It is the thirty first millennia and Earth’s natural resources have all but been depleted. The world has been plunged into total war as each nation scrambles to claim what little is left. Mother Earth, the cradle of humanity is nearing a violent destruction. The fighting wears on and countless millions are lost until one man comes up with a final solution. His solution is ascendance... to the heavens and beyond.
***
The dawn rises on a dying world, Mother Earth screams in agony as the untold millions of scars littering her surface festers with the blood of her children. Millions of ships scatter the vast continents of the world, all aimed toward the great darkness beyond. The signal is given and the thrusters fire. The crafts begin to ascend with an almighty roar as they shoot upward towards the blackness of space. Everything is on the table as these mighty metal caskets carry their precious cargo into the vast reaches of space.
Upon the surface stand the remnants of humankind all of them wishing for the same thing. Some cry, some wave and some smile. They look up and see the greatest sight ever recorded in human history. From any one place thousands of ships can be seen screaming through the sky. Mother Earth herself holds hope in her heart as she sees the ships safely from her care; she always knew that her children would make the right choice no matter how much they would fall. She felt a love only a mother could know as she watched her children ascend to perhaps their most dangerous pursuit yet and wished with all her dying heart that they would stay safe.
The ships broke orbit and discarded their primary thrusters. A signal would beam to all ships from the project A.R.K supermind AI Terra to each individual ship AI. With the order received each ship would lock onto a destination and lurch forward a destination locked and a coarse set. On board each ship, frozen in stasis was the entirety of humankind’s young with some being merely infants and others teens. For humanity had reached the decision in unity that to prevent another Earth only the children could be trusted to make the right decision.
One ship with the designation Cradle of Hope suffered a system malfunction and broke course. Leaving the main group it veered off into deep space on an uncharted route. The ship’s AI Oracle tries desperately to re-route the craft but fails as the ship veers further away from the main group she calculates the chances of her passengers survival and is unsatisfied by the odds. The systems that are used to run her complex routines would use too much power. If her precious cargo were to have any hope she would need to redirect the power used to run her into the cryo stasis systems and let the ship drift. She saved a copy of herself and left a portion of energy to maintain this copy.
The ship goes dark and begins to drift. There is a long journey for the children aboard the Cradle of Hope and little do they know how large their destiny will be.
Author's Note
This is but a prologue and also my first story. I'm working on the first chapter now. Please let me know how i'm doing. I know it isn't long but I poured my heart into this. There will be 2 of these little half chapters because I want the intro to be powerful and stretching it out would subtract from the intensity.
Also listen to some epic music while you read this. I worte it listening to this Rumble Head - Final Descent (Epic Powerful Vocal Uplifting)
The planet Equis, a peaceful world populated by intelligent equine life any many other magical creatures only heard of in legend, each with a symbiotic relationship to the planet herself. A place of magic and miracles, where conflict near doesn’t exist. Its governing powers, the Alicorns, with their infinite wisdom and unwavering compassion watch vigilantly over their flock, but even they weren’t prepared…
***
Another dawn rises over the planet. The sun is shining brightly over the horizon. Ponies come out from their homes and prepare for the coming day. The streets of this little town spring to life with the sounds of idle chatter and laughter. This is a day much like any other thought one colt to himself as he set out to set up his shop for another day of business. He walks into his shop and drags out the open sign with his teeth. Placing it he sighs and returns inside awaiting his first customer.
He is but one of many who are oblivious to the object approaching from the vast reaches of space, hurdling blindly through the dark searching for the light that will guide them to a new home. However one has seen the signs and she is furiously racing around a laboratory checking equipment, taking readings, sending frantic letters via dragon post. She is still yet unsure of what it is and she has many questions left unanswered, her thoughts lay with her charge of protecting her subjects from any danger. What little she knows of any worlds beyond her own, she has theorized many times.
“Not much time… GAHHHHH… what does any of this mean?” She asked herself frantically, whilst holding a mile long feed of mechanical readouts. She took a deep breath and calmed herself.
“Get a hold of yourself Twilight! You’re a princess now; enhance your calm Twilight… I said enhance!” She said slapping herself with her right hoof. A now marginally logical Twilight Sparkle exhaled and peered through the obscenely large telescope to her right and spotted something that had never been there before. A dark metallic object around the size of Castle Canterlot was hurling toward her planet at a frightening pace. She began to feel a trademark Twilight attack coming on and ran around the room twenty times to calm herself.
“It’s almost here. It’s almost here. It’s almost here” She repeated around fifty times, whilst stamping on the spot. She peered back through the telescope and observed the strange object entering the atmosphere. The object began to glow a fiery red as it super-heated upon re-entry. Large chunks broke off and dissolved, the main hull of the object burst into flame as the oxygen of this new world caught it for the first time. Smoke billowed from the thing with even more chunks breaking away as it plummeted toward the surface blazing brightly like a star falling from the heavens.
Twilight left the telescope and ran down the stairs of her castle. She burst through the doors into the open to stare up in a mixture of amazement and fear as did many of ponies around her. They all stared and pointed at the flaming object hurtling toward them.
***
Onboard the Cradle of Hope hundreds children slept silently in stasis, unaware of the imminent danger. Alarms sounded the reawakening of Oracle. Klaxons screamed to her of the ships catastrophic damage, proximity warnings littered her interface. She took manual control of the ship and immediately realized how bad the damage was and the hull groaned in agony at her attempt to pilot the craft. Her cargo would not survive the crash into the planet at this speed, she needed to slow down. She sent a command to the drag flaps (what was left of them), and they sprung open slowing the Cradle of hope drastically, but not nearly enough. She primed the thrusters and sent them into a backfire mode causing the ship to nearly tear in half. The cockpit electronics all fizzled and sparked and the main view port cracked under the enormous strain on the hull.
Down they plummeted but amidst all the chaos one thing caught her attention. The planetary scanner had picked up civilization. She breathed a sigh of relief, her job was almost over. She hoped that the people of this planet would take care of her children.
Her relief was short lived as another message caught her attention. Impact in thirty seconds. She gave the ship its final command. End stasis. With this done she closes her eyes and smiles.
The ground was now only meters away and closing fast. Oracle wished her children all the luck she could muster and activated her homing beacon just as the ship smashed into the ground.
Once the ship had crashed it slid and broke apart on the surface, knocking down all in its path, until it finally came to rest in a clearing. There was virtually nothing left but the main stasis chamber which activated it temporary shielding.
One of the stasis chambers had been damaged in the re-entry and its occupant awoken early. A plaque located on the bottom of the chamber marked her as Sha’layn.
Author's Note
I know these ain't long because they are just introductions to the story. Preluding to the main event. Again let me know how I did... Also an editor and proofreader would be nice.
