silent voidby felixp daydreamChaptersprologue: those who forgetchapter one: rock villagechapter 2: crash landingchapter 3: inhumanprologue: those who forgetthe funeral was not helping my 'recovery'. i dont care how much doctor neurosis was convinced it would help me to 'come to terms' or 'move on', it wasnt working. what kind of name is neurosis anyway. and now here she is, in front of me. she looked... peaceful, i guess. this is not helping at all. everyone always makes it out like remembering the good times helps you move on but i am just thinking about how i would never see her again. my mother, the kindest woman this side of the new cloudsdale empire is dead and there is nothing i could ever do or say that can change that. all that life, all that joy and optimism just... gone. oh no im pondering the fragility of life. this is never a good thing. "terra, are you ok." a voice said from behind me as a hoof was laid gently on my shoulder. i looked up to see the empathetic face of my father, a well dresses stallion with a light grey coat and well arranged white hair. this was the first time he had been this nice to me in a while and i began to doubt how genuine he was. a cold breeze blows through the room and i realise that i am crying. for some reason the realisation that i am crying makes me burst into tears. i bury my head in my fathers chest, he puts a foreleg around me soothingly but this only succeeds in making me wonder how genuine he is. ever since i decided to take a job in being a terraformation planner he has decided that i am below him. apparently expanding the outreach of our species is less suited to me than a job in politics like him. i just dont know how he can sit around dome meeting table and talk about asbos and things all day. all i have to do is say; 'put air there, turn that sand to grass, put some trees there' and draw some diagrams and i get the rest of the day off. i pull away from him and let him pay his respects. walking back to the pews i see the empty seat next to my daughter. my mother suggested the name firma and i liked it, she didnt know her as well as i wanted and looked as though she thought she wasnt sad enough but met me with an empathetic look none the less. in my current mood i think the first thing that happened was that i felt angry. why was she sorry for me i'm not the one dead. i didnt loose a wife or a sister. i only lost... well, it was the woman who raised me but you see my point. for the rest of the funeral me and firma just wanted to get out of there and continue our lives as they were. she even started to fidget around towards the end. as it turned out the next day i discovered that my father was, in fact, faking his empathy. frankly i didnt care. i just wanted to get back to work and try to forget the unforgettable. my boss offered me a holiday but i told hima that that was a ridiculous idea. how am i meant to get over it if i cant forget it. he didnt argue... much. besides, i had an important week ahead. i had to go and talk to the mining ship e.c.s. (equestrian cultivative starship) ishimura. some japonese word, i dont know. it was one of our terraforming ships that had gone rogue and decided to go mining for something or other. i didnt really care right now. i aprihensively got aboard the transit ship. i was worried about leaving firma alone with my father but i really had no choice. the ship was small, consisting of a flight deck, sleeping quaters and kitchen. celestia help me if i have to stay here longer than a day. a voice screached onto the speakers, spraying feedback everywhere; "please prepare for our five day trip to the planet of tail volantis." how wonderful. i am thrust forewards by a push from my back, hard. a growling yet cheery voice says from behind me; "hey there newcomer, you in for this here expedition." i didnt say anything to the rig-clad stallion. why did he have the full suit? he was in new canterlot, the worst that could happen is that he be crushed by someones ego. my rig only covered the one side of me like any sane pony would have it. how do you even pee in those suits? disgruntled by the stallion i move towards the place that i assumed was the quaters. and that term applied quite literally as the only places to sleep were two bunk beds. one of which already had stuff all over it. i threw my bag onto the top bunk of the second bed and pulled myself up behind it. "HEY, looks like we're bunkmates!" i swear. if this idiot talks to me one more time... the entire ship seems to shake as the stallion throws his metal covered body onto the bed under mine. ugh, looks like this is the order of the week. chapter one: rock villagethree days on this 'ship' and this guy, machojack, which i doubted was his real name, was getting seriously on my nerves. but this was the day we were scheduled to arrive and right on cue the vast ship could be seen through the cockpit window as i stepped up. there ended up being five people on the ship. i say people because tow of them were zebras. there was me, a light grey unicorn with dark orange mane hair. then there was machojack, the obnoxiously happy and large pony who i only ever saw the head of, his full body