The emergency flaps allowed for about as much maneuvering one would expect of a powerless hunk of metal falling at terminal velocity, little to none. Somehow the co-pilot managed to nose up enough that they weren't coming in at a ninety degree angle anymore, and might survive the impact. Might.

"We aren't going to make the NAV beacon they placed, but we will get close, if you consider twenty kilometers off close." the co-pilot said, straining against the controls to keep the ship stabilized.

Leo, who had buckled into the pilots seat to help the poor co-pilot navigate, advised her to look for a spot with ample foliage to help diffuse the impact over a greater distance rather than smash full force into the ground. She had picked a decent patch of trees in the distance that looked dense enough to help slow the ships decent.

"Woah, was that a castle?" Leo asked, whipping his head around to look out the port window.

"Dunno, wasn't paying attention, focusing too much on keeping us alive." Williams answered.

"Well lets keep that in mind, if we can't regroup right away with our rescuers maybe we can head there, it shouldn't be too far. maybe about five to ten kilometers."

"Brace for impact!" she shouted to the crew.
______________________________________________________________________________

Shawn and Dillan turned their attention toward the sky as a fireball scorched its way across the sky.

"It's falling too fast, they won't make it here." Dillan pointed out.

"Hey, good eyes kid, yeah, hope they live through the landing." Shawn said as he turned toward the remaining survivors. "Hey! Get ready to move! Is that ship flight worthy?"

"With some repairs, yes, but in her current condition no Sir." Kale answered as he emerged from the ship.

"Alright, look, I'm setting the titan on guard for the camp, everyone, get that craft flight worthy, mount up and meet us at that other dropship, the titan will follow the ship on foot. Hins! You're with me, lets move. We need to secure that dropship and survivors if there are any."

Lt. Hins donned her thruster pack as did Shawn. The Major grabbed his assault rifle from the titan and slid his visor down from his helmet, then took off full tilt into the woods followed close by Stacy.

Dillan turned to his father who was helping his mother to sit against a tree. She was still injured from the trip off the planet, but no one had had the time to stop for more than five minutes to do anything about it. She wasn't bleeding or anything, just bruised and banged up from the rough departure.

"Dad. I..."

"Son. It's ok, I got your mom. Go help fix the ship. If anything happens to that, there's no way for us to get home."

He stood in silence for a few moments then nodded as he turned to join the group in clearing the damaged pieces of the ship away.
______________________________________________________________________________

Shawn burst through the woods, the thruster pack making it easy to clear gaps in the terrain or thick bouts of overgrowth. Stacy was a good pilot, she was keeping pace with him, even though he was taking it easy on her. After all, they were on the same team, no sense in trying to compete against each other. His last titan partner taught him that.

Twenty Kilometers was no walk in the park either, and would have been faster by Titan, but he valued stealth over power in this kind of situation.

Nearly thirty minutes had gone by and Shawn was beginning to tire. He glanced back to see that Hins wasn't faring any better so he signaled her to stop. They took a moment to rest in a small clearing where some larger trees had been knocked down, making good benches. He straddled one and pulled a small canteen from his suits supply pack.

We are probably only about half way there. Although we have made good time. We don't want to linger here too long though." He said, taking small sips to conserve his water.

"Why are we in such a rush?" Stacy asked, running her hands over the slight stubble of auburn hair growing back on the top of her head. How she had missed having long flowing hair.

"I didn't want to frighten anyone at the camp, but when the ship came down, I tried to raise comms with them. There wasn't an answer." He said grimly as he put his canteen back. "C'mon, we've wasted enough time."

They both took off with renewed purpose towards the dropship.
______________________________________________________________________________

"AAAAauuuuughhhhhh." Leo groaned. "Is everyone ok?"

"I'll live, Sir." Williams rasped.

"Davis is out like a light, but he's breathing, Sonny and I are fine." Farahad called from the aft compartment.

"Let's not linger here too long guys, I have a rapidly sinking feeling. Williams, raise Sadie on comms." Leo ordered.

"Bad news sir. Our comms array was ripped from the ship during our landing."

"Just fucking great. Well, lets get out and start preparing to leave. Knowing these guys, if they rate high enough to have a smart AI they will have a competent commander. It's only a matter of time before a search party comes to us."

"Hey you guys feel like you're being watched?" Sonny asked.
______________________________________________________________________________

Hins body went limp as she smacked into a tree.

