Chapters I.S.C Hostile Takeover, জাদুঘোগ
The grand battlecruiser floated through the corona of the small star orbiting the center of one of the most unusual systems that the Science Ministry had ever discovered, scouting out the area to see if the planet at the center could be taken as a colony of the Empire. The scans were unclear, but visual imaging showed some kind of planet-wide civilization on the surface that seemed to really like big colourful sexplosions that didn't do any actual damage to the planet.
The captain of the ship looked across the rows of control stations controlling every aspect of the ship and looking as closely as they could at the area around it at the massive projections of the data streaming in on the vast amounts of mysterious energy centered on the central planet and its satellites, gathering as much information as they could from both onboard scanners and the probes launched.
"Science Officer, have we made any progress on the energy?"
"No sir, but the probes on planet have revealed a wealth of information." Pulling out a small tablet, she flicked several images onto the main screen, and enlarged one of a small, brightly coloured being atop a grassy hill. "The energy is mainly centered on the continent inhabited by these beings. The ones such as this, with the protrusion from its head, can manipulate the energy with various levels of dexterity to perform a variety of tasks, from simply lifting objects to full blown teleportation, and observations show that ability cannot be predicted by any factor other than age, it developing as they do from birth, though some younglings appear to randomly become quite able for varying lengths of time. They appear to be often centered towards the higher echelons of society, becoming those who manage the lives of others. The second type," she continued, switching to a second image," have no protrusions upon their heads. Rather, they appear to passively manipulate the energy to make up for the incredibly inefficient designs of their forms and achieve flight, constructing entire settlements out of clouds and controlling the weather, and some are presumed capable of supersonic flight utilising the energy, based upon admittedly unclear observations. They appear to take mainly military and sport roles, as well as acting as a primitive messaging system. The third type appear at first to be the most useless of the three main types, having no additional body parts. However, they use the energy passively as well to perform great feats of strength and endurance, and almost entirely keep the civilization going through their agricultural prowess as far as we can tell. There is also a fourth type that appears to be venerated as royalty throughout, though only four examples have been seen. The first appears to be some sort of representative of the light and the daytime, appearing only then and decorated in gold and white, while the second appears to be a representative of the dark and the night-time, appearing only then and decorated in dark blues and black. Each are guarded by their own force, with the night one having a sup-species of the flying ones, with membranous wings, slit pupilled eyes and clearly carnivorous teeth. The two of them also appear to be the ones keeping the satellites going around the planet, but we have measured the approximate power output during this process, and this is only about a third of what they could theoretically utilise, thus presumably why they are in charge. The third is much smaller, more in line with the rest of them, and lives in some sort of crystalline city far to the south, protected from the cold by a massive shield of the energy, and ruling over some sort of affected varient of the natives with bodies that appear to also be formed from crystal, though we suspect this to be an effect of the energy emanating from a crystal at the center of the settlement, below what we presume to be the palace. The fourth is slightly smaller, and lives in a second cystal palace, though smaller and situated within a small village, and emanates the energy like you wouldn't believe. The civilization appears to be attempting to advance without damaging their climate, and has grand cities of glass and metal yet has vehicles of wood pulled by others, and has no flight technology beyond the gasbag. The other civilizations of the world are much less interesting, as none appear to be able to utilise the energy at all, and yet are at a similar level of technological advancement. This is all we have gathered, and while we should be able to wipe them out easily, colonizing afterwards would be impossible. A much more personal and drawn out war would accomplish what we want, but we have no real idea how to protect against being attacked by the energy and as such, I would advise caution."
The captain sat for a while. The he sat some more. He sat for several hours in total, until he finally made a decision. He stood, and activated the intercom system.
"Crew, this is your captain speaking. Prepare for a ground invasion. Expect it to be easy at first, but to last a while. We are going up against a defenceless looking species lead by a being that can hold together a star every second of every day and not even break a sweat while moving it around a planet for, as far as we can tell, thousands of years. Expect heavy resistance during ground engagements, especially when they have the upper hand. We will win this, but it will not be easy. Prepare to fight, prepare to die. For the glory of the Emperor!"
He deactivated the com, and turned to the bridge crew.