rig concealing everything from cutie mark to chest to hooves. he was a dark orange pony with a dark brown mane. the other pony on board was one of the pilots, a small, glasses wearing pony who i yesterday discovered was machojacks brother, technojack. does nopony have a sensible name here. he didn't speak much and the only times i had seen him away from his pilot terminal was to eat, come to think of it i don't think he even slept, I'd know, the curse of insomnia not helping my angered thoughts at everything. the first zebra was the co-pilot, who never spoke and walked around as a a blind man walks about his house. the other zebra was a skinny, young filly by the name of lilly essence. i avoided looking her in the eye as i had a cat with that name when i was younger. the planet of tail volantis (i really have a thing against everything's name this week) obscured the sun, eclipsing it so that wisps of the suns burning rays seemed to try and reach around the planet and capture the ship stationed above it. as we neared the planet technojack spoke for the first time into a microphone. "ishimura, this is transit ship 235501 requesting permission to take anchor in your hangar." taking his hoof off of the activation button all that was received in reply was static. this took attention away from what i was really annoyed at. 'take anchor', i hate space so much. the wall of static was broken by some faint sounds, at first they couldn't be made out but slowly they got louder. soon the sound of a guttural noise could be made out, like someone was going to be sick, or talking without vocal chords. it was a sick sound, disgusting to listen to. technojack didn't seem to mind the sound and waved it off with "their comms are probably just out, its probably nothing. i can fix it once we get there." the vast body of the ship loomed over us as we neared it. "we should try the comms again. their gravity teather looks to be packing a mighty punch." machojack says, tapping a screen in front of him with a hoof. the two pilots switch their screens to show the same statistics. "me oh my, thats gonna hurt." technojack says, reaching over to his microphone again. "ishimura, come in. seriously guys, your tractor beam is on full." this and other messages were recieved with static once again. by this point we were all certifiably scared. lilly was visibly shaking. "lilly, are you okay?" i ask, attempting to comfort her. "i-i knew someone who was in a traction accident once. it was horrible." to be honest the concerning nature of her statement was overridden by the fact that her voice was SO FREAKING ADORABLE! it was soft, quiet and high pitched and it made my heart melt. well it would had my heart been present. the tractor beam hit hard, and i mean really hard. suddenly the whole ship shook and stopped. after a second of that we were hurtling towards the ship at alarming speed. we all flew around the cockpit and i flew straight into the sleeping quaters. flying into the 'rigging machine', a machine that attaches any amount of rig needed to any pony who needed it. unfortunatley for me the machine was set to be used by machojack, so it was set for a full body rigging. i hit the machine hard and rolled over onto my back, the ship lurched again and my body thrust towards the opposite wall yet my limbs didn't follow suit. looking to my limbs franitcly to figure out why i was flying or possibly glued to the wall, i soon see that i am attatched to the machine underneath me, specifically locked in. "oh dear," i said out loud as two metal panels closed around me. as i began to wonder how this week could possibly get worse a cold... something was hit against my back. no, not a something, metal, metal, concussion was confusing me. a metal something was pressed up against my back. and my front, and my legs. several 'eeps' escaped my mouth. as the concussin overtakes my head. i pass out. chapter 2: crash landinglike something from a fever dream, images and sensations of cold metal pressing against me constricted my mind. as a filly i was very claustrophobic and this situation did not help. usually my mother would help me through these times but now... so many things. some time later my consciousness floats back to my body and i hear the crackle of fire and shouts. my eyes dart open and panic takes hold fast. one of my hind legs is stuck under a large portion of what is barely recognisable as the remains of the ship. the ship rested on it so that the metal suit surrounding it stopped me from being able to remove my leg. as i sat up on my back the suit felt heavy, very heavy. yet it seemed to aid my movement, seeming to anticipate my next motion before i made it. the shouting reached my ears again, and as it did i turned and saw technojack and lilly coming around a large piece of the crew quaters. lilly saw me and pointed a hoof at me. "technojack, there she is," she says in a voice that is much more distraught than the one i heard from her earlier. they both rush over to me and help me out from under the large piece of what i now see to be part of the main deck. as i get back to my feet and look at the burning wreckage of the ship a third voice boomed