The Coming Tide

"Yes ma'am, awakening the 'hushed casket' now." Came the reply of a member of Daring Do's Party. The physically fit earth pony archaeologist deftly twirled the pry bar in her right hoof, shuffling around with anticipation as she and the excavation crew inched closer to the alien stasis unit. To a neutral spectator observing the scene out of context, they would almost more closely resemble tomb raiders, rather than simple mares and stallions of science. To the credit of a would-be observer, Daring Do was in fact an actual treasure hunter, far more so than she was an archaeologist.

Out of the small mob of grinning, beaming ponies, Daring Do's smile was by far the largest. For almost the entirety of their careers, all but Daring had their sole occupation be only to uncover and interpret history. But now for everyone here, things were far different. Today, history was not merely being studied. It was being made.

As for Daring Do herself, the glory and prestige of discovery would be largely hers, the others currently around her being mere footnotes in her next memoir, or 'Daring Do novel' as the less informed of the public back in the Kingdom would know it as.

Daring Do's grin spanned nearly from Equestria's west to east coast by the time the ponies' pry bars finally made contact with the alien metal. One second, the tips were forcefully wedged into the grooves formed from the sealed stasis door. The next, a shrill hiss of cold, stale air filled the room while the seals gave way under the leverage of brute force, causing more than a few ponies to cough and cover their muzzles with their cloth wrappings.

The door slowly, climactically, slid up and back, disappearing into the shadow of vents and frost-lined piping that laid behind all the stasis units. Daring's heart performed flips and rolls in her chest as the ancient air slowly faded away in hazy white-blue eddies, revealing the unit's occupant within.

On instinct, the others of Daring Do's party backed away as more of the being was seen, its true size revealed. The bravest of them valiantly held their quills and parchment out to record a potential conversation, still anticipating the being inside to be benign, if not benevolent. Bravest of all, Daring herself, actually got closer to the now open expanse, getting better scrutiny of her mystery alien. Adrenaline pumped through her veins, and her anticipation was nearly euphoric.

It wasn't yet much to see, as thick frost and ice still obscured most of its features. But more detail was being exposed with each passing moment, as an unseen heating system kicked in to aid in the revival processes.

Chunks of ice melted rapidly away with a hiss and a cloud of steam that overwhelmed the freezing eddies, revealing a tall, lithe, and extremely sinewy biped. Its legs were vaguely similar to the hindlegs of an equine, given the intriguing angle at which they were bent where the knee met the thigh. The head and hands thawed last, exposing thick, almost leathery reptilian skin and six, talon-like fingers on each slender hand. Like its legs, the alien's arms, long ago flash frozen in a crossed 'X' position across its chest, were long and gangly. They were built for dexterity.

The alien was enshrouded in a set of onyx black robes decorated in many incomprehensible red runes. Intricate and esoteric in fashion, the garment fanned in many tastles, sashes, and other loose bits of the exotic fabric the entire ensemble consisted of. At a detailed glance, the robes gave the being a priestly or monk-like visage. Most intriguing was that the onyx 'fabric' had an almost liquid-like quality, flowing across the surface of the wearer's body and leaving behind a sheen when exposed to the harsh rays of lights above.

The archaeologist' hopes at the creature being benevolent were largely dashed once they caught glimpses of its facial features. In fact, they took further steps back in response to the view of a large angular jaw likely full of dagger-like teeth, high pronounced cheek bones, a spiny 'beard' of scaly skin along its neck and chin, and a more than intimidating forbearance about it. Daring Do, however, remained in place with her confident smirk, her own courage was adamantine and unbreakable.

Everything was quiet for a second. Then, the creature opened its eyes.

A pair of feline-like irises peered out at the ponies. When the eyes registered them, they did not convey hostility, nor exultation, but rather an intense form of curiosity. Another second passed, and the being had completed its observation of the group of indigenous creatures that had so blatantly awoken it.

Without warning, it hauled itself out of the stasis pod and onto the icy metal floor. Daring Do was still rooted to her spot, and as a consequence the alien's gangly form was now mere inches from her own muzzle. Were she to take one step forward, she wood surely bump into it. The alien peered down at the pegasus with its continually curious expression, slightly vibrating its body and shrugging off the last vestiges of cryosleep. Daring finally decided to take a step back in the interest of practicality, and managed to meet the alien's gaze with her own face awash in wonder.