"Weapons Team, prepare for ground bombardment"
"Yes, Captain."
"Flight Control, prepare my shuttle, and get us to deorbit above wherever we've marked their capital."
"Yes Captain."
"Comms, do we have a translator packet?"
"Yes Captain."
"Upload it to my helmet and get me a ground security team. Let's see if we can end this before it begins."
Throne Room, Canterlot Castle, Canterlot, Equestria
Princess Celestia was very bored. It was half an hour since Cinderblock had begun his presentation on the development of the architecture of Canterlot and how much more grey and rectangular it could be and the lack of graphs and the fake statistics meant that she could still only assume he was still introducing the introduction to the thing and she was really wishing that she could just let loose and blast him and his presentation out of the window and get onto something that actually mattered. But no, she had promised that everypony could get their turn and as he hadn't actually said anything untoward she still had to hear him out. Besides, there weren't any windows that she didn't like enough to blast him out of.
It was as this point that the entire room began to rumble beneath them, and while something of this nature only usually happened when Luna was awakened in the daytime without the awakener immediately pouring an entire pot of coffee down her throat, the lack of storm clouds above her tower and the fact that it was still as bright a day as it was five minutes ago forced her to assume that there was another cause. She turned her head to look out of the other window, noticing on the way that Cinderblock was entirely ignoring what was going on and was continuing with the presentation that was still as boring as her namesake building material, and got the shock of her very long life when she saw the massive black thing descending from out of the sky, golden decoration glimmering along its many sharp edges. It hung in the sky, before a small blue rectangle slowly expanded into life on its underside and something very small and very dart-like shot out and headed straight for her.
I.S.C Hostile Takeover, Shuttlecraft C-1
The captain was quite looking forward to the coming meeting. The probes had collected much data from the surface already, especially during the neural scanning, and he hoped that the translation matrix in his helmet was going to work as well as the xenolinguistics team said that it should. The craft rattled slightly as it turned to land on the spot that had been chosen, which he was told was in a rather nice sculpture garden. There was a thump as the craft settled, and as the ramp came down and he walked out he saw a flash of golden light as the gold royal, or 'Goldie', as he had nicknamed them, appeared along with several of what he assumed were some kind of royal guard, though the plate gold armour and wooden spears he judged to be much less of a threat than their command of the energy. As 'Goldie' approached, the captain could see that they were quite obviously female, and then bowed, though mainly as a diplomatic courtesy rather than as any gesture of respect.
As he rose, he could see that she was looking at him quite curiously.
"Hello," he began, "I am Captain Marott Wills of the Imperial Space Corps, and I bid you greeting on behalf of the Grand Imperium and its subject races. We wish to begin a diplomatic discourse at the earliest possible opportunity, and look forward to a co-operative future together."
"Hello," read the text as she began to speak, "I am Princess Celestia, and I welcome you to the Diarchy of Equestria, and I too wish to begin diplomacy as soon as we can."
"Princess? So you'll be taking us to the king and queen now, then?"
"No, my dear Captain. Princess, or Prince, I suppose, is basically the highest rank there is. Nobody much likes titles of King or Queen around here, mostly because everyone by those titles has turned out to be quite despicable beings. I'm sure your people have similar things from your history."
"Oh, we most certainly do. Well then, let us go inside and begin."
Throne Room, Canterlot Castle, Canterlot, Equestria
Everyone jumped as Princess Celestia teleported back onto her throne in a flash of light.
"Please, exit the castle immediately. This is a rather fragile situation and every precaution must be taken to make sure that it goes as well as it can. I apologise for cutting short the Court but it must be done."
As the guardstallions began to escort the petitioners out of the room, Celestia teleported once more, back to the visitors, and began to lead them into the castle proper.
"This castle itself is one of the older buildings in Equestria. Canterlot was initially constructed by the refugees from ancient Unicornia with the initial intent of resurrecting the nation, but this plan was scuppered when both me and my sister decided that the earth pony capital in the Everfree was a much nicer, less speciesist place to live. Eventually, after my battle with Nightmare Moon, I could no longer live there, and though the unicorns were still much too haughty and speciesist for my liking and the pegasi had softened greatly and would have been nice to live with, I couldn't exactly be cut off from two-thirds of my subjects and so I came to live in Canterlot. My efforts with delegating power to the noble classes haven't gone as well as I hoped in softening them up and I can't pull most of the power back now, so here we are. Speaking of which, we have arrived at the diplomatic offices, and I invite you to take a seat inside while I fetch everypony else who needs to be here."