"Fuck!" Shawn yelled, leveling his rifle at the large Lion-like creature. The rounds penetrated the flesh but only managed to piss it off more.

The manticore swung its large front paw in a sweeping motion that was easily avoided with a vertical burst from his thruster pack. What he hadn't expected was the scorpion tail that came smashing down from above. Last minute reactions allowed him to turn his body so his head didn't take the brunt of the blow, this didn't help his shoulder though as the muscular tail hit him like a baseball bat.

The pilot lay on his back, struggling to take in a breath as all the air was knocked from his lungs upon hitting the ground. The manticore, bleeding from its right side stood over him as if to taunt him for being weak. Shawn clenched his teeth and finally drew a ragged breath.

"Fuck you" he coughed as he unsheathed his knife and sunk it up to the hilt in the soft underside of the lion's mouth. The life drained from its eyes as it collapsed on him, once again compressing all the air from his lungs. It took all of his remaining strength to drag himself from under the several hundred pound corpse.

"Hins, get up, we need to move." he said, trying to pull the pilot to her feet. "C'mon, wake up! Fuck it."

He slung her over his good shoulder and limped along toward the dropship. With the reduced speed he should still arrive within ten minutes. The Jungle, more of a dense wood now, was beginning to thin out. It made traveling a bit easier.

After another kilometer or so, Stacy began to stir, so he set her down.

"Uhggh, What was that?" she said, grasping her right arm where her armor plating was dented in.

"No idea, whatever it was, it was big. I'm surprised you didn't die when it ambushed us. It's dead now whatever it was." He said, helping her to her feet. "We shouldn't be far out from the ship now, only a few more minutes. From here out, we need to slow our pace. Don't want to surprise anyone who may or may not be there."

The last statement confused her a bit but she decided to go with it. They walked slowly towards the still smoking trail of downed trees. At the crest of the hill they could see the trees, fallen for the next two hundred meters where the ship sat in a nest built from downed timber. Stacy went to continue walking but was grabbed by Shawn.

"Wait. Something's not right." He scrutinized the site. Where were the survivors? Why aren't they securing the perimeter of the LZ. "Sadie, Engage thermal."

His visor snapped to short range thermal imaging. The entire ship was still registering as a hot spot from the re-entry so he couldn't discern any body signatures inside. What rattled him the most were the Heat signatures in the trees surrounding the ship. There were ten of them, but the signature was nothing he'd seen before. Not human, animals maybe, but are they waiting to ambush the crew when they leave? Too small to be that lion thing that attacked them.

"Stacy, I'm not sure what it is, but there's something in the trees around the ship." Shawn whispered.

At this range he was able to establish short range comms to the survivors personal radios on board the ship. He tuned to their channel and keyed the MIC twice to signal his arrival on the channel. Three MIC breaks responded as an acknowledgment.

"Major Shawn Thompson to remaining crew aboard the Thistle." He whispered into his communicator. "As you are probably aware, there is an unknown presence surrounding your ship. Lt. Hins and myself will create a diversion, maybe it will scare them off, if not we will covertly engage and eliminate all presumed hostiles. On my command, you are to exit the ship, and move at best speed to the..." he looked at his compass. "South of your current location. Follow the ships wake over the hill crest then break into the woods for a few hundred meters. wait there for further instruction."

"Hins." He nudged her shoulder. "Engage thermal on your visor, It will help you see them through the foliage. I'm going to toss a shock rock over there as far as I can get it, maybe cause some confusion, and split up the group. you go to the right of the clearing and engage. I will move left. We meet in the middle."

She nodded and he pulled an EMP grenade from his ammunition pouch. There was a slight whine as he primed the grenade and let it fly. Upon impact there was a large electrical discharge and several of the heat signatures scattered and converged on its location.
Stacy was already in motion the second the grenade impacted, as was Shawn. He closed on the closest hot spot and approached it from what he assumed was behind. When he was almost on top of it he disengaged his thermals to almost reel in shock. a small black bat winged horse was perched in the tree in front of him, watching the ship like a hawk. He let out a small 'psssst' noise and the creatures concentration broke as it looked down uttering a "HUH?"

It's curiosity was sated when a fist collided with its nose causing it to black out and tumble from the tree. He caught it but damn was it heavier than he expected. Guess he didn't take into account that it wore gladiator like armor. Gently he set the body down so it didn't make any noise and re-engaged thermal, moving to the next heat signature. the next two were close side by side, this wouldn't be as easy.

