Colonization of an New World

Credit list:

Editors: Blond Blue Eyes

"We are approaching sector 42 ma'am. Which area would you want me to land the craft on?" The pilot spoke, while pressing a button on the dashboard. Immediately a hologram of the area came up on the front window. On it showed a live video of the sector with a grid layout on it. Numbers and letter on the side allowed her to call out each grid to individually assess which is a good spot.

"How about the data from the tectonic scanner? What has it revealed?" Twilight asked an engineer to her right. "The data is almost finished compiling. OK, displaying on the screen now." There was a slight flicker of the holographic map as it updated itself with the data picked up from the scanner. Little icons popped up in some of the grids showing where underground resources were.  There were separate icons showing where volcanic activity was close to the ground and icons for metals in the ground. A resource called petroleum was located a few hexes off the coast of the sector. "Looks like Grid Coordinate 7-I is the most viable position to settle down. It has good proximity to the concentrations of geothermal activity and metals; however it would take a few years to set up more outposts to be able to start harvesting the petroleum." she said to herself. Years of study from the books the humans had showed that those resources were highly valuable for both their usefulness and value in trading, though she had no idea why would they need to trade for. "Oh well. Guess it be useful." she thought.

"Set for Coordinate 7-I pilot, make sure we land safely. The rest of you start preparations for procedure, Set Up. Team leaders, I expect the checklists I gave you to be fulfilled in 30 minutes time. Then head to landing stations. By the end of the week, I expect this landing ship to be able to be considered a small city before we start exploring the nearby fauna."...

……

Twilight's Log

Year 0, Week 1, Monday (7 days after landing)

It has been 7 days since I saw the others. I wonder how they are doing so far. This place has no magic field that I can sense at all; hence I am unable to communicate to them at all through telepathy. That's why I have ordered the engineers to launch our explorer drone that came with the ship to find some of the resource pods that the humans have sent ahead. So far it has not come up with anything yet. Our little city is starting out just fine, the cargo of laboratory material is proving to be so useful. Already we came up with a way to make a robot that we can pilot to a good city site and with the push of a button immediately transform areas into livable outposts that we can easily improve on within weeks to make a functioning city, talk about efficiency. However our original city is still too small to carry out projects like that so I would need to manage it for a while.

The local fauna is discovered to be edible but we need to train some ponies to make farms before our food yield increases. After a stable food supply, maybe we should concentrate on exploration of the world. There have been reports of alien life a few kilometers away. So it would be wise to have some form of military unit to protect our lands even though the human weapon, “Rocket Battery" that came with the ship seems capable of repelling occasional alien intrusions. It has a finite range and I worry it may not be able to protect workers outside of its effective range. Furthermore, I worry it may instigate aliens stronger than those 'Wolf Beetles' to attack us.

Our city suffers some occasional electricity shortages. Maybe that’s why Rarity chose to have a ready to deploy fusion reactor packed into her landing ship. Oh well, I'm sure I’ll be able to find a way to overcome it

Priority List:

Start improving our lands around our city

Solve the energy problem

Find resources pods to launch human communication technology 'Satellite' to make contact with the others

Create a military unit in case of future alien intrusions

Signed Twilight Sparkle (Personal student of Celestia), *Leader of The Sparkle Scientific Union

* It was a title the ponies under my charge asked me to adopt. Personally I would prefer if they didn't asked me to adopt such a title but hey, if there something that would keep them together it would be having a group name and a leader to respect I would do it. Their morale is kind of low after landing in this place

……

Day 9.

At the shared dining area, Twilight was having breakfast with the colony's chief scientist to discuss the latest discovery that was made in the lab. It was a breakthrough for a form of advanced engineering which allowed them to construct what the scientists called a Thorium Reactor. It is able to generate more energy than their current generators. The person in charge of operating the drone ran down the aisles to inform their leader on what the drone had found.

“Our leader Twilight, we found a resource pod. The explorer has found a 'Solar Collector' in it. Should I use the drone to bring it back?" the drone operator interrupted. Twilight was going throughout the list of constructions planned. With a rather irritated look she raised her head from her tablet and said "Well, did you consult the checklist of criteria before consulting me?"

"Err, yes." the now rather sheepish looking drone operator said. "But that’s not the only reason why I came to you. While on the way there, the drone passed through an area that may be of interest for you. I took some pictures of the area for you to look through ma'am." He then passed a tablet to her with the pictures in question already on the screen.

"This… this looks like the remains of another city… but it does not look like any of my friend's places. Is there another sentient species on this planet?" she paused for a while to consider. "How many exploration modules does the explorer have left?” The drone operator said: "Exactly 1 left but I sent it to investigate some fossils near the resource pod." the operator was about to say something but was cut short by Twilight telling him to stop going to the fossils and make a course to the ruins to instead explore it