Conference Room 3-B, Canterlot Castle, Canterlot, Equestria
Princess Celestia was quite excited, though it did not show. It had been a long time since any new races had been encountered, and she was looking forward to what this 'Grand Imperium' had to offer. To her left sat Luna, looking similarly impassive, but managing to look angry and judgemental at the same time. To her right were Cadence, who couldn't hide her emotions as well, and Twilight, who was barely managing to stay in her seat and appeared to be vibrating slightly with her excitment. On the other side of the table were the mysterious captain and the four guards that had accompanied them.
"So, captain, shall we begin? I am Princess Celestia co-ruler of Equestria along with my sister here Princess Luna. I would also like to introduce Princess Cadence, ruler of the Crystal Empire, and Princess Twilight, Defender of the Realm."
"As has been established," said the captain, taking the pause as a cue, "I am Captain Marott Wills of the Imperial Space Corps. These are Sergeant Brockol Martin, and his men, Lieutenants Frank Abinjole, John Bayr and Thron Jojbaerner. We are very interested in your system and exactly how it stays existing, as as far as we are aware, it is entirely unique, and shouldn't work at all. As a way to get things started, allow us to present you with gifts. Sergeant, give them the gifts."
Sergeant Martin reached down into his backpack and pulled out four small boxes, and slid them across the table to the princesses. They opened them, and each had a slightly different look of confusion as they extracted a small stylised metal cage on the end of a lanyard, each colour coded to the individual opening the box.
"What, may I ask, is this?" queried Luna, staring intently at the object.
"Put it on, and you will have visitor access to all non-classified areas of the ship. You know, so you don't get vaporized during the tour."
As they slipped the cords over their heads and let them rest on their withers, the small cages shimmered and folded outwards. The small filaments spread and slithered across their bodies, and thin tendrils split off and burrowed down through the skin. Twilight attempted to pull them away but as they burrowed into the base of her horn her magic was abruptly halted. Thin plate metal spread in the gaps between the filaments, enclosing them completely.
"Now then. Celestia, Luna, you may notice that some of your power can still escape. This is on purpose. We know that this system will collapse without you, and as such, you shall remain atop this mountain for eternity keeping it going. You cannot do anything else. You will be kept alive in there. Men, prepare them for transport, and we meet up in fifteen. I'm going to find some more of this frankly amazing cake they never got the chance to eat."
Twenty minutes later.
Everypony was very worried. That much was obvious to Mayor Mare, as they were all in the town hall talking quite loudly. It was obvious from earlier that the Princessess appeared to be dealing with something from the object up in Canterlot, but nothing had been told to her, which meant that she couldn't tell the townsponies anything, which meant that rumours were spreading quickly, the most prominent being an alien invasion of some kind. There was a sudden rumbling and the sky cracked with noise.
"All citizens of Equestria. A deal has been struck, and power over your solar system has been ceded to the Grand and Holy Imperium of Man, Rulers of the Seven High Systems, and True Inheritors of the Galaxy from the Ones Who Came Before. From this point, your lives should change for the better. New technologies should potentially double your lifespan. Diseases that you fear shall be cured. Your civilization shall enter a new golden age of progress and development. You shall reach beyond the stars themselves and do things that you never dreamed were possible. To any non-pony lifeforms, you shall be accepted as equals among the citizenry, no matter what your previous indiscretions. Resisting these changes is futile, and shall likely result in immediate extermination, so just do as you are told. Head to your local transportation hub for transport to Canterlot to be officially registered as a citizen, or you shall be considered a rebel and an enemy of the state, and charge which comes with a punishment of immediate extermination. Thank you for your time, and please don't panic, you'll make it worse for everyone."
