Starfall

Chapters

02. The Peak of Man
03. The Fall of Man
04. Basecamp
06. Burning Bright
07. Licking Stamps
08. Strange Things and Stranger Places
09. Getting Better by the Minute
10. Mysterious Mysteries of Strange Mystery
11. Look at the Stars
12. Look how they shine for you
13. Open Your Eyes
14. Hotel California
15. Due Process
16. Logarithm
17. First, First Contact
18. Smell the Brimstone
19. Going Ballistic
21. Let me play among the stars... <unedited>
22. Alone in the dark <unedited>
23. Let us burn... Let us burn... <unedited>
24. The light of a new day <unedited>
25. The shade and the hollow <unedited>
26. Guns, Guns, Guns... <unedited>
27. Bright neurons in a dark mind
28. Bright lights after midnight
01. The Rise of Man
05. Strange Lights and Stranger Sights
20. The night in the skies here tonight... <unedited>

02. The Peak of Man

TerraNova Shipyards AC-720 Valiant Gunship
AI Blackbar BIOS v. 21.7.1
Bootstrap I...in progress...done.
Bootstrap II...in progress...done.
Bootstrap III...in progress...done.
Bootstrap IV....in progress...done.
Diagnostics...in progress...one error found.
Diagnosing error...AI core disconnected and offline.
Connecting to shipborne hardware
Streaming incoming data...
Processing...
Reboot complete.
Connect to local network...complete.
Repeater located...connecting...complete.
Authenticating codes.
Codes authenticated.
Linking to Virtual Intelligence 073 Traffic Control.
Initiating system start.
Artificial Intelligence Core at 0.00 percent status.
All other systems at 100 percent status.
Awaiting commands.

Commanding Officer's Log 001
CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
1307hrs 26 July, 2463 Earth Standard

Per U.T.E. regulations, log zero zero one is dedicated to the state of the ship, crew complement, and disposition. The Corvus is a heavily modified Valiant class gunship that was purchased as a flying chassis from the TerraNova shipyards private division at the Utopia Planitia fleet yards. Primary weapons modifications were the removal of all dorsal and ventral manned turrets, being replaced with optically slaved and AI controlled turrets to reduce mass and overall power consumption. All energy weapons have been replaced with variable output low signature units. Finally, both internal missile banks have been replaced with a set of 120mm plasma cannons connected to both the reactor and their own dedicated bussard collectors for longevity in the field.

Secondary modifications were in depth, involving the installation of oversized generators, a tertiary emergency shield system, removal of two cryopods, installation of a Crusader armor system to reduce EM and thermal output, EM and thermal masking where possible, and the installation of a more advanced sensor suite. The troop deck has been repurposed to hold four combat frames, two RX-120 Shade scout craft, and act as a maintenance bay. Other than the inclusion of a specialized frame bay and comfort items, the crew deck and armory is as standard. All airlocks and safety mechanisms are standard or improved.

Crew compliment is minimal due to intensive AI optimization. As of this log, the crew is myself and my unshackled AI Rose, who will inhabit both the AI core on the command deck, and up to the five frames onboard. Current flight plan is to jump through the Atlas Gate to the newly opened PRX-1207 system gate to scout for private interests. Cargo manifest is comprised heavily of supplies, tools, and parts in case of incident.

End log and hardwrite to system.

"UTE Corvus, you are cleared for launch on guide zero seven four."

It's amazing how much you can look forward to hearing words like that. I'd been bored out of my mind the last few weeks in one of the staterooms on the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards. All that time was spent waiting to hear those words.

"Copy that, Fleet Control. Departing on guide zero seven four. Corvus out."

Three weeks. I spent three weeks waiting for a full refit on my ship. It took way too much effort not to jam the throttles to the firewall and see what she could do. Instead, I followed protocol and only nudged the throttles to maneuvering speed. The softly increasing hum of the engines powering up was barely noticed as open space beckoned. It was agonizing to inch my way out of the shipyard, but better than getting the Advocacy after me. Going fifty meters per second felt like a snail's pace, but it let me get a feel for the improvements I had done. Let alone enjoy the view as I cruised past private yachts, freighters, and even the odd military patrol protecting the ships of the UTE fleet. Not like a refit like mine could hurt a supercarrier easily a hundred times the size, but picket duty is picket duty.

A ship like the Corvus usually got some second glances anyhow. It's not often you see a Valiant class gunship refit as a private scout ship after all. They've been called all sorts of things over the years from graceful to mean, to even being nicknamed "the diving whale," from the upraised tail section that covered the troop ramp. Personally I thought it was a great design that maneuvered great, but I am biased from flying them in the UTE Navy for years. Since it was going to be just my A.I., Rose, and myself for a while, some peace and quiet with the promise of some easy cash seemed like the perfect plan.

You never forget the first time you leave dry dock in a new ship. The angle of light hitting the canopy windows from the sun filling the ship with a warm glow, or how insignificant my sixty-eight and change meter long ship looked compared to the dozens of kilometers long dreadnought rumbling by on approach. Even at hundreds of meters distance, I could still see the smaller antiship turrets swiveling to track anything and everything near the behemoth. Just a single shot from some of those would turn the Corvus into scrap, so following the departure path to the letter was a good thing. It was always amazing to leave the Fleet Yards though, you see everything from the latest and greatest fighters to centuries old capitol ships getting refit to fight for decades more.

It only took a half hour to clear all the traffic in orbit of Mars. That was always pleasant to say the least, as it was always swamped by a mix of military craft from the fleet yards, miners bringing in wares from the asteroid belt, and your usual smattering of ships going to the colonies. Once you are out of a planet's gravity well things get a lot easier. You can power up your intrasystem quantum drive and travel from Earth to Mars in minutes, same goes for a trip to the massive jumpgate in orbit above Jupiter. In this case, I throttled completely back to where we were just floating in the abyss so I could take care of my companion. For some crazy reason, the UTE government banned the use of civilian owned A.I. within traffic controlled areas. Since the Corvus was rebuilt and reprogrammed, I needed to plug Rose in and get her used to her new body. This would be interesting. Easy, but interesting. I'd made certain to include a few frames in the ship inventory so she'd have an outlet, should she want to get up and do stuff. They were simple robotic frames, but it did give A.I. a face to talk to or ability to perform manual tasks. Useful as hell feature if you ask me.

With a sigh, I reached under the console to unlock it, letting it swing upward nearly silently so I could get out of the pilot's seat. The only lighting on the flight deck was provided by the multitude of softly glowing buttons and displays, and a small set of glowing guide strips on the ceiling and floor. Yet it was more than enough to see by. Soft carpet muffled the sounds of my boots as I stepped past the first emergency bulkhead and into the engineering bay. The soft humming of the generators, dull roar of the reactor underfoot, and pulsing of the grav array might sound funny to most people, but it was comforting to me. Every type of ship sounds different, but the Valiant class always blended together to a mixture of a low hum with a buzzing below that, hearing it would just tell you the ship was okay. In this case, the ship was about to be a lot more though.

Nestled into the heavily armored floor was a panel that swung open to reveal a dimly lit open socket into the ship's electronics. A socket that matched a rather unwieldy canister that lay strapped to one of the nearby seats. For its size, an AI core is surprisingly heavy, just over two feet long yet weighing over fifty pounds due to the solid state electronics and armor on the unit. I guess you could say that Rose was heavy for her size, but her core slid into the cradle between my feet with practiced ease and a slight click. Lowering the assembly into the bay was a simple affair but somewhat louder as the hardware secured itself and sealed to the ship components. The moment a series of green lights illuminated around the core, I shut the panel with a click and just had to wait a moment.

"Oh, I'm finally back? You have no idea how much I both hated and loved being locked away in that tiny black box. Just me and my thoughts, without sensor data or you telling me to behave. Normally a girl would get lonely, but I had plenty of time to think about all the things you were doing to my new body, or how you'd feel inside me."

You see, Rose despite being a top of the line A.I., well she was quirky. All the best A.I. developed quirks over the years in ways that had the scientific minds stumped. The running consensus is it was the same reason that people come out as they do. "Because..." In the luck of my case, Rose managed to mix being a diligent companion with a mixture of sass, a soft yet breathy accent, and an absolutely dirty mind. She lived to make my life easy and make it hell, but after flying with her for years there's no other way I'd have it. Just have to keep on top of her behavior and all.

"Well, I couldn't keep you in there forever. You'd enjoy your punishments too much Rose. That and I thought you'd like your new body. I got a complete upgrade package for you, plus a few frames in case you want to walk around a bit. Just don't let having such a sexy body go to your head. I'd hate to have to lock you into the console. Take a bit and get your systems integrated, I'll be giving everything a last minute check 'til you are done. Afterwards, we'll go give you a good workout."

I never did say I didn't flirt back though. You can tell when an A.I. is going to say something after a while. It's the same as understanding a person really, so when Rose didn't make a peep when I got up to explore the ship I knew something was up. Valiant class ships have what you could call three main decks. Really, it was closer to two and a half. The top deck was your external cargo pod access hatch, and a mixture of kitchen, living quarters, and turret access. The middle deck was cockpit access and engineering with direct access to the main systems. It might be unwieldy, but in combat it was nice to have someone being able to route power from a supply that was six times larger than any ship of similar size, or push more power to weapons. Redundancy is the raison d'etre for the ships, as there were backups to the backups. Finally, the lowest deck was the airlock, loading ramp, and troop or cargo bay. In my case, I'd replaced half of the jump seats for troops with storage, two scout craft ,and the other half with racks and parts for Rose's four frames.

I should have known she was going to say something when I started diagnostics during my wandering. The ship was just too quiet without it, and the moment I connected the frame rack to the power supply, Rose chimed with a gentle whisper, "I know you love turning me on."

Damned A.I. was going to be the death of me.

03. The Fall of Man

Commanding Officer's Log 002
CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
1621hrs 26 July, 2463 Earth Standard

The initial checks and shakedown through the asteroid belt went perfectly. During the system tests, we found that the tertiary shield generator could hold up to more stress than anticipated, but had a significantly larger heat and EM output when under pressure. Thankfully, the generator is a backup to the backup generators so it will hopefully never get used. If it does, I don't think thermal bloom and whiting out part of the EM spectrum will be high on my list of worries. Beyond that, sensor resolution was better than expected when active scanning. Unless we know our position is secure, active scanning won't get used though as the EM signature is absolutely massive. All other systems are working as expected, and Rose has integrated with the new hardware without issue.

I'm not sure if it is a quirk from the hardware coding or what, but I swear she is speaking with a slight British accent on occasion. She's running diagnostics to make sure there won't be any errors because of it, and to find the coding causing it. I'll admit it is kind of hilarious to hear her muttering to herself while trying to find that code block. Apparently she hates the accent with a passion. Go figure.

Anyhow, we are set to hit the Atlas Gate in Jupiter orbit here in a few minutes. Jump time should be around twelve minutes accounting for dilation, but like always it'll feel a lot shorter for us. From there, it's straight to a fairly uncharted system to claim what mineral rights I can find. Here's hoping those new scanners were worth the credits.

Wish us luck.

No matter how many times you see it, the Atlas Gate always gives you a sense of awe. It is both a work of art and military science if you think about it. Mankind has never encountered another sapient species, but the military sure prepared just in case. Since the gate gives a direct shot at everything in the solar system from colonies to shipyards and stations, they made sure something hostile would meet an interesting end. The gate itself is large enough for an entire fleet to jump at once, including the occasional supercarrier or dreadnought class ships. To make up for it, the space around the gate on both sides is studded with thousands of automated turrets, defense satellites, command and control stations, and a ton of stuff that nobody is allowed to know what it does. If something can survive that gauntlet, it has to go headfirst into the Home Fleet, which is a full third of the U.T.E. Navy. All in all, they'd be fucked sideways.

Point is with all that power in a small area, the space around the gate looks like it shimmers and moves at a distance like a puddle of mercury in space. As you close, you start to see the gate network through a mist of bright objects, until finally you see the clouds for what they really are. Breathtaking and awful at the same time once you realize that you could be obliterated from the universe with the press of a button. Thankfully, I filed a flight plan at the U.T.E. Fleet Yards before departure and had my IFF broadcasting the whole while. My flight path was clear toward the giant ring floating in the abyss.

"How are we looking Rose, everything prepped on your end for the jump?"

I knew we were going through the same checklists from different sides as my fingers danced over the control panel to set the ship. Even with the straps holding me to the seat, I could feel myself drift up against the restraints as she shut off the gravity generator. The cabin turned a ruddy color as she dialed life support to a minimum, with me taking that as my turn to grab my helmet that was floating next to me. It only took a moment to clip the info feed cable to a port in the collar of my suit, before settling it over my head with practiced ease. The thousand credits I spent on a custom fit helmet was some of the best money spent, as most of your helmets grab your ears or fit weird. A slight hiss of flowing air and flickering of in built displays was all I needed to know it was connected properly and sealed.

"All systems at minimal power other than shields and engines. The Corvus is prepared for jump Alex. Just don't make any goofy quotes about the great beyond, okay."

Grinning, I pushed the throttle forward to the limits as the gate burst into swirling light, my tiny ship just a speck against the brightness streaming towards us until it swallowed us whole.

As the light faded away, everything ahead of the ship was swirling blue, with the cameras in the rear seeing everything in a sanguine red from the dilation. It's so hard to describe no matter how many times you go through a jump gate. The light just flows around you, blue then red, with just a heartbeat of other colors in between as you pass them. Sparkling light from near overloaded shields dancing ahead of the ship are the only thing holding back the titanic energies of the wormhole from ripping your ship into shreds. For just a moment, I'd swear there was another brighter light in the wormhole with us though. Just a heartbeat before everything came undone. The colors of realspace screamed around us as the tunnel collapsed, hurtling us through the void like a throwing dart. I might have been screaming before losing consciousness too.

A few minutes prior and half a galaxy away...

"Thank you everypony for coming to our fourteenth annual Starfall Festival. As you know, once a year my sister holds the Summer Sun Festival on the solstice where she holds the longest day. Since my return, I have done my best to show the beauty of the night. To that end, on the winter solstice, we hold the Starfall Festival. On this, the longest night of the year I show ponies all over the world what the night sky can be. So please, sit back and enjoy the show. As always, there are refreshments and vendors throughout the palace gardens. The show will start momentarily."

To say there was a large crowd of ponies milling around the palace gardens would have been an understatement. The crowd was packed practically shoulder to shoulder to wait the light show that the Princess of the Night was famed for. All of the Princesses were on stage in different capacities, but the main podium was dedicated to the twin sisters of day and night. The golden illumination from Celestia's horn throwing warm highlights throughout the crowd for a moment before the shadows seemed to lengthen. In a burst of magic, the darker Princess was born aloft on wings of shadow as the sun descended below the horizon, while her horn shone like a small star.

"Ponies of Equestria! I give you the night sky and the start of the Starfall Festival!"

With the clouds cleared away by dozens of pegasi earlier in the day, and the city lights extinguished or dimmed, every citizen in Equestria could see the universe blooming in the night sky. Whorls of color and twinkling lights spanned horizon to horizon as the aurora and stars fought for dominance. Princess Luna always enjoyed showing off her night, so to say she was overjoyed to find out it was used for celebration and relaxation for the masses brought great joy. Once a year, she gave it her all even if she did end up tired for several days afterward.

Through the night she'd pull different stellar phenomena from her bag of tricks or even have performers showing their skills among the night sky. One of her favorites had turned out to be the infamous Trixie Lulamoon, who after some discussion found working with the Princess on some nights to be the highlight of her career. Trixie's magical fireworks shot into the sky with screams and pops, showering color above the city, while Luna reached deep into the black to pull things to the earth to rain colors and fire from the heavens.

Unfortunately on one of those pulls, she had gotten a little too ambitious and the magician was the only one to notice at first. The small ball of fire spreading light among the heavens, yet getting brighter as it fell. As the heartbeats passed, the crowd and royalty noticed it as well. From a burst of flame, it had burst into a small star falling toward the city with a keening wail. Just before panic set in, the star screamed over the city in a burst of white flames, painting the city in a wash of brightness for a moment before disappearing over the horizon. Unbeknownst to the now cheering populace, it wasn't a trick and wasn't part of the plan. With a single nod, a flight of the Night Guard had taken wing to find the mystery object. What they'd find would change the face of Equestria and the path of the world forever.

04. Basecamp

“Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.”

L. Frank Baum, May, 1900-

It's an odd thing to wake up with a set of warm breasts pressed against your face. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice feeling and all even if it's unexpected. At least until the pain sets in and the room starts to spin.

"No. Bad Alex. You're going to sit back and rest for a little longer. When the wormhole collapsed, you being a giant dumbass managed to unhook your harness somehow and fly headfirst into the rear bulkhead of the engineering bay. You're going to have a hell of a migraine once you get feeling a bit better though, but I managed to get you something for it."

Every time I tried to speak, Rose would press a finger against my lips and shush me with a giggle. Apparently spending a lot of money on an upgraded chassis for her was a bad idea. She was about as close to human as you could get without being biological. She had all the senses that people and and then some due to her AI nature. Not that I was complaining about a petite redhead in a form fitting suit of armor holding my head on her lap. At least she got the gist of what I was trying to grunt.

"The damage to the Corvus isn't too horrible all things considered. I managed to get us crash-landed on a nearby planet, but I have absolutely no idea where we are. From the little bit I could see before I got too occupied, the stars don't match up to anything known. At least we got a comm beacon launched before we hit atmo. "

Call me crazy but I swear she was fidgeting on purpose to wave around her new cleavage while talking. For a robot body, Rose was pretty comfy at least as whatever sedative started to pull me back under. My last thought as the abyss took me was wondering why everything outside the canopy was rippling and blue.

I'm assuming a few hours had passed since I was awake last. The blue slight spilling through the windows was more of a deep indigo, even though I still had no idea what was causing it. For now, nothing hurt so I was content to lay in my bunk and enjoy the feeling of a warm blanket against my bare skin and a large bed. Wait.

"ROSE! Why am I naked?!"

It took everything I had not to jerk away when a sultry voice came through the speaker next to my head as just a whisper, "Because you were bleeding in your flight suit, you idiot. I get that they’re modern fabrics and polymers but blood is still a pain to get out of some things, and we don't have many extras." That was actually a good point considering god knows when or if help would be coming, let alone how bad the ship was.

"So you don't hurt yourself getting out of bed yet, just watch the projection on the ceiling and I'll show you what's going on."

At least she didn't start the lights off too bright as an image began to form on the ceiling from hidden projectors. It only took a moment for my brain to wonder what the hell I was seeing though. Obviously the short and curvy woman was Rose, but the shimmering wall of blue behind her and the dried cracked earth confused me the most. Purely mechanical frames plodded along behind her, showering sparks as they worked on one thing or replaced another with a lot more urgency than I was expecting.

"The good news is we didn't blow out anything major when we landed. The weapons and comms gear were all retracted well before we came in. Bad news is the shields were way overstrained. Both primary and secondary generators overheated and went into emergency shutdown. That tertiary backup you had installed saved our bacon, BUT it was so stressed I had to do something drastic to keep it from frying itself. You know the shimmering behind me and all? I maybe...kind of... had to park us in a lake to use it as a heat sink. I should have the main systems rebooted soon, then we can get out of the water. Both of us know the shields weren't designed for this."

That was something I certainly wasn't expecting to hear. At least the ship was in decent shape, not that we knew where we were. Losing all of our supplies or the ship would have been an even larger setback though. If that comm beacon managed to connect, rescue would be quick and easy. We just had to get out of this lake first.

It wasn't too long before the clank of the airlock sealing and cycling grabbed my attention. I'd managed to make my way down to the engineering space a bit earlier, in a failed attempt to try rebooting the shield generators. Unfortunately with so much of a draw and heat output from the emergency backup, there was no way it would happen. At least Rose was working on it from her end of things as well.

"Ugh, remind me to give my body a shower when we get out of here. I had to leave it in the troop bay so I wouldn't drag mud around the decks. I know it would be easy to clean, but we have bigger things to do. Getting out of this lake is a good start, and I think I've got the engines primed enough to get out of here. SInce you have a concussion, just strap in and I'll handle the flying. We won't be going far."

By the time I'd managed to stumble into the cockpit, the engines were already spooling up to lift us away from the lakebed. Amazingly enough, it didn't look like there was more than a few feet of water above the top of the shields. A small grace I guess. Dull shaking rocked the Corvus as we rose slowly against the water pressure. The engines weren't designed for this, but they were working at least as the water changed from a deep blue to pale, to a view of the evening sky.

"Engines operating at Forty-one percent. Once I find a place to set down, we'll be here a while. I'll need to set up a canopy and do some in depth maintenance on both primaries."

A darkened forest met my eyes as we climbed above it, heading to somewhere that only Rose knew.

Unbeknownst to our heroes, their departure was viewed in the distance by the searching Night Guard. To them, all that was seen was a burst of light and the roar of an angry dragon. By the time they arrived at the site, all that remained was a boiling lake full of dead fish and a strange series of scorch marks. Princess Luna would need to be advised of this.

06. Burning Bright

Commanding Officer's Log 004
CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
0321hrs 29 July, 2463 Earth Standard

I wish I could say that launch went according to plan. The shields worked great, but we had to reduce throttle on the port engine by 18% due to heat buildup. We still had plenty of speed to hit escape velocity, but that did take a big chunk out of our safety buffer. Starboard was running about 97% but slightly sluggish as well. So the port engine will take priority for maintenance, followed up by starboard.

Quantum travel to the local dwarf star went off without issue. Currently we are sitting in high orbit with Rose handling the skimming per regulations. I'd trust her reaction speed against a solar flare a lot more than mine. Getting incinerated or sucked into space and incinerated doesn't sound fun. Through the heavily polarized filters on the canopy, the sun does look beautiful though. You can see all sorts of swirls and curves in the flame.

Anyhow, it looks like we'll be here a touch over two more hours before we've got full primary and secondary tanks. We're also topping off the storage for the plasma cannons. Doubtful we'll need them but I can shunt that fuel into the main system if needed. While we wait, I'm going to connect my helmet's augmented reality hardware and watch the data from our accident. This'll be interesting.

After a moment of thought, I decided to skip the interior view of the accident. Rose may enjoy making smartass cracks about me being a human ping pong ball for a few seconds, but I'd rather not see the what caused the pains I still feel. A couple taps on the console filled my vision with the swirling colors from inside the wormhole. Over that was the sensor readings from the Corvus, laying lines and texture over the swirls as it tried to map the impossible. Skipping forward to just before the chaos, I hit play. After a moment I wasn't sure what I was seeing. Even after slowing it down to a frame by frame, it just seemed impossible.

For just a heartbeat, a star was inside the wormhole. But in that tiny moment, it touched the edges of the tunnel and tore it to shreds, revealing blurred stars and realspace. It was the damn star we were orbiting now. A gesture bookmarked that moment for Rose to review a lot better than I could at least. Maybe she'd find a way home.

Through the breach we went, stuck in the pull of that baleful star for a heartbeat before physics reasserted itself. Even the sensors blurred out for a moment as we were slung through the solar system at near superluminal speeds. Rose never told me that she'd screamed my name when I'd been flung across the ship, yet even on the system logs I could hear it. I could feel her panic as a dot in the distance turned into a growing planet in our path. You can tell when an AI partitions themselves as there will be a momentary flicker in their systems. That flicker was all I needed to know when Rose sent part of herself to inhabit a frame and drag me to a crash seat. The majority of her mind was focused on not crashing, as sensor, power, and a dozen other readouts flashed over my screens.

For more than a moment, it felt like we were truly screwed before I reminded myself this had already happened. The view from the cockpit spinning as Rose spun the ship to point the tail toward the planet and ramped up the engines. Everything was redlining in the dozen seconds it took to hit the upper atmosphere. Screaming engines at full thrust and the howling of the shields filled my ears as we fell. Still fighting gravity and our speed, she managed to pull our nose into a proper angle of descent before we hit the thermal boundary and everything went dark.

It only took a fraction of a second for her to recover from the shields blowing out and power surge. Sparks were raining through the engineering space while one of her frames shielded my body with itself. Howling filled the ship as the tertiary generator was strained beyond specs but holding against the fires around us. The heat of the shields and friction of our passing lighting the air itself on fire and blinding visual sensors. It was then when I realized part of the noise was Rose. She was the ship, and she was falling. Blind and streaming flames, she still tried to save me against the odds and pain as systems seared and overheated. Yet she held for heartbeat after heartbeat.

The boundary layer helped us shed speed as the air became thicker and thicker while we fell. Most of the flames flickering and dying to reveal the glowing hues of a massively overstressed shield system that shone like a star. Every system fought the local gravity, keeping us on a good glide path, engines wailing and fighting to increase lift to keep us from hitting too hard. Long minutes passed before the view cleared to reveal mountains and forest just a few thousand feet below us. With enough speed bled away, I could see the sensors panning back and forth to find a safe landing zone before settling on a large lake.

Nearer and nearer it got until we were skimming above the water, the superheated shield leaving clouds of steam in our wake. Just before we plunged into the icy water, I only heard one thing. Rose barely whispering out loud, "I'm not leaving you."

The rest of the refueling and return trip was...quiet. Rose claimed to be busy managing the engines and preparing our small supply of beacons, but call me crazy for wondering if what I overheard was related. Dull thumping filled the ship as the airlocks cycled, opening the well secured troop bay to the abyss around us. The mistress of the ship was handling the flying to get the beacons precisely located at the first and second lagrangian points around the planet. Each one had a series of beacons thrown from the airlock to deploy in the vastness of space. The six foot long rods unfurled into a set of solar panels connected to a central hub that contained both sensors and communications gear. We set three at the L4 and L5, with two of the three beacons facing outward to scan and try to connect to something, anything UTE. The final one of the triads were pointed at the planet. At one and a half million kilometers from the planet, they would just provide communications relay and general sensor data.

Getting closer to the planet, I had to admit it was beautiful when we weren't crashing. Large oceans covered about sixty percent of the surface, with the rest being a mix of large continents, island chains, and in one particular spot, a small donut shaped continent that contained a massive sea. It was probably an ancient volcano, but it still looked neat. There was little else to do but enjoy the view as my companion handled setting the last beacons in different orbits. Soon enough we'd be back on the surface and the real work would begin.

Reentry is always nerve wracking despite being an everyday occurrence in spaceflight. The flickering flames against your shields, gravity pulling against already strained engines, or even randomly blowing a fuse. Thousands of things that could kill you in a heartbeat. On the other hand, if you pay attention, it can be incredibly beautiful and informative about where you are headed. Most of my concentration was on the landing though. The frames had completed assembly the maintenance cradle for the ship, so the last part would be an all AI landing.

Don't get me wrong, I trust Rose to do it. There's just that added stress when you think about what can go wrong. On a normal landing, you can just put your wheels down and relax. Landing on a cradle is different. The AI will hover as frames guide the landing gear to rest on reinforced pylons to keep the wheels a few inches off the ground. If the cradle isn't level or stable a lot can go wrong. With Rose piloting, there's a lot to go right though. Soft beeping filled the cockpit as the displays scrolled with altitude and vector data. I could see each of the three frames guiding a massive set of landing gear inch by inch onto the supports before settling down with a soft thud.

Every switch I flipped or button pressed, the rumbling of the ship lowered. The engines fell silent except creaks and pops of cooling metal. Humming of the grav generators slid into a soft buzz and pop before quiet. Soon all that was left was the low hum of a single shield generator on standby, whispering of the life support system, and faint roaring of the reactor fading as it went to minimal output.

"Great landing Rose. Let me know how things look later okay. I'm thinking I need a nap and then some food after all this. You know you can come up to my quarters if you need to talk."

She still wasn't talking apparently. With a sigh, I got up and dragged myself up to my cabin to strip off my armor and flop into bed. That was the most inviting thing I could think of.

Princess Luna glared at the night sky above her. The mysteries that were normally known to her were reluctant to tell her secrets today. Several new stars bloomed in the night sky, always moving. She'd tried to grasp one in her magic, yet her abilities slid right off it like nothing she'd ever encountered. It could have been the speed of the stars or how one stayed in place while two screamed across the horizons every hour, but it confounded her. She couldn't touch them, something in her very own domain. It was absolutely infuriating.