Her wonder increased when the alien suddenly unfurled its stiffened arms with such speed that they cracked in the freezing air like a whip. Rolling its shoulders around, it slowly awoke its musculature to better allow for its normally fluid and agile movement. It stood idle then, still peering down. The alien's regular drawn-out breathing pattern and expectant facial expression indicated it was waiting for her to speak first.

Daring Do had professionally observed the ensuing muscular actions down to the most minute detail, and was quick to compare it to an average well-rested pony awakening at dawn. With this innocuous vision in mind, it made the monumental task of opening up verbal communications far less nerve wracking for her. Daring then imagined herself conversing with another pony, rather than an ancient, frozen extraterrestrial who may or may not eventually turn hostile to the revelation that her own people had been taking its materiel without permission, and damaged its ship further with magical explosives.

Stumbling over its own words, Daring's mouth was finally able to find its voice. She spoke slowly, carefully. Every syllable was uttered in as nonaggressive a manner as possible. "Uh...G...greetings extraterrestrial." she raised her foreleg, pointing to herself. "My name is Daring Do," Daring then pointed to the others. "And this is my crew." Her unintended rhyme caused the creature to chuckle mirthfully; a low raspy sound deep within its chest.

For a moment, the towering alien seemed far less foreign and unknowable. The group of ponies around Daring even broke into a faint, slightly nervous laughter amongst themselves. Some stepped forward and returned to their original places, getting closer to the alien in the process. Those with writing implements were already fervently scribbling down every detail they could about the ongoing first contact.

As the E.T. continued to chuckle and stare at her curiously, a thought crossed Daring's mind. "Wait, can you actually understand me? Please, nod if you can!" Daring began to feel a pang of disappointment for several seconds as the alien showed no sign of response, until finally, it inclined its head slowly. Disappointment all but vanished from Do's face when the alien uttered a single word with its shrill voice in garbled Equestrian.

"Continue..." The final syllable of the word seemed to vanish, lost into the sound of the alien's long-gravelly breaths and equally raspy voice, but everyone had heard it clearly.

The treasure hunter and her excavation crew smiled, with twinkles in their eyes. An extraterrestrial, straight out of cryosleep and from a place light-years away, could actually understand them!

"Whoa! This is amazing, it's straight out of a science fiction movie!" she collected herself. "Ok, anyways, me and my crew here are happy to humbly welcome you to uh, to Planet Equus, and welcome to the Kingdom of Equestria." Daring Do made a broad swishing motion with her left wing indicating she was referring to the entire world. "Oh, and speaking of Sci-fi, I'm going to skip on the whole 'we come in peace' cliche. You're species is smart and advanced enough to travel through space, you know it's already heavily implied."

At this rate, Daring might as well have been conversing with an old friend. Her words once again elicited a chuckle from the robed alien being. No doubt the mare's smirk might also have played a role in the alien's growing sense of amusement. "Kingdom...?" it murmured in between chuckles, analyzing and comparing the mares to the stallions in the group. "No. Matriarchy."

It, or he, as it seemed to Daring that the alien gave off a masculine smell and presence, stopped chuckling for a moment. He touched something on his wrist, which responded with an electronic sound. Then, the alien promptly spread his arms out as the wrist device began to project an arc of vibrant red light out before them.

To Daring Do and the archaeologist' further astonishment, the light turned into a hologram, the revolving globe of a planet. "Equus..." He declared, involuntarily exaggerating the 's' with a hiss. Then the alien pointed a talon at Daring, who put a hoof to her chin, interested. "Equine."

"Yes..." Daring began. The excavation crew around her oohed and awed at the hologram in the mean time, approaching it to see the geographic details of their own planet from such a unique, high-tech perspective. A few even reached out to touch it, gasping as their hooves went right through it. "You are on Equus. But uh, Equine is a rather formal term, you can just call us ponies, or Equestrians if you like." Daring continued. "In fact, if you have any questions about us, we'd be glad to answer them; and of course we have some for you as well."

