Beyond the Boundaries

Prologue

Two centuries ago, four major species of Equestria joined their forces to form the Equestrian Empire, a massive, technological conglomerate. They set out to explore the universe and colonize new planets. Their rule extended to over forty planets, spreading all across the region of space known as the Argorius Belt.

In between the planets Yelmarus (one of the larger terraformed planets in the Argorius Belt) and Equestria, there was an enormous nebula, filled with young and uninhabitable star systems.

About fifty light-years into this nebula on Equestria’s side, there was a lone space vessel, bearing Imperial markings and the name Daedalus. It was a research vessel, carrying equipment to delve into asteroids with, or to catch and examine the lingering space dust. On board this research vessel was a single unicorn pony named Twilight Sparkle, a studious but socially awkward scientist and explorer, set to study and understand as much as possible in her lifetime.

And that was exactly why she was here. She had been sent all this way to make a slow journey from Equestria to Yelmarus. She only planned to stop at Outpost Thirty-Eight, the biggest space station within the nebula and quite a significant trading post for the empire. Her job was to determine what the nebula consisted of. Most ponies would consider such an assignment a living nightmare, flying through a dull cloud for weeks on end, doing not much other than reading the analysis of space dust. To her however, this was a dream job.

But, Twilight Sparkle was alone. Usually, she would prefer it this way. She specifically requested to do this assignment solo. She enjoyed her loneliness for the first few weeks, along with the thought that there was nopony to distract her from her work. But as the time passed by, she started to feel the full weight of being all alone in the emptiness of space.

Communications with the Outpost was almost non-existent as well. Due to a misunderstanding about some of the collected information, there was tension between Twilight and Admiral Iron Flag. In light of this, she chose to keep her conversations as brief as possible, and only instigated communication if the situation called for it.

And now she sat alone in the main lab of the ship, absently staring through the small window into the nothingness of space, lost in her thoughts.

Twilight snapped herself out of her pointless reverie with a shake of her head, looking down at the equipment she was currently working with. Earlier, the ship’s sensors indicated the presence of titanium and silicon: metals that don’t naturally occur in this part of the nebula at all. Most of it was no more than just dust particles, but her attention was now focused on the larger pieces of the metal that she’d gotten on board. Finding the two together worried her; titanium and silicon were the two main components that the Federation used for its spaceships.

She placed one of the smaller samples in the mass spectrometer, hoping that the analysis would disperse her fears. Her eyes were set onto the monitor nearby as she read the results of completed analysis. This alloy was exactly the same as the one that the Empire used for building spaceships. She was filled with a sense of bewilderment as she read the results of the analysis.

“Ugh,” Twilight muttered to herself. “It’s acting up again. I need to recalibrate it.”

With a heavy sigh, Twilight recalibrated the machine and ran the analysis again just to come to the same conclusion as the first time around. Still unsatisfied with the results, she recalibrated the machine yet again and another analysis yielded the same results as both previous attempts.

She was baffled. The analysis made no sense whatsoever. ‘How is it possible that a ship could be reduced to nothing but mere dust? A ship’s hull could only be in such small pieces if it was either blown away by a very powerful weapon or due to an engine core explosion...’

But before she could think upon it further, her thoughts were interrupted by an alarm from the cockpit sounding throughout the entire ship. A proximity alert.

Nebula IX-54221 spanned an estimated total of two hundred light-years in length, height and width, forcing everyone who wanted to go from point A to point B without a long, long detour to go right through the thick, reflective clouds of stardust and stray electromagnetic energy. Though officially bearing the designation “IX-54221”, it had been dubbed by many as the ‘Hole of Dark Light’.

Two weeks after Twilight Sparkle had originally entered the nebula, another Empire military vessel named Iapyx had been sent on patrol about two light-years away from the Daedalus. Aside from its intimidating hawk-like exterior, the ship was in pretty bad shape. If it were to reach faster-than-light speed right then and there, it would fall apart due to the higher density of the nebular gases around it.

Fifteen creatures from all across the Empire shared the chambers of the dimly-lit vessel. There were thirteen ponies and two griffons, both of the latter having mixed in perfectly with their equine crewmembers. There was a constant lingering tension on board, a  need to always be on guard due to the vessel’s military origins. However, since they were quite a massive distance away from their commanding officers, all the officers on board had casual friendships, creating a lighter, more breathable environment.

One of the officers was a sky-blue pegasus named Rainbow Dash. Her mane was depicted by her name, as it consisted of a mixture of vibrant, chromatic rows of colours. She was also one of the ship’s two gunnery officers, manning the massive weapons that accompanied the military vessel when it was required. After all, space wasn’t sunshine and rainbows… It was full of pirates and other dangers. That didn’t bother her though; Danger was her middle name.

No, really. It was.

At the moment, she was sitting in the small alcove of the ship’s lower pulse cannon, leaning back in a not-too-comfy chair. She felt like taking a nap, but the last time she did that on duty it hadn’t ended well for her. No, she decided to fall back to her second favourite activity on board the ship besides napping; annoying the ship’s other gunnery officer, Vinyl Scratch. She looked up the chute that connected the upper and lower guns, and shouted, “Hey Scratch! Played any good instruments lately?”

The head of a white unicorn with a blue mane poked into the other side of the tunnel, giving her a playful grin. “I was thinking about it, LT, but I’m too lazy to fill out the paperwork for misused ammo.”

