Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Epilogue

Chapter 1
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Into the Black

Chapter 1

Celestia made her way through the castle having finished with her duties in Day Court. It had been a long day, she had already lowered her sun and night had fallen upon Canterlot hours ago. The day had dragged on as she listened to petitioners as they made their cases. Following court, she had spent most of her evening on the large amount of paperwork she had to deal with on a day to day basis. With thousands of years of experience, Celestia was a master at completing her work quickly and efficiently. Today was different though, she was quite distracted. What normally took her an hour or two was going on five. She made a mental note to clear her schedule as much as possible for the next week. In her current state, focusing on her work was impossible as her mind kept wandering to Luna and her need to discuss the distant object speeding towards their home.

It was Luna who first noticed the object hurtling through the great void of space. Celestia tended to focus on her sun while Luna dealt with not only the moon, but the rest of the planets in the system, as well as asteroids and comets. Without constant adjustment by Luna, these bodies would be drawn out of their orbit around Equus as the sun's greater gravitational pull took hold.

It was during Luna's nightly work that she sensed an object not under her control speeding though the distant cloud of comets encircling the system; billions of miles away. Though extremely rare, this was not the first time a rogue body had entered her domain. This object, however, was unique. The first thing that stood out was that the object was moving at an extremely high speed. So fast that Luna had almost not even noticed it. She had been making some very fine adjustments to the orbit of a comet when it passed by. It took both Luna and Celestia searching for the better part of an hour to find the object again. In that time it had traveled hundreds of million of miles. Both sisters were shocked, neither had encountered anything in nature moving at that speed. After carefully tracking the object for the next several hours, Luna received her second shock. The object was slowing down.

By now, 21 hours after initial discovery of the object, Luna had determined that at its present course and speed, the object appeared to be headed very close (in celestial terms) to Equus. It would take less than four days to reach the planet. As it was so very distant, neither princess could yet see the object.

She rounded a corner and increased her pace. Up ahead she spotted Prince Blueblood talking to a guard posted at the door to Luna's room.

"Yes I've already checked court, she had already left and was last seen headed towards here," Blueblood said. "Look, I need to talk to her about a very important matter. I'll just wait here until she arrives."

She let out a quiet groan. She did not have time to deal with whatever his most recent complaint was. Thankfully Blueblood and the guard were facing the opposite direction and had not noticed her yet. With a quick light of her horn, she teleported herself into Luna's room.

Looking around the room, she realized Luna was not there. However, she did find a scroll addressed to her on Luna's desk. She unrolled the scroll and give it a quick read.

Sister, I will be in the observatory. Meet me there as soon as your schedule permits.

-Luna

Sighing, she lit her horn once more, and in a flash of light disappeared. Reappearing in Luna's observatory, Celestia looked she looked around the room until she spotted Luna making some adjustments to her telescope.

Noticing Celestia's entrance, Luna turned towards her sister.

"I see that you found my note," Luna said. "I did not want to interrupt court and I assumed that you would be looking for me as soon as you were finished with your duties."

"Thank you sister," Celestia replied. "Though I would have been glad for the interruption. Court was long today and I was distracted, thinking about our mystery object. And besides, you know that you are always welcome to stop by." She gave Luna a quick nuzzle.

"Tia please," Luna said, blushing slightly. "We need to discuss the object."

"Have you been able to find it in your telescope?" Celestia asked.

"I have not, but this is not surprising. At its current distance, it would have to be quite large for me to be able to see it. I have been modifying a spell that I use for astronomy. Once I have it working, we should be able to get a visual of the object."

"That is good news," Celestia said. "You know Luna, Twilight would likely find this very interesting. I've been thinking about it, and I think we should inform her and Cadance." She turned to Luna and smiled.

"Even if this turns out to be nothing, I'm sure Twilight would enjoy working on creating a new spell," she said. "It's also been a while since she's visited."

"I see no problem with that, and if it does turn out to be something, Twilight and Cadance deserve some forewarning before we make the information public," Luna replied.

"Then it 's settled. I will send letters to Twilight and Cadance, while you continue to work on your spell."

Luna nodded. "I shall do just that," she said. "But before I do, would you care to break for a late dinner? I assume that as usual, you worked through yours, and I know an excellent place that is open late."

"You know me too well. Dinner was five hours ago and I haven't eaten since lunch. The letters can wait a short while, let's go eat."
Luna headed over to her desk and placed the stopper on the open ink well. She tidied up the scrolls she was working on and then walked back over to Celestia. The two sisters then exited the observatory, chatting about their day's activities as they headed off to eat.

The Ponyville Library stayed open rather late compared to most other libraries in Equestria. The mare who ran the library, more often than not, would stay up reading late into the night. It was her policy to encourage reading as much as possible and thus if she was awake, the library was open. Because one never knew when somepony might want to borrow a book. That meant that seeing the closed sign on the library door was an unusual occurrence, even at this late hour. That wasn't to say the library was empty. It was currently occupied by 6 mares and one baby dragon.

"Alright girls, are you ready to head out?" Twilight asked.

"Just as soon as we can get Fluttershy to come out from under your bed," Rainbow replied.

"Fluttershy dear, it will be fine" Rarity said, trying to calm the nervous pony down.

"But it's so dark out. It's too late to be going out right now."

"Of course it's dark out," Rainbow said. "You can't look at the stars during the day!"

"It'll be just fine Fluttershy, we'll be in the field, just across from the barn," Applejack said. "You'll be within sight of mah house the whole time. Big Mac and Ah have been out almost this late working the orchards before, we ain't never had any problems."

"Besides, you don't want to miss Ponyville's first Stargazing Party," Pinkie said bouncing up and down.

"I know you're excited Pinkie, but most ponies don't usually stay up this late, I don't think that many will show up," Twilight said. "I invited you girls to join me but I didn't think you'd try to turn it into a party. Not that I mind, I actually like the idea, I just don't want to see you disappointed."

"Twilight, when you asked us to join you tonight, I said to myself, 'Pinkie, you've never been stargazing before, and that means there's probably never been a stargazing party before. That needs to be fixed, and it's up to you to make the first stargazing party, the best one, got that?' And do you know what my answer was?"

"You asked yourself a question, and then answered... yourself?" Rainbow asked.

"Of course I did. How else would I know if I was up to the task? And the answer was yes! Anyway, I passed those flyers out to everypony in Ponyville. I bet we'll get a bunch of ponies," Pinkie said.

"Well, we better get going soon, or if anypony does show up, they'll wonder where we are. Fluttershy, you don't have to come if you don't want to," Twilight said.

"No, it's all right" Fluttershy crawled out from under Twilight's bed. "I'll join you. Pinkie's right, I shouldn't miss out on this."

"Ok, then it's settled, let me just go check on Spike and we'll get going."

Twilight walked upstairs and into Spike's bedroom. Spike was sitting on his bed reading.

"Spike I'm headed out now. I should be back by midnight," Twilight said.

"Ok Twilight," Spike said, not even looking up from his comic book. "Have fun."

"Remember Spike, stay here, I don't want you changing your mind and walking over to Sweet Apple Acres alone this late at night."

"Not a problem, this is only the first book in the series," Spike pointed to a large stack of comics. "I've got to read that whole pile."

Twilight laughed.

"Ok Spike, but don't stay up too late. I expect you to be asleep when I get back."

"I won't!" Spike said. "Bye!"

"Bye!"

Twilight walked back downstairs and rounded up the rest of the girls. They walked out the door and headed towards Sweet Apple Acres.

"So I've got my telescope and 3 pairs of binoculars," Twilight said, nodding at the large duffle bag she was levitating alongside herself.

"We'll have to take turns using them, but they'll give a much better view than you can see with your eyes alone."

The group was almost at Sweet Apple Acres. Twilight had spent most of the walk over talking about the different things they could see. There were twelve planets in the system, but three were too small or far away to see, even with her telescope. She started to list the planets when Rainbow landed.

"Twilight, I don't think that's going to be enough." Rainbow said, interrupting Twilight.

"Huh? " Twilight looked up.

They had arrived at the field and there were almost 30 ponies there already.

"Oh wow, look at how many ponies showed up!" Pinkie bounced off and started to greet everypony.

"Whaaa?" Twilight's jaw dropped but she was quick to recover.

She looked at the mass of ponies, then looked at her duffle bag, then back at the ponies again.

"Oh my gosh this is a disaster. I don't have enough equipment for this many ponies. Some ponies might not get a turn and then they won't have fun and it will be all my fault."

She started to hyperventilate.

"I should have planned for this, I have another telescope, but I didn't bring it and I could have found more binoculars..."

"Don't worry about it Twilight," Cheerilee said, walking up behind them with Big Mac following her.

"Big Mac let me know that quite a crowd was gathering, we stopped by the school and picked up some extras," she said indicating at a box of binoculars in a small cart Big Mac was pulling.

"Plus I brought my own telescope."

"Eeyup," Big Mac said.

"Oh thank Celestia," Twilight said. "I really should have planned for this though. I didn't even know you had a telescope Cheerilee."

"Oh yeah, I used to run an amateur astronomy club, but I just haven't had the time in the last few years. When Mac invited me, I figured you knew since he said you planned the party and this is where we used to meet."

"I didn't pick this location, Applejack did," Twilight said.

"Oh yeah, Ah forgot to tell ya Twilight. When Ah mentioned it to Big Mac he suggested usin' this field," Applejack said.

"Reminiscing over old times again, eh Mac?" Cheerilee said, smiling at Big Mac.

"Eeyup," Big Mac said quietly, turning a slightly brighter shade of red.

"Well why don't you help me setup the telescope, you remember how right?"

"Eeyup."

The two ponies walked over to the field and got to work.

"Wait, so your brother used to be in an astronomy club?" Rainbow said. "I didn't take him for an egghead."

"Yah do realize that you're at an event that might as well be another astronomy club meetin' right Rainbow?" Applejack said with a smirk.

"Ah, but, uh... Well, I'll make it cool," Rainbow said.

The rest of the girls chuckled. Twilight got to work setting up her scope and then worked with Cheerilee to pass out binoculars. She spent the few hours talking to the group of ponies, pointing out constellations, planets and a few moons. Cheerilee added some bits of knowledge and even pointed out a few things Twilight didn't know about. They both went back and forth helping ponies find things to look at and making adjustments to the telescopes. As it got later, more and more ponies had to head back home.

"Thanks for inviting me Twilight," Fluttershy said. "I'm glad I came, the night sky really is beautiful and if I hadn't come I wouldn't have seen those amazing fireflies."

"Ew, bugs, I don't know what you see in them," Rarity said.

"Oh they aren't bad Rarity, you like butterflies, they're bugs too."

"I suppose. Well I bid you all goodnight," Rarity said. "I'm going to walk with Fluttershy and then head home myself. I've got to open the boutique early tomorrow."

"Bye girls, I'll probably see you tomorrow," Twilight said.

Rarity and Fluttershy headed off. Only Pinkie, Rainbow Dash, Twilight, Big Mac and Cheerilee remained. Applejack had left about half an hour earlier since it was her turn to head into the Ponyville market in the morning to sell apples. Since the few children who had attended were long gone, Mac took a quick trip back to his house and grabbed a case of Sweet Apple Acre's famous hard cider, a big bag of marshmallows, chocolate, graham crackers, and some firewood. Dash immediately downed two bottles while everyone else was still working on their first. When everypony looked at her, she shrugged.

"It's almost impossible to find this stuff," Dash said, glaring at Pinkie "I might not get any more for another 6 months."

"Take it easy Dash, you've still got to fly home you know," Twilight said.

Rainbow stuck her tongue out at Twilight, but slowed down on her third bottle. Mac started a small fire and passed out sticks and marshmallows. Everypony gathered around the fire, eager to make s'mores.

"I'm glad you set this up Twilight, It's been too long since I've last done this," Cheerilee said.

"Eeyup," Big Mac added.

"I think I might try to start the club back up, I can probably set aside some time at least once a month. Twilight, if you are interested, would you like to help me run meetings? That way if one of us is too busy to make it, the club could still meet."

"That's a great idea, but I'll need to check my schedule to confirm I have enough time. Would you like to stop by the library tomorrow and we can plan something?" Twilight asked.

"Sounds good to me, I'll stop by after lunch. Is anypony else interested in doing this again?"

"I am! And if I come to the meetings you can be sure you'll have clear skies." Rainbow Dash said.

"I'm surprised you liked it so much Dashie, guess that makes you an egghead," Pinkie said with a wink.

"Ok I admit it, it was pretty cool. Especially looking at Luna's moon! Hey Twilight, you should invite Luna next time."

"I don't know, Princess Luna is likely far too busy to come to an amateur astronomy club meeting."

"Oh come on Twilight. Besides, I think she'd love to see ponies enjoying her night. Pleaseeeeeee?" Rainbow asked.

"Rainbow does raise a good point," Cheerilee said.

"Eeyup."

"Oh alright, when we figure out when the next meeting will be, I'll send her a letter." Twilight said.

"Woohoo! Yeahhh!" Rainbow said, doing a quick victory dance in the air.

"Dashie just wants to see Luna again," Pinkie said with a grin.

"No Pinkie," Rainbow said with a serious look on her face. "I mean I do, she seems pretty cool and all, but I really meant what I said.
I really do think she'd love to see ponies enjoying her night. Looking at her moon tonight, it really puts things into perspective. She spent 1000 years so far away from anypony because she thought nopony cared about her. Let's show her that isn't true anymore."

"That was a very thoughtful thing to say Rainbow," Twilight said

"Yeah yeah, " Rainbow said blushing. "Just don't tell anypony I said it, or I'll deny it. Don't even know why I did, bleh mushy crap."

"Could be the cider," Pinkie said with a giggle, pointing at the 4 empty bottles next to Rainbow.

"Can we change the subject?" Rainbow asked. "How far away is Luna's moon again?"

"It has an average distance of about half a million miles away." replied Twilight.

"Wow, that's like super duper amazingly far," Pinkie said.

"Yes it is, to put it in perspective, you'd have to circle Equus about 20 times to travel that distance." Twilight said.

"The whole planet? 20 times?" Rainbow asked. "That would take forever, even for me."

"Right. After you made the sonic rainboom over Cloudsdale I calculated that you topped out at 10 times the speed of sound, or mach 10. Assuming that is the fastest you can go, and you could keep up that speed nonstop it would take you... " Twilight paused to run some calculations in her head. "Almost 3 days to make that trip."

"Wow," Pinkie and Rainbow said simultaneously.

"Luna's moon is actually our nearest neighbor in space," Cheerilee added. "Celestia's sun is about 100 million miles away. Dysnomia, the farthest planet from the sun is almost 5 billion miles away. It's so far away you need a telescope to even see it. It was named that because before the Princesses took over, it's orbit was so chaotic.

"It had a highly elliptical orbit, and at its closest it was visible to the naked eye, but would get harder and harder to see as it got farther away till it vanished completely . It was said that Discord had set the planet on its unusual orbit and so it was named Dysnomia, daughter of Discord. When Celestia and Luna ended Discord's reign they set it on a more natural orbit, so it no longer came close enough to see."

"I thought Celestia just moved her sun and Luna her moon?" Pinkie asked.

"It isn't common knowledge, but it isn't completely unknown either," Twilight said. "Between the two of them, they manage the entire solar system. Before Celestia and Luna, Discord did as he pleased. The asteroid belt between Equus and Leviathan, the first and largest of the gas giants in the system, is actually the result of him smashing two planets together. "

"Discord fiddled with the solar system on an almost daily basis. At the end of the Chaos wars, when Celestia and Luna used the Elements of Harmony against Discord, the entire system was in shambles. None of the planets were in stable orbits, with Discord no longer moving them about. The asteroid belt's orbit intercepted the one Equus had fallen into, but worse still, Equus' orbit wasn't stable. With Discord no longer controlling it, Equus was in danger of falling into the sun. "

"All of ponykind together were not powerful enough to mimic Discord's work. All except for Celestia and Luna. That's when they took over and reordered the solar system."

"Wait, Equus might have fallen into the sun?" Pinkie asked. "But the sun orbits Equus, how would that work?"

"In a normal system, planets orbit the stars," Cheerilee said. "Stars are massive, Celestia's sun is about 335,000 times as massive as Equus, it has a much larger gravitational pull and so smaller, less massive objects would ordinarily orbit it. When Discord lost control of the system, the sun was the largest source of gravity. But it would have been sheer luck if any of the new orbits had been stable without intervention from Celestia and Luna."

"Why is our system different then?" Pinkie asked.

"We don't know if our solar system was ever normal. Recorded history only goes back partially into Discord's reign, before that, if there was a before, maybe our system was normal, we don't know. Ponies back then didn't have the technological or magical knowledge we have today, so even if there was records, they wouldn't have known about the orbits." Twilight said.

"The only ones who might have are Celestia and Luna. We don't know where they came from or if they were around before Discord or not, all we know is that about 15,000 years ago they appeared and after a long war, they ended Discord's reign. With Discord no longer controlling the orbits of the solar system, the Princesses took over, but they ordered the system instead of leaving it a chaotic mess."

The fire started to die down as the ponies continued to talk. When the last of the hard cider was gone, the ponies started to pack up. Twilight realized that it was much later than she intended to be out and quickly began gathering her things. Suddenly the ponies heard someone running quickly down the road from the direction of Ponyville.

"Who would be up at this hour?" Dash said, yawning.

"TWILIGHT!" someone shouted. "Are you out here?"

"That's Spike!" Twilight said. She quickly cast a spell, reigniting the fire to provide some extra light. "Over here Spike!"

"Oh thank goodness," Spike said, breathing heavily.

"What are you doing out here, I told you that you weren't supposed to leave the library. You shouldn't be out this late alone."

"Sorry Twilight, but you have a letter, from Celestia, " Spike said. "It woke me up when I coughed it out."

"Oh Spike, whatever it is, I think it can wait till morning. Still, at least you had a good reason and you didn't get lost."

"But it's marked urgent! I looked for you since it was after midnight, and then I decided to just wait a while, but then I got another letter, this one addressed to me and it was Celestia asking if I had delivered the first letter yet. That's when I left." Spike said, still panting from his run.

"Oh, do you have the letter? I'll read it right now."

Spike kicked at the ground with a sheepish look on his face.

"I rushed so fast out the door, I forgot to bring the letter with me."

"Ok, better take the fast way back," Twilight said. "Sorry everypony I've got to go."

"Don't worry about it Twilight, we'll cleanup here," Cheerilee said.

"Let us know what's up when you can," Rainbow said.

She levitated her duffle bag over, tossed the telescope inside and gathered up the rest of her things.

"Spike, hop on, I'm going to teleport back."

Spike jumped up onto Twilight's back and she charged her horn. There was a flash of light and they were gone.

Author's Note

As far as I can remember never really names the planet the ponies live on. I've always assumed Equestria is either the country or the continent or both. I remember seeing Equus used somewhere, but I can't remember if it's a commonly accepted name among fans, or specific to some story, forum post or comic that I've read.

Chapter 2
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Into the Black

Chapter 2

"I hate teleporting with you," Spike said, brushing soot off of his face.

"I think I'm getting better at it. You don't look nearly as bad as last time, and this was the longest multi-teleport yet," Twilight said. "Though I don't know if that's from practice or the overall boost my magic received when I became an alicorn. Maybe we can do some testing later!"

"No thanks!"

Spike ran upstairs and grabbed the scroll from Celestia, he ran back down and gave it to Twilight. As she went to open it, she was surprised to detect the presence of powerful seal. The scroll was keyed to prevent anypony but herself from opening it. That was beyond unusual for a letter from Celestia. A shiver ran through her body as her mind began to imagine what the letter might contain. A shake of her head forced herself to recenter her attention on the letter. She opened it and began to read.

"Good evening Twilight.