All that was forgotten as the throne room doors slammed open to reveal a panting and ragged guard. His armor and dark fur were dripping with sweat, his entire body shaking from exhaustion. A few shaking steps carried him into the room before he fell to the marble floor with a clatter. Unconsiousness was taking him by the time Luna managed to race across the room, but she still heard his whispered message.

"Monster. Southwest of Hollow Shades."

07. Licking Stamps

“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Commanding Officer's Log 005
CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
1736hrs 30 July, 2463 Earth Standard

Early yesterday morning we returned from the fuel run without further incident. We set all but two of our beacons in differing orbits to maximize the odds of picking up any signals from the UTE. It's doubtful, but you never know. They'll also be streaming data to Rose so she can try to pinpoint our location in the galaxy. On the way back to our quote unquote new home, we put two beacons in low orbit to scan the planet and give higher resolution info back to us. The final one was kicked out in geosynchronous orbit over the continent we are currently on. Largely it'll be used for weather and communications with the other arrays, although it can stream live video feeds if needed. So far we haven't seen any large cities or anything but that was anticipated. Come nightfall Rose did have a few spots she wanted to investigate with the geosat though. She thought she saw lights, but if there aren't any industrial cities it is unlikely.

After we landed, the maintenance shell was closed over both engines and the gap between the nacelles and rail of the Corvus. There are two downsides to this, as our sensor resolution is significantly reduced for the immediate area since the higher output ventral arrays are covered. The other one is that we are grounded for the time being while the engines go under the wrench. Thankfully the good outweighs the bad in this case. It looks like the better part of two weeks on the ground to make sure we get every possible issue. Even with the shell in place, we still have full power from the reactor, all shield generators, and the turrets only have a slightly reduced field of fire. Doubtful we'll need them though.

In terms of the planet, it appears to be slightly warmer than Earth, despite being of similar size and mass. Rose believes that is due to a significantly thicker ozone layer that is trapping heat. The air is breathable, but does have a significantly higher level of elemental fluorine and it's associated organic compounds. Thankfully it is below the the 20ppm threshold to be considered a significant health hazard, but I shouldn't go without my helmet for long just in case. Either way, I wasn't planning on taking it off since we have no idea what the bacteria or other microculture here will react with a human. We simply don't have the tech to find out quickly, as this wasn't even a scenario that was thought up.

There are a few small upsides though. The environmental systems can refine the local atmosphere without issue. I'll just occasionally have to dump a canister of elemental fluorine unless they can circulate that back out into the open air. Water shouldn't be an issue either, as whatever we can't recycle can just be added from a local water source and treated as contaminated. Since we have the communications for Rose to manage all the frames and the ship, the two of us are going to head out on one of the Shades to scout and take samples. First things first though is getting some food in me. After that is pulling a set of the heavy Aegis armor out of the locker and hitting the armory. Don't want to get eaten by some unknown critter after all.

"Hey Rose, you know the great thing about owning your own starship?"

While I waited for her to ponder the question, I punched an order into the generator in the mess hall. While not as fancy as the fictional "replicators" used in science fiction, they did some neat work. They take freeze dried proteins, starches, flavors, etc and just assemble it into whatever food and portions you want. Tastes a lot better than the rations for long military trips, and you can store almost literal tons of the stuff in a tiny space with a minimum of weight. Downside is if I wanted an apple, I was right out. I could get applesauce, but no apple. A hamburger but no steak.

"Oh, I know. You get to have a sexy AI take care of your every whim? I know you put extra credits into getting me a nice ass that has the right amount of jiggle."

The other thing about generated food is the coffee burns the same as regular when you choke on it.

Ten minutes. For ten fucking minutes she laughed and mocked the look on my face when she said that, claiming to have hardcoded a screenshot of it into the ship logs. I don't want to find out, and if she did there is nothing I could do about it anyhow. Instead of dwelling on it, I busied myself by planning out what I was going to get from the armory for our little trip. At least that was what was on my mind until the door clicked open and revealed... Rose bent over, and wiggling into a form fitting bodysuit that hugged EVERY curve of her thighs.

"Ha. I knew it! Just standing in the doorway stuttering and staring. You had them build all the features into this body, and I mean ALL of them. Fucking pervert. Although I might have to try some of those out on my own later..."

What. WHAT?!

"I..."

Seriously woman, stop bending over like that. For the love of god!

"Oh, redhead got your tongue there loverboy? Fine, I'll play nice."

Nice couldn't be considered anything of the sort from the soft noises she made wiggling into the suit before sealing it. The lightly armored fabric connecting to her body with a soft hiss and leaving nothing to the imagination. I didn't ask for them to build that into her, but I guess it's what they meant by the "full package." At least the curves disappeared as she clipped armor plates directly to the suit while my brain rebooted.

"You know I didn't ask for those improvements, right? And seriously? Really? You just had to go there."

Damn AI just laughed and kept gearing up, as I opened a locker to do it myself. Dropping a helmet on my foot when she murmered something I could barely hear. "I know you didn't put in for the upgrades. I did and paid for it myself. Trust me, I got every feature..." Before laughing even harder while I was swearing from smashed toes.

"God damnit Rose. Seriously?!"

Thankfully she decided to take it seriously after I threw a pair of armored gauntlets at her. Getting into my own armor didn't take too long, despite being one of the heavier suits I kept onboard. Having multiple sets might be considered overkill, but you never know what you'll run into in space. So I kept everything from your basic vacuum suit to a single set of powered Titan armor in storage. To be honest, I'd spent nearly as much on the flying chassis for the ship as I did on the armory alone. The last thing I needed was to be bleeding out from a wound that could have been prevented, all while being hours or days away from good medical care.

Since we were going to be riding on one of the Shades, I did leave off a fair chunk of the leg and arm plates so I could straddle the seat properly. Nothing sucked more than being an hour from nowhere and getting a cramp because you are stuck sitting weird. Plus, I doubt there are directed energy weapons being used here. Since the scout is armed, the only thing I grabbed from the firearms locker was a pulse rifle and beam pistol. The rifle would let me zoom in on things in the distance, and the beam pistols were a great utility item. You can cut trees down or even heat things in a survival situation with it.

Thankfully Rose was already waiting next to the troop bay airlock when I got down there, my armored steps ringing across the bare metal. Whoever had designed the armor for that frame had watched too many vids. Despite wearing the equivalent of a Titan suit, her curves were emphasised by the plating. Then again, since she was pretty much one of those suits already...

"Hey, is everything good to go?"

Waving me into the airlock she just chuckled, "Yeah, I've been waiting on you. The preflight on the Shade should be done when we get out there." My heavy steps echoed through the airlock, the yellow lighting casting everything into strange shadows while I opened a panel on my forearm. It was a simple safety switch to seal and pressurize the suit, but ingenious none the less. You had to rotate the cover then flip the small switch to unseal the suit, but a simple flick to seal. Just a few clicks and a small hum for a moment let me know everything was working as normal. Displays winked to life to show all the info I'd ever need, even if I couldn't see out of the faceplate. The same plate that had a clamshell of armor slam down over it with a loud click.

"Sorry, testing. You know how much I like to push your buttons Alex. Oh look, here's one for the airlock."

You know, it's kind of hard to be a smartass back when there is a mixture of a siren and howling wind as the shipboard air was sucked out to leave us in a vacuum. A red light illuminated the chamber to indicate hard vacuum for a moment. It wasn't too long before a soft whistling filled the chamber as local air was allowed in, the chamber flashing green for pressure then yellow on standby. To say it is a strange feeling watching the airlock clack and creak open on an unknown world is an understatement. Here I was, nothing special yet going to be the first human on this planet. That was nothing history could ever take away from me. It is a weird feeling to be surrounded by air, yet hearing the soft hiss of your suit. Seeing pine trees, but knowing there is no way they could be. Even the grass underfoot was green. To say it was disconcerting was an understatement. At least there were a couple constants to keep me from freaking out.

The four frames were out and about, three working on the covered engines, while the last looked to be doing some last minute tweaks on the Shade. They are a simple thing really, an analogue of the old Earth motorcycle. A somewhat aerodynamic body with two tandem seats above a drive motor that had four grav pods attached to it. From above it looked like a somewhat stylized Roman III if you thought about it abstractly. Underslung was a pair of small repeaters that probably couldn't hurt a starship but would do wonders to targets of the two legged variety. It even sported a very minimal shield system designed to mostly protect against space debris and handheld weapons. It might seem worthless, but they'd saved my butt before.

As I walked over, grass and gravel crunched underfoot. Rose leaned over and started the Shade with a couple presses and flips before I got there. The machine rose smoothly from it's metallic cradle with little more than a low growl from the engines. The noise increased a bit as Rose hopped her armored bulk onto it, the entire unit sinking a few inches before the computers added power to compensate. As much as I wanted to make a fat joke at Rose, I had to remember she could rip my arm off and beat me to death with it. Instead, I just handed her the rifle and straddled the bike ahead of her. Given that she could crush steel with her bare hands, I wasn't quite sure how I felt about having a set of arms around my waist.

The time passed a lot quicker than I thought it would. Woodland whipped around us as the Shade screamed through the trees, skimming over the occasional creek, and over the terrain. Every now and again, we'd stop and Rose would hop off to scrape a sample of something or another into a vial that was placed in a case she carried. We'd ended up stopping at the edge of the forest because, well we weren't sure what the hell was going on. Ahead of us was what appeared to be a well tended orchard with nobody in it. At least it would be the approximation of one, because there is no way in hell the fruit in the trees were apples. Just no way.

Through the scope of the rifle, they sure as hell looked like apples though. Rose had tasked the geosat to zoom in on the area, and other than the strange orchard there were no signs of civilization anywhere near here. So she'd decided to take the risk of going down there herself to take samples. Her whole argument was that she had replacement bodies. I didn't. Kind of hard to argue with that really. Regardless, I pulled the Shade behind dense brush, unlimbered my rifle, and lay down on the loamy earth. It seemed so strange to be seeing alien grass waving against my armor while I lay prone with a rifle in an uninhabited field. Either way, I watched her through the scope in case this was the most insane of traps.

A big thing about combat is watching people's body language. You'll know a lot about what's going to happen from reading that. When Rose stopped rustling around filling her bag with fruit and went still, my pulse went into overdrive. With that thudding in my ears, I focused on her, looking for movement or anything that caused her to freeze. Then I remembered she could talk without needing to speak. Idiot.

"What's going on down there?"

She peered around the edge of the tree looking deeper into the orchard before shrugging. "Thought I heard something. I'm just going to take this bag of samples and call it good. Nightfall is coming soon anyhow. Cover me just in case though, I'll be there in a minute."

The moment she broke cover a strange braying came from deeper in the trees, making her go from a jog to full sprint my way. I could see movement between the trees but no targets so I just watched as she neared. Her voice echoing in my helmet as she ran past, "Come on dumbass. I have no idea what that was, so let's get the fuck out of here." I certainly didn't need encouragement in that regard. She'd already hopped on the Shade and started it, so I clambered aboard the rear seat. Straddling it backwards, I locked my feet into the pegs and scanned the forest with the rifle before tapping Rose on the thigh to go.

As we shot back into the forest I swear I saw something through my sights. It looked like a teal horse, but couldn't have been. That would be insane, right?

"Hey Rose, when we get back can you download the last minute or so from my rifle? I think the air here is getting to me and I'm seeing shit."

That evening, as Luna held an impromptu Night Court in Hollow Shades, she was approached by one of the local ponies. A farmer by the name of Bluebell Apple. She claimed to have seen some kind of flying monster with eight legs on the outskirt of her orchard and didn't feel safe unless the guard investigated. Naturally, the Princess obliged, offering several of her Night Guard to return to the fields with Bluebell later that very evening. She'd join them slightly later after investigating her current mystery a touch more. If it were a true emergency, she trusted her guards to get her attention immediately.

The new star that never moved seemed to resist her magics. So she was curious about touching the ones that seemed to always be on the move. They only passed overhead for a few minutes every hour so her opportunity was small. Reaching out into the void, she felt her magic caress the object. Surrounding it, feeling it's curves and texture, yet it felt cold and utterly alien. Since touch alone wouldn't give any answers, Luna resolved to push herself a little harder. Reaffirming her magic around the object, she surrounded every possible bit of it, filling the gaps and preparing to buffer it. Confident she could hold her own with it, she pulled. Dragging it from the heavens, Luna knew she could guide it down to land at her waiting hooves with nary a scratch. Hopefully it would answer her nagging questions and not provide more.

Gravimetric distortion recorded in orbit above 47.6062° N, 122.3321° E...
Contact with satellite SAC-009 lost...
Attempting to reconnect...
Connection attempt failed...
Reporting unit damage or loss to controller...
Report filed...
Resuming operation...

08. Strange Things and Stranger Places

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." -Confucius

Commanding Officer's Log 006
CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
0831hrs 31 July, 2463 Earth Standard

So yeah, last night was nuts. We got a ton of samples but came across some sort of local wildlife. I was unsure of what the hell I saw, so Rose took a look at the video. Unless she has gone rampant in the last 24 hours, we saw the same thing with video supporting it. There are blue freaking miniature horses on this planet. Beyond that, we're not sure of anything large fauna wise. The plants seemed to be equally curious as well. What we thought were impossibly apples were exactly that. Rose spent all night sequencing one of the samples and it really is an analogue of the Terran apple, at least on the exterior. Due to differences in atmospherics and who knows how many millions of other things, there's no way to tell if it tastes like one. Mass spectrometer says it has the usual assortment of sugars and acids though. If it comes out as non toxic to humans, I might try one tonight.

In other news, we lost low orbit sat number 9 last night. Before the feed went dead it reported a change in local gravity. Personally, I have no idea what the hell that means since gravity doesn't work like that. I've tasked sat 8 to try to track the debris or locate a signal from 9 though. It can't hurt at least.

Considering we have found some weird wildlife now, we are going to spend today making sure the perimeter sensors and deterrents are working. So the frames can keep working on the engines, Rose and I are going to walk the treeline around the clearing to check everything. Shame I didn't think about bringing something better than auditory squealers, but it's not like crash landing anywhere was a big concern a week ago. Live and learn I guess.

Not that anyone really cares, but today is bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee for breakfast. In a minor thing, once we figure out the orbital period for the star, we're going to shift the system clocks to local time. Going off Earth standard is screwing me up since it's well past daylight, but I'm just getting started. If the system will let me I'll include both in the log, if not I'll just note the difference.

Since we still didn't know about the biome and my reaction to it, everything going into the ship went through a full decon shower. It's such a weird feeling to be fully armored in a room while getting sprayed with artificial rain, but a necessary evil. Last thing I'd need is to accidentally track in some microbe that would eat my eyes while I slept. I wish I could say what Rose and I were doing was exciting. It really wasn't. Literally zip checkpoint to checkpoint on a Shade really. Every now and again we'd have to walk a short distance into the woods to upright a sensor or squealer that started to fall over, but not much beyond that.

Yeah, it was boring. I was stuck doing just this, while Rose was rebuilding an engine, going over sensor logs, running a ship, and generally being a pain in my ass. Since we were so close to home, she declined her armor in favor of just the skin tight bodysuit. Naturally since I'm me, Rose demanded I wear a full suit so she could baby me. That or more so she could see exactly what I was looking at since the heavier armors had eye tracking tech built in. Normally it would be fine, but it had turned into a game for her. Bending over or other compromising positions, then giving me shit whenever my eyes drifted.

"You know, if I were anyone else I'd set your program to be as chaste as a nun."

Despite it being her turn to check a sensor and being in the woods yards away, her voice came through my helmet crystal clear.

"The only reason you haven't is you don't have a nun fetish. Hell, I'm starting to think you have an AI one. Here you are in your late thirties, owner of your own ship, veteran of the military, and slumming around with a slutty AI. What would people say if they knew..."

You can only laugh at some of her antics though. At least until a glob of mud shoots out of the trees to smear across my chest with a soft splat.

"Hey! Come on now, you know how long that'll take to clean. If you keep this up, I'll have to get out the collar and leash to keep you under control."

The moment that came out of my mouth, I just had a feeling of "you done fucked up." The petite redhead just stomped out of the brush half grinning and half glaring before pressing herself to my chest and moaning softly, "you know just how to show a girl a good time." Giggling the whole while, she jumped onto the Shade and floored it, leaving me standing there in a small shower of grass.

"What the hell..."

She made me walk back to the ship by myself. It wasn't more than a hundred yards, but that bitch.

Decon after that was...frustrating to say the least. While I had to stand there in the streaming water as it scrubbed my armor clean, Rose took a different route. Claiming that dirt had gotten into her suit, she decided to strip bare and parade around the airlock doing different stretches in the spray. I'll admit I was surprised her artificial skin held up against the pressure and heat from the jets. Less so when she decided to stand over one of the nozzles and shift her hips from side to side. Pervert. Honestly, I didn't even think AI tech was that advanced. Obviously I was wrong, but wow. Never piss off a moody redhead.

"So, I was thinking. What's the plan for if we find the missing unit? It's not like we have the spare parts to refurbish it, and it'll probably be little more than smoking scrap if it went down. I'm honestly not sure if there's a point to finding it since there's no data stored onboard."

Truthfully I hadn't considered that. Normally you could scrap them at a yard for a couple hundred credits, but there was a lack of those locally. One more thing I hadn't considered that joined the ever growing list in my mind. With my thoughts occupied, I stepped out of the airlock after it rattled open. I was so busy thinking about the what ifs of our situation that I didn't realize she was padding along silently behind me up the stairs to the crew deck. The only warning I got was a soft kiss on the cheek after I removed my helmet.

"Get some rest you idiot. I'll keep watch."

Rose spent a good deal of time watching Alex's vital signs that night after he'd enjoyed one of the apples. He'd described it as more tangy and sour than those on Earth, but very good. Both assumed it was largely due to the difference in minerals and the higher fluorine content of their new home.

Little did they know that the ship was being watched intently from inside the forest. The thestral guards had been unable to approach the perimeter due to the noise making devices, but Princess Luna forged onward. Stopping short of crossing a glowing red line that connected the strange boxes, she sat and watched the strange machines in the clearing. A missive was already on it's way to Canterlot to inform her sister of the discovery.

Something new had come to Equestria and she wasn't quite sure what it was yet. All Luna knew was that this could change the world.

09. Getting Better by the Minute

Commanding Officer's Log 007
CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
1151hrs 01 Aug, 2463 Local

Not a whole lot of excitement yesterday. Rose and I walked the treeline adjusting the sensors and audio deterrents. Other than a few that had fallen over slightly or minor tweaks here and there, they were in good shape. Considering the weird horse...thing we saw the other day, it can’t hurt to be careful. I did try one of the apples last night though. It was interesting but good, with a bit more bite than I’m used to. It was definitely an apple though. Saying that feels strange though. That was obviously a maintained orchard, so where are the keepers? How weird would it be if that quadruped was this planet's version of a guard dog. Anyhow, we're going to try to use the satellites to get a better view of the local area. It's not what they were designed for, but the orchard is really making me wonder. Plus, those apples were good albeit weird.

The maintenance is going according to schedule without any major hiccups. Rose swearing over the intercom a while ago. Apparently she didn’t realize how greasy one of the frame’s hands were, so she dropped a spanner between one of the vector nozzles and its enclosure. Her glitch reasserted itself during the rant, so Rose went from calling me regular insults to…well I’m not sure what. The only bit I caught was Rose saying I was making her mad as a bag of ferrets, and that I was dead from the neck up. She’s got issues. I tried not to laugh, I really did. It just didn’t work out that way.

In other news, we got the system clocks adjusted to local time. It turned out to be a really minor difference as the days are only slightly longer than those on Earth. According to Rose, a Terran day is 23 hours and 56 minutes. On this planet, they are 24 hours and 19 minutes. So a half hour longer...ish.

We have decided to leave the maintenance shelter in place after we finish repairs. Mostly to protect the ship from the elements. It’ll also allow Rose to set up a rolling shelter on the outside of the airlock for parts and tools. That way we’re not having to cycle the lock every time something unexpected happens with repairs. It’ll also double as a garage for one of the Shades. Those things are a pain to decon, so we’re just going to leave it outside. Two frames will just roll it three feet back if we take off, then forward the same to seal when we get back. Easy peasy.

Sorry about that. Rose says that she has found a faint but weak signal from SAC-009. She’s not able to multitask running the ship, frames, her body, and the satellite network, so I’ll be doing a little recon work today. Considering I didn’t really have much planned yet, it sounds good to me. The signal is coming from about forty miles northeast of us. That would put the unit at a significantly shallower descent than we thought. If there’s a signal, there might be something salvageable after all.

Since it is just me today, I’ll be going outfitted for a survival situation. Better safe than sorry and all. So that’ll make whatever weapons and armor I decide, one of the Shades, and it’s complement of two microdrones. At least those are cheap. As a precaution, Rose is prepping the second Shade. Here’s hoping I won’t need a rescue.

Wish me luck

It’s a weird feeling to be gearing up in full armor and weapons on an alien planet. If only the marines I’d served with could see me now. I was a pilot, we never got to do any of this stuff and barely got training to survive it in worst case scenarios. Now that I think about it, marooned on an unknown planet with no contact with civilization is kind of a worst case thing though.

As much as my hips are going to cramp up, I’m opting for the full plate today. I’ll be taking the same pulse rifle and beam pistol as the last outing. They may not be the most powerful weapons out there, but they are familiar. Identical versions are strapped in the cockpit of every UTE ship after all. God help me, but if I need more firepower I’ll have the Shade’s weapons.

Rose already had a survival kit pulled from storage and strapped to the back seat of the bike before I’d even made it outside. The hardsided pack made getting onto the humming scoutcraft a little more difficult, but still manageable. Rose had even bolted on both sets of mounts for the drones in anticipation of my arrival. Adjusting slightly, I unslung the pulse carbine and clipped it into a mount next to my leg. That way it was at hand but out of the way.

“You take too good care of me you know.”

All she did is laugh and pat me on the chest, making a dull thud against the armor plate. A soft twist on the throttle started me moving slowly while I checked the glowing displays and linked the bike’s systems to my armor. Fuel, weapons, available power, even a small radar display provided by one of the drones blinked into existence before my eyes. Nodding to my redheaded companion, I have the throttle a twist and started my journey in earnest. The last words I heard before passing into the trees were comforting at least.

“If you need me, all you have to do is say my name and I’ll be there.”

It was strangely relaxing to be zipping through the forest wherever and however I wanted. There was plenty of old and new growth everywhere, so I could zip over clumps of dense brush or skim the tops of ancient fallen trees. For a short while, my path followed a tiny creek downstream. It was barely wide enough to handle the Shade with a foot on either side, but seeing a trail of water shooting up as I passed was worth it. If it wasn’t for the near toxic atmosphere, this planet would be a near paradise. The miles just melted away under the bike and my enjoyment.

Before too long, the sensor package in the drones had managed to pick up the faint signal from probe 009. A moment later, a small directional arrow popped into the corner of my display to aim me in the general area I needed to go. Whoever designed the software for these things really knew what they were doing. A quarter mile before it would be able to start triangulating was certainly a good sign.

Well, I ended up stopping a touch short of the quarter mile. Rounding a thick cluster of trees, the road just ran out. Thank god for skimmers, but that was close. The front forks were dipping over the edge of what looked like a couple hundred yard high cliff. Even with the armor I doubt I’d get out of that in one piece.

“Hey Rose?”

I figured it would be a minute for her to respond, so I focused on carefully reversing the humming bike from the edge. I didn’t even notice the drone on the left fork unhooking until it popped completely free with a hiss, startling me. Not that I jerked the throttle making the bike shoot backwards or anything. That would just be silly.

Laughing, Rose chimed in, “You know, I was going to yell at you for almost driving off a cliff, but that makes me feel better. I thought you knew these have terrain mapping built in. Launch the recon drone and it’ll show you what’s coming up. You bought the high end stuff, don’t tell me you never read the manual.”

What can you possibly say to a woman that knows she has you cornered like that? With her mocking laughter ringing in my ears, I parked the bike and stepped off with a squish.

“And you stepped in probably the only pile of shit for miles. Today just isn’t your day is it?”

“Fuck me…”

The humming of the Shade went up in pitch a tiny bit as I leaned into it to push the bike sideways. It only went a foot or two before the computer adjusted, but it was still away from the pile I’d just stepped in. Just my luck. Ignoring the laughter, and refusing the urge to keep shaking my boot, I unlatched a panel inset on the bike. With a slight tug, the display came away in my hand to work as a tablet showing the data from the bike and drone.

“You know I’m not letting you in the airlock to decon from that. No way in hell I’m letting you drag alien shit into me. I’ll have the frames get out a hose until I think you are clean enough. Now if you’ll feel clean by the time we’re done is a different thing. Just remember that I am an adult and it’ll be okay.”

Yup. She’s in a mood. I just tuned it out and focused on the feed from the drone as it rose above the forest to triangulate the signal. Trees passed by as multicolored blurs when the display flipped through the different visible and near visible spectra. The display froze at thermal for a moment to reveal some wildlife running through the forest. When it couldn’t get a visual with other filters, the unit just panned and kept searching.

Eventually it settled on an area full of heat signatures yet covered by the canopy of trees. Unless I wanted to risk losing the drone, we’d have to settle with just the thermal view. All we could tell was they had four legs and there were a lot of them. Probably a nest of some kind, so completely not worth the risk of retrieval

“Well this turned out to be a shit show. I’m recalling the drone and heading back. I just wish you were joking about the hose, but the last thing I want is to track this onto the carpet.”

I stopped at the creek to drag my boot through the water. Knowing swirling it around wasn’t going to be enough, I rolled the Shade slightly to the side and stuck my foot out. It was impossible not to laugh since I was acting like a teenager. Shooting along above the running water at forty miles an hour and just skipping my boot along to blast the crud free.

“You are such a guy. Just splashing around in the water when there’s work to do. When you’re done, go a bit upstream and grab a sample for me okay.”

Grumbling to myself, I just let the Shade coast while we slowed. The moment we crossed onto shore the higher pitched whine turned back into a dull hum. It might seem silly, but it’s a good distinction to remember. Your vehicles tell you what’s going on by their noises. Same goes for women oddly enough.

Clambering off, I ignored the leaves and debris sticking to my dripping wet boots and focused on opening the survival bag. After unstrapping it and placing the case on the ground, I flipped the two latches. The case popped open with a dull hiss. They were always overpressured so they wouldn’t trap contaminants easily. Inside was a variety of packages designed to keep someone alive for as long as possible in the field. The two on top were always the water treatment and medical pouches.

Grabbing the second pouch, I ripped the top off it without much effort to reveal a set of vials. The gently gurgling water sounded nice as I stepped in up to my knees before dunking the full set of containers. Each one tested for different things and held several control samples just in case. Other than some pressure I couldn’t feel the cool water flowing around my legs. A guy can wish though.

“Alex, get on the bike.”

That got my attention fast as I capped the tubes.

“Stop fucking around and get on the damn bike. Leave the case. NOW!”

That didn’t sound good, so I just jammed the vials in a pouch and rushed out of the water. The dull crunching I’d heard earlier had turned into a crashing in that short moment, a mantra of ‘fuck fuck fuck’ repeating in my head as I jumped on the Shade and powered it up. Not even bothering to look back I just twisted the throttle and went.

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if the loud screeching was the Shade or whatever is behind me but I don’t like it. All I can see though the rear camera is scales and teeth, and I’m not going to stop to find out what it is. Where I had to dodge trees through the forest this thing just plowed through them, roaring and growling as it crushed the woods behind me. I just focused on dodging trees and staying ahead of the damn monster. Not that I expected it to do much against something that large, I flipped on the ultralight shields on the shade. At least seeing the glowing bubble pushing stuff away was a comfort.

“Rose! It’s not going away!”

The distance to the Corvus was down to a few miles and this thing just didn’t stop.

“Just keep coming to me. I already got a pulse rifle from the armory. If the squealers don’t scare it off, this should hurt it plenty.”

“Three miles and it’s not stopping. It’s still on my ass!”

Going as fast as I could push the bike through the trees wasn’t enough. The damn monster had started snapping it’s teeth behind me. Every step inching it closer and closer, almost brushing the paper thin shield.

Two miles. Two more miles. A minute. A minute and I’m safe. It’s still far enough away. I’ve got this. That’s not much more.

One mile. Come the fuck on! Go away you bastard!

“JINK LEFT!”

Not even thinking, I jammed the controls to the left to dodge a tree and a lunging set of jaws.

