The Son of Earth

David slowly stood up. Walking over to the door of the library, he opened it, and was greeted with a gust of wind and rain, as well as the piercing brightness of the ship's spotlight. Closing the door, he turned to face the two ponies. "It looks like it's storming pretty hard outside," he said, earning nods of agreement. Suddenly, an idea crossed his head. "Ms. Twilight," he said, suddenly switching to his formal voice. "It would be my honor to shield you from this terrible weather until we can enter the vessel." He knelt down reverently as he spoke.

"Well, of course!" said the purple pony. "But with what? You don't have an umbrella or anything like that," she said.

Opening his briefcase, he took out a small orb. "Not quite an umbrella, but close. Come here," he said. Once the purple pony got close to him, he lightly tapped on the side of the orb with his thumb. Suddenly, a pale blue shield materialized around the two. "This'll keep all the rain out until we get to the ship." Turning around and waving to Rarity, who was still sitting at the table and had begun conversing with Spike, the two set off into the rain.

Soon, they reached the door of the matte black spacecraft. The wing sprouted out of the body a few meters back, tipped with a bright green light. Knocking on the bottom of the craft with his fist, David signaled for the door to open. It did just so, bending down and exposing the red velvet-covered staircase into the craft. Bowing, David motioned for Twilight to go first into the vessel. She did, and he followed directly behind. The inside was spacious; nearly ten meters long and three meters tall. Each seat had a window next to it, allowing the passenger to look out into the world beyond. The two rows of seats were spaced around a meter apart, with a vibrant red carpet running between them. White lights in two lines directly above the chairs were embedded into the ceiling. The walls were a light grey, with the black shades of the windows forming dark ovals. A lone digital clock stood on the rear wall of the craft, as well as a small drink dispenser.

"Welcome to my ship," David said as Twilight looked around. "It's not too much, but it'll get us where we're going in comfort and style. You can pick any seat you want," he continued, gesturing to the eight chairs. Twilight deliberated for a few seconds before choosing to go to the furthest-back one. David took the seat next to her and leaned back, pushing the seat back down to almost touch the wall. His eyes drifted lazily to the clock.

18:37

He sighed. This was definitely going to be a long flight. The engines hadn't even been turned on yet, and it'd take them at their fastest speed a good hour to reach orbit. Combine that with the flying tour he wanted to do, as well as all the orbital rendezvous that needed to happen, and it could very well be up to two days. He leaned back in his chair and turned to face the pony.

Twilight was busy fidgeting with the buttons on the chair, trying to see what each one was. They were marked in some language she couldn't understand, but she soon learned that the weird one with the angular characters on either side and a curved one in the middle turned on some sort of bright light over her chair. Another one, marked with a rectangle and lines going through it, opened the strange flap on the wall next to her seat. She sighed, frustrated. It would be so much easier if these 'humans' wrote Equestrian instead of just speaking it, she thought to herself. Turning to face David, she found him staring at her. "What?" she asked.

"Are you having trouble with the buttons?" he replied, his voice with not a small amount of amusement. "And don't worry that you probably can't read any of the labels; it's just a difference in language. Like this:" He proceeded to switch from what his language bracelet now identified as Equestrian to English. "Can't understand me now, right?"

The pony just stared at him blankly. What are those guttural noises he's making? she thought. Surely it can't be some sort of battle cry?

Seeing the desired reaction, David switched back to Equestrian. "See? What this little gadget here lets me do," he said, pointing to the silver bracelet around his arm, "is allows me to read, write, and fluently speak any language I happen to come across. Here, I'll take it off and let you borrow it; you won't be able to understand me if neither of us are wearing it. But, it'll probably be better if you wear it, seeing as we're going into human territory."

With that, he tapped a small button on the surface of the bracelet, and it retracted from around his arm into a little sliver. He gently grabbed Twilight's foreleg and, holding it still, lightly pressed the silver sliver to her leg. It beeped once before quickly forming around into a tight, perfectly-measured bracelet around her leg. "Try speaking to me now," he said.

Twilight's mouth struggled to form words before she finally spoke. "Does... does this work?" she said tentatively, her mouth carefully exploring the human language.

"I can hear you loud and clear," he said. "Now try reading the labels on the buttons."

Turning to her armrest, she began trying to read the labels on the buttons aloud. "Light..." she said, pointing to the one she'd figured out earlier. "Call? What does that mean?"

David gently moved her hoof away from the button. "Hit that if something goes wrong and you need crew assistance; one of the pilots will come to you and help you with whatever you need."

Twilight nodded before continuing to read. "Screen... I guess that one sounds rather harmless."