I apologize for sending you a letter so late at night. I need you to make your way to Canterlot tomorrow. Luna and I have an important matter to discuss with you. Your old room in the castle has been prepared for your stay, you need not bring anything but yourself and Spike. I apologize for the lack of detail in this letter, but the matter that we wish to discuss with you is sensitive. I've included 2 tickets for the Ponyville Express to Canterlot. It leaves the station at 8:00. Be advised that we may need you to stay in Canterlot for up to a week. I am sorry for the short notice and any problems with your schedule this may cause. We will talk further when you arrive.

See you soon,

- Celestia"

Twilight looked at the library clock, it was already 3:15. Tomorrow in the letter was today! Any thought of a good night's sleep quickly vanished as she tried to think of what reason Celestia could have for summoning her on such short notice.

"What does it say Twilight?" Spike asked.

"We need to go to Canterlot."

"When?"

"We're taking the Ponyville Express, it leaves at 8:00, Spike you may want to go back to bed, we're going to need to leave here by 7:30 to be at the station in time to board. That doesn't leave much time for sleeping."

"What about getting packed? Do you need help?"

"Celestia has prepared my old room, she said to not bother bringing anything."

"Ok, well then I'm going to go back to bed. I'll set my alarm for 7:00."

"Thanks Spike, goodnight."

Twilight paced back and forth across the library. What could Celestia and Luna wish to discuss? Was there some sort of new threat? Things had been pretty quiet since Discord's reform. The only thing Twilight had even heard about in the last few months was she heard some news about somepony named Tirek escaping Tartarus, and injuring some ponies. Celestia had apparently personally apprehended him a few days later. There weren't many details of his attack but Twilight wanted to get some more information when she had a chance to talk to either Celestia or Luna about it. Looking at the clock again, wasn't sure what to do. It was too late to get a decent amount of sleep.

"Well, I can take a quick nap right now and sleep more on the train, it's a little over an hour ride to Canterlot," Twilight said aloud to herself. Twilight made her way up to her room. Setting her alarm for 5:00, she closed her eyes and quickly fell asleep.

BRINGGGGGGGG BRINGGGGGG!!!!

Spike groaned and shut off the alarm. He stumbled out of bed. As he slowly started to wake up, he realized he smelled something cooking. He made his way downstairs and saw Twilight putting a stack of pancakes on a plate.

"Good morning Spike," Twilight said as she poured some more batter on to the hot griddle.

"What? How are you so awake? You're never up this early"

"Oh, I got up hours ago," Twilight replied. "I'm going to sleep some more on the train, so I spent the last two hours packing."

"Didn't you say the letter from Celestia said we didn't need to bring anything?" Spike asked.

"Oh yeah, it did!" Twilight said grinning. "But for the Princess Celestia to summon me like this, something important is clearly going on. I don't know what it is, but I want to be prepared. I've got all 10 volumes of Predictions and Prophecies packed. I started skimming through them when I woke up, but I only made it through the first two. Hmm, maybe I won't sleep on the train, I could make it through the next book or two I bet."

"Twilight, you need more sleep. If you get to Canterlot and pass out, you won't be much help to Princess Celestia," Spike said.

"But what if I can't help because I'm not prepared?" Twilight said pouting. "Ugh, you're probably right Spike. I'm still going to bring the books, but I will sleep on the train. Or at least I'll try. Ok, please eat quickly, I need to make a stop before we go to the station. When we get to Canterlot, we need to head to the castle immediately."

A pile of pancakes floated over to a very hungry Spike, held aloft in Twilight's magic. He reached across the table and picked up the bottle of maple syrup. With a twinkle in his eye he began to pour a generous helping of the sweet liquid over the stack. Only a cough from Twilight was enough to get him to put the bottle back down. Once Spike put the bottle down, Twilight grabbed it and used what little syrup remained to top her own pancakes. Not much was said between the two friends as they ate their breakfast as quickly as possible.

After finishing breakfast, Twilight grabbed her book bag, pony and dragon made their way to the Ponyville station. She made a quick stop at the post office, and dropped off letters to Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie and Applejack explaining that she had to take a trip to Canterlot and could be gone for up to a week. As she was walking to the station, she saw Applejack setting up her cart. She galloped over and let her know that she had to go to Canterlot.

"I just dropped off some letters at the post office letting the girls know where I'd be. I didn't want anypony to worry but I didn't have time to swing by and let everypony know."

"Well thanks for lettin me know Twilight. I won't keep ya since I know ya need to make the train."

"Thanks Applejack. Once I know how long I'm staying in Canterlot I'll write you," Twilight said as she took off.

Twilight and Spike arrived just as the Ponyville Express was pulling into the station. They waited patiently for the current passengers to disembark, and then made their way onto the train. Sitting down, Twilight let out a big yawn.

"Spike are you going to try to sleep also?" she asked.

"Nah, I'm feeling pretty awake right now."

"Ok, can you wake me up when we're almost to Canterlot?"

"Sure thing Twilight."

Twilight closed her eyes and quickly drifted off to sleep.

Sunlight sparkled off of the reflective towers of Crystal Empire. Shining groaned and pulled a pillow over his head. Shining was not a morning pony, and he had no desire to get out of bed. It never failed, every day at 6:17 a brilliant beam of sunlight reflected into the royal chambers and woke him up.

"Maybe I can get Cadance to agree to some thick curtains," he thought.

Cadance on the other hoof, was very much a morning pony. She was up at the crack of dawn every day and today was no different. She made her way back into the royal chambers carrying a cup of coffee for Shining.

"Good morning Shining," she said. "I've got your coffee."

"5 more minutes," Shining said.

Cadance set the coffee down on a table and walked over to the bed. She started poking Shining with her forehoof.

"You can't stay in bed all day."

"Why not?"

"We have too much to do today."

"You can come back to bed too," Shining said. "We could take the day off."

"And what? Spend the whole day in bed?"

"Yeah, why not. It would be fun." Shining said with a wink.

"Fun?" Cadance said, smirking. "You are talking about sleeping right?"

"Well there is that," Shining leaned over and gave Cadance a kiss. "And..."

At that moment loud popping noise was heard as a scroll appeared out of thin air and landed on Shining's head.

"Oh, a letter from Celestia," Cadance said, looking at the scroll with interest. "That's odd, she usually sends them through the mail."

Shining just frowned.

Cadance noticed the scroll was marked urgent. She opened it up and read it.

"Good morning Cadance,

I am sorry to bother you on such short notice, but I need you and Shining Armor to make your way to Canterlot. Luna and I have a matter of great importance to discuss with you. I've sent word to Vanhoover to reroute the Crystal Express back to the Crystal Empire immediately, it should be arriving around 7:00. I'm sorry for contacting you at the last minute, but since the train wouldn't arrive till 7:00, I decided to send word in the middle of the night and wake you. I also apologize for the lack of details regarding this trip, know that the matter is very important but Luna and I need to discuss it with you pony to pony. Twilight has also been summoned, she should be in Canterlot by this morning. Please plan on staying in Canterlot for up to a week.

I look forward to seeing you this evening when the train arrives,

- Celestia"

"Shining, get up, we need to get going," Cadance said.

"What is it?"

"We need to go to Canterlot. Celestia has sent a train, it will be here in less than an hour, so we have that long to pack and get to the station."

"Is something wrong?" Shining asked.

"I don't know, here, you better read this yourself, there aren't really any details. I'll start to get ready."

Shining gave a quick glance at the letter from Celestia. They both rushed to pack as quickly as they could. Shining asked one of the guards to summon a carriage to take them to the train station. They finished packing just as the carriage landed outside the castle.
Arriving at the station, they found the train already waiting for them.

The Crystal Express utilized the latest in techno-magical hybrid engines and had an average cruising speed of 100 miles per hour. Wing travel had a higher average speed, but most ponies lacked the endurance to fly more than a few hundred miles in a day. The Crystal Express could make the thousand mile journey to Canterlot in just about 12 hours with stops for refueling. Ordinarily it ran from the Crystal Empire to Vanhoover, through Canterlot all the way to Manehattan. Being sent back to the Crystal Empire was going to throw off the schedules of a large number of ponies.

Cadance and Shining boarded the train as quickly as they could. They had a private car at the front of the train. Inside they found a small detachment, one pegasus, 2 earth ponies and a unicorn. The pegasus was in charge and he approached the two ponies.

"Good morning Lieutenant..."

" Lieutenant Swift Wing ma'am," The guardspony said, bowing to Cadance. "I've received orders to escort you and Shining Armor to Canterlot."

"Do you have any idea what's going on Lieutenant?" Cadance asked.

"I'm afraid I do not ma'am. I was stationed in Vanhoover, I was given orders at 23:30 last night to board the Crystal Express. I was to rendezvous with you and Shining Armor and escort you to Canterlot for an urgent meeting with Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. That's all the information I have."

"Well, I suppose we'll find out when we get there," Cadance said sighing.

The conductor entered the car and asked everypony to take their seats. The train was ready to depart. With a loud whistle and a hiss of steam, the train rolled out of the Crystal Empire Station and started off towards Canterlot.

Twilight stepped off the train and looked around. The streets were packed with ponies, while not as large as Manehattan, the capital city of Equestria was still home to a huge number of ponies. Thankfully it was the weekend, so it wasn't as bad as it could get. Still, Twilight was in a hurry. Teleporting to the castle was out. First off there were wards to prevent anypony from teleporting directly in, the closest she could get was the main gate. Combining her relative lack of sleep with Spike and her luggage made a long distance teleport not a particularly good plan.

Even with her relative inexperience, flight, however, was fairly easy and far less draining. Spike could ride on her back and levitation for the luggage was so easy she could do it in her sleep. Plus it could cut the 20 minute trot to a few minutes. She beckoned Spike to hop on her back and took off.

Minutes later she arrived at the main gate of the castle. The guard at the gate let her know she was expected and to meet Celestia and Luna in the throne room. Making her way through the grand halls of the castle, she arrived at the throne room. The door, which was usually open for Day Court was closed with 2 guards stationed at the door. The guards gave a bow, then one of them addressed Twilight.

"Ma'am we have orders to let only you in. Princess Celestia asks that Spike remain outside."

"Hmm, that's strange," Twilight said. "Spike can you wait here? I'll check in with the Princesses and see what's going on."

"Sure thing Twilight. I'll watch your luggage."

After Spike hopped off the guards opened the door to the throne room and let Twilight in. She heard the doors close behind her, looking ahead she saw Celestia and Luna sitting on their thrones.

"Twilight Sparkle. My most faithful student. Thank you for coming on such short notice." Celestia said.

"Hello Twilight, it is good to see you again," Luna added.

Twilight gave a deep bow to both princesses.

"Twilight, there is no need for that," Celestia said getting up off of her throne and walking over to Twilight. "You too are a princess of Equestria and more importantly, you are among friends."

She reached down and gave Twilight a friendly nuzzle.

Twilight froze for a moment, her face heating up, but then she returned the nuzzle.

"Thank you Princess-"

"Just Celestia will do," Celestia said, interrupting the young alicorn.

"Now, as you noticed we asked Spike to remain outside. Without getting into any details of why we summoned you here, I would like to say that neither Luna nor I have any problem with letting Spike in, but wanted to leave the choice up to you. "

"We have a matter of potentially great importance to discuss that needs to be kept confidential, for at least, a short while, if it turns out to be as important as Luna and I suspect it could be, it will be going public in a few days time, I loathe to keep great secrets from my little ponies but it is necessary from time to time. If you think Spike is mature enough to handle keeping what we discuss confidential, then we shall let him join us."

Twilight took a moment to think about the question. She remembered the adventures that Spike had accompanied her on. She thought about the assistance he gave during Sombra's return.

"I trust Spike, he can handle whatever this is about."

"Alright, Twilight," Celestia said.

Luna's horn glowed and the door to the throne room opened.

"Guards, please allow Spike the Dragon to enter," she said.

Spike peered into the room and looked at Twilight questioningly. Twilight gave Spike a brief nod, seeing this he made his way to the front of the room and bowed respectfully to the celestial Princesses. The door closed with a thud behind him.

"Good morning to you Spike," Celestia said smiling warmly. Her expression then turned more serious.

"As Luna and I were just discussing with Twilight, there is a matter of potentially great importance. Twilight has placed a great deal of trust in your ability to keep the matter we are about to reveal a secret, please do not let her down."

"I won't, you can trust me Princess," Spike said.

"Let us begin then, Luna would you like to take over?"

"As my sister stated, the matter we are about to bring up must remain a secret. We have sent word for Cadance and Shining Armor to join us, they should be here early this evening. They are the only other two ponies that you may talk to besides Celestia and I about this matter until told otherwise."

"Is there danger?" Twilight asked.

Luna hesitated for a moment before replying.

"We... do not know. This is, in fact, an unusual situation. We are no more knowledgeable about the matter than any pony with the same information we have. It could be nothing, it could be the greatest discovery ponies have ever made, or it could potentially be the greatest danger. Twilight, tell me, what do you know of the uniqueness of our solar system?"

"Do you want a detailed report or a brief summary?" Twilight asked, eyes lighting up at the thought of giving a lecture.

"A brief summary will suffice."

Twilight held back a frown and then mulled over the request for a moment before she began to speak.

"Out solar system contains 13 planets, an asteroid belt, and one star. Unlike a normal solar system, our home world of Equus is at the center of the system. The orbits of all local celestial bodies, including the sun are controlled by you and Celestia. Typically Celestia handles the sun, while you deal with everything else, planets, asteroids and comets. Celestia is capable of managing the entire system alone, as evidenced by her managing things while you were imprisoned on the moon. I am not sure if you also possess this ability."

Luna's face showed a hint of sadness when Twilight mentioned her banishment. It quickly disappeared as she replied to Twilight's

"I do, but this was not always the case. In the past both Celestia and I lacked sufficient power to properly manage the entire system alone. Before the Nightmare I could not move the sun at all."

Twilight looked confused. "But ponies reach their maximum magical potential around the age of maturity, surely for you and Celestia, that was ages... er uh..." Twilight stammered as she realized she was essentially calling both Celestia and Luna very old.

"Yes Twilight, " Celestia said chuckling. "We reached maturity many thousands of years ago. We have in fact been around for a very long time. What very few ponies have known is exactly how long. We were around when Discord first appeared, nearly 50,000 years ago. We were physically mature a long time before he showed up."

"Then why didn't you stop him earlier?" Spike asked.

"Spike!" Twilight shouted.

"It is alright," Luna said. "It is a valid question. The truth is we couldn't. When Discord first appeared, our combined strength was nothing compared to his. It took most of our power just to remain hidden, all we could do was wait, and plan. As you pointed out, ponies reach their full magical potential around the age of maturity. This varies from pony to pony and from race to race, but alicorns are special.

"Alicorns are unique among the pony races in that they possess exceedingly powerful magic, a strong combination of the 3 other races that is more than the sum of its parts, and that they are very long lived. Five hundred to a thousand years is not uncommon. In addition magical potential of an alicorn is not tied to physical maturity. Alicorns continue to grow in magical strength well into their early 100s, often ending many times more powerful than they were at the age of physical maturity. You will notice this in yourself now that you have obtained alicornhood."

"But you and Celestia are much older than that," Twilight said. "If you were around hundreds of years before Discord showed up, wouldn't you have already reached your full strength?"
Luna continued. "Yes, and as I stated, alicorns are unique among the pony races, and among alicorns, my sister and I are also unique. We are, as far as we can tell, completely immortal. As the years go by, we gain more and more power. We have, apparently, no age of magical maturity, or if we do, we have yet to reach it."

"This is why Nightmare Moon was able to escape her banishment after 1000 years," Celestia said. "Even banished and corrupted, Luna's power grew, eventually reaching the point where the spell I cast with the Elements could no longer contain her."

"But my friends and I were able to use the Elements to free Luna from the Nightmare," Twilight said.

"Indeed you were and I will be eternally grateful for you and your friends helping me. I will continue the history lesson and you will know why you were able to do so shortly," Luna said.

"As I was saying, Discord was beyond our power, but we came up with a plan. Celestia and I combined our magic to create the Tree of Harmony. For thousands of years we poured more and more power into the Tree. We also developed powerful spells, that were resistant or even immune to chaos magic. As our power grew, so did that of the Tree.

"The Tree of Harmony was intended to generate a field of anti-chaos magic, that would provide an area that Discord could not enter, nor affect. If it worked we could continue to create more Harmony Trees until Discord was pushed out of Equestria entirely. Something happened though, that neither my sister or I understand. The Tree of Harmony bore fruit, the Elements of Harmony were born. In time we discovered that when wielded by Celestia and I, these elements gave us the power to overcome Discord."

"It was not till centuries later, after Luna's banishment, that I found out that the elements are strongest when wielded by 6 individual ponies, and more so when those ponies embody the spirit of the elements themselves as you and your friends do," Celestia added.

"That is why when you and your friends wielded the Elements together, they spell they cast was far more powerful than when I wielded them alone against Nightmare Moon. The increased power was enough to free her of the Nightmare"

"A fact that I am eternally grateful for," Luna said. "Twilight, I asked about our solar system because I wanted to see how much you knew about the level of control my sister and I have over it. Most ponies are only aware of the work we do with the sun and the moon. It appears that you have sufficient knowledge for me to begin."

"Two nights ago I was making adjustments to the orbit of a comet at the edge of the system. It was at this time that I felt something pass close by. It was moving so fast I almost missed the object, but I was able to find it again. It appears to be on a trajectory that will bring it fairly close to Equus."

"What kind of object? How fast was it moving?"

"We do not know what it is yet, it is both too far out and moving too fast to see. As for its speed, when I did some more precise measurements last night, it crossed an distance of just over 330 million miles in an hour," Luna said.

Twilight's draw dropped to the floor. "330 million miles. That's..." she ran a quick mental calculation. "That's about 50% of the speed of light!"

"Indeed it is, neither my sister nor I have ever seen any object in nature move that fast," Luna said. "What is more shocking however, is that as I continued to track the object across the heavens, I have discovered that it is slowing down. It is in fact slowing down fairly quickly, decelerating at a rate of 40 gravities."

"I don't get it Twilight, what's the big deal about this thing," Spike asked.

"Spike, this is huge! First off nothing moves that fast in nature, secondly things in space don't slow down, not by themselves. " Twilight started pacing back and forth, with an excited look on her face. "Neighton's first law, an object in motion remains in motion unless acted on by an external force. Something must be slowing it down! If it's isn't natural and it is slowing itself down, could it be a vessel of some kind?"

"You mean like aliens?" Spike asked.

"That is a possibility, though we did not want to jump to conclusions," Luna said. "It could be some naturally occurring phenomena that we've never seen before. Even with our millennia of experience and knowledge to draw upon Celestia and I are not all knowing.

"When will it get here?" Twilight asked excitedly.

"If its course continues without change, it should come within 300,000 miles of the planet," Luna said. "What will happen next we do not know. If it continues to decelerate it will be captured by the planet's gravitational field. If that happens, I will have to ensure it ends up in a stable orbit. I am waiting until I am able to see the object get an estimate on its size before I settle on a course of action."

"Luna, I know it's very far out, but have you tried using a distant sight spell to view the object?" Twilight asked.

"It is both too far and moving too fast for a standard distant sight spell to work. I have been working on modifying it and combining it with a scrying spell to give us something useful. Would you like to assist me with me with the modifications?"

Twilight stopped her pacing mid stride. A chance to work with one of the Princesses on spellcrafting was an amazing opportunity.

"Luna, I would be deeply honored to assist you. When would you like to get started?"

"If you start now, you may be able to finish before Cadance and Shining Armor arrive," Celestia said. "Meanwhile I am running a shortened session of Day Court for the next few hours, Spike can join me."

"Can we stop at Donut Joe's?" Spike asked Celestia with a pleading look in his eyes.

"Lunch is in a little while, don't go spoiling it with donuts," Twilight said.

Celestia however looked at Spike and gave a quick smile and a wink when Twilight wasn't looking.

"That is agreeable sister. Twilight, let us make our way to my observatory, we can work on the spell there."

Twilight and Luna made their way out of the throne room and then took off at a quick trot towards the observatory.

"Now Spike, about those donuts..."