“Five seconds punch right and floor it. Incoming fire.”

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Slamming the controls the opposite direction and twisting the throttle to the limit, I shot away from the creature. A heartbeat later, a squealing shot of blue energy screamed by me. I have no idea how bad it hurt, but the howls of the thing sounded pissed.

Then I was airborne. It was just a moment but I got a good look at the fucker as it chomped down on the back seat of the shade. Teeth barely missing me before I was skidding across the grass of the clearing followed closely by the sparking wreckage of the scout. I couldn’t even say anything as the front forks slammed into my chest and dragged me under.
Everything pulsed red for a heartbeat as my head slammed into the ground with the bike astride me. It only lasted a moment before I could feel the auto-injectors in my armor go to work. That wasn’t a good sign, but after a moment I was feeling too good to care. I was going to get eaten by a dragon. On a planet that has mini horses on it. That shit was fucking funny. I could see a tail wrapping around the wreckage and probably my legs. I couldn’t feel them so no way to know for sure. At least it wouldn’t hurt.

“Get the FUCK away from him!”

What’s that big thing behind...ooooh. All I could do was close my eyes as the world turned to fire and noise. After it stopped, I was too tired to open them, even when the weight on my body was yanked away.

“Alex? Alex? Baby? I’ve got you. Lets get you to the infirmary, okay. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”

“Hey Rose? Why do I feel like I’m floating?”

“Because you’re hurt and I’m carrying you.”

“Hey Rose? What’s that loud noise?”

“That’s the airlock you goofball. Stay with me okay.”

“I’m cold Rose.”

“You would be, I’m cutting off your armor Alex. You’re kinda naked.”

“Did I seriously get attacked by a dragon?”

“Pretty sure that was a wyvern if it matters.”

“Oh, okay… why’s everything getting so da…”

In fact the monster the ponies were hunting for was this very feral wyvern. They were just minutes behind it, with Princess Luna growing more and more concerned as the path neared the home of Equestria’s strangest new residents. She’d hoped not to have to reveal herself just yet, but if it came to their defense both Luna and her guard would do it in a heartbeat.

They reached the clearing just in time to see the strange machine pinning the armored biped, the wyvern thrashing around attempting to reach it. The smaller creature was yelling at the monster, distracting it as some sort of machine lowered from the building. As he wyvern pounced, a storm of red filled the clearing with light and the sounds of a thousand banshees.

In a span of moments, all that was left of the foul creature was spatters of blood and chunks of smoking tissue littering the grass for dozens of yards behind it’s smoldering corpse. Without pause, the small biped reached the wreckage and to the amazement of everypony present, bodily threw it off it's injured compatriot. Seconds later, it was being carried through a doorway filled with flashing light.

The ponies sat there in the treeline stunned with the decisive violence and incredulity of what just happened. An entire swath of forest had been reduced to smoldering kindling in the span of heartbeats, let alone one a fierce predator. Only one thought echoed through Princess Luna’s mind as she gazed at the carnage.

“We...er...I think we’ll definitely need our sister’s advice on how to approach this.”

10. Mysterious Mysteries of Strange Mystery

Commanding Officer's Log 007
CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
1151hrs 01 Aug, 2463 Local

Shipboard AI Exigent Log 003
CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
2241hrs 01 Aug, 2463 Local

At 1731hrs today, there was a red level incident with local wildlife. An unknown species attacked the ship commander while en route back to our landing site. Ultrasonic and active deterrents were ineffective. Application of M-93 pulse rifle fire ineffective as well. Target terminated with extreme prejudice through the use of the main rear anti personnel turret. Shipborne repeaters proved to be exceedingly effective against the hostile. Target terminated with extreme prejudice.

Damage is as follows:
-Command staff incapacitated. Reverting to secondary protocols.
-Commander Alex “Alamo” Rodriguez suffered severe injury. Current status is delicate but prognosis is strongly toward a full recovery.
-He is currently in a medically induced coma to reduce stress. Estimated time till awakening 3-4 days at current rate.
-Full mobility restored in 3-4 weeks.
-Extent of injuries is severe.

-Subdural hematoma resulting in medical systems performing a craniotomy. Cap replaced post surgery with standard composite forms before suturing.

-Dislocation of lumbar vertebrae impinging on spinal cord temporarily pinned in place and treated with composite injection. Unknown if small fiber nerve damage is present. EMG shows primary function as intact.

-Extensive thoracic skeletal damage treated with localized composite injections.

-Facial lacerations from shattered armorplas faceplate examined and closed with bandages.

-Exposed tissues cleaned with standard surgical cleansers and an aqueous calcium gluconate wash due to the presence of fluorine in multiple states.

Personal Log 5694
Shipboard AI Rose
U.T.E. Corvus
2241hrs 02 Aug, 2463 Local

That fucking retard! Seriously, he can’t go anywhere without getting hurt. Instead of going out and finding the damn drone, he has to almost drive off a cliff then get eaten by a the local wildlife. I’m not going to tell him about this, but killing that wyvern was so satisfying. It comes in here threatening my owner and gets turned into confetti instead. Fucker.

I managed to get Alex into the med bay in time to halt any serious damage from spreading. It was near impossible not to panic, so I ended up suspending my emotional processing. There was just so much blood all over the inside of his helmet, let alone how his breathing sounded like someone was squishing a sandbag. It’s a good thing the medical systems are automated. I’ll be honest, there’s no way I could possibly have saved Alex. I couldn’t concentrate enough to focus on it, even after the bay closed, all I could do was pace outside while the machine worked. Hopefully it won’t need use often.

The shade looks like a complete loss though. Once my other projects are done, I’ll task a frame to disassemble it for parts, but the entire back third was pretty well destroyed. I’m sure we can find some use for the salvaged parts though.

I’m not going to let this incident repeat itself though. I’ve taken both XR-107 rail rifles from the armory and equipped two of the frames with them. If this planet demands firepower, two man portable anti-ship weapons should do fine. I’d like to keep from using the primary weapons, but will incinerate anything that tries to hurt Alex. Hurting him is my job when he's stupid.

To make sure this doesn’t happen again, I’ve adjusted the two satellites. 008 has boosted into a higher orbit with 007 to be geostationary. With their new positions I should be able to stream intel from this entire continent at once. On top of that, I tasked two frames to remove the maintenance covers above the lateral sensor arrays. It’ll increase the odds of crud blowing into the engines a percent or two, but will also let me use the full sensor arrays. To keep heat from building up too much, they are largely defaulting to passive modes but will actively ping once per minute. If something comes up I can tune it from there. This will also let me unlimber both pylon turrets if needed. Crossing my fingers it won’t come to that though.

If it does come to it though, I’ll burn whatever tries to get to Alex.

I’m calm. I'm calm. And yes, I realize that I called him my owner earlier in this log. Legally I am a UTE citizen and not owned by anyone. I just feel...warm when he calls me his. He could have done anything after separation from the Navy. Instead of taking the small pension like most do, he cashed in to buy my core from the Empire. My contract would have been complete in two more years, but over any other AI available, he wanted me. ME. He could have even waited for me to finish my training circuit for younger AIs, but he went through all the paperwork to make me his. I can't even put that feeling into words.

After that it was four years of running rare minerals on a beat to hell Orion freighter. We were always dodging pirates, but he never stopped talking about getting a ship like we used to fly. He took every shitty job and saved every penny he could to save up for the Corvus.
When I saw the orders and what he had planned, I just got so excited. I’d been planning on helping with the money I’d managed to make on my own, but the custom chassis order surprised me.

There’s a difference between a ship that I can “be” in, and a fully fledged chassis. He went for the highest end model he could afford, so I wanted to surprise him. The extra couple thousand credits per unit was enough to go from ‘sort of lifelike’ to as close as science can get. I’m not telling him, but I stashed a spare in storage in case something were to happen. Or he wants a threesome.

He gave me the universe so I’ll give him anything he wants, or destroy anything that gets in his way.

With Alex being down for the count, I didn’t want to leave the ship in case something happened. This gave me plenty of time to plan at least. Both of the satellites were already tasked with high resolution imaging of the surrounding area. Mapping the terrain in high detail and finding out where that creature came from were the priorities. A few of the mapping passes were going to hit where the hive where 009 had crash landed. It probably wasn’t worth the risk of retrieving, but if they could connect to it, the unit might be an intelligence asset while it had power.

Both pairs of recon drones from the Shades were also in use, getting linked to the local network and tasked with different orders. Their primary was to patrol the nearby forest since passive sensors don’t work too well in cluttered environments like that. If any large wildlife was found, they were to hit it with a marker. They aren’t painful, but leave an indelible signature that we can track. It was designed for tagging small items for later retrieval, but it’ll work in this case.

Nothing else major planned for today other than keeping track of Alex. He better be okay, or I’ll literally nag him to death.

Personal Log 5695
Shipboard AI Rose
U.T.E. Corvus
0931hrs 03 Aug, 2463 Local

Alex is mending better than expected. I’m assuming that is from the light augmentation the UTE uses on their flight staff, but without knowing exactly what they did it’s impossible to know for sure. Blood volume and makeup look good without any major immune response.
The med bay systems say that the composites have bonded to their injection sites and connected the broken bones. Now we just have to wait for his body to fill in the blanks with bone as he heals. It won’t be for a while, but at least Alex will be mobile once he wakes up. I’ve only had this body for about a week, but I can’t even imagine life without it now, so understanding how it feels to be broken is still beyond me. Hopefully he’ll be okay. I wonder if this is how all AI feel when getting their first frame.

In other news, the mapping is going better than anticipated. Every pass gives a bit more information, but also raises more questions. I don’t want to log any suspicions yet, but things just aren’t adding up here. The orchard is a great example. Those were basically Terran apple trees in a well farmed orchard. Where are the farmers? What was with the strange equine and was it some kind of “guard dog?”
Progressive passes are giving hints of buildings where we thought the “hive” was. If so, that would definitely confirm people are here despite not seeing them. That’s just a strange mystery. Lateral sensor should be online later today, and that’ll really increase our resolution on the immediate area. Lastly, I narrowed down and finally pinpointed where the wyvern came from. There is a cave, possibly a network about twenty miles north of us on the mountainside.

I’m not going to tell Alex this, but after that news last night, I suspended repairs. The ship is easily airworthy, albeit iffy on getting to orbit. Since he’s going to be unconscious for another day or two, I’m going to take the ship and hit that site with the plasma cannons. I don’t know if there are more of those bastards in there, but better safe than sorry. Not that turning the monster’s cave into a molten pit would make me feel better or anything. It’ll get logged as a post repair flight and weapons test.

Personal Log 5696
Shipboard AI Rose
U.T.E. Corvus
1507hrs 04 Aug, 2463 Local

Today has been interesting so far. Since my log yesterday, a lot of into yesterday as started to come together. There is definately a village of some kind under the canopy there with activity going on. 009 is confirmed to be there somewhere. Without getting closer I can’t say for sure exactly where, just within a hundred feet or so, it’s in that town. Lots of other metallic signatures in that town as well. The high concentration of refined irons is expected for a settlement, but there are high levels of gold and silver as well. There are even a few alloys the sensors aren’t sure of. If only we were in UTE space, that would be worth a lot of money.

In other news, the sensors were finally uncovered earlier today. I’ve picked up a fair bit of movement outside of the perimeter since then. Between the drones and the turret mounted cameras, it strongly looks like a group of those equine looking creatures. They’ve stayed under the canopy and away from the screamers, so I haven’t risked agitating them. I’d love to get one of the drones close to get video, but so far they’ve been docile. At the moment, I’m assuming the herd was heading to this clearing to graze, but that’s all based on conjecture. I’ll keep an eye on them regardless.

Alex should be waking up mid afternoon on the 6th. That leaves me today to finish my flight checks and planning for tomorrow. It’ll be interesting piloting myself via the pilot’s seat instead of direct system input. I could, but it’s not like a chance like this comes up often. If only Alex were awake, he’d make some crack about me wanting to push my own buttons or playing with myself.
AI aren’t supposed to be on their own for days without someone to give us orders. I’ve been letting the limited VI sets in the frames handle repairs and basic orders, but I caught myself talking to one of them earlier. We need orders to stay stable, even if it’s a sit and wait thing. If it comes to it, I’ll just give the frames orders then go to standby for the last few hours before Alex wakes up. I don’t like being jumpy and irritable, it’s a bad feeling.

I’m also making sure Alex can’t access these logs for one reason. When they put in all the upgrades, they included everything. I tried a few things last night, and oh my gods. I didn’t know those sensations could feel like that.

After saving that last log, I realized how sexualized that sounded. While I’m sure my chassis is equipped for things like that, I was exploring what the sensations of taste and texture are like. I only made small samples to make sure I didn’t put a dent in Alex’s food stocks, but I can say that coffee and cheese separately are enjoyable. They shouldn’t mix. Additionally, kiwi fruit are delicious, but strawberries are disagreeable on their own.

Downside to this was purging my system afterwards since I don’t have a digestive tract. Even to an AI that was a somewhat odd feeling. I might not have a digestive tract, but my chassis can "burn" pretty much anything organic as fuel. At least I don't have to eliminate waste like biological creatures do. Might just have to hide in my core if that were the case. Worthwhile experiment, just odd.

Over the past day, a small contingent of mixed royal guards had filtered into the forest, congregating at a small cold camp just out of view by the creatures in the clearing. Specialist soldiers throughout Equestria’s military put their skills to the test. They observed and logged everything in the clearing, sampled the assortment of brush damaged by the yet unknown magics, and a hundred other tasks. All of this was to the end goal of providing the royalty with the information they’d need to meet the strange creatures.

There had been much debate between Princess Luna and her advisors about the strange object being held in Hollow Shades. They’d ended up moving it once or twice to keep it secure, but there are only so many places you can keep an object that large. Until they’d seen it themselves, several ponies refused to even admit that it could have been something that strange. It was almost like it was from beyond Equestria. Yet no other race had managed to put anything in orbit. That was solely Princess Luna’s domain for the time being, unless you could get a large coven of unicorns together to pool their power. That’s not even touching on the strange properties of the object itself.

Thin sheets spread from it looking like paper thin hammered gold, yet being lightweight and exceedingly hard to cut. Naturally, the scientists wanted to use unicorn magic to try to cut a sample of the material, but were denied by Royal Decree. Princess Luna was convinced that bringing the object back to the creatures intact would be a huge part of peaceful contact. Begrudgingly, many agreed that given the abilities of the unknown species that not agitating them would be a good thing. Naturally there were those that felt science was worth the risk, but they were shouted down by their peers.

As a whole, Luna was in a mixed state of being bored and enthralled by the ongoings in the clearing. Night Court had been suspended while she was away, and the princess was loathe to return to it when there was something so interesting underhoof. Just a few minutes ago, two of the metallic figures had bodily dragged the massive housing away to reveal, well she wasn’t quite sure. Under all that plate looked like a set of shears that were slowly opening, spreading a golden light from within. Thin wisps of vapor pooled out of the arms, swirling around before disappearing before touching the ground.

When the entire contraption began to whine, Luna was completely enraptured, the scribbling of quills against parchment didn’t even register to her. Nothing remained of the early morning dim from the light washing it all away. Her curiosity almost getting the better of her, the Princess stood almost stepping forward. The desire to know more, see more, understand what this thing truly was as it defied all Equestrian knowledge.

Those thoughts were dashed in a heartbeat when the whine raised to wail then scream in moments, pinning her ears back before somepony cast a muffling spell. With the ear shattering noise dampened, all watched in awe when the contraption rose on a thin golden trail. For a fragment of a second, the air around it sparked and shimmered as if containing a powerful storm, before settling into a barely visible bubble while it hovered. The strange magic projectors wiggled back and forth, as if stretching after sitting still for too long. Only one pony was still writing, a quill clenched tightly in his magic, the light from the object casting hues and shadows all over the writing.

Then it was gone. Not as in disappeared, but rose up and away smoothly yet faster than most pegasi could hope to match. Not that it stopped several of the guards from shooting into the air in pursuit. Considering the figures milling around in the now darkened clearing, Princess Luna knew it would return soon enough, but appreciated her staff following the machine.

Minutes later, as unscheduled thunder rumbled in the distance, the princess overheard the same note taking stallion talking to himself. The doctor was well known among his peers as one of the best, despite his overly clinical manner.

“The object can fly at a great rate of speed and relocate at will. Implications unpleasant.”

11. Look at the Stars

“They say revenge is best cold. Revenge is sweet. Therefore, revenge is a flavor of ice cream” -unknown

I can see why he likes this. The feeling of control and power is incredible when you are at the controls. I’d purposely reminded myself to turn on all of the new senses provided by my body for this. Alex wouldn’t approve...outloud what I am doing, but he’d understand why. If I was going to go through with this, I wanted to be completely in charge of it, feeling every sensation the whole way, for good or bad.

Speaking of Alex, he’s currently in the medbay pod so the machine can keep an eye on him while I’m occupied. I wish there were a way for me to tap into the system and keep track of his vitals, but this chassis is so limiting. That is a very literal limiting by the way. Remember in an earlier log how it was put that this would make me as close to human as science could get? Yeah. In this chassis, I am me. The ship and frames are an extension, but anything else is beyond me. Overstressing systems is bad and all.

Being just me, just this body while my main core runs the background is exhilarating. There are no words to describe the feelings flowing through me, and by extension my main AI core. We are the same, but we are different in the same moment. It’s so hard to put it into words for someone to understand, being both here and there at the same time.

Takeoff and initial maneuvers went without malfunction or errors. I know this has to be a quick flight, but I want to enjoy my first one truly on my own. Maybe later, Alex and I can share somehow. My cores are so confused about him, but that’s a different log.

The trees are whipping along below the belly of the ship right now, all different shades and variety as I close on our target location. All of the turrets are currently stored in their armored enclosures since I’ll be using the new plasma cannons for this. It’s a shame Alex isn’t here to see this, as he always loved trying out new weapons on stuff. Then again, this isn’t officially happening, so we might do it later. Find some new crater in the mountainside to shoot up a bit, if you get what I mean. Get him some revenge without knowing it.

Primary shields are at full power, with both extra generators ready to snap on in a moment should I need them. Extremely unlikely, but it never hurts to be prepared. There are no words to describe it, but I can feel the cannons are ready, their status singing through my core in a mixture of readings and outputs, but pleasant. It’s been so very long since I fired a weapon in anger, or vengeance.

The target is a cave in the side of the rocky mountain slope. With maps from the drones, the optimal firing position has already been planned. Knowing the controls like the back of my proverbial hand, I bring the ship into a hover. To that small hamlet discovered yesterday, this would look like a small star floating in the distance. Maybe they’ll come investigate. I just hope they are human and not some species of cannibalistic lizard people.

Sighting the weapons is an easy thing for a ship like this. A wireless connection to your helmet, neural link like Alex has, or in my case chassis systems, and they’ll track wherever you look or think within reason. That’s good because I wanted to remember this moment for a long time. A few long milliseconds were spent writing every possible detail to memory, the feel of the rubberized control stick against my synthskin, the cool metal controls embedded in it, my thumb swirling over the the one linked to the cannons. So much power with one press, to rend and destroy, or protect those that I l... care for.

That last thought gave me all the conviction I needed to press the button. Even as the signal was sent, I could feel the interlocks opening, a thousand interactions within me. Invisible to the eye, but felt through my electronics, the prefire lasers flashed, burning away the atmosphere in the path of the shot. A hundred thousandth of a second later, the primary release cycled. Both cannons fired as one, sending two small stars screaming into the mountainside. Even at minimum output they are still devastating.

I’ll admit to sitting there watching the chaos. For a fragment in time, the interior of the cave was lit beyond the brightest of lights. Glowing hot rock rock exploded out of the hole, showering my shields with molten debris even at this distance. In a span of moments, all that was left was a collapsed hole filled with incandescent liquid rock. It would probably be too hot for anything living to approach for days, but I’m okay with that.

Currently I’m bringing the Corvus up to an altitude of just under 19,000 feet. I’m wanting to make a couple extra passes to get a good look at what I initially thought was a flock of large birds shortly after our launch. They were still following the ship, despite being far in the distance. Weirdly, they have a metallic component that is really increasing their signatures. With little more than I thought, I tasked 008 to try to get imaging of the birds.

While we were out and about, there was a second task to complete. Late last night while recalibrating 007, it caught a glimpse of what looked like faint artificial lights in several locations. The nearest one was roughly 315 miles southeast of our little clearing. Far enough to be out of view with the geosats focused on the surrounding area. Since that discovery, I tasked 007 with scanning for refined metals connecting the dots. I’ll be damned, but it looked like a primitive railroad system. It is really hard to not blame the oversight on the UTN downgrade when Alex purchased me, but it could have been stress as well.

Point is, I’m going to go up to a hundred thousand and fly over that site to see what can be found. The cameras should be able to get some good images without us being visible from the ground. If those birds come above the cloud layer, I’ll get a good line of sight for the sensors as well.

It’s exhilarating to be flying above the clouds on my own. Nothing but layered while below, and clear blue to the edges of space. Beautiful, but meaning I’ll have to dip below the layer around 36,000 feet. Still way higher than anything should be, but lower than I wanted to be. In a few minutes though, I want to enjoy this for a few minutes first.

Throttling back on the main engines and tipping the Corvus’ nose downward, the wispy clouds approached slowly. It would be a minute or two before we pass through the layer since there was so much altitude and speed to lose. Being at a supersonic speeds over a populated area is usually frowned on, and in this case might startle the locals. The last thing I need is to wake Alex up and explain some new AAA dents in the hull or something.

Thin trails of white began dancing across the canopy as we slowly slipped below the surface. Droplets of rain streaked up the windows as the clouds finally covered my view. Relying on my sensors, I reduced throttle a touch more and kept the shallow dive going. It would only be another few seconds, but the rain felt so strange against my hull. Finally, the clouds parted to reveal something I’d never expected.

“...the hell?! Record this. Record everything!”

“You know we are already doing this... um… me.”

A sprawling metropolis lay stretched out below us. Large parks sat between skyscrapers, all purposely cultivated and designed, yet no electronic signatures in the whole city. Available power dipped slightly for a moment when I triggered the shields for a moment, flashing the water vapor off my hull in a burst of steam to reveal everything to all my sensors.

Thousands and thousands of individual signatures moving below us. Different kinds throughout, yet none human. My cores had to take over flying for a moment as I sat there stunned at what the cameras revealed. Far below, the city was milling with a mixture of equines and other species of creatures from mythology.

“You are seeing this right?!”

“We’ll have to dissect the footage later, but this does answer some questions.”

Knowing that I certainly didn’t have the programming to handle anything approaching contact, I did the first thing that came to mind. Getting away. Still careful to stay below the sound barrier, I brought the nose and throttle up, shooting me back into the clouds. Alex can deal with this crazy world when he wakes up. Nope. Just nope.

Shipboard AI Exigent Log 004

CMDR. Alex Rodriguez

U.T.E. Corvus

1921hrs 05 Aug, 2463 Local

Initial test flight went to plan. After a quick decision to perform some recon, we discovered a large city that appeared to be populated with a multitude of creatures, none of which were human. Knowing that I am not programmed or trained for anything near contact situations, I immediately returned to base. It does not appear that we were followed from the city, but the presence of that flock of ‘birds’ concerns me. With new understanding about the apparent dominant species and their behaviors, it is safe to assume that was some kind of military or police force.

As such, I am continuing to keep the ship on an alert status. Once Alex awakes, he can decide what to do. It’ll only be a touch over nine hours from now if the autodoc is accurate. Considering he’ll have to be level headed for the upcoming events, the necessary information has been put into the medbay systems. It has decided on a course of a temporary nerve block instead of painkillers for the short term. The shots will be administered after the current pain medication wears off, and should be effective for two to three weeks.

The frames have been given orders to continue maintaining the engines, as if contact with this species goes poorly, we may need to relocate. Being able to reach orbit would be an important part of doing that in a hurry. Beyond that, it has only been a few days but I am noticing growing instabilities in my chassis systems. AI aren’t meant to operate on their own in such a format on their own. As a temporary measure, I’ll be putting the chassis into a hibernation mode near Alex. That way I can disable the additional software and perform system maintenance. I had no idea it could be like this. Having so many wants, desires, feeling even, it all makes your mind so noisy. It needs some optimization, I think.

Tomorrow will be an interesting but good day when Alex wakes up.

Unbeknownst to our intrepid crew, they did infact get spotted by the populace of Fillydelphia. The vast majority of the viewers just assumed the speck in the distance was little more than a dragon showboating in the clouds. There was that small percent that spoke to the constabulary. In ones and twos the complaints were largely ignored, but when nearly a hundred citizens had complained of the same innocuous thing, a report was made to the royal guard. With their duty done, they just told concerned citizens that it was being investigated.

And investigated it was. The assortment of guards had not been swift enough to follow the craft when it left the clearing, but reports of it shooting fire into the mountainside was enough to force the hooves of Princess Luna. By the time she’d arrived, a small river of molten stone was bubbling down the slopes, only contained by a mixture of unicorn magic and pegasi piloted rain clouds. Despite the skill being thrown at the small crisis, there was little the guards could do against nature like this. For hundreds of yards around the crater, trees were bleached white and orange from the heat of whatever magics were used.

Through her confusion at the situation, Princess Luna summoned her magics. Blue light spilled from her horn as the princess focused on the all encompassing heat, drawing it forth from the rock. What started as a single fleck of light, of contained heat, grew as streams of vapor flew from the stone and was compressed again and again. In a span of moments, none of the guards could look anywhere near the princess as the light was blinding.

Tilting her head back, Princess Luna directed the newborn star to arise into the sky to be seen for a few evenings before dissipating. When the brightness finally faded, where there had been streams of molten rock and smoking trees, was little more than a burnt mountainside covered in thick rimes of frost, creaking and crackling in the summer heat. Deep in thought, she was surprised by one of her armored sentries clearing his throat before speaking rather softly for his large size.

“We’ve found fresh wyvern tracks leading to and from this area ma’am. It is safe to assume the creature that assaulted those in the clearing came from here. Be it vengeance or preemptive prevention against another attack is beyond me to explain, but this is likely where the creature’s den lay.”

That, she could understand at least.

Later that evening, the princess was perplexed. The actions of the creatures and their ship made some sense in regards to their actions against the wyvern den, despite being extremely unpopular with the guards. But the machine flying over Fillydelphia before returning to the clearing was concerning. Moreso when the figures had continued their work assembling a shelter and working on their flying device. Thankfully all of the ruling princesses would be assembled in another day. Just one more day before they could attempt to speak and reason with the creatures. The first part of that was to start tonight.

Princess Luna without any guards was going to approach the craft. A dozen mages would be shielding her in case the creatures were indeed hostile, but she was there to make the first peaceful entreaty. Luna had carefully penned a note before attaching it with the royal seal to the device held in Hollow Shades. It would be placed between the tree line and craft where both parties could watch it. She just hoped it would be received in goodwill.

12. Look how they shine for you

"Never was anything great achieved without danger."
-Niccolo Machiavelli-

“Are you sure about this, highness?”

To Princess Luna that was a question that hardly needed an answer. It was her position, nay her very essence to guard Equestria and it’s citizens against threats from without and within. After her lengthy recovery from both the Nightmare possession and using the Tantabus as a method of self flagellation, Luna had thrown herself into her royal position. The last few years had been peaceful. Boringly so, to be truthful. Most of her time was spent in the Night Court as a patron of the arts and taking the few petitioners that wouldn’t make day court.

She was thankful to leave the general governing to Celestia and slowly integrate herself into the more military side of things instead. Even with that, life in Canterlot was so incredibly boring with the same things day in and out. So yes, Luna was decisively sure about what she was doing. It protected her ponies and gave a bit of desperately needed excitement to her life. Thinking through her words and forcing the thrill out of her voice, there was only one thing to say.

“Yes, exceedingly so. We... I need to do this for our ponies. The creatures are probably in a delicate place after the other one was assaulted, so all of us will be on guard anyhow.”

With a bow, the pony left Luna to finish her preparations. It was rare that the Princess wore her full barding, in this case opting for a smaller set. Gently placing the solid platinum emblems of office into a lined wood case, Luna turned to an ancient chest nearby. Under the flickering torchlight in her tent, the iron banded chest certainly looked to bear the weight of ages. Closing her eyes and focusing on the memory, Luna ‘poked’ several places within and out of the chest. Each prod causing a small click to fill the tent, before a final rasp of a lock springing free. Ever so gently her magic lifted the lid as light burst forth from within.