IR-1, Deck 12, I.S.C Hostile Takeover, জাদুঘোগ
Twilight blinked as the metal covers around her face slid away. She looked around frantically at the mysterious metal room she was in, and saw that it was completely empty other than a table in front of her and a chair on the other side. She sat, immobilised for what was evidently a period of weeks, as a regularly timed announcement repeated the same seven words in the same order over what she presumed was each passing week. After sitting for some weeks, she began to notice that she hadn't felt tired, or hungry, or thirsty, for the whole time she had been seated. Just as she was beginning to ponder this revelation, the wall opposite her slid open, and one of the mysterious beings walked in and sat down on the chair. Looking it over as best she could, she realised that this was the mysterious captain who had imprisoned her here.
"Ah, Ms. Twilight. You know, I never did catch your last name. Assuming, that is, that you have one."
"Mr. Wills, please, let me out of here."
"You know, I could do that, but then you would be a symbol of resistance to the populace below, and if it comes to an all out war, then I'm afraid that it wouldn't go very well for anyone. You see, we can't simply burn this planet to cinders. We would like to live here afterwards, and we would like to know how this 'magic' of yours works, as I'm afraid that even the public execution of the dissident elements of your population isn't discouraging resistance. So, you help us and we help you, you see."
At this, he leant back is his chair, and rested his feet upon the table, angling himself so that he could still get a clear view of Twilight should anything happen. He could just see the beginnings of tears welling up at the thoughts of executions and the safety of her loved ones no doubt running through her head.
"All right."
"I'm sorry, what was that?" he said, leaning forward and putting his feet down.
"I'll help you. But I have conditions."
"But of course." Pressing a few buttons on his wrist, the metal retracted from her legs and she felt her control return. The doors slid open once more, and she followed him out, jogging slightly to keep up with his long strides.
After walking for a while, and a lot of stairs, they entered what appeared to be a small room with several seats looking through a window at bare metal plating. The metal slid over her legs once more, and she was walked to a seat next to the captain, where several hundred small filaments slid out of the metal and appeared to merge with the chair. There was a rumbling that began suddenly, accompanied by a grating whine, and the metal outside of the windows began to move upwards. It was only when light shine through the windows that she understood that they had been moving downwards, and were evidently in some kind of flying vehicle like the one the captain had first arrived in. Straining her eyes, she was surprised to find that the land below appeared to be in the same condition that it was in when she had seen it last.
Ponyville, Equestria
The flight lasted only a few minutes, and they were soon down on the ground, where the metal quickly slid over her whole body, before suddenly becoming completely transparent. Looking down at herself in shock, she could see that whatever illusion did this also made it look like nothing was pressing down on her fur. She jumped down from her seat, and was surrounded by the ever-present guardsbeings that seemed to grow out of the walls. She was walked out of the side door and down the steps, and when the whining of the craft settled down, she could hear a crowd that she hadn't heard in a while. There were many of the voices she had come to know and love during her time in Ponyville, though some of the usual louder ponies seemed to be missing, and the crowd sounded more subdued than usual. As she was walked along the streets, she quickly realised they had landed behind the town hall, and before she could think of anything else, she was thrust up a set of stairs and onto a stage.
Looking around, she could see and hear and feel the raw elation rising off of the crowds as they saw her for the first time in what she had been informed was a little over a month of her time. Looking over the crowd, she practically broke down in tears when she saw the front row was occupied by her completely uninjured family, sans Cadance, as well as the other Elements. Noticing another strange noise, she looked up to see a small spire hovering above the town hall, with two curved surfaces rotating around it displaying her onstage with the words "Live From Ponyville" emblazoned across the bottom. She then felt a strange pressure, and could see the metal streaming away through gaps in the boards of the stage, becoming visible away from her body a mere fraction of a second before going out of sight.
All of a sudden, there was a noise like a piece of parchment being torn, and the crowd in front of her went silent. She felt something warm trickling down her front legs, and rubbed it with her hoof, and saw that it was blood. A strange peace came over her, and as the blackness creeped into the edges of her vision and, hearing her voice echo across the stunned crowd, spoke her final words; "Damn. And I had so much left to do." And she dropped, face first, into the boards of the stage as she breathed her last.