Luna spent some time bringing Twilight up to speed on the spell work that was needed. They continued to work on it for a while, only breaking for a quick lunch. Part of the process was investigating exactly how one of the components would work. Luna suspected she would be using part of a scrying spell for the final new spell, so the two ponies had to do some research into how the spell worked. This was fairly straight forward and it helped that the scrying spell, originally written by Star Swirl the Bearded, was itself a modification of a distant sight spell Luna had written long ago.

The distant sight spell functioned like a magical telescope, giving the caster the ability to see distant objects more clearly. Increasing the amount of magnification was fairly straight forward, but the higher the magnification, the more jitter was introduced. There was no way any pony would be able to keep their view steady enough to observe something billions of miles away.

The scrying spell gave the caster a visual projection of an area, there were two issues with the using that spell though. The spell consisted of two components. The first part of the spell was cast on an area you wanted to observe. This required being able to see that area. The 2nd part of the spell would form a projection of that area. The view in this projection was fixed, it couldn't be moved or rotated. The ponies had no way to get into space to cast the first part, and even if they could, the projection couldn't track the object.

"Luna, may I ask you something?"

"Of course you can Twilight, you need not ask permission."

"It has to do with what we were discussing earlier, about how you and Celestia's power continue to grow. Why is it that Celestia had me and my friends deal with Discord?"

"Ah. Well, as I said before, the Elements work best when wielded by six ponies rather than by two. Celestia and I wielding the elements together could only lock Discord away, but the lock was flawed. It slowly lost power until Discord was able to free himself. She had hoped that with you and your friends using the Elements, a stronger, more permanent seal would be put into place. Instead something unexpected happened. The Elements made a fundamental change to Discord's nature. "

Luna paused to write down some notes. She took a deep breath and continued.

"In truth, we do not know exactly how it happened but I what I suspect is Discord was imbued with some of the aspects of the Elements. For the first time in his existence he experienced Harmony. It gave him perspective and I believe it was this change that allowed you and your friends to successfully reform him. No longer was he driven purely by chaos, instead he was filled with some of the same desires as ponies, to exist in harmony with other beings, to experience the joys of friends and family and to be part of something bigger than himself."

"Well, I guess that offers some explanation in Discord's change of heart," Twilight said. "I'm glad he is no longer threatening the safety of Equestria. Oh, actually that reminds me, while we're on the subject of threats to Equestria..."

The door behind the two ponies opened up and Celestia and Spike walked in.

"...I heard something about somepony named Tirek escaping from Tartarus, who is that? I couldn't find any information on him at my library or in the Canterlot archives."

Celestia froze the moment Twilight mentioned Tirek's name. Luna's smile instantly vanished, the room itself seemed to grow darker.

"I... I would prefer not to discuss Tirek," Twilight thought she saw tears in Luna's eyes but the Princess of the Night quickly turned her head.

"If you'll excuse me, I need to take care of something," Luna vanished in a flash as she teleported out of the observatory.

Twilight sat down hard, a look of panic in her eyes. She looked at Celestia nervously.

"What did I say?"

Celestia walked over and embraced Twilight with one of her wings.

"There there Twilight, do not worry, Luna will be OK. Tirek is a painful subject for her."

"I didn't know, I heard about his escape from Shining but he didn't have any real details I was just curious."

"I know you didn't intend to hurt her, and she knows that as well. Give her some time and she will return to us. for now, do not bring him up again in front of Luna, if she wants to talk about it, she will bring it up with you. If you are still curious, we can talk about it another time and I will let you know what happened."

The two ponies and a dragon remained silent, Celestia continued to hold Twilight with her wing until the young alicorn calmed down.

Minutes passed until Spike finally broke the silence.

"Uh, this is getting kind of awkward, did you and Luna make any progress on the spell to see the UFO?"

"It's not a UFO Spike, or at least we don't know if it is one yet."

"UFO stands for unidentified flying object, it's unidentified, it's an object, and it's flying though space. It's a UFO," Spike said with a smug look on his face.

Twilight scrunched her nose.

"Well, I guess that's true, what I meant is it's not like one of the flying saucers from your comic books. It could be, but we don't know yet, but to answer your question, yes we've made some progress but we aren't quite there yet."

"Would you mind if I looked at your notes?" Celestia asked.

Twilight took the next hour bringing Celestia up to speed on her and Luna's progress. At the end of the hour, Luna returned but said nothing. The three ponies worked in relative silence till it was getting close to dinner.

Luna stopped working suddenly and spoke up.

"I think I have a solution. Why don't you three go grab something to eat and then meet up with Cadance and Shining Armor? I will prepare the spell."

With Spike on her back and Celestia by her side, Twilight made her way to Canterlot Station. Ponies stopped and stared, it wasn't every day they saw Celestia walking around the town. Celestia, however enjoyed the change of pace from her normal ridged schedule. She loved her little ponies and enjoyed being able to see them outside of heavily structured interaction of Day Court. She smiled and greeted ponies as they made their way to the station. Some ponies even managed to get over the shock of seeing her walking around and greeted her back.

One little filly even ran over and gave Celestia a hug. A very embarrassed mother ran over and apologized, but Celestia hugged the filly right back and let the mother know it was alright.

They stopped at a small restaurant to grab some take out. The owner noticed Celestia in line and nearly had a stroke. He walked over and took their order personally. A short while later he came out with 3 sandwiches. Twilight tried to pay, but the owner refused.

"Don't worry about it Twilight, I'll deduct it from his taxes," Celestia said with a wink.

The group finally arrived at the station, sat down and waited for the train to arrive. Twilight glanced at the station clock, it was only 6:00, the train wasn't due in for another hour. They sat down and ate their sandwiches, eventually they heard a whistle in the distance. It sounded a few more times, each time closer than the last. Finally Twilight saw the train coming around the last bend in the track. It pulled into the station and slowly came to a stop.

"Honey, we've arrived," Shining said, waking Cadance up from her nap.

The trip had been long and uneventful. Cadance had taken a brief nap. Shining had spent the time talking to Swift Wing and his squad. They swapped stories back and forth for a few hours until the train finally pulled into Canterlot Station.

Cadance opened her eyes and looked out the window. She saw Celestia, Twilight and Spike standing outside. She waved to them through the window, but they didn't notice her.

"As soon as we disembark, we shall escort you to the castle and Princess Celestia," Swift Wing said.

"Celestia is waiting right outside, we just passed her as the train was coming to a stop," Cadance said.

"Oh, well that will certainly make our job easier."

Swift Wing and his squad exited the train with Cadance and Shining Armor following. They immediately spotted Celestia and her group and walked over.

"Lieutenant Swift Wing, reporting with Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Prince Shining Armor as ordered ma'am."

"Thank you Lieutenant, your quick response to my summons is most appreciated. You remind me of your grandfather."

"You knew my grandfather ma'am?"

"I knew Red Dawn well, he was a loyal and kind pony and a fine officer. His service was exemplary. He was also one of the fastest fliers in the guard at the time. "

Shining Armor broke away while Swift Wing and Celestia continued to talk.

"Twily!" Shining Armor walked over to his sister and gave her a great big hug. "How've you been?"

The two ponies spent a few minutes catching up with each other, Cadance greeted Twilight and Spike and then walked over to Celestia.

"Hello Cadance, thank you for coming on such short notice. How are you doing?"

"I'm doing well, but I'm very curious as to what this is about, can you tell us now?"

"Not here, please follow me. We're going to meet up with Luna, she's in her observatory. Swift Wing, if you'd please accompany us, have the rest of your squad report to the Canterlot Garrison and wait there for further orders."

Following Celestia, the group of ponies made their way to Luna's observatory. Swift Wing was asked to remain outside, while rest of the group filed into the main room. Celestia and Luna took turns bringing Cadance and Shining Armor up to speed. Both ponies had a number of questions. Celestia and Luna answered them as best they could, pausing part way through so that they could lower the sun and raise the moon.

After the questions died down, Luna then brought up that she had successfully tested the new spell and should be ready to try to get a visual on the object. Twilight was curious, as before she left, they were still having issues with focusing the spell.

"How did you get past the focusing issue we were seeing at high magnification?" she asked.

"I bypassed it entirely. My solution will use a fairly low magnification, only about 10 times higher this telescope," Luna said, pointing at the large telescope behind her.

"With the object so distant, will that be enough?" Celestia asked.

"It should be, here let me explain how this works. First I modified the distant sight spell to use the visual display that Star Swirl's scrying spell uses. Instead of the caster seeing it, it functions more like a telescope. Anypony can look at the image that is projected in front of the caster. Then I modified the visual display. The one from the scrying spell is 2 dimensional, the new visual display is 3 dimensional. Let me demonstrate.

Luna's horn glowed as she concentrated on the spell. A 3 dimensional image appeared focused on the desk on the other side of the room.

"The 3 dimensional view is basically a one way portal that only lets light through. You aren't looking at a visual representation of the desk, you're looking at the actual point of space the desk occupies. By setting up the spell this way, I can then cast the modified spell on that point in space again. In essence, I am nesting the spells. The first spell is cast here, which gives us a view of a point in space a 10 million miles away. I am then able to cast another spell on that point in space which projects the image of a 2nd point in space another 10 million miles away from it, which is relayed by the original spell back to here. Only the final spell in the chain does any magnification which is then relayed back to the original point. I call it the Deep Space Imaging Spell"

"That's brilliant!" Twilight exclaimed.

"There is a limit on both the number of times we can nest the spell before it degrades and the magnification of the final spell. The higher the magnification, the less spells we can nest, hopefully it will be sufficient to give us a good view of the object. I've already written a wrapper spell so we can easily adjust magnification and the numbers of nests as we continue to find the optimal parameters."

"I have no idea what Luna just said" Spike deadpanned, "does this mean we'll be able to finally see this thing?"

"We shall find out in a moment my little dragon," Celestia replied.

Luna lowered her telescope out of the way since she needed a clear line of sight to the sky for the spell to work. She then closed her eyes and concentrated on the new spell. Her horn glowed brightly and an image appeared in front of her. She opened her eyes and looked at the image.

"I will now make some adjustments as I attempt to bring the object into view."

Her horn lit again but she kept an eye on the image. It slowly zoomed in more and more on one point in space, but there was still nothing in the display but stars. After a few minutes of that waiting, the ponies started to lose hope. Twilight then noticed a very small dot in the center of the display that was not there before.

"I think I can see something, can we zoom in any closer?"

"We are getting close to the limit of this spell, but I think I can make a few more adjustments," Luna replied

Slowly the dot grew larger and larger until the ponies were finally able to make it out.

"Sweet Celestia!" Twilight said. She then gasped and shoved her hoof over her mouth realizing what she had just shouted.

"Ordinarily Twilight, I would be disappointed, in your choice of profanities. But in this case, I think the use is justified," Celestia said. "Sweet me."

In the display hovering in front of the group of ponies was a ring shaped object. It was still a little small, but the image was clear enough that it was obvious this was no natural phenomenon. Whatever this thing was it was artificial.

Author's Note

I based my version of Equestria on the official map that was released some time ago, but scaled up so Equestria is roughly the size of the US, so going from Canterlot -> Manehattan would roughly be like taking a train from Kansas to New York.

Pony travel tech is roughly on par with early 1900s trains.

Chapter 3
View Online

Into the Black

Chapter 3

The Grand Chk'rain Empire had first started spreading beyond its home world of Vi'Macs Prime 3000 years ago. It was then that Emperor Lothzar the Third, after finally uniting the planet, began the Empire's expansion into the stars. Since then, an unbroken line of his descendants had diligently worked on extending the Empire's borders. Presently the Empire consisted of 35 major worlds, numerous space stations and smaller colony planets, 11 conquered systems, thousands of uninhabited systems, and a vast fleet. The bulk of these planets were clustered near the outer portion of the core of the galaxy, but in the last 2000 years the Empire had been spreading towards the outer edge of the galaxy. This spread was a relatively slow process due to the enormous distance between stars.

With the invention of the phase drive, it seemed that the Empire had finally found a way to overcome the universal speed limit, ships could finally exceed the speed of light. The phase drive could take a ship and bring it out of phase with the rest of the universe. The higher the phase gradient the faster the ship could go. As an added bonus, ships that were out of phase didn't interact with the physical universe in the same manner as an unphased vessel. This was good because shields didn't work in phase space and a collision with a solid object at hyper-relativistic speeds would not end well for any vessel. There were however, 3 major limitations to phase drives.

The first limitation was at the highest possible phase gradient maximum velocity was still limited to around 10-15 times the speed of light. Even at this enormous speed, it would take thousands of years to cross the entire galaxy. The second limitation was that the phase drive became less and less efficient the closer it was to a large gravity wells. The closer a ship traveled to a star, the lower the maximum speed of the drive until it no longer worked at all. Within one light year, travel was limited to about 2x that of the speed of light till it stopped working entirely at about half a light year. The flip side to this was when the Empire's ships reached the edge of the galaxy, the phase drive was theorized to work incredibly well in the nearly empty void between galaxies.

The final limitation however, was the worst. The phase drive worked by forming an energy field around the ship. Everything in field was brought partially out of phased with reality, which is what allowed the ship to travel faster than light, this field was deadly to all known forms of life. No method had yet been discovered that could shield life forms from the phase space. In theory it would be possible to block the harmful effects of the field while still allowing FTL travel with shields, but shields didn't work in phase space. Any living beings subject to a phase field would generally die within hours.

It seemed that interstellar travel would have to rely on slower than light colony ships, while automatic exploratory vessels could be sent out using the phase drive to scout ahead of the colony ships. This was how the first settlement of the empire outside of its home solar system was established. Communication between the home world and it's first colony was slow, relying on phase ships to relay messages back and forth. Finally, a solution was discovered.

Transdimensional node travel was an improvement over phase drives in many ways. First, travel was nearly instant between any two points. Secondly, it had no effect on organics. Living beings could travel from one system to another in a matter of minutes. The system was much less sensitive to gravity wells. It's major weakness was that it required a node to exist in the starting location and the destination. These nodes were created by what was commonly known as a Trans-D Gate or just gates. It was then decided to seek out new systems to expand the Empire into.

Massive automated gates were built, equipped with Phase Drives and sent out into the galaxy. They were programmed to look for signs of life, seeking out transmissions such as radio waves that tended to leak out into space wherever technological civilizations existed. The gate would then enter the system and send back a report of its findings. Based on those findings, The Empire would then determine the appropriate course of action.

There was one other limitation of node travel. The maximum distance between nodes was partially based on the size and number of gravity wells between any two nodes. As such, the node system zigzagged back and forth across through known space as more and more gate ships arrived at systems of interest and added new nodes to the network.

At the end of one of these chains of nodes a space station orbited the single gas giant in the system. While this system was devoid of any native life, this gas giant was an excellent fuel source. Unfortunately it was the only planet in the system, it didn't even have any moons. This presented a severe lack of raw materials for both construction and repair. A problem the local commander was struggling to come up with a solution for.

There was a knock at the commander's door. He shut off his computer display and pressed the button on his desk that opened the door.

"Commander Viettar, I'm sorry to intrude, but we've just received a report from a gateship. A new node will be coming online in approximately 60 hours in sector 2157.32. The gateship has detected radio transmissions and is already at the outer edge of the system," Subcommander Korthack said.

Commander Viettar diverted his full attention the moment he heard the word gateship. Stations as far out as this one generally had decades pass between new node activations. In fact, this particular system was at the end of a chain which hadn't had a single new node connected to it since it had gone active 75 years ago. A few gate ships had been sent in search of new worlds nearly five decades ago, but that was long before he had taken command of the station. Viettar hadn't even been in the service when those ships had been sent out.

The news that the gate had picked up radio transmissions made the announcement even more exciting. After nearly 2500 years of sending out gates, only 11 other races had been discovered. Ten of those had already been fully absorbed into the Empire, while the 11th, the Heliosians, had just been brought under Empire control five years earlier and was in the process of being integrated.

This was the first time in the Chk'rain history two different species had been discovered so close to each other. Average time between new races was in centuries.

"Do we have the initial report on the new species?" Viettar asked.

"Not yet sir, the gateship is still gathering information for the full report, all we know so far is that it has detected signs of civilization. "

"I will contact Central Command, and ask them to divert a contact vessel. Bring me the report from the gateship as soon as it is available."

"Yes sir" Korthack turned around and left the room. Commander Viettar got to work preparing the requisition forms needed to secure a contact vessel. He shuddered slightly, if there was one constant throughout his military career, it was paper work. Paper work never changed.

The four princesses, Shining Armor and Spike continued to watch the object for some time. While it was clear that it was artificial, that's about all they could determine. It was time to figure out what to do next. Celestia stepped forward to address the rest of the ponies in the room.

"My sister and I have been around for a very long time, and we have seen many things. It is rare for us to encounter something new that we know nothing about, but in this case, and I think I speak for Luna as well, I am as shocked as any of you."

Luna nodded in agreement while Celestia continued.

"Our next steps are important ones. This ring, whatever it is, appears to be on course to that will take it extremely close to us. I doubt this is a coincidence. We should prepare for guests. Whoever it is that comes to visit us from distant stars, I want to be ready to greet them as ponies should, warmly and with friendship."

"Do you and Luna have a plan of action already?" Cadance asked.

"Celestia and I have some initial ideas, but I think we should spend the next few hours discussing ideas that anypony has. Like my sister said, this is new for all of us."

"Twilight, do you remember Arctic Skies?" Celestia asked.

"The professor from the Royal Academy? I think he taught astronomy, but he retired before I was old enough to take the class."

"Yes that's him. He's did retire, and then moved to Manehattan. I'm going to send Swift Wing to bring him back to Canterlot. He's the closest we have to an expert on space apart from Luna and while it was a work of fiction, he did write that book, Mare on the Moon, about the group of ponies that traveled to the moon on a rocket. I'd like to hear his ideas on space travel in the real world, if he has any."

"I read that book, his description of the lunar surface was surprisingly accurate," Luna said.

Twilight made a mental note to get a copy of the book and read it as soon as she could.

"Will you be informing Swift Wing of the ring?" Cadance asked.

"Yes, though I will ask him to keep it to himself for now. We will be making a public announcement after the object arrives, I want to see what it does first before I say anything. " Celestia said.

Luna opened the observatory door and invited Swift Wing into the gathering. The princesses brought him up to speed and quickly cast the DSIS so Swift Wing could take a look at the ring. Swing Wing looked extremely nervous by the time Celestia got to giving him his new orders.

"Swift Wing, you look troubled, are you alright?" Celestia asked.

"I uh um..." Swift Wing said with a stammer.

"It's alright, you can speak your mind," Celestia said.

"Is this a joke?"

Celestia laughed.

"No my little pony, it is not a joke. You will be leaving in the morning, the Crystal Express has already departed, so you will be boarding Engine 12, nonstop service Canterlot to Manehattan it leaves at 8:00."

Luna turned to Swift Wing.

"One more thing Swift Wing. Until we make a public announcement about this ring, you should not share your knowledge with anypony. My sister and I have decided to inform Arctic Skies, so that he will be prepared. The letter we will be giving you includes all the information we have thus far. It is for his eyes only, though it is magically sealed so that should not be a problem," she said in a serious tone.

"Yes ma'am, I understand."

Swift Wing was dismissed and he headed off to the Canterlot Garrison to get some much needed rest before his next journey. The rest of the ponies continued to discuss the plan of action to take when the ring arrived. Everypony had a different opinion on how to handle the situation, so progress was slow. Eventually Celestia called for a break, the planning would continue in the morning.

Swift Wing gathered up his squad and informed them of their new orders.

"Ok listen up, we'll be boarding Engine 12. It departs in soon so let's hustle. We're headed to Manehattan on another escort mission."

"Another escort mission? Why are we running around babysitting civvies?" Rocky Road asked.

"Doesn't matter, when the Princesses say go, we go" Swift Wing replied.

"I don't know why you're complaining," Crystal Star said, after taking a sip of coffee. "If we were back in Vanhoover, we'd be doing our daily run right now. Instead we get to relax on a train for the next 2 days, then pick up a civvie, and spend another 2 days relaxing on a train again. It's like extra leave." She levitated the empty cup into the nearest trash.