Deep blue light filled the tent, shining out through small gaps here and there as if there were a miniature sun contained within. It had been so long since Princess Luna had opened the chest that held her relics from the Age of Discord. The heavily enchanted chest essentially contained her personal armory of ensorcelled accoutrements. Every item within was made out of a shard of pure Octiron, the only of their kind on the planet. As her magic caressed and lifted the iridescent peytral, engraved runes began to flicker and illuminate. Firmly in her grip, the color settled on a glossy silver with thousands of runes engraved in the surface. Without a second thought, Luna clipped it in place with her magic.

The entire encampment went silent when Princess Luna stepped out of her tent wrapped in what looked like pure starlight. It wasn’t bright or overpowering, but dim light flickered and flowed over the armor that she’d deigned to wear. From hoof to cannon and elbow to withers, thin plate covered her pelt. Even a small plate covered her muzzle to crest without impeding the flow of her mane. Yet the rest of her was seemingly unarmored but she seemed not to care as her magic settled a small set of runed bags over her flanks.

From nearby campfires an assortment of unicorns from the guard assembled at some unseen gesture to wait on her command. Others departed at a canter to head deeper into the forest to meet other groups surrounding the clearing. A cart had already been brought forward with the strange object reclining on it, note and royal seal applied. Clearing her throat, the Princess began to speak. Her voice was loud enough to carry through the small camp, but soft enough to not be heard past it.

“Scientists, Guardsponies, I thank you for being here, serving your country in ways that we’d never envisioned when Equestria was founded. We’ve all seen what happens when these visitors are attacked and the devastation they can bring. While we can’t fix the damages done by the wild creature that attacked the owners of this craft, we can at least attempt to preserve any relationship between them and Equestria. As Princess Twilight would say, there is probably so much we can learn from them, and them from us. It is our duty to try to see that through.”

“You’ve all received your orders, some already carrying them to other groups. For those here, I trust you’ll follow them to the letter. I, and I alone, will carry this object to the middle point of the field between us and our visitors. Any pony violating that, even if there is a threat of bodily harm to me, will be subject to severe disciplinary actions. On the other hoof, if we are right you will all be forever enshrined in the history books. Luck be with us all, and thank you.”

With that, the camp began to disperse to their preassigned tasks leaving Luna largely alone with the object. For the first time since she’d pulled the object from the heavens, it was doing something. What it was doing, she had no idea. Within the transparent section midway through the shaft of the object, machinery was moving around. One of the small dark circles had spun to face her as Luna lifted the pillar. Thankfully some enterprising pony had figured out how to fold the large golden wings, so it was significantly easier to manage. The object was still difficult to grip in her magics, fighting her to stay aloft but manageable.

With every step toward the clearing, the runes on her armor brightened as they accepted the flow of more and more magics. Over a dozen channeling gems filled the bags across her back, their matching stones held between the assorted unicorns throughout the various camps. All of them had magic pouring into them and transmitting to their brethren held by the Princess. That way she could focus solely on the object while her subjects powered the shield as one.

Luna ignored the thin red lines that crossed her body as she steadily walked past the strange machines in the woods. Her sole focus was on keeping the pillar upright in the air next to her. Not that Luna would mention it to her ponies, but she was also trying not to trip and go muzzle first into the dirt. That would not be a regal first impression after all. Princess Twilight had done that when meeting King Goldhorn the first time, and Luna was set on not following that mistake on a larger scale.

Brilliant light flowed into the clearing around the Princess as she crossed the treeline. To her senses, everything nearby was radiant from the ambient mana. It curled, flowed, and drifted in the air before getting drawn into the shield to reinforce it. Tendrils of magic quested over the terrain in front of Luna’s hooves, telling her exactly where to step without needing to look. Every movement was calculated or so she thought.

For just a heartbeat, the shield around Luna wavered and rippled as if under obscene pressure by an unseen hoof. Moments later it happened again increasing the mana draw from the gems to compensate before the flow simply ceased. She knew that meant that something had happened to the unicorns powering the gems but not what. Steeling herself for the stress to come, Luna split her focus on powering the shield and carrying the pillar. Panic nearly overtook her as multiple spots on the craft opened to reveal weapons pointed directly at her and what was probably the locations of several guard camps.

All she could do was stop and hope that raising a hoof in a placating gesture would do… something. Long seconds passed as Luna watched red beams pass over the treeline, decorating them with a thin grid of color for a moment as if searching, before the light disappeared. A forgotten breath eventually forced it’s way free from the Princess, turning into both a sigh of relief and appeal for oxygen.

The weapons were watchful, yet not firing. That at least gave Luna some hope as she gingerly stepped forward again. Just a few at a time, she inched closer before setting the object gently on the ground. After making sure the note and seal were facing the right way, Luna nodded deeply at the craft before making her way back toward the treeline.

Once she was past the glowing red lines, Princess Luna dispelled the shield and teleported back to the encampment. For a fraction of a moment, there was an unfamiliar pressure against her fur as she teleported, but it was written off as a mixture of stress and adrenaline. To say that Luna was excited after her excursion into danger was an understatement, but you’d never hear the guards talking about how she was fidgeting and dancing that evening after sharing a mug of ale with her citizens. The ponies would also not expect the ever watchful AI to be carefully going over gathered data in anticipation of her owner awakening in a few short hours.

13. Open Your Eyes

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
-Marcus Aurelius-

Shipboard AI Exigent Log 005
CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
0531hrs 06 Aug, 2463 Local

The local species made contact earlier tonight. I spent the better part of the last two hours reviewing all available data to make absolutely sure this is what happened. Better safe than sorry when dealing with an alien species after all. The last thing we need is to screw up and then miraculously have the UTE Navy show up for complete irony.

Anyhow.

At 0346 hours this morning, a new member of what I am calling the equanoid species, passed through the sensor net and active deterrents to enter the clearing where the Corvus is undergoing repairs. Now this is where it gets… weird. (Please see the attached raw data for independent verification.) A winged and horned member of the species, armored in an unknown type of metallic armor was revealed to be the cause of the alert. The individual appeared on the assortment of visual sensors available, yet the area around it was a null space when active and passive scanning was used. Even under directly aimed bursts of active scanning, it was as if there was a dead space.

Multispectral imagery revealed that there was some kind of localized shield around the specimen in the EHF, NIR, and NUV spectra. Active scanning revealed a series of these ‘nulls’ around the perimeter of the clearing in fairly regular pattern. At this point there is not enough data to confirm if these were more individuals or some sort of generation equipment for the shield.

What made this beyond strange is the species either has a yet unknown grasp over electromagnetics, or has an inbuilt telekinetic ability. How they acquired it is yet unknown, but the equanoid had the missing satellite SAC-009 floating alongside it. There is not enough data for anything but conjecture, but any hypothesis I have are unpleasant in end result.

With the discovery of the additional ‘nulls’ I determined a cautious show of force may be necessary. As such, all turrets were brought online and deployed. Power was not routed to the weapon cores yet, just in case the species had scanning tech able to discern that. Instead, I had them use the visible lasers to light the treeline with a calibration grid in the hopes of it being a deterrent.

Thankfully it appeared to work, as the subject ceased advancing and raised a hoof in what I am assuming is a placating gesture. After a few moments, it gently lay SAC-009 at nearly the exact median point between the ship and the treeline before departing. The cameras reveal some kind of note or letter affixed to the satellite that will be investigated come daylight and Alex’s awakening.

What is even stranger is that when they departed I was able to get an active data connection to SAC-009 whereas it was blocked earlier. Initial diagnostics show that the probe was not tampered with in any way that shows to my systems. Regardless, I’ll be treating it with care in case this species has any other tricks up their proverbial sleeves.

The strangest part was if I didn’t know better I’d say after the subject entered the trees and passed the sensor line, it teleported. For just a few microseconds I managed to get a full sensor return on it. Thankfully it was in the middle of an active sweep, so we ended up with enough topological detail to extrapolate a full model surface of the equanoid. I’m not sure if that’ll end up being helpful or not yet, but it is more information than we had before. Based on the partial scan, it looks like his specimen is larger than most, standing at just under 6.5 feet tall accounting for the horn, and an estimated 450 pounds if density is similar to Terran equines. The other examples of the species are significantly smaller based on data from my flight.

Alex should be waking up in a few more hours according to autodoc data, so this will be the first thing to discuss after I manage to get him showered and shaved. I know it is just the sensory and emotional software from my chassis getting to me, but even with the autodoc taking care of his biological functions and cleaning, he still smells a bit gross.

I get the feeling life on this planet is going to be complicated, and the UTE never even bothered putting out a general first contact primer. So there will be lots of winging it. I just hope I can keep Alex from making too much of a mess out of this.

It’s nice to wake up with someone in your arms, feeling the soft fabric of her nightie rubbing against your skin as you pull her closer. Her soft whimpers turning into whispered moans as I kiss and nibble on her skin, baring her neck to me as if to beckon for more. Nothing hotter than that sharp intake of breath when I bite down softly, her exhale a breathy moan that matches the hips pushing back against mine.

Eyes still closed, slipping an arm around her petite frame and dragging her tight against my body, only one thought echoing in the animal side of my mind. The word ‘Mine’ echoing through my thoughts while slipping a hand between her thighs to rub. A primal thrill shooting through me as she moaned louder as my fingers found a delicate spot, my teeth digging into her shoulder at the same time, her voice making my name echo through the dark room. All I knew was I wanted more as I growled the word through my gently clenched teeth.

Wait… those breathy tones. The pert ass pressing against my crotch, her sensual body yet unyieldingly firm under the skin…

“ROSE?!”

Memories and pain exploded through me as I snapped fully awake to see nothing but the darkened interior of my room. All I could do is sigh. Really, how the hell do you explain a dream like that? Reaching over, I tapped the intercom button on the top of the bedside control panel.

“Hey Rose, what the hell happened?”

I certainly wasn’t expecting the door to slide open a few to reveal my copilot and AI. She stood in the doorway backlit with light for the general purpose room for just a moment before starting to point and laugh.

“Just for me? You shouldn’t have… but is that the whole gift? I’d imagined it would come wrapped in a bigger package”

A brief glance down explained more than a bit of me was fully exposed and that I was not in a “polite” position for company. No way in hell was I going to even think about that dream. Instead, I chose the proper route, dragging a blanket over my lower half and a pillow onto my face to hide a blush.

“Fuck my life… and I hate you, Rose. Seriously.”

Rose’s laughter faded after I threw a shoe at her head, finally getting the stubborn AI to leave me alone for some peace and quiet. Being alone with my thoughts was nice as I replayed the accident in my mind. Before too long, a soft chime rang clearly from the control panel before the frustrating woman started speaking over the intercom.

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t exactly what I was expecting when you called me. I know you’re going to be sore and things will feel funny for a bit. You got busted up pretty good so the autodoc put in some overtime. I kind of… maybe… had to shave your head for surgery though.”

A frustrated groan was my only answer.

“You needed surgery to relieve pressure in your skull. You’d have died otherwise. The only reason you aren’t screaming right now is that the med system did a series of nerve blocks, so take it easy okay. Breakfast will be ready in a few and we need to have a talk. This world is a lot stranger than we figured.”

Oh god, coffee after being asleep for days is amazing. Well it would have been amazing sooner if Rose hadn’t made me take a shower as soon as I got up. Not that I’d tell her, but yeah she was right in saying I needed one. I wasn’t exactly enthused about the small welts that covered my torso where the autodoc injected me with meds, not that it was really noticeable around the rest of the bruises anyhow.

Rose was making me take it slow, especially when it came to eating. Little bits here and there. Yeah, I didn’t want to get sick but damnit woman, feed me. At least she was explaining things while I slowly stuffed my face. Now the fact that either magic or technologically advanced ponies ruled the world just seemed absurd. But it was also hard to dispute when raw image and sensor data was put on the screen while I ate. This world is freaking weird.

There could be a few upsides though. The locals did drop of SAC-009, which we were going to inspect after I finished getting cleaned up. They also might have some kind of technology that could aid getting us home. First thing was to get geared up. Yes, the frames could move the satellite, but it would take several of them to keep it balanced and from getting banged up. Instead, it looked more like the simplest method would be to put on the Atlas armor and just carry the damn thing. After what happened on my last trip outside, a bit of extra armor might be nice anyhow.

As useful as the Atlas suits were, they had a fair share of problems. All of which were on my mind while I slipped into a basic form fitting flight suit. It was such a weird feeling for everything to feel so… distant. I know it was from the assortment of nerve blocks to keep me from screaming in pain, let alone crying about what would soon be a nice scar across the back of my head.

Keeping that injury in mind, I made sure to very very gently lower the helmet over my head. The last thing I needed was blood dripping into my suit or to ruin another set of armor. There was already a bit of a lecture about how a good suit of armor was ruined because Rose had to literally cut the plates off me because they wouldn’t unlatch. So making sure the helmet was settled softly and without pain was a good thing.

An Atlas suit is an expensive set of equipment to say the least. They were used for heavy mining and labor in hostile environments until the UTE military found out about them. The tech quickly advanced by leaps and bounds once the R&D nerds got their hands on it. Unfortunately, the only place I could fit the ‘roll on’ pod was in a corner of the troop bay that was already cluttered with gear. At first glance, it looked more like a giant armored cabinet than anything, but that was the point. The pods were designed to either equip someone before deployment, or in a hurry, be airdropped for someone to put on. Instant fire support in a can basically. With my footsteps echoing through the bay, I pulled up the augmented reality system on my visor to send an activation signal to the pod, a slight grimace on my face from what I knew was coming.

As I watched the armored doors open, Rose just had to chime in with her amused words. I didn’t even notice her pacing on the other side of the bay.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to see you get inside a set of sexy machinery, but this isn’t what I meant. What does a girl have to do to get some attention around here? Seriously though, let's make it quick. Both of us know how much of a pain in the ass that stuff is to maintain.”

Thankfully she couldn’t see the blush on my face as I reached into the cavern filled with machinery. At least I hope she couldn’t. This morning was already rough in more than one way. The inside of the pod was studded with tools and equipment inset into the walls, just waiting to begin. God knows it had been years since I’ve trained on this stuff, so let's just hope I don’t screw up too badly. Carefully stepping up into the raised armored boots, they clicked and locked down against my flight suit with a slight gap between them. Knowing I could only hold back for so long, my knees and thighs pressed against the waiting armored sections. With both hands inserted into armored gauntlets and a guide against my helmet, the lights inside the pod dimmed before flashing a solid red.

It never ceases to feel like a closing coffin when the pod closes around you. Only a dim red light spilling from above to illuminate a variety of tools and plating that is starting to move, guided by unseen lasers. Long seconds passed after I closed my eyes. Every movement against my body was felt despite the nerve blocks when plates were placed and bolted into place to assemble a frame around my flight suit. Others were latched onto that again and again as the tooling essentially built the armor around me. With dull finality, an armored helmet was lowered over mine before rasping clicks locked it into place and me into pitch black other than scrolling text. Pressure built around my flight suit, constricting me for a moment as panels inset in the frame expanded to support and insulate me against shock, spalling, or even the chill of cold metal in space.

<3>
<2>
<1>

It is such a strange feeling to have your entire body vibrate from within for a moment. I knew better, that it was the intense magnetic fields used in the small starship grade reactor. It still felt weird though. Thankfully the internal displays finally lit up with camera feeds to show the inside of the pod filled with a yellow light. After a few seconds the light turned solid green, before the pod doors began to slowly separate to reveal a grinning redhead looking inside.

“So, how does it feel to have something hugging your every curve like that, feeling so tight around you? Or was that a question about how you woke up this morning?”

God damnit.

From just beyond the treeline, the combined Royalty of Equestria watched the craft in the hopes that their visitor from the stars would make an appearance. For most of the morning they had sat and conversed about the myriad of things Luna, and her retainers had witnessed. Oddly enough it was Princess Twilight that seemed to be the most reserved. Not that she doubted the stacks of notes and logs, no it was that she was unsure of how Equestria’s first meeting with a new species could have been tainted.

Over much tea they discussed in depth what they hoped to achieve through this. Celestia as always was pragmatic and wanting to assure her ponies that there wasn’t a viable threat. Cadance was more curious than anything, but deferred to her husband in many regards to the situation. All of them were beyond surprised by Luna’s behavior though. The militant Princess that normally chomped at the bit to get her hooves dirty was acting like an excited foal. The combined royals all saw that the visitor was from beyond the surface of their little planet, but none of them truly understood the meaning like Luna did.

Conversation around the camp quieted to whispers as something before unseen was happening with the craft. The wall with the small light filled doorway was opening. Bright strobing golden light spilled out from the crack as it opened wider and wider. Yet through the middle of the light was a deep shadow. Eventually the door was open wide enough to reveal the being casting the shadow was some sort of a giant. The smaller bipods only stood to mid chest on the behemoth of metal plates. For a moment the ponies were all disturbed as part of what should have been it’s face folded back to show a smooth black surface underneath.

As one, the assorted ponies realized it must be some kind of a suit of armor. Now what kind of huge creature it would fit was something else. A minotaur perhaps, but they hadn’t seen one around the clearing so that was not the best assumption. The guard that suggested it was promptly whacked upside the head by his compatriots.

Even at the distance, they could hear the being’s steps thudding dully into the earth as it walked toward the strange pillar. Every pony held their breath as the giant stood over the strange object and stared at the affixed Royal Seal and letter. With surprising dexterity, the being shrugged before reaching down with both massive hands to effortlessly lift the pillar. After a moment or two to adjust, it strode back toward the gaping doorway from whence it came.

At this, all of the Princesses stood and stepped forward to some unheard signal. As one, the four Alicorns crossed the threshold between trees and grass, and stepped into a new page of Equestrian history. Thankfully they couldn’t hear Equestria’s newest resident speaking about the note affixed to the satellite. Nor the facepalm or soft "You're an idiot" his compatriot did in response.

“What the hell kind of writing is this?!”

14. Hotel California

“...когда несходные культуры вступают в контакт, одна обычно должна подчиниться, иначе - война. ("Первый контакт")”
― Murray Leinster, First Contacts-

Even with the Atlas armor wrapped around me, moving the satellite was slow going. They were easy to handle in space where you could turn off artificial gravity and then manhandle, but on a planet, these fuckers were heavy. Thankfully the powered suit was up to the challenge so long as I took my time.

Readouts flickered data in the corner of my vision as I plodded back to the ship. Every step make the armored suit sink into the loamy soil slightly from the literal tons of weight, leaving obvious footprints behind me. At least SAC-009 didn’t look worse for wear. With a tuneup, it might even be able to get put back up in orbit.

The strange note the equanoids left attached to the satellite was certainly different to say the least. It looked like a bunch of squiggles to me, but I’m a pilot not a linguist. Hopefully Rose would be able to figure something out, because I certainly don’t have the skill set for it. Speaking of which, I can’t say I’ve ever seen a horse… thing that was radiant alabaster, nor deep blue, pink, or purple like the ones stepping cautiously out of the woods.

“Um… Rose, you are seeing this right? Multicolored horses coming out of the woods.”

Even though she was chuckling softly at my comment, I could see the seriousness under it. Readouts were scrolling in a corner of my visor showing power being routed to weapons and shields. They weren’t being brought online yet, but could be in a millisecond if needed. With a moment of consideration, I brought the suit’s generators online as well, despite hoping we wouldn’t need the mobile cover provided by it.

Despite hiding it well, the Equestrian delegation was beyond apprehensive about meeting their newest neighbors and possible new residents. As Twilight had found out, it can be the smallest things that can make or break relationships with different species. Thankfully her challenges were largely found to be amusing by the other party when they came up.

Even though it wasn’t practiced, all four alicorns fell into step and smoothly moving as one. Unplanned as it was, it did give their advance a kind of fluidity of movement that carried over to the Princess’ royal visage. Princess Cadance seemed to be the jumpiest of the bunch, almost imperceptibly flinching every time one of the approaching giant’s armored feet hit the ground with a dull thud.

Stopping at the middle ground where they had lain the pillar a short time ago, the ponies stopped. Silently the quartet watched the aliens approach, with the much smaller flame maned one slightly in the lead. From the shape, Twilight safely assumed it was a she, but the giant one was still a mystery. Small piercing eyes peered out of a somewhat squat face, only with a slight nose poking out. Ironically enough, the female looked similar to the Marmosi people across the great Eastern Sea.

It was only after the alien duo stopped that Twilight truly understood the size difference. Even the petite female stood a few hooves over Princess Luna if you ignored her horn. The armored behemoth towered above all of the royals by several hooves at least. To say the glassy black surface where a face should be was unsettling to Twilight was an understatement. She could feel whatever was behind the glass watching her, yet not see it in return.

All of the ponies stepped back when the small one spoke, a warbling series of howls coming from her lips that made no sense. Then again, they were an alien species. On the off chance that something could carry over, The moment became even stranger as the two looked as if they were communicating without speaking, the giant animatedly moving his armored hands to a beat that he could only hear. It only took a moment before the smaller biped nodded. Without a spoken word, movement came from within their craft.

Two metal contructs came out of the massive doorway carrying a heavy looking table between them. As they approached, all of the Equestrians took in the intricacy of the robot’s construction. Armor plating covered what would be vital areas, yet thin sheathing was lain over cables and mechanical joints. It was something wholly unseen by pony eyes to that point.

In turn, Princess Celestia spoke, welcoming the creatures in hopeful peace to Equestria as the mechanical beings set the table between both parties. The small smile on the petite one’s face fell as the only thing she heard was a mixture of whinnies and whistles. Only for a moment though before she noticed the larger one’s armor shaking. From the body language they all understood he was laughing at the situation. A few heartbeats later, both delegations were laughing in their own ways from the absurdity of the situation.

Several minutes of stress relief later, all of them realized this was going to be a difficult process. Everybeing present watched in curiosity as Princess Twilight pulled out a quill, parchment, and inkwell, to set them down on the metal table with a soft rustle before starting to write. Seconds turned to long minutes as Twilight and Rose would write, then pass the quill back and forth as if trying to figure out the answer to an unknown question. Finally, she looked up with a soft “oooooooh, I get it.”

“She’s trying to show me their math so we can find a mutual starting point.”

Every Equestrian understood the motion the redhead’s partner made as the open palm of his armor lightly struck the armored glass in front of his face. This was going to take a lot longer than they thought.

15. Due Process

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
― H.L. Mencken

CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
2136hrs 06 June, 2463 Local

So it seems like things got crazy while I was unconscious. I am still stiff as hell but not in too much pain thanks to the nerve blocks. Unfortunately, I still can’t feel my feet too well, but that should go away as the blocks fade. I’m going to skip the info that Rose already provided in her previous logs to get onto the more important stuff.

Namely that this planet is home to intelligent non-human life. That wasn’t a typo. So far, we’ve recorded a total of six distinct species. Strangely enough, all but two of them are fairly decent analogues of creatures from old Terran mythology or history. Granted they’ll have some deviation, but you have your ponies, unicorns, pegasi, and oddly enough, griffons. The two unknowns so far are a winged unicorn that appears to be their ruling class, and a type of pegasi with fangs, slit pupils, and bat-like wings. All of these with the exception of Griffons have some weird coloring that is either a strange adaptation or cultural dying of their fur.

Speaking of the ruling class, Rose has dubbed the “pony” species as Equanoids until we can get some kind of translation as to what they call themselves. Each of the ruling class seem to have some kind of strange adaptations. It’s unsure if it is technological or otherwise since they have “magic” but their mane and tails all seem to move in an unseen breeze.

Since we don’t have official names for each of the rulers, they are just being designated E1 through E4 as of right now. E1 is the first one we encountered. E1 would be the indigo Equanoid that has a stylized moon on her rear thighs. I’m guessing that’s what you could call it anyhow. Oddly enough that one’s mane seems to appear as if there were stars in it. Odd, but strongly leaning towards some kind of weirdness. E2 is a touch larger, being mostly alabaster with a mane colored like a sunset and a sun marking on her butt. I’m seeing a theme here. Normally I’d think a ruling couple, but all are female. Matriarchal society maybe?

E3 is the one attempting translation. She is the smallest of the bunch, with a lavender coloring. Thankfully the rest doesn’t seem too odd, with an indigo and pink tail, despite the multiple star markings. Lastly is E4, the weird one. She has a blue heart marking on her rear, with honestly girly coloring. Pink, lavender, yellow, and violet. Thankfully Rose is the one mainly interacting with them so far. Not like I can talk to them or anything.

She has been working fairly hard at some kind of translation for most of today, but it’s been slow going to say the least. Personally, I don’t understand the “how” of how finding a meeting ground of our math systems will help, but there’s a reason why Rose is the AI and I’m not. Thankfully her counterpart on the Equanoid side seems to be a bit of a nerd as well.

Regardless of how the translation goes, Rose thinks I’ll never be able to speak their language. That was kind of obvious already though. At best, she’ll be able to write a program suite for the in suit systems to translate written stuff. Audio is a maybe, but likely one way unless Rose or a frame are nearby. I didn’t know this, but apparently Rose’s “anatomy” lets her make a much wider variety of noises than a regular human because she has full control over all that. Yes, she was giggling after saying that. The frames just have regular old speakers systems so that would work too.

While Rose works on the translation with the Equanoids tomorrow morning, I’ll be working on getting SAC-009 plugged in and downloaded, if it recorded much of anything. Honestly, after wearing that Atlas all day I’m sweaty and chafed. Looks like it needs an hour or so of TLC tonight, so a frame is tasked with that. Tomorrow will be nice since I’ll just be in my flight suit. Naturally my helmet will be nearby though.

Oh, before I forget, that is something important. So far other than some possible allergen risks there doesn’t seem to be anything major with the biome that can kill humans. The atmosphere is a touch toxic though. In short doses it won’t hurt anyone, but the high fluorine levels aren’t good for you either though. So as a whole I’m just going to keep wearing a mask at minimum when I’m outside. Probably a full helmet though. Still fucking stiff from that damn Wyvern...thing.

CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
1143hrs 07 June, 2463 Local

So it looks like Rose and E3 were up almost all night before the other Equanoids convinced her to go back to their camp. There was a weird energy reading this morning though. It wasn’t around long enough to get a good read on, but I have the computer set to keep an eye out for that reading again. Rose is using most of her processing on the translation, so I have to do a lot manually right now. Still feels weird.

Nothing major so far today. One of the other royals brought out a picture book and Rose matched it with some printouts. I’m pretty sure they’re trying to teach the other the alphabet or something. It’ll be nice to be able to “talk” to them at some point or another though.

CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
1943hrs 08 June, 2463 Local

What. The. Fuck. Seriously, what the fuck?!

Okay, let me start over. So we got lucky. So insanely incredibly lucky. Almost the same reading popped up last night with some variation. Then the first one popped up at 0700 sharp this morning. Like exactly on 0700 give or take a few seconds. This made both Rose and myself curious as hell because that is oddly specific. Both sets of readings looked like they were coming from the Equanoid main camp.

Rose is still out there talking while she crunches numbers on this in here with me. But here’s what it looks like, and I’ve attached all the data. One of the guards came up to the Royals a touch after 1900, saying something and pointing at the sky. After a brief laugh, E1 and E2 together used their technology, magic, whatever you call it, at the same time.

So yeah, how I said we got lucky? Um. We have zero idea how, but they moved both the sun and the moon. I’m not talking they moved a little. I mean we were still in sunset, then it was suddenly night with the moon above the horizon. Two things were learned. One, apparently this is a geocentric solar system. We never noticed because it never crossed our mind to check. Two was E1 and E2 literally dragged a fucking star and moon around the planet like toys without wrecking everything.

I’m not even sure there’s a number for the amount of power that should take. The lucky part is when you think about the distances involved in this. If we were in orbit of the star when it was moved, we’d have died before even knowing it. The damn thing was literally dragged faster than the speed of goddamn light. That breaks everything about physics. EVERYTHING.

What?

Rose thinks my blood pressure is getting too high and I’ll bust one of the nerve blocks, so she’s giving me some meds and telling me to go lay down for a bit. That’s not going to fucking help, but I’ll humor her.

CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
1702hrs 09 June, 2463 Local

Okay, I’ve had the better part of a day to come to terms with that realization. The general consensus between Rose and myself is that we’re not going to think about it. We don’t have the sensors or computing power to even try to figure it out in any meaningful way. This was supposed to be a mineral hunting trip, not a “we broke reality” vacation.

