they tried to restore order, the officers were set upon, trash and bricks hurled at them as some ponies tried to keep the flow of free gas coming, directing cars to the pumps as though they were cops directing traffic. One officer was run over, one of her hind legs crushed by the wheels of a heavy van. Backup was called, backup arrived. At some point somewhere, shots were fired. A blast of magic demolished half of the station canopy, bringing it tumbling down upon the pumps and the desperate gas-thieves.

Some ponies decided not to limit it to just gas, and looted a nearby clothing store. Might as well look fine and fancy at the end of days, they reasoned. The looting spread, first through the street, then through the neighbourhood, then the city, and then all of Equestria. Ponies suddenly decided it would be nice to bask in the luxury of a new stolen sports car or widescreen tv or fashionable hoofbag in the time they had left, and who was going to bother going around tracking each rioter down after it was done?

By the end of the week, when the police and army had restored order, two cops, eighteen civilians, and thirty rioters were dead, thousands had been arrested, and several billion bits-worth of damage had been caused. It was, perhaps, an inevitability. Ponies reacted differently to bad news and hardship, but in the face of impending disaster, some commentators had tried to play it off as simply 'letting off steam,' like it was a giant end-of-the-world party instead of an orgy of violence and thievery.

Celestia had a different view. In a public announcement, she declared that anypony charged with rioting from now on would serve a minimum of four years in prison- in other words, a life sentence. That, perhaps unsurprisingly, cooled things down rather rapidly. No hoofbag was worth life in prison and a chance to die screaming as fire and radiation consumed your cell. Rioters and looters quickly faded away from the streets, patrolled now by teams of baton and stun magic-wielding cops and squads of grim-faced soldiers in full combat gear. Order returned, though the gasoline prices continued to rise. The supply was rationed from then on, reserved first of all for the military, police and government agencies. Gasoline, however, was not the only thing running out.

Time was running out, too.

There And Back Again

One year until G-Day.

That was what some were calling it. The G stood for Gamma, of course.

The past few years had been hard on Equestrian society. Though there had been no more riots, the functioning wheels of a nation were slowly breaking down and crumbling, just as King Grissom had predicted. Equestrians were weary, hollowed out by living in constant morbid fear of the future. Suicide rates had skyrocketed, an epidemic of hangings and brain matter smeared on bedroom ceilings by single gunshots. Suicide was, for the past year, the second most common cause of death, right behind heart disease. Many ponies had reached the end of their tether, sick of every waking moment being dominated by G-Day, listless and broken, jobless, worthless.

The economy had crashed, despite the best efforts of the central bank and treasury department. The closer G-Day came, the less desire ponies had to go out and work. Inflation caused by the Griffons slapping huge tariffs on every export meant nopony could afford to buy much anyway. Even essential services were affected by the shortage in workers, and big cities like Manehattan and Canterlot could suffer several rolling blackouts in a single day. It could take half an hour to summon a fire truck when your house was burning. Your post might arrive several weeks late, if it ever came. The only things truly functioning at full capacity were the military and Project Rebirth.

The interior of Friendship One was almost completed. The crew were undergoing intensive training, for first they had to become Equinauts. Everypony aboard would have to know exactly what they were doing, and be able to perform multiple roles to a decent degree of competence. A flight surgeon would have some rudimentary knowledge of operating the ships' controls, an engineer might learn how to work in the hydroponics bay, and so on.

The selection process had been rigorous. Likely candidates had been processed, selected, screened, re-screened, security checked, double-checked and triple-checked, and then requested to attend a training camp at the ESEA's Baltimare assembly facility. Some were obscure scientists- biologists, geneticists, agricultural engineers- but a few were well-known to the general public. Colonel- now promoted to General- Spitfire, the mission's commander, was chief among those names. An experienced Equinaut, Spitfire had been a combat pilot and commander of the Wonderbolts, the elite flight-demonstration jet squadron, before being selected to join the Equinaut Corps and flying two missions to the space stations and three to the moon. As a grizzled veteran of spaceflight and of leadership positions, Spitfire was an ideal candidate to be mission commander for Friendship One, as a joint military-ESEA project.

Once the mission-critical roles had been filled- commander, chief engineer, astronavigator and so on- thought turned to how to populate the rest of the ship, and thus, their new home, should the grand experiment go to plan. That was a more complex process. A national lottery of sorts was devised, with each citizen of Equestria being given a number. The allocation for each race- Unicorn, Earth and Pegasus- was identical, so that there would be a good spread of genetic diversity among the crew. Considerably smaller numbers were allocated to Zebras and Yaks, while an even smaller percentage of 'seats' were assigned to Griffons. This was simply because Kingdom of Griffonia wanted nothing to do with the process, and so the ESEA only had a small stock to choose from, those Griffons who were citizens of Equestria.

Their numbers were drawn and their records checked. If they possessed no obvious disqualifying features, such as a long criminal record, weak heart, or balance problems, they were sent an official, sealed letter by direct courier (the postal system being hardly trustworthy any longer). A medical examination, psychiatric screening, and other tests would then be administered once they arrived at the Baltimare camp, now something of a tent city beside the vast, curved hangars and assembly buildings. If they passed, and were willing to undergo the necessary training, they were in the programme.

There were naturally numerous rejections. Many ponies wanted to stay with their loved ones, or were scared of space travel, or thought the position should go to somepony more qualified. There were plenty of qualified ponies who had been specifically chosen, however- doctors, physicists, botanists, engineers, teachers, mining experts and the like, every specialty that you would need to create a self-sustaining colony. However, as one of the mission planners put it, you didn't want your colony to consist entirely of space-nerds because then you would 'end up with a colony, and thus a species, with more than its fair share of mental disorders and capable of being bullied by every alien who might want our lunch money.' That was where the ponies chosen at random from the lottery came in, bringing a wide range of talents, personalities, and traits to the table.

While all this had been going on, and the clock had been ticking down toward G-Day, there had been one more crucially important flight. A shuttle, with no modifications save its crew, had been launched. The seven unicorns aboard had been given a simple task, one familiar to test pilots down through the ages; see how fast you could make the damn thing go.

Scientists had theorised that, as well as pushing the ship forward, magic could, perhaps, be used both as a shield and as a kind of quantum bubble. This hope, vague though it had been, was what had given Celestia the impetus to start Project Rebirth in the first place, because it was the only way the ship could ever achieve a speed sufficient to outrun the gamma ray burst. The shielding effect would protect from micrometeorite impacts and interstellar cosmic radiation, and the bubble would- it was fervently hoped- act in a similar way to cavitation in water, a concept used by Equestrian submarines, whose torpedoes were designed to produce such bubbles by directing the flow of water around them in a certain way so as to change its pressure and cause bubbles to form, which in turn hugely reduced the friction and drag of water on the torpedo, allowing it to achieve speeds several times faster than any other form of underwater weapon. The idea was that the magic, surrounding the ship, might conceivably allow it to travel much faster than would be possible with ion drives, rockets or any other known form of technological propulsion. It was even theorised that it might be able to use magic as a kind of wormhole, and simply tunnel through space.

The test flight proved the theory beyond any doubt.

Starting from orbital velocity, the crew of the shuttle used their magic to power away from the planet, not stopping once they reached a certain speed, as the first magic-powered tests had done. They kept going, and going, and going, tracked all the way by the ground stations and mission command, out beyond the moon's orbit in a matter of hours instead of days. In doing so they became the most distant ponies from Equis, the greatest travellers in all of history- though the distance they had covered was a minuscule pinprick compared to how far Friendship One would be required to go.

Once they were clear of the moon, they accelerated again, and the next portion of the mission was to test the shielding theory. All on board were fully prepared to die in pursuit of the goal, making sure Friendship One could achieve its great and noble aim, but death did not find the Equinauts on their flight. They passed through the asteroid belt- not the densely clustered labyrinth of popular myth as depicted in sci-fi movies, but still dangerous enough- and accelerated again, constant streams of magic, never ceasing, pushing them forward faster and faster until the orbital telescopes viewing them noticed the craft appearing to slowly turn red, a product of the rapidity at which it was now pulling away from them, red-shifting the light it reflected toward earth in much the same way as distant, receding galaxies did.

Not only the visible light was stretched in such a fashion; so were the radio waves from the shuttle's communications system. This was an issue that had been considered, but sidelined because the ship would have to be travelling far faster than was imagined possible for it to be a serious problem. As it was, they began to rapidly lose contact with the shuttle. Communications were already impeded by the fact that there was a delay, due to the distance between Equis and the shuttle, meaning a message sent would not be received for almost ten minutes, but now the frequency of the transmissions sent from the shuttle was changing too, thanks to its speed, meaning they were not being picked up by radios on the ground which were tuned to the frequency that had been in use since the start of the flight. Some frantic scrambling followed as mission control tried to adjust to a broader-band transmission to re-establish contact.

Deep-space radar lost track of the shuttle entirely at one point, and the fears of mission control began to grow. Another failure. It didn't work, couldn't work. Foolish, a waste of brave lives.

Then, a radio transmission, delayed, according to the timestamp given, by at least four hours.

"Hoofston, this is the Valiant. Canterlot time 12:34 and eighteen seconds. We are commencing deceleration procedures. Current distance from Equis...twenty-nine point six-five-one Celestial Units. Speed unknown, we've maxed out our recorders. Damn things are just spinning around like they're altimeters and we're in a nosedive. I hope you've been keeping a good record."

There would have been great cheers at the arrival of this signal, had the Valiant not already arrived back at Equis, outpacing its own message and, in doing so, smashing the science of physics into a thousand pieces, for the Valiant had been outrunning light itself.

In a little over two hours, the shuttle had travelled almost thirty Celestial Units into the void, and then back home again. One Celestial Unit was the distance between Equis and Celestia's sun, so this put the craft far out in the edges of the solar system, in the vast darkness where comets like to lurk. This kind of speed was astronomically higher than anything ever achieved by any other Equestrian ship or deep-space probe. It had been considered an impossibility; the speed of light in a vacuum was the ultimate, the one barrier that could never be broken by science.

That was why it had taken magic to break it, a force that still, even to modern scientists, was baffling and all but incomprehensible. After all, the sun weighed trillions of tons, yet Celestia could control it and move it, a physical impossibility according to physics. Magic, it seemed, could bypass reality in many ways, an ability not just limited to Alicorns. The Unicorn crew of the Valiant had been able to drive the shuttle an almost infinite distance beyond its design parameters, out into deep space where it was never meant to go, at speeds considered impossible, fanciful, the preserve of science-fiction stories with imaginary propulsion systems like wormhole drives and hyperspace generators.

This success led to some commentators questioning why Equestria was only building one colony ship, and not dozens, to transport the entire population, or at least a much larger chunk of it, to their new and distant home. The answer was simple- they did not have the resources to build more than one. The number of rocket launches required to transport things to orbit was already stretching the system to capacity, with far more launches per month than had ever been attempted before. Industry, now fully under government control, was at the limits of production capacity trying to churn out more boosters and shuttles to get the constituent parts of Friendship One into orbit. What little spare capacity existed was being funnelled into the construction of underground bunkers which comprised the second part of the hopeful rescue plan for ponykind. Nor were there enough trained Equinauts to build a second ship, let alone an entire fleet of them., even with the rapid step-up in training and the invitations sent through the lottery scheme.