The massive earth pony behind Crystal Star looked up.

"If I was on leave I wouldn't be lugging around hundreds of pounds of armor and gear," Stone Hide said.

Swift Wing glared at his squad.

"Alright, quit your complaining, it's time to board the train," he said.

The four ponies climbed onto the train, and shortly thereafter, the train rolled out of the station. The rest of his squad chatted amongst themselves, but Swift Wing wasn't really in the mood for talking so he looked out the window and watched the country side roll by as the train made its way east. Several hours later he realized somepony was calling his name.

"Equus to Swift Wing, are you there?" Rocky Road asked.

"Yes?"

"I've been calling your name for the late five minutes."

"Oh, sorry I was zoned out."

"Yeah, we noticed. You've been kind of out of it since you showed up at the garrison last night. What's going on?"
Swift Wing felt conflicted. He had been working with these ponies for years. He wanted to let them know what was going on, but he also understood why Celestia and Luna didn't want to make the information public yet.

"Look, I can't really get into that. I'm under orders to not discuss it."

"Was the order from the Princesses?" Crystal asked.

Swift Wing's surprised look gave the answer away.

"One of the local guards mentioned he saw Princess Celestia, Princess Twilight, Shining Armor and a white pegasus guard headed to Luna's observatory last night," she added.

"Ok, yes it was, I wasn't told the meeting itself was secret, but I can't talk to you about the contents, so just drop it."

"It's not changelings again is it? Rocky Road asked.

"Even if it was, I couldn't tell you."

"Can you at least tell us who we're picking up?" Stone Hide asked.

"Yeah, that's not a secret, a pony by the name of Arctic Skies."

"The stallion that wrote Mare on the Moon?" Crystal asked?

"What's that?" Rocky Road asked.

"It's a fiction novel about ponies who travel to the moon on a giant rocket," said Crystal. "I think he also taught astronomy at the Royal Academy, but it was before my time."

"Yes, that's him, but that's all the details I can share."

"Alright we'll drop it," Rocky Road said.

"We've got another day and a half to Manehattan so let's stop with the questions, I can't answer them anyway," Swift Wing said.

"Yes Sir!" the rest of his squad replied.

Swift Wing closed his eyes. It was going to be a long trip.

Luna sighed, she had been awake since the initial detection of the ring in deep space. It was times like these she was glad she could get by with almost no sleep. One of the many benefits to being an immortal alicorn she thought. She could easily stay awake for weeks at a time and not feel any effect. There was a limit though, as Celestia had found out while Luna was imprisoned. 1000 years of managing the country and the solar system all by herself had left Celestia tired. True, her overall power had grown, but even the Princesses needed to recharge their batteries from time to time. However, when you ran a solar system by yourself, time for rest and relaxation were at a minimum.

The cleansing of the Nightmare had left Luna almost completely drained of magic. Even after being freed of the Nightmare, Celestia had to still carry on running the system alone. It wasn't until almost a year later, after Discord had been freed and re-imprisoned, that her magic had finally started to recover.

Meanwhile, Celestia was forced to expend even more power fighting off Discord's attempts to retake control of the system while Twilight and her friends were working on stopping him. By the time Discord had been imprisoned once more, Celestia had nearly been drained herself. Luna smiled grimly, it was no wonder her sister had such a problem with that changeling queen, Celestia had been running herself ragged for a millennium, she was virtually on the edge of magical collapse. Luna of course had missed the entire affair, having placed herself in a magically induced hibernation in attempt to hasten her recovery. Had she been awake and recovered, she would have squashed Chrysalis like the bug she so resembled.

She was ready now though, nearly 2 years after being freed from the Nightmare, she was almost back to full strength. Celestia was also doing much better, since Luna now had enough power to help manage the system. Things were looking up for the two sisters. Now if only we could decided what to do about this ring, Luna thought. The meeting had been going on all morning and nopony was any closer to an agreement than they were last night.

"We've been at this for hours and haven't made much progress," Shining said.

"Well it's hard to come up with a plan of action, when we don't know what will happen when the ring gets here," Twilight replied.

"I think we should work on communication first," Cadance said.

Celestia nodded.

"I agree. It is extremely unlikely that whoever or whatever is on that ring, will speak Equestrian. There are multiple translation spells we can try, and I'm sure at least one of them will end up working, but it will take time. I would like to be prepared before the ring gets here.

Twilight looked up from her notes.

"I can work on that, I've been meaning to look at translation spells for quite some time. I can think of one problem though. All the translation spells I've read about are for direct verbal communication. Unless whoever is on that ring lands on Equestria, we can't cast it on them."

Celestia closed her eyes while she tried to remember as much as she could about translation spells.

"There are translation spells that work with written text," she said. "That doesn't directly help us, but I've been thinking about something. We may try to communicate with them via radio. I think we can adapt one of the text translation spells to work with the verbal one and combine it to work on a radio transmission, but it will require some work. I will join you in the Canterlot Archives after this meeting is adjourned."

"Twilight, there is one other thing I'd like to do," Luna said, looking at Twilight. "I would like to invite the rest of the Elements to Canterlot. I think they should know about this discovery before the general public does. I do not anticipate problems, if there are any, tis better to be prepared."

"I can go get them," Spike said.

"I don't want you taking the train to Ponyville alone."

"Oh come on Twilight, what's the big deal?"

"Shining and I can go with him," Cadance said. "There's not much else for us to do right now, so we can take Spike to Ponyville and be back with the Elements by the end of the day."

"Alright, that will give Twilight and I time to work on getting all the translation spells in order. We will meet again at dinner time with the rest of the Elements and let them know."

The ponies broke up and went their separate ways. Luna stayed at the observatory to monitor the object and work on setting up a radio transmitter. Shining, Spike and Cadance headed to Canterlot Station to catch a train to Ponyville and Twilight and Celestia made their way to the archives.

Spike hopped off the train. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Cadance and Shining were still following him. It wasn't like they should have any trouble. Even at the busiest of times, Ponyville Station virtually empty compared to the hustle and bustle of Canterlot.

"Come on you two. We'll go to Rarity's first, her boutique is just a short walk from here."

The group walked quickly down Ponyville's main street. Pegasus ponies flew back and forth in the sky moving clouds around in anticipation for the light rain scheduled for later this afternoon. Spike shivered slightly. Any colder and that rain would end up as snow. The dragon preferred the heat, but at it was still only fall. Winter was far far worse than just a passing cold day. Not wanting to get caught out in the rain, he quickened his pace.

Rainbow moved a cloud into position. Her weather team was busy at work preparing the coming rain. Still though, this wasn't exactly a big storm. She could probably handle the whole thing herself. With ten other ponies helping, this was going to be a quick job. She glanced down at the town below. She was surprised to see Spike, Cadance and Shining Armor making their way across town.

"Hey Cloudchaser, I gotta fly, can you move this cloud into position?" She pushed a cloud over to the other pony.

"Sure thing Rainbow."

With a flap of her wings Rainbow descended towards the town.

"Hey Spike!"

Spike turned around and looked up towards the sound. He saw Rainbow hovering just overhead.

"I thought you were in Canterlot with Twilight."

"I was, I came to get you. Well not you specifically, but you and the rest of the girls."

Cadance quickly explained that they were rounding up the Element and needed to bring everypony back to Canterlot.

"What's going on, is it Discord? Changlings? Are we under attack?"

"Nothing quite like that Rainbow, all will be explained in Canterlot."

Rainbow made a sour face. She didn't like waiting.

"Ok, I guess. Fluttershy and Rarity are at the spa, so you three should head over there. I can go get AJ. I'm not exactly sure where Pinkie is, but knowing her, she'll probably find you first. We'll meet you at Rarity's boutique."

Rainbow flew back up into the sky and let Cloudchaser know that she had to go, then she flew off towards Sweet Apple Acres. Shining, Cadance and Spike headed towards the spa to fetch Rarity and Fluttershy.

"Sugarcube Corner is on the way to the spa. We can stop there and look for Pinkie," Spike said.

After following Spike for a short while the group rounded a corner. Shining, who had never been to Ponyville before, was surprised to see what looked like a real life gingerbread house topped with a cupcake. Walking inside, the two ponies and a dragon were instantly assaulted with the smell of freshly baked goods and sweet confections.

A small bell jingled as the door closed behind them. They heard a pony moving around in the back room.

"Just a minute!"

Pinkie Pie hopped out from the back of the store carrying a tray with 3 large cupcakes.

"Oh my gosh, Spike!" Pinkie said happily. "I was wondering why I made this."

She indicated towards one of the cupcakes, it was covered with sapphires. She set the tray down on the nearest table. With a flick of her muzzle, Pinkie tossed Spike the cupcake. Spike took a large bite.

"Mmm sapphire blueberry, my favorite."

Pinkie tossed the remaining cupcakes to Shining and Cadance, both ponies caught them with their magic and proceeded to gobble them down. Both ponies were pleasantly surprised to also have received their favorite flavors.

"My Pinkie sense said I'd have special visitors today, so I whipped up some extra cupcakes. I hope you enjoyed them."

Cadance and Shining were confused, but Spike was used to Pinkie strange abilities. He quickly explained the situation. Pinkie let the Cakes know that she had to go and the group of 4 headed over to the spa. They found Rarity and Fluttershy leaving the spa just as they got there. As they walked towards Rarity's boutique, Cadance and Shining brought Rarity and Fluttershy up to speed.

When they reached the boutique, they went inside to wait for Rainbow and Applejack. About 1/2 an hour later, the door opened and in trotted Applejack with Rainbow flying right behind her. Cadance stepped forward and addressed the crowd.

"I'm sorry everypony for having to interrupt your day. A situation has arisen and Celestia sent us to gather you Elements. I can't really get into the details yet, but as far as we know, there is no danger yet, this is merely a precaution. Princess Luna and Celestia will explain the whole thing when we reach Canterlot."

"Is Twilight still in Canterlot?" Applejack asked.

"Yes, she and Celestia are working on something. As I said before, I can’t really explain anything at this time, but even if I could, you likely wouldn’t believe me. We should get going. The sooner we can get to Canterlot, the sooner we can show you what’s going on."

The group left the boutique and headed for Ponyville Station.

Author's Note

I tried to keep pony tech slightly close to examples we've seen in the show... But going purely by the show, pony tech is... weird. So I extrapolated based on some of the things that have been seen.

If you only watched the first few two episodes, you'd think it's all medieval fantasy setting with magic filing in for some more modern things.

As the series goes on, you get hints of more advanced tech.

Lights, steam trains, a hydroelectric dam, an arcade machine (which means computers), wireless headsets, even lasers. The list goes on.

So they've got Schizo Tech.
Travel is late 1800s - early 1900s.

Computers 1970s - early 80s, no real networks yet.

Weapons tech - Pre-WWI but not very wide spread. The guard, who in this story, are mostly like a ceremonial national guard, aren't armed with anything modern because there hasn't been a war in 1000+ years.

Communications: You've got radio, telegrams for quick long range communication. Magical letters are pretty much limited to Twilight (via Spike) and Cadance / Shining.

Chapter 4
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Into the Black

Chapter 4

The Canterlot Archives were the largest repository of spells in all of Equestria. In fact, it was the largest repository of spells on the whole planet. Unfortunately, it was also the oldest. While there was an ongoing effort to modernize the archives into collections of similar spells, written into books, more than half of the archive was still on individual and poorly sorted scrolls.

Thankfully Celestia had an excellent memory and knew exactly what wing the translation spells were located in. Now it was just a matter of digging through the shelves and finding the correct scrolls. If only she could get her ponies to put scrolls back in the exact location they came from.

"I found a number of spells to translate written word!" Twilight said happily. "I think we've got everything we need now."

Celestia smiled warmly at Twilight.

"It has been a long time since we've done any spell-crafting together. I've been looking forward to this."

Twilight squeed internally, she cherished any time she got to spend with the older alicorn. Twilight may have had an innate understanding of magic, but Celestia had thousands of years of experience. The spells she wove were both elegant and powerful, they were, in a word, beautiful.

"Me too," she said, beaming.

The two alicorns got to work on creating a translation spell that would work with radio communications. Twilight already had a few ideas and she started to write them down. Every few minutes Celestia would interrupt with some additions of her own, or she would show Twilight how to improve a portion of the spell. Celestia's revisions helped reduced the amount of magic needed to cast the spell and also improved the accuracy of translation.

Twilight put the quill down on the table and looked at Celestia.

"You told me last night, that if I wanted to know more about Tirek, to talk to you later."

Celestia looked at Twilight and sighed.

"Tirek showed up a few hundred years after Luna and I locked Discord away with the Elements. He was similar to Chrysalis and the changelings, but instead of feeding on emotions, he could drain magic from a pony. Pegasus ponies lost their ability to fly, Earth ponies lost their connection with nature and Unicorns were so weak that they couldn't levitate a feather. If left unchecked he could drain so much magic from a pony that even their cutie mark would vanish."

Twilight gasped, everything she knew about pony magic said that should be impossible.

"Was it permanent?" she asked.

"No, but depending on how much a pony was drained it could take weeks or even months for them to fully recover. With each pony that Tirek drained, he grew more and more powerful. He was like a sponge, soaking up the magic of any ponies he could capture. But he produced little magic himself, so he had to continually drain ponies to keep his own power from diminishing."

She paused to make some changes to the translation spell.

"As his power grew, he was able to drain more and more ponies at once. In secret, he started to capture ponies and imprison them, so he could drain them over and over. His plan was to drain all of Equestria, which he thought would give him enough power to drain Luna and I. His brother, Scorpan, who was on friendly terms with ponies, tried to get Tirek to abandon his plans, but when Tirek refused, Scorpan warned us of Tirek's plan."

"Could Tirek have drained you of your powers?" Twilight asked.

"Luna and I did not know for sure. We were both still fairly young and managing the solar system after Discord was locked away, kept us relatively weak. It may be that he could, or it may be that even in our weakened state we were beyond him, but neither of us wanted to find out."

"We knew what Tirek's plan was, but we did not know exactly where he was. I sent scouting parties out into the badlands to look for him with the express order to report back when he was found and to not engage him. Of all the things I've done in my life, that sending out those scouts is what I regret the most."

Twilight had since stopped working on the translation spell entirely. She watched Celestia intently as the mare told her story.

"One of those scouting parties was lead by a powerful unicorn mage named Moon Gem. I did not know at the time but she and Luna were in a relationship. When all other scouting parties returned but hers did not, Luna panicked. She gathered up the Elements and took off for their last known location."

A few tears rolled down Celestia's face as she continued.

"Moon Gem had attempted to engage Tirek and had been captured. He now knew we were looking for him, but he wasn't ready, he didn't have nearly enough power to face us. Luna had arrived outside the cave Tirek was hiding in and was searching for him."

"In a move of desperation he drained every last drop of magic out of all the ponies he had captured, including Moon Gem and her scouting party. The force at which he drained those ponies proved fatal. In the blink of an eye, 1200 ponies lost their lives that day. Luna entered the cavern prison just in time to see them all die, including Moon Gem."

By now Celestia was in tears. Her story to was bringing up painful memories. At first Twilight wasn't sure what to do. She hesitated for a moment, but then reached over and gave the Celestia a comforting nuzzle.

"You don't have to continue if you don't want to."

"It's alright Twilight," Celestia said, taking a moment to calm down. "Under normal circumstances Tirek would not drain a pony to death, he kept them around so he could feed on their magic as it returned, killing a pony meant removing that source of magic in the future. As I said though, he was desperate."

"Luna became enraged. she took the Elements and started to cast a spell. This spell however was not meant to entrap or contain, instead she meant to strike Tirek down, her heart full of vengeance. It was against the Elements nature to be used in such a way, so they resisted, but her rage fueled her magic and she and she fought to bend them to her will."

"It was then that I arrived. I sensed what Luna was doing and I teleported in and countered her spell. It dissipated before she could finish casting it. I quickly cast a teleport spell and sent Tirek directly to Tartarus."

"Luna would not talk to me for years, she blamed me for sending Moon Gem, and she blamed herself for not stopping Tirek in time. When she finally spoke to me again she had grown distant. A portion of the Elements power had shifted into her when I interrupted her attack, but it was corrupted by her rage. Twisted and evil, it slowly grew in power over the centuries and eventually gave birth to the Nightmare. This is why when I discovered that Tirek had escaped Tartarus, I dealt with him immediately. I didn't want to force Luna to be reminded of the pain."

"I can't believe I brought up Tirek to Luna. I didn't mean to hurt her," Twilight said sadly. "I can't even begin to imagine how much it would hurt to have somepony you love torn away from you like that."

"Luna still blames herself for her loss of control and the Nightmare that followed, but I do not. She reacted poorly, but in truth I have never seen such a number of ponies murdered in cold blood. Especially when one of those ponies was a lover. I do not know how I would have reacted."

"What about in wars, or during the reign of Discord?" Twilight asked.

"In my long years I have indeed been involved in many wars and seen thousands die, but while killing is never a good thing, there is a vast difference between killing in war and the murdering in cold blood. As for Discord, it was a very rare thing for him to directly kill a pony. Discord embodies chaos, but he is not evil, he never went out of his way to kill anypony."

Both ponies sat there in silence for a few minutes. After that Celestia finally spoke up.

"We should get back to work on this translation spell."

After a few more hours, they finally finished work on the spell. They gathered up everything they needed and went back to Luna's observatory.

The rest of the Elements, Cadance, Shining and Spike had arrived at Luna's observatory. Luna greeted them but then went back to work, setting up her radio transmitter. She let the party know that Celestia and Twilight were still working on something, but when they returned all would be revealed. After almost two hours of waiting, even Fluttershy was getting impatient. Dash, who was bored out of her mind, had taken to flying back and forth across the room in her own version of pacing. She noticed Luna was finished with whatever she had been working on and sitting alone at a desk across the room.

Luna looked up from her notes.

"Rainbow Dash, it is good to see you again."

Dash gave a quick bow.

"Hello Princess. I don't suppose you would care to give any hints to what this is about?"

"Celestia and Twilight should be back soon, be patient young pegasus."

"Believe me, I'm trying, but it's taking forever and knowing Twilight, she's probably sitting in the Canterlot library reading some stuffy old book, having completely forgotten she's supposed to be meeting us."

Luna laughed. Even though Rainbow didn't know it, she was pretty close to the truth.

"Did Twilight ask you to visit Ponyville yet?"

"I do not believe so, what is the occasion?" Luna asked.

"Oh, well a group of us met up the other night near AJ's farm. Twilight brought a telescope and she was telling us all about the night sky. Cheerilee, she's the Ponyville school teacher, I guess she used to run an astronomy club, she was talking about starting it up again."

Luna smiled, it was always nice to hear about ponies taking the time to appreciate her night.

"I had asked Twilight to invite you, figured you might like to hang out. You could join me... I mean us the next time, you know, if you like the idea," Rainbow said laughing nervously, a hint of red showing in her cheeks.

"I think that is a wonderful idea. Let me know when your next meeting will be. Oh and Rainbow, you can always ask Spike send a letter to me directly if you don't want to wait for Twilight."

The door to the observatory opened and Twilight and Celestia walked inside. Twilight went over to greet her friends while Celestia walked over to Luna.

"Ok everypony."

"And dragon!" Spike said.

Celestia chuckled.

"Yes, everypony and dragon. If you would gather around Luna and I will bring you up to speed. I think the easiest way to do this is to show you. Luna, if you'd cast your spell?"

Luna's horn glowed momentarily and a projection of space appeared in front of her. It twisted and distorted as she brought the ring into view. The rest of the Elements were confused, they weren't really sure what they were looking at.

"Three nights ago, I sensed an object entering the outskirts of our solar system. Neither Celestia nor I could identify the object, only that it was unusual, both based on its extremely high velocity, and that it was slowing down."

"Luna and I decided to inform the other princesses, so letters were sent to Twilight and Cadance. They, along with Shining Armor and Spike, joined us in Canterlot. We then went to work on designing a new spell, the Deep Space Imaging Spell, or DSIS. The spell allowed us to view the object, which was still too far away to see through normal means. Once DSIS was complete and cast, this is what we saw." Celestia said, pointing a hoof at the ring.