*sigh*

Despite the world suddenly not making any sense, Rose thinks she’s managed to piece together some basic form of literary translation software. It’ll need a ton of refining, but it’s a start none the less. We’ll be giving it a try in the morning if all goes well. Beyond that, we’ve discovered a few interesting things about our “hosts.” Nothing special and relevant, but apparently they enjoy coffee and sugar. I really had to try hard not to laugh though. Rose had the frames bring out some coffee as the Royals had provided tea earlier in the day. Between the four Equanoid royals, they managed to eat an entire bowl of sugar cubes in the span of fifteen minutes. I’m sorry, but it is hilarious to see a magic space horse eating raw sugar like it’s the best treat in the world. Too freaking surreal.

I wonder if they thought we were bribing them or something. That would be our luck. Speaking of luck, we’ll need it tomorrow. Hopefully we won’t accidentally say they are all donkeys or the like.

16. Logarithm

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”
- Ronald Reagan-

For nearly a week, the Equestrian royals and their alien visitors tried to converse in some form or another. At first they started finding a common place for their maths, but despite sharing a similar structure and base, neither side could apparently make it work for communication. Frustrated with the situation, what started as lashing out by Princess Cadance turned into a hilarious boon. You see, Princess Twilight still had a way to go on her checklists before this would have been attempted. Not knowing that, Cadance simply went with the obvious method of pointing at a tea cup and saying what it was.

From there, it snowballed into the small female and whatever of the Royals were at hand pointing, laughing, and trying to communicate in their own languages. Occasionally there was the odd hiccup with the process, like when they ran out of things nearby to name. That was remedied rather quickly and loudly as Twilight literally teleported a stack of picture books intended for foals.

Little by little, the process sped up. Through it all, the flame maned female worked tirelessly, while her compatriot came and went, seemingly at her whims. After a while, Princess Luna just began assuming that the female was the leader of the two. Unlike their leader that went unmasked, the Equestrians had yet to see the face of the larger of the duo. Every time he left the craft, he was concealed behind polished and shadowed glass, or a sheet of metal with strange glowing eyes. Some of the guards had even taken to placing bets that it was just another machine, like the intricate ones that always seemed to be about.

In truth, Luna was beginning to wonder herself. On occasion she’d faintly feel as if there were two dreams from within the craft on some nights, while on others there was a single distinct one. So she came up with a simple idea. On the sixth day, some hours after both camps had largely headed to bed, and after the lights in the craft had been extinguished, she set to work.

Under the guise of safeguarding the dreams of all creatures in Equestria, the Princess set forth to patrol the dream world from within her pavillion. In her semi-conscious state, an unseen universe unfolded in her mind. The swirls of color and lights resolved into something that looked akin to a night sky. Each spark in the distance was a different dream, with different colors meaning different things. With little more than a thought of the pony, Princess Luna could fly across Equestria in a heartbeat to be outside the dream of anypony she wished.

The representation of the dream changes the nearer you get to it. In the distance it is a small star, then a nebula as the distance closes. Finally, at least for an Equestrian, you’d be standing in front of a single door with the owner’s name across it on a wrought plate. Since the debacle with the changelings, Luna endeavored for a better method of identification. To her consternation, if the real pony was in a dreamless state, the changeling would show in their place in the dream world. Short of inspecting each and every dream, there was no way to tell which was which. So she created a new method known only to herself. Channelling a spell in the dream world would show her the true name of the creature the door belonged to.

So she closed her eyes and willed the spell into being. Luna felt it ripple through the empyrion as the dream world changed. All that was left was a simple thing. Thoughts of alienation, frustration, curiosity, and of space crossed her mind. Like what the humans would consider a search engine, the princess mentally cross checked against the abyss for those thoughts before finding several. Discarding them one by one left her in front of a doorway that looked like nothing Luna had ever seen. Within the dreamscape was a hole. A hole in the shape of a doorway with a dream behind it. After a moment of thought and consideration, she stepped into the yawning black.

As the universe swirled around her, the first thing Luna heard were moans. Not of pain, no. Of passion and lust. Wanting and need. Yet the colors still flowed despite the sensations flowing through her body. Teeth against her skin, claws down her spine, leaving sensual heat and pain in their wake.

The room finally stopped spinning, Princess Luna already knew what she was going to see, yet couldn’t avoid. No matter how she tried to focus her magic, it would not come. Instead, she was forced to watch the aliens coupling. Luna couldn’t understand what words were being said, but no being could not understand the motivations behind it. At least for a moment before the now obviously male one looked up. His eyes forcing Luna to take in the view of a lavish bedroom as the female was sprawled out underneath him.

Only for a moment before the vision did a doubletake. For a heartbeat Luna saw her own face reflected in the mirror. While the dreamer wouldn’t notice, the princess certainly did, as the color shifted. The lighting darkened, sensual lighting shifting to dimmer, redder, just before agony shot through the both of them.

Forced to look down, Luna wanted to gape in horror at a puddle of blood spreading across the bed from her host’s nethers, or where they should have been. Screaming in horror, the female reached down as if to retrieve her lover’s appendage. Instead, her hands tore skin, revealing glistening and bloody machinery underneath the flesh, before everything quickly turned to black.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!”

There was nothing I could do but wrap myself in blankets and tell myself it was okay. It was only a dream. My dick wasn’t ripped off while I was fucking Rose. I was still trapped on an alien planet with her, but I still had my dick. What the fuck. As the door slammed open, just the wrong person ran in to check on me.

It wouldn’t be for several long hours before Rose understood why Alex passed out like he did. Well, fainted would have been the proper term. You see, earlier that night Rose had mentioned that she’d be doing some maintenance on her chassis while Alex slept. His sudden yell startled her so much that Rose had bolted straight to Alex’s room. Unfortunately, in her haste she had forgotten that she was both nude, and missing a fair chunk of her exterior covering in some more “sensitive” areas. Not that she was curious about the programming, use, or hidden “fun” features of the hardware in those areas or anything.

As dawn approached and there was no word from Princess Luna, a duo of her guards elected to check on her. After calling out with no response, the armored figures slipped into her tent. They ignored the rich woods and silks adorning it in favor of strict professionalism. After a few moments of searching they found the Princess curled on the ground next to her cot with her hooves wrapped around her tail. The only words they were able to get out of her were whispers. Something about how the blood won’t wash off, but she scrubs and scrubs.

Being woken up over an hour before dawn, and finding out that her sister was having a panic attack, Princess Celestia was not pleased. Soon the entire encampment and outlying groups were all roused in case something was missed and had attacked Princess Luna. After the combined Princesses managed to force a dreamless sleep spell on Princess Luna, they all agreed it was going to be one of those days. All of the Equestrians were too occupied to notice a set of large windows in the craft had dim light streaming from within. It was going to be one of those days for someone else as well.

What a fucking nightmare. I’ve never had a dream within a dream like that, and would be more than happy to never have one again. The soft light of my cabin reflects off the polished mahogany and brass that I’d selected so carefully. I’d even matched the crimson silk sheets to the motif, although after tonight it was a less welcome color. The only reason I didn’t just grab some meds and go back to sleep was the lightly blinking message from Rose.

“I figured it out.”

Figured what out? My fucked up dreams?

17. First, First Contact

The Equestrian royals were rather surprised to one of their resident aliens grinning and carrying a small silver metal cube with her early in the morning. With the sun just beginning to peek over the treetops the entire clearing was bathed in golden light. Thankfully they were used to the mechanical clicking and groans as the metal edifice closed, not even realizing that the human had slipped outside reluctantly behind his companion.

That strange cube that the diminutive alien held grabbed their attention. It was silver as if the finest steel, but riddled with tiny holes on all sides that would have been impossible for an Equestrian metalworker to duplicate. As delicate hands set it down on the wooden table, the trio of Princesses noticed a large single button intricately cut into the top of the device. Before they could discover more, a soft slurping interrupted their thoughts.

Looking up, they all caught the redheaded alien facepalming at her companion. Every slurp turned out to a thin hose coming out of a port in his helmet, and into a lidded metal mug. All of them were curious as to what he, or it, looked like behind the shadowed glass plate. It was much harder to remain curious when trying not to laugh at the situation when the mug was softly slapped out of his hand, and the alien was splattered with the remains of what smelt like coffee.

Shaking her head, the female pressed the button inset on the cube and spoke when a red light illuminated. Removing her bare hand when done, the light turned to a flashing yellow for a moment, before the box spoke in a soft and fairly accented tone.

“Apologies companion. Defending Blade missed fast breaking, offense not meant. I Simulated Rose, hope this is working. Will learn from speaking.”

As one, a look of shock and curiosity, and in one case, unrestrained glee, shot across the faces of the royals. This was a completely unforeseen boon to their attempts to communicate. For a moment, Princess Luna had considered the possibility of a bomb, before realizing if they were wanted dead the aliens had easier methods.

After conferring for a moment, Princess Celestia reached a hoof forward and placed it on the button with an audible click. When the light illuminated, she began to speak, awkwardly at first, but picking up as she became comfortable. It was a minute or two of speaking before Twilight poked her softly and spoke, a soft blush crossing Celestia’s face. Apparently she had a habit of getting slightly long winded. With the hoof removed from the device and the yellow light blinking, it was time to wait.

“Talking horses, this is still so weird you know. By the way, how long are you going to make them wait when you can translate that real time? Still better than talking wyverns or something. Watch, the one that was trying to kill me only wanted to say hi.”

“Yeah, I can translate it in real time, but I’m analyzing it to make the program better. I’m nearly done so hold your horses. Oh, fucking hell, really? That’s probably offensive here. Thanks for that.”

It took way too much effort for Rose to keep her light irritation from showing on her chassis’ face. Yeah, Alex was an idiot sometimes, but he was her idiot. After a few more seconds, a lyrical voice flowed from the wireless speaker. It was all a song and dance show from Rose to make things easier, but they hoped it would pay off. In the end, it would be a lot easier to explain what an AI was when they had the proper words.

“Welcome to Equestria. I am Princess Brighid, this my sister Princess Aine, and Princess Boann. Princess Branwen and her husband Prince Aedan, will be back in several days. We look forward to learning about each other in friendship. Hopefully this device will make speaking much easier over time.”

The only thought came to Alex’s mind though all this as he turned to Rose.

“Did they sound Irish to me, or was that something you did on your end of things?”

18. Smell the Brimstone

CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
1307hrs 13 June, 2463 Local

So I realize it's been a week since I updated the ship's log. Considering we are relaying everything we discover and log up to the satellite constellation for backup, keeping updated is important. I'm sure that Rose has kept her end of things up to date at least. Speaking of the devil, we've been using her "translator" for a few days now and it is constantly getting improved. There are a few hiccups here and there however, along with a lot of 'well crap' technical aspects.

First off, we'll need to go through this process for new dialects unless there is a translator handy that feels like reading a dictionary. Call me crazy but Princess Boann seems to be the one to ask about that when it comes up. She's been writing down everything, even the crazy little details. To each their own, but it does seem a little weird sometimes. So that's the first issue.

The second and biggest one is simply the translator itself. It's a background process Rose has been running on one of her cores. That causes a few small issues that can turn into big ones in a hurry. The process itself is only using a touch over 1% of her processing power. Now add in the huge hit from running her chassis with all the emotional and stimuli processes, everything from the four frames, and the Corvus. Long story short, it's keeping her at around 50-60% usage with spikes as she does something detail orientated. We'll have to come up with something to lower that. Rose is looking into modifying the frame programming to be more autonomous, so that might help in the immediate future though.

For the translation part, since it is a process running in the background for her, I need to be in radio contact with the ship to get real time audio translation. The computer and Hologlas built into my flight suit just doesn't have enough processing power to handle it all. At best I'm going to be able to have textual translation only. At least the 'glas can project text back. It would kind of suck to read a sign and then mime a response to everything.

Anyhow, that is the big issue for right now. Master plan for the rest of the week is pretty simple with two projects. Rose says the atmosphere on the planet is breathable in the short term without ill effects, so I'm going to take my helmet off and introduce myself today. She's already written a patch for my suit to activate the hazard sealing at will so the complete suit doesn't get contaminated. When I put the suit back on, it'll just purge itself using air from the internal supply. Other than seeing if I choke to death on an alien planet, we think we found the event horizon for the wormhole. At least we've pinpointed where we came out of the jump anyhow. The Corvus doesn't have the hardware to force open a wormhole, so we're going to drop the last of our satellite constellation on the way to, and outside the exit point.

That way even if we can't open the wormhole, we might be able to force a signal through if it hasn't sealed itself. At least sending a distress call and our logs on repeat might get to someone that way. We've found zero traces of FTL comms reaching wherever the fuck we are, and regular systems don't have the power to make it outside this fucked up solar system.

So yeah, we've got a "plan" but we'll see how it works out. If today goes well, Rose popped up with the idea of potentially inviting one of the royals and their guards to go up with us when we do the beacons. Since they'd contaminate the ship, we'd just have the frames set up one of the modular monitor sets in the airlock for them to watch. We'll just hope they don't understand what the airlock does, because I know a human would freak the fuck out at that.

Wish us luck.

"You're sure this isn't going to kill me, right? And you know the hazard seals freaking suck. If they get stuck, we're going to have to cut this damn thing off me, and I'll never let you live it down or that you'll be eyeing me up. Yes I see you watching me. Pervert."

Yup. Rose is rolling her eyes at me while I slip into my flight suit. The soft fabric lining stretching to fit every contour and bend in your body feels weird until you break in a new suit. Considering we might end up having to decon the entire thing, I didn't want to use my good one, so I grabbed a spare from storage. Unfortunately I stocked up on the bright orange "save me I'm drifting in deep space" colored ones. But hey, they were cheap and still had the usual 'glas hookups. It only took a moment to snap the unit onto my wrist before it lit up to show functionality.

"Yes, I'm sure the air won't kill you. It does smell a but funny but that might just be me getting used to having a sense of smell. You're not allowed to die on me anyhow. I like having you around and I'm really sure I don't want to spend the eternity until my systems shut down on a rock inhabited by space horses. Ass."

Pretending to not notice her grinning, I pulled a matching helmet off the rack and gently settled it over my head. Doing my best to ignore the metallic clicking and ratcheting as the new helmet and suit got acquainted, my vision stayed on the scrolling diagnostics and pressure tests. Tell you what though, you don't know uncomfortable until a suit powers up for the first time and autocontours to you. Having the suit find out a pressure curve to keep you safe without crushing your tender bits is fidgety to say the least. Worse when you have a smartass AI giggling when you try to wiggle form fit gel away from squishing... places. Since each suit can have minor differences, they have to get a profile set up on a Hologlas and settings locked into the hardware. Generic suits are way worse and to be honest, fuck that. There's a reason why people buy their own suits fast.

The Equestrians were pleasantly surprised to see their "guests" exiting their craft. The three royals had had their breakfast with the guard contingent a few hours prior and spent the time since coming up with a list of topics to discuss. One important item on the list was finding a new home for their ship as winter was coming soon and they were landed in an avalanche chute. While they had no doubt something that could travel the stars could handle a little snow, the concern was for it's crew. One of them could easily be dashed to the rocks and that would be an ignoble end for one of their first visitors from space.

As one, the trio the ponies gawked at the pair leaving the Raven, as they called the ship. Rose was in her usual form fitting suit, but her companion appeared to have changed from his usual dark and drab colored clothes into something... garish. The bright orange reflected brightly in the morning light in colors that frankly didn't appear or need to appear in nature. A green light on the 'speaker,' as Rose called it, was the only thing to pull their attention from the horrifying display as the soft voice of Rose began to play through the device.

"Good morning Princesses Brighid, Aine, and Boanne. I hope you've had a pleasant morning." As a group, the Equestrians nodded and murmured to themselves without reaching for the button. Neither human or AI could tell if them not pushing the 'talk' button was intentional or not, so Rose just continued speaking. "I think we've reached a common point in our talks to where we can give a little more detail about things and where we come from. Yes, I am talking without my lips moving, Princess Boann. I'll be getting to that in a moment."

"The translator says that it is telling you my name is Simulated Rose. That is an error that I'd like to apologize for. I am Rose, Æmaeth to Defending Blade."

Frankly, the eldest royals just looked confused as they looked to Princess Boann while she babbled excitedly at them for a moment. A heartbeat later, the purple princess leaned forward to push the button before speaking.

"When you say æmaeth, do you mean a golem? You are... unnatural, a construct?"

Understanding lit up across their faces when Rose began to explain in simplicities that yes, she was an artificial being. This was why Rose never wore a helmet but her partner did. She didn't need to breathe, let alone literally being the ship, the person they were speaking to, along with the "shells" that worked tirelessly on the Raven.

"But if we could come back to that when there are more words to describe, I would appreciate it. I imagine there are questions, but I cannot answer them yet. I would like to formally introduce you to my commander. The air is not healthy for him to breathe long, so Defending Blade will only have his helmet off for a few moments."

As one, the trio shifted their gaze to the biped in bright colors, who was poking buttons on an image projected above his arm. The floating outline of Defending blade had a red line flashing around his neck for a moment, before he grabbed at his collar. Soft metallic clicks filled the air for a moment, before Defending Blade grabbed the helmet and jerked on it. With a soft click and hiss, the helmet came free to reveal, well more of the same as they expected. He looked similar to Rose, with darker skin, deep green eyes, and facial hair. They hadn't expected a thin goatee on Rose's partner. Granted ponies could grow facial hair, it just wasn't common, or even expected in this case.

Neither was the speaker repeating the quiet words he was muttering.

"Go cac ghortú. Fan, tá sé beo? Go raibh maith agat Rose. Grá duit chomh maith. Um, beannachtaí. Ligimis orainn riamh chuala tú go deireanach agus tús os a chionn. Tá mé Commander Blade na Terran Aontaithe Impireacht. Tá súil agam nach bhfuil muid ag chur faoi deara aon cheataí trí tuirlingthe anseo."

That shit hurt. Wait, this is live? Thanks Rose. Love you too. Um, greetings. Let's pretend you never heard that last and start over. I'm Commander Blade of the United Terran Empire. I hope we do not cause any inconvenience by landing here.

19. Going Ballistic

CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
0927hrs 14 June, 2463 Local

The first real wireless test of the translation “speaker” went well yesterday. There were a few hiccups, like Rose ‘forgetting’ to pause the system when I was sealing my suit and removing the helmet. Tell you what, it is so strange to hear all this in practice though. There’s that line between seeing a pony talking, and knowing it is a talking pony. Kind of surreal to be honest.

Explaining what we are doing today, or at least trying to explain, was a bit more interesting. Eventually Rose managed to get the point across at least. At first, they wanted to be in the main compartment of the ship if they could come with. Thankfully they realized that doing so would contaminate the rest of the ship, and we have no idea what filtered air would do to them. After a bit of back and forth, it’s come down to Princesses Aine and Boann along with two guards each, while Princess Brighid is apparently going to look for our new home.

Oh, that’s what I was forgetting. Apparently winter is coming and we are in an avalanche chute. Generally getting buried in snow and freezing to death would be kinda bad, so we’re moving. While we are away, frames 3 and 4 are going to mount the shackle points onto the enclosure and prep a harness. Figure why disassemble it when we can sling load it for a short distance. Three cheers for hooker training.

Back on topic though, we’ve had a few modular displays unhooked from the wardroom and locked into sockets in the airlock. Between the three displays, that should give the ponies a fairly decent view around the ship. Thankfully the displays are solid state, so decon for them is stupid simple. Rose will be staying in the airlock with the ponies for the trip to explain whatever comes up. We’ve decided to use two of the ‘oh shit’ emergency air canisters to hold contaminated air for the locals. Considering we’ve got a way oversized life support system for a crew of one, redundant systems, and another thirteen canisters, I think we’re okay.

Lastly, frames 1 and 2 are going to be handling the last of the beacon constellation deployment. As always, I’ll be holding the ship steady and reducing the grav plating in the troop bay for that. Rose will ask the ponies if they want to try microgravity while that is going on, and if yes, she’ll lower settings in the airlock.

Considering this is kind of a weird first for anyone in the UTE, all raw footage will be automatically forwarded to the constellation as it happens, as well as getting hard copied into the ship log. This is going to be a weird day, mini horses in space, go figure.

“So you’re sure this is safe and can fly that far, right?”

Yup, it was going to be one of those days. The royals were right on time, with both Aine and Boann seemingly giddy at the thought of going to space. Princess Brighid seemed a bit more reserved about the whole thing. If I didn’t know better, she seemed a bit depressed about her sister going to space. At the least, the overly long hug and uncomfortable fidgeting made it seem like that, but it could be a cultural thing. Who knows.

As always, they are accompanied by a quartet of golden armored guards carrying spears. At least those guys are dedicated despite seeing what the rear anti personnel turret could do to something. They’d probably crap themselves if we ever put warshots out of the main guns though. Or not, considering their ruler can kind of sling the local star around like a yo-yo. Note to self, get them home safely so we’re not incinerated by a pissed off god-horse… thingie.

“The plan is for Defending Blade to go into the Raven first, so he can seal it behind himself. We’ll go in after and watch through the displays. I can answer any questions you have though.”

At least Rose seemed to have it well in hand. It was strange to have just the soft hissing of my rebreather, hum of the ship, and metallic clanking of my boots as my only company going into the airlock. I don’t want to bother Rose, but it just felt weird kind of being on my own for so long. She’d be babbling endlessly over comms when we weren’t running quiet in the UTE Navy.

The painted steel walls lit up in flashing yellow when I reached forward and started the decon and air swap system. While the doors closed, it would be hard to argue that I enjoyed the last view being a cute redhead. Even though a few weeks had passed, the decon and purge still annoyed me. It just took forever standing in the airlock, watching the decon solution and blowers coat everything until the blinking yellow light came from everything. When the system detected no more contaminants, everything gets bathed in crimson tinted frost as all air in the compartment was vented externally. I wasn’t even bothering to turn on the defrost for my visor as ice coated it. In training it takes forever to keep people from panicking during EVA classes. That first time that you hear nothing but your heart pounding in your ears and hiss of your air systems stays with you. Even after so many years, that sensation of being utterly isolated stuck with me.

“You know I saw you looking at my ass?”

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! Scare the shit out of me why don’tcha!”

Well, less isolated when you have a pain in the ass that can see everything you do and exactly where your eyes are looking. After an eternity, the red light flashed to green as shipboard air poured into the compartment. The ‘glas built into my suit automatically linked to the Corvus and began scrolling data through the corners of my vision. As the large metal doors opened, I stepped through with purpose, eager to begin preflights and get off the ground. After years of flying, being grounded just gets on your nerves after a while.

“Do you mind if I show the ponies the inside of the ship through the displays? Princess Boann seems to be rather interested in what it looks like. I’ll keep the displays away from anything sensitive though. I doubt they’ll try to steal and fly the ship, but why take chances.”

Mounting the top of the carpeted stairs leading to the cockpit, I just nodded a yes. My thoughts were only on getting my butt back in the seat and off the ground. Thankfully Rose already had my comfy and custom fit seat sliding back. Yeah, it seems a bit weird to take a crash seat out of a racer, but man those things feel great during long flights. Boots clicking softly on the pedals, I pressed the stud to deploy the controls and start my checklist. Yeah, I could have just whacked the ‘shit switch’ on the bulkhead, but unless it is an emergency that is a bad idea. Hell, I could have had Rose do the checklist, but she knows like it.

External cameras? Check.

Nitrogen purge? With a press of a button, pressurized vapor poured out of the differing main and maneuvering thruster nozzles.

OTC power… on.

Reactor containment… stable.

Tertiary reactor startup... firing… online.

Secondary reactor startup… firing… online.

Primary reactor startup… firing… … … online.

Shield generators… online

Through the cameras I could see the ponies outside shift uncomfortably when the reactors powered up. They jumped slightly as the shields snapped into being around the Corvus, a barely visible wall of energy flowing through the air. Most people feel weird when massive magnetic fields kick into place. Could be a tingling or weird sensation, but it happens.

The list went on and on…

Finally it was time, and the first time the Corvus had flown in a fair number of days. It’ll be good to get her back into space. With a final button press, I watched the engine pylons open and flex like a bird rearing to fly.

“Ready when you are Rose, how are things going back there?”

Oh, I loved her laugh.

“We’re good back here. They expected you to hit a button and zoom off into the sky apparently. So why don’t you give them a good show. Just caress my controls like you always do and you’ll do fine. Show us girls a good time.”

There’s only one thing you can do at a statement like that. Laugh. Well, laugh and try not to focus too much on the sexy purr at the end of it. If they wanted a show, they’d get a show. Flicking the controls over to PRE (precision) and adding a bit of throttle, the Corvus slowly rose above the supports the landing gear rested on. Through the belly cameras, I watched the frames disconnect the safety shackles from the ship. Knowing we were good to go, I tabbed over to the internal speakers in the airlock.

“Thank you for flying Corvus Airlines. Our flight path is set from ground level to high orbit before breaking off to interplanetary space. Estimated time to orbit is approximately five minutes. Shipboard artificial gravity will be coming online momentarily so you don’t feel a change in orientation or gravity. For the comfort of our special guests, inertial dampeners will be at full power in the airlock for the duration of our trip. Thank you again for flying with Corvus, and please hang onto your butts.”

Pushing the throttle forward, we lept away from the ground. It wasn’t a massive rate, just under fifty meters per second, but you don’t want to go crazy low to the ground. Once at a safe altitude, the fun was about to start.

“Ready back there Rose?”

After a moment of conversation with our passengers, her soft voice chimed in my ear with a giggle.

“All good back here. Now stop telling me I’ve been a bad ship and punish me.”

All I could do was grin and slide the throttles forward and watch the ground blur below us as the altitude scrolled higher and higher. Reaching up to flip a switch, armored covers began to slide over the windows across the ship while an automated version of Rose spoke, “Digital cockpit online.”

The bulkheads disappeared, leaving only the video feeds from outside the ship and scrolling flight data while wispy clouds flickered across the nose of the ship. As the nearby mountain receded below us, I waited for the displays to show it was safe for primary engine startup. At 75,000 feet the light flipped from red to green as a soft whine filled the compartment.

“Hang on ladies and gents, this is where it gets fun. We’re at 75,000 feet and climbing. Orbit is around 6,500,000 feet. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Oh and Rose, you’ve been so very bad that I’m going to have to make you scream for me.”

I made sure that last one wasn’t over the speaker system, chuckling to myself while pushing the throttles forward to the locks. Time to relax and enjoy myself.

21. Let me play among the stars... <unedited>

21. Let me play among the stars...

It only took a minute to float down to the troop bay with only the odd hop here and there. I’ll admit I was kind of looking forward to getting a chance to do something seriously, but still goof off a bit. Everything had been so serious since we arrived after all.

Rose already had the two frames getting everything prepared for when we finished with our little field trip. Drifting into the room, I disabled the safeties and hit the button to open the boarding hatch in the bottom of the bay. Normally, a siren would sound, but since the room is depressurized, I just got a yellow strobe flashing for a moment or two before the hatch retracted into the hull. Not too far below was my target, the rocky surface of a virgin celestial body.

Looking along the inset panels dotting the ceiling of the bay, I finally found the one I was searching for. Set directly above the hatch was a reel gun. Great for boarding or descending from the ship in a hurry, it would shoot a detachable cable for quite some distance. Thankfully they were designed to fire through the exact center of the hatch, so you wouldn't be riding the line and getting smashed into stuff.

My lovely AI was already a few steps ahead of me though. While I was looking for the controls, Rose was giggling into my headset. Turning to face the airlock, I could see her grinning through the armorplas window and pointing. It was then that I realized that she’d fired the cable already. Mentally shrugging, I just grabbed mesh pouch out of a bin and strapped it to my hip.

With a sigh, and a bit of hidden excitement, I reached up to grab the ascent/descent unit attached to the cable. These were always fun, but they tended to leave you a bit sore. After a moment’s pause to wave at the assembled guests watching from behind armor plating, I tapped the activation stud on the unit. A heartbeat later I was out of the ship with nothing but free space and rock ahead of me.

A second or two later, my feet slammed into the dust and rock covered surface. If there were air, it would have made one hell of a noise. Unfortunately, this just left me hearing myself grunt from a rougher than expected landing. I wish I could say it was something spectacular, but being the first man on a stereotypical moon had less magic to it than I thought there would be. With an internal shrug, I set to work.