No time, no resources, no crew for anything more than a single ship. Everything would ride upon her, for they would only get one shot at success. But with the Valiant's success, for the first time since Celestia's fateful speech, the world could allow itself to feel a little sliver of something they had almost forgotten ever existed.

Hope.

Ticking Clock, Smoking Gun

How time flies.

The last year, for many ponies, seemed to have passed much more quickly than any which came before it. A continual background fear made it difficult to keep track of time. Days turned into years, turned into centuries inside each anxious mind.

The bunkers were filling up, another lottery having been performed to fill their general accommodation. Queues of buses and trucks, using military fuel supplies, of course, streamed out of each major city and town across Equestria. Each pony had been told to bring one suitcase and one personal bag, to contain their entire world. That was all. There was no space for more.

One month before the end, the doors were opened at each complex, great, heavy steel monstrosities that looked like the entrance to a giant bank vault. Supplies had already been pouring in, but now it was time for the ponies themselves. Wide-eyed civilians, foals trailing aimlessly along and clinging to their mother's tails, sad-faced stallions looking back over their shoulders at the surface, and up into the sky with a mixture of fear and longing. Soldiers and Royal Guard directed them from their transports and down, deep down underground, as far as explosives and magic and Diamond Dog miners could take them. To safety, it was hoped. Those doors, once sealed, would be pressurised, each bunker complex operating as a closed system, like a spacecraft or submarine. This was vital. It was not enough to simply filter the air from outside, like a fallout shelter, because in all likelihood there would be no air outside.

Privately, many of the engineers and technicians assigned to each bunker knew that, even if they survived the strike, it would only be a matter of time- maybe months, maybe decades, maybe centuries- before the triple-redundant oxygen generating systems of each complex failed or ran out of spare parts. Even when that happened, it was hoped, the plants and food-bearing hydroponics beds, plus a significant quantity of algae, could help provide oxygen as well as nutrition. But that would have to continue until the end of time, because it was expected by many scientists that the entire atmosphere of the planet might be stripped away or otherwise irrecoverably damaged by the gamma ray burst, making life on the surface impossible for generations- or perhaps forever.

That was why the more astute of the ponies now filing in to each bunker might have noticed that they passed through not just one, nor two, but a total of three large blast doors, because the entranceway was not just a one-way street. It was an airlock, designed to, hopefully, allow Unicorns in Equinaut suits (or slimmed-down versions of them supported and braced by the wearer's own magic, because a true spacesuit was impossibly cumbersome and heavy in Equis gravity) to move across the surface at some future date in search of supplies from whatever remained of their civilization. The idea of simply throwing open the doors and foals running out happily into the sunlight, however, was likely just a pipe dream. Each pony took one final look out across the landscape- desert, prairie, the mouth of a mountain valley- that lay beyond the doors of their bunker, before they stepped inside. They knew they would never see the surface, or the sun, again.

With one week to go until G-Day, Equestria had practically stopped existing any longer as a functioning entity. Electrical power and running water were only widely available in the largest cities, or where a pony was lucky enough to live close to a military base or some other vital facility, like the rocket complex at New Zebrica, where the deep roar and crackle of a new launch could be heard at any time of the day or night. There was not much of a schedule any longer; as soon as a rocket and her crew or supplies were ready, up it went, the next one already waiting on a barge in the river that ran beside the complex, ready to go, like ponies queuing for a bungee jump, or more accurately one of those fairground slingshot rides.

An explosion at a rocket fuel plant, probably caused by speed and skipped safety checks, had killed eighty-seven workers and demolished part of the nearby town of Clopham Junction just weeks earlier, as the deadline approached and standards slipped. Another plant had been closed for six months due to a lack of workers- they had simply walked off the job, one by one, to go be with their families, and not enough replacements had been found, even with military technicians from the Space Corps' nuclear missile division being rushed in to help. The remaining plants had been churning out rocket fuel like soda. Almost a hundred civilians had died when one tanker truck carrying poisonous hydrazine overturned and a fast-spreading cloud of vapour had drifted through a suburban neighbourhood. The bodies, a very brief report had been ashamed to say, had been left in the houses where they lay. The mortuary system, like most other things, had collapsed too, and nopony came to collect the corpses.

Friendship One was the only thing anypony cared about now. It was the only thing that gave any hope whatsoever, every time it sailed by overhead, anti-collision lights on the scaffold visible from the surface, like a gigantic, distant airliner. Telescopes would reveal more lights coming and going, shuttles and automated capsules delivering a steady stream of supplies and the crew, some two thousand eight hundred of them.

The vast majority- two thousand one hundred- were ponies, equally divided among the three subspecies. There were three hundred Zebras, too. One hundred Griffons, all those Equestrian citizens who had pledged loyalty to the Sun & Moon United and had passed the screening checks and training. There were a hundred and fifty Diamond Dogs, a hundred Yaks (a significant number of their small population), and a small and eclectic assortment of the other small sapient races- mules, a buffalo, a few of the smallest dragons- making up the numbers. There were no cows, whose physiology would not stand up to space travel, it had been determined. The Seaponies had not been called upon, because their Queen had announced their intention to ride things out underwater, in the deepest reaches of the seas. The Changelings had ignored any requests, too, perhaps having their own plans for survival underground. Discord had retreated to his own world, safe from harm behind the skein of a different reality, telling Celestia there was nothing he could do to aid the planet, nor the evacuation. He had offered to house the Elements and the royals if they wished, but his pocket dimension was too small to house everypony. They had all refused to go- like Celestia, they would stay behind to try and save the planet. Discord had expressed his doubts. Some things, he told the solar demigoddess, are beyond even our power.

The ship was also being loaded, amongst other things, with a huge genetic repository of DNA samples, sperm and eggs from every species, including those who had chosen not to come along for the ride, and including a huge variety of samples from plants, trees, grasses, lichen, seaweed, algae and a thousand other floral subspecies. The genetic patterns of non-sapient life- rabbits, cats, dogs, mice and many, many more- had also been included. The science equipment aboard the ship would, it was hoped, enable the crew to begin the process of expanding the population of each sapient race, and of seeding the new world with the remains of the old.

The new world.

New Equis, it had been redesignated. Formerly called Typhon-B, it was one of two planets in the system, orbiting the star whose name it shared, and it was the only candidate for habitability anywhere nearby. Of a similar size to Equis, New Equis was known since before the emergency to be a candidate for a mission, imagined to be far, far in the future at that point, to colonise it. Long-range observations by spectrometry and space telescope had confirmed that the planet, eight light-years away, was temperate, had an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and possessed both oceans and continents. It was the only true choice, because the next closest planet which had been on the shortlist was a hundred lightyears distant, which, even at the superluminal speeds the Valiant had achieved, would be beyond the reach of Friendship One, which was not being built as a 'generation ship,' nor as a cryo-stasis ship. Wherever they were going had to be within a reasonable distance (in astronomical terms at least- the planet was still trillions of miles away from Equis).

It would, it was hoped, be an ideal starting point for a new civilization, one that would be spared the horrors of G-Day. But they still had to get there first.

With one week of life left, ponies were doing all kinds of things to keep their mind off of what was to come. There were organised 'street orgies,' which involved exactly what might be imagined. There were 'end of the world parties,' where, although the topic was apocalypse, the drink and drugs and magic-induced hallucination-shows continued to entertain, and often lead to more impromptu orgies, too. Huge banquets were put on by rich ponies, lavishly decorated halls outfitted with the finest foods and wine, and the doors thrown open to anypony who wanted to attend, no invitation necessary, because why not? Nopony was going to use any of that food after G-Day. This was not going to be like the aftermath of a bad hurricane or volcanic eruption or even a nuclear war, where it was a matter of carefully rationing supplies until help arrived, or until more stable communities could be established. There would be nothing left soon enough.

Out in the street, the army and police kept order, in the sense of mostly ignoring anything short of gunfire. There had been plenty of mass shootings and magical rampages over the past few years. Lunatics going out with a bang, terrorists and separatists giving it one last hurrah, religious nutjobs from the Cult of The True Moon, the Discordians or the Sombrans, loudly denouncing Celestia's messianic status as they gunned down her subjects. But order, for the most part, had been maintained. The army and the police were the only organisations who still had gasoline, electricity, running water and internet access, save for a few laboratories and universities, and of course the ESEA and the industries supporting the survival missions. The military were being kept on standby, both to assist with civil disturbances, aid in the bunker preparations and the final launches to orbit, and also just in case anything unforeseen should occur.

It was a good thing that they were, too, because with just a few days left, King Grissom made his move.

Seeing Equestria in such disarray, a failed state just waiting for the armageddon that he knew would never come, Grissom had been quietly preparing for years for this. A perfect opportunity. No longer would Celestia dominate global politics. It was his turn, his time to shine, even at his advanced age. Grissom was nothing if not a calculated plotter, a strategist. War with Equestria could have happened years ago, before Celestia's announcement to the world, but as soon as the King learned of Celestia's delusion, that all her attention was wrapped up in this forecasted event that only she could detect, he saw a golden opportunity.

Sure enough, as time dragged on and more and more of Equestria's money, time and resources were being devoted to building Friendship One and the bunker complexes, Grissom had raised tariffs on Griffonian exports, tightening the budgetary woes of Equestria still further. It had not helped a fragile economy; the stock market had already crashed to its lowest ever level when Celestia had given her speech. It might have brought the Griffonian economy down with it, if they had gone along with Celestia's scheme, but the Griffons did not buy into her predictions. Grissom gave a rousing speech urging every Griffon to continue with their lives as normal, and the economy stabilised, while Equestria's went into freefall.

Economic power was not the only area where Grissom had been building up strength. The military, too, were being strengthened, and quietly prepared for war. Grissom knew Equestria would be at its weakest in the weeks before Celestia's prophesised doomsday. Morale would be non-existent. Why would soldiers want to fight for a land they believed would soon be turned to ash? Why would a soldier hurl themselves into the fray rather than spend what they imagined would be their last days on Equis with their loved ones? They would have nothing left to fight for. Their ranks were thinned, Grissom knew, by mass desertions. Their strategic oil reserves were running low. The national effort was being focused elsewhere, not even on this planet, for the most part. This was the perfect time to strike.

And strike he did. The border region of Yakyakistan separated Griffonia from Equestria, long-disputed but controlled by ponies. It was here that the Griffons attacked, claiming to be seeking to put an end to the case of true ownership. There was some token resistance, but as the Griffonian tanks and helicopters swept south across the plains and through the gap between two widely-spaced mountain ranges, the way ahead seemed to be almost completely clear.

By the time they burst through into the temperate lands and pleasant forests of Equestria itself, there was little to stop them. An Equestrian mechanised force had assembled near the city of Trottingham, but were soundly routed. Celestia ordered every available unit to march to plug the gaps in the line. It took several days, and by the time a proper defensive plan had been enacted, the Griffons arrived at the pivotal city of Vanhoover. From here, it was a straight run west, to Canterlot, the obvious, logical target, the capital city, symbolic, beautiful.

But they did not head west. Not all of them. The largest part of the Griffon army moved south, toward the dusty deserts of the equatorial province of New Zebrica.

New Zebrica, where the final few, vital rockets were sitting and waiting on their barges in the river.

Fight Or Flight

A sudden panic had gripped the war cabinet of Equestria when they learned of the direction of movement of the Griffon army. Why were they going south? Why were they heading for New Zebrica, the launch complex?