"We still do not know what this ring is, but as you can tell, it is clearly artificial in nature. Its current heading will bring it very close to Equus. Closer than Luna's moon in fact. I cannot think this is a coincidence, I believe it will either take up orbit around the planet, or possibly land on the planet itself."

"I do not believe it will land sister, and if it does, that may be dangerous. I have been able to calculate the size of the object based on the magnification provided by the spell and that ring, as small as it looks the outer part of the ring is nearly 7 miles in diameter."

Twilight gasped. The entire town of Ponyville could fit inside that ring, with room to spare. The room erupted into questions. Celestia and Luna answered them as best they could with Twilight chiming in every so often.

"We don't know if it's spying on us or not Rainbow, but we must assume it has some knowledge about us, or it wouldn't likely be headed here."

"No Fluttershy, we don't know if it's dangerous or not."

"Yes, we have been working on methods to communicate with it."

"If its deceleration remains constant, it will be here in just under 2 days."

"Yes Pinkie, if there are aliens on board, you can prepare the official Welcome to Equestria party."

This went on late into the evening until the ponies reached a point where none of the princesses had any more answers. Finally Celestia adjourned the meeting.

"Some of you already know this, so consider this a reminder. Please keep this information secret. Refrain from discussing the ring unless you are here at the observatory, or in another private location. Luna and I will be making a public announcement once we have more information on what this object is. As you can tell from the lack of answers to some of your questions tonight, we simply don't know enough about this object yet."

With the meeting ended, the group broke up. Twilight and her friends headed back to her room to setup some extra beds. Cadance and Shining decided to grab a late dinner. Only Celestia and Luna remained.

"Sister, there is one thing about this ring that has been bothering me for the last day."

"Just one thing Luna?" Celestia said with a smile.

"Alright, there are many things that I am curious about, but this stands out above the rest. If I were to bring an asteroid of a similar size to the ring up to the speed that ring is currently moving, the magical field around it would be enormous. Yet even as this ring draws closer and closer I sense no magic. The area the ring occupies is as devoid of magic as the space around it. How is it moving and how does it continue to slow down?

Celestia's great horn lit up, she reached out with her senses and focused on the ring as it flew through space. Luna was right, the ring was completely without magic.

"Maybe it moves by other means?"

"Perhaps, but what besides magic could be powerful enough to move it at such great speed?" Luna asked. "All the theoretical methods of space flight that I have read about used either magic, or rockets, or some combination of both, and no rocket could be as efficient as magical propulsion. Not to mention, we can see the ring right now. There are no rockets visible."

"I do not know. Perhaps it is some technology we have yet to discover, or even dream of. Or perhaps it is using a magical means that is undetectable to even us."

The two sisters sat together and kept watch over the ring for some time. Eventually Celestia bid Luna good night and decided to get some sleep.

The next day the ponies met up again. There wasn't much left to do in preparation for the arrival of the ring. Celestia had already written the start of the public announcement, but she was waiting for more information before she could complete it. Luna decided to get some rest since she had been awake for days. Twilight took Spike and the girls on a tour of Canterlot. Shining Armor visited some old friends in the guard with Cadance.

Canterlot may have been the capitol of Equestria, but Manehattan was the nation's commercial center. With almost 4 million ponies living within the city limits, it was by a large margin, Equestria's most populous city.

Swift Wing stared out the window of the train. This was his first time to the big city and he had never seen so many ponies in his life. He had no idea how he was supposed to find Arctic Skies.

"So, have any of you been here before?" he asked.

Crystal Star raised her hoof. "I have, I lived in the suburbs for a few years before joining the guard."

"I take it you know your way around?"

"Yes sir, or well I did, it's been a while."

Swift Wing gave the address given to him to Crystal Star.

"Do you know where this is?"

"I think so sir."

"Good, then you're on point."

The train pulled into the station and the group of guards disembarked. Crystal Star led the group as best she could. They left the station at a fast trot and hopped on a trolley to take them across town.

"Ok, I know it's in this neighborhood, but I don't know exactly where."

The squad spent the next 30 minutes searching without success. Finally, after getting directions from a local police pony, they were able to find Arctic Skies' home. The four guards trotted up to his door and knocked.

"Just a minute!" they heard somepony say from inside the house.

The door opened and they caught sight of an elderly unicorn. The swirling colors of his aurora borealis cutie mark stood out against his pure white coat. Only A few strands of hair still matched the vibrant blue of his eyes, the rest of the color in his mane and tail having long since dulled with age. There was a slight chip on the end of his horn, unusual since such injuries were easy to treat in this day and age. He matched the description provided by Celestia perfectly, but it was always prudent to verify identity. Swift Wing coughed to get the pony's attention.

"Good morning, are you Arctic Skies?" Swift Wing asked.

"I am, may I ask who you are?"

"My name is Swift Wing, my squad and I are here on orders to escort you to Canterlot."

"Canterlot? Who are these orders from?"

"Princess Celestia herself, she asked me to give you this," Swift Wing said, pulling a letter from his saddlebags and giving it to Arctic Skies. "It is for your eyes only."

Arctic Skies opened the letter and read it silently to himself.

"Hello Arctic Skies, it has been a long time since we last talked. I apologize for the abruptness of my request, but I find myself in need of your knowledge and expertise. I have sent an escort of guards to accompany you on your journey. The matter is quite urgent, but also sensitive. Of the group you travel with, only Swift Wing has knowledge of the matter. I ask that you keep the content of this letter confidential until I decide to go public with it.

Four nights ago Luna discovered an object of unknown origin at the edge of the solar system. This object appears to be a course to, or close to Equus. It will reach the planet on Tuesday, which should be the day you receive this letter, sometime in the early afternoon.
Neither Luna nor I have ever sensed any object before quite like this one. It moves with great speed across the heavens, yet it's course changes as it approaches. A mystery like this warranted further investigation, and so we kept it under careful study. We can now confirm that it is, in fact, slowing down. Luna devised a spell to give us a visual image of the object. It appears to be a great ring, 7 miles in diameter. It is clearly artificial in nature, and moves through space by no apparent magical or technological means.

Please join us in Canterlot as quickly as possible, so we can discuss this further,

- Princess Celestia"

"Is this a joke?"

Swift Wing hadn't seen the contents of the letter, but he could guess.

"No sir," he said.

Arctic Skies lit his horn and the letter caught on fire, seconds later, it was nothing but ash.

"Give me an hour to pack some things and I'll be ready to go."

Commander Viettar was less than pleased. Of all the ships Central Command could have sent, it had to be the Jassarie. First off, it was a Ravager class. That bucket of bolts has been obsolete 150 years ago. Secondly, this particular ship was run by the most pompous ass in the fleet, Captain Thrux.

"Yes Captain, I am aware you have been waiting for 24 hours, but the gateship just now has sent the full report. We haven't had the time to process it yet, nor to put together a plan of entry. We don't even have a language translation yet, the gate barely sent enough data to start a translation matrix. Regulations state that there will be no ship will enter a system until preparations are complete. I know you outrank me, but as the commander of this system I have the final say in matters of gate travel. I will not permit passage of your ship until protocol has been followed."

"We shall see about that Commander Viettar."

The communication ended without warning. Viettar stood up and started pacing back and forth across his office. He pulled up the report from the gateship.

Summary of System 29537:

Star:

• 1 Class G star

Planets:

• 4 gas giants

• 1 ice giant

• 8 rocky planets

• Major asteroid belt detected, high in raw materials.

• 1 planet is capable of supporting life.

• 1 planet has a indigenous population

• Class III Civilization

• System recommendation: Unknown

The report from the gateship was confusing. The ship had reported back a class 3 civilization. That meant pre-space travel and no detectable nuclear power.

Long range scans showed at least 100 million life forms on the plant. This could easily solve the workforce problems this section of the Empire was suffering from. With a habitable planet he could move his command post from the beat-up old station it currently resided on to planet side. However there was missing information.

Oddly, the report had given an unknown status for the system recommendation. There was only supposed to be three possible selections. Absorption, avoid, or ignore. In addition the system map was completely missing from the report. The section that it was supposed to be in was completely blank. They had only a count and basic information on the planets.

At first the he suspected a problem with the gateships sensors. Many of the gateships had been built hundreds of years ago. They were quite outdated at this point. None of his techs however, could figure out what kind of malfunction could occur that would allow the gateship to detect planetary bodies, but not create a system map. The best they could think of was some unknown bug in the mapping code. The same thing went for the system recommendation. They were trying to dig up the revision of the software that had been installed on the ship, but it was written over 250 years ago, making it difficult to retrieve.

They didn't even have a map of the planet the ring was orbiting. Without it, the Jassarie was going to have to map the planet when it arrived. Normally he'd send a mapping probe there were none in the system and Thrux was refusing to wait. He didn't know how Thrux was going to plan an absorption incursion properly without one.

Based on the transmissions, the planet had at least 3 different languages in common use, but cross referencing this with the life scans showed that those languages were being used by entirely different species. This would be the first time a planet was discovered multiple forms of intelligent life.

Viettar looked at the clock. The gateship was scheduled to arrive in 2 hours. He had that long to go through the rest of the report and figure out what to do with Thrux.

Chapter 5
View Online

Into the Black

Chapter 5

Swift Wing helped Arctic Skies haul his luggage up onto the platform. He and the rest of the squad waited patiently for the train to Canterlot to arrive. He glanced at a large clock hanging over the platform, it read 12:30. The train was due to depart at 1:00 PM so it should be arriving at any moment. Swift Wing was looking forward to getting back to Canterlot, Manehattan was interesting but a bit large for his tastes. With any luck he'd be be able to return to Vanhoover after finishing up his current mission. Then again, with all that was happening he suspected he might have to stick around the Capital for a while.

Arctic Skies had not attempted to talk to him about the contents of the letter and for that he was thankful. In fact, the older stallion hadn't said much of anything. Instead he sat there, deep in thought.

He looked over at the large clock next to the train schedule. Based on what Celestia had told him, the ring would have arrived by now. The station radio was playing music from a local channel, wasn't his favorite type, but he kept an ear focused on it. Every time there was a break in the music, he thought it was Celestia, switching over to emergency broadcast to make her announcement of the ring. Each time though, the next song started playing seconds later.

Luna wrote some figures down on the paper in front of her. The ring had arrived. As she had guessed it did not land, instead it had taken up orbit around the planet. Had it not been day time, she suspected the ring would have already been noticed by one of the other major observatories scattered across Equestria. In fact it was close enough that even smaller privately owned telescopes could certainly see something.

All four princesses, the rest of the elements, Shining Armor and Spike sat quietly watching the projection from Luna's spell. Even Rainbow Dash, who must have been bored out of her skull by now, didn't move a feather.

The ring was close enough now that the view from the spell was perfectly clear. In fact, Twilight had come up with some modifications and now Luna was able to pan the image around the ring. The surface of the ring appeared to be made of metal, and it was extremely smooth. In fact, as far as Luna could tell, it was one solid piece. There were no visible markings, no fasteners of any kind, nothing. She still had quite a bit to go though, and she hadn't even looked at the inner portion of the ring.

The view screen showed a very smug looking Captain Thrux. Viettar knew this he would not like this conversation.

"Commander Viettar, I have just transmitted orders from Central Command. You will activate the gate. I will be moving my ship to the System 29537 in 5 minutes," Thrux said.

Viettar looked over to his command console and confirmed the orders.

"Yes sir," he said with a sigh.

Thrux cut off the communication without another word.

His techs had managed to dig up the code that the ring was using. After carefully going over the code the techs determined that there was indeed a bug. If the ring was unable to properly determine any planets orbit, it would throw an error. The orbit for that planet would be left off the map, but a note was supposed to be made detailing the error. As long as at least one body had a proper orbit, the map would display and properly show details about any errors. Unfortunately the code wasn't designed to handle a situation where no orbits could be determined. That unlikely problem hadn't been handled correctly and instead of returning details of the error, the system was retuning nothing.

That was also the reason for the unknown recommendation. Recommendations were based on proper returns from all report sections. When the system map returned nothing, the recommendation subroutine didn't exited with an unknown value. The strange thing was, the only way the system map would be completely blank was if none of the orbits could be mapped properly. Why that would happen was anyone's guess.

Viettar let out a grim laugh. Maybe there was an undetected black hole in the system. A small part of him hoped that Thrux flew right into it.

Viettar hit the comm button on his desk.

"This is Commander Viettar to Subcommander Korthack. The Jassarie has permission for gate travel to system 29537. Inform Commander Thrux he may get underway."

"Captain Thrux, we have just received permission for gate travel."

"Excellent, take us in ensign."

The Jassarie's sublight engines engaged and it entered the ring. There was a flash of light and the ship exited.

"We have now arrived in System 29537."

Thrux looked across the bridge at the view screen. It was centered on the planet the ring was currently circling. At least one major city was visible, but much of the planet's surface was green forests or yellow plains.

"Set a high orbit above that planet, drop communication probes across all major land masses."

He turned to Lieutenant Cikrak, the ship's science officer.

"Start mapping the planet, then map the system, I want to know exactly what the Empire has just acquired."

The Jassarie dropped down into a lower orbit and started deploying comm probes. Comm probes were dropped from a ship directly into a decaying orbit. They would last about 72 hours before they burned up in the atmosphere. This was plenty of time to start deploying more permanent communication satellites.

The comm probes were designed to do 3 things. First they would pick up and relay any local communications that were too weak to make it out of the atmosphere. This would give the Jassarie additional data, most of which would be used towards enhancing the translation software to better handle local languages, something in this case that was sorely needed, but it would also start building databases on those native life forms.

Much information could be gathered from these transmissions. Local customs, religious data, entertainment. On more advanced worlds, comm probes would attempt to gain access to any computer networks that it could in efforts to enhance the data collection.
Second, the comm probes were equipped with powerful optical sensors that could work in conjunction with other comm probes. This allowed the Chk'rain to get visual information on the local inhabitants without landing on the planet itself. Lastly, the comm probes were equipped with powerful transmitters, this would allow the Thrux to transmit a message to the entire planet at once.
Thrux leaned back in his chair, now all he had to do was wait.

Rainbow Dash was beyond bored. She was half considering taking a nap but if something did happen she didn't want to miss it. Suddenly there was a flash of light in the center of the ring. Before she could figure out what had happened an object started coming out of the ring. She gave a quick shout, alerting everypony else.

Luna wasn't sure what to make of this new object. It was quite large, at little over a mile long, and maybe a quarter of a mile in diameter. She supposed it must be the gate builders version of a ship, though instead of sailing the seas, it traversed the stars. It was somewhat cylindrical, except the bottom part was flatter and the top was curved. It had a large number of protrusions on the top and there were a great number of metal spikes on the front pointed in a forward direction. Running along the sides of the object where what looked like massive, but sleek turrets, though judging from the size of the ship these turrets were as large as an Equestrian frigate.

The ship started to move towards Equus. Luna adjusted the field of view provided by the Deep Space Imaging Spell, so she could watch both the ship and the ring at the same time.

"Twilight, prepare to transmit our pre-recorded greeting. Send it in Equestrian, if we receive a reply, we can test the translations spells and see if any of them give us a meaningful translation. From there we can modify the radio translation spell to send an appropriate response."

Twilight walked over to the transmitter Luna had setup and got to work. Meanwhile the ship had started a low orbit of the planet. Every once in a while there was a small flash of light that came from the ship. Luna zoomed in to get a closer look. For a few minutes nothing happened, but then a small round object shot out of the ship. Luna wasn't sure what they were, but judging from the number of flashes she had seen coming from the vessel, there were now dozens of these things in various orbits around Equus.

"I'm ready with to transmit," Twilight said

"You may start the transmission," Celestia said.

Once the comm probes had started dropping the amount of data on the planet below exploded. Thrux was skimming through that data while waiting for the ship to complete its orbit. The planet itself seemed to be about 65% water. It had 3 major landmasses and a number of large islands. The largest of the 3 landmasses also contained the highest population. The biggest city they had yet spotted was on the northeastern shore of that continent. Visual data showed that the native live forms on that continent were some form of colorful quadrupeds.

This is where the first bit of confusion came in. All other intelligent races the Chk'rain had encounter had some form of grasping appendage. The Chk'rain had claws, The L'raxians had talons, the Thrull had tentacles, The Heliosians had hands, the list went on. This species appeared to have hooves. How they built anything, Thrux did not know.

The next bit of confusion came as he was browsing images of these quadrupeds. So far, three different types of quadruped had been found in the database. . One type was plain old quadruped, the second type had a horn, and the third type had wings. The problem with the wings was that they were much too small to possibly support a life form of that size. He double checked the planet data. Gravity was 1.3 of standard. Even on his lower gravity of his home world there was no way these things should be able to fly. Yet, he had a image of one of them hovering sitting right in front of him.

"Sir, I've been going through the data we've gathered and it looks like there was a transmission sent out from the center of the largest continent directed at us."

"At us? Are you sure? How would these primitives even know we're here?" Thrux said, a confused look on his face.

"Yes sir, looks like it was sent out about half an hour ago. We still only have enough data for a partial translation. The computers have been busy working on enhancing the translation matrix, but it is going to take more time. It is, as all the other transmissions we've picked up have been, audio only."

"Let's hear it then."

To the builders of the very large ring, we to you. We hope you can message and are able to it. As the rulers of the of we wish to welcome you to the planet of . We send this in hopes that we may . We detected your ring as it entered our , needless to say, it came as a great to finally know that we are not alone in the When you this message, please reply on the same . We will be monitoring it and have been working on a number of translation in order to communications. We look forward to your reply.

Luna, Princess of the Night.

Celestia, Princess of the Day.

"That's the entirety of the message sir, it looks like it was broadcast on repeat. It's still going."

Thrux did not look amused. He walked over to the comm officer and glared at him.

"If this is your idea of a joke, it is not particularly funny."

The comm officer looked very nervous.

"No sir, that's the message, it's still transmitting now, I can bring it up live if you like."

"First off, working on translation ... something?" Secondly, whoever this Luna and Celestia are, they just claimed that they detected the gateship as it entered the system. That is impossible, a class 3 civilization could not possibly have spotted the gateship that far out. Even if they had one of their primitive telescopes pointed right at it. Do we have confirmation of the class 3 rating?" Thrux said.

"At a best guess, they said they were working on translation software. Tech estimates show that there is a likelihood of this group having primitive computers, it's possible they have written software to aid in translating other languages, though I doubt it would be effective."

"As for the classification, I just checked that myself, the computer confirms it sir. We haven't detected any advanced sensors sweeps of any kind, we haven't even detected anything as primitive as lidar or radar. Radio frequencies are aligned with the computers estimates on tech level. They are using electricity but it appears to be from a combination of coal and hydroelectric power. Definitely no nuclear, nor have we detected any oil or solar power in use."

"Cross reference those names, Celestia and Luna, the rest of the database on this planet, I want to see if we have any other information," Thrux said.

"I'll get right on it sir."

Thrux sat back down in his chair.

"Move the ship into position over that large city we identified earlier, it's time we sent our reply."

As the ship rounded the planet, the great city came into view on Thrux's screen.

"You may fire when ready."

"Have we received any reply from the ring or the ship?" Celestia asked.

"Nothing yet," Twilight answered.

"The ship is currently on the other side of Equus, our transmitter will not reach that far, nor would we be able to receive a reply. We will have to wait for them to circle around again. Based on its orbital rate when it exited view before, it should be coming up from the northeast in a few moments."

Luna continued her study of the ring. She had just finished with the outer portion and was ready to work on the inner portion. Once that was complete, she would adjust DSIS and make a visual inspection of the ship.

Celestia was waiting patiently for Luna to finish looking at the ring. She was talking quietly with Cadance when she was momentarily overcome with wave of sickness. Something was wrong, something was horribly wrong but the feeling disappeared so quickly that she didn't know what it was.