from behind me, causing me to jump in my metal boots. or at least attempt to jump, the heavy steel covering my body made me incapable of such a feat. the thing i see behind me is machojack, looking no less happy than usual. "HEY, SNAP PREETY LAYDEE" he shouts at me, probably talking about the weighty rig constricting every part of me. he proceeds to then come up to me and put a metal foreleg around me. "you survive, like us. now we escape and go home, yes?" i have to admit that although he was annoying he did know how to calm people down. we headed off down a nearby platform towards two large steel doors. the doors had a holographic circle in their centre saying 'open'. a slight tingling goes off in my head as i near it. this told using my rig i can remotely open the door. we enter the room beyond as the door opens. the room would normally be full of people but for some reason no one was here. this was conerning, especially after out 'explosive' entrance. "tech-ey, go and check the control panel in that room." machojack points to a panel through some glass in a room just next to this one. "don't call me tech-ey," says technojack as he opens the door and moves through, fiddling with a panel on the other side of the glass. the three of us remaining in the room wait for him and search for reasons why no one is here. suddenly at this point a stallion runs through the third door in the room. the stallion was the image of fear. his clothes were ripped and his skin bandaged, blood covered a large portion of him. his rig had been ripped off, revealing many of his inner workings, this seemed to be the least of his worries though. he looked at us, first to me, then machojack and then to the pony closest to him. he jumped on top of lilly, holding her down with his back legs as he attempts to smash his head into lilly's "GET THEM OUT OF MY HEAD. I CAN'T TAKE IT, i can't... share it with me filly, MAKE US WHOLE." as technojack stares in disbelief machojack and i just about leave out shocked states and prepare to take action when, through the open door, a figure lands from somewhere above the door frame, almost invisible in the dim light of the hallway behind, completley silent. the creature looked like a pony but... didn't, it's form was mangled and contorted. it's ripped and torn skin barely covers joints that don't bend the right way, it's face no longer recognisable but shrunken, with nothing but an instantly recognisable guttering emanating from it's mouth, the same one as we heard on the comms. it lifts up a forehoof, no, wait, a fore-fore hoof. this thing has six legs. but the upper arms of the two front ones had been replaced with blade-like protrusions. similar to the one coming out of the back of the creatures head, stretching and bending around to the front. as well as these six legs two protrusions from it's back could be seen in the dim light, blood dripped from them, they looked like wings but had no feathers and were the wrong shape, the bones jutting out and the 'wings' much bigger than pegasus wings, able to stretch to the floor. the creature moves up to the stallion attacking lilly before machojack had finished screaming "OH FUCK!". it uses the boney blades protruding from it's 'legs' to impale him from behind. blood pours out of the still screaming stallion, covering lilly. if lilly could have screamed more, she would have. the creature lifts up the corpse and puts it in the way just in time for it to take the full force of machojacks bullets, finally killing the stallion. he had taken out a handgun he had apparently had this whole time and he was firing it at the thing. "LITTLE BROTHER, RUN, WE SHALL FOLLOW." machojack shouts as he realises that his bullets had had no effect. the small stallion in the other room immediately runs away through another door. turning to me, machojack looks hopeless. then his gaze meets the now blood covered lilly. the monster was preparing to kill her once it had removed the stranger stallion from its 'claw'. machojack runs and grabs lilly, throwing her on his back and then shouts to me; "COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE LADY." i did not hesitate. i had not moved from this one spot for the whole time and i needed to get out of here. we ran through the still open door that the creature had come through and along a corridor. as we did more of these abominations leapt from vents. they all had the same general layout to their bodies but the lasserations on their skin were different. a service elavator lies at the end of the corridor, the door opens instantly and we leap in. the doors close and we start to move. i turn to see machojack comforting lilly. he puts a hoof to her face, her shock evident underneath the blood. i start to say: "WHAT, IN THE FLYING FU-" but i am cut short as the elavator doors open and two blades wrap around the metal of my torso. i try to move my forelegs but to no avail. the creature pulls me towards the door as the elavator still moves down, pushing me towards the top of the elavator. i hear a loud 'SNAP!' and i fall to the bottom of the elavator, propped up on the creatures blades i land onmy head, hard. and, for the second time that day, i black out. chapter 3: inhumanSomething has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.
