Queen Chrysalis’s capsule bobbed up and down in the Griffon Sea, awaiting recovery. The Equestrian Space Agency might prefer winged landers, but Chrysalis strongly preferred capsules. As Chrysalis had put it herself, if the thing you’re riding down from space in, wrapped by a giant fireball, is going to have the aerodynamic properties of a brick, it’s stupid to slap wings on it and call it a glider. Better to treat it as the brick it is.
Chrysalis herself sat in the capsule’s center seat, flanked by the yeti and hippogriff who had just finished their rookie flight. The descent had been uneventful from undocking to splashdown. Of course, Chryssy thought smugly, I was piloting it.
And in thirty days she’d go up and do it all over again. Thirty up, thirty down, that was to be the cycle, at least until the earliest possible day that the escape rocket in that other universe- the Mahv, or whatever- was ready for launch. Concordia would be on permanent standby on the off-chance that the universe Amicitas had landed in was found, in which case it would jump there at once and begin directly coordinating rescue plans with the natives. And if that happened, it would be either herself or Rainbow Dash in command of the mission.
Of course, once the castaways had their rescue rocket, the plan would change to immediate pickup as soon as the universe was located. But that day remained at least half a year away, according to the castaways.
With a sudden jerk the capsule lifted out of the water, no longer bobbing. Bringing a capsule down was still a little bit of a roll of the dice, but CSP had got better than hitting the correct ocean; now they could put down within a dozen or so kilometers of the recovery barge. Thus, within minutes of splashdown, the capsule now floated in the air under the telekinetic power of the recovery team, to be set down on the barge for transport back to Horseton for reconditioning.
All of that was normal, routine, business as usual. The presence of a purple alicorn on the deck of the barge when Chrysalis opened the capsule hatch, on the other hoof, was definitely not normal.
“We need to talk,” Twilight Sparkle said, without preamble.
Chrysalis looked around. The barge had a control shack, and the tugboat that towed it a small cabin, and that was all. No privacy. Not even the pretense of privacy, given that the control rooms for both tug and barge had enormous windows. “Here? Now?” the changeling queen asked, climbing out of the capsule. “In front of-“
“Something very bad has happened,” Twilight said. “It happened two days ago, but we decided not to tell you until you made it down safely.”
Chrysalis’s imagination ran wild. She understood the logic. What’s more, she understood Twilight Sparkle, a mare who by changeling standards was an uncontrolled blabbermouth. If the princess had not only held her tongue but ordered others to do likewise, on the premise that it might be a dangerous distraction from the potentially lethal process of reentry, it meant something that would make Chrysalis in particular unable to control herself. And the fact that the princess was here to tell her the very instant she got out of the capsule…
“Tell me,” she said.
Twilight told her.
It was every bit as bad as Chrysalis expected.
Teddy didn’t pace. He didn’t slam the desk. His face remained calm, composed, unruffled. But he kept knocking the end of a pen onto his desk blotter, sliding his thumb and forefinger down its length, picking it up and allowing the top to swivel down, then knocking the other end into the blotter to start the cycle again. Venkat had seen his boss as fidgety as this before, but he couldn’t remember when. “Okay,” he said quietly. “We are going to operate under the assumption that Mark will recover. What does the loss of Dragonfly do to recovery efforts?”
“Plenty,” Venkat said. “Dragonfly was their mission engineer. She was also the only one capable of maintaining their spacesuits, which have required two rounds of maintenance and one emergency repair in two hundred and twenty sols. Barring a miracle from the pony homeworld, they have over three hundred sols remaining with no suit maintenance, known wear issues on said suits, and no backups or replacements. And, of course, all work on adapting pony systems to our needs will be set back.”
“Also there’s the matter of the cocoon mentioned by the pony astronauts,” Mitch grumbled. “They say such things have never been rated for vacuum. They’re never going to abandon her while there’s any chance she’s alive, so that means they have to get her out somehow to suit her up for transfer to the rover. They’re not going to cooperate with any plan that gets in the way of that.”
“Dragonfly is the second most popular alien crew member after Cherry Berry,” Annie said. “News of this disaster hit the Net like a fucking A-bomb filled with pureed shit. The only people who blame Dragonfly for this massive clusterfuck are the same chucklefucks who wanted to let the aliens die in the first place. They’re screaming ‘we told you so.’ But damn near everybody else is convinced that she’s going to die, that Mark’s going to die, and that the others are doomed without them, and that there’s fuck-all NASA can do to stop it.”