Suddenly the radio crackled to life and a voice started to talk.

"We are the Chk'rain, this system now belongs to us, your planet belongs to us. Your civilization belongs to us. You belong to us. Resist and your cities will burn, as the great one now does. Your population will be distributed amongst the stars. There, your very lives will fuel our empire as we..."

Luna shut off the transmission, a dark expression covered her face.

"It appears that they do not come in peace."

The train had left the station about half an hour ago. Arctic Skies made his way to the dining car near the front of the train. Swift Wing followed him while the rest of his squad remained in the passenger car.

"It's going to be an interesting discussion with the Princesses" Arctic Skies said, looking at Swift Wing.

"Sir..."

"Yes I know, I won't mention any specifics, the letter did indicate that, but this whole thing is terribly exciting. It is hard to say nothing. "
"I understand, but let's change the topic," Swift Wing said.

Arctic Skies sighed.

"Very well," he said, turning to look out the window.

Arctic turned back and looked towards Manehattan. This was the first time he had left in over 10 years. Still, it would be good to visit Canterlot again. While he was turning back around a flicker of movement up in the sky caught his eye. He turned and looked up, expecting to see a pegasus doing some cloud work or just flying by. Instead he saw what looked like a shooting star.

"Swift Wing, do you see that?" he said, pointing at the object.

Swift Wing didn't have a great view of the window from his seat so he leaned over as best he could and looked up.

"Yeah, what is it?"

"I'm not sure, let me see if I can get a closer look."

Arctic's horn glowed as he cast the far sight spell he used so many times in his astronomy class. Looking skywards, he saw what a long metal cylinder streaking towards Manehattan.

"I don't mean to switch back to our previous topic, but whatever that is, it doesn't appear to be pony made," Arctic said as he continued to track the object.

It looked like it would reach Manhattan moments. If only he could get a better... FLASH. His entire field of vision was lit up by a second sun.

Then all he could feel was burning. He couldn't see anything but he could hear screams of pain as the thermal effects of the blast ignited the walls of the train and scorched the flesh of anypony unlucky enough to have line of sight on the blast point.

It was hot, so very hot, Arctic Skies could smell smoke and hear some pony coughing, but he still couldn't see anything. A loud rumble overpowered every other sound around him. The windows of the car exploded inward, glass shards shredded his coat, cutting deeply into the skin below. The train car was sent tumbling and Arctic was toss from his seat and slammed violently into the splintered remains of the ceiling. His head collided with something hard and he lost consciousness.

Swift Wing wasn't sure what happened. He was talking to Arctic Skies one second and the next half the train was on fire or smoldering. Even he hadn't escaped unscathed, patches of his coat had been seared off where neither the wall next to him, nor his armor had provided cover. He started to get up to check on the rest of the car when everything exploded. The windows, chunks of the sides of the car, everything. At the same instant as everything had started exploding, the dining car went airborne. It flew right off the track, rolled over twice and landed on its side. Armor or not, that had hurt. Bits of glass and splitters of wood had dug into his parts of his body that weren't covered by the armor. He stretched out his wings, fearing they may have been damaged, but by sheer luck, it felt as they were ok.

He stood up shakily and looked around. He didn't see anypony else up yet, he turned and walked over to Arctic Skies. He immediately turned and vomited onto the floor. The unicorn's face was covered in severe burns. He even thought he saw a bit of skull showing in one partially charred area. Blood was pooling floor, a large shard of wood jutting from Arctic's barrel.

Arctic groaned, his eyes fluttered and he lifted his head as best he could.

"By Celestia's mercy, you're alive!" he heard Swift Wing say. "I'll see if I can find help."

Arctic looked at himself, then up at Swift Wing.

"I don't think there's time for that son," he said coughing up blood. "You need to find out what happened. If that came from the ring..."

"If I go now, you will die."

"I don't think you can change that now, one way or another. Find out what happened, inform the Princesses."
Swift Wing hesitated, but then turned around and flew out of the now open side of the car. He flew towards the passenger car, where the rest of his squad had been. It was upside-down and on fire.

"Rocky Road! Crystal Star! Stone Hide!" he shouted getting as close to the blaze as he could.

He looked up into the sky, if he could find a cloud he could get some rain on the fire, try to put it out. The only thing he could see was smoke and ash. Green wood didn't burn as easily, so most of the trees were simply charred, but the underbrush had caught and there were small fires all around him.

He heard a noise coming from the blazing car. It sounded like movement. Without so much as a thought for his own safety, he charged up to the train, spinning around he bucked open a window. He could make out a faint glow in the smoke. The heat was almost unbearable and his lungs burnt.

"Hello! Is anyone alive?" he said.

"Over here!"

It was Crystal Star's voice.

He made his way towards the sound. He found her trapped, fire on one side, wreckage on another and a large beam coving her only escape route. She was holding the fire at bay with a force field, but she looked to be in a terrible state.

"Thank Celestia, you're alive!" she said as Swift Wing came into view. "Help me with this beam, I'm using all my magic to keep the field up, I can't levitate it out of the way."

Swift Wing tried to kick the beam but it only moved slightly. He braced himself against a pile of rubble and pushed as hard as he could with his rear hooves. Slowly it started to shift until it suddenly gave way and fell down completely. Crystal Star jumped forward and the two ponies exited the train as fast as they could.

"What in Tartarus happened?" Crystal asked.

"Are you OK?" Swift Wing asked.

"I think so... but Rocky and Stone Hide... they're dead. Crushed by the other half of that beam," she said, tears welling up in her eyes. "Rocky, I think he died instantly, but Stone Hide, he was trapped under it. He couldn't move. He was burning and screaming. I tried to help, but then the beam shifted and I was trapped too. I couldn't move it... I tried... I tried..."

Crystal collapsed onto the ground. She couldn't hold back the sobs. Swift Wing wrapped his wing around her.

"You did your best," he said. "Now I need you to be strong. I'll be right back."

Swift Wing quickly went back into the dining car to check on Arctic Skies. The old pony was no longer breathing. With a sad look on his face, he exited the train.

"I need to fly up and see if I can figure out what happened. Stay right here," he said to Crystal.

Crystal nodded and Swift Wing took to the sky. He flew up and up, the higher he flew, the more destruction he saw. But he still couldn't see Manehattan's skyline. The only thing he could tell was that the smoke was worse in the direction of the city. He thought he could make out flames, but he wasn't sure.

He flew back down to Crystal.

"We need to find the engine, it has a radio on board. Manehattan was attacked," he said.

"By who?" she asked.

"I do not know for sure, but I will tell you what I do know. And in doing so, I will be disobeying a direct order from the Princesses."

Swift Wing spent the next few minutes giving Crystal a quick overview of what he knew.

"If this was any other situation, I'd think you were playing practical joke on me. Even now, I have my doubts. You are suggesting that we were just attacked by space aliens?"

"I don't know for sure, all I know is Arctic Skies said he saw something that looked, well, alien, streaking across the sky towards the city," he said. "I don't know how or why, but the timing makes it my best guess."

The two ponies marched forward searching the wreckage until they came upon the engine.

"They usually have a radio for emergencies, let's hope it still works."

The engine was in much better shape than the rest of the cars. It's greater mass had kept it on the rails. It was also mostly made of metal, so it wasn't actively burning. Swift Wing forced the door open just to discover the engineer. She hadn't made it, horrible burns covered her body.

"Coal dust probably went up," Crystal said.

They searched the cabin and found the emergency radio. Thankfully it had been in a metal box and appeared to still be in working order.

"You know how to use this thing?" Swift Wing asked.

"Yep, dunno how much range we'll get with it though," she said. "Let's see if we can get anypony."

She clicked the radio on, made some adjustments to the dials and picked up the mic.

"This is PFC Crystal Star of the Royal Guard, is anypony picking up this transmission? Over."

She waited a minute and repeated the message. After several tries and no response she looked over at Swift Wing.

"There's a spell I can try to use, it will boost the range, but I don't know how long the radio will hold up, the more I boost the range, the faster the internals are going to burn out."

"Do it."

Her horn lit up and she transmitted the message again. It took 3 more tries and 3 more boost before they finally got a response.

"PFC Crystal Star, this is ranger station 13. I'm reading you, can you repeat your message? Over."

Swift Wing grabbed the mic.

"It's a 1 way so remember to say "Over" when you are done, " Crystal said.

Swift wing nodded and then started to transmit.

"This is Lieutenant Swift Wing, PFC's immediate superior. I need you to relay an urgent message to Canterlot as quickly as possible. Manehattan has been attacked. I repeat Manehattan has been attacked. Over."
"

"This better not be a joke, or you're gonna be in a heap of trouble Lieutenant Swift Wing. Lucky for you, we heard a mighty rumble about 15 minutes ago, thought it was thunder, but nothing's scheduled for today. What's your position Lieutenant? Over."

"We were on a train heading to Canterlot. We're on the tracks, about 15 miles out of the city. The train has been disabled only 2 survivors. Over."

"We're about 200 miles out on that same line. We've already got one pony flying your way to investigate the noise. We'll dispatch a pegasus rescue crew. They should be there in about an hour. Over."

"Will you relay the message? Over."

"That we will, but let me stress again, this better not be a joke. Over."

"Thank you. Be advised, PFC Crystal is boosting magically boosting this radio's transmit, which may cause a burn out. If it does, we'll lose contact. We are going to follow the rails and head in your direction. Over."

"Thanks for the info. I'm going to get that rescue flight in the air. Over and out."

The room was filled with the sound of bickering ponies. Dash had already volunteered to fight, Twilight was trying to explain that Dash had no way to get to the aliens. Pinkie Pie was sitting quietly in the back of the room, her mane drooping over one eye, with none of its normal puffiness. Fluttershy was doing her best to comfort Pinkie, while Rarity, Applejack, Cadance and Shining Armor argued over what to do next. Spike was watching, unsure of what to do. Celestia walked over to Luna.

"We need to make an announcement, and then we need to prepare."

Luna and Celestia were the only two ponies in the entire kingdom with any real experience in war. Equestria hadn't seen anything larger than a border skirmish in the last 1000 years.

"We can use the emergency broadcast system," Celestia added. "Twilight and Cadance, follow me. Luna, can you and Shining alert the guard? The rest of you, wait for us in the throne room."

Luna scrunched up her nose in confusion.

"What did they mean by "as the great one does now?" she asked.

There was a knock at the door. They could hear a pony shouting from outside the room.

"Princess, an urgent matter has arisen."

Celestia used her magic to open the door. A guard ran in, panting and drenched in sweat.

"Princess, I'm sorry to interrupt, but something strange is going on. There is a strange message coming over. Nopony at the garrison had any idea what was going on. At first we thought it was a joke, but it was being broadcast on every frequency, it completely cut off all other stations."

Luna turned the radio in the observatory back on. The transmission from the Chk'rain filled the room. She quickly scanned through all frequencies. On every channel, the message played, over and over.

"They must be overpowering all local transmitters," she said.

Celestia's horn lit up and she concentrated on the radio.

"There are hundreds of small objects transmitting this message across the planet," she announced.

"Sister, we need to stop this, we can't send out emergency messages until we stop their transmissions."

Celestia nodded her head. Her horn glowed and a transparent sphere of energy expanded outwards. It flew upwards at high speed until it came in contact with the closest comm probe. A magical web of energy surrounded the probe. The sphere expanded higher and higher, faster and faster until it covered all of Equestria. As it expanded more and more probes had their transmissions cut off.

"I have believe I have blocked the transmissions, Luna can you check the radio again?"

Luna switched to the station used by the Royal Guard. The Chk'rain transmission was no longer playing. She picked up the mic.

"Canterlot Garrison, this is Princess Luna, can you hear me?"

"We're reading you Princess."

"Mobilize the guard, have all officers report to throne room. Send two of the night guard to the Canterlot Emergency Broadcast tower I will meet them there."

"Yes ma'am."

"Tia, what about the ship?"

"Move it over Canterlot and hold it there. Then we can be sure it will be in range of our transmitters, when we send our reply."

"I will do so right after I've setup the emergency broadcast."

Luna disappeared as she teleported away.

Chapter 6
View Online

Into the Black

Chapter 6

Lieutenant Cikrak had served as the science officer aboard the Jassarie for the last 6 years. Before that he spent 10 years working in a more junior position aboard various ships. He had a great deal of experience and had seen a great many strange things, but he had never seen anything like this. Cikrak had been gathering data to compile a system map since almost the moment the Jassarie exited the gate.

The Jassarie's computers however, kept throwing errors at him. There was an automated system that was supposed to generate the system map. It scanned for planets, predict the orbit based on distance from the local star, and the planets detected mass, then measured any deviation from that orbit. Deviation was caused by other gravitational sources. This could be anything, other planets in the system, a secondary star, an undetected black hole. The computer would then use that info to find the source of the deviation. The problem was the computer was throwing out of bounds errors when measuring the detected deviation. None of the planets were where they should be.

The ring itself had similar issues when trying to compile a system map, which is why it wasn't included in the reports. He connected to the ring's computer and downloaded the raw data it had gathered. That gave him positional information for every detected body in the system for the last week. Cikrak then got to work, using the data from the ring to get raw orbit data. With that he was able to build a map. The results made no sense at all.

According to his data, everything in the system was orbiting the planet they now circled. Even the local star was orbiting this planet, and it was doing so at impossible speeds. The star's orbit around this planet had a circumference of approximately 1 billion kilometers. The star was completing that orbit every 24 hours. For it to do that meant it was moving at almost 4% of the speed of light.

"Captain Thrux, there is something seriously wrong with this system sir," Cikrak said.

Before the science officer could continue, the comm officer interrupted.

"Captain Thrux, there's something wrong with the comm probes sir."

"I'll get back to you in a minute Cikrak," Thrux said.

Thrux walked over to the comm officer.

"What is it?" he said.

"We've lost contact with them."

It wasn't unusual for a small number of the comm probes to fail prematurely, so Thrux wondered why he was being bothered over minor details.

"How many have failed?"

"All of them sir."

"Every probe has failed?" Thrux said, stunned.

"Well, that's the thing sir, they're all still in orbit, we can detect them, but they aren't transmitting anymore."

"Get me a visual on the nearest probe," Thrux said.

The image on the view screen shifted from the burning city below to one of the comm probes. A faint web of glowing yellow energy surrounded the probe.

"What is that?"

"I don't know sir, I didn't even know it was there before we switched to visual sensors. I'm not getting any readings on it at all."

"Well, find out! And start deploying some new probes, but cut the broadcast. Those beings down there should be able to transmit back, I want to get in communication with any remaining government they have. "

The ship shuddered violently as alarms started going off.

"Sir, the ship, it's being pulled off course!"

"WHAT?"

"I don't know, the ship is moving, but it's not us, I've got the engines at full, trying to compensate, but there's no effect."

"Look!" someone shouted.

The entire image on the view screen was glowing blue.

"Get me an external view of the ship."

The Jassarie was moving, but not under her own power. The entire ship was wrapped in a pale blue aurora. Thrux could see the visual distortion caused by the engines, as they strained to bring the ship back on course. The whole ship started shaking as the conn officer brought the engines to 110%.

"Captain, that effect is on visual sensors only, it isn't registering on any other sensors," Cikrak said, checking some readings at his station.

"I need more information than that Cikrak, something is moving my ship, I want to know what. Send a comm probe back through the gate, include all information you have discovered and our current status," Thrux said.

"And then, GET ME BACK CONTROL OF MY SHIP!"

Celestia arrived at the throne room to find the room filled with officers of the Canterlot Guard already assembled. She marched to the front of the room and began to explain the situation to the guard. She had just finished telling them about the ship exiting the ring when Luna arrived. She walked to the front of the room to address Celestia.

" I have moved the ship into position above Canterlot" Luna said.

"Have we received any new communications? Celestia asked.

"None that I am aware of. The emergency broadcast system is active. The message gives a quick explanation of what is going on and I've requested all local governments to check in with guard. When I left we had heard back from every major city save Manehattan. Most of the smaller towns hadn't yet responded."

A member of the Night Guard flew into the throne room at high speed. He landed directly in front of Princess Luna.

"Princess, we just received word from Lieutenant Swift Wing. Manehattan has been attacked. He was on a train about 10 miles out of the city. It was destroyed in the attack. Only he and Crystal Star survived. He doesn't know what attacked them, but whatever it was, it was big. The city appeared to be burning, but he couldn't get a clear line of sight."

Twilight gasped, most of the guard looked as shocked as she was. The last time there had been an attack on a major Equestrian city was when Nightmare Moon had battled Celestia just over a millennium ago.

"Shining and Cadance, I'm putting you two in command of the guard, mobilize the entire Canterlot division. Have them ready for combat and be prepared to receive civilian casualties," Luna ordered.

"I'll have them ready shortly," Shining Armor said. Cadance and Shining galloped away, with the rest of the officers following.
"What should we do?" Rainbow asked.

The rest of the Elements were standing beside her ready to assist.

"We do not yet know the details of the attack, but there are likely many wounded. We shall teleport the entire Canterlot garrison directly to Manehattan. The priority should be getting the civilians out of harm's way, you may assist with that," Luna said.

"We don't yet know how these beings operate, I will teleport to Manehattan first. Take Twilight and her friends to get the Elements of Harmony, we may need them. Then teleport the guard and the Elements to me," Celestia said.

She motioned to Luna to come closer.

"Luna, right before we received the first transmission, I was overcome with a feeling of wrongness that I cannot explain. It disappeared almost immediately, but now I have a feeling it is tied to the attack on Manehattan. Let me go first, I don't want to put any of my ponies in the way of unnecessary harm."

"Tia, it may be dangerous, we don't know what these Chk'rain are capable of," Luna said worryingly.

"I will be fine Luna."

Luna nodded her head in agreement. She rounded up Twilight and the rest of the girls headed off to retrieve the Elements of Harmony.

"What about me?" Spike asked.

Celestia looked down at the baby dragon. She reached down with one of her wings and gave him a hug.

"Spike, you are too young to go off into a battle, you must remain here."

"But I want to help."

"I know Spike, I know."

Celestia's horn glowed brightly and she vanished in a brilliant yellow flash.

Long range teleports could leave the caster disoriented and woozy. Celestia though, had thousands of years of practice. She wasn't phased in the slightest by the spell, however, she was immediately assaulted by a new feeling. She hadn't even opened her eyes and yet she knew what had happened.

Everypony knew that Celestia and Luna had been around a long time. What nopony apart from the two Princesses themselves knew was how long. Luna and Celestia were there at the beginning. It was then, nearly a million years ago that magic forced its way into the physical universe, transforming the desolate harsh world of Equus into a lush paradise teaming with life. The magical field permeated every living thing on the planet, uplifting the species that were most in tune with its energy.

It was on that day, the race of ponies began and it was on that day that Celestia and Luna received their cutie marks. Celestia had been studying the sun ever since. For a time, everything was peaceful, but raw magic reacted unpredictably with the physical universe. Entropy and magic combined and from it, chaos magic was born. A being of pure chaos energy came into existence and with his great power he ruled over Equus.

It wasn't until thousands of years later, through the effort of the first two alicorns, that the magic of harmony was born. It was with this power they were able to fight Chaos itself and win.

As Celestia's magic grew in strength, she learned about the physical universe, how it worked, what it's rules where and how magic could break those rules. She spent centuries studying the sun. She could reach out and touch it with her magic, feel it, sense how it worked. Celestia knew fusion better than Twilight knew books. She knew it's power, and its capabilities, and she knew that these Chk'rain monsters had turned it into a weapon.

She opened her eyes. Before her lay what was left of the great city of Manhattan. The 100 megaton blast had gutted everything. The skyscrapers were gone, not even their massive steel structures remained standing. Great fires raged from thermal effects of the blast. Even the suburbs, miles from the city's center were nothing but wreckage and rubble.

Celestia let out a primal scream as her coat ignited in a blaze of fire.

Luna had just retrieved the Elements of Harmony. She and the girls were rushing back to meet up with Shining Armor and the Canterlot Garrison. A massive wave of power hit Luna and she skidded to a halt. Luna felt it, she felt the pain and she felt the rage the instant Celestia had opened her eyes.