prologue: those who forgetthe funeral was not helping my 'recovery'. i dont care how much doctor neurosis was convinced it would help me to 'come to terms' or 'move on', it wasnt working. what kind of name is neurosis anyway. and now here she is, in front of me. she looked... peaceful, i guess. this is not helping at all. everyone always makes it out like remembering the good times helps you move on but i am just thinking about how i would never see her again. my mother, the kindest woman this side of the new cloudsdale empire is dead and there is nothing i could ever do or say that can change that. all that life, all that joy and optimism just... gone. oh no im pondering the fragility of life. this is never a good thing. "terra, are you ok." a voice said from behind me as a hoof was laid gently on my shoulder. i looked up to see the empathetic face of my father, a well dresses stallion with a light grey coat and well arranged white hair. this was the first time he had been this nice to me in a while and i began to doubt how genuine he was. a cold breeze blows through the room and i realise that i am crying. for some reason the realisation that i am crying makes me burst into tears. i bury my head in my fathers chest, he puts a foreleg around me soothingly but this only succeeds in making me wonder how genuine he is. ever since i decided to take a job in being a terraformation planner he has decided that i am below him. apparently expanding the outreach of our species is less suited to me than a job in politics like him. i just dont know how he can sit around dome meeting table and talk about asbos and things all day. all i have to do is say; 'put air there, turn that sand to grass, put some trees there' and draw some diagrams and i get the rest of the day off. i pull away from him and let him pay his respects. walking back to the pews i see the empty seat next to my daughter. my mother suggested the name firma and i liked it, she didnt know her as well as i wanted and looked as though she thought she wasnt sad enough but met me with an empathetic look none the less. in my current mood i think the first thing that happened was that i felt angry. why was she sorry for me i'm not the one dead. i didnt loose a wife or a sister. i only lost... well, it was the woman who raised me but you see my point. for the rest of the funeral me and firma just wanted to get out of there and continue our lives as they were. she even started to fidget around towards the end. as it turned out the next day i discovered that my father was, in fact, faking his empathy. frankly i didnt care. i just wanted to get back to work and try to forget the unforgettable. my boss offered me a holiday but i told hima that that was a ridiculous idea. how am i meant to get over it if i cant forget it. he didnt argue... much. besides, i had an important week ahead. i had to go and talk to the mining ship e.c.s. (equestrian cultivative starship) ishimura. some japonese word, i dont know. it was one of our terraforming ships that had gone rogue and decided to go mining for something or other. i didnt really care right now. i aprihensively got aboard the transit ship. i was worried about leaving firma alone with my father but i really had no choice. the ship was small, consisting of a flight deck, sleeping quaters and kitchen. celestia help me if i have to stay here longer than a day. a voice screached onto the speakers, spraying feedback everywhere; "please prepare for our five day trip to the planet of tail volantis." how wonderful. i am thrust forewards by a push from my back, hard. a growling yet cheery voice says from behind me; "hey there newcomer, you in for this here expedition." i didnt say anything to the rig-clad stallion. why did he have the full suit? he was in new canterlot, the worst that could happen is that he be crushed by someones ego. my rig only covered the one side of me like any sane pony would have it. how do you even pee in those suits? disgruntled by the stallion i move towards the place that i assumed was the quaters. and that term applied quite literally as the only places to sleep were two bunk beds. one of which already had stuff all over it. i threw my bag onto the top bunk of the second bed and pulled myself up behind it. "HEY, looks like we're bunkmates!" i swear. if this idiot talks to me one more time... the entire ship seems to shake as the stallion throws his metal covered body onto the bed under mine. ugh, looks like this is the order of the week.