Were they trying to hijack the project? Did Grissom believe, as Celestia did, that the gamma ray burst really was coming, had he suffered a change of heart as the day drew near? Was he desperately trying to save his race, replace the crew of the Friendship One with Griffons somehow?

Or did the Griffons mean to stop the mission altogether? If we die here, we all die here as one? No survivors?

Celestia did not think Grissom believed. He certainly had not when she had given him the news of the impending disaster, and there was no reason to think he had changed his mind. It was just a power play, a chance for him to rule over a dead land in the minutes or hours he would have left before doomsday. A doomsday that she was convinced was coming, but the King was convinced would never happen.

So what were they trying to do?

A junior analyst in the photointelligence unit cracked it. She had received a bunch of photographs, still images of the advancing Griffon army's supply train taken by an Equestrian military satellite in orbit. There were three very large vehicles, the shadows of which upon the ground revealed they had ten wheels apiece. Low, flat, squat-bodied things, but with long cylindrical cargos atop their unjointed chassis. Missiles, aboard their transporters.

Nuclear? had been Celestia's first question, to which the analyst had shaken her head.

"No, Your Highness. We believe them to be anti-satellite weapons."

There was an uneasy silence in the war room.

"Then they want to destroy our last hope?" Celestia voiced what was on everypony's minds. "Why do they not just fire their missiles now and be done with it, if that is the case?"

"These missiles are too large, Your Highness," the analyst explained. "They cannot be fired from their transporters like some smaller medium-range missiles. We believe that the Griffons need to capture the launchpads at New Zebrica to be able to fire them."

"They have their own launchpads," Luna pointed out. "Why not simply fire them from there?"

"Friendship One is in the wrong orbit," the Director of the ESEA chimed in, invited to the briefing because his facility was coming under threat, and now the final life's work of every member of his staff was in danger. "Griffonia's missile sites, their nuclear silos and their space center, are on the other side of the planet, quite literally. We deliberately put Friendship One into an awkward orbit, one we've never used much before except for testing. An inclined orbit, slanted at a 30-degree angle from the equator. An orbit that we have easy access to, but they do not. Not from their lands. The ship never crosses Griffonian territory as it orbits the planet. It remains over Equestria the entire time, and does not pass within line-of-sight of any Griffon missile base. The Griffonians put their space and missile facilities as far away from their border with Equestria as they could because they needed reaction time, in the event of nuclear war. They needed time to launch their missiles before they were destroyed in their silos. The same reason ours are out in the desert, far from the border. The difference is, the Griffon space programme is entirely under military command, so their space center is in the same place and for similar reasons. So we couldn't knock it out easily with a bombing run, stop them putting satellites up there."

"Surely they can manoeuvre their missiles after launch? Put them into the correct orbit?" Celestia reasoned.

"They can, Your Highness," the analyst nodded. "But those manoeuvres are highly fuel-intensive. And these missiles...they are...different, we believe."

"How so?" the Princess demanded.

"They're carrying less fuel. Our intelligence told us when they first built their nuclear missiles some decades ago, the Griffons were investigating anti-magic warheads," the Chief of Staff of the Air & Space Corps replied, a big burly mare in a sky-blue uniform by the name of Storm Bringer. "They'd fit some kind of artefact at the tip, like a penetration aid."

That drew a few confused looks, so Storm Bringer continued. "Penetration aids are devices that are fitted to ballistic missiles to help them evade enemy defences. For example, chaff dispensers, inflatable balloons, radar jammers...anything that might trick a radar into targeting a decoy, or make an enemy commander think there are more incoming warheads than there really are. That kind of thing. The Griffons were working on an anti-magic warhead, one that could break through a magic shield. They needed to know they could destroy Canterlot, bypass its shield."

Celestia nodded. "Yes, I remember the briefings. You believe they have adapted this technology?"

"We believe it's possible, Your Highness," Storm Bringer nodded.

"The telltale signature of one of these adapted weapons is a larger, more rounded warhead casing," the analyst added. "To accommodate the extra equipment, whatever, ah, artefact they might be using to produce a magic-nullifying effect. That extra weight and drag reduces the effective range of the missiles. We believe some of the propellent might have to be removed to accommodate the changes, too."

"So they have to bring their missiles to a place where they are within range..." Luna nodded. "They cannot fire them from their own territory and put them into the right orbit without running out of fuel."

"And they believe their anti-magic warheads can be effective against Friendship One," Celestia added.

"But how can they know that they even need it...?" Twilight, a small, confused voice from the side of the room.

"We told them," Celestia said bluntly. "We told the whole world. We had to. Everypony now knows that magic will protect the ship on its journey to New Equis. Not just providing propulsion, but safety, too, a shield against radiation and debris. The Griffons know we can protect the ship with magic because every sapient creature on this planet knows it."

"But why?" Twilight asked. As the newest, youngest Princess, she often stayed silent during important discussions such as these, but she felt the need to understand. "Why would the Griffons...if they didn't believe..."

"I think King Grissom may view it as a final snub against me," Celestia explained to her former student. "When I have spoken to him over the past few years, he has always said I was succumbing to madness. Building this ship, wasting resources and time, destroying our economy and society...he does not believe in what is coming. That is why he is invading. He knows we are weakened, and he thinks the whole world will be his to rule over."

"But why not just let the ship leave...?" Twilight demanded to know, to understand the inner workings of the mind of a Griffon sitting on his throne thousands of miles away.

"I think capturing Canterlot is not enough for him," Celestia replied. "He can take the city, he can try to kill or capture us. He can do all that, but I think he wants me to see what he views as my 'pet project' going down in flames before he does so. Perhaps he thinks it will break my mind. Perhaps he thinks it already broken. Mind games, Twilight, something Chrysalis and Discord both well understood. It seems Grissom enjoys similar proclivities."

"His vanity threatens to doom us all..." Luna pointed out harshly. "Can the ship be protected, General?" she asked Storm Bringer. "Will the shields hold if we raise them now?"

"In truth, Your Highness?" the grey mare looked at her Princess. "I have no idea. We don't know what kind of artefacts they may have installed in those missiles. They've never been used against actual magic before. Might just bounce off, might tear right through and destroy everything."

"Then we must not let them test their missiles on an actual live target," Celestia pronounced. "The remaining launches...how many?"

"Eight more, Your Highness, to get everypony and all equipment aboard," the ESEA director informed her. "Two on the pad at Hoofburg, two on the pad at New Zebrica, four on barges, waiting."

"How fast can you get those barges to Hoofburg?"

"Two days, Your Highness, plus another twelve hours and change to get them set up and ready," he replied to Celestia.

"Do it," she ordered. "All launches are to proceed from Hoofburg. General Mayflower? Order every willing and able unit to move and defend New Zebrica space complex. General Storm Bringer? Keep satellite coverage over the enemy supply column and send every aircraft you have to destroy those anti-satellite missiles while they are still on their transports."

With only three days left until G-day, Storm Bringer was not able to scrounge up all that many aircraft for her strike against the Griffon convoy. Two squadrons of ground attack aircraft, squat and ugly with weapons hanging from pylons beneath like decorations on a Hearth's Warming tree. Three squadrons of fighters, sleek and deadly, to provide air cover. One mostly intact squadron of heavy strategic bombers, delta-winged giants usually kept in readiness for nuclear war. There were hundreds more aircraft dotted across various bases, but not the crews to fly them. Desertions had decimated the Air Corps so close to the end of it all, even more so than the army, because there had seemed little for the pilots to do. At least the army could keep order in the streets. Performing a bombing run to put an end to a gang shooting seemed a little like overkill, even now.

While a strong line of soldiers and tanks tried to keep the Griffon tide at bay, the aircraft crept in, flying nap-of-the-earth where possible, clinging to the ground like foals to their mothers, blending their radar signature with that of the ground in the hope of avoiding detection. The convoy's position was relayed to the pilots by the latest satellite pass. Twenty miles ahead. The first of the fighters popped up over a line of steeply rising hills, and all hell broke loose.

Each aircraft found itself suddenly painted by dozens of tracking radars. Their warning receivers buzzed in the pilots' ears. The Equestrian military might have been threadbare now, but the Griffons were still working at full capacity. A Griffon AWACS aircraft had tracked the Equestrian force all the way from their formation point, where each squadron had joined up with each other, circling several hundred miles to the west of their target, before dropping down to low-level for the actual approach. Its crew had vectored four squadrons of fighters into the area, each of which had eight aircraft, each of which carried eight missiles. On the ground, protecting the convoy, was an entire air-defence regiment, with several dozen truck-mounted missile systems and combination gun/missile systems mounted on tank chassis. It was not a fair fight; the Griffons had expected such a response.

The Equestrians broke formation, their fighters climbing to engage and distract the Griffon interceptors so that the ground-attack aircraft could do their work. But there were simply too many enemies. Even with their sophisticated targeting computers capable of tracking several dozen targets at once, the Equestrian fighters could only launch what missiles they had slung beneath their wings, and then they were down to their rotary cannon and its limited supply of ammunition. Though they brought down a dozen enemy aircraft, they in turn were annihilated, missiles tearing through the thin metal of their wings and the vulnerable bodies of the pilots within. The ground-attack planes, keeping low and hugging the ground, were still brought under fire, losing eight aircraft before they got anywhere near the convoy. Even as thy drew closer, they ran into another wall of missiles being put up by the ground escorts. At the first sign of trouble, the detection of the incoming raid by the Griffon AWACS, the anti-satellite missiles upon their transporters had been quickly shuttled into shelter at the edge of a wooded copse, where infrared-proof camo netting had been hastily pulled over them to cover their tell-tale visual profiles. Even if any of the attacking aircraft had reached the target, they probably would not have even been able to find the missiles anyway.

The few survivors milled around, circling behind protective hills, their fuel running down, time running out. With the fate of the entire species at stake, they charged forward anyway, bravely cutting toward the convoy in desperation, pumping out chaff and spitting flares like a firework display. The lumbering heavy bombers, operating far below their designed altitude, were not exactly cut out for this type of work. Streams of cannon fire from the ground tore through them, rapid-fire 30mm guns on mobile tracked vehicles unleashing a hundred or more rounds per second. Spaced out miles from the convoy, these vehicles also carried short-range missiles, which they used to devastating effect against the surviving attack planes. Within two hours of takeoff, there were no Equestrian planes still in the air.

With the failure of the air attack, Princess Celestia now faced agony. If the Griffons reached New Zebrica, everything might be for naught. In less than 72 hours, the world would end, unless their magic could combine and somehow resist it. To do that, they needed all the Princesses, Starswirl, and the Elements of Harmony to all be in the same place, ideally Canterlot. But Griffon forces were making their way to the capital, and to the spaceport. If they captured New Zebrica, they might- only might, but that was more than enough- be able to destroy Friendship One. They did not have enough strength to defend New Zebrica for long enough- another day, maybe two if they were lucky. Then the Griffons would break through, roll up the wide boulevards of the city and the smooth concrete aprons of the spaceport, and shortly after that everything would be over.

There was only one course of action left that she could see might ensure the successful departure of Friendship One and its entire crew, but the time for that was not here yet- not quite.

Incoming, Outgoing

With forty-eight hours until G-Day, the fighting for the spaceport raged. A thin line of Equestrian troops were holding back the tide, a great flood of Griffon soldiers and tanks and personnel carriers, nudging and probing at the line like a dog nipping at the heels of its prey. Helicopters whirred through the overcast skies, jets swooping down like avenging angels to deliver a string of bombs or a devastating cluster munition here and there. Most of the city of New Zebrica was in Griffon hands already, but the Equestrians had dug in around the spaceport.