______________________________________________________________________________

"Hey Commander Starlight?" Lt. Commander Willow whispered to his commanding officer. "Why are we just watching that thing. It looks like an asteroid."

"Shh. You see those? Since when have you known an asteroid that has a door?" the Officer chided. "I've already reported our findings to Princess Luna. She will be sending a larger squad. They arrive in four hours. When they do, we are going in."

Suddenly a large ball of lightning erupted from the woods not far from their position. Alpha squad was already in motion as was there task to intercept and neutralize any interference.

Suddenly a twig behind them snapped followed by a muffled 'shit'. The officer didn't hesitate a single moment, they had been compromised.

"Engage! Engage!" He shouted as the remaining seven night guards took to the air.

A roar of what sounded like a burst of dragon fire erupted behind him as he turned to see a faun like being flying at him. Starlight kicked his hooves out and impacted the creatures left fore hoof. A cry of rage was heard from the beast whose face burned an eerie blue as he felt something clasp onto his back hoof. Somehow the creature had caught one of his hooves and was pulling him out of the air.

His free hoof wound back and struck out but hit air as another burst of the dragons fire was heard and the creature flipped its body around onto his back, and collided a hoof of its own to the back of his skull, plunging him into a world of darkness.
______________________________________________________________________________

Shawn landed the front flip on the back of the skull of the creature and kicked off using his thruster pack to get even higher and grab onto the second winged horse that was still flying up. He grabbed this ones wings and pinned them to its back, causing the two to free fall directly to the ground. At the last second he jumped off and pushed him into the ground sending the horse into a roll.
Amazingly the horse recovered and regained its footing.

'I guess I can't actually call it a horse' he thought. When they squared off with each other the horse only came to about his waist. 'Although they pack a hell of a punch, er, kick', he continued, shaking his hand to dull the throbbing pain. The small horse took this as a moment of opportunity to strike and launched itself toward him in a full body tackle.

"Oh shit." Shawn gasped as he leaned back into the impact and grappled the fore hooves of his attacker. He rolled onto his back and planted his right foot in the sternum of his now victim and launched him out of the roll, smashing into a tree. Amazingly the small horse struggled to its hooves again.

"Just stay down dammit!" Shawn shouted. Suddenly a look of confusion struck the small horses features but he was too slow to react and was knocked unconscious by a sweeping kick to the head.

"About time, Sir." Stacy joked as she approached. During his fight with those three, she took out the remaining creatures. She proved herself a capable warrior, but then again he already knew that. She was an M-COR pilot after all.

"Alright, coast is clear guys, come on out." he called over the comms.
The side door on the ship hissed open and out came five Militia Members, each toting their own gear bags.

"Gentlemen, and lady." he greeted the crew.

"Hey!" Stacy shouted, punching Shawn in the arm. "You didn't address me as a lady at the camp."
Everyone chuckled.

"Nice to meet you Sir. Sgt. Leonardo Reporting. My men call me Sgt. Leo though." he said, saluting the major. "The men we extracted, Farahad, Davis, Sonny and Bailey." each of them responding with respective salutes.

"Drop those arms soldiers. No rank here. We are stranded on an unknown planet in uncharted space." he waved off the salute. "Lets get your gear and get to a safe LZ for our bird. I will forward updated orders to our extraction. Sadie. If you would please."
______________________________________________________________________________

The ship was almost ready to fly, everyone was gathering the remaining gear and loading it on board. Suddenly the Titan issued a beeping signal and Sadie's voice issued from the external speaker.

"Attention remaining crew. New directive from Major Thompson. The ship is to arrive empty to retrieve eight passengers. They will return here. Time is of the essence. Arrive as soon as possible, that is all." the speaker went dead.

"Well you heard the computer lady." Kale said. "This hunk-a-junk is flyable, we need to get airborne. Lets go."

He and Jennings boarded the craft and took flight toward the downed dropship. Estimated Time of Arrival, three minutes.
______________________________________________________________________________

"Hey, you guys have any duct tape on that ship?" Shawn asked, climbing inside.

"Yeah, right here." Farahad said as he pulled a box of the silver adhesive from the emergency compartment.

