Chapter Zero: It All Started With A Ship
I take a deep breathe and sigh. Twilight won't stop whining in the backseat about how she should be the one piloting the ship, not me.
"I should be the one piloting the ship! I have far better navigational expierence!" She bickers, slamming a hand onto the back of seat. I pay her words no mind. She calls my ignorance of her a curse. I think it's a gift.
Right. Says the newly minted princess that nearly killed us five times by almost missing a asteroid. The paint job on the exterior of the shuttle bears the silver indentations of how close we were to those mammoth sized hunks of rock and debris.
Personally, it's too close for my liking. That's why I choose to pilot the shuttle.
Twilight continues to complain further about why we shouldn't even be in this sector of space.
"You do know that there is absolutely nothing of remote interest in this sector of uncharted space, right?" She whines with a little miss know-it-all charm in her voice. "I mean, why on Jupiter are we even out here? If we're off chasing another one of those highly false myths of the supposed 'ark of Eques' that's buried in a large asteroid field, like you've taken me too several hundred-"
"Five times total, Twiley. All on my own pay and personal time. Now, if you'd please be a helpful little princess and recalibrate the shields, that'd be wonderful." I cut her off. She doesn't like being cut off, but she agrees, and with a few simple keystrokes from her touch screen that rests behind me, the shields properly adjust themselves.
I slow the shuttle's engines down to low thrust as I creep slowly past a large asteroid. What I see as the field of vision clears is that Twilight and I aren't alone out here.
I spot four shuttles and a small fighter, each bearing a distinct color and shape, probably personalized to the individual pilot's tastes.
Applying more power to the engines, I move closer towards the small caravan, noticing them nestled on a smaller asteroid that overlooks a wide chasm that spilt a moon sized asteroid in half. Oddly, the lights onboard the vehicles are still on, as are the illumination lights, all peering out in the chasm ahead.
Twilight is silent as she looks over the vehicles. She pauses and raises her index finger to her temple, concentrating.
Twilight's a extremely gifted Psionic, being able to read minds or pick up tables with a thought. Knowing her, she's probably scanning to if there's anybody around.
She shakes her head no after a few moments of silence. "No human people around, though the yellow shuttle is full of animals."
I assess the situation and it's options. A, Go into the dark chasm after people, or B, stay and wait for whatever might be inside to come out....
...Yeah, I'll go with option uno. Gunning the thrusters, I smirk as I notice Twilight clinging onto the seat for what she thinks is dear life.
Pssh, better navigational skills my hand! She may be able to plot a course, but I'm the one who's flown more than her. And flying is a different feeling from just plotting a simple A to B line. Flying almost feels like home for me. Almost, as if it's missing something I just can't place.
Twilight lets out a scream of terror unexpectedly, as my head snaps out of it's pleasant day-dream. Seeing the large object ahead, I swing the shuttle hard to the right, mere inches from touching....
...Touching what looks to be a giant spaceship. More like scrapping paint with the thing. No, correction to that statement. This is the spaceship, the ark I was always told about by my parents. I just somehow know it is that same vessel.
My parents had told me when I was kid that long ago, a ancient race had to leave their changing home to seek refuge among the stars, as their planet would no longer support their native form of life. So, they built three arks to carry them on their voyage, using technology never seen or used again. They named the vessels after their governing royalty, and then left their world. But, during the maiden flight, a meteor storm caused the three vessels to separate from their original grouping, scattering them to the cosmos. Supposedly, the largest of the three was buried in a asteroid to prevent it from ever being found and falling into the wrong hands.
Truth be told, I'd always clung onto that belief because I thought maybe it might be true.
But staring at the giant golden letters engraved on the ship remove any doubts I had about the legends being false.
The letters read: S.S. CELESTIA
Twilight taps my shoulder. "Spike?"
She taps twice now. "Spiiike? Are you okay?"
I shake my head to clear my awe-struck mind. "Yeah Twilight, I'm fine. Grab your helmet, I want to take a look at this ship in person."
Twilight nods, already moving to grab her helmet, sliding it over her head. Her helmet is one of a kind, with built in amplifiers to allow her abilities to work in the depths of space. Somebody must have thought it would be cute to design the two amplifiers as twin magenta stars, each one over where Twilight's temples would sit when her head is inside the helmet.
As for yours truly, I prefer the type of helmet that not only impresses the ladies, but offers a fully integrated AI system, customizable by moi.
Ironically my current choice for the AI's avatar is none other other than Twilight herself. As if one of her wasn't torturous enough, I somehow decided that two of her, one in person, the other in my face, is effective. It hasn't failed me yet.
Sliding the helmet over my face, I lock the necessary restraints in place around my neck, and follow Twilight into the airlock chamber. With the moving a lever, the door slides open, and we both step outside. My hand goes to my side to draw my gun, but the whirring whine of several other guns charging stops my movement.
I'm staring face to face at several other girls each bearing a firearm, or in the case of the pink one, two firearms, all loaded and ready to turn Twilight and myself into corpses.
A rather tall lady, about my height, clad in a bright white spacesuit with striking purple lines, keeps a laser pistol trained on me as she walks closer. She rests the barrel of the gun against the chin of my helmet.
With a soft, tender voice, she says, "Hello, Spikey-Wikey."
It seems my luck has gone from good to terribly bad.