Teddy paused in his pen-tapping ritual. “Is there anything we can do about it?” he asked.
Chrysalis rubbed her head. “Okay, Dragonfly messed up,” she admitted. “She messed up by the numbers, but I can’t really blame her. In her position I probably would have done the same thing. Except for saving the monkey, that is. I might not have done that.”
“He’s not a- ugh,” Twilight Sparkle groaned. “Mark is a person, not a monkey. And he needs our help. You can begin by telling us how to cure him.”
“There is no cure,” Chrysalis said. “Not when a changeling drains someone empty of love. Victims either recover by themselves… or they don’t.”
“No cure? But there has to be something!!”
Chrysalis considered this. On the one hoof, anything further risked giving up secrets she’d managed to protect despite the détente. On the other hoof… she wasn’t really sure, anyway. “Removing the changeling usually releases the victim,” she said, “though the victim will be weak for a while. But failing that… your brother recovered quickly when confronted with the loved one I impersonated. You remember that, yes?”
“Every time we have to work together, yes,” Twilight Sparkle said. “But I try to put it aside for the-“
“Yes, yes, harmony friendship blah blah blah,” Chrysalis interrupted. “My point is, it might help if this Mark makes contact with whichever loved one Dragonfly impersonated for her feeding. The presence, or even the image or voice, of the real thing might dispel the captivation.”
“That’s it?” Twilight asked. “No spell, no infusion of love?”
“That really is the best suggestion I have, princess,” Chrysalis snapped. “Remember, until not that long ago we changelings had no reason to care about our victims except to make sure they kept producing love for us to eat. We don’t exactly have clinical trials I could refer you to!”
“An oversight that needs correcting,” Twilight replied coldly. “But another time. How do we get Dragonfly out of that cocoon?”
“You don’t,” Chrysalis replied. “Your report specified an opaque cocoon. That’s a long-term hibernation cocoon.” It was also the kind that produced queens, but Chrysalis saw no reason to enlighten this pony. With almost no magic and definitely no royal jelly, it wasn't going to happen anyway. “Forcing it open will injure or even kill the occupant. She’ll come out when she feels safe, and not one moment before.”
“You’re not being particularly helpful,” Twilight grumbled.
“You ask me a question I’ve never needed an answer for, and you ask another question for which there’s only one answer whether you like it or not!” Chrysalis roared. “I’m doing the best I can for you, pony, for you and my daughter and my senior pilot. Cease complaining and let’s talk about a lander.”
“A what?”
“I’m not on board with the idea that we have to wait for the pony homeworld to act before we can,” Teddy said. “What can we do?”
“Catatonia is a condition we still don’t understand very well,” Dr. Shields said, perched on the edge of one of the office chairs. “Mark could come out of it any moment, or he might remain that way for years. He requires immediate medical supervision, and he won’t get that until someone gets him off Mars.”
“I think we have to assume he comes out of it quickly,” Teddy insisted. “Without Mark’s skills and knowledge of Ares systems, the Purnell plan fails. And we already know from the alien castaways that their space programs probably won’t be able to make a craft that can both land and return from Mars any time soon.”
“Obviously we were wrong about our people being able to survive until rescue comes,” Chrysalis said. “We need to get there as fast as possible. How quickly can we design a lander to pick them up?”
“Are you kidding?” Twilight gasped. “Do you remember how huge your moon lander had to be? Now imagine it landing on a world with three times the gravity of the moon! Enough atmosphere to drag on the way up, but not enough for any serious aerobraking on the way down! And imagine it carrying six people more than whatever crew you send with it! And we have to be able to do that with absolutely no magic whatever, not even the telepresence spell.”
“So have the Concordia run comms relay,” Chrysalis said. “It’s got the batteries.”
“A landing and takeoff would take as much as two hours,” Twilight pointed out. “That’s not counting however long rendezvous with Concordia would require. And Concordia will be draining power all the time, until it doesn’t have enough power to make the jump home.”
“Are you saying it can’t be done?” Chrysalis asked.
“No. I’m saying it can’t be done and tested soon enough. We’d have to test it by landing and recovering it from Bucephalous, and that project could take a year even if we use Concordia to ferry the lander back and forth. We have to design the ship. We have to train crews. We have to do unmared landings to make sure the craft won't kill the crews. And then we do the piloted landing and ascent. All of that takes too much time. It’s faster to just use the human ship.”
Chrysalis snorted. “Not acceptable,” she said. “Dragonfly is going to die in that hell-world if we don’t get there quickly. And I’m the only one who can coax her out of that cocoon.”