Daring Do's robed alien chuckled again, as she finished with, "Quite a lot of questions, actually." she somehow failed to register the being activating something else on the device as she ran a few choice questions she had for the alien through her mind. "Okay, let's see..." she said finally. "What does your species call itself? And how did you end up crashing here so long ago? What was your purpose, what are your numbers?"

The alien tilted his head this time, considering her inquiries. After a few moments he said, "We are...Sharquoi."

"Sharqoui...hmm, Shark-oo-oi...Am I pronouncing that right?" Daring's tongue felt strange and muddled, attempting to articulate such a guttural-sounding word. He inclined his head affirmatively towards her again. Daring smiled triumphantly. "Ah, so I am. Interesting. Please, go on."

"Empirical directive." He declared. "Grand experiment. Sharqoui, numbers...many!" Suddenly, the hologram changed shape as the Sharqoui waved his hand broadly. An animated wave emanated from the wreck, their present location, and branched deep out into space. The wave continued on until it bounced off projected objects holding position in orbit, near Equus' oddly stationary Moon. The blips flickered, and then an entire armada of vessels is brought into focus, each bearing a resemblance to the very one Daring Do and the others were inside.

All of Daring Do's group gasped at what was being revealed. Daring herself looked at the new projections, then back at the towering robed Sharquoi. Her smile was long gone from her face, replaced with a mixture of anger, paranoia, and disbelief. More of the spacecraft were being uncovered even as she continually glared, and the archaeologists murmured warily. Daring had seen these types of things in various science fiction motion pictures as well; every pony in her group had.

They all knew what this meant.

It was then that Daring Do realized something else, something that sent a chill down her spine and deep into her wings. All this time, the Sharquoi had not been peering at her with curiosity and amusement, as one would towards a clumsy friend who had just done something funny. In reality, he was staring at them all like a manticore, anxiously eying her prey.

"Oh...crap." she muttered, her ears falling flat against her skull like trampled paper soaked in the rain. Daring Do's alien contact drank her anxiety in like wine, and chuckled once more, his true nature now obvious.

"We're so screwed." One of the stallions whimpered, observing the other stasis pods opening off their own accord, as slowly as the original.

The Sharquoi continued his chortling as both species stared at one another. His slitted eyes twinkled with a cruel, calculating glee, and his reptilian tongue lolled out amongst razor sharp teeth. Before Daring or the others could say or do anything else, he held his arms out high and craned his slender head and neck forward.

Then, without warning, the living tangle of sinewy tissue and onyx fabric emitted an agonizingly loud shriek, his beard unfurling menacingly. A piercing orange light emanated from his esophagus to glare out at them as well. The alien waved its outstretched arms around in various gestures, as if giving a passionate speech or sermon.

Daring Do and the others winced instantly, doubling over and covering their ears with frantic abandon. Crowbars, quills, pens and other tools clattered to the floor. The ponies were being assaulted with both sound and vibration. It was a piercing wail that seemed to nearly tear their entire world asunder. Even the unicorns of the group were rendered helpless, their magical concentration shattered by the pulsating auditory attack.

When the shriek finally abated in a high pitched howl, and the Sharqoui resumed his default stance, many of the Equestrian excavation crew were already beginning to faint.

Other stasis modules had opened by now, and several more Sharqoui had appeared in the space behind the first.

The pegasi treasure hunter could barely see much of them as she too gradually faded into unconsciousness, breathing heavily and laying on her stomach. Her beige pith hat lay on the cold metal floor beside her.

"You bastard. If you freaks...try to do anything to our world, don't think...its inhabitants aren't going to go down without...without a fight." Daring's voice was slurred and labored, until she finally became too drained to even speak properly.

The robed Sharqoui snarled at her, then chuckled again as it leaned down, noticing something around Daring's neck. It was her necklace, containing the small vial of glowing liquid Daring kept as a curious trinket during the day, and as a work and reading light come dusk.

Daring Do gasped as the alien grabbed at the vial, feeling the cold skin of the creature make contact with her fur. The unnatural onyx fabric draped over parts of his wrist almost seemed to leech the warmth right out of her own body, more so than the Sharqoui himself or the metal floor combined. He yanked the vial off with little effort, holding it up aloft, appraising it in the harsh glow of the ship's artificial lighting.