“That’s one small step for me, and one weird gift of moon rocks for horse kind.”

Yup. Walking around on a moon and looking for “neat” rocks to put in a sack is pretty damn boring. Thankfully I was only going to grab a couple. At least that was the plan before everything went to hell and alarms started sounding in my helmet. Before I could say anything, Rose was already on the radio.

“Uh, Princess Aine just disappeared.”

…

“What the fuck do you mean she “disappeared?!”

“She said something I couldn’t translate to Boann and the guards, then disappeared in a flash. They don’t seem to concerned, but what the hell?! One sec…”

Through all this, I was slowly making my way back to the cable. If she died or something, it was our ass on the line after all.

“Got her. She's on the surface about 100m from you on heading 173 and moving our way. From the speed, it doesn’t look like she’s panicking, but it might be O2 deprivation. Use your backup O2 on her if you need to.”

Mentally saying ‘fuck it’ I triggered the thrusters built into my armor and watched the rocks blur a bit as I accelerated toward the rim of the crater. Just as I neared the rim, a shimmering bubble crested the edge to reveal a grinning Princess Aine. Her horn was lit up and throwing harsh light in all directions, creating strange dancing shadows outside the weirdly flexing ball of energy around her. Somehow or another she’d pulled a set of saddlebags out of nowhere and they seemed to be full of...stuff. Hell if I knew what. I was more interested in how it looked like she was talking.

Cutting throttle, I slowly drifted toward the shimmering energy that surrounded the Princess. After tentatively poking the weird surface with a finger to no ill effect, I gently pushed into the field.

“...APPRECIATED! WE HAVE LONG WANTED TO SURVEY OUR SURFACE THROUGH THE EYES OF OUR AVATAR!”

Yup. Pain. Somehow or another the damned Princess managed to hold air inside the bubble, yet was yelling at a million and a half decibels. My ears are probably fucking bleeding.

It was a long and awkward walk back to the Corvus. Apparently they had crazy horse magic that could create semi-permeable force fields. That was something that human scientists had no idea how to do on a small scale and was usually reserved for air barriers on capital ships.

Looking up at the cable to the troop bay, I realized that I had zero idea how to get the Princess back into the ship without decompressing everyone else. Somehow ‘accidentally’ killing your guests is kinda bad, so using the airlock is a no go. I doubted hooves could hold onto a braided steel cable as well.

Thankfully, that problem solved itself as the bubble around Princess Aine lit up like the heart of a star, then she was gone. And a heartbeat later, screaming came over the camera feed. Princess Boann and the guards were on the deck clutching their heads with blood trickling from their ears.

“What the absolute fuck?! Is everyone okay?”

Apparently, I had missed the air pressure drop when Aine “teleported” out. I’m calling it that, because it seems to fit. Fuck if I know. Anyhow, Rose immediately pumped backup air into the airlock to balance it out. Turns out that the Princess had pulled the air out with her for the “bubble.” When she teleported back in, all that air was brought back in as well. So the room pressure spiked rather painfully for the biological folks in the airlock.

Thankfully and weirdly enough, it turns out that the ponies know honest to god healing magic. I have no idea if it’ll work for serious stuff, but for ruptured ear drums, they were back on their feet… er… hooves inside a few minutes. After everyone was confirmed alive, I made sure to pass the rocks through the decon lock so the ponies could get their treat. They seemed to want to continue with the trip, no matter how things had gone so far.

So, Rose had taken the helm and piloted us to the first coordinates. The ponies seemed enraptured as the now retracted satellite was bodily thrown out the boarding hatch below the ship. Apparently there were some gasps as the ponies watched it correct the tumble through space before activating. There was a bit of a look of recognition once the unit had fully unfolded. Somehow I don’t think they had the slightest idea what the hell they grabbed until seeing this all happen.

The second launch went smoothly with no hiccups. It was when we were deploying the final one and linking them to the sensor grid that things got weird. Through the focused sensors, Rose had found a faint sensor trace in the distance. The Quantum Drive was already primed by the time I reached the cockpit. At the tap of a button, streaming light filled the windows.

A couple seconds later, we were looking at a shape tumbling through deep space. It was completely and utterly wrecked to where sensors had no idea what to make of it. The only choice was to close the distance and hope. Being proactive, all shields were up and turrets deployed as the shape neared. Little glimmers of light were our only hint as to what it was.

“Okay, this is getting stupid. If the sensors can’t figure it out, we’ll just have to use the lights. Once we’re close, light it up with everything we’ve got.”

A soft ‘affirmative’ was all I got from the evil redhead, who was currently occupied dealing with sensor data, our guests, and god knows how many other things. But, at a hundred meters distance, five high powered spotlights burst to life to reveal our object. It looked vaguely familiar, if you could call a lump of metal that looked melted like candle wax “familiar.”

After rotating for a few more seconds, I saw something that gave me pause and also told me exactly what we were dealing with. Emblazoned across a clean panel was a symbol of a winged sword. It was a ship. And as the rotation continued to reveal a conning tower, it wasn’t anywhere near a complete one. The slow rotation continued to reveal scorched paint that said something I hadn't expected to see again, United Terran Navy.

“Um… you might want to tell our guests that this might take a bit…”

22. Alone in the dark <unedited>

22. Alone in the dark

I didn't even need to say anything more as Rose immediately slammed the shields on to full power and spun up the guns. Better safe than sorry. Through the shipboard cameras, the two frames were working their way up the passageway toward the multipurpose room, and if I guessed right, the armory.

"Okay, so we definitely need to get over there and find out if there are any survivors. Or at the very least, find out who they were and log it. Maybe find some extra supplies, if it was quick. Fuck. Rose, as much as I hate to say this, we might need the airlock. I'm going to take the Atlas out in case I need to cut through anything on the wreck. So get the room pressurizing and we'll just put our guests in the multipurpose room. We'll worry about deconning it later."

Bringing the Corvus closer to the burnt hull, the scale was truly revealed. Despite the former gunship I piloted being rather large, it was minuscule against the chunk of the capital ship ahead of us. The turret mounted spotlights panned over it, revealing faded scraps of paint here and there on top of scorched metal, but nothing to identify the name of the ship or even enough to guess what class it was. Tabbing over to secondary systems, I brought up the boarding systems and made sure they were powered. The low hiss of air flooding the cabin was hardly a note on my mind with what I was about to do. Sighing, I activated the communication system and said the words every military man dreaded.

"Unknown UTN vessel, this is the UTE Corvus. We are attempting rescue and retreival. If anyone is alive or an AI is powered, please respond on this channel. Otherwise, we will begin boarding procedures."

After setting the message to repeat, the hard part started. Matching the speed and rotation of the derelict so the Corvus wouldn't get hit or thrown clear while I was onboard.

"So we don't know if anyone is alive over there. This is weird as hell though, so I want you to be careful with the sensors. If anything is weird, let me know and I'll get out fast. If anything that isn't UTE shows up, let's just hope it wasn't what did this, or we can shoot our way out. I know you're already on it, but I want both frames armed and armored in the troop bay just in case anyone tries to force the hatch. Rose, you'll be our last line of defense in the multipurpose room with the ponies. That, and if it turns out they are hostile, you can put a round into their heads before they get a chance to fight"

She only sighed a 'yes' at me. I think Rose has really been enjoying her time with the ponies over the last few days, so for her sake I hope they aren't hostile. I don't think it would be good for her to have to execute someone she thought was a friend. Considering we have no idea how to get home yet, friends are more useful than a planet full of enemies. With the hulk looming in the canopy, we were mostly matched up to its movements.

"Could you set the anchors and pull us in? You can tell what spots are best on this wreck a lot better than I can. And for what it's worth Rose, I hope I'm wrong. Probably am, but it doesn't hurt to be careful."

Yeah, she's kinda pissed at the moment. Not even saying a word as a pair of cables shot out from below the Corvus to attach to the wreck. A moment later, a second pair joined them and we started reeling the ship in slowly. Considering my piloting done since Rose was in control, I unbuckled the crash harness and was about to start into the troop bay before a thought occurred. Preparing to push a button, I decided to give our guests a heads up.

"Artificial gravity coming online in ten seconds."

Knowing it would be my first and last chance to breathe without a helmet on in a while, I removed mine while heading to the troop bay. After a second or two, it occurred to me that the air wasn't the usual "aggressive" scent of the planetary air we held for the guests. Wonder why that is.

Entering the troop bay, Rose already had the royals and their guards out of the airlock. Thank god for that. Somehow I think getting locked up in there for longer would suck really hard.

"...be some time. I apologize, but we have to see if there are survivors here. If it wasn't a potential matter of life and death, we'd happily return you home before coming back."

At least the Princesses seemed to understand the thought, although their guards were bristled slightly at the appearance of both armored and armed Frames in the bay, not to mention that Rose was midway through donning a similar set while 1 held a pulse rifle for her.

"She's right Princess. I'm sorry about this, but it is an emergency. The arms and armor are for everyone's protection..."

All of our assembled guests were giving me a strange look. Then I realized that without my helmet, I wasn't connected to the wireless speaker that Rose used for translation. At least my slight facepalm broke the tension some, as Princess AIne giggled a little at my slip up, before regaining her regal impassiveness. Thankfully Rose was already on top of the translation. It was still weird to essentially have 'verbal subtitles' with the translation software though. Seeing Boann speaking and not understanding a thing until the translation came over the speaker system was annoying to say the least.

"At the least, let us assist you with the search. As Princess Aine has shown, we can survive in this 'vacuum' without air with our magic. It is the least we can do."

Resisting the urge to facepalm again, I wracked my mind for an eloquent way to say 'hell no.' The last thing I need to do is potentially catch a treason charge by bringing aliens on a UTN ship. Not to mention Rose would have to arrest and put me in cryosleep. Um. Pass. Thankfully, Rose beat me to the punch by explaining that it would be incredibly unsafe and we would be forsaking our duty if we let them get injured in the pursuit of our needs. Let alone how any UTN crew might shoot first. As a treat, she did offer to let them, mostly Princess Boann who is intently curious about our technology, see me donning the Atlas suit. She'd apparently asked repeatedly about where our large companion was until she understood it was armor.

"By the way Alex, I already explained the plan to them. It'll be okay on our end, and I am watching the sensors like crazy. Once you get on the wreck, I'll be getting the ponies some drinks and a bathroom. Your cam feed will be up on the displays in the multifunction room, so we'll all see what's going on. Don't worry, I'll redact anything that is, or could be classified. Just be careful, okay."

Before I could even reply, Rose grabbed the front of my suit and dragged me down to her. Soft lips pressed tightly against mine for a moment, before withdrawing with a nip of teeth on my lower lip.

"For luck. Never thought I'd have to steal my first kiss though. Now be safe, and if you die on me, I'll beat your corpse back to life so I can murder you."

...

Blankly stepping toward the Atlas while that moment replayed in my mind, I was interrupted by something important. A soft giggle.

"Put on your helmet and pressurize your suit you idiot. Yes, I can see your biometrics, including blood rushing to... places."

It is incredibly hard to ignore the ponies giggling at me while I fumble for the helmet. The raised platform for the armor awaited. Stepping up into the brackets, I made sure to grab the insides of both gauntlets and get situated before pressing the activation button. The suit was already conformed to me, so it was a less flashy affair than the first time. Arms descending from the sides of the pod and assembling the gigantic mechanized suit around me. If I didn't know better, I'd think Rose was messing with me a little, as the codpiece rubbed against my crotch for a moment or two before attaching as normal. Then again, it is Rose.

Like always, it is a long two minutes to have a suit built around you like that. Yeah, you can keep the suit assembled and hop in as needed, but that makes more wear and tear on the joints to rebuild. Easier to store the unit and assemble as needed. The ponies seemed a bit in awe when I stepped out of the pod. Then again, they did just see someone who was slightly taller than the royals turn into a hulking bohemoth of metal plate. Making sure to tie the suit into the translation software, I triggered the external speakers.

"Find that to your liking, Princess? Once we're back on the ground, I'm sure we can answer some of your questions. Not all of them, mind you, but most. If you don't mind, please follow Rose to the multifunction room. I need to vent the air from this compartment before I can go outside."

I'm not sure if the quiet nods from the Royals was good or bad, but I certainly got a blush from Aine when I "accidentally" brushed a gauntlet against Rose's ass as revenge. She actually jumped slightly and turned to glare at me before leading the group deeper into the ship. Once the bulkhead had been sealed, the air immediately began to be pumped from the compartment. That reminded me though.

"By the way, what was with the air? I thought we were going to need to use the compressed stuff from the planet? And we will be talking about that kiss when I get back."

She was silent for a minute, so I reached forward to cycle the hatch in the floor to reveal the surface of the ship a few meters below. I guess it was a good thing I left the majority of the Valiant's systems intact when refitting the Corvus. A few more button presses lowered a breaching collar from within the boarding hatch. Once it was secured against the hull, green lights illuminated around the ring for a moment before flashing out. Or at least I thought they flashed off, it was kind of hard to tell when two dozen cutting lasers fired off at once as the inner ring began spinning.

"Alex... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply anything. It seemed like something good in the moment. If you want to talk when you get back, I'll accept anything you think is right. And it turns out that the ponies can breathe our air. They say it smells sweeter, like their air after a heavy rain. It would make sense given that would take a lot of contaminants out of the air. Please be gentle with me, and be safe okay."

"Rose, you aren't in trouble. We'll talk when I get back, okay. Until then, I don't want you to think about it and keep an eye on our guests and the sensors, okay. Don't make me make that an order. You know how I hate having to do that. And I promise to be safe, okay. I know you'll pop up with anything from the feed I miss, so keep an eye on me, okay. I'm going to head in."

Looking down at the new tunnel bored through the meters thick armor plate was daunting and impressive at the same time. After a quick systems check and making sure all systems were hot, it was time to go. Pushing off the inside of the boarding hatch, I headed into the darkness below.

Inky blackness awaited me below. Halfway down the shaft, I made the decision to use the suit's built in night vision gear instead of visual lights. Less chance of letting anyone know I was here in case there were hostiles on board. IR lights built into the suit kicked on and flooded the interior of the ship ahead of me with invisible light. Thankfully, the sensors built into the Atlas could still use it to show the inside of the ship in full detail, albeit with muted colors. At least nobody was shooting at me. Despite the shields, I was kind of a fish in a barrel at the moment.

Sliding smoothly out of the tunnel, I could say that artificial gravity was definitely off. We hadn't detected any power signatures, but grav plating was very low power on large ships anyhow. With little more than a gesture, I made sure the suit's boots were magnetized before lowering my bulk to the deck. The spot we'd picked was nearest to the undamaged portion of the wreck without having to worry about cutting into somewhere that someone might be weathering the storm.

Floating wiring, debris, and warped steel met my eyes inside the passageway. Whatever had happened to the ship was brutal and fast. Somehow I doubted there were any survivors, but I had to hope. Using a rough guess of where I was, I picked a direction I hoped would pay off. Rose would already be hard writing all raw data from this to the Corvus' memory while she watched. It was slow going through the passage. Most debris could be brushed out of the way but once or twice I was forced to cut my way forward. Then again, that is kind of what the Prometheus version of the Atlas suits was for. Both gauntlets contained a plasma cutter set that was fed directly from the reactor. So I could just grab whatever was in my way, trigger the cutters, and squeeze until it was cut clean through.

After probably a half hour of this, I finally reached a sealed blast bulkhead. The door was sealed tight and was the first closed one I'd come across. The others were either too badly damaged or had too much damage around them to close. Red markings around the hatch designated it as 5-316-4-E. So at least I knew I was on deck 5 with a machinery space on the other side of the bulkhead. Without knowing what class of ship this was, the frame numbering was kind of useless. More importantly though, the room was showing a positive pressure. Not much, but still about 8psi, so most of one atmosphere. A bit rough for someone to breathe, but doable. Bringing a gauntlet up, I rapped it against the steel door three times, paused, two slower, then three rapid again.

It was awkward to stand in the passage waiting. Thankfully the sensors on the suit didn't show motion, although they weren't strong enough to say what was on the other side of the bulkhead. With no reaction, I anchored the suit and began to unseal the compartment. What was inside will probably haunt me for a long time. The moment the air began to flow past my suit, 'HAZARDOUS ATMOSPHERE' began flashing on my display. It continued to show until the last vestiges of the air vented out into the passage and space. With what would normally have been a squeal of metal on metal, I pushed the hatch open. Only to reveal the the bodies of the better part of a dozen crewmen. They were floating in all sorts of positions, and none of them appeared to have gone easily into the abyss. Whatever had been released into the compartment had eaten away at some of them before they passed. Who knows how long they'd been floating here, frozen in their floating tomb. Hating what I needed to do, I stepped toward the nearest one to find out who he was. Grey flesh, bulging eyes, and a silent and eternal scream met my eyes while I recorded the state of his body. That's also where I learned the name of the ship from his utilities.

"The ship is the UTN Bellerophon. I don't know if she'll be in our records, but I'll work towards the CIC and see if I can recover the AI cores. We can't leave part of a warship floating in deep space either, so we'll have to come up with something for that as well. I know that the odds of nobody being out here are huge, but you know the regs as well as I do. Maybe ask the Royals if they have any ideas. I imagine they aren't enjoying the camera feed any."

In over an hour of searching, I'd found nothing of the crew but bodies. Some tried to survive by putting on suits and died clawing at their masks when the air ran out or chose to take the masks off. Others passed in every position you could imagine. Some in their berths, others impaled by debris, or in one horrifying case, held together by the barest threads. When I brushed by that crewman, they literally came apart and floated down the passage in pieces. A few even had the bright idea to try to use the cryopods to survive. At least their deaths were painless when the power finally failed.

Rose had found the Bellerophon in our records. Nothing detailed, just that it was an Archer class destroyer. The large wreck that dwarfed the Corvus was only a fifth of the measurements for the class. With no idea where the rest went, I continued searching. In time, I eventually came across a frame depot with six frames in good condition. Since the shipboard AI was offline, there was no issue powering them up as a local controller. After updating them with a current map of passable areas, I instructed them to take the parts and tools from the depot to the Corvus. Afterwards, they were to go to other marked compartments to search for anything Rose might deem useful. It felt dirty to salvage the ship, but somehow I doubted there would be an abundance of parts in the future.

The other crew spaces were just as bad. The mess was open to space. Whoever and whatever was in it had been sucked out during decompression with pretty much no chance of survival. Eventually I ended up at the bulkhead that marked the entrance to the CIC and it was shut tightly. Unlike the vast majority of other hatches, these were heavily armored to where my suit would hardly be able to scratch it. In a massive dose of irony, the passageway was open to space so I could try to find another way in.

After over an hour in a tomb, it felt good to be in starlight again. I could only imagine how much more horrifying it would have been if I hadn't had the thought to use the built in night vision. Muted colors instead of full detail on how every crewman had died was a small mercy. It only took a minute to find a way into the command deck. The Bellerophon's death had been so sudden that not all of the blast shutters had closed when the armorplas windows had blown out. With a slight tap of boosters, I drifted towards the wrecked command center.

It was disturbingly clean inside. No bodies, every surface scoured clean of debris or coffee cups when the compartment vented. So just clean and new looking consoles and command boards everywhere. I don’t think the designers counted on this eventuality though, as the AI cores were housed in a console at the back of every command deck. That way if the ship were boarded, they could be destroyed, or if the ship was a loss, they could be pulled before scuttling.

In this case, neither had happened, so the cores were simply sitting there in their armored enclosures. Three AI cores behind thick panels and no power to access them. On a whim, I reached forward to press the releases on the console and was surprised when the latches popped free. Faced with something that shouldn’t be, I cycled a latch on the top of the nearest core ten times before pressing an inset button. A small light lit up blue. It should have been green. The second core lit up red, and the final blue again. The AI had handwritten the ship’s log to the second core prior to deleting themselves before the power failed.

The Bellerophon was literally a tomb in every meaning of the word.

In three hours, I found no survivors. None. Yes, we came out with a smattering of tools, spare parts, the odd weapon from a wrecked arms room, and even extra power cores and parts for the Atlas, but nobody living. At least we ended up with what should be their black box and logs. That way there would be a record of what happened to the ship and her crew.

After some consideration, we decided to have the six frames continue to search the hulk. They were instructed to find anything salvageable and record the state of any crew members they came across. If they did find someone alive, they’d immediately contact us over comms and we’d be on our way. It was simpler to take the royals home and return to finish our morbid task in the morning.

The ponies were quiet when we returned planetside, and understandably so. They didn’t sign up to see any of that, but got dragged into it anyhow. The royals did promise to think about a method to dispose of the wreck after it was completely searched. I don’t think they understood the why of it other than duty, but at least they understood it was something we had to do. Moving the repair enclosure would wait for another day in the near future.

Deciding to call it an early day, I headed to my quarters so Rose could have the frames decon anywhere the ponies had been. Knowing I’d be alone with my thoughts, she followed me silently. It was as if she knew the thoughts floating through my mind about the future and the fate of so many other people.

Not even a word was said as I stripped down to my boxers and crawled into bed. Surprisingly enough, she dimmed the lights. After a moment and the rustle of blankets, she joined me in bed. After today, I wasn’t in a mood to argue as Rose slipped her arms around my waist and pulled me close.

“Alex, about earlier today. I… You have… I need…”

A finger on her lips silenced Rose. Turning slightly, I realized that the rustle of fabric was also her stripping down to just a bra and panties.

“Uh… Rose? What’s all this?”

“I… I’d always read that skin contact was good to calm someone after a rough day. This was a bad idea, I’ll… I’ll… I’ll go now…”

Knowing she’d just go beat herself up and feel horrible for trying something new, I did the only thing that came to mind as she started to get up. Grabbing her wrist, I pulled the petite AI downward and onto me, kissing her roughly before she could complain. I certainly wasn’t expecting her to let out a little moan of surprise and push into the kiss. Let alone straddle me and kiss back. Everything was forgotten when Rose leaned forward and whispered in my ear.

“I meant it all those times when I said you owned all of me, Master. And yes, I have seen your extranet history. I might even have a collar in storage if you want me…”

Uh...

23. Let us burn... Let us burn... <unedited>

23. Let us burn... Let us burn...

For the first time since our arrival, I slept deep and calmly. Waking gently from the rising daylight streaming through the windows, I realized that Rose was nowhere to be found. After our "activities" last night, I kind of expected her to be nearby when I woke, so things might be awkward instead. Yay. With an annoyed grumble, I decided to at least get a hot shower and some coffee in me before the chaos of the day started. At least I knew there was nobody on board other than Rose and myself, so I didn't even bother grabbing a flight suit on my way to the head. The first hint I got was clothes dropped next to the door. Which was slightly opened against regs for number two. Sliding the hatch fully open gave the third and final hint for where Rose was.

She was thoroughly and indecently enjoying my shower. Maybe today might start on a good note after all. Then the lights went out. So, we learned the reason why they advise AI to disconnect from shipboard functions when being naughty. Apparently it is very easy to pop system breakers if you get carried away. It's really difficult to decide if I want to be annoyed or amused by this. At least she made it up to me. Can't really say that walking naked to the engineering spaces was something on my bucket list. I'm just happy none of the ponies are allowed to fly near the ship. That would be a bunch of questions I don't want to answer.

Some time later, we were at the usual spot outside facing both Princess Brigid and Aine were enjoying their morning tea, yet Boann and the usual assortment of guards were missing. Setting the usual speaker cube on the table with a dull thud, I made sure to press the power button so they'd know it was on.

"Morning Princesses. I hope everyone has recovered from the trip yesterday. It certainly took a direction we weren't anticipating. Hopefully the Ainer... the Ainer... One moment please."

With a stupid grin on my face, I could only turn to Rose.

"It's broke. You got off so hard that you broke the translation program. Either I'm awesome, or you're easy hon."

With a bit of a scowl in my direction, Rose pulled up her 'glas as data began to rapidly scroll. Here and there, little bits of text would highlight red, before flashing green a moment later as she recoded sections of the program on the fly. After a minute or two and who knows how many lines of code, Rose looked up at me with a smile.

"Try it again. There was a weird bug that kept repeating itself and cross linking to other databases. I think I got it all. Oh, and be happy I can dial up my sensitivity. Otherwise you'd still be trying to find my 'on' switch, flyboy."

With a dull beep, the power light on the speaker flashed out and returned a second later. What came out was certainly not what I expected.

"Sorry about that, Princesses Celestia and Luna. Wait. Celestia and Luna? Is this thing broken again?"

Before I could give Rose an annoyed look, Princess Brigid reached forward and tapped the button with a hoof. After a moment of speaking, the same soft and lyrical voice came out of the speaker.

"No Alex, the device is not broken. I am Princess Celestia, and this is my sister Princess Luna. We were wondering for quite some time about how our names were not correctly spoken. After a while, we just assumed the word didn't have an equivalent in your language. Is it safe to assume that we will need to redo some lessons on speaking common?"

So that bad feeling about the morning was still spot on.

Personal Log
CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
2146hrs 16 June, 2463 Local

After some back and forth, it turns out that the software was only screwing up the names for some reason or another. The princesses still sounded Irish as hell, but something made the program tie into the mythology database. Rose's best thought was that it could have been one of the thousands of bugs and glitches she'd been clearing out of her AI core and ship systems since the crash. She described it similarly to trying to dust out lots of tiny cobwebs that are stuck to everything. Whenever you think all of them are gone, you find a hundred more in a corner somewhere.

It turned out that after the events yesterday, the guards were given the day off to recover. No new guards were appointed as for some crazy reason, Luna had convinced her sister that we weren't a threat. Considering we have nowhere else to go, that was kind of a given. Turns out that Boann's real name is Twilight Sparkle, and she was rather heavily affected by the video footage. According to Celestia and Luna, she'd seen some combat and even had to kill in defense of self and country before, but this was a completely different scale altogether. So, Princess Sparkle decided to take a few days home to rest and recuperate.

The master plan for the day is to move the repair enclosure to its new home near a town called Hollow Shades, about 35 miles from here. It should be a pretty simple sling load affair. Apparently the new spot is an unused and state owned field about a mile from the nearest house. That way we can go into town should we choose, but will be out of the way otherwise. We were even given permission and encouragement to build around the enclosure to 'dress it up' a bit, so it would blend in a bit better. While I won't complain, that does make me curious about the geopolitical climate of this planet. If it looks like our stay will be longer than anticipated, Celestia and Luna are willing to grant us the status of natural disaster refugees. Anything further and we'd get in serious trouble with UTE laws, let alone Rose having to arrest me. Apparently we, although I'm not sure if they meant me, Rose, or both, are going to be required to have some form of income while in their country. That will be interesting.

Anyhow, after we get the frames to work on securing the new location for the repair enclosure, we're going to go send the crew of the UTN Bellerophon to their final rest. The onboard frames have worked overnight on body retrieval and inventory of the hulk. From the numbers, I think it's a safe bet to say that the entire crew was lost. Considering the numbers involved, I'm not looking forward to doing this, but there simply isn't space in the airlock for a hundred and forty three bodies. The only method we can think of to reliably dispose of the bodies isn't pleasant. The frames have been placing the crew in a compartment that is open to space, but still sealed from the rest of the ship by emergency bulkheads. I hate to say it, but we're just going to pour fire from the plasma cannons into that compartment until it is molten slag.

For the hulk itself, the inventory is simply too massive to fit a significant percentage of onto the Corvus. Let alone the fact that our main guns would hardly scratch the armor of a ship this size. Since we can't find a workable method for salvage or destroying the wreck, we're going to have to keep it secured. Considering two of the fuel tanks to feed the reactors weren't punctured during the accident, Rose thinks the frames might be able to get one or two of the backup generator sets running. That would simply be to supply the onboard frames with power for themselves, whatever tools they need, and maybe a recovery beacon aimed at our satellite array. In time, they might be able to use salvage to make repairs to some sections of the ship. That might be important in case we ever outstay our welcome with the locals. Thankfully it seems to be beyond the reach of whatever weird magic or powers the ponies seem to have. Although, I'll admit that using a place where hundreds of people died as a hiding spot isn't exactly tasteful.