chapter one: rock villagethree days on this 'ship' and this guy, machojack, which i doubted was his real name, was getting seriously on my nerves. but this was the day we were scheduled to arrive and right on cue the vast ship could be seen through the cockpit window as i stepped up. there ended up being five people on the ship. i say people because tow of them were zebras. there was me, a light grey unicorn with dark orange mane hair. then there was machojack, the obnoxiously happy and large pony who i only ever saw the head of, his full body rig concealing everything from cutie mark to chest to hooves. he was a dark orange pony with a dark brown mane. the other pony on board was one of the pilots, a small, glasses wearing pony who i yesterday discovered was machojacks brother, technojack. does nopony have a sensible name here. he didn't speak much and the only times i had seen him away from his pilot terminal was to eat, come to think of it i don't think he even slept, I'd know, the curse of insomnia not helping my angered thoughts at everything. the first zebra was the co-pilot, who never spoke and walked around as a a blind man walks about his house. the other zebra was a skinny, young filly by the name of lilly essence. i avoided looking her in the eye as i had a cat with that name when i was younger. the planet of tail volantis (i really have a thing against everything's name this week) obscured the sun, eclipsing it so that wisps of the suns burning rays seemed to try and reach around the planet and capture the ship stationed above it. as we neared the planet technojack spoke for the first time into a microphone. "ishimura, this is transit ship 235501 requesting permission to take anchor in your hangar." taking his hoof off of the activation button all that was received in reply was static. this took attention away from what i was really annoyed at. 'take anchor', i hate space so much. the wall of static was broken by some faint sounds, at first they couldn't be made out but slowly they got louder. soon the sound of a guttural noise could be made out, like someone was going to be sick, or talking without vocal chords. it was a sick sound, disgusting to listen to. technojack didn't seem to mind the sound and waved it off with "their comms are probably just out, its probably nothing. i can fix it once we get there." the vast body of the ship loomed over us as we neared it. "we should try the comms again. their gravity teather looks to be packing a mighty punch." machojack says, tapping a screen in front of him with a hoof. the two pilots switch their screens to show the same statistics. "me oh my, thats gonna hurt." technojack says, reaching over to his microphone again. "ishimura, come in. seriously guys, your tractor beam is on full." this and other messages were recieved with static once again. by this point we were all certifiably scared. lilly was visibly shaking. "lilly, are you okay?" i ask, attempting to comfort her. "i-i knew someone who was in a traction accident once. it was horrible." to be honest the concerning nature of her statement was overridden by the fact that her voice was SO FREAKING ADORABLE! it was soft, quiet and high pitched and it made my heart melt. well it would had my heart been present. the tractor beam hit hard, and i mean really hard. suddenly the whole ship shook and stopped. after a second of that we were hurtling towards the ship at alarming speed. we all flew around the cockpit and i flew straight into the sleeping quaters. flying into the 'rigging machine', a machine that attaches any amount of rig needed to any pony who needed it. unfortunatley for me the machine was set to be used by machojack, so it was set for a full body rigging. i hit the machine hard and rolled over onto my back, the ship lurched again and my body thrust towards the opposite wall yet my limbs didn't follow suit. looking to my limbs franitcly to figure out why i was flying or possibly glued to the wall, i soon see that i am attatched to the machine underneath me, specifically locked in. "oh dear," i said out loud as two metal panels closed around me. as i began to wonder how this week could possibly get worse a cold... something was hit against my back. no, not a something, metal, metal, concussion was confusing me. a metal something was pressed up against my back. and my front, and my legs. several 'eeps' escaped my mouth. as the concussin overtakes my head. i pass out.
chapter 2: crash landinglike something from a fever dream, images and sensations of cold metal pressing against me constricted my mind. as a filly i was very claustrophobic and this situation did not help. usually my mother would help me through these times but now... so many things. some time later my consciousness floats back to my body and i hear the crackle of fire and shouts. my eyes dart open and panic takes hold fast. one of my hind legs is stuck under a large portion of what is barely recognisable as the remains of the ship. the ship rested on it so that the metal suit surrounding it stopped me from being able to remove my leg. as i sat up on my back the suit felt heavy, very heavy. yet it seemed to aid my movement, seeming to anticipate my next motion before i made it. the shouting reached my ears again, and as it did i turned and saw technojack and lilly coming around a large piece of the crew quaters. lilly saw me and pointed a hoof at me. "technojack, there she is," she says in a voice that is much more distraught than the one i heard from her earlier. they both rush over to me and help me out from under the large piece of what i now see to be part of the main deck. as i get back to my feet and look at the burning wreckage of the ship a third voice boomed from behind me, causing