The launch towers had already been detonated by explosive charges, creaking and groaning metal plunging to the ground, denying their use to the enemy. But in truth, the Griffons did not need the launch towers themselves. A reasonable facsimile could be erected by military engineers in just a few hours, even without using magic, which would be sufficient for the smaller missiles, though not for a heavy shuttle and its boosters. They just needed somewhere flat, level, open, and in the right part of the world. The spaceport was the obvious choice, and it was symbolic, too, a claw raised in defiance to the Sun-Princess and her mad, blind obsession which had led her country to ruin and left Griffonia and her King to rule over the whole world.

In Hoofburg, far to the west, the barges had arrived after a twisting, winding journey through the canals and rivers of backwater Equestria. The final canal they rode upon was the only water for miles around, so remote was the military spaceport's location. The canal had been dug for the sole purpose of transporting the huge barges that carried the heavy-lift military rockets to their launch complex. With the arrival of the final barge, they would likely never be used again. Four launches remained. The two rockets on the pads at New Zebrica had gone up as soon as they could, before the Griffons could get close enough to intercept them during their ascent. After that, the launch towers had been demolished by explosives. Hoofburg was now the only Equestrian launch facility. There were four rockets left to launch, safely delivered by barge. To erect each one, fuel it, prepare it, and load the crew and cargo, would take a minimum of eight hours each if all the safety checks were bypassed. Two rockets were already on the pads and fuelling up.

That gave them enough time, but only just. The two prepared rockets took to the skies one after the other, blazing like comets in the night. Twelve hours later they would rendezvous with Friendship One, now shed of her external metallic snakeskin cradle, and dock with her. While they were still orbiting toward the much larger ship, the final rockets would launch. Naturally, not everything went to plan.

Of the two final rockets, one was carrying medical supplies and oxygen equipment. The other was carrying the final batch of crew, twenty ponies crammed into a shuttle built to hold only twelve. They were engineers and civilians, the last batch of rounded-up lottery winners plus a few Equinaut crewmembers who had volunteered to pilot the last shuttle, the final rocket from home.

The supply rocket was scheduled to launch several hours earlier than the crewed shuttle. It did, climbing into the predawn sky at about the same time the Griffons finally broke the Equestrian line at New Zebrica. Somewhere, deep in the endless bowels of the thing, something went wrong. Catastrophically wrong. An artificial sun blazed into life in the skies over the western desert as the supply rocket tore itself apart, fuel flashing into brilliant, searing life all at once, a huge explosion rending the dawn and abruptly cutting off the crackling roar of the engines. Flaming debris rained down all across the launch complex and downrange, into the empty desert, as though a volcano had just erupted.

Angry, panicked hooves bashed control consoles and desks in a rage as the impotent flight controllers watched the rocket explode. Only two other rockets, remarkably, had been lost during launch in the whole of Project Rebirth. Both of those, unfortunately, had carried crewponies on board. At least this one was just a drone-ship, a capsule crammed full of equipment instead of the warm press of bodies. But they were useful supplies, and now they were gone, and there was fresh worry. Did the scrambled rush to launch overlook something? If so, had they overlooked the same thing with the shuttle?

The launch, despite the lateness of the hour and the importance of the mission, had to be postponed. Technicians began the painstaking search, examining every rivet and screw, every circuit and pipe, every programme in the launch computer and flight systems. It would take time, but the symbolic disaster of losing the last flight from Equis would have been catastrophic for the morale of the colonists. A new launch time was scheduled- noon. After the twelve-hour flight to the colony ship, that would leave the crew of Friendship One six hours to depart before the expected arrival time of the gamma ray burst.

The science could not be so precise because, although they knew the orbital track and distance of Sigma-225b, they did not know, yet, precisely where in its orbit it had been when it exploded, because the light emitted by the blast had not yet arrived. Celestia, however, could be more accurate, because she could feel it coming, drawing nearer and nearer like a gathering storm, the ghostly cry of a dead star. It visited her all the time. Played on her mind, whispering, whispering, then talking, then shouting, and now roaring, a terrible howling that only she could hear.

It is coming.

New Zebrica had fallen. Shrouded in a pall of dust and smoke from relentless bombings, the spaceport was a broken shell of its former self. The control room was gutted, both by Griffon firebombs and Equestrian demolition charges. The launch towers lay crushed and broken on the thick concrete, all twisted girders and pipes, like some construction toy knocked over by a petulant foal, tired of playing. Dazed survivors, uniforms blackened by soot and death, sat in bunches, rounded up and disarmed by victorious Griffon squads.

Once each building had been searched and cleared, room by painstaking room, and the ground swept for mines, the three anti-satellite missiles were rolled in across the bumpy, broken ground, carefully, slowly, their drivers craning their necks for potholes and shell craters, guided by Griffons walking ahead. Engineers stood by to lay planks or dig wheels out of any of the soft, cloying mud that the steady drizzle had been producing. Locations had been identified for each missile to be placed, and the engineers had been busy erecting makeshift scaffolding in lieu of launch towers. As noon approached, the happy Griffons were greeted by clearing skies, azure blue and bright sun overhead. They sang their national anthem as they toiled, marching prisoners away or setting up the three launch platforms. Griffonia, King of Nations.

The clearing skies betrayed them.

In orbit, an Equestrian spy satellite made a timely pass over the spaceport. Every such satellite still operational had been tasked to the area, several expending all of their remaining propellent to change orbit. Instead of one pass every ninety minutes as a single satellite would be capable of, the Equestrian high command now had a snapshot every fifteen minutes. They knew the missiles were there. Now was the time for Celestia's plan.

"Contact, contact! New contact, bearing two-seven-eight degrees, range two-thousand-four-hundred miles, altitude six-eight-thousand feet, climbing. Unknown contact, mark as Alpha."

A bright red dot flashing on the viewscreens of the early warning centre, Griffon Missile Corps.

Just one, a single blood-red sigil on the map, being picked up by over-the-horizon radar tracking.

"Altitude one-hundred-thousand."

"EWC, this is GHQ. We have your target, tracking. ID?"

"Not at this time, General...standby."

This had to be a mistake, didn't it? A computer glitch. Wary eyes scanned the screens, waiting for the dozens, then hundreds of other contacts they were sure had to be following. Target Alpha continued climbing.

"GHQ, this is EWC. Confirmation of target ID. Confirmed radar and thermal signature matches Equestrian Manticore-Class ICBM."

"Understood, EWC. Any further targets?"

"Nothing yet, sir."

The screens remained stubbornly blank, apart from the single icon. One missile. One nuclear-tipped ballistic missile. Just one. But why, what purpose did that serve? What was its target?

One missile was not enough to destroy Griffonia, nor to destroy its army. It was enough to destroy a single target and nothing more. The nuclear holocaust they had trained for was not appearing on the screen. If it did, that would be grounds for firing every single one of Griffonia's missiles in response. But one missile? Grounds for great concern, but not total nuclear war.

Phones rang off the hook as Griffon commanders tried to ascertain what the hell Celestia and her generals thought they were doing. What was the target, and why? Sew confusion? A high-altitude EMP blast? That would surely destroy their own precious spaceship in the process, as well as throwing much of Equestria back into the stone age. An attack on the army advancing on Canterlot? Possibly, but tactical, short-range missiles with greater manoeuvrability would be better for such a situation, where targets were on the move. This was a strategic weapon, being hurled into a high suborbital trajectory from the missile fields of the western desert. It was targeting something that was stationary.

The Griffon capital? A decapitation strike, to kill the King and military high command? One missile was not enough for that. The capital had anti-ballistic missile defences ringing its outer suburbs. No, that couldn't be it either. That didn't leave much, and it did not take long for the Griffon generals to realise what it implied. They knew what the target was before the tracking radars of the EWC could inform them of the missile's trajectory.

"Colonel Garner, this is GHQ. Abandon mission, I say again, abandon mission. Pull all troops back to phase line Apple immediately. Minimum distance five miles. Evacuate anti-satellite missiles. We believe you are the target of incoming nuclear weapon. How copy?"

Colonel Garner, an experienced, level-headed Griffonian regimental commander, shook his shaggy-maned head as he replied into the field radio inside his armoured command vehicle. "Sir, the missiles are already being deployed. We can't evacuate them. They're off their transporters and halfway up the damned launch towers we've been building."

"Then evacuate your troops at least!"

"There must be a mistake, sir. The ponies...they wouldn't..."

"Well they have. Now get your ass in gear, Colonel! You have five minutes, tops."

"Understood..." Garner poked his head from the hatch of the APC and roared. "Every Griffon get the fuck out, now! Pull back to phase line Apple immediately!" He ducked back down, radio gripped in his claw, and spoke into it.

"All units on this net, all units on this net, this is Hammer 1-1 actual. Execute emergency withdrawal to phase line Apple. I say again, emergency withdrawal to phase line Apple. Adopt NBC procedures and take cover immediately. This is not a drill."

All across the spaceport, Griffons began taking to the air, flying back north, towards phase line Apple, the first line of trenches the ponies had dug to try and defend the outskirts of the city. Tanks, APCs and trucks began to roll, streaming away over the concrete and tarmac, leaving behind three makeshift launch towers and three anti-satellite missiles, one half-erected and leaning against its tower, one in place and almost ready to launch, and one swinging gently like a child's toy from a heavy wheeled crane.

The EWC continued tracking the missile as it reached its apogee, shedding its protective nosecone, exposing the warhead to the chill of space before it separated from the body, little puffs of propellant angling the conical device correctly onto its trajectory. It began to plunge back down into the atmosphere, friction heating it like a re-entering shuttle, until it arrived some four thousand feet above the spaceport.

From the viewscreen of the external camera inside his command vehicle, Colonel Garner saw a blinding double-flash of brilliant, impossible white. They were only about three miles from the spaceport. Some of his troops had made it to phase line Apple and adopted suitable procedures; get behind something, don't look at the flash, gas masks and the stinking rubber chemical suits on. Others, slower or escorting wounded or prisoners, had not made it so far. They were the first to die.

As as second sun illuminated the Zebrican plains, the three anti-satellite missiles, lying at ground zero, were instantly consumed by fire. A few seconds later, Garner's carrier was caught bodily by the blast wave and rolled over, as if by a giant invisible claw. The spaceport, so recently fought and bled for by the last courageous Equestrian defenders, was turned to ash in a heartbeat. A huge mushroom of fire and smoke rose into the sky, towering above the cowering Griffons who had made it to a safe distance. As nuclear weapons went, it had been a relatively small, 500-kiloton explosion, but that was more than enough for its intended purpose.

Meanwhile, three thousand miles away to the west, the final countdown had begun.

Departure

The Vanguard reached its destination successfully and safely, delivering its crew and cargo to the massive interstellar ship that would be their home for the next few years. Everything was being made ready; Friendship One was at its full complement, stocked with supplies, hydroponics facilities and oxygen plants operational. The navigation system was online, the thrusters and backup ion drives were standing by to be used when and if needed. The long, almost spindly craft was not elegant; it could not be called beautiful in any sense of the word, all protruding stanchions and antennae, a couple of slowly rotating tori giving the sensation of artificial gravity so the crew could try to combat bone density loss and muscular atrophy during their journey.