"What is it Luna?" Twilight asked.

"Something is wrong with Celestia. We need to go, NOW!" she shouted, the full effects of the Royal Canterlot Voice overpowering the rest of the group.

Before anypony could speak up, Luna was already casting the teleport spell.

Twilight grimaced, the rest of her friends doubled over in pain. She had some experience with long range teleports, but nothing like this.

Applejack stood up, the contents of her stomach lay on the ground next to her.

"What in the hay?"

The group of ponies were standing on a massive pile of rubble. The smell of smoke was in the air. Up above an intense light shined down upon them and they heard Luna shout out.

"Tia, you must stop this. I've been down this path before, it will only lead to ruin!" Luna said

"LOOK AROUND SISTER, SEE WHAT THEY HAVE DONE."

Twilight hardly recognized the voice. It sounded like Celestia but it was so full of hate and raw power that she almost didn't notice.

"I see it Tia, and they will answer for their crimes, but not like this."

Twilight looked around, as far as she could see was nothing but twisted steel, chunks of concrete and broke glass. Where could they... she gasped and she nearly threw up as a sick feeling overcame her. Manehattan, they were in Manehattan. Or what was left of it.

"THEY... WILL... BURN!!!!"

The intense light grew brighter still. Twilight could feel the heat in the air. Her friends stood behind her, watching the sky.
Luna knew that simple words were not going to cut it. She had but one chance before having to resort to the Elements. She teleported above Celestia and accelerated into her sister at a speed that would impress Rainbow Dash. Celestia was forced downward by the blow and landed next to the group of ponies.

Twilight almost couldn't even look at Celestia she was glowing so bright it hurt her eyes. What she could see terrified her. Where Nightmare Moon was a creature of darkness, this twisted version of Celestia shined brighter than the sun. Her flowing mane was gone, her head wreathed in flames shooting off in all directions, with a great fiery tale to match. Her eyes were pure white and glowed brightly, the pupils not visible in the light.

Celestia stood up. With every step she took towards the ponies, the intense heat grew. Metal girders bubbled and dripped, concrete cracked and wood ignited.

"YOU DARE ATTACK ME?"

"Tia please, listen. Don't make the same mistakes I have made. Calm yourself, for your sake, for my sake, for the sake of Twilight and her friends," Luna said, pointing towards the group of ponies that watching the arguing titans.

There was a noticeable drop in the heat pouring out of Celestia when she heard Twilight's name. Luna took this opportunity and rushed to her sister. She wrapped a wing around Celestia and nuzzled her.

"She is here Tia."

Luna motioned to Twilight. Twilight hesitantly took a few steps forward, then ran to Celestia. Though diminished, the heat was still almost unbearable, but Twilight persisted. She reached the great alicorn and joined in on Luna's embrace. One by one the rest of the Elements ran forward as well.

Slowly the heat died down, the brilliant light reduced to a flickering glow. Celestia's fiery mane slowly faded away until her normal prismatic mane returned flowing in a wind nopony else could feel. The angry expression on Celestia's face flickered and broke as she started sobbing.

"You were too late," she whispered, tears welling up in her eyes. "Too late."

Up above the planet twisted chunks of metal collided into each other as they flew off into the deep dark of space. The field of debris slowly spread out above the planet, some bits fell into the atmosphere burning up on re-entry. A small escape pod's engines flared up as it limped towards the gate.

It had been a month since the destruction of Manehattan. Every single pony in the guard was working day and night, combing the wreckage for survivors. It wasn't enough. Aid came from the griffon empire, the zebra nation and even the dragons. Thousands of pegasus ponies, both guard and civilian, took to the skies, bringing in clouds from all directions. A great storm was prepared, the fires were put out one by one.

The number of surviving ponies found in the rubble dropped to almost nothing the closer and closer workforces got to the center of the city. Even a few miles away from the center of the city, the casualty rate was nearly 100%. The death toll was in the millions. More lives had been lost in that one attack than every war in the recorded history of Equestria combined.

A national holiday was declared in remembrance of the city, and the ponies that lost their lives in the attack. It took longer than usual, but the ponies did what ponies always do, they began to rebuild.

Luna and Celestia pulled the wreckage of the Jassarie from orbit. When Celestia has first seen the fate of Manehattan, rage and anger overtook her, detecting the position of the ship by finding Luna's magic that was holding it in place, she shot a massive beam of heat upwards at the spaceship.

Thrux had raised the shields when the Jassarie was first pulled off course. The beam impacted on those shields, they held just long enough to absorb the majority of the beam, before they failed entirely. Normally transparent, the massive amount of fire caused the shields turn black as they started to crack. The armor under the point of impact heated up till it was glowing cherry red. The shields collapsed entirely and the remnants of the beam turned the armored skin of the ship into slag.

The lights on the bridge flicked in an out, alarm bells rang and loud whirring was heard as the fans in the ventilation system spun up to maximum speed, struggling to clear the air of smoke. There was at least one major hull breach and dozens of microfractures. Atmosphere was leaking into space.

"Sir that came from the planet!"

His ship, still trapped in place, Thrux did the only thing he could think of.

"This is the Captain speaking, all crew abandon ship, I repeat all crew abandon ship!"

Of the hundreds of escape pods, only one made it off the ship, before Celestia, annoyed that her first attack had left the ship in once piece, wrenched it out from Luna's grasp and started to squeeze. Encased in a bright yellow glow, the hull of the ship, started to creak and groan. On the planet below, a magical demi-god, driven by immense hatred and loss, reached out with but a small fraction of the energy she used to move the sun. Already weakened by the initial assault, the hull of the Jassarie cracked like an egg, seconds later it shattered into pieces.

Luna's quick response to Celestia's rage was enough of a distraction, that Celestia didn't notice the one escape pod that had made it off the ship. It drifted over to the gate on minimal power and then exited the system.

Most of what they pulled down was twisted and ruined, but some small parts were intact. Some sections, still being run by the emergency batteries that kicked over when main power went out, still flickered with the spark of electronic life. Nothing biological however, had survived. The Chk'rain were no more immune to hard vacuum than any other species in the galaxy.

Lead by Celestia, with Twilight at her side, the ponies gathered their most intelligent of their number and began to study the technology that powered the ship. The ponies were years, maybe decades away from being able to understand even the most simple of systems, but they had to start somewhere.

Not knowing what to do with the gate, Luna and Celestia had left it in place. They devised a spell, which would alert them to any movement or detectable change in the gate. That way if anything else came through, they would have warning.

A variation of this spell was cast around the entire planet of Equus. It would warn Celestia, Luna and Twilight of any further attack on the planet. The spell would highlight any inbound object and hopefully give them time to deflect it into space.

Author's Note

If you've made it this far...

Kilometers? But I've been using miles so far. What crazy nonsense is this.

Not a huge fan of made up units but I wanted to use something different for the Chk'rain because they're alien. Using metric for the aliens gave me a way to use different units but still have the units be understandable by readers.

Chapter 7
View Online

Into the Black

Chapter 7

2 hours after the destruction of the Jassarie...

When the escape pod exited the gate, inbound from System 29537, Commander Viettar knew something had gone horribly wrong. He marched down to the docking port and waited for the hatch to open.

15 crewman exited the pod. 15 out of a crew of nearly 8000. Captain Thrux was not among them. The only bridge officer that had survived Celestia's retribution was the science officer, Cikrak. He ran out of the pod and hurried over to Commander Viettar.

"What happened to the Jassarie?" Viettar asked.

"Gone. You need to lock out gate activations from 29537 right now," Cikrak said running past Viettar and heading toward the lift to the command deck.

"What happened?" Viettar asked as he followed Cikrak onto the lift.

"I can't explain it," Cikrak said. "That doesn't mean I won't try, but I don't think I can. Did you get our comm probe that we sent earlier?"

"We did, but we didn't know what to make of it. The orbital information you sent us is impossible."

The two officers arrived on the command deck. Viettar gave the order to disable inbound gate connections from System 29537.

"Let's take this into my office," Viettar said.

Cikrak followed Viettar into his office and began to explain what had happened. By the end of Cikrak's tale Viettar was shaking his head in
disbelief.

"The gate only registered a class 3 civilization and you are telling me they somehow managed to destroy a Ravager class starship while it's shields were up? The evidence is undeniable, but I still find it impossible to believe."

"Sir, I don't know how they did it, first we got hit with a beam of energy. That actually did register on the scanners. It was as far as we could tell, purely thermal energy, except it was focused, like a laser. None of the atmosphere around the beam had any measureable shift in temperature. Unlike a laser, the beam was visible, also it was quick but not traveling at anywhere near light speed," Cikrak said.

"But that didn't destroy the ship, just disabled it?" Viettar asked.

"No sir, we took heavy damage but the ship was still intact. If we hadn't been held in place we could have left."

"Tell me more about that," Viettar said.

"Well, it was shortly after we nuked one of their cities. A pale blue glow enveloped the ship it was as if we were being dragged across space. We ended up fixed in place over one of their larger cities, and when I say fixed, I mean fixed. We were too low to be in geostationary orbit, yet our position was dead stationary above that city."

"Did you detect anything at all during this time?"

"Other than the glow, no sir. Sensors showed absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. "

"Ok Cikrak, I'm going to make up a full report based on the information you sent us earlier and what you've provided now. I want every survivor to go over this report and look for any discrepancies before I send it out. Then all 15 of you will sign off on it, I don't even want to think what Central Command is going to say about this."

"Yes sir," Cikrak replied.

"You are dismissed."

Commander Viettar got to work compiling the report, it took him two weeks to get the entire thing completed. It went through several revisions and was the single longest report Viettar had ever worked on. In the end he had included reports from all 15 of the survivors directly attached to his. Ordinary policy was for the system commander to summarize crew reports that were being sent up the chain, but in this case he felt including the entire report was justified. Viettar was just finishing the final revision as Korthack walked in to his office.

"We just received a message from Central Command, looking for an update System 29537, they want to know they haven't heard back from Captain Thrux and how soon they can expect new workers for the Empire."

Viettar hung his head and shook it slowly.

"I'm just about to send it, but I dread the results. Once they read this, we'll be lucky to keep our lives Subcommander."

Viettar looked back to his computer and saved the final notes he had made. Then he hit the uploaded the report into a comm probe and sent it through the gate. It would take at least a week to make it back to Central Command's nearest outpost. He had that long to live anyway.

One month turned into two, then three than four. Even for a base this far out, to have heard nothing in so long, was an unusual thing. Viettar had heard nothing back from Central Command. He sent numerous inquiries, but nothing came back at all. He tried to contact friends who worked in Central Command, but again, no responses. It was as if his communications weren't even going through. Finally towards the end of the 8th month, nearly enough time for a message to make it half way back to the home world of Vi'Macs Prime, a comm probe from Central Command exited the gate. It had a message for him, just two words.

"Stand by"

Another two months passed with no additional updates. Viettar was standing on the command deck getting status updates from his men when the station received the signal for gate activation. He gave the order to bring the gate up on the view screen.

A massive ship exited the gate. The Jassarie was a Ravager class, 2 kilometers long and almost half a kilometer in diameter. It was an older ship design dwarfed by modern miracles of engineering. The Tck'Wrath, a Desolator class Titan exiting the gate was 20 kilometers long and 6 kilometers in diameter. There was only 5 of these ships in the entire Chk'rain fleet, and this was the only one not commanded by an admiral.

It's massive bays held 125 bombers and an equal number of space fighters. It even carried with it 2 destroyer escorts, one attached to the front and one to the back which would separate from the ship in times of combat to provide screening.

Not that a Desolator needed screening. It was designed to take on fleets and win. The secondary weapons on a Desolator out powered the primary 10 terawatt lasers of the Jassarie by a factor of 10. And there was 20 of them. The main guns were made up of 3x3 batteries of 15 petawatt lasers. A combination of 100 point defense lasers and 150 of the smaller point defense railguns provided overlapping anti fighter coverage from every possible angle of attack.

Imperial class V shield emitters provided protection to shrug off multiple, simultaneous hits from the main guns of any other class of ship in the fleet. In the unlikely event that the shields were breached, 25 meters of refractory armor provided additional protection.

"Sir we're receiving communication from the Tck'Wrath, it's directed to you and for your eyes only"

"I'll take it in my office," Viettar said.

Viettar sat down at his desk, he straightened his uniform as best he could and he opened the comm link.

"This is Captain Uthzar of the Tck'Wrath. Commander Viettar, take a shuttle and report to my ship immediately, bring Cikrak and the rest of the survivors of the Jassarie with you."

Uthzar ended the communication right after relaying the message. Viettar quickly left his office, he gave Subcommander Korthack orders to have the rest of the survivors report to the shuttle bay, grabbed Cikrak and headed out.

"Where are we going?" Cikrak asked.

"We've been ordered to report to the Tck'Wrath," Viettar said.

In the shuttle bay, the rest of the survivors of the Jassarie were waiting. They boarded Viettar's command shuttle and flew towards the Tck'Wrath. Viettar was nervous, even in the best of times, the Chk'rain didn't look kindly on failure. The failure in this case had been Captain Thrux's, but with him gone, it was likely Central Command wanted someone to blame.

The shuttle flew over to the Tck'Wrath. This was the first time Viettar had seen a Desolator class ship in person. The size of the thing was immense. His shuttle pilot requested clearance to dock and pulled into the main bay.

Viettar and Cikrak were escorted by ship security to the bridge. The rest of the survivors were sent somewhere else. Viettar didn't want to think about it. Upon reaching the bridge he was greeted by Captain Uthzar.

"Please escort the Commander and the Lieutenant to my office."

Viettar and Cikrak were led inside followed by Uthzar. Security was ordered to leave the room and remain outside. Viettar tried his best to not look nervous while Cikrak hung his head low, he had already accepted his fate.

Uthzar took a long look at the two officers.

"You may both sit down. and relax, you will not be dying today," Uthzar said.

Viettar couldn't help it, he let out a long sigh of relief as he took his seat.

"Lieutenant Cikrak, I want you to think very carefully and tell me exactly what happened in 29537" Uthzar said.

"Sir, the report..."

"Yes, I read your report, and I read Viettar's report, and the reports of your other 14 crew members. I want to hear it in your own words."

Cikrak spent the next two hours going over the details of the Jassarie's destruction. Uthzar asked dozens of questions about every minor detail. An additional hour was given to Viettar to bring up anything Cikrak had forgotten or missed, that Viettar had read in the other crewmembers reports.

"You are probably wondering why I am here and why you are not drifting out an airlock," Uthzar said bluntly.

"Yes sir," Viettar replied.

"I spent a lot of time looking at both Cikrak and your service records. They are both exemplary. Yet this alone would not have normally saved you. I argued very strenuously to not send the Tck'Wrath to 29537. We don't know what happened to the Jassarie and leaping into this unknown, weapons hot, is not going to end well for anyone," Uthzar said.

Uthzar sighed.

"Central Command is nervous. The Heliosian rebels managed to destroyed a vast number of ships before we caught them. They are worried that whatever power exists on this planet, it will escape 29537 and launch an offensive."

The Heliosians were the only Class 1 race the Chk'rain had ever discovered. Class 1 was reserved for other space faring races. Heliosians technology was still far behind that of the Chk'rain, when a gateship discovered the Heliosians' system, 50 years ago. The Heliosians still hadn't mastered faster than light travel at the time, so they had been confined to the local system. What the Heliosians had was innate knowledge of their system and a will to fight like no other species. Having never before attempted absorption of a space faring race, the standard Chk'rain invasion techniques were ill equipped to deal with space borne defenses.

It took 15 Heliosians ships to match a single Chk'rain Ravager class, but the Chk'rain had only brought 5 along with some support vessels. The Chk'rain had only detected about 50 Heliosians vessels when planning the invasion, but somehow the Heliosians had managed to hide an additional 50. The Heliosians lost nearly all their ships, but they were able to destroy the entire Chk'rain fleet. Worse still, the Heliosians then attacked the gate, and managed to disable it.

The Chk'rain dispatched a new gate towards the Heliosians system. It took 45 years to reach that system. During that time the Heliosians studied the technology of the Chk'rain and learned to duplicate it. The Chk'rain assumed this would happen so they gated in a massive armada while the new gate was still outside the Heliosian system. The armada cruised into the system with the gate, protecting it from any Heliosian attack. It then crushed the Heliosian fleet, but the Heliosians had advanced far faster than the Chk'rain had predicted. They spent 45 years building a new fleet and heavy fixed defenses for their system. The attack was a costly one and many Chk'rain ships were lost.

The Heliosians had even managed to repair the original gate, build a 2nd and establish a colony in a nearby star system. It was there that the remnants of the Heliosian fleet fled.

The Heliosian system was conquered but the Chk'rain had suffered greatly. Before the Heliosians, the Chk'rain had never lost even a single ship. The fight with the Heliosians had managed to destroy nearly 70. At the time, that was 1/4 of the entire Chk'rain fleet.

The Chk'rain didn't have a gate in the Heliosian colony system, normally the fastest way to get one there was to gate in the parts, instead they reestablished control of the old gate and sent it on its way. At least they tried. The Heliosian had booby trapped the gate, it exploded when it was being towed out of the system, taking out a number of tow ships that were desperately needed to bring supplies out of the main gate and back into Chk'rain space.

Repairs were conducted on what remained of the Heliosian fleet. It was still no match for the Chk'rain fleet, but the Chk'rain fleet couldn't be everywhere at once. The Heliosian started to run small raids though the Chk'rain's own gate system, all while building new ships in their colony system.

The Chk'rain had never thought to secure the gate system before. No other species was around to use it. They worked quickly to add locking codes to the gate system, but before it could be implemented and distributed throughout the gate system, the Heliosians managed 17 separate and highly devastating raids

Finally the Heliosians' luck had run out, the Chk'rain set a trap, and managed to bait the Heliosian rebels to commit almost their entire fleet. As soon as the Heliosians gated in, the Chk'rain engaged the new gate locking protocols. The rebels were trapped, unable to flee they fought to the last ship. The Chk'rain then built a number of new gateships and sent 5 of them on a course to the Heliosian colony. The gates would be arriving in 3 years and the Chk'rain would wipe out what remained of the rebels, trapped in their colony system.
"I have been ordered to bring the Tck'Wrath through the gate, and reduce the surface of the planet, now designated 29537.1, to ash. I am then to attempt discover the secrets of whatever power destroyed the Jassarie. If I am unable to, or the bombarding of the surface fails, I am to set anti-matter charges on the gate, leave the system and blow the gate."

"I had to call in a number of favors, but I was able to get Central Command to put your fate in my claws. I'm not going to have you killed because I am not an idiot," Uthzar said. "Cikrak, you are the only surviving officer of the Jassarie and to throw away potential knowledge when I'm about to jump into the same system where it was destroyed would be foolish."

"As for you Viettar, you had nothing to do with this debacle, you even warned that imbecile, Thrux, to not head into the system until more information was gathered. I won't see you take the blame for his bad decisions, no matter how many friends he had in Central Command."

"Commodore Uthzar?" Cikrak asked.

"Yes?"

"Permission to speak freely?"

"Go ahead."

"Central Command is making a huge mistake sending your ship to that system. I don't think it matters if they send your ship, or a fleet. If it were up to me, we'd blow this gate and establish a quarantine zone around the system large enough that no gate could lock on." Cikrak said.

"I don't know about anything so drastic as that, but in general I do agree with you, but I have been given my orders and I will follow them. I assume you will as well?"

Cikrak nodded.

"When are we leaving sir?" Viettar asked.

"Right now, I want both of you on the bridge, follow me."

Uthzar stood up and left the room with Viettar and Cikrak following him. He ordered the conn to set course for the gate. Shields were raised, weapons were brought online. The Tck'Wrath flew into the gate and exited in System 29537.

