Space Engineer over Equestria

Luna convulsed as 4 new objects tore into her , it wasn’t dangerous, but so rarely had her stars been touched that she had no resistance to pains related to it.

Wait, that was odd… There were 4 manufactured vessels, but only 3 aliens. How did… focus, Luna had to relay this to Celestia.

“Sister, whoever that alien was calling has arrived, there are 3 more aliens and 4 ships.” Celestia blanched as much as her white coat would allow. It was grave news indeed.

“Will our rocket beat them to the first alien?” The elder princess asked. Luna did the mental calculations in her head, but it was mostly guess work on her end.

“It’s close, I’m not sure what speed they are capable of.” Luna said distractedly as she was still doing the calculations as Celestia left to inform mission control. They would see them before too long, but every second mission control had to work with was critical.

“Aye, we see the three bogies. They’re faster, but we’re closer.” Spitfire looked over her shoulder. “Agent TT, start running calculations. I want to start running scenarios now.”

“Aye Cap’n just keep leaning over the console like that.” Spitfire spat back a glare, but she turned back to her console and gave a few knobs a knowing turn. “BUCK! Fine! I’ll keep my eyes down, just keep your hoof off that.”

Spitfire pulled her hoof away

In the depths of space was a ship, named the Pinya, it wasn’t massive by any degree, but it was plenty large for one man. This ship that was large enough for one man was slowly drifting about in the vast nothingness that surrounded a blue and green orb, the planet Equiss, but the man in the ship big enough for him didn’t know that, nor did he register the view of said planet as he slowly regained consciousness a second time.

“Blargh… Fuggin’ cannibal potatoes.” Kamachakta grumbled to himself, rubbing at bleary eyes with armored hands as he cursed everything, especially potatoes, for his untimely awakening.

His sight returned, Kam looked around from his seat, seeing nothing wrong with his ship from there, he unbuckled himself and floated down to the first level. Seeing the door on the underside of his ship intact caused a sigh of relief to issue forth from the man as memories of drunken barrel rolls and screeching metal entered his mind unbidden.

Shaking away unpleasant memories, he made his way to the door to the back room of the Pinya. Opening the door without hassle, Kam saw that everything was indeed well with his ship, and turned to make his way back up the stairs to his favorite chair.

What he saw out the window in the front of the Pinya as he turned stopped him in his tracks. A planet, green and blue and round, perfect for civilian life, he didn’t look at it twice. What caught his attention was the largest belt of the largest asteroids he’d ever seen, it was beautiful, and caught him in fantasies of endless riches, minerals, and lovers of his choosing for a fair few minutes.

When his mind returned to reality he found himself pressed against the glass, openly drooling. After cleaning himself off and leaving a mental note to delete the scene from the system recordings he slowly made his way up to his chair, dreams still bouncing around in his head.

After seating himself, Kam looked over the display in front of him seeing the planet show up along with the majority of the asteroids he saw earlier, but also noticing a few strange things, one of those thing being that his sensors rebounded off of something behind the Pinya, he took a guess that it was the white thing he apparently punched through on his way to the distress beacon, which was still active.

Along side it though were 4 other ships at varying distances from himself,one derelict moving surprisingly fast for a ship without a driver. Two of the ships had single biological signatures on them and were drifting aimlessly, Kam figured they were probably unconscious. The last one had four signatures, and was on a direct course for the beacon, from the planet... Locals then.

Kam sneered to himself. He absolutely hated planetsiders, with their money, and political jockeying, not to mention the holier-than-thou attitude he had yet to see not displayed everytime he met one, it irked him to no end, especially how they always seem to forget that their ‘civilized’ lives are possible because of spacers like himself.

System... reboooooting
Neural Nanites activating…

Dreams... entering short term storage.

Good morning me!

Where was it? The ship remembers, a large slightly curved white obstacle that only registered on the light spectrum in the human level, possibly part of a larger sphere.

The ship remembered being unable to stop in time, but at the velocities it had been traveling at it should be missing a large portion of itself.

Calculating possible impact scenarios... loading…

That wasn’t good at all… If the white wall had been stone then there would have been massive damage to all core processing systems… and worse.

The ship chastised itself. It should have left the days it jumped like that long behind with the Regulr Incident, and here it was jumping in blind. Brother or Sister, or no, that jump had been foolish.

Where was it now? It could sense a… sphere surrounding it at an impossible size… a star, a planet… It’s sibling! on a small vessel, in a distressed status. That wasn’t good at all.

Wait, other vessels, a mining ship, dinky, barely armed, but armed enough to threatened the ship’s sibling. There was a blocky and dull Salvaging vessel, its sensor footprint was a mile wide, probably wasn’t even cleaned. Last was a military vessel, the best armed of the three, missiles, turrets, heavy armor, a gravity drive. A tough little nut to crack, but it wouldn’t survive three seconds under a frontal assault.