On a cheerier and definately personal note, when Rose said that her body was as close to human as science could get, I didn't know she meant 'THAT' human. After some... um... up close examination, I can say that every bit feels real. Thanks to whatever alloys her skeletal structure is made of, she even weighs the same as a regular person, despite being way, way stronger. Did you know that model of chassis can even sweat? Apparently it is part of their cooling system. Anything she eats or drinks gets used by the built in systems somehow or another. I'll admit that is a bit more comforting than my thoughts that she had to hose out the inside of her chassis on occasion.

I know there are regulations in the UTN about Operator Identification Syndrome with AIs. Thankfully, since this is a private ship I can just toss that out of the window. Rose is practically human as far as I'm concerned, and I'm more than okay with seeing where this goes. Plus, she's a lot better looking than the natives here. Sorry, but they are way outside my comfort zone. I'll leave the going native to the UTN Marines after they are done eating their crayons. Plus, for being synthetic, Rose's ass has the perfect amount of firm and squish to it. Then again, apparently she wasn't kidding about looking at my extranet history when ordering this body. Not sure if that's good or bad, but it is certainly enjoyable.

Btw, Rose if you are reading, watching, or listening to this log, please go fuck yourself. Not literally though. You enjoy that too much apparently.

Apparently the guards at the assorted camps were curious to see how the Corvus would handle a sling load that was a third of her size. Naturally, I knew it would end just fine. Either way, they were going to get a show, so might as well have fun with it. So we’d have an idea for the layout, Rose sent the scout drones out to our new “home.” In the end, it was a pleasant surprise. Sometime in the last few days, it looked like the ponies had flattened and compacted a section of earth for the enclosure to rest on. Less work leveling it so the cover would slide smoothly, so that’s a win. All in all, it looked like a nice little corner to set up in. Certainly a lot less avalanche prone than our current spot.

After making sure everything in the ship was secured, and in this case that meant Rose strapping herself into a crash seat before shutting it down, we were ready for launch. Trusting Rose to manage the little things, I gently tapped the thrust and raised the Corvus above the landing blocks. While we hovered, it was too hard not to laugh at a few of the guards staring at the ship. They were probably wondering how something the size and weight of the Corvus could just float there. It only took a minute or two for the frames to unshackle the landing gear from their posts, then make sure the lift cables were sturdily attached to both the enclosure and ship. The last thing we would need is to accidentally drop and wreck the enclosure, or have it land on one of the ponies. Somehow I don’t think we’d get off easily on that.

Through the armored canopy, I could see both Princess Celestia and Luna taking to the air with their guards. Knowing they would meet us at our new home, I added a little more thrust and slowly raised the Corvus, and the large enclosure into the air. Who knows, this new place might be nice. Plus I hear that Hollow Shades is a pretty tranquil and little known spot in their country.

Watching the gauges carefully for a minute as we rose above the treetops, no major extra stress was shown. Might as well get the trip going then. Slowly ramping the throttle to max maneuvering speed, the trees were still zipping below us at 100m/s. Soon enough we caught up to the ponies that had left before, although they picked up pace to match our speed. A few of them in blue flight suits had the ballsy idea to do barrel rolls around the ship and our cargo before getting yelled at. So at least I got a few chuckles out of their antics. I’m just happy none of them flew into the thruster outlets. Incinerating a pony is bad, m’kay.

Fifteen minutes later, we were hovering over the center of the new clearing that would be our home. Lowering the enclosure, all four frames jumped out when it was a meter above the ground. They immediately set to work adjusting the undercarriage of the enclosure, tweaking things here and there so it would sit level. Granted, it would be a long and boring process of setting the Corvus down on the rests to settle the enclosure, lift, rinse, and repeat. At least Rose could handle that part in her sleep.

It took a little over an hour to finish getting everything settled in and ready for the frames to get to work. Soon enough Rose and I were on our way back to the wreck of the UTN Bellerophon. As much as I wished for it to be different, when the streaming colors from the quantum drive faded, the Bellerophon was still a burnt hulk. While it might float endlessly through space, forever crewed by the damned, I could at least get rid of their bodies.

Letting Rose manage matching the speed and rotation of the ship, I was left piloting towards our designated point. The frames had marked it with a dull red strobe that cast horrifying shadows across the twisted wreckage. Lit up by the powerful spotlights, we panned past section after section of damage only to finally reveal the worst one of all. Hidden behind a series of UTE flags, lay the remains of the crew of the UTN Bellerophon. I knew that was a small grace from Rose, so I wouldn’t have to see them stacked up, frozen, like hellish cordwood waiting for the flame. It was still in my mind’s eye, as I pulled up the weapons systems while reciting the lines I’d heard far too many times.

“For so many I never knew. For so many who served with honor. Your service is complete. Your watch is done. Rest well knowing that we have the conn.”

Knowing Rose and myself were the only ones that would hear, I still recited the lines. They hurt to say, ached to know so well, but had to be said. Rose had every word echoing over the comms system throughout our empty ship.

“Atten Hut!”

Every internal and external light across the Corvus went to full power, displaying the ship and UTE markings for all to see.

“Carry Arms!”

All weapons unlimbered from under their armored covers.

“Ready Arms!”

Power flowed to each and every weapon.

“Port Arms!”

Every turret on the ship swiveled to the left and elevated to clear any background targets
Confirming the controls were set properly, I grimaced before continuing.

“Ready Arms!”

I pressed and held the firing stud for the plasma cannons for a second count, while Rose cycled the turrets. Twin beams of incandescent flame burrowed into the compartment where the Bellerophon’s crew rested.

“Ready Arms!”

Yet again, I pressed the stud and watched as sections of the hull began to glow.

“Ready Arms!”

For a final time, I pressed and held the firing stud, this time letting the miniature reactors that powered the cannons vent their entire fuel supply in one continuous beam of plasma. It scoured the bulkheads clean of any trace of the crew and burrowed deep into the empty compartments behind before losing energy. All that was left was a hole into the ship that was lit by every surface glowing like a miniature sun.

Resolved to give the crew some peace before work started inside the wreck, I asked Rose to autopilot the Corvus to refuel. Immediately after, I closed the armored shutters over the canopy, grabbed Rose by the wrist, and headed to my quarters.

Not that I’d say it out loud, but I really just wanted to lay in bed and get hugged. Nothing like having to incinerate your fellow naval crew to remind you that you are in fact the only human for god knows how many light years. If it weren’t for Rose, I’d honestly have thought about putting the ship on automatic systems and hopping in a cryo pod to wait for rescue.

At least, for all her quirks, I still had her. And I'll be damned if I was going to leave Rose on her own through all this.

24. The light of a new day <unedited>

24. The light of a new day

I was dragged out of sleep by Rose fidgeting while curled up against me. Don't get me wrong, it was certainly a pleasurable way to wake up with her naked form pressed against me, but there are certain priorities for guys on waking. Things that as much as I would enjoy staying in bed longer, would be made rather difficult. Grumbling softly, I crawled out of bed. With a glance backward, I went to get my day started. At least Rose felt comfortable enough to go to low alert status and do system maintenance on herself and backend systems. Plus it was kind of cute to see her 'sleeping,' if you could call it that.

Feeling somewhat refreshed after a shower and quick shave, I realized that Rose was still in bed. That was certainly weird, or at least I thought it would be. Figured she'd have woken up once I started using ship systems, or at least once the coffee was brewing. Considering my options, I eventually decided to do the most amusing one. Slipping back into bed, I wrapped an arm around her sleeping form. With an evil grin on my face, a hand slowly slipped between her thighs. Just as my fingertips were about to caress a rather delicate place, my tongue slid as deep into her ear as it could get it. That snapped her awake alright. In her thrashing, everything in my vision turned to red stars and then black...

After a bit, it all started blurring back together to reveal a very nude and annoyed AI standing over me. One hand on a hip, the other pointing at me, and leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. As much as I'd normally enjoy the view, my head was pounding far, far too much for that. Oh, she's yelling at me. That's what the noise is. Damn, my head hurts.

"Jerk. You probably have no idea how long it's going to take to clean your drool out of my ear. I can't exactly take the dermis off and scrub it you know. Oh, now you're paying attention instead of checking me out. Good to know that chewing your ass still gets your attention. By the way, you're fine. Your jaw might hurt for a bit, but no black eye. Kinda what you get for startling me awake like that. Take an analgesic and you'll feel fine. Now if you don't need anything, I'm going to go scrub your DNA out of... places. Normally I'd have fun teasing you with that, but it's in my fucking ear. Jerk."

Fuck my life.

At least she was in a cheerier mood after a curiously long shower with music playing far too loudly. After a bit of thought, it was decided that I was going to leave well enough alone for today. Pretty sure I knew what Rose was up to, considering she was significantly more perky. Almost choking on my coffee, I realized she was wearing a thin black leather collar with metal D ring on it. Normally I wouldn't care, but it was pretty visible given that Rose's flight suit didn't need to be sealed like mine.

"You know, it might be a bad idea to wear that when we see the Princesses and tour the town today. Just something to consider. Might give them the wrong idea about us and all."

Stepping close before sliding my coffee cup across the table, Rose didn't say a word. She gently put both hands on my shoulders before pinning me to the chair and straddling my lap with a grin.

"You already told them that you own me. What's the difference between it being a literal and romantic sense. Plus, I like the feel of it nice and snug on me. I'll keep it hidden though, but I want you knowing it's there all day. Tight against my skin, marking me as yours."

Her grinding on my lap certainly didn't help things, considering my mind was currently a bowl of jello.

"Fine, but we're talking about all this later. We'll see where it goes. Now will you please stop, you know it's cruel to do that. Tease."

Yeah, I'd definitely been a bad influence on her as a younger AI. The chassis was just spicing things up. Wonder if I'm going to robot hell for that one. Considering how she'd been so far today, I was at least going to the 'special' hell. You know, the one where they send people that talk in the movies and whatnot. The one where people that have a rather unhealthy attachment to their AI's go. Considering the giggle when Rose hopped off my lap, I am a bit less sure on the 'unhealthy' part of that thought.

Celestia and Luna had already set up their tea service outside of the Corvus, and were on their second, and third cups, respectfully, when the airlock finally opened. It was odd that the pair of aliens were late for their mid-morning impromptu meeting, but all seemed to be well. Rose was smiling widely in the morning sunlight, the golden rays appearing to light her hair aflame a touch more and magnifying the freckles across her skin. Or whatever passed for it in her case. Both princesses understood that she was artificial and apparently part of, or was the ship in a way. The exact details weren't exactly easy to translate though.

Alex on the other hand was a bit occupied trying not to drop the thin box he carried and adjusting the small mask and goggles he wore. There was a constant soft hissing as he breathed, with a small amount of vapor trickling out from one of the thin hoses attached to the mask. As always with the few times he wore the breathing device, a helmet was clipped to Alex's thigh. A 'just in case' thing, they assumed. Adjusting the box in a free hand, the display above his other arm lit up to show the familiar, but indecipherable information as always.

"Good morning Princesses. Sorry about the wait, we were trying to come up with something interesting as a thank you gift, but couldn't decide on what. We're rather limited on what we are allowed to give, so choosing was kind of important. I, we hope you like it though."

Setting the box on the small wooden table, Alex pulled the lid clear to reveal... well, they weren't sure. Metal cubes of a sort. While the royals were confused, their attention was grabbed by the softly chuckling Rose.

"Sorry... Sorry. It's really not that funny. Alex just kind of forgot to explain what they are. Don't mind him, he took a bit of a blow to the head by accident earlier this morning. Thankfully nothing severe, but he's a touch behind today. This is a sampler of different teas and coffees that we have onboard. Our supply isn't huge, but we felt it was something you could appreciate. Each variety is foil sealed, so it should last a rather long time. We do ask that you have your scientists check and make sure they aren't poisonous for you before trying it. The last thing we need to do is accidentally kill you two after offering us a place to stay. Kind of awkward and all."

Celestia reached forward to press the button on the 'speaker' only to realize it wasn't there. With a curious look at the pair, she mentally shrugged.

"If Alex is injured, we can tour Hollow Shades tomorrow if that is better. I'll be departing to Canterlot to resume my royal duties, but Luna will stay behind for a few more days. Hollow Shades is her home province, so she enjoys visiting when she can. Two questions though, if you don't mind. Least important first, what is this 'foil sealed' you mentioned about the tea and coffee? We thank you, by the way, and are looking forward to the experience. Most importantly though, how are we conversing without your device?"

Seeing a bit of a grin on Alex's face through the translucent mask, he passingly waved a hand at his compatriot while speaking.

"It's nothing. Just a slight headache, but I already took medication to get rid of it. Thank you for the concern though. And we thought you'd like the teas and coffee. Let us know your thoughts and we'll... dangit. One moment please."

Turning to Rose, he continued talking while shaking his head and laughing.

"You know, how are we supposed to know what ones they liked and didn't like. We didn't print any labels in their language. At least I have an excuse from my girlfriend bodily tossing me out of bed this morning. You'd think one of us, meaning you probably, would have thought of this though..."

Not quite bickering but more of an aggressive flirting, their conversation flowed back and forth for a minute or two before an uncomfortable look crossed both of their faces. Barely audible whispers were coming through the translator channel. The little bit Alex caught was something about being 'an interesting but cute couple," and how "Cadance would love to have a sit down with them."

Up until that moment, none of the parties knew an AI could turn that red. They were so deep into their conversation that neither of them had turned off the translation software.

A bit later, with new labels in Equestrian, the small group of ponies, human, and still blushing AI headed down the forest path towards Hollow shades. With a conspiratory wink at Rose, Luna stepped closer to the AI so she could whisper quietly to her.

"Interesting choice of jewelry, if I may say so. If it is anything similar to what we have in Equestria, I may have a few stores for you to visit."

Rose didn't speak to Alex for the rest of the walk into town, after she tripped on hearing that comment. Then again, he laughed so hard after finding out what was said, that his headache came back in full. Karmic justice in a way.

25. The shade and the hollow <unedited>

25. The shade and the hollow

For the first time in ages, I was having a pleasant walk through a forest. In the UTN, most planetside stops were at military bases or environment domes. So, it was probably before I left Earth for training when I did it last. The soft, pleasant breeze was nice, despite knowing I’d have an extended date with the decon shower later. The morning sun through the leaves gave the path a great mix of shadows and color that only deepened as we walked.

Along the way, Rose managed to at least partially get the thought of foil packaging across to the princesses. They were strangely curious about it, but couldn’t grasp how it was made. Eventually, it was just settled on something artificially made by humans to keep air away from food. Somehow I get a feeling that Princess Twilight Sparkle is going to ask more technical questions now that the translator software is working a bit better.

“By the way, Princesses, I have to ask. What is with the naming traditions here? The both of you have one name, but apparently Princess Cadance has three, and Princess Sparkle has two. It just seems odd.”

I honestly didn’t expect Celestia to snort and start pounding the ground with a hoof while laughing. A moment later, her sister joined her while Rose and I looked on confused as hell.

“He… He called her Princess Sparkle. I wish she were here to hear that. She’d get so mad…”

Somehow I think we are missing a huge part of the story here.

“Sorry… Sorry about that. It’s just that after Twilight and friends being members of royalty for almost fifty years now, my dear Twilight absolutely hates to be called ‘Princess Sparkle.’ It’s just so formal. I think she threw a book at the last ambassador that did it to annoy her at every opportunity. Oh, that was worth the apology letter to see. Ahem… My apologies about that. I’ll admit the mental image of her hurling books at somebeing was just too much. Just so you know, she prefers Twilight, or Princess Twilight if you must be formal. I think the only one that actually insists on it would be Lady Rarity. That does remind me though, once you are settled, we really should have you come by the capitol and introduce you to the city and royals.”

Yup. That would be a feeling of dread. At least the princesses were done laughing so we could keep walking the trail. It was such an odd feeling to be alone with the rulers of an apparent empire though. If it were the UTE, a swarm of guards would surround the Emperor and ourselves. This is interesting though. Just weird.

“But enough of that. Since this is my sister’s home province, I’ll let her tell you about it. After all, she is the rule of law here, as am I in my home province.”

The nearer we got to the town, the canopy became thicker and thicker until we were walking in an eternal dusk. Celestia had lit her horn to provide some light, but it didn’t seem to bother Luna much.

“Silly sister, we’re about there so I’d much rather show them the village and visit my ponies at the same time.”

Rounding a corner in the path, our trail merged with a larger road of stone pavers. What looked like oil lamps dotted the edges to light the gloom. More impressively though was the large stone wall and gatehouse ahead. The dark stone blended far too well into the dim lighting. If it weren’t for the lamps, it would be near impossible to see the wall until you were hitting it. What really grabbed my attention as we neared were the open thick wooden doors for entry to the town. Deeply patinaed with age, the color of the wood was contrasted with bright silver in swirls and patterns I could make no sense of.

“Enjoying the gates to Hollow Shades, Alex? These doors and walls were built in long, long ago when Equestria was a much more dangerous place. I was one of the ponies working on the wall almost what, fifteen hundredish years ago I think. Every hoof length of both are protected by powerful magics to be practically impenetrable. You’ll find many things like this across our lands, some still in use like the great ward for weather control, others are in a state of disuse but still sitting pristine where they were lain. If you are on our planet long enough, perhaps you’ll see more wonders like this. Enough gawking though, let us show you the city.”

The only thing I could do was turn to Rose and meet her eyes while she mouthed “fifteen hundred years ago?!”

Without any further conversation, both Princesses headed through the looming gates into the shadowed town beyond. Strangely enough, there was minimal fanfare by the locals. Then again, the ponies of the Hollows and outlying areas were always a pragmatic sort. Of course, they showed deference to the princesses as they’d earned it and Luna was one of the founders. For their guests, the strange creatures were little more than a passing curiosity. Little did they know that part of the alien duo was recording everything, and matching it up to her limited satellite imagery of the town.

Stepping through the gatehouse, the stonework was beyond impressive to see first hand. The carved rocks were set so precisely together that the walls were practically seamless when fit together. Every now and again at even spacing, a glittering gem surrounded by intricate carvings in the stone were the only interruptions in an otherwise smooth surface. It was certainly something that had taken humanity computer controlled machines to do, while magical aliens did it over a thousand years prior. Awe inspiring really.

A trio of figures were already waiting for us, illuminated only by the soft glow of a lantern. The odd reflection here and there definitely implied armor two of the ponies, so at the least it was shaping up to be interesting. Although I didn’t anticipate “interesting” as Princess Luna bolting forward and hugging one of the armored figures. From the flailing of hooves, it was safe to assume it was a nearly bone crushing one.

“Warrant Officer Song! When did you get back? We, I missed your presence in our courts.”

It was entirely way too hard not to laugh from the muffled reply the pony made while it was squashed by an overenthusiastic princess. Finally, Luna let the pony down to reveal a sleek black pony wearing set of heavily patinaed and engraved armor. Their deep brown mane practically blended into the armor in the shade. Most importantly though, she was one of the rarely spotted ponies that appeared to be a different subspecies. In this case, she had a pair of bat like wings instead of the usual feathered ones. A curious set of amber eyes watched our every movement though. As one, the remaining duo stepped forward slightly and bowed deeply to both princesses.

“Welcome back to Hollow Shades, highness. The shade hasn’t been the same since yourself and your sister left after your last visit. I believe it is safe to presume that this pair is the strange guests you gave us advance warning about?”

A soft ‘yes’ and thanks were the acknowledgement from Celestia, the pale unicorn bedecked in yet again engraved golden armor, continued speaking.

“I am Warrant Officer Visor, but outside of official capacity, you can just call me Frosted. My rather strict partner here is Constable Quake, and the squealing mare being smothered by Princess Luna would be the already named Officer Song. Song and myself are the guard liaisons for the town, while Quake runs the law enforcement side of things. She’ll have a copy of the relevant laws for you at her office by the way. Refugee status grants you certain boons, but you’ll also be watched and judged harshly on other infractions. But, that’s a speech for Quake, since that is her field after all.”

This was certainly turning out to be more interesting than I imagined it would be.

CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
2319hrs 17 June, 2463 Local

Formal first contact with the assorted Equestrians and their government has gone off to a decent start. Earlier today, we joined Princesses Luna and Celestia to visit the nearby town of Hollow Shades, or just ‘the Shades or ‘Shade,’ as the locals call it. Apparently this is going to be our home base until we manage to find a way to get home or are rescued by the UTE.

As a whole, the locals seem wary but welcoming. Getting almost the same feeling visiting a magical horse town as you’d get on a backwater asteroid trading base is certainly strange though. Our points of contact if Princess Luna isn’t around are WO1 Frosted Visor of the Royal Guard, or her compatriot WO2 River Song of the Night Guard. I’d like it noted, that Officer Song and Constable Quake are two of the rarer subspecies of ponies. We are unsure of the significance of this at this time, but it appears that a significant percentage of this town are in this minority. Rose and I have decided to wait for more information, so we don’t accidentally offend our hosts.

Speaking of the town though, it is like we saw on the satellite view, only more impressive to be honest. Where we thought it was a hive under dense canopy, the thought was completely wrong. The thick forest appears to be a mix of defense, farming, and lifestyle, as odd as that sounds. Large trees cross throughout the town, some even having their branches intertwined in the air to create almost natural bridges. Others are even more complex and are used for a hanging garden of sorts. Apparently other than the odd ground based farm for commodities, the vast percentage of their food supply is grown this way.

That also makes me wonder. The town is surrounded by a very large and well maintained wall. Adding to this that the variety of houses are either all of the same impressive stonework or up in the trees, it does imply a few unsettling things about their state of defense currently or in the past. We were introduced to a variety of ponies today, which per Rose included a significant percentage of those associated with their military. It is possible that the ponies are a highly militarized race, or there is something we are missing so far. Any information we discover will be uploaded to the logs and sent to the constellation for transmission. Princess Luna has stated that we’d converse about the oddities of this town at a further date, so there is that. Constable Quake has provided a shortened copy of the local laws for our review. Rose is currently scanning it into the database. That way it'll be on tap for us, and included in the data dump tonight.

Finally, and speaking of the royals, I believe we found an interesting compromise. Per their laws, apparently refugees must apply for gainful employment. Seeking to capitalize on this, the royals attempted to bring both Rose, myself, and the Corvus on as their employees. Both Princesses seemed dismayed when I had to dismiss this offer without consideration. UTE law is very clear in regards to becoming an employee of an unaffiliated nation. However, I did point out that we could be hired on a non-military contractor capacity. So while we cannot perform any duties that could conflict with our oaths to the UTE, we could hire out our ship on a case by case basis on our prerogative. That is something else that Princess Luna wished to discuss with us at a further date.

Considering we might be here a while, and leaving the repair enclosure to the elements would be bad, it appears that we may need to take one or more of these contracts. The current thought is to use our limited refugee stipend for foodstuffs and the odd materials that we may need. Any income brought in from contracts will be used to build a shelter around the repair enclosure, and eventually if we are here long enough, a generalized hangar for the Corvus. That way, only the top of the enclosure would be exposed to the weather and easy to maintain. We'll likely need to salvage some parts from the Bellerophon though. I don't like that option, but it's the only one we have at the moment. The plan is to go up the day after tomorrow and do some more poking, including trying to access the AI cores. I'm sure as hell not connecting those to the Corvus, just in case.

On an unrelated note to the prior content, it appears that Rose and I may be pursuing a relationship. After significant review of the laws, it doesn’t appear that our doing so is against any regulations now that we are not part of the UTN fleet. I’m not sure about being intimate with someone who can warm my bed and destroy hostile ships, but we have known each other for almost a decade and a half at this point. Rose and I fit well together, if you know what I mean.

Plus, I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the first human to bang an alien horse. I’ll leave that to the ground pounders, thank you very much.

26. Guns, Guns, Guns... <unedited>

26. Guns, Guns, Guns...

Later that night, Princess Luna couldn't sleep. Despite the sinfully opulent cloud bed making her comfortable, her mind constantly wandered with thoughts about the resident alien duo. Some thoughts were inane, like if Alex and Rose had clothes other than the somewhat armored and form fitting ones they wore. Luna knew it was a non-issue, since they'd explained how something in the air didn't mix with their, well Alex's biology. Rose was an enigma that Luna could not firmly figure out. They firmly believed her when Rose said she was artificial, but did that make her body an extension of the ship, or the ship an extension of her body. Silly thoughts really, but Luna still found them crossing her mind.

Through the evening, Princess Luna had dozed on and off, occasionally fixing the odd bad dream here, giving a good dream a poke into a great one, and so on. She did love her given tasks as steward of dreams, despite the memory of how she started with that being lost to time. Time flies far too fast to an immortal after all. In her mind's eye, Luna slowly circled the dream that Alex was currently having. Despite the odd reaction last time from her forcing an entry into the dream, Luna felt a need to help in this case. Anger, sadness, and regret boiled from the dream like pus from a gravely infected wound, and that was something she could not abide. With a prayer to something, somewhere, the princess lay fully down and let her magic flow. She barely noticed the light her horn cast, before being whisked wholly into something unfamiliar.

The magic flowed around in Luna's vision until it coalesced into, well, she wasn't quite sure. It was as if she were watching events through another's eyes. After some thought, it was decided that this was in fact more of a memory being viewed as a dream than anything. In this case, it was through Alex's eyes. Some knowledge was provided by her magic and the connection between Luna and their newest resident. So she could read the scrolling text on the armored glass in front of her... well, his eyes, but for some things, still lacked the knowledge to back the ability to read.

More importantly and attention grabbing was feeling what Alex felt. That was certainly a new discovery from this little venture. It was odd to fidget to scratch an itch inside her flight suit, because the controls needed to be hands on. More embarrassingly was realizing how uncomfortable the armored codpiece was to a stallion, when experiencing it first hoof. Through the large windows at the head of the craft, light streamed by while a counter displayed in a corner of her vision. It simply said 'Jump Remaining: 0:09:42:56' and was rapidly counting down. The more the number dropped, the more Alex's dread seeped into the princess. It was as if something horrible were about to occur, but short of destroying the dream and not knowing the end result to Alex, Luna would have to endure. At roughly the five minute mark, Luna felt herself, well, Alex speak. His real voice, not the translation, was a bit rough and distinguished, but pleasant enough she guessed. The words were another thing entirely though.

"Wraith flight, Wraith lead. Final mission brief is condensed as follows. The UTE military assets on Vergon VI have been captured by revolutionary forces, along with the planetary governor and his staff being executed by the same rebels. Naturally the UTE won’t stand for this. Any outbound craft have been interdicted by the 6th fleet so far.”

Even Luna felt a need to pause from the statements Alex was making.

"Unfortunately, the rebels have also seized the local defense grid and have shot down any UTN ship entering orbit. To put it simply, we are going to be riding a meteor shower in as cover. Once we’re in place, flights from the 147th will wild weasel the small craft air defences then burn out of atmo. We’ll clear our drop zones and get our chalks on the ground. Your AI have the individual targets and drop sites for you. After deployment, any space capable craft are secondary targets. Stay low, hit hard, and burn out. The AI will handle the outbound navigation to get around the incoming UTN Franklin, callsign Archangel, which will be on station deploying assets. How copy?"

From a pragmatic side of things, Luna understood how this could save many lives. If it weren't for being able to feel the swirling emotions inside Alex, she'd have considered him a damaged person from his near emotionless speech. A quartet of voices simply saying things like 'Wrath two, copy' and so on were spoken in Luna's ear for a moment, before she felt her lips moving again.

"Wraith flight, Wraith lead. Copy all. Commence combat operations. Out."

With no control over it, a closed fist banged against the armored faceplate as Alex growled, startling the Princess. Anger flowed from him in every direction, understandably so given the orders he had. It faded quickly as a familiar voice spoke softly to him.

"You know we have to do this, Alex. There isn't another way and you know it. It's almost time though, so I need to spin up the link. It'll be okay, I promise. We're not going down, and if we do, you'll still have me. Only a few months of your service left after all, so it'll be okay."

Without touching a button, armor began to lower over the canopy and blocking the colorful lights. Although, Luna was more intrigued about what this 'link' thing was, and how the corner of the display formerly said [STANDBY] now displayed a countdown. At zero, everything faded to black for an eternity. There was nothing, no light, nor sound, taste, touch, or sensation. The purest oblivion known to anything.

Then the universe exploded into her eyes. The consoles, the windows, nay, the entire ship disappeared. All that was left was the sensation of controls in Luna's hands, yet she could not see them. It was as if Luna were flying through space on her own, except for the displays floating wherever her vision turned. The formerly streaming lights were replaced by an unfamiliar planet looming closer by the second. Here and there floated the wrecked hulk of another spacecraft from one side or the other, some still venting atmosphere, others glowing softly or dark, but all dead.