"Perfect..." Shawn said as he began binding the legs and mouths of all the winged creatures. The two that he had fought so arduously were gathered and tossed with the bags of gear after being bound. They were clearly the leaders of the force and if they were intelligent enough to wear armor, and ambush them, they most likely had a means of communication. He intended to find out.
As if on cue the other ship arrived and everyone boarded, toting gear or an unconscious pony. Once everyone was on board the ship lifted off and headed back to the lake.
______________________________________________________________________________

Willow slowly woke, a pounding headache and sore jaw causing him to clench his eyes in pain. He tried to stretch his jaw but found he couldn't open his mouth. His eyes shot open to be greeted with darkness. Something was over his head, dim light filtered through but he couldn't tell where he was. There was a strip of something that resembled tape around his muzzle, but it was much stronger than the tape he was used to, and thicker too. He tried to move his hooves to pick at the tape but found that they were bound together too.

"Looks like one of them is awake." a male voice said. "Go get the Major."

'So they have a rank structure? Wait. How can I understand them?! they can speak Equish!?' Willow struggled a bit in panic but then forced himself to settle down. If they wanted him dead he wouldn't be here now. He can't let them know he understands them. They obviously don't think he can or else they wouldn't be talking about anything like rank in front of him. Unless they are idiots.
Suddenly hoof steps approached and ground to a halt just in front of him. Blunt clawed appendages he knew were called hands from mythology about fauns, half pony half ape beings had, gripped his sides and pulled him to his hooves and the bindings around the hooves were cut. Only the front ones, smart creatures. He couldn't help but wonder if these creatures were indeed fauns, or decedents of them.

Suddenly the hood was pulled from his head and the light hit his eyes with unrelenting force, causing him to squint and his eyes to water. He gasped and reeled backwards when he realized the intense light was merely the blue glowing face of the creature that had attacked them. He took this time to take in his surroundings and figure out where he was, but to no avail. They were in some sort of shallow cave.

"Creature." the beast spoke to him, remember, play dumb.

He simply tilted his head and stared wide eyed at the blue glow. A sigh was heard from inside it. That blue thing, must be a helmet, not its face. It's voice sounds muffled. Not as dumb as he thought they were, armor, and concealing the face of their ranking members.

"Creature, if you can understand me. I want you to know, all your friends are dead." This was a bold faced lie but Willow didn't know this. He tried to betray no emotion and simply tilted his head again, but the Major had seen the dilation in the horses eyes, and knew he understood.

"Creature." he began again. "If you can understand what I say. Please, let us know, it will make this easier on you."

After a few long moments of silence the creature sighed in frustration and replaced the hood over Willow's head. Willow began to struggle but in his weakened state he was no match and the towering beast overpowered him and rebound his limbs. The hoof falls faded away and Willow whimpered in the silence, the echoes of his own despair doing nothing to calm his nerves.
______________________________________________________________________________

Shawn exited the small cave they had found to the north of the lake and removed his helmet.

"Well that was productive as all hell. why'd you lie to it?" quipped Sonny.

"So that's why you're the Light Machine Gunner and not the Sniper." Shawn retorted eliciting a chuckle from Davis as he subconsciously caressed his long rifle at the mention of his profession. "Not very bright eh? The beast understands us, I can see it in its eyes. We need to be careful about the exchange of information around it."
______________________________________________________________________________

Dillan slid behind the tree as he overheard the soldiers exchange.

"Yeah its not the only thing you need to be careful about the exchange of information around." he mumbled.

Once everyone had went back toward the clearing where the ship was landed he crept into the cave. It was dark, but not too dark to see once his eyes adjusted. Running his hand along the walls as a guide he shuffled his way into the cave and found a whimpering pile of something on the ground.

"Hey." he whispered into the darkness. Instantly the noise stopped and the silence came crashing around him. "Hello?" he asked. More silence. "Fine if you don't want my help." he turned to leave but suddenly a muffled moan met his ears.

He approached the pile on the ground to see that it was a small animal bound in the cave.

"What the fuck?" he said pulling the bag off its head. The yellow eyes that greeted his caused him to stumble back and fall on his ass. "Are you what they were talking about?"

The creature simply looked at him with pleading eyes. As his own eyes adjusted further he saw something shiny around its muzzle, duct tape? He reached to pull it off but the small animal shied away.