Several large modules, adapted from space station designs, provided the bulk of the living space, such as it was. Each crewmember had a 'bed' (really just a sleeping bag strapped to the bulkheads, to save space) and a small storage bin for personal effects, and that was all. There was electricity in every compartment, about the only luxury, providing for lighting and access to the internal intranet of the ship, which contained an almost complete record of every book and movie ever made, compiled and digitized as part of a vast cultural archive within the ship's computer, backed up at multiple points by external hard-drives dotted about the ship containing the same things. Nopony wanted to lose their history, their culture, their past, even though they were about to hopefully begin an entirely new chapter.

In the middle of the ship was the command module. Like the combat information centre aboard a warship, buried deep within the hull, the command module was located where it was deemed to be the safest. Micrometeorite impacts were far less likely than they would be at the front of the ship, and even with the magical shield bubble, it was deemed prudent to protect the brain of Friendship One through its physical location and also the installation of a large micrometeorite deflector, a big metal sunshade-looking contraption stuck to the sides of the module. From here, General Spitfire would oversee the day-to-day operations of the giant, lumbering craft. Normally, mission control would relay messages and telemetry from their tracking stations to this module. But soon enough after departure, there would not be a mission control any longer.

They would be on their own, for the perilous, dark journey through space, an impossible, unprecedented, absurdist notion of travel over a distance so vast as to practically lose all meaning. Of course, any journey- impending apocalypse or no- that intended to travel at such speeds would be essentially on their own anyway, as they would quite literally outrun the radio signals that might be sent from the ground. But this had a different quality to it, the difference between forgetting your phone and being unable to call roadside repair when your car broke down, and there being no roadside repair and no towing company and no police, because they were all dead.

Spitfire and her crew were well-trained and well-led, but there was a mental component to the mission that even the ESEA psychologists had not quite been able to deal with. All space travel was lonely. Being so far from home could have a deleterious effect on a pony's psyche- Princess Luna could attest to that- but they were going so much further. All Equinauts through history, save for the Valiant's trip into the outer solar system, had been able to see their home planet looming large through their viewports. They had all had a home to come back to. The crew of Friendship One would not. They would have to travel through the nothingness, for longer than anypony had ever been in space, going farther than anypony had ever gone, all the while knowing they could never go back, and if they did, they would find only the charred bones of their loved ones and the ashen remnants of the world they had known.

No psychologist had ever been trained to help a patient deal with that.

Four hours after the arrival of the Vanguard, the ship was ready for departure. The crew, when not devilishly busy with preparatory work, had been waiting in dreadful anticipation of nuclear retaliation from Griffonia, but there had been none. King Grissom had no desire to inherit a radioactive wasteland as his spoils of war, and so long as Equestria continued to hold fire on the rest of her nuclear weapons, he would do the same, and none of his nuclear missiles could be put into a high enough orbit to destroy Friendship One anyway. Spitfire, floating gently in the command module, summoned her senior staff, for she was expecting a message. When it came, it was broadcast throughout the ship, to every compartment and on every circuit. A few amateur astronomers and ham-radio operators tuned in as well, listening from the surface for the last message they would probably ever hear. Spitfire adopted a posture that was as close as she could come to parade-ground attention while in zero-gravity.

"Hoofston, this is Friendship One. We are standing by for your transmission, over."

"Friendship One, copy. Transmission begins now, over."

The video screen popped into life. An image of the throne room of Canterlot Palace, and in the foreground, the Princesses, all four of them, in their royal regalia. There were other figures in the background too- those in the know would recognise the Elements of Harmony, Starswirl the Bearded, Shining Armor, the commander of the Royal Guard- but it was the Princesses that commanded the attention, and it was Celestia who spoke.

"My most loyal subjects, and all our allies and friends aboard Friendship One. You are about to embark upon the great journey, toward which we have striven these many years. You carry with you the hope of our entire species, and every species on this planet. As we watch you with eyes turned skyward, we pray to the endless and unforgiving expanse that it may allow you to complete your mission in safety."

The crew were silent, in rapt attention, as the world had been when Celestia announced that everything would be coming to an end in five years' time.

"Your task is a grave one, but it is the most important task in all of our long and storied history. No command I have ever given has carried more weight. This is not about victory in battle, or ending poverty, or fighting for rights and freedoms. This is about nothing less than the survival of everything we are, of everything we believe, of everything we hold dear."

A tiny bit of static crackled on the audio, perhaps from a cosmic ray from Celestia's sun passing by. Friendship One had to be protected against that, too, and she had been radiation-hardened in a similar fashion to military aircraft and vehicles, with circuitry and machinery designed to operate even in a high-radiation environment.

"This will be the last time you shall hear my voice. But do not forget it. Remember what you see here on your screen. Remember us, and all those who are staying behind. Remember every face, every name. Remember every place you have ever been, every sight you have ever witnessed. Use those memories to build anew. To create another civilization from the ruins of the old, but to learn from our mistakes, to build on our strengths. Make New Equis your new home, and think of us from time to time. That is all we can ask of you."

Crying in zero gravity was tricky, for the tears tended to form globs and cling to the eyes and cheeks like a thin sheen of slime, but there was scarcely a dry eye in the command capsule as the crew listened to their Princess, their brave Princess, who could have come with them, still could; teleporting to the ship was well within her power. They all could come. Every one of those on screen, the royal family, the Elements, their closest advisors. There was room and time for the transfer to be made. They could be accommodated. There was a small but vocal contingent aboard who argued that the Princesses were being derelict in their duty by choosing to remain behind. Their presence would give an immense boost to the colonists, both in terms of their abilities and their morale-raising presence. But they had chosen to stay, not to avoid the risks of the perilous journey into the darkness, but to try, however futile the effort may be, to save all those who could not come, all those who were not Equinauts and whose lucky numbers had not come up in the lottery. Even those who wilfully disbelieved the end was coming. Even those who were, at this very moment, defiling Equestrian soil with their presence, breaking international law and fighting an unjust, greedy war. They would try to save everything, but perhaps they would save nothing.

"If we survive, we will endeavour to get a message to you," Celestia continued. 'It will, of course, not arrive for years. Eight years, to be exact. If you do not receive that message in eight years time, then you can safely assume the worst, and that you are the last living ponies, the last living Zebras, the last living Yaks and Griffons and Diamond Dogs anywhere in the universe. If that should be the case, then I have no doubt you will all uphold the great and noble traditions of your respective races, and the collective principles of love, friendship and justice that we all hold dear."

Each of the other Princesses then spoke a few word, echoing Celestia's sentiments. Luna urged the different races to work together, Cadence urged them all to show love, respect and understanding for each other under trying conditions, and Twilight, the youngest and most inexperienced of the royals, simply wished them luck and said that every creature left behind believed in them and their long mission. Celestia then spoke again, for the final time.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with you. Twilight is correct. We all believe in your eventual success, though it will be a seemingly endless and hard road. If we succeed here, then your mission will have paved the way faster than any thought possible for an expansion of our society beyond the stars. If we fail, then you will be all that remains to carry the torch. Good luck to each and every one of you."

"And to you all down there, Your Highness," Spitfire replied, holding a firm salute, hoof at her temple, until the image of the throne room flicked off and was replaced by a blank blue screen.

In the cool, pale light of the pre-dawn hour, while most of Equestria was waiting in fearful silent dread for the end, a few astronomers gazed upward into the sky. Friendship One was clearly visible through their telescopes as she prepared to depart. Though she was an ugly ship, she was a beautiful sight; the sunlight that would soon arrive over Equestria was already painting her hull a fiery gold, as though she were undergoing atmospheric re-entry. In reality, the ship was getting farther from the planet, not closer to it, nosing out of its orbit with a few bursts of propellent before they engaged the magic 'drive' which would take them away, far away.

These few astronomers, at least, could spend some small part of this final morning doing something that they loved.

Friendship One left behind its cradle, the metallic womb where she had been birthed, and climbed into a higher orbit. Spitfire ordered her to be taken to one-third of lightspeed, at a gradual but increasing rate of acceleration. Best not to tax her too much all at once, just in case. There were a million parts that could break and ruin the whole effort before it even began. Yet they could not dawdle; somewhere, invisibly, out there in the coal black emptiness, death was stalking them, nipping at their heels.

To the observers below, Friendship One began to draw away, waning like a fading winter moon, getting smaller and smaller, hard to track because there was no glow from rocket exhaust nozzles as there would be with a normal craft. Magic was driving her, not rocket fuel. Her ion drives were strictly secondary, suborned to the forces of a different science, one which, despite having been studied for far longer than the world of astrophysics and technology, was still not fully understood, even by its greatest practitioners.

Friendship One accelerated, leaving Equis orbit, and then, like a flash, it was gone, racing away at speeds too great for the mind to comprehend, as its unicorn 'engine room' drove it into the void. Soon it was gone from deep-space radar altogether, outrunning the radio waves that were tracking it. Other than Celestia's speech, there had been no great ceremony, no breaking of champagne as there would be with a naval vessel or cruise liner, no pomp and circumstance. Just a little light in the heavens growing smaller and smaller until it vanished entirely, as though it were a metaphor for the fate of ponykind.

To echo that metaphor, a little while later, as the sunlight broke over the land and dawn arrived in a brilliant blaze of fiery splendor, the air-raid sirens began to mournfully, pointlessly wail across Equestria.

One Final Sunrise

The sirens went unheeded by most. They did not matter; there was no hiding from what was coming, not like from a Griffon bombing raid or a tornado. A basement or the cupboard under the stairs was not enough. Crouching low in a bathtub with some pillows piled on top would save nopony this time. Even a purpose-built bomb shelter in your backyard or beneath a public park was of no use. Just a warning that the end was nigh. Now is the time to make peace with yourself and with your Princesses. Now is the time to pray.

The dawn came, and the sirens sounded, and then they went painfully silent. Everything was silent. No planes rumbling overhead, no cars on the roads, no happily laughing foals in the streets. Just an oppressive stillness, like the hour before a summer storm breaks. Ponies huddled miserably together, clinging to their families, their pets, or just sitting out on the porch with their spouse or lover, watching the sun come up, the last sunrise they would ever see.

And what a sunrise it was. Celestia made damn sure of it. The skies were clear, a brilliant ripple of purple-red on the horizon spreading across the vast empty canvas until the whole sky looked like an abstract painting. And then the glowing orb itself crested the edge of the world, and everything was golden, perfectly golden, like the doors of heaven had swung open and the Princess herself was there to welcome every single one of her subjects home.

The only parts of Equestria that were not silent were the places where Griffon military forces were on the move. The grinding clank of tank tracks and endless dirge of wheels as convoys of trucks pounded the dirt roads into mud and heavy armoured vehicles tore up the asphalt beneath their bulk, jets screeching overhead in support, the low throbbing whir of helicopters. It was an army on the march, but it may as well have been a training exercise, as they met no opposition. Trench lines and bunkers sat abandoned, doors swinging gently in the breeze like some horror movie set. The towns they passed through seemed deserted. Canterlot, the distant capital, was their goal. They knew the Princess was there. Their satellites had intercepted the radio and video transmission from the palace to their strange collective shibboleth, the lifeboat that the ponies believed in, but the Griffons did not.