She tapped it gently. Unfortunately for her, her muzzle happened to be a few centimeters too far forward for the screen; it swung down from the ceiling, hitting her square in the muzzle and causing a thin stream of blood to trickle out as she felt her legs buckle underneath her.

"Oh, shit! Are you okay?" David asked as she slowly fell to the floor.

He just sighed as he pulled a medical kit out from underneath her chair. Taking out a simple needle, he slowly pushed it into her neck and emptied the contents. Twilight woke up, gasping. "What in Tartarus --" she began, fuming.

He just calmed her down. "Relax, relax. It was just a bit of a miscalculation. These screens were designed for flat-faced humans, not for ponies. Don't worry, all you have is a nosebleed." Pulling out another, much smaller syringe, he stuck it into her neck. "This should stop it," he continued. "It's basically a raw injection of empty cells. What they'll do is find your genetic material, copy it, and use it to rebuild your damaged nose. Even if it's broken, it should be healed within the hour." He sighed as he went back to his chair. "But be careful; some of the other buttons might also hurt you on accident. Definitely don't touch the facial massage; it'll have some seriously gruesome effects on a face of your shape."

The sound of the engines slowly grew in intensity as Twilight perused the buttons. Eventually, the craft took off with a jolt, startling her. David suppressed a chuckle before turning to face his own personal screen. Tapping through the menus, he eventually came to his personal flight planner. He drew a line over the map of the surface showing his desired flight path before marking the point where he wanted to start the climb to orbit before sending it to the pilots. A clunk reverberated through the ship as the VTOL engines retracted into their pods and the forward propulsion engines lit up. As the spacecraft began to fly, David, looking out of his window, noticed some flying 'ponies' wearing blue uniforms with yellow stripes.

"Who are they?" he asked, pointing out at the uniformed 'ponies'. "Are they some sort of air patrol or something? They seem to be quite interested in following us. I wonder if they know we can see them."

Twilight looked at them for a few seconds before speaking. "They're the Wonderbolts; Equestria's military airshow flying team. They tend to escort any sort of important pegasus or chariot, or watch any form of unusual flier."

"So, basically, they're escorting us to make sure we don't try anything funny, and they'll probably try to shoot us down if we make any hostile motions."

"Well, yes. But they're likely to check if there's any ponies on board, and force us down without actually hurting us if they find me."

David sighed. He didn't mind being escorted by Fleet fighters - it actually made him feel safer, knowing that good men were watching his back in case anything happened. But these pony escorts just unnerved him, especially how they were flying in squads of three on either wing. He sent an order to the pilots to speed up past mach; hopefully they could outrun them without too much fuel consumption.

The whining of the engines grew in intensity until a boom pierced the skies. David watched as the 'ponies' slowly stopped, their faces in expressions of awe. He turned to Twilight, who had a similar expression on her face.

"What?" he asked. After all, going supersonic was a regular feat by all Fleet aircraft, going so far as to be standard practice after takeoff.

"In the past century, nopony's been able to do any sort of sonic boom other than Rainbow Dash, and even that can tire her out significantly. You just did it like it was nothing!" Twilight seemed somewhat distraught by the massive power of the craft.

"Oh, you think supersonic is a big achievement? Before the War, almost all airliners that could carry more than eighty people were hypersonic. Six hundred seventy knots is not fast for any sort of modern vessel."

Twilight just stared blankly. "If you can pull of sonic booms like it's nothing..."

David's grin grew exponentially. "You're going to love what we have to show you once we get to the Arcadia."

Fields, clouds, hills, and forests all sped by as the spaceplane continued to climb. Slowly going up, it followed the course set by David earlier that night. The sun burned red on the horizon as the craft continued to climb above the clouds and into the upper atmosphere. Twilight was glued to her window, watching the world below and the sunset beyond, as David ordered dinner for both of them. She'd strongly refused to eat any of the meat products, even after being reassured that they were synthetic and that no living thing was harmed to make them. So, instead, he got her a plate of sauteed mushrooms with a side of potato fries. For himself, he got himself a double-layered cheeseburger, complete with fries and a soda. While he usually didn't eat such flat-out dangerous food, he couldn't stop his cravings. Twilight was sipping her tea as she stared out the window, almost with a longing in her eyes. Putting down his half-eaten burger and cleaning himself up, David knelt beside her.

"Hey. Are you alright?" he asked gently. She turned to him, still holding her tea in her telekinetic grasp.

"Hmm? Oh, yes. Everything is fine; it's just, I've never seen the sun set from this high. In fact, I'm pretty sure nopony has. It's... beautiful," she said, gesturing to the painting of reds, oranges, whites, and blues smeared across the darkening sky.