“We can’t even find them yet,” Twilight pointed out. “And until we do find them, even if Discord gave us a lander gift-wrapped with a certificate from the legendary Queen Majesty herself- and even then I wouldn't trust-"
“Enough!” Chrysalis turned her back on the princess. “If all you can do is find reasons why we can’t do things, what good is an alicorn princess anyway?”
“Chrysalis, my student is there. My first student.”
“And so is my daughter. One of many, but still mine.”
“I know. And that’s why, when we go rescue them, we have to be sure it’s going to work. We probably won’t get more than one chance.”
Chrysalis wanted to argue the point, to attack the logic, to impugn the motives of the princess… and couldn’t. They needed to get there soon… but they absolutely had to get it right, first. “I know,” she said, and silently she cursed herself for allowing a bit too much genuine feeling into those syllables. She could feel pity pouring off the idiot genius already.
“Chrysalis…”
“Leave me,” the queen ordered. “This audi… this… conversation is over.”
“Leave you?” Twilight gestured. “We’re on a barge.”
Chrysalis looked around, realizing how many eyes were on the two of them. Wonderful. I just humiliated myself in front of an audience. “Leave me anyway,” she muttered. “Take your pity somewhere else.”
“No. Friends don't leave friends alone at times like this.” Twilight Sparkle made her point by walking over to Chrysalis and sitting down next to her.
And that was that, apparently.
Sparkle, Chrysalis noted, had more sense than to put a comforting foreleg or wing around her. That was as well, for if she had, détente or no, she would have ripped it off.
“We can ask the alien crew to discuss it with their superiors,” Teddy said, “but for now hoping for an alien rescue mission is futile. What can we do, right now, to help?”
“Ideal treatment for catatonic shock begins with putting the victim in a place where they feel safe and secure,” Dr. Shields said. “We aren’t going to get that on Mars. Next comes pharmaceutical intervention to counter any imbalance of brain chemistry. Dr. Keller and I are reluctant to recommend that, since the ponies have no way of testing neurotransmitter or endorphin levels, and we'd rather they not experiment with the contents of the medical kit. Electroshock therapy, of course, is right out."
The other people in the room nodded silent understanding.
"The next best thing," Shields continued, "is contact with loved ones, people the victim trusts, assuming they weren't the cause of the catatonic episode. Perhaps Mark’s parents and the Hermes crew could record a series of short messages to be sent over the Pathfinder channel.”
“Audio only,” Venkat said. “Our data transfer rate is about 750 bits per second and dropping. That’s a megabyte every three hours. Video is absolutely out of the question. Even audio messages will have to be short and very low-quality.”
“Voice and a small picture, then,” Dr. Shields suggested. “It won’t be as good as full video, but it will help. Text messages are useless in these cases- no sense of direct connection.”
“Do it,” Teddy said. “I’ll call the Watneys myself and make the arrangements there. Mitch, handle the Hermes crew. Venk, if you know of anyone else-“
Venkat shook his head. “Mark was married to his work,” he said. “He had a couple of girlfriends during training, but they didn’t last long. The closest people to him are his parents, the Ares III crew, and the ponies.”
“Don’t forget his geek factor,” Mitch put in. “Mark loved superhero movies and science fiction. Maybe we could tap some of his favorite actors for that.”
“Get me a list,” Annie said. “I’ll make it happen. Most of Hollywood is beating down my door asking how they can help.”
“All right, then,” Teddy said. “Let’s show Mark how much he’s loved.”
Ok, here is what I think is happening with Dragonfly, based on my own observances and passages in previous chapters.
The general consensus is that Dragonfly is metamorphosing into a Queen; the cocoon she created leads credence to this, as does the increased emotional sensitivity she's displayed towards unemotional objects (Mars and Sojourner). Sure, Kris says he's not planning anything of the sort, but stranger things have happened. Queens, I believe, are capable of drawing more Love from the environment than mere drones of the Hive; they're the Queen for a reason, after all, and surely the one capable of gathering the most Love (I.e. the most powerful Changeling) is the one placed in charge.
Now, in a past chapter, Dragonfly said that Chrysalis was capable of always feeling someone's Love for her while she was in orbit above Equestria. That could have been just hyperbole, or some form of Changeling propaganda, but let's assume that it's literal.
(I don't know the exact mechanics of Changeling Love transference; is there a max distance? Is it limited by line-of-sight? This becomes important in a second.)