"...Imulsion." he said. The word caused the Sharqoui to form a sort of grin, for reasons known only to him. Much to Daring's mortification, the alien then made a fist to crush the vial open, causing the viscous luminescent fluid to run across his talons. He then unfurled the fist and flung the liquid around towards the hapless Equestrians.

Daring constantly shifted attention between the other Sharqoui behind her new enemy, and the liquid he called Imulsion. She twitched her eyelids in shock as the Imulsion started to move on its own. It slithered like a slug, towards her and the other ponies. Normally she would have given it a wide berth, but her traitorous limbs, all six of them, refused to obey her increasingly panicked mind.

The Imulsion absorbed itself into her and the others' skin, just as she finally fell unconscious. Daring Do's body uncomfortably thudded against the metal as it tipped over onto its side.

Snarling triumphantly, the Sharqoui waved his other hand to his kin behind him. "Collect Equines for analysis." Two of the waiting party strode forward, each of their footfalls creating a loud succession of thumps and vibration. The two new beings were slow, lumbering giants.

"Drinol!" The duo proclaimed. Both chuckled in baritone voices as they got to work. They gently scooped up Daring and the other unconscious ponies as if they were little more than a filly's stuffed animals.

They each had a set of powerful arms, thick as tree trunks, with hands that possessed five stubby digits each. Each hand was cuffed in a gauntlet, that ended in two protruding spikes on the knuckles, longer and larger than the hands themselves. Equally powerful legs rested at their bottoms, leading up to a hulking body that could almost dwarf a minotaur's.

Both Sharqoui wore body suits and thick, form fitting black and red breastplates. The armor was decorated by glowing red lights symmetrically placed at various intervals to accent the polished onyx surface. Ostentatiously, their arms were left bare and without plating, revealing the rippling musculature underneath. Their faces were liked the robed Sharqoui, but far blockier and devoid of their gangly comrade's intelligence. They breathed and wheezed heavily as they labored.

When the Drinol–as the giants seem to call themselves–had collected as many ponies as they could over their shoulders, the smaller Sharqoui, around six foot in height and equipped in similar body armor but covered more of their bodies, took over.

Like the Drinol, these Sharqoui had blocky faces and cruel, beady little eyes, but had more in common with the robed one. The way their mouths were sculpted left them with seemingly permanent sneers, adding to their already imposing figures. Their skin was a thick, leathery-scaly hide only a chainsaw-like device could likely breach.

The robed Sharqoui was already striding purposely out of the cryo chambers with his kind's weird gait. The pair of Drinol lumbered out after him. He stopped as he encountered another of the sneering Sharqoui, this one as tall as him and wearing a more ornate and bulkier version of their body armor.

"Leader." Both aliens greeted one another, a simple matter of inclining one's head.

"Equines secured, Kantus?" The other's voice was a high pitched hiss, resembling a chilling wind in a winter sky during a raging blizzard.

The Kantus bowed his head again. "Yes. Noble Theron. Imulsion was dispersed." He squawked out.

With a hiss of approval, the Theron turned and watched as the Drinol passed by with their live captives. "We must contact General Krotan. Powder has been acquired by Equines, experiment begins." The Theron leader waved his massive hand authoritatively towards the far end of the cryo chambers. "I will analyze Equines with the drones. You, prepare the Precursor for deployment."

While the Kantus nodded and prepared to take his leave, the group of half a dozen Sharqoui drones passed by with the unconscious ponies slung over their shoulders, chuckling and snarling with amusement. "Precursor, Flood!" One declared.

"Equines tested, in coming tide." Another added mirthfully, breaking out into coarse giggle that could peel paint.

"Subjugate." One of the Drinols duo muttered idly up ahead of them.

"For the Queen. For General Krotan!" All Drones declared in unison, heading out and into the access junction between Cryogenics, Engineering, and Personnel Quarters. Their destination, the bridge and command deck.

Throughout the Cryo bay, the rest of the crew awoke. Dozens of stasis units cracked open just like the first, letting their occupants out for the first time in centuries. That is, all units but one.

A single module, far larger than the others and secured with a time-bolt device incomprehensible to Equestrian science, and not of Sharqoui manufacture, stood still and away from the others. And now, the Sharqoui Kantus was approaching it, intent upon releasing the primordial creature that lay dormant within.