David just smiled. "No matter how many planets I visit, no matter how many sunsets I see, they're never the same. There's always something... special, something different about each one. This one, I think, looks a lot like the ones back on Earth, except... better. I can't put my finger on it; it just looks objectively better."

Twilight smiled slightly. "Yeah, the sunsets here are really beautiful. But what were you talking about, 'how many planets you visit'?"

David sighed as he prepared to begin an explanation. "You see," he said, "my fleet and I have been jumping around the galaxy for ten years. Every so often, I'd go down to the surface of a planet. Usually, I'd stay overnight. I'd take the time to watch the sunset before retreating into my compartment, though," he began. He continued talking about his experiences with various planets and sunsets, from the massive-looking red dwarfs that warmed dead planets with their dying light to the glorious sunsets of gas giants, as the light of their star slowly pierced their atmospheres and clouds, to the last dying throes of a star and its planet as it goes nova or is eaten by a black hole. David recounted all of these experiences, and by the time he'd finished, the unicorn had fallen fast asleep on the floor of the ship, and the sky was dark. David took a look at the clock on the back of the vessel.

22:17

He sighed. Carefully lifting up the sleeping unicorn, he took it to its seat and reclined it into bed mode. Once he had lain her down on the flat padded seat, he took a blanket from one of the survival kits and laid it over her before placing a pillow underneath her head. He sat next to her, staring out the window at the stars that began appearing, for sometime before his body also decided it was time for sleep.

He woke up with his head on something soft. Carefully lifting it, he found he'd fallen asleep onto the purple unicorn. He stole another glance at the clock.

7:43

He decided to let the pony sleep for some more time, so he carefully and quietly got out of his chair. He silently thanked whoever had invented rotation-less artificial gravity as he silently went to his seat and ordered a bagel. The meal he'd half-finished had been removed from the table, replaced with a hot coffee. He lifted it to his lips and took a sip of the beverage as he looked out of his window.

The planet's surface slowly curves outward. Clouds, continents, and the occasional massive spire can be spotted out of the side of the ship. Far off in the distance, the green and red lights of a Fleet fighter can be seen, followed by three more sets. They take formation on either side of the ship, looking into the windows before smiling and waving as they see David. He just smiles back, relaxing in his chair. Eventually they fly off, probably to return to their ships.

David sighed as he took another sip of the coffee. Looking behind him, the pony was still sound asleep. He decided to view the front camera of the vessel. After all, it helped to know where you were going. The screen snapped down when he hit the button, and the camera view appeared. Ten shapes were visible in the distance, clearly outlined with their gleaming hulls against the darkness of space. He went over to the pony and gently shook her.

She awoke with a start before turning to look at David. "Oh. Hi." she said, straightening out her mane. "Sorry for falling asleep during your talk..." she said sheepishly.

"Don't worry. We're almost here, anyway. Remember; once we're inside, do NOT remove that translation bracelet, or else nobody will be able to talk to you." He emphasized this last point greatly, for it was very important. Twilight nodded in understanding, before turning to ask a question.

"What do you mean we're almost here? We're almost where?" she asked in rapid succession.

"See for yourself," said David, gesturing to his screen.

Twilight was peering over David's shoulder as they watched from the nose camera. The hulls of each ship slowly grew in size as they grew nearer, until individual details could be discerned. The flagship of the fleet, Arcadia, stood out from the rest of the fleet with its sheer size. Two massive hollow cylinders, the barrels for the deadly anti-ship railguns, stuck out of a hexagonal bulge in the side of the massively long spacecraft, pointing straight forward. The massive thrusters were situated in the rear, glowing a neon blue with the massive amounts of energy flowing through them even in their idle state. The small spaceplane slowly approached the ship, before turning suddenly and flying along its side. The radio chatter was quite clear as the traffic controller guided them to their docking bay.

"Control, this is SOE-1, requesting permission to land in Bay 216."

"Roger, SOE-1. This is Control, granting permission to land in Bay 216. Follow the ILS indicators once they appear."

"Roger, Control. Moving into position. ILS activated, moving in to dock."

With small puffs from the maneuvering thrusters situated all over the shuttle, the spacecraft slowly floated into the bay. Once it had secured a firm magnetic lock against the floor of the docking bay, the bay's internal antigravity kicked in, as well as the pressurization. A hiss of escaping air accompanied the opening of the ship's door as the inside equalized pressure with the outside. Gesturing to Twilight and grabbing her hoof, David led her outside onto the bay floor.