I remember reading a quote somewhere that said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that Love is the only force in the universe capable of traveling faster than light; able to appear instantaneously wherever the recipient is located.
Now, assuming that Dragonfly is in fact becoming a Queen, and assuming that Love works similar to how I described to Changelings (in that its strength doesn't diminish with distance), imagine just how much Love Dragonfly will receive from a couple of billion humans all sending their Love towards Mars, even if it's only because the humans in question find her cute? It won't have nearly the potency that romantic Love would have, but even general affection for Dragonfly would be enough to keep her sated for the duration.
(I wrote the above after the last chapter, but kept it saved so it wouldn't be buried in the comments. While I don't doubt that Kris is going to be true to his word, and NOT make Queen Dragonfly, consider this: at some point, there had to be a FIRST queen; a drone didn't just decide one day to mess around with royal jelly. What's to say that in extreme cases (such as being marooned on a hostile planet with little to nothing in the way of Love), some buried survival instinct couldn't trigger the change without the need for Jelly?)
Fingers crossed
And we see yet again that Twilight Sparkle should be kept far away from sharp objects, combustibles, and politics. Because as much as Twilight might empathize with Chrysalis, the feeling is not returned because Chrysalis is a narcissistic, xenophobic, sadistic, unprincipled sociopath. I don't buy for one second that she wouldn't put Twilight's head on a pike if she thought she could get away with it.
She is not, and never will be, your friend, Twilight.
8919958
Not with that attitude she won't!
Well. Shit.
As I promised, I made potato flat bread and Irish potato farls using nothing but mashed potatoes and potato flour. I can say that the results were not great. It is not significantly different than hash browns. It is basically mashed potatoes with a crispy outer layer.
Twilight has a very interesting definition of "friend".
Sad that we won't see queen/evolved Dragonfly, but hopefully Mark gets snapped out of his catatonia soon.
Let's hope Mark can hear and see a message from Beth soon!
Waiting and hopeful.
Good wordsmithing gets us readers emotionally invested toward a positive outcome.
Rule 1: Don't die. Rule 2: Don't let your buddy die.
8919986
At the moment, Hermes is much, much closer to earth than it is to Mars; I forget all the various radio setups, but I believe that Hermes needed to be in Mars orbit in order to transmit audio, right? That means that Beth's voice won't be heard on Mars for several months
All I note is a hint towards Chrysalis's landing on the moon. So I'm guessing they didnt do moon to orbiterike Apollo did but more along what Braun envisioned.
Tease!
But yeah, let's hope she can get out of it alive, at least. I still believe the ponies wil have to be the ones to mount the rescue, things are NOT looking good to the castaways.
THANK YOU. Wherever that hype came from was completely unfounded and stupid.
8919958 8919984 Right this minute Twilight is as close to a friend as Chrysalis has in their universe (Cherry being outside the universe at the moment, leave your message at the beep).
And Twilight really believes in friendship comma the power of.
8919994 No, Hermes can be tens of millions of miles away and receive voice transmissions on the Amicitas radio just fine. And Hermes has enough power to transmit voice signals clearly enough to Amicitas from almost anywhere in the inner solar system except on the opposite side of the sun. And the actual time delay for radio signals never exceeds twenty-eight minutes between Mars and Earth. So voices can happen tomorrow- provided they keep it very short, so Mark can hear it in the hab without having to go EVA and climb the ladder into Amicitas.
Hoo boy.
Well, dear author, while I still want to believe that you'll get everyone home alive in the end, I've lost any idea as to how. This is about as hard a blow as you could've struck without killing one of them outright.
Well played.
8919994
I'm aware of the bandwidth problems, but if Earth can send audio to Mars right now, then surely they can send audio to Hermes, and vice versa.
8919994
You forget that Hermes has a direct line to NASA. They can transmit to Earth in a matter of hours, if not minutes, then NASA relays to Pathfinder. Venket said they can do about 1megabyte every three hours, so Mars can get an audio message in a few days.
Some back of the envelope math: 5 minute, decent quality song is about 6Mb.
6Mb * 1Mb/3hrs = 18 hrs.
NASA can probably get the compression and quality down even farther than the crap I have in my library, so I would assume they could get a longer voice only message to Pathfinder for the same data.
Oh yes, she's legendary alright. Legendary genocidal monster!
Unless you're a pony.
Seriously, she's a monster to any race that so much as farts in the general direction of ponies. Look up her "punishments" to the other races, then I dare you to tell me she's even a decent creature.