It hardly seemed a fair fight any longer. There had been strong resistance around the spaceport at New Zebrica, but that was all. Nopony seemed to care about defending anything else. The Equestrian Army had melted away, like a snowflake landing upon the tongue. Just as King Grissom had planned. The whole of Equestria, consumed by fear and devoutly following the lies of their Princess, had simply given up. They had no will to resist, and soon, the whole of the country would be under Grissom's claw, prostrate and begging for a real leader, one who had not become swallowed by a messiah complex and a desire to become like a bell-ringing lunatic with a 'The End Is Nigh' placard strung around their neck, both at the same time. Celestia had led her country to ruin, and now she was about to deliver it wholesale to the Kingdom of Griffonia.

In Canterlot, Celestia and Luna stood together on the high balcony of the palace, watching the sunrise together, two sisters enjoying a final peaceful moment, a warm and loving embrace, a gentle kiss on the forehead. The city below seemed empty, though both knew hundreds of thousands of desperate ponies were down there, somewhere, cowering in corners or tucked up in bed shivering with fear, all knowing their only chance of survival came from within the walls of the tower the royal sisters were standing upon.

They were all there; Cadence, Twilight, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Starswirl, Shining Armor, Sunburst, Starlight Glimmer. Plus a cadre of a hundred and fifty trained sorcerers and military barrier-magic experts, the best of the best of those who had not been assigned to Friendship One. It would take every ounce of strength in their bodies, all of them combined, and it would still likely not be enough.

Celestia and Luna entered the throne room, where the others waited, face drawn and downcast. Some, like Rainbow Dash, seemed keen to get to the action and finally be doing something. All the waiting, all the tension of the last five years of public knowledge, was coming to a head. This was it. They would do, or they would die.

Celestia thought about giving a speech, but she had given enough of those during her long life. Besides, she had given one a short while earlier, to the crew of Friendship One, now a very fast-moving dot somewhere out there, outrunning physics itself, tearing through the ether like a bullet through the air- or else it was now a very fast-moving cloud of atomised debris, condemned to drift for eternity through the dark and lonely abyss.

Whatever the fate of their brave colonists, their focus was here and now. New Equis was, quite literally, a whole new world. Even if they survived the impending holocaust, the battered survivors might never learn of the fate of Friendship One at all. It could remain forever a mystery.

"It is coming," Celestia said suddenly. "I feel it."

They all turned to look at her. A sudden shock, sweeping through her system just as it swept through her Sun. The gamma ray burst was in the solar system, its powerful radiation rippling across the surface of the star, as though a pebble had just been hurled into a pond at lightspeed. A violent plume of superheated matter burst from the far side of the Sun, like blood spattering from an entry wound, the radiation having raised the surface temperature rapidly, but the Sun itself would not die. Even the gamma ray burst was not strong enough for that, not at the distance it had been travelling, gradually widening the beam, gradually losing focus and energy density over so many trillions of miles, as the months and years rolled past. The Sun was much too big, much too powerful an entity in its own right, to be destroyed or severely damaged by the blast. But a planet?

Oh, a planet was quite an exquisite morsel for it to chew upon.

"We have minutes at best," Celestia informed everypony. They moved into position, pre-planned, a wide diamond formation. The Elements of Harmony formed an inner ring around the four Alicorns, while everypony else clustered at one of the four points of the diamond. At a nod from Celestia, everypony present closed their eyes. Their horns glowed. The Elements glowed around the necks of their bearers. Slowly but surely, casting the same protection spell and augmented by the mysterious magic of the Elements, they formed a dome above the palace, then above the city, spreading outward and expanding farther from its source with the same creeping certainty as the gamma ray burst. A city could be protected by one Alicorn easily; Cadence had used her magic to defend the Crystal Empire when needed, and Celestia had protected Canterlot against Luna's rage centuries ago before banishing her. To protect a planet was altogether a different prospect, which was why all the Alicorns, the Elements, Starswirl and the other hundred and fifty unicorns were combining their strength.

The glimmering dome rose from Canterlot, alarming Griffon military observers watching the city via live spy-sat link. They calmed once they realised it was just a shield. Perhaps Celestia feared a nuclear attack in retaliation for her use of atomic weaponry? But King Grissom had no intention of deploying his nuclear arsenal; why would he, when he was conquering the whole of Equestria with contemptuous ease? There was essentially no resistance now, other than a few scattered squads here and there who were determined to die for their flag and their Princesses in a more meaningful manner. The rest were just waiting for annihilation from beyond the stars, and that made them easy prey, rounded up in vast numbers where they still wore the uniform, and simply dissipating like a hot breath on a cold night as the Griffonian army advanced, scattered to the winds by their groundless fears.

Grissom did not want to rule over a dead land, ruined by radiation, and though a small part of him feared that Celestia might launch all of Equestria's missiles out of spite or panic, he doubted that would be the case. She expected death on an even grander scale to be imminent. Her conviction was so great it seemed unlikely she would use those weapons until her belief was truly shattered when nothing happened at all. By that time, by the time her disillusioning was complete, the Griffonian army would have already captured Canterlot and, quite probably, the missile launch sites as well. Even now, large transport planes, escorted by squadrons of fighters, were carrying Griffon drop-companies to the missile fields, where they would hurl themselves from the open ramps and doors and descend with frightening speed upon the silos and their command bunkers. There was no Equestrian air force left to oppose them. The radar stations they passed over lay dormant. No missiles leapt up to meet them, so great was Equestria's collapse. Like a black hole, the nation and its once-proud army had turned in on itself, an empty shell, a nothingness. Only distance stood between Grissom and total domination. Distance, and time.

The shield expanded, puzzling and worrying some Griffon observers. Perhaps it was not just a shield, but some kind of magic weapon? There was puzzlement until somebody reminded the assembled generals and ministers that the pony belief in the coming end was so great, they would continue to keep up the pretence until the last possible moment. Until all doubt had gone that they had made a mistake. Until the Griffons were kicking in the palace doors and gunning down the Princesses, distracted as they would be by their magic. Producing such a shield required great concentration. Attempting to produce a shield of this magnitude would be enough to put one into an almost catatonic state; there would be no resistance in the palace. The nearest units to the city were an hour away.

But they did not have an hour.

The gamma ray burst swept on through the void, invisible, like a tidal wave that could not be seen. There was no warning of its approach. It was like a torpedo fired by a submerged submarine, running silent and deep until it struck its target. Though the shield surrounded the planet as though it were in a snowglobe, it was translucent, and the first indication anybody on the ground got of the sudden storm was when the heavens came alive with auroras, even in the morning sky. It looked like the world was inside of a disco ball, some cosmic nightclub kaleidoscope nightmare evolving over their heads. Outside of the shield, hard radiation battered itself against the barrier, like a shark pounding on the hull of a glass-bottomed boat. It looked for a moment like it would hold; gamma ray bursts do not last long, seconds to minutes at the most. But then the full bore of the storm struck with a power unmatched anywhere in the universe.

The shield wavered, flickered like a lightbulb, dimmed, burst back into newly resurgent strength as Celestia and Luna pushed themselves to the brink of death, straining their bodies and draining them of their very essence to keep the shield up. But it was not enough. The shield bent and buckled, and was punctured first approximately one thousand miles off of the southern coast of Equestria, over the open and empty expanse of the Southern Ocean. Here, the radiation rushed through like water flowing through a hole in a dam, and just like a dam breach, that undermined the rest of the structure.

The waters of the Southern Ocean beneath the breach began to boil as they were suddenly heated by the onrushing tide of electromagnetic energy. Huge clouds of steam burst from the surface, superheated and scalding. An unfortunate Griffon frigate, patrolling the nearby Fairmile Islands, was turned into a pressure cooker, frying its crew inside its metal hull, the fat and muscle melting from their bones.

The skies above the sea turned to fire as the radiation ripped through. Clouds vanished in the sudden heat haze, Celestia's gorgeous sunrise now replaced with a hellish skyscape, like something from the twisted mind of a half-demented artist instead of the earlier picturesque tableau. Flames burst into horrible life upon the shores of the Fairmile Islands, grass and trees and birds igniting, the sands on the beaches fusing into glass. The same thing happened on the shore of Equestria's southern coastline. The shield, now fatally undermined, collapsed entirely. Its source, Canterlot and its palace, turned to fire in a heartbeat.

In the upper atmosphere, the ozone layer was torn to shreds, stripping away the protective shroud that shielded the planet from cosmic rays and solar flares. There was just too much energy hitting it, too fast, too hard. A gamma ray burst from a more distant star would have still damaged the layer, but most of its harm would have been absorbed by the atmosphere, the thick and cloying air that would have cushioned the blow and absorbed the radiation like the lead shielding or tank of water around a nuclear reactor. The farther away it originated, the less damage it would do. Sigma-225b had been fired at point blank range in cosmological terms, and its impact reflected that proximity.

In Griffonian military HQ, radio links, relayed by satellite from their ground and air forces in Equestria, began to cut out one by one. Video screens went blank. On the other side of the world, the Griffons and their King could only watch on with confusion, and a rapidly spreading sense of dread that maybe, just maybe, the Princess had been right after all.

In Canterlot, the palace burned to the ground, towers of flame crumbling, with molten gold running down the marble walls like candle wax. The Princesses, the Elements and their bearers, and all those who had remained behind were gone.

In Hoofburg airbase, the heat of the burning sky ignited the rocket fuel reserve, sending a huge billowing plume of fire belching forth from the earth. The staff housing, where the families of the launch team huddled, glowed with the heat, melting away.

In Hoofston, the mission control team for Friendship One were incinerated at their desks, the last message from Equis sent mere seconds ago, but lost forever in the blizzard of incoming radiation.

Near Ponyville, the entire Everfree Forest blazed, a hideous inferno, the weird and varied denizens of that oddly magical place nothing more than ash beneath the rain of pine resin and exploding sap as tree after tree succumbed to the end.

In Manehattan, city of glass and steel, a million windows shattered in the heat as the sky turned into a hellscape, something drawn from Discord's darkest visions. The lord of chaos had long since disappeared, retreating to his own pocket dimension. Even he could not stop this.

In Griffonia, as the screens went dark, the military commanders began to receive panicked messages from units stationed thousands of miles from the initial impact point, not yet affected by the catastrophe but able to feel its peripheral effects. They could see something was very wrong, and their radios crackled heavily with static.

"Viper 1-5 to command, something's going on out here! That shield is gone, I say again, the Equestrian shield is gone!"

"Sunray 6 to all units on this net, standby. Our rad-meters just spiked off the charts, awaiting confirmation."

"Command, this is Angel 2, emergency traffic! The whole sky is on fire to the west!"

The Griffons were powerless to act, or even to respond to their units, because they simply didn't know what was going on. Magic? Nuclear detonations? Or were the prophetic words of the Princess from five years earlier, broadcast on every channel and station and frequency, coming true? Was this really the disaster she had claimed, or was it a trick, a final, last-minute deceit? Had she been fooling them all along, lulling them into some false sense of security so she could unleash her superweapon? Was her spaceship actually that which it had been feared initially, some kind of orbital weapons platform?

King Grissom flew into a momentary rage, thinking Celestia had outsmarted him after all, but calmed himself as more panicked reports flooded in from border posts. There were desperate calls for help, messages of huge spikes in radiation and temperature, and one by one, those reporting in went silent, their feed cut, a hiss of static on the line, like a million angry bees. One underground bunker complex reported a thick, brown mist coming in through their ventilation system. They went quiet moments later.