But something wasn’t right… none of these vessels seemed to possess the tech necessary to hurt the ship’s newfound sibling, none of them were broadcasting in a way that would control…

There was another ship, a … rocket? The powersource was uncertain, but the engines were neutrino based. It seemed to be broadcasting… That was it! Wait, the biosigns… they weren’t human, so strange… whoever they were, they were hurting the ship’s sibling!

It had to act now!

The ship slowly engaged its gravity drive, if it could get there first it could block the signal.

“Captain! One of the ships is rapidly accelerating!” Agent TT froze as the largest ship seemed to be undergoing an impossible acceleration for its mass. “Captain, we need to dump the power from stage one and two to stage three, drop off the later stage engines… if we do, we might make it first.

“BUCK!... do it, I’ll start trying to hail the alien again, perhaps if we start sending numbers or patterns it might realize we are trying to communicate.

I groaned tiredly as I lifted myself out of my seat. I had to find a mirror, had to find a mirror.

“What. In. The .Fuck.” These were the words uttered in confusion from the man named Kam. These words he felt necessary because the derelict he picked up on his sensors sped up, when he saw this he figured it was a system malfunction or somesuch, until he noticed it change its trajectory to intercept the planetsiders that were speeding up as well.

At that point, he said a necessary sentence, and decided to just roll with it. Replacing his helmet on his noggin, he fired up his engines and started making his way to the interception site.

There was a ringing in his ears, a ache in his shoulders, a… where was he? He remembered a wall of white, a distress call… alex… ALEX! Fade lurched to his feet and stumbled over to the…

His head was swimming… Fade couldn’t hear anything, his feet seemed to both be heading left… he was falling..

oww

Wait… What? Where? Cryo? Distress call… Weird white… THE WHITE!

With that thought Jason lept to his feet, or would have, had the cryo tube not been locked, only succeeding in smacking his helmet against the glass. Clumsily he fumbled for the release, mumbling about “the stupid fucking door-window-thingy” as he staggered forward and out of the pod.

As he climbed the ramp up to the improvised cockpit, Jason checked his messages to see if he did, in fact, send the distress call he had been preparing a few seconds before he hit the white and, to his relief, it sat in his Drafts folder, unfinished and unsent. As soon as he reached the cockpit, however, his relief vanished.

“Oh shit,” was all Jason could utter as he drew up a scan of the area surrounding his ship, while it didn’t look like a pirate ambush, there was a plethora of vessels closing in on the ship that had sent the distress call, a mining ship similarly armed to his–he could probably take it out if he had the element of surprise, not that he’d take the chance–, two military grade ships, one small and one large, both more than capable of reducing the Norm to a smoldering wreck in seconds. And another, strangely armed, strangely shaped, and seemingly on a flight path from the planet. Not going near that one either.

The Norm may not have been damaged in the collision with the white, luckily, but Jason wasn’t about to take any chances with those heavy ships, he’d just let his vessel float towards his destination, seemingly inactive while he waited in his scouting craft, which (hopefully) wouldn’t appear on scans as he neared the distressed ship, he could only hope they didn’t notice his initial scan.

If he did get caught, Jason would just have to bolt in the scout, hoping that the Norm would soak up enough fire to cover his retreat, perhaps even fry his assailant when they inevitably hit his thermite stores, sending the salvaging vessel up in flames.

Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, maybe they’d all kill each other, or work together to save the stranded ship, and not move to claim the seemingly dead ship floating their way.

The ship groaned as one human tried to fool it, and another seemed to not know what it was doing. She hadn’t confirmed the third ship was an alien vessel, but it was looking increasingly likely.

But Seriously, doesn’t that salvager know that he’d have to stop some biofunctions before trying to pass off as dead. She could literally… well, some of the junk in his cargo hold was giving off interference, but the ship could tell he was alive!

If an AI could sigh, now would be the time. Sadly, the ship’s mother never installed that reflex. Well, the ship could feasibly simulate the feeling of yawning, but that wouldn’t be the same… or would it?

Strange that it had never occured to do that. Nonetheless, what was it going to do with the tiny ships that were quickly complicating its tactical options in relation to the aliens. Hmm

The fighters! The ship could use the fighters in its bays to harass the other two ships, but could it afford to lose those? It had lost the Winry construction shuttles it had bought, so replacing the fighters would take cash, and… the ship was low on cash.

What to do… what to do… The command shuttle ought to be able to survive long enough to get out of firing range, if they did fire on it, and all the ship needed was more operating space to maneuver in…

That ought to work.

“Sir! The largest ship is moving in a considerably more aggressive manner, and it seems to be deploying a smaller craft. I can’t tell the intent yet.” Spitfire noted Agent TT had stopped flirting, good.

“Keep tracking it, Daring Do, other guy, strap in. We have no idea what’s gonna happen in the next few minutes, and even less of a clue what that thing’s weapon range is. Unicorn, I want you scanning every second. The moment you detect a possible weapon tell me.”

“C-captain, all 4 vessels appear to have weapons, the largest one is covered in them! That is, if I’m right and those are guns.” Spitfire felt her stomach drop a little.

This was a big bucking mess.