8920036
Twilight is more than welcome to believe whatever she wants right up until Chrysalis puts her head up on that pike.
Feels like I just let out a breath I'd been holding for months
I really liked how you handled this chapter, cutting between the two groups as they had similar conversations. And Twilight breaking the news was a very touching moment. And I think you plotted the whole arc just great, with the rocket engine being the cause of the downfall. I particularly liked that it wasn't anything big and dramatic with half a chapter of narration describing the situation to set it up, as it was with the hab blowout. Just that suddenly the terminal snapped off because it was a bit battered
I was quite surprised that the pony internet popularity rating placed Cherry at #1 and Dragonfly at #2. I'd have thought Starlight the magic unicorn would be way up there, but then maybe I'm just thinking of her in the story. Whereas, while I know Spitfire's not terribly popular among the crew, I thought the internet loved her as the alien troll queen?
It was lovely seeing Venkat acknowledge near the end that the ponies are some of Mark's dearest friends
It is going to be weird going forwards with only Cherry, Spitfire, Starlight and Fireball
8920062
Then Starlight would do the same to her WHEN she gets back. Starlight Smash.
8920063 Cherry Berry has two advantages: she's the most conventionally cute of the group, and she's the mission commander and legendary alien astromare. In a way it would be like what if Betty White had been the second person to set foot on the moon, and then you set her in a popularity poll against Sigourney Weaver? Starlight is a bit of an egghead, Spitfire's trolldom and body-flaunting costs her points, and Fireball has all the advantages and disadvantages of being a dragon.
8920050
Much farther.
That's about 160 kilobits per second. An MP3 can do some pretty decent-fullband stereo audio (ie. music) at 128kbps (Roughly 1MiB per minute) and MP3 is old news. Even Ogg Vorbis, which is almost as old, can beat that at the same quality level.
Look at this chart:
https://opus-codec.org/comparison/
G.711 is what phone companies have historically used for routing POTS/PSTN (traditional landline phones) over digital networks.
A modern codec like Opus or AMR that's good for mono narrowband audio can do that with something in the 8 to 12 kbps range and, given the context, dropping down to 5kbps may be a perfectly viable option. (I've never listened to any of them at 5kbps, so I don't know for sure.)
Given that 128kbits per second * 60 seconds = 960kbytes, let's round that up to 1024KiB (1 MiB) and call the extra framing overhead.
Working from that "overhead added" rate, 5 to 12 kilobits per second would mean that it'd take roughly 40 to 90 kilobytes per minute of audio.
8920059
I can't say I know the reference to Queen Majesty. Could you fill me in?
8920127
Eh. I don't know. Cherry just seems the blandest of the group. She just seems to fade into the background.
8920130 Vaguely remembered G1 reference on my part. (And G1 was not a nice place for a non-pony to be, a lot of the time.)
8920129 This. The early Internet had some sound on dialup speeds. The quality was crappy, but the voices were recognizable.
Opinion: you have your plans, ok no problem. You're writing the story you want to write, and that's fine. But...I would advise against feeling you need to adhere to the template established by the original Martian story. This is, after all, your story. And if there is significant divergence, that's ok.
Just because something or some goalpost or timeline happened in the original, doesn't mean it needs to happen here.
You know, I kinda want Firelight to be brought in to send a message to Pumpky-Wumpkin.
SG: Daďdddd! We talked about this.
(After just watching the last episode. )
8920130
from the wiki on her
These weren't always for major offences. Just making a pony cry would be enough with nary an eyelash batted.
She was quite simply a monster... If you weren't a pony.
8920127
seeing dragonfly as her daughter
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/dpwikia/images/d/db/S01e02_spit-take.gif/revision/latest?cb=20161005014143
can we get Russia to come save the day now?
8920182
I just love Starlight so much more after watching it.
Like mentor, like student
i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/704/655/f72.gif
8920178
I don't know. I would probably do the same to them if they made certain ponies cry.
8920150
That quality would be at or below the 5kbit end of the modern codecs by my estimation.
Dial-up went up to somewhere between 6 and 7 kilobytes per second, which would be 48 to 56 kbits per second (though technically, limited by law to 53kbits per second at most)... or roughly 4 to 4.5 times the bandwidth requirement for something like Opus or AMR to encode the audio quality you get out of a landline phone in ideal conditions.
