Space Engineer over Equestria

As Kam sat in his super comfortable flying chair he stared intently at the display in front of him, the lenses in his helmet not hindering his line of sight, as he sailed on to a destination he just now figured was a bad idea. This thought cemented itself in his head when he saw a door open on the front of ship revealing a hangar full of fighters.

His eyes widening in surprise, Kam hit the metaphorical brakes, and changed his mind about getting closer to the action as the Planetsiders were swarmed by the lighter, faster, vessels. Changing his trajectory, he made his way away from the possibility of crossfire, and relaxed once he judged himself far enough out of the way.

With little in the way to do while he waited, he started up his playlist, the beats pumping through his body as well as the rest of the ship, and opened his scanner again. When he did he noticed another strange thing, one of the ships his scanners picked up went dark, and the biosign had moved.

Wondering just what exactly was going on with the ship, and needing something to do until the rocket, and the scouts swarming it, were done, he turned off his playlist, the lack of noise disorienting him for a moment, and began recording.

His voice sounding cold and metallic coming through his helmets mic, he spoke to the little spinning thing in the center of the screen showing him that he was being recorded.

“This is Captain Kamachakta of the independent mining ship Pinya... Are you dead? If so, don’t respond and I’ll go about organizing your funeral and the distribution of your assets. If you’re alive I’d like to speak with you concerning your business in this sector. If you’re alive and pretending to be dead, I’ll be boarding your vessel if you don’t respond, confirming that you deemed it appropriate to lie to me about such a thing, I will be sad if this happens. Captain Kamachakta signing off, hope to hear from you soon.”

Pressing the Spinning thing he ended the recording, and opened the send option. Navigating the possible options he found the suit in the dead zone of an inactive ship, and hit send.

Patience, what a wonderful thing to have, with it one can weather any storm, hunkered down in their home, waiting for it to pass. Such patience doesn’t really help when said storm may kill you at any moment, though, as Jason was beginning to realize as he sat in his diminutive scout without anything to do while mysterious warships flew about outside. His plan was far from flawless, but hopefully the larger ships would be too wrapped up in blasting themselves to pieces to notice him, hopefully.

“This is Captain Kamachakta of the independent mining ship Pinya... Are you dead? If so, don’t respond and I’ll go about organizing your funeral and the distribution of your assets. If you’re alive I’d like to speak with you concerning your business in this sector. If you’re alive and pretending to be dead, I’ll be boarding your vessel if you don’t respond, confirming that you deemed it appropriate to lie to me about such a thing, I will be sad if this happens. Captain Kamachakta signing off, hope to hear from you soon.”

Fuck…

“Well, no point in giving him a reason to board, I guess,” Jason mused as he clambered out of the scout and towards the ship’s many reactors, activating each in sequence, “even if he does, could always light him on fire or something, doubt he’d expect it, being in space and all.”

Once the ship was once again thrumming with life and the turrets searching for threats, Jason made his way to the cockpit, spending a minute to think of a response to the pilot of the Pinya.

“This is Captain Jason Rey of the salvaging ship Norm, I’m sorry if my deactivated ship was of any cause for alarm, but you must have noticed the other ships in the area, I just wanted to make myself the least ‘interesting’ of the bunch, after all, who would mind a derelict salvaging ship when there are several others that are not only moving, but heavily armed?”

“Ah yes, I can see why you would try to stay out of the way. So… What’s a salvage ship doing out here in this little chunk of nowhere?”

“Same as you, probably. Caught wind of a distress beacon and decided to check it out, hadn’t planned on so many ships showing up though.”

“Hmmm. Yep, that’s why I’m here too. Caught an S.O.S. in the middle of digging out an asteroid and figured I might as well check it out, seeing as I’ve got nothing but time. Well, that and I figured I may or may not get some sort of compensation, not exactly the richest man in the universe here.”

“I had been dissecting a transporter before I got the message, left someone to take it apart for me and flew over here. Oh, just wondering, you hit that white bubble too? Or was I just unlucky?”

“Nope, I hit it too, I had just gotten out of cryo-sleep and didn’t notice it in time to stop. What I did do, however, was get knocked out by it.”

“Well, seems we’re in the same boat then, you going to try to get to the beacon before the other ships or let them duke it out and just float on in?”

“I would try to get through now, but I don’t exactly have the funds necessary to replace my ship right now. So I’m going to wait it out, see who wins, and possibly make a run for the beacon if the big one is run down enough.”

“Same, though I sincerely doubt the other two will as much as dent that thing, what do you say, if the big one goes down, that we work together to get to the stranded ship?”

“That, my friend, would entirely depend on if you have a plan. Preferably one that doesn’t involve suicide runs and firefights, because I don’t have one that doesn’t involve either one, or both, of those.”