Another reported switching to internal ventilation because their oximeters and flowmeters were showing that almost no actual air was coming in from outside. They too dropped silently off the radio net shortly after.

"Get me some satellite imagery of Canterlot!" one general demanded. He was curtly informed that the spy satellite they had been using for that purpose had gone offline.

"Then get me some fucking imagery of somewhere else!" he replied. His anger turned to deep concern when he was told that there was not one single satellite available. They had all gone offline- shut down, destroyed, signal blocked, nobody was sure. But they were not responding. None of them, even the ones in orbit over Griffonia. Not just spy-sats, but weather satellites, pollution monitoring satellites, communications satellites. They tried piggybacking on the civilian satellites that relayed television and radio signals, but they, too, had gone dark.

"An EMP!" the general snarled. "Has to be. By the gods, that thing she built up there..." He paused. That made no sense. An electromagnetic pulse that powerful would destroy all of Equestria's satellites, too. Come to that, it would likely destroy all of their electronics, full stop. But then, if Celestia was willing to run her country into the ground and see it laid low economically and militarily, might she take this final, mad step? Perhaps she was aboard that ship after all, riding away to glory and to a new world while leaving her great rivals, the Griffons, stumbling round in the stone age?

But the scientist in him (and he had a doctorate in chemistry, as a former head of Griffonia's chemical weapons programme) said that no EMP weapon could be built that was powerful enough to affect an entire planet. An entire hemisphere, yes, maybe, with a big enough warhead and an altitude high enough. But Griffonia was on the other side of the planet, or at least most of it was, and so were her domestic satellites. Any weapon detonated, even in space, would find the huge, rocky bulk of Equis lying in its path, and its radiation attenuating away in the whisper-thin upper atmosphere. A nuclear detonation threw radiation in all directions, and did not concentrate enough of its force to affect something that was thousands of miles away. No, an EMP weapon could not do that. This had to be coming from something- or somewhere- else. A great sinking feeling gripped his heart, dragging it slowly down into the icy depths of true realisation.

Yes, the Princess had been speaking the truth. The only thing he could think of that was powerful enough to do that was either an enormous solar flare, which they would have been able to detect- or a gamma ray burst, which they wouldn't.

They had seen nothing, yet if they were to be looking out from the opposite hemisphere, from Equestria or New Zebrica or the Southern Ocean or the great archipelago that ran like a spine through that vast and mighty sea, they would have been able to see a light in the sky. A small, faint light compared to the brilliant, blazing sun, but enough to be visible even in the soft daylight of early morning, like the half-moon that hangs dimly in the blue sky in winter. This was the death glow of Sigma-225b, ten lightyears away, an echo from the past, for the star had been gone for a decade. Only now was the light from that terrible, catastrophic event reaching Equis, and it was bringing hell along with it.

In the irradiated, heat-scarred ruins of Equestria, there was no life. One half of the planet had been scoured clean, not just of civilization, but of the very air itself, the huge pulse of radiation overpowering everything, out-muscling Equis's protective magnetic field and atmosphere which would have kept the planet safe from a more distant or less energetic event. Most of the atmosphere had been torn apart at a molecular level, so intense was the energy directed at it, and reassembled by a chain reaction into large quantities of nitrous oxide, a brown fog which was what the Griffonian bunker had been seeing, seeping through their vents. This process would have happened more slowly and on a more limited scale after a less severe burst, a glancing blow or a widely dispersed distant explosion, but the concentration of gamma rays, x-rays and other highly energetic particles meant that it was happening on a vast scale, turning most of the hemisphere into a brown, hellish wasteland, covered with thick cloying fog instead of a true atmosphere.

On the other side of the world, there was panic.

The communications net had gone dark. Both the military and civilian leadership of Griffonia had no contact with their own units, their own cities, their own citizens. The national power grid had gone down; not all at once, but in a rolling series of cascading blackouts, starting in the westernmost provinces- those on the periphery of the dead hemisphere- and gradually moving eastward, a combination of power shedding, overloading and whatever damage the gamma ray burst was doing. The military had backup generators and so did the government buildings and royal palace, but the operators at their radio sets were not getting through to anybody.

"Any unit on this net, any unit on this net, report status, over!"

"This is Griffonia Command calling all vessels at sea, respond on this frequency if you hear this message."

"Is anybody there? Anybody at all? Please, somebody, come in! I don't even care if you're a pony, just...tell me there's somebody else still out there!"

The airwaves were not silent, for they thrummed with static; severe, harsh bursts of white noise filled the headsets of the radio operators. The radiation detectors posted at the entrances to the palace as part of its security system were ticking away like a field of a thousand croaking frogs. The guards outside wore respirators and gas masks as they stood watch over the hideous red-brown sky that had replaced the fine, golden evening of a few minutes earlier. So swift had the end of the world been that most Griffons didn't even know it had happened yet; they imagined a power failure, perhaps an Equestrian bombing or missile attack on a local power plant, not realising the scale of the issue. The red sky? Well, at night, that was good, wasn't it? Shepherd's delight, they said. As they lit candles in their lounges and murmured through the darkened streets, the Griffons, with the exception of their leadership, remained ignorant of the facts.

Their world was dying.

A harsh, stinging rain began to fall; a dirty rain, brown like the sky. The guards retreated beneath the porticoes of the palace. There shouldn't have been rain. It wasn't in the forecast. It burned, too, like being lightly pelted with a stinging hail. This wasn't right. Not right at all.

Darkness fell quickly, partly due to the time of day and partly due to the soot and ash swirling through what remained of the atmosphere. There was an eerie quiet hanging over Griffonstone. The evening birdsong chorus was silent. They said the animals were the first to know when something was wrong- before an earthquake, for instance. Perhaps that gloriously reddish sunset was not a benign symbol. Not on this particular night. Now, slowly, the Griffons in the streets began to realise what their King and his ministers already knew. Something was definitely very badly wrong.

The winds came next, howling gales blowing out of the hills, off of the sea, from seemingly nowhere. Whipping across the land, carrying unwary Griffons into the air, knocking over light poles and trees, stripping tiles from rooftops. This, like the acidic rain, was definitely not in the forecast. Hurricane-strength gusts took cars and fences and streetlights on a merry journey down the street. The anemometers atop the Griffonian National Meteorological Observatory registered their highest ever reading- two hundred and ninety miles per hour- before they were ripped from their moorings. Buildings collapsed. Trucks and heavy intercity buses were tossed about like toys, hurled into the air above the darkened cities and towns of Griffonia. Panic descended rapidly across the population. The Griffons had their own ancient creation myths, and they had their own apocalyptic myths, too. Except they weren't just myths anymore. The winds, the bloody sky, the claw of their ancient primitive god enveloping their world and squeezing it in a death-grip.

The crazed atmospheric conditions caused by the sudden, intense heating of one half of the planet had caused the winds, dramatic and sudden, as the air sought to regain its equilibrium, rushing from a place of high pressure to one of low pressure. The ozone layer was all but gone, torn asunder by the bath of hard radiation. The atmosphere itself was crumbling; some of it had been torn free and hurled into space by the highly energetic collisions and sudden heating, while some had been converted by the rapid chemical reactions into nitrogen dioxide. One hemisphere was gone, but the other was not safe.

The gamma ray bust was still blazing through space like a river of radiation, and the planet was slowly, inexorably rotating about its axis. Every second that passed brought more of its surface into the firing line, fresh, virgin territory for the burst to work upon. Now, it was Griffonian territory that was burning, the fires igniting under the death-gaze of the burst, spreading rapidly and ferociously, fanned by the winds, all-consuming.

In Griffonstone, King Grissom held his head in his claws and wept.

The windows of the palace crashed in, pelted by debris from the raging, howling storms. Great stained-glass triumphs depicting his predecessors now lay scattered in a million jagged pieces before him.

Just like my kingdom.

He wept, he laughed the bitter and broken laugh of one who finally knows they have been foolish, ignorant. The laugh of a griffon who spent a lifetime smoking and is surprised when he finally gets diagnosed with lung cancer. The laugh of a griffon who abused his wife and is surprised when she leaves him. The laugh of a griffon utterly convinced it was his enemy who was the fool, but who was surprised when he turned out to have been the blind one all along.

He summoned his generals, told them to do what they could, save who they could.

Then he drew his pistol and put a bullet in the side of his head.

The gamma ray burst continued unabated for forty-seven minutes and twelve seconds. Then, it ended as abruptly as it began, as if somebody had turned off a giant, invisible light. There had been longer bursts recorded in the past, some from very distant supernovae lasting several hours. But forty-seven minutes was more than enough.

Half of the planet was dead, a sterilized and silent world save for the howling of the winds and the crackling of the fires. The other half was dying, a terminal patient with little time left. The destruction of the ozone layer alone would doom them all; the constant bombardment from ultraviolet light from the sun would cause cancers and cripple food production. The ash from the fires and the photochemical smog would coat the world, hanging in the upper atmosphere like a blanket, cooling it. What was left of the atmosphere was a twisted wreck of its former self, with acidic nitrogen-rain falling from the skies, nitrogen smog rolling like morning mist across the landscape, storms raging.

It would not take long for the survivors to begin to suffocate; the oxygen concentration of this new and badly wounded atmosphere had dropped below survivable levels thanks to the effects of the blast. Many griffons had forgotten about Celestia's dire predictions. Most had not believed her anyway, their trust firmly rooted in Grissom's competent leadership and not in the mythos of the Princess. Large numbers of them died without even knowing what had befallen their world. Those who did remember cursed their King for not believing, just as he had cursed himself at the very end.

It didn't matter now. Nothing mattered now. It was all over. The war, so close to being won, had been lost after all.

The last griffons alive on the planet were members of the Griffonian Navy's submarine corps. Their ballistic missile boats were nuclear-powered and could stay at sea for a year before their reactors needed maintenance. Their crews, surfacing to find their throats closing up from the particulates and their lungs gasping for sufficient oxygen, no radio communication with headquarters, and no visibility thanks to the smog, panicked and returned below the surface. They died several months after G-Day when their food supplies ran out, and with them died the Griffonian military, the proud martial tradition which had led them to within touching distance of victory. So close, yet so far, denied by something that came from among the stars and destroyed everything.

Among those same stars, trillions of miles away, one small speck of the old, dead world sailed onward.

The Last Rocket

Silent and gleaming on the pad, the shuttle sat astride its large silver booster tank, flanked by the two spindly, slender rockets, like guardians shielding it from harm. The solid-fuelled rockets and the liquid-fuelled main engines would carry the shuttle into the heavens, where it would be a twelve-hour ride to Friendship One and then a frantic scramble to get everything ready and to depart in the small window they had before the arrival of the end.

It was a tighter window than had been hoped. Friendship One was supposed to have left several days ago, according to the original plan, but the closer things got to G-Day, the more problems seemed to crop up on board. One of the oxygen plants had shut down, requiring the delivery of additional spare parts to replace the ones that had to be consumed. Those spares had to be scrounged up from a disused base hospital at Hoofburg, because the factory making them had shut down, its mission fulfilled, its staff sent home to be with their loved ones. Then, one of the crew, performing an extra-vehicular activity to fix a damaged antenna, became entangled and found their air tank punctured by a sharply protruding stanchion, part of the ship's extremities. She died before she could reach the airlock. A problem with the navigation computer required a complete reboot from the ground. All of these things added time, which was the one resource they were running out of faster than any other.