me to jump in my metal boots. or at least attempt to jump, the heavy steel covering my body made me incapable of such a feat. the thing i see behind me is machojack, looking no less happy than usual. "HEY, SNAP PREETY LAYDEE" he shouts at me, probably talking about the weighty rig constricting every part of me. he proceeds to then come up to me and put a metal foreleg around me. "you survive, like us. now we escape and go home, yes?" i have to admit that although he was annoying he did know how to calm people down. we headed off down a nearby platform towards two large steel doors. the doors had a holographic circle in their centre saying 'open'. a slight tingling goes off in my head as i near it. this told using my rig i can remotely open the door. we enter the room beyond as the door opens. the room would normally be full of people but for some reason no one was here. this was conerning, especially after out 'explosive' entrance. "tech-ey, go and check the control panel in that room." machojack points to a panel through some glass in a room just next to this one. "don't call me tech-ey," says technojack as he opens the door and moves through, fiddling with a panel on the other side of the glass. the three of us remaining in the room wait for him and search for reasons why no one is here. suddenly at this point a stallion runs through the third door in the room. the stallion was the image of fear. his clothes were ripped and his skin bandaged, blood covered a large portion of him. his rig had been ripped off, revealing many of his inner workings, this seemed to be the least of his worries though. he looked at us, first to me, then machojack and then to the pony closest to him. he jumped on top of lilly, holding her down with his back legs as he attempts to smash his head into lilly's "GET THEM OUT OF MY HEAD. I CAN'T TAKE IT, i can't... share it with me filly, MAKE US WHOLE." as technojack stares in disbelief machojack and i just about leave out shocked states and prepare to take action when, through the open door, a figure lands from somewhere above the door frame, almost invisible in the dim light of the hallway behind, completley silent. the creature looked like a pony but... didn't, it's form was mangled and contorted. it's ripped and torn skin barely covers joints that don't bend the right way, it's face no longer recognisable but shrunken, with nothing but an instantly recognisable guttering emanating from it's mouth, the same one as we heard on the comms. it lifts up a forehoof, no, wait, a fore-fore hoof. this thing has six legs. but the upper arms of the two front ones had been replaced with blade-like protrusions. similar to the one coming out of the back of the creatures head, stretching and bending around to the front. as well as these six legs two protrusions from it's back could be seen in the dim light, blood dripped from them, they looked like wings but had no feathers and were the wrong shape, the bones jutting out and the 'wings' much bigger than pegasus wings, able to stretch to the floor. the creature moves up to the stallion attacking lilly before machojack had finished screaming "OH FUCK!". it uses the boney blades protruding from it's 'legs' to impale him from behind. blood pours out of the still screaming stallion, covering lilly. if lilly could have screamed more, she would have. the creature lifts up the corpse and puts it in the way just in time for it to take the full force of machojacks bullets, finally killing the stallion. he had taken out a handgun he had apparently had this whole time and he was firing it at the thing. "LITTLE BROTHER, RUN, WE SHALL FOLLOW." machojack shouts as he realises that his bullets had had no effect. the small stallion in the other room immediately runs away through another door. turning to me, machojack looks hopeless. then his gaze meets the now blood covered lilly. the monster was preparing to kill her once it had removed the stranger stallion from its 'claw'. machojack runs and grabs lilly, throwing her on his back and then shouts to me; "COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE LADY." i did not hesitate. i had not moved from this one spot for the whole time and i needed to get out of here. we ran through the still open door that the creature had come through and along a corridor. as we did more of these abominations leapt from vents. they all had the same general layout to their bodies but the lasserations on their skin were different. a service elavator lies at the end of the corridor, the door opens instantly and we leap in. the doors close and we start to move. i turn to see machojack comforting lilly. he puts a hoof to her face, her shock evident underneath the blood. i start to say: "WHAT, IN THE FLYING FU-" but i am cut short as the elavator doors open and two blades wrap around the metal of my torso. i try to move my forelegs but to no avail. the creature pulls me towards the door as the elavator still moves down, pushing me towards the top of the elavator. i hear a loud 'SNAP!' and i fall to the bottom of the elavator, propped up on the creatures blades i land onmy head, hard. and, for the second time that day, i black out.