Celestia felt the ship enter the system the moment it left the gate. It had been nearly a year since the ring had arrived. The ponies of Equestria had spent that time planning and rebuilding. Within seconds she teleported to Equestrian Space Command, where Luna was already waiting. Equestria didn't have any ships yet, but the ponies had been busy. They built a large command center on the base of Canterlot mountain, with a state of the art communication array. Just outside every major city, a smaller array was built and staffed 24/7 so cities could be reached and given updated orders instantly. There were backups spread across the country, some close enough to cities that they could respond if the city itself was hit, some in the larger towns.

Luna was already sending out a warning of the incoming ship to all other facilities. Sirens could be heard in the distance, as ponies fled out of Canterlot. All across the country ponies began to evacuate the cities and head for the hills.

Celestia grabbed the mic for the main transmitter and sent out a message to the incoming ship.

"Commodore, incoming message from 29537.1... uh, it's in Chk'rainian sir."

There was a murmuring among the bridge crew. Some of them had heard stories about the destruction of the Jassarie and the strange beings that inhabited system 29537.

"Put it through," Uthzar said.

"This is Princess Celestia of Equestria, you have violated our space, cut your engines and explain your presence here."

"This is Commodore Uthzar of the Titan Tck'Wrath. I have come to investigate the destruction of one of our ships."

"Your ship launched an unprovoked attack on one of our cities."

There was a momentary pause.

"I crushed it, killing all aboard. I regret my actions, but do not take this regret for weakness. We will defend ourselves if attacked again."

Uthzar cut the communication.

"That's all I need to know, open fire on the planet, launch all missiles"

The Tck'Wrath carried an full load of 1000 missile. It could empty that load through its 25 launchers in 60 seconds. The Chk'rain no longer bothered with fusion warheads. Instead the missile was nothing more than a large cylinder of metal with a very powerful engine attached to the back of it. The missile was shot out of the launcher at 10000 m/s. The engine kicked in and accelerated the cylinder under 300 gravities of acceleration for up to 60 seconds. The resulting impact of each missile had the kinetic energy equivalent to a 25 megaton nuke. Not quite as big as the fusion warhead that obliterated Manehattan, but they were cheaper to make, safer to store, and the Tck'Wrath had 1000 of them.

Luna sat in Space Command headquarters surrounded by 25 unicorns of the Royal Guard. Each of them casting their own copy of Luna's Deep Space Imaging Spell. The 25 separate views covered 90% of the skies over Equestria. Luna herself cast a tracking spell on the 25 DSIS viewing images. It would highlight any moving objects contained within the views that were too small to track visually at the present magnification. Within seconds dozens, followed by hundreds of small glowing streaks exited the ship and accelerated towards the Equus. Luna looked on with grim determination. She concentrated, her horn glowing fiercely, pulses of blue light rose out of her horn and flew upwards.

The streaks started to disappear. First one, then 25, then 100, the 200. Still more came at the planet. Luna sent more and more pulses skyward, hundreds of missiles were disabled, but hundreds more still came at the planet. Though the magical energy needed to stop the missiles was but a small fraction of Luna's power, she hadn't been expecting to deal with so many and had been caught off guard.
Celestia saw her sister struggling and quickly joined in the defense. In less than a minute every single missile had been stopped.
"We will have to develop an area effect spell in the future Tia," Luna said, breathing heavily.

"Yes Luna, but now we must deal with the ship."

Celestia reached out with her magic and grabbed the massive warship and began to pull it towards the planet.

"Sir, sensors report that every single missile has been disabled. They've all stopped, dead in space, I can't detect anything wrong with them, except they aren't moving."
Viettar stood there looking at the view screens. He had read the reports, but he still didn't believe what he saw. How could a class 3 civilization stop even 1 missile, never mind 1000.

A feeling of dread slowly began to overtake Cikrak.

"Commodore Uthzar, I strongly urge you to take the Tck'Wrath back through the gate. Blow it up behind us, but get this ship out of here."

"Lieutenant Cikrak, I will not..."

The image on the view screens changed as a glowing yellow field appeared around the ship.

"It's too late," Cikrak said, pointing at the view screens.

"Sir the ship is moving... we're being pulled towards the planet!"

"Disengage safeties and set engines to maximum power, back us off," Uthzar shouted.

The powerful engines of the Tck'Wrath engaged, straining to bring the ship back on course. The Jassarie could manage 50 Gs of acceleration, even though the Tck'Wrath was many times larger, the highly advanced engines of the ship could give it 250 Gs of acceleration. That was just about at the limit the inertial dampening system could handle.

The engines started to hum as the strain increased. With the safeties disengaged, they were running at 120%, for a moment it looked like it would be enough. The ship slowed, stopped, and began to back away from the planet. Then the yellow glow intensified and the ship shuddered, then started to move towards the planet once again.

"Commodore, the engines have just failed, engineering is reporting it will be at least 10 hours before they can bring them back online."
"This is impossible!" Uthzar threw his claws up in frustration. "Do we have a fix on the source of the earlier transmission?"

"Yes sir."

One of the techs brought up a view of the planet and zoomed in. There was a large facility built next to a mountain. A number of transmitters were mounted into the mountain itself, pointing upwards.

"Bring the main guns on line, when we are within 1/4 a light second, open fire."

The ship was pulled closer and closer. When it hit the range requested by Uthzar, the main heavy lasers of the Tck'Wrath turned on the planet and opened fire. Nine powerful beams struck out from the ship, portions of the facility instantly vaporized, secondary fires shot up from the facility as the great heat of the lasers caused nearby objects to ignite. Smoke billowed up and covered the facility, obscuring the view momentarily.

The yellow glow surrounding the ship changed, and a glowing spherical shield surrounded the ship. The lasers impacted on the shield but were unable to punch through.

Fires raged around her as Celestia tried to help the surviving ponies out of the melted wreckage. Luna cast a spell and a massive thunderstorm appeared overhead. The rain slowly began to quench the fires.

"What happened?" she asked.

"I think they hit us with some sort of energy weapon, possibly very powerful lasers, I did not know they could do that."

"That is my fault sister, the detection spells were only setup to track physical objects. I am sorry."

"Do not blame yourself Luna. The ship is secured in a magical field, nothing else will be getting out. Are you ready to board it?"

There had been much discussion on what to do if another ship came through the ring. In the end it was decided that Equestria needed figure out how the alien's technology worked and start building their own ships. Remaining always on the defensive was a poor choice at best, and if ponies could get out into space, they might be able to find out who these aggressors were and why they were attacking. If another ship returned, Luna was to attempt to capture it, an intact vessel would be much easier to study than the wreckage of the first ship.

"I am" Luna said.

"Good luck Luna," Celestia said as Luna teleported away.

An alarm went off on the bridge of the Tck'Wrath.

"Commodore, internal sensors have detected an intruder in the main bay! It's..., I think it's one of the beings from the planet below."
Security brought up a view of the main bay on the bridge view screen. Hovering in the middle of the bay was a dark blue quadruped. This one was different than the images presented by the Jassarie's database. First it was a bit larger. The other quadruped were around 1.5 meters, this one was just under 2, not including the horn. Secondly it had a horn and wings, a previously unknown combination. It wore metal shoes of some kind on its hooves, a dark crown on its head and a torc with an image of a moon upon it. In the place of hair, what looked like a partially translucent field of stars rippled in the air, defying gravity as if lifted by a wind that Uthzar knew was not present in the bay. The tail was made up of another field of stars, similar to the hair.

"Depressurize the bay, blow it into space," Uthzar said.

The force field holding the air into the bay was dropped and the air rushed out into space. The blue alien landed and began to walk inwards.
"Sir, bay is now hard vacuum, but the intruder is still alive."

Luna landed when the air began to rush out into space. Hazarding a guess, her presence was known. She grinned, having spent 1000 years on the moon, she was no stranger to hard vacuum. She started to walk to the inside of the bay. She saw what looked like it might be a door. There were some buttons on a keypad next to the door. She poked at them but though they lit up, nothing happened. Shrugging, her horn flared to life and she teleported to the other side of the door.

She wasn't exactly sure where to go, but she figured she'd find somepony, or somealien eventually. She started to walk down the corridor. A loud alarm started going off in the halls. She heard what sounded like a speaker play a shipside announcement in the alien language. She cast a translation spell and listened in.

", alert. Intruder detected just outside the main bay. Security report to the main bay."

"Oh excellent, they're coming to me," she thought to herself.

Hulking armored figures rounded the corner. They aimed, what Luna assumed were guns of some kind, at her. She heard one of the aliens order "Open fire." and the corridor was filled with heat as pulses of coherent light attempted to burn their way through Luna's hide.

Uthzar couldn't believe what he was watching in the security cameras. Judging by the reaction of the rest of the bridge crew, no one else did either. First that... thing had walked across the main bay, full exposed to hard vacuum with no apparent effect. The air rushing out of the bay had not affected the physics defying hair or tail of this beast. It walked up to the door of the bay and hit the access button.
The doors of the bay wouldn't open while the bay was depressurized so nothing happened. Uthzar felt a bit relieved until the thing's horn lit up and it disappeared in a flash of light. Cameras outside the bay showed it reappear in the main corridor. The Chk'rain had been working for centuries to try to come up with a way to teleport matter and still the solution eluded them. This creature appeared to be able to do it at will.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Viettar said. "I don't think security is going to be able to stop it."

Just then, the camera showed the armored forms of security entering the main corridor. Within seconds, they opened fire. White hot beams of light struck at the blue demon, but a translucent blue shield shimmered into existence every time a shot would have impacted. Not a single laser made it through.

The creature stood there for a moment, looked around at the guards and made a sound that Uthzar could only assume was laughter. Then it's horn lit again and a brilliant flash went out, momentarily blinding the cameras.

When the image came back up, the entire squadron of guards were down on the floor.

"Sir, the guards are down, but sensors show they aren't dead. It looks like they are just asleep?"

Luna sat down after she finished casting the sleep spell. She looked around hallway at the pile of sleeping guards. She couldn't really get a good look at them in their armor. They stood upright on only two legs, looking to be anywhere between 6 and 7 feet tall, but some of that could have been the armor. There was a short stubby tail that didn't quite reach the ground exiting the back of the armor. It was covered in dark gray scales similar to a dragons. They had 2 arms, similar to a dragons, but ending in a very different looking claw. The end of the claw looked almost like a birds but much larger and with 6 appendages.

She then closed her eyes proceeded to cast a dream spell. She connected to each of the creatures surrounding her. She entered their minds, shaped their dreams to suit her own purpose. Using her powers she forced the creatures to dream about day to day activities. She then followed the dreams, watching and seeing what the creatures did, how they got around, what they knew. She saw all of this in their heads, and as the creatures dreamed, Luna learned.

Uthzar watched as the creature sat down. Beams of white light shot out of its horn, twisting and turning until they landed on the heads of every sleeping guard.

"Scanners show they are still ok sir, not exactly sure what's going on."

"Are we detecting anything apart from the creature and the guards? Any sort of energy that would explain what we are seeing? Uthzar asked.

"Not a thing."

Uthzar wasn't sure what else to do. He sent more guards, hoping to catch the creature unaware while its eyes were closed. The moment they entered the corridor, they collapsed, sensors showed that like the rest of the guards, they had fallen asleep. Additional beams of light appeared and dove into the second wave of guards.

The ship had more guards, thousands in fact, but Uthzar didn't want to have them all incapacitated.

He tried sending in attack drones, but while the creature hadn't killed anyone yet, it showed no such hesitation when dealing with the drones. It's blue force field blocked every incoming shot. It then retaliated sending what looked like a blue beam of energy from its horn. Every drone that was hit exploded into fragments.

So Uthzar sat there, watching and waiting, to see what it would do. Not a word was said as the entire bridge crew continued to watch and see what the impossible creature would do. An hour passed, while it sat there, every conceivable scan was run on the creature. Nothing was found. Cikrak worked with the Tck'Wrath’s science officer as they bounced idea after idea back and forth on what to do.

The creature stood up and turned its head. Uthzar could swear it briefly looked right at the security cameras. It began to walk down the corridor. It reached a closed door with a keypad in front of it. The creature's horn lit up and Uthzar watched as the keypad registered the correct sequence of presses that would bypass the security lock on the door. The door opened and the creature walked through.

"It knew the code! How could it know the code!?" he heard someone say.

"Lock down the ship. Emergency containment protocols . Seal all doors and hatches." Uthzar barked.

"What good will that do? It can teleport!" Cikrak said, unable to hide the panic in his voice.

"Just do it!"

The creature reached another door and entered in a sequence of keys. The pad beeped in response but the door did not open. The creature turned its head and looked directly at the security camera. It rolled its eyes proceeded to teleport away.

"Sir, it's on sensors again, this time in main engineering."

The view screen switched to the engineering deck. Every engineer in sight was unconscious, strands of white light emanated from their heads, twisting and turning flowed back to the creature's horn.

Fifteen minutes passed, before it opened its eyes and trotted over to the main reactor. Pale blue light flared into existence as once again this thing used its mysterious powers. For a moment, the entire reactor shimmered, but then the light died down and the creature teleported away once more.

"Hello Commodore."

Uthzar didn't need the ships sensors to tell him where this blue monster had gone off to, it was standing right in front of him. He reached out slowly with his claw and touched the creature, checking to see if it was in fact a living being.

"What are you?" he said in a whisper.

"I am Luna, Second Princess of Equestria. Defender of Dreams, Keeper of the Night. This ship is now the property of Equestria. You and your crew will be teleported to the planet's surface. There you will be held as prisoners of war."

The entire bridge crew stood there in shock. No one quite knew what to do.

Uthzar snarled and reached for his command console.

"Not likely."

He quickly keyed in his command code and activated the ship's self destruct sequence.

"Self Destruct Sequence Aborted. The Self Destruct System is Offline." The display flashed back at him.

Luna smiled.

"Goodbye Commodore," she said.

The last thing the Commodore saw before being teleported to the planet's surface was Luna's horn covered in that damned pale blue glow.

It took Luna the better part of the day to teleport all 15,000 members of the Tck'Wrath's crew down to Equestria. She could have done it faster, but the larger the group, the worse the effects of the teleport so she stuck to moving no more than 10 at a time. By the end of the day, even her vast magical stores felt a bit drained.

Probing the minds of the guards had given her insight into most of the ship. More importantly, she found out about the reactor that powered the ship, she discovered the engineering crew would have even more knowledge about the workings of the reactor, and she learned that the ship was commanded by Commodore Uthzar, who alone had the command codes to the ship's computers.

She headed off to engineering, and learned even more from the minds of the engineers. She found out about the self destruct mechanism and how only the Commodore had the key to unlock the ship's computer and set it off.

Luna cast a stasis spell on the device, completely locking it down and preventing the computer from activating it. She was prepared for her encounter with the Commodore, she knew what he would try. She then teleported to the bridge and cast a scrying spell. Celestia had already cast the 2nd part of the spell, so as soon as Luna cast the first part, Through the spell, Celestia could very clearly see Commodore Uthzar and exactly what he keyed into his command console.

Epilogue
View Online

Into the Black

Epilogue

With access to the computer, Luna was able to pull up the ships libraries. One of the most important things Luna had learned was that the gates could be locked down to prevent use. The first thing she studied was how the locking system worked and how to lock the gate. She brought up access to the local gate and initiated a lockdown, but she also learned that the locking system had a fatal flaw. Gates didn't have any form of faster than light communication, in order for a gate to be able to communicate with another gate, a node first had to be activated. The node was opened just enough for an identification code to be sent through. Then the receiving gate would either open the node entirely, or disconnect.

It would be trivial to send a spell through the node that would trick the receiving gate into accepting any identification code. Even a first year student at the Royal Academy could write such a simple spell. With this knowledge, the ponies could lock their gate down, but use any Chk'rain controlled gate that they wanted.

She and Celestia brought Twilight, the rest of the Elements and hundreds of other ponies up to the ship. Nearly two years went by while ponies studied and read all that they could about the Chk'rain.

Ponies stared to replicate Chk'rain technology. It would be a while before they could make their own ships, but clean fusion reactors to replace coal power were already being built.

Ponies had slowly begun to convert the the Tck'Wrath to suit their own needs. New pony size furniture was installed, adjustments were made to the control structures to make them easier for ponies to use. The ship itself was rechristened as the Manehattan in honor of the fallen city.

The always studious Twilight Sparkle spent more time going through the ship's library than any two other ponies combined, it was she that discovered the history of the Chk'rain empire.

Twilight brought up a file on the command console and motioned for Celestia to come over.

"Look here Celestia, it says that the Chk'rain have conquered 11 other species. Based on the description, it looks like they are using those species for slave labor," she said gasping.

She and Celestia continued to read the document. The more they read the worse it got. Trillions of slaves, billions slaughtered in horrific wars of conquest. There were no words for this injustice.

"We have to help them Celestia."

"That would mean leaving the system Twilight," Celestia pointed out.

"But what about all those slaves? You saw the report, how can we sit by while these monsters murder billions" Twilight said sniffling.

Celestia reached over and nuzzled Twilight.

"I am not saying we should not do it, I am saying it is not a decision to be taken lightly. It would mean abandoning our safe haven and going to war with the Chk'rain. Luna and I cannot possibly be everywhere at once, and one of us would have to remain here, to keep everything running. That means sending regular ponies in ships. Ships that would have to fight the Chk'rain fleet. Even with assistance from Luna or myself, many ponies would die."

"Oh" Twilight said, she hung her head and let out a few tears. It still didn't seem right.

"I am not saying no Twilight. There are many bad reasons ponies have gone to war in the past. For land, for power, for the gods, or even for money. War is a terrible thing and it is often best avoided. Sometimes, though, something comes along that even the terrible price of war is not too high of a cost. Something like fighting for freedom. Being willing to put your own life at risk, especially when it would have otherwise remained safe, for the freedom of others is an admirable quality," Celestia said, drying Twilight's tears.

"I understand, but I still think we should help them. Just thinking about it though, it's such an enormous task. Where would we even start? The Chk'rain control so much space, so many star systems. Even if we can duplicate their ships, it will take us decades just to learn how to build the infrastructure we need to build ships. Then we'd have to actually build up a fleet, which would be at least another decade and then spend years fighting to reach the core of their empire," Twilight said.

Celestia brought up the screen again and quickly skimmed a few sections.

"Here, we would start here." Celestia said, indicating at a section of text on the screen.

"The Heliosians?"

"Well, first off they are the closest to our own system. Just six gate jumps away. Second, they were recently conquered, they may yet retain the will to fight. They are the most advanced of all the races the Chk'rain have conquered. They have an understanding of Chk'rain technology and experience in space that far exceeds our own. Lastly they have a colony with shipyards, which could be used to accelerate our industrial capacity far faster than we could alone."

Celestia paused to bring up some more information in the computer. She read a few pages of text and then turned to Twilight.

"Twilight, I think you are right, not only will we help these beings, but we have less than a year to prepare."

"What? We can't build ships that fast."

"We will send the Manehattan."

"Why so quickly?"

"Because in just over one year, gateships will arrive at the Heliosian colony system. The Chk'rain will then gate in and wipe out the last of the resistance."

"Once we learn how to fly it, the Manehattan should be able to handle the small fleet that this report says will be sent. Then again, there is no guarantee that Chk'rain won't change their plans. They do not know what happened here, they may divert more ships to the Heliosian assault, if they are fearful of losing again. That is why either I or Luna will accompany the Manehattan on this quest," Celestia said.

"We need to spend the next 11 months training a crew for this ship, that will give us enough time to launch it, and arrive at the Heliosian home system just in time to smash the Chk'rain fleet before they jump to the colony and destroy it."

Twilight started pulling up computer records. She pulled up a datasheet on the Heliosians system and started skimming it for information on the species.

" Heliosians... First and only class 1 race discovered... Put up resistance at a scale never seen before.... First time in history a Chk'rain ship was lost to enemy action... Species is highly adaptive and able to assimilate new technology at extremely fast rates... blah blah blah... Oh look here's some information on their system," she said, reading aloud.

"Heliosians live on the 3rd planet from their sun, it is orbited by a single moon. In the Heliosians' common tongue the name of this planet is..."

"Earth."