"Don't worry little guy, I won't hurt you." he reassured the worried animal.
Slowly he pulled the tape off as Willow chanted ow ow ow through the tape. To Dillan it merely sounded like whimpers until he got the tape loose enough for it to open its mouth.

"Ow." Willow said out loud, causing Dillan to once again spring back and clasp his hands over his mouth to keep him from screaming another what the fuck.

"You, you can talk?!" he whispered urgently.

"NO!" Willow half shouted. 'fuck I blew my cover.' Willow thought.

"Look, I don't know what they said to you but whatever it was it was a lie. They also know you can understand us." he said as he sat cross legged in front of the still bound pony.

"Can you untie me?" Willow asked giving the creature across from him puppy dog eyes again.

"As much as I want to, I don't know if I can trust you. At this point I trust my own species more than you, no offence." Dillan answered as he held up his hands as if to defend himself.

Willow sighed, "None taken I suppose. If I were in your place I would do the same. If you don't mind me asking, what are you anyway?"

"I will answer, only if you promise to return the favor." Willow nodded in agreement so Dillan continued. "I'm a Human."

"Human? Never heard of you."

"And you are?"

"A pony."

At this Dillan couldn't help but snicker a bit.

"What?" Willow said defensively.

"Nothing, really, I just thought it was kind of funny. We have ponies on our planets too, but they can't talk."

At the mention of this Willows eyes practically exploded from his head. "PLANET?!" but was immediately shushed by the Human. "Sorry, but 'your planet'? You aren't from this planet?" he asked incredulously.

"Nope." he replied simply. "Look, I know the Major, He's not a bad guy, he's a bit rough around the edges but he tries to do right by everyone who isn't strong enough to stand up for themselves."

"Then why did he kill my friends?"

"The other enemies, he mentioned? He said he didn't kill them, that must have been the lie. He knocked them out and tied them up, enough that they couldn't follow until he got away but not enough that they could still get out. Look, you don't have to talk to him, but if you don't talk to him soon eventually I will tell him that you talked to me. Trust me, that won't look good, for either of us. So do us both a favor. Talk to him soon."

The human reapplied the tape, not as tight as it was before, and replaced the hood, then patted him on the head. It was slightly demeaning but it felt good, a friendly touch.
______________________________________________________________________________

Meanwhile, orbiting Dillan's home planet.

"Sir." The soldier saluted as he entered the Captain's quarters of the ship. "The planet is under complete IMC control. The Militia are retreating. Oddly enough though one of the Militia ships are breaking from the pack and are headed into unknown territory. What are your orders Sir?"

"Request Vice Admiral Graves' permission to pursue." Captain Donahue commanded.
Aboard the Militia ship fleeing the planet's gravitational pull a team of engineers frantically works to study the flight coordinates logged by the derelict Titan recovered from the edge of the smoldering crater where Major Thompson fell. The Titans on board navigation computer used to log warp jumps into atmosphere recorded a massive jump out of system at the time of the detonation of that bomb.

By calculating the speed and trajectory of the jump they approximated the destination of the jump, and were sent to retrieve any evidence of what happened to one of the Heroes of the Militia. If word got out of his defeat it would greatly demoralize the troops in the Militia.

"Sir, we have an approximate destination. I'm not sure how but they are about a months travel time in this direction. My only guess is that weapon they used somehow increased the power of their jump drives and they overshot exiting the planets atmosphere, by almost a light year." the engineer reported to the ships captain.

"Well, let's get to it boys, spin up the FTL drives and lets get underway. A month is a long time."

Both ships accelerated to Faster Than Light speeds one shortly after the other, the IMC in hot pursuit of the fleeing Militia ship.

Author's Note

Alright, I'm still trying to find an editor, but I am not going to withhold my chapters to wait for someone to go over it with a fine tooth comb. I'm not that anal about syntax and grammar and all this other stuff, yeah I know this is what makes stories better for those who care about that stuff, and I promise I will revise the chapters when I find an editor willing to go over them with me. I am not going to deny those who still want to continue on, bad sentence structure and all to find out what happens. I know when I read a story the suspense between chapters sometimes kills me. So I will try to get the chapters to you, the reader, as soon As I have it spell checked and a brief revision has been gone over by me. If you guys really want me to, I will hold off future chapters until I can get an editor, if it matters that much to you, let me know.

Oh and as to the Equestrians and Humans having the same speech, I have a theory for that too. It all ties together with the great alicorn war. =P