But they still had a good chance of getting away. If the shuttle blew up or had some malfunction and could not reach them, then Friendship One would depart as soon as they could. The farther from Equis they could get, the better their chances of surviving. Nopony knew, even Celestia, exactly how wide the gamma ray burst was, or how far away the ship would need to get before it was out of the line of fire. Some estimates put the safe distance in light years- a far cry from the five-mile safe limit Colonel Garner had employed to save his troops from the nuclear weapon. The gamma ray burst was a gigantic shotgun, but nopony knew how much spread the pellets possessed after leaving the barrel. The ship would have to travel as fast as it could away from the planet and hope for the best. New Equis, their target, was below the galactic plane, eight light-years away, and, it was hoped, far enough outside of the cone-shaped blast streaking toward them to be safe.

Hoped, but not guaranteed.

In launch control at Hoofburg airbase, there was calm; a soft, quiet serenity as the big digital countdown clock on the main viewscreen ticked away the seconds. This would be the culmination of their mission, the final launch, not just of the day or the week or the year, but of all time. Once the shuttle Vanguard carried its crew and cargo to orbit, they would have nothing to do. They would be free for the rest of the time they had, free of any responsibility except to themselves and their families, who had been relocated to base housing nearby. There would be a few brief, sorrowful hours, and then? Nothing.

The crew of the shuttle had been loaded, the hatch sealed. Final preparations were underway, with the big blue numbers ticking down all the time, closer to launch and closer to armageddon. T-40:00. G-19:00:00. Or thereabouts, anyway. Nopony was exactly sure on that second number. Weeks, months, years of preparation, it all now came down to this. One last launch, one final, symbolic departure to orbit, the last ponies to ever leave Equis.

T-30:00. Vanguard's flight computers were switched to internal navigation mode and loaded with the launch profile.

T-20:00. A mandatory ten-minute pause for a final briefing and full system check. Everything was good. Everything was green. The countdown resumed.

T-10:00. A final poll of every station, every system. Go or No-Go, those were the only two choices. Were they ready to fly, ready to launch?

"Launch Director will now conduct a final launch status check. Flight?"

"Flight is go," replied the small, diminutive figure of Hazy Days, the flight director for the mission, sitting in her swivel chair, a cigar hanging from the corner of her mouth, as it always did during launches. She would chew on it like some old cowpony on the frontier, until the shuttle reached orbit, and only then would she permit herself to light it.

"Guidance?"

"Guidance is go."

"Range safety?"

"RSO is a go." That was a bit of a joke by this point. Anypony downrange who was likely to be hurt by falling debris from an exploding rocket would be dead within hours anyway.

"Consumables?"

"Consumables, we are go."

"Surgeon?"

"Surgeon is go." As if the flight surgeon's opinion mattered anymore. It was too important, too vitally symbolic to be scrubbed for any reason short of a technical fault that would guarantee its fiery destruction in a very demoralising way. That was still possible anyway, of course, for no spaceflight was ever completely safe. But the old surgeon gave his decision even though it didn't much matter, as if recommending exercise or a change in diet, something he had done a thousand times before and that he knew would most likely be ignored by the patient. After all, the biomedical sensors each crewpony wore beneath their suits showed them to be in good health, but even if there was a medical issue with one of the Equinauts, they could be damn sure the mission was going ahead anyway.

"Booster?"

"Booster is go." The two heavy solid-fuel rockets attached to the shuttle's enormous external fuel tank would drive the Vanguard into orbit.

"Payload?"

"Payload is go." The cargo in the shuttle's hold, a symbolic but essentially useless collection of artefacts from Equestrian history. The original constitution of the fledgling nation, the signatures of the much younger royal sisters faded and yellowed by the years, but still legible. The gilded ceremonial cup from which Celestia had supped purified water at the very first Summer Sun Celebration. The few pathetic and poignant scraps that constituted the personal belongings Luna had taken with her to the moon. The royal portraits, the official ones by the court artist which had hung in the throne room, four in total. Celestia, divine and impossibly regal, radiating benevolence and wisdom, the guiding star. Luna, expression stern and hauntingly beautiful, like a chill winter's night where frost lay all about and the sky with its endless stars flowed gently above. Cadence, young and pretty, a great warmth in her eyes and smile that matched the love in her heart. Twilight, youngest of all, slightly timid in expression even upon canvas, the great responsibilities of leadership thrust upon her but met with determination, courage and friendship. Those regal, powerful paintings and a thousand others now sat layered between sandwiches of particle board and bubble wrap somewhere in the belly of the shuttle, as though somepony were moving house and had just slung everything in the back of the truck.

"CAPCOM?"

"CAPCOM, we have a go for launch." Capsule Communications gave the last green signal, meaning the crew on board were all prepared and ready to go.

"After polling all stations, Launch Director confirms we are go for launch. T-10 minutes and counting. Restart the clock."

Up on the big screen, the countdown resumed.

T-5 minutes. The tank vents were cycled and the auxiliary power unit activated. Steam from condensing liquid oxygen and hydrogen wreathed the shuttle like a wedding veil as it waited patiently for launch, the heat from Celestia's noonday sun warming the skin of the big silvery booster tank and heating the supercooled fuel inside.

T-3 minutes. The main engine nozzles of the shuttle pivoted, swinging from side to side and top to bottom, a preflight test similar to how a pilot would test the ailerons and elevators of his plane while sitting on the runway to make sure they still worked. The flight surfaces of the shuttle underwent a similar preprogrammed test, too, though they would not be needed. This was a one-way flight; there was no return trip to Equis.

T-2 minutes. The Equinauts lowered their protective, gold-tinted visors, even those below on the lower deck and forward cargo hold, where no light from the sun would reach. Just in case something went wrong; protection from the wind if they had to bail out. But they probably wouldn't bother even if something did go wrong- why save yourself from falling to your death if you were going to be fried a few hours later?

T-1 minute. The power supply from outside was cut and the shuttle switched to its own power systems. The automated internal launch sequence began. The Equinauts braced themselves for the longest and wildest rollercoaster ride of their lives.

T-30 seconds. "Vanguard, launch control. Standby for a signal." A moment, then a voice, loud, clear and calm, unmistakable. Princess Celestia herself.

"My most loyal subjects," she began, broadcast into each crewpony's earpiece and over the internal radio system of the shuttle. "You are the last ponies to leave the surface of this planet. Our home. You carry with you precious relics of our civilization, but also the thoughts, prayers and hope of every one of us who remain behind. You will hear my voice again before you depart, but for now I give you my blessings and goodwill. Your launch will be watched by all those who are able to see it. A bright torch in the summer sky. Good luck."

"T-10, 9, 8, 7, 6, main engine start, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1..."

The engines roared into life, bright cones of blue-white flame. Jets of water spurted out like gigantic firehoses from beneath the craft, to cool and deflect the exhaust and, pointlessly now, to protect the launch tower. It would never need to be used again. Torrents of water poured out, millions of gallons flashing to vapour, huge clouds of steam billowing out like an old-fashioned locomotive's boiler had just exploded. At zero, the solid rocket boosters ignited, pillars of fire slowly, ponderously lifting the shuttle clear of the ground, rising into the air, sweeping onward and upward, literally unstoppable now- the solid boosters could not be turned off and would burn until all their fuel had been expended- clearing the tower with a hiss and flash of flame, a great thrumming roar filling the desert. It pounded through the chests of the base staff and their families, looking up with awe and immense sadness.

"Liftoff of the shuttle Vanguard," the public announcer spoke his final commentary over the base loudspeaker system, and broadcast via television and internet to the relatively small proportion of ponies still able to get a good signal and who had interest in watching. "Carrying the torch for a new civilization, and saying..." a lump formed in his throat, "saying goodbye to the old. May the Sun carry you and guide you." At the moment the clamps were released and the shuttle left the ground, responsibility for it transferred from launch control at Hoofburg airbase to mission control. If this had been a military launch, that would have simply been in a different room within the main building, but since it was an ESEA flight, that meant a transfer of responsibility to their control centre in Hoofston.

"Cleared the tower," the announcer intoned as the shuttle roared into the sky with ever-increasing velocity, the great cones of flame beneath her pounding the relentless heat and pressure into the concrete pad below, shaking and vibrating everything like a jackhammer, concussive waves of force pulsating out visibly, as though the air itself were throbbing and shaking, an earthquake in the sky.

"Vanguard, roll program."

The shuttle began to tip and change course, swinging over onto its back like a playful dolphin, the big silver fuel tank now facing the heavens. The smoke trail she was forming now took a dogleg as the Vanguard turned, angling away to the southwest, toward the equator and the orbit that would take her to Friendship One. The roar of her engines and boosters crackled and carried across the land. Ponies in the nearby cities of Las Pegasus and Hoofston could see her rising atop a pillar of flame and smoke, the thunder of her passage signalling the death knell for this doomed world, and a clarion call of hope for a new beginning elsewhere. But not for any of those watching.

Ponies froze in place in the streets, eyes turned skyward to watch. In Hoofston, even ponies engaged in a mass brawl in the street outside a tavern they had practically drained dry stopped their fighting to look as Vanguard rose above the low hills to their north and cut a trail across the cloudless vastness. It was as though ponies were watching not a shuttle, but a nuclear missile, that with its launch signaled the impending end of everything they knew. Other than the thrumming, shattering cry of the rocket motors, there was no sound. Ponies were silent; in awe, in sadness, in dread. The fighting ponies outside the bar never did get back to settling their drunken dispute. Instead they went back inside to drink one final round, together.

The on-board computers of the Vanguard automatically cut the thrust being produced by her own engines as she climbed, for she was approaching the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure, where the atmosphere was trying its damndest to stop the shuttle from reaching orbit, where the velocity of the Vanguard was increasing faster than the air density was diminishing. It was this single moment in time where the whole craft was under the most physical stress it would suffer during the entire flight to orbit, not at liftoff as some ponies might imagine. Cutting power to the engines to about two-thirds of maximum helped to keep the stress on the airframe within safe limits. One they were through that point- some seventy seconds into the flight and at an altitude of 30,000 feet- the computer automatically brought them back to full power again.

"Vanguard, Hoofston. You are go for throttle-up."

With the engines blazing, she continued to soar into the skies. At 150,000 feet, the two booster rockets separated with a flicker of light and a puff of fire as small pyrotechnic charges fired to push them away, a shroud of propellant gases and a light haze of smoke surrounding the craft for a few moments, looking to the untrained eye like something had gone tragically wrong. But the Vanguard emerged unscathed as the two boosters fell away, seeming to hang in the air, the last few spurts of flickering flame carrying them onward until they ran out of momentum and began to fall back to earth. In normal circumstances a ship would be waiting out in the Western Sea to recover the boosters for reuse. Nopony bothered this time. The recovery ship's crew were out partying or home soberly praying with their families.

Now it was just the Vanguard herself, without the boosters to give her a push, but the air was so thin up here that the smaller main engines of the shuttle were more than adequate to complete the task of driving her into orbit. As she faded from sight from the ground and divested herself of the now-expended fuel tank, hope seemed to fade with her. A forlorn calm set in across Equestria. It was like seeing the tail end of the last train leaving the station as you arrived, its red lantern swinging gently, and you knew you weren't going to see your home that day. The only home any ponies would have soon enough would be New Equis. Those who watched the Vanguard recede into the deepness of the sky knew they had no chance of ever seeing it for themselves.