Fascinating! I like the in-story acknowledgment of the popular queen theories while also pointing out why it couldnt happen. And I really like that most people are worried about dragonfly as well as Mark; the point about her being one of the more popular aliens on earth makes this make sense, and it averts my worst fears of earth getting in an uproar to abandon the aliens for being monsters. This is a fascinating plot point and I had a feeling it was well planned, with how much it impacts the story. Still woukd be cool if Dragonfly DID change biologically to become sort sort of magic-independent queen, but eh, I only even heard that theory recently so it doesnt bug me that thats not the case. (Ha, bug. Puns.) Really enjoyed reading the reactions on both sides, I cant wait to see how they get out of this one!
I'm looking forward to the CSP/ESA equivalent of the 'Apollo 13 room full of stuff' scene. Only the stuff includes a half-dozen rather nervous ponies.
8920185
No.
Well, frak x3.
Interesting to see both the denizens of Equus and Earth coming to similar conclusions about how best to help Mark.
8920039
The Six step program to save everyone.
1. Find the right universe
1.1 Or the wrong universe that can give good directions.
2. build a MAV capable of lifting everyone
3. Get it to Mars before Hermes gets there.
4. Rescue Dragonfly. (easiest step really if Mav is piloted by Chrysalis)
5. Rendezvous with Hermes back to Earth.
5.5 Use Sparkle drive to save a lot of time.
6. Once on Earth recharge batteries for trans dimensional jump and or build a portal to Equestria once on Earth.
Or the 1 step method.
Use a deus ex machina.
8919945
Sorry for the figurative takedown I'm about to issue, but I figured this comment needed a response.
Fair enough, but I would have preferred reading this as a preamble.
So! First, Death of the Author is a thing. But usually it refers to interpreting a story's meaning. Very rarely can it be applied to events, and hardly ever to events while the author is still writing them. (You might be interested in Flash Fog, which did have a bit of improvisation because of audience feedback, but a better bet would be to search for "audience participation" stories, or some such.)
Now I'll admit there have been some exceptions for this story, but as far as I remember, they've all been either cosmetic ("Whinnybago") or in the vein of bringing the story closer to the author's intent. So my second point is: disqualifiers. Dragonfly lacks not only the royal jelly as was canonized just now, but also a universal magic field capable of conducting love from Earth. (Though all this talk of Author Intent has me contemplating what Kris does plan for Dragonfly's body to do. My money's on a particular Twilight-Zone-y thing.)
As for the first Queen not needing royal jelly, well, that's kind of a funky way of drawing the through-line. The way I figure, an early species which would eventually evolve into changelings began with all females (maybe) being capable of laying eggs. Then a Queen differentiated by having many offspring be infertile, and the ensuing social model became so successful she evolved job security: no fertile offspring without The Royal Jelly. This way, the process cannot be reversed. (I say that, but even now I have a counter, which I simply won't get into tonight.)
8920350
Actually, Royal Jelly was mentioned at least once in CSP.
Alternatively, nothing in particular happens, she's just in hibernation.
One thing the equestria side can do at this point is check whether that cocoon is in fact vacuum rated.
8920272
way to kill the meme train
Ehhhh, I dunno, almost committing manslaughter doesn't tend to garner sympathy. Especially with such a traumatizing method.
8920428 She was literally starving to death.
8920059
Any answer to a threat to your nation must be inadequate, fierce and leave a long-term impression. Like, for example, if a nation threatened your monopoly on money printing by supporting their currdncy with oil, you should topple their government, destabilize the economy, fuel theur opposition with weapons and send a few drones just for good measure.
That's Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Syria for you.
Or you can turn their leader into a statue.
Choose what works for you.
8920430
Okay? That's been true of people and animals on Earth and has been met with mixed results. The potentially preventable nature would make sleep deprivation a decent example and that's no more easily forgivable.
And the "Queen Dragonfly" fanatics go wild!
Oh, good. You shot it in the head. I haven't said much on the subject, but going the Queen Dragonfly route would have irked me because this isn't a story about Dragonfly, it's a story about the whole group. Going the Queen route would just make DF feel like a horribly stereotypical Mary Sue.
There's also all the glaring in-universe logistical issues like space suit sizing.
8920345
Humm... dimenton-hopping always makes me think of Sweetie Belle...
Sweetie chronicles ex machina?
8920437
I agree that Queen Dragonfly would have been the wrong choice, but I disagree that she would have been a Mary Sue. Her likeability wouldn't have changed much (Sues are universally loved), but her demand for resources would have increased (a problem that remains just as difficult to solve with or without a queen on Mars.)
I think the problem is that it wouldn't have added anything of value to the story.
I'd be scared too...