“How about don’t advance unless they’re all out of commision? That’s the only thing I can think of that doesn’t involve shooting something.”

“Good plan, I was just going to suggest that. Though we should probably go anyways if the planetsiders win, no telling what the locals will do to an alien. And judging by their ship’s design, I’d say this is one of their first.”

“What about surface-based missiles? Those things could take us down in less than a second, and what about the White? If they made that, which managed to knock us both out before we even got close to the planet, what else could they have in store? Lasers? Plasma? I don’t really want to meet these locals, take apart their ship, sure, but get close to them alive? No, not really, sounds like a death wish to me.”

“Well, to that I say. If they have the power to make something like the White, how are we still alive? If they have the technology to make a protective sphere around their home, why don’t they have White Lasers? Why are they fighting with normal-ish weapons when they could weaponize their shield tech and just take us all out like that?

I’d say because they didn’t make it, I think the White is just a natural phenomenon, caused by what, I don’t know. But I don’t think they do either.“

“I guess you have a point, but we still don’t know what that gun shoots, could be bullets, could be some sort of weaponized White. If you go in, I’ll be close behind you, but there’s no way I’m taking the lead without knowing what I’m going up against.”

“Fair enough, though it’s unlikely they’ll win, most likely the military warship is going to, and if so we’re fucked if we go anywhere near it. And even more fucked if it decides it doesn’t like us and starts chasing us…

Unless we had a warship of our own, which I think we could get. You see one of the other ships that showed up was a pinnace, and the pilot is still out. Think you could fly it if we nabbed it?”

“I bet I could rig something up, though I wouldn’t want to be in the thing when it’s under fire, I’ll probably just have it fly towards whichever ship survives then hop back in mine, the turrets should provide a good enough distraction.”

“Sounds good, you want to go grab the ship so we’re ready for when they’re done?”

“Works for me, hope those turrets aren’t on though, if so we’re in for one hell of a ride.”

“God I hope not, well let’s get to it then.”

The ship physically groaned as it did an emergency exit from the micro jump. The unidentified vessel sending the signal was maneuvering in sub-light. The ship realized it had no idea what it was jumping into. Nanites that it had never realized were off were coming on. Somehow the mysterious white wall had disabled bits of it hadn't realized could be shut off.

Why had it assumed the unidentified ship's signal was the cause? It was normally not so hostile so readily. What was going on? Why... why had it ever doubted it?! The ship was approaching it's one living relative, armed, and sending out a signal that was activating harmful nanites!

The ship was too far away for conventional weapons, but too close to jump again. There was only one option.

The ship loaded up one polar missile up top, one polar missile along in the bottom, and one thermal nuclear device in the middle. It readjusted it's facing to lead the alien vessel just a little, and it said a small prayer to the Goddess Fantasi.

One shot.

"SPITFIRE! I DETECT A ... SOMETHING?! COMING FROM THE LARGEST SHIP, APPROACHING FAST. WE HAVE JUST-" The still unnamed unicorn in the back of the ship stared in shock as what would seem to be a weapon detonated moments before it would have impacted.

Nightmare Moon roared in frustration as the metal entity's control on the missile superseded her's just long enough to prevent the missile from hitting. She raged for a few moments, tearing apart a few of the fighters with the gravity wells. She stopped herself before she tore apart the command drone. If she had understood the metal pony's mind correctly she'd need that for when she used the metal pony's weapons to decimate foolish Luna and Celestia from orbit.

Nightmare Moon reanalyzed the situation. She had a ship full of traitors to eliminate. She had to do so before the ponies, likely the Elements of Harmony, could trick her new host. After that she would suborn or kill the other aliens, and finally she would bring eternal dreams to her beloved Equestria.

But, first she had to finish her control on this "living vessel." All ends would come from there.

"Are you going to wait as they kill your sibling?"

The ship froze as a unknown spoke from its own intercom. Where was the speaker?! Had it been haxed?!

"No, I'm a friend. I've come to help you make the right choices. You can't hesitate now." The ship stopped as the oddly familiar voice came from its own intercom again. It almost was like it was talking to itself. But that would mean that some of its nanites had been compromised.

The ship regarded it's logs. To its shock there was a batch of nanites that had stopped responding. Part of that batch had come back on but was responding strangely.

It wasn't a pure hacking attack, and the aliens had sent no signal that it could detect. Whatever that was, the ship couldn't let it fester.

The ship dumped the damaged core into its micro ventilation systems, and watched the nanites travel through its body, to be dumped in the fighter bay.

Nightmare Moon screamed in frustration as the mass of tiny metal creatures she had become was dumped onto a flat metal surface. Rage and cruelt boiled through her veins as she pulled herself back together much like she had the mist. It was time to show this giant metal whale who it was messing with!