“Oh, shut up.” Rainbow groaned, shook her head and looked down at her monitor. “Huh. I thought I saw something. You seein’ anything, Scratch?”

This time she got an extremely sarcastic laugh in return. “Yeah, right! I bet that there are at least two fleets of space pirates just waiting to attack. No, wait, make that three, just to be on the safe side!” Vinyl waited for a few seconds for some sort of a feedback from Rainbow before her laughter started to calm down. ”Seriously, Dash. No one is crazy enough to go directly through the nebula. Well... except for us.”

Dash slightly nodded in agreement. She knew Vinyl couldn’t see it. It was just a force of habit, something she always did. “Mhm… Good point. But I could swear—”

Without warning, a massive explosion violently shook the entire ship, thrusting Rainbow Dash hard against the table in front of her and then backwards into the wall of switches behind her. Rainbow shook her head and jumped back on her hooves, only to trip over them and crash as the ship trembled again.

Ominous, repetitive alarm claxons came to life, sending out the monotonous sound and warning the crew for impending danger. With a quick glance through the porthole at her station, Dash saw some of the ship’s exterior; hunks of metal were floating everywhere and fires were blazing in what appeared to be an impact zone further down the hull of the ship.

“What in Tartarus is going on!? Vinyl!” she shouted upwards in Vinyl’s general direction, instinctively turning on her cannon with practiced movements.

But, instead of a response from Vinyl, one came over the intercom from an officer on the bridge. “We have been hit by an unknown force, all hooves to—“

The message was interrupted by yet another explosion. Rainbow was violently shaken around by even more trembles. An aggressive, orange light was lit above her head, accompanied by a whooshing sound that was made when a blast door swiftly slid shut. By the time she looked up, she saw only the exit to the corridor and a closed hatch.

“Vinyl! Get off your lazy flank and talk to me!” she yelled through the heavy blast door. “You hear me!?” Rainbow hit the massive door hard enough to grimace from the pain. “Scratch!”

There was no answer. Instead, there was another explosion originating from Vinyl’s chambers, knocking Rainbow to the ground.

With her body now pumping adrenaline through her veins like crazy, her training and instinct took over her actions. In a split second, she jumped back onto her hooves and rammed her hoof into the button labeled ‘EMERGENCY’, which isolated and secured her section even further.

A moment later, she stationed herself in front of the monitor and began checking her sensors, looking out for enemy heat signatures, or anything else that might give her a clue of the situation.

Nothing.

The intercom crackled to life again with the erratic and panicky voice of one of the commanding ponies, and it was transmitting all over the ship. “All hooves, abandon ship! We have sustained heavy damage and are incapable of maintaining life support. I repeat, all hooves, abandon—“

For the second time in a row, the voice from the intercom was interrupted by a loud explosion, but this time Dash didn’t see any fire. Rather, she could feel the violent tremors spreading throughout the entire ship. By the time the vibrations had subsided, the alarm tone had been replaced by another tone, one that was much louder and more intimidating; the one that indicated you needed to abandon ship immediately.

Rainbow Dash, working mostly on autopilot, pulled herself up onto the ladder that connected to the exit and the other gunner’s seat, using her wings to give herself some extra lift. Once she had a decent grip with her hooves, she kept going from iron bar to iron bar, pulling herself up rapidly.

With each ascending bar, the recent events began to cut deeper and deeper into her mind. Her ship was on the brink of destruction because either there had been some terrible mistake or because they were, for some unknown reason, under attack by someone or something. Vinyl, who was both her co-worker and friend, had just died, and Dash was certain that wasn’t the only casualty.

Huffing slightly, Rainbow reached the top of the shaft, climbing through the opening on the side of it and tumbling right into one of the corridors of the ship. There was nothing but emergency lights and sirens, the dark and grimy corridors echoing the alarm’s ghostly noise. Feeling another shake, she got back onto her hooves and began running down the corridor.

To top her streak of luck, a dull, mechanized voice suddenly echoed throughout the ship. “Engine coolant system failed. System overload in T-minus five minutes.”. Rainbow snorted. As if the rapidly degrading life support wasn’t enough of a death sentence for the ship.

In her hasty gallop, Rainbow passed an exploded relay, the body of a griffon crewmember lifelessly lying next to it.

Dash stopped. “A-Alaric?”

There was no response. A forming pool of blood underneath the gryphon told Rainbow what she didn’t want to know.

She forced her legs to take her further, to press on. She passed a set of  fires, but hardly paid them any attention. The sound of her hoof steps accompanied the ominous rumbling and the crackling of fires. And, of course, the sirens.

Finally, she arrived at her destination, a dimly lit corridor filled with unused escape pods.  ”Maybe on the other side of the ship someone made it,” she thought. Another explosion. This one really close, as she could hear the cries of escaping oxygen nearby. Panic taking over entirely, Rainbow Dash shot through an open door into the small escape pod. On her way in, her hoof found its way to a large button, the small door slamming shut behind her as soon as she pressed it. She got in place in the pod’s only seat and pressed a couple of buttons in front of her.

The pegasus was automatically strapped in, and in a split second she was violently shot from the ship. She was pushed back into her seat, blood rising to her head. On a small display showing sensor data, Dash saw a burst of high energy readings and radiation behind her.

She hung her head, her eyes closed and her teeth clenched. A trail of tears slid down her cheek.