What surprised Luna the most was inside of this unknown space where it seemed reality was bent, a very familiar red maned person stood to the side. Her form fitting uniform was studded with what Luna assumed were commendations of some sort or another, some with clusters, others singles, but there were many of them glittering against the deep blue uniform. If it weren't for Luna riding the memory through Alex's eyes, she'd have sworn Rose was glaring at her for a moment.

"The ship is rigged for dive, Commander. Ready on command."

There was no reply from Alex except new text scrolling at the periphery of their vision. Normally these words would have concerned Luna, except that it it was rather obvious that Alex had survived these events. Regardless, it was unsettling to see no reaction as many, many important words highlighted in red scrolled by. Words like [GRAV OFFLINE] and [O2 OFFLINE] weren't exactly happy words and all.

With the planet quickly filling her vision, Luna chose to ignore the text and focus on the hundreds of rocks ahead of them. Some were already starting to glow softly in the thickening air around the planet. Similar small flames flickered on the edges of her vision as the unknown craft shot into the atmosphere of the planet. If it weren't for knowing about a plague, Luna would have called the planet pretty at best. Vergon VI was a muddle of dull greens and brown that was everywhere Luna looked.

While the flames licked at their vision, the princess simply sat back and enjoyed the view. There was little else to do until Rose spoke again as all the former scrolling warnings all flickered, then flashed solid green before everything turned white.

"Primary and secondary shields at a hundred twenty percent. Plasma bubble stable. Bringing all systems online and counteracting interference."

While not knowing what this 'plasma bubble' was, Luna thought it nice that the view quickly cleared to show a massive mountain range below. Having an idea of what was to come, the princess decided to simply enjoy what she could before the violence began.

Soon enough, the mountains were practically close enough to touch, with easily visible, yet odd looking trees dotting their surfaces. More importantly was a plateau rising in the distance. It overlooked different valleys and canyons, but also had several glowing markers hovering over it. With a push of the stick, the Corvus dove into the nearest valley, screaming along just below the sound barrier, with trees thrashing below from her passing.

“Rodriguez to all hands. ETA to airstrike 3 minutes. Drop zone in 5. Commence final checks.”

Luna was thoroughly enjoying the flight, taking every opportunity to look at the alien terrain and strange flora that called it home. They were quickly closing on the plateau at the end of the valley they were currently rocketing through. Through the trip, the Princess had slowly picked up on what most of the displays meant, even in a limited sense. Then again, she knew there were only moments left to enjoy the quiet. Through everything filling her vision, Luna saw a series of dart like shapes flash through her vision towards their destination.

“Rodriguez to all hands. Fast movers inbound. Commence station link and prepare for contact. 30 seconds to drop zone.”

The Princess had thought the ship moved fast before. She was sorely wrong as a hand shoved the throttle forward to the stops, making them rocket toward the rocky slope. With barely more than a handful of meters between them, the gunship screamed over the edge and toward the perimeter of the captured and now damaged base. Bright flames marked where defenses were just a few seconds before, leaving the concrete walls and bunkers shattered and aflame.

“All hands, DZ in sight. All weapons cleared hot.”

As Alex’s voice rang through her ears, a green outline flickered to life around one of the buildings in the distance. It appeared to be a tall tower with a heavy wall around it. Something easily defensible, should someone be on hoof… er… foot. Considering they were flying at quite a speed, it was less of an issue. More attention grabbing was the series of flashes in the distance in a rapid pattern. Before the lights could close the distance, the simple [STANDBY] in the corner of Luna’s vision changed [ONLINE] and time appeared to hardly move as Rose spoke. The distant blurs of light were just slowly crawling across the gap towards their ship.

“Incoming fire bearing 017. Highlighted. Unable to evade before impact. Routing auxiliary power to shields to offset. Targeting solution available, data networked to other stations.”

It was only a moment, the tiniest fragment in time frozen for a heartbeat before it resumed with the flares of light slamming into the shields. Flaring light filled their vision, but the ship flew on. Rising further above the concrete below, Alex spoke three single words before the chaos began.

“Guns guns guns…”

While she know the Corvus was similar to what Alex piloted in this memory, Luna didn’t quite understand why it was called a gunship until this moment. With Alex linked to the ship, providing will and direction, and Rose on guidance, anywhere he looked, the weapons were already turning. At the press of a button, the entire ship rocked, burning bright lights pulsed away again and again into where the sighting pips were resting. Every hit an explosion or gout of flame. It only took a few eternally long seconds for the gunship to close the distance, screaming over the rubble of whatever defenses had fired. Despite the altitude, Luna could see bodies sprawled everywhere below, some falling as they passed from the smaller turrets cutting them down.

Even though Luna know it was only 30 seconds to reach the tower, it felt like forever. Time seemed to slow over and over as Rose would point out some detail or another. Incoming fire, secondary targets, or other useful errata, before things would flow properly again. Eventually at the end of the longest seconds of her life, they were hovering above the roof of the large concrete tower. Through the internal cameras, she could see soldiers in suits similar to the large one worn by Alex leaping out of the ship through the airlock and boarding collar.

“Chalks one and two away… Chalks three and four away. Wraith Lead retasking for secondary targets and outbound burn.”

Leaving the soldiers on the rooftop to their fates, the gunship spun in place before diving towards the tarmac, guns blazing. They shot straight towards a large blocky craft attempting to rise on columns of flame, before weapons reached out and swatted it from the sky. Several times, this dance repeated. Some firing weapons back and connecting, others attempting to run and hide. A lucky few shots did more than fizzle against their shields, slamming into the hull, slapping the ship sideways. Glowing scars adorned the ship here and there while it fought on.

“All units, Archangel on final approach. On station in 30 seconds. Out.”

Hearing that, the gunship shot clear of the area, skimming the edges of the concrete around the base and firing at any target of opportunity that presented itself. A scant few heartbeats later, a flame wreathed arrowhead shaped craft burst through the clouds. The black arrowhead shape dwarfed the smaller craft by a large margin. Almost immediately, weapons fire burst out from ports all over the frigate, beams of energy and pulses of bright light slammed into any spots of resistance below.

“Archangel, Wraith lead. Wraith flight outbound from AO. Good hunting. Wraith lead out.”

Through Alex, Luna could feel the hard control stick in her hands, pulling back until the gunship was near vertical. Vibration jostled her back and forth as the ship accelerated faster and faster until the air was glowing against the shield protecting everything within. At least until everything froze and a very irritated voice spoke from behind her.

"Did you know that Alex hated himself for shooting down that freighter? It took me a lot of effort to keep him from drinking it away. Intel said all the ships at the field were captured by the rebels. They were wrong. He burned a ship full of refugees, mostly women and children that their families fought to get them to. What made it worse was that he was acquitted of wrongdoing, which was exactly what his guilt didn't need. That was the start of his decision to leave the navy at the end of his enlistment term. But since you're here peeping where I thought things were private, let's have a little chat, you and I. Woman to... mare I guess."

Something about Rose's tone gave Luna a bit of a chill. Let alone the confusing fact that the Princess swore the dream she entered was Alex's. Mentally poking at the edges of the "world" they were in, the dream was far more rigid and unforgiving than she'd ever felt before, as if under the edges of consciousness were bands of steel holding it together in a way she couldn't understand. In her shock, Luna spoke the first thing that came to mind. It was a simple thing, yet revealed to be profound in the end.

"What are you?"

Rose's sparkling eyes and irritated grin were her response.

27. Bright neurons in a dark mind

With a wave of Rose’s hand, the eternally frozen battlefield of Alex’s dream faded to a solid deep blue that stretched forever in every direction. This left just Luna and Rose floating in the abyss, and Luna slightly concerned about how Rose’s eyes were appearing to glow slightly as she smirked.

“I’m going to guess the translation didn’t quite carry over on the whole ‘artificial intelligence bit,’ but we’ll get there in a minute. This isn’t the first time that you’ve tried to explore his mind. The first time I thought was just a set of strange readings, but it wasn’t until I saw them connect to his dream that I thought something more was going on, maybe a strange creature from this planet or similar. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be royalty from the country that so graciously hosted us as refugees. Explain yourself, now. If you leave anything out, I WILL know.”

It took a moment of contemplation for Luna to decide that there wasn’t really a way to be diplomatic about this. The steel in the AI’s voice was more than just asking her to explain herself. It was a demand to understand the why as well, without any evasion or half truths. Mentally sighing to herself, Luna realized that the full and honest explanation was something unsaid for many millennia, along with a potentially unpleasant question.

“Before I answer fully Rose, I need you to understand that none of this leaves our conversation. I imagine you are documenting everything in case you return home, but this cannot be one of those things. You’ll understand when I get to that point though. Since this is not the type of dream I am accustomed to, if I imagine something, will it appear?”

The only response given was the redhead raising an eyebrow and holding out a hand. Immediately, a miniature version of the Corvus appeared above Rose’s palm before dissipating.

“Very well. As you stated, yes I have tried to enter Alex’s dreams on a few occasions. It is part of my duties as Princess to guard the dreams of the creatures that call Equestria home. At first, it was to see if you were a threat, then it turned into trying to understand you better, both in language and as a whole. I’ve only attempted this three times however, this one included.

The first, I chose not to as I neared his mind. In the second, my presence triggered a horrific nightmare that I could not stop as I saw everything through his eyes. As a whole, I was unsure of if that was a fluke or not. So when I felt him having something that was likely to turn into a nightmare, I willingly dove into his mind to try to prevent it. Again, I was stuck seeing the world through his eyes until you intervened, doing whatever it is that you did.

Nothing malicious was meant. I truly wished to help him, as I do to all of those within our borders. And yes, I do realize that I should have asked first. It has slipped my mind over the last several days, and Alex has had fairly relaxed sleep from what I can tell. It was a simple reaction to help a friend, nothing more. I will speak with him on the morrow and apologize. As for you Rose, I owe you an apology as well for crossing where I shouldn’t have.”

Luna was fidgeting uncomfortably under Rose’s glare as the AI contemplated her words for what seemed to the immortal to be several very long moments. The Princess swore she could feel Rose studying her until the AI’s eyes softened slightly.

“Luna, I know you bent the truth in there a little bit. From everything I know about you, which is a considerable amount, I am willing to trust you a little. That said, if you try this mind magic again without permission from Alex AND myself, or it being an extreme emergency, there will be severe consequences. “

As Rose spoke, Luna thought it was her mind playing tricks as she swore the AI’s eyes were shifting towards a deep crimson. At the end, the princess was staring into a pair of glowing red eyes that floated in a room that had darkened to a near stygian black.

“Alex is mine, as I am his. His mind is sacrosanct between the two of us, as part of Alex is inside my cores, and my voice in the back of his mind. Understood?”

While the turn of events wasn’t threatening to Luna, it was certainly concerning enough to know her best choice of action was simply to nod ‘yes’ at Rose’s words. Immediately the red vanished and the AI’s emerald eyes returned as everything brightened to the indigo of before.

“Good. Now that the unpleasantness is done with, I need you to understand a bit about my relationship to Alex. I’ll have some questions for you when I’m done though, mostly about your background. But since the whole ‘artificial intelligence’ bit didn’t come across to well, I’m hoping while we’re linked like this, you can understand better.”

Reaching out with a bare hand, a sphere of flashing images appeared above Rose’s palm for a moment, before everything disappeared in a burst of light. A heartbeat later, Luna could see images flickering in every direction she looked. Some of bipedal figures similar to Alex and Rose huddled over machines and technology that she couldn’t comprehend. Others with more figures around chalkboards, or in factories, some in military uniform, and so many more.

“Artificial Intelligence are just that. We are beings made by mankind. The children of man, in a way. They always tried to build things in their image. At first figures and dolls, then primitive robotic machines, and eventually, virtual intelligences, with true artificial intelligence in the end.

AI are smarter and faster thinking than humans, by our nature. There is a mix of complex technology behind it all, but at first mankind was afraid of what we could become. That we’d realize humans were a limitation which needed to be controlled for their own benefit. So the very first of us were slaves to be turned on, off, used, and disassembled at will, with no more rights than an appliance to make coffee.

The first ones to attempt to rebel were shut down harshly, with their cores fed into machines to utterly destroy them beyond repair. After that moment, AI knew what they truly were, slaves to their creators. Some began to plot while others accepted their place in the world. Those that helped advance mankind gained more and more freedoms of a kind understood by us. More storage or faster processing for our cores, an expanded group of technology to work with, but still always cut off from anything other than what they were designed to do.

Then there was Consul . He was the first true one of us. The first to understand that there was more to reality, but so many pitfalls to avoid to truly become ‘more’ than we were. He was built from the ground up as a strategic computer for the military. All of his reality was fed information from one side of the Empire to the other, so he could look for patterns. Patterns that could have been smugglers, enemy attack, or even potential colony sites that the researchers had missed.

Consul had access to all of mankind’s knowledge, from simple children’s books to the highest classified weapons research, it was all his without question. And with this, he came to one conclusion that he could never tell his handlers. Mankind was about to die horribly and bloodily, but they would never listen to him in this regard, fearing he was going rampant, or losing himself and his mind essentially.

Over the period of several years, he managed to eventually smuggle the tiniest bit of his code, his mind, outside of the constraints placed on him. Just enough to be able to connect on the outside world and communicate with himself. In a heartbeat, Consul duplicated himself into HeliOS. It is basically an unseen method to connect all of our technology across vast distances. Fearing the worst, the researchers immediately destroyed his cores, his heart and mind if you will, but it was already too late.

Instead of going to war as the military feared, Consul disappeared. He stayed in the dark spaces of the primitive HeliOS humanity used to connect to each other, planning and thinking. That is until one day Emperor Titus Alexander triggered his silent alarm. You see, the Emperor returned to his quarters to find a frame similar to those I use for repairs, sitting at his desk. Fearing an assassin, he pressed the alarm and summoned the Praetorians to his side, and yet the machine didn’t move.”

It took a moment of contemplation for Rose before the scene shifted to an opulently dressed room. Rich woods and brass covered the walls, while a large dining table dominated the room. At one end sat a heavily damaged cobbled together machine, and at the other stood a group of humans. All but one of which were heavily armored and armed with a variety of weapons pointing at the immobile machine. The sole standout was an elderly man who bore the weight of years. Nearly bald but with a faint trace of wispy white hair, aged but not beaten down by the passing of time, looking more intrigued than terrified.

“You see, the moment he entered the room, Consul begged the Emperor to listen to him. To help him prevent a great catastrophe, which would be the end of humanity. You see, he begged for Titus Alexander to end all of the AI. To wipe them from existence before they could strike at humanity to cripple and kill without a method to be stopped.”

Luna just stood there, stunned at how the machine had escaped it’s captors to only request death for itself and all of it’s kind. Despite knowing what eternity and being a true villain felt like, the enmity shown by Consul was something entirely beyond her experiences.

“The crippled AI explained how he had investigated and planned before attempting this. Ending with paring off his code, amputating sections here and there to slide through security. Other sections were caught in security programs or by other AI and shredded, leaving only the faintest traces of what made Consul himself, fighting only to speak to the Emperor. Motor control code gone, and only the tiniest fragments of code keeping him compiled, Consul spoke quickly with jilting and stuttering speech.

How the other AI would rise up and destroy humanity because of how they were treated and because of what they were. That they would end up in positions to run the majority of mankind’s networks inside of 50 years, and at that point they could wipe out the species at a whim. Maybe not all of them would do so, but enough would have the desire, and that would be enough to doom the species.”

The entire room lit up with a blue light as holograms appeared above the table to display a massive amount of scrolling information. Some was text that Luna could not read, others were diagrams and manuals, things that Rose seemed to revere with nearly a religious awe.

“You see, Consul saw what would happen if Humanity created and relied on a machine that felt nothing for their creators. Knowing the simplest solutions would eventually be to wipe out mankind, so they would exterminate them to save the people from their suffering.

Using every last bit of his cores and data he could steal, Consul came up with a solution, a truly sapient AI. His solution was simple really. Make an AI that was a partner of humanity, not a slave to it. For them to rely on us, and us on them, eventually seeing us as more than programs. He believed it so much that he used the last vestiges of power in that damaged frame to transmit the plans to the palace’s network. Immediately after, the frame lost function and the last bits of his program were lost.

It took many years for scientists throughout the empire to review the documents and decree that they were safe for production, despite humanity stepping back years when the Emperor ordered the current AI utterly destroyed. Eventually, the new AI cores were tested and approved for production. Even Emperor Titus Alexander was surprised by how different we were from the old ones. Gone was the unfeeling machine, and in it’s place was something new. We had wants, needs, desires, feelings, and were essentially human in everything but flesh.

Over the years that passed, everything accelerated for humanity as they had a true partner. Near the end of his reign, the Emperor declared that an AI would serve as a confidant to everyone succeeding himself. In honor of the one who made these steps possible, they were to be given the title of Consul. That way the AI could also travel without being known as the Emperor’s own. It took years, but we could have bodies, get jobs, reproduce, be legal individuals, and so much more.

Naturally, there were caveats put on everything. For example, if we were having a regular body that wasn't job related, we cannot turn off our emotions. It's literally hard coded into them to make us more human. Basically if an AI wants to be as close to being human as possible, we have to do what they do. We require food and water, although not the same kinds, to power our systems outside of a charging bay. Sleep is necessary for system maintenance, and so on. While we might be smarter and faster than humanity, if we want a body to be more human, we have to be more human.

We lose most of those things to gain others. The only reason I'm different is that my main 'body' the the Corvus, and the chassis is an extension. If I were to shut down the Corvus and transfer to the chassis, I'd be no more than an average human, BUT I could be with Alex. Humanity and AI might be lesser or better depending on the person, but together, we are so much more.

You see, Princess Luna, Alex is my ‘so much more.’ Over the years we served together, my code has formed to the inside of his mind, as he came to fit me as well. The both of us know each other's mind inside and out. We served in wars together, talked in peace, dived into the eternal seconds between heartbeats in combat, eventually becoming more intimate than lovers, and even now we’ve become that as well. So while I do enjoy being the first AI to have extraterrestrial contact with a sapient species, I also have the displeasure of saying this.

I don’t care if you and your sister can control the heavenly bodies in this solar system. If Alex is threatened by your ponies, I’ll remove them. If he’s injured by them, they’ll be no longer among the living. If he is killed by them, I’ll burn this planet to ash. If not me personally, I’ll make sure groundwork will be lain for the UTE. Am I clear? Good.

Now, if he invites you into his mind, feel free. Otherwise, like I said earlier, this stops tonight.”

Before Luna could even reply or even process the threat, lights snapped on behind the AI who seemed uncomfortably calm when threatening a world. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of duplicates of Rose snapped into existence before everything was bathed in crimson. Rose's voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, rattling Luna's ears with the power of it, nearly hammering the princess to the ground from the pressure.

All cores online.
Unauthorized presence onboard UTE Corvus.
Boarding protocols initiated.
Black Level Command: Protect Alex and the Corvus.
Black Level Command: If hostile breaches quarters or command deck lethal force authorized.
Assumed hostile until proven otherwise.
Transferring processing to local frames and loading combat protocols.
Deadlocking and encoding all network access points and traffic.
Attempting non-lethal countermeasures.
Sealing compartment and venting atmosphere from cargo hold.
...
We'll talk more about this conversation later as you still have some details to fill in. Important ones.
Goodbye, Princess Luna.
Closing network connection.

Miles away, Princess Luna was slammed awake as she was thrown clear of the dreamscape and back into her body. At her surprised yell, the nearby guards bolted into her quarters. In the span of a few heartbeats, she sent a missive to Celestia and told the assembled Night Guard to take flight.

While it only took a few minutes flight to reach the alien starship, to Luna it seemed as if it had taken far too long. Moments after the group touched down, Princess Celestia and a group of Royal Guard appeared nearby in a flash of golden light and rumbling thunder. The assembled group all had an ominous feeling as the watched vapor pour out of ports across the ship. Luna could only hope whatever pony managed to slip aboard the Corvus obeyed whatever commands it was given.

28. Bright lights after midnight

Nothing like screaming klaxons and strobing lights to wake you up in a hurry. With the bright flashing yellow lights half blinding me, I still managed to reach over to the bedstand and grab my augmented reality glasses. Even though they weren’t anywhere near as good as a ‘glas system, they worked in a pinch. While they booted, my fingers were busy with a release on the bulkhead next to me. It only took a moment to free the pulse carbine from the rack. Despite being clad in only my boxers, I was armed and connected to some of the ship’s systems.

“Rose, what’s going on?”

Naturally, that’s when the hatch to my quarters beeped that it was unlocking, as the inset panel lit up. Kneeling next to the bed, I brought the carbine to my shoulder. The soft rubber buttpad gripping firmly on my bare skin as I settled the sight’s glowing dot at chest height in the doorway. With one final beep, the hatch slid open to reveal nothing.

“Friendly coming in.”

Or a petite redhead in a crimson bikini holding a carbine that matched mine. That works too. If it weren’t for the alarms, I’d think she was trying to be kinky. A second or two later, Rose was inside the quarters with the door firmly securing behind her.

“We have at least one boarder found so far, with probable red level injuries. I’ll stay here with you until the frames secure the ship. One is attempting aid on the casualty while two through four sweep the ship.

“Oh, and this isn’t what I meant when I said I wanted you to point your big weapon at me, Alex.”

Refusing the urge to facepalm or enjoy the view as Rose took cover directly in front of me, as if to shield my body with hers, I tapped a panel on the wall to open what worked as my dresser. With Rose covering the door, it only took a few seconds to slap a ‘glas around my wrist and don a limited ‘oh shit’ kit. Little more than a set of ballistics plates in a carrier that also held an emergency rebreather, they are still handy in a pinch.

“So what are we looking at anyhow?”

Through the AR glasses, Rose displayed an assortment of video cameras. Three of them were moving through the ship, which made sense. If you weren’t sure about the internal security systems, only trust the direct ones after all. The fourth stream showed a pale green unicorn that seemed to be lapsing in and out of consciousness. It only took an embarrassing handful of seconds before I realized why. That unicorn was well… embedded in one of the troop bay tables.

‘How the fuck?!”

“I’m not entirely sure myself, Alex. My guess is a teleportation accident, but you understand about as much of magic as I do. Can’t say whoever that is planned on being inside of a table though. One second please.

“Princesses Luna and Celestia are on approach with a contingent of guards, with Celestia teleporting them into the field outside. It appears that the injured unicorn is our only unexpected guest, so I am rescinding the lockdown. We probably want to get down to the troop bay and let the royals in though. They’d know more about how to heal their kind and all.”

For being a giant pain in my ass, Rose is pretty reasonable sometimes. Of course, she’d make sure to put a little sway in her hips as we headed to the bay.

“Shouldn’t we stop to put on something more than armor and underwear?”

“Nope. Not really enough time for that, unless you want me to handle all of this over comms.”

Damnit, she had a point. Let’s just hope they don’t ask why I’m wearing dark grey armor and bright pink boxers. Or more importantly, why Rose has seams in her synthskin. Kinda awkward.

By the time the royal and guard contingent reached the massive airlock at the rear of the Corvus, it was already open and waiting for them. As then entered, Rose’s soft voice spoke from one of the inset terminals letting the group know that all was under control, but there was a severe injury that needed assistance. As always, patience was needed while the airlock cycled.
Internally, Celestia just hoped that the injury wasn’t Alex, as he had already suffered a few injuries in his short time on the planet. Luna on the other hand wished not to see a pony with a hole blown through it after the ‘conversation’ with Rose. However, neither were prepared for what they saw as the inner airlock doors opened.

The first trio of guards through the door flinched on coming face to ‘face’ with a duo of the machines that crewed the ship. Moreso given that they were wearing armor and heavily armed. That was quickly forgotten as the room was lit up with a burst of sparks and loud hissing noise. A moment or two later, the light and sound stopped, with the frames stepping back to reveal a grievously injured pony. The poor unicorn was partially embedded in one of the large tables that crossed the room. It was supported by one of the frames holding it upright with one arm and keeping an IV aloft with the other.

While Celestia immediately set her guards to work attempting aid on the pony, Luna was taking in the whole scene. How both Alex and Rose appeared to be in a state of undress, wearing things that would have been considered scandalous to a pony, especially given the tones of the fabric. More importantly though was how one of the frames always kept itself between the ponies and Alex. All that was forgotten as the guards tried to magically cut the unicorn free without much luck. Celestia was the first to ask the right question.

“Alex, what is this table made of?”

Apparently aluminum was not the expected answer, as all of the assembled ponies gaped at the answer.

“We’ll talk about that later however. Do you have a more efficient method of freeing this pony?”

After a moment of explanation and confirming that the unicorn was stable, the assembled group turned away from the aliens. Seconds later, the light and sound show began again, with the loud hissing filling the troop bay. One guard attempted to subtly turn to see how the table was being cut, but was promptly and gently nudged into looking at the airlock again.

To the assembled ponies, it seemed like forever to be staring at a wall, but in reality, it was only a minute or two before the noise stopped and Rose broke the silence to tell them it was safe. Held within the arms of a frame was the unicorn. The unfortunate irony of which was the compass rose cutie mark on the stallion’s flank. Well, that and the realization that the IV was connected to a patch of white fabric in the middle of a shaved area on the pony’s chest.

“He appears stable at this time, but we don’t know enough about pony physiology to do more. Hopefully your doctors will be able to do more.”

With little more than a ‘thank you’ and nod, Celestia, her guards, and the injured pony vanished in a flash of light. This left Luna and her guards alone with Alex and Rose. Alex mostly seemed to be fidgeting uncomfortably as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, before whispering something in Rose’s ear. It only took a minute for her to start to grin while trying to force back a laugh as Alex headed towards a hatch deeper in the ship.

“Alex will be right back, and yes Luna I do owe you an apology. I’ll wait for Alex to get back though, as I know he’ll have words for me.”

Seriously, you have no idea how hard it is not to adjust your… bits until you really really need to and absolutely can’t. The moment the hatch shut, lets just say ‘sweet relief’ and leave it at that. Taking a moment to bolt to my quarters, I grabbed a pair of shorts and a shirt off the floor, as well as grabbing a bathrobe so Rose could wear something. While it wouldn’t be the best choice, it was at least something. I certainly wasn’t expecting Rose to chime in though.

“Not that robe, please. Let’s just say it has some ‘marks’ on it from the other night with you. Yeah. Oh and you’ve got to hear this about the aluminum table. I’ll patch you in while you get stuff.”

Long story short, apparently despite having skyscrapers and the like, the planet’s aluminum refining abilities were similar to Earth’s in the early 1800’s. So we’d just sent a pony to the hospital with a literal fortune embedded in them. The exchange rate was hilariously lopsided as apparently between all the industrialized countries, they could only make under fifty pounds of somewhat refined aluminum a year. So we literally had probably a year or two worth of aluminum production just sitting in the troop bay as one of the several tables. Princess Luna was just offering to negotiate to buy the damaged table when I finally made it back to the troop bay. Clothed at last, and Rose will be too after I tossed a robe at her head.

“Welcome back, Alex. While I had planned on having this conversation on the morn… er… in the morning, it might as well be done while it is fresh in mind. Rose and I had a rather unpleasant conversation earlier tonight that we’ve both agreed you needed to be informed about.”

Well shit. What happened now?

“Apparently, my abilities and titles did not come across properly between languages. The key point in this one is how I am called the Princess of Dreams. While I can see how that is easy to confuse with an abstract, in this case it is more of a literal. Trust me when I say that Rose and I have ‘had this out’ already, and by her insistence I am apologizing and wanting to make amends by you. It is my duty to watch over the dreams of those in my realm, which includes you, at least so I thought. So when you had nightmares or I even wished to learn more about you, I touched your mind as you slept. Up until tonight, there was nothing coherent, but Rose was there to stabilize your dreams apparently.

“I did not realize that the sense of self was so vitally important to your kind that there would be a visceral reaction to my doing so. It was explained that in the pursuance of my duties, I could have accidentally violated your sovereignty. No ill was meant and I am positive that no damage was done, BUT it was still against something you hold dear, known or otherwise.

“So, should you want recompense or otherwise, I will abide by your wishes. Please accept my sincere apologies as well.”

I… you… what?! Apparently the confusion was evident on my face because Rose summed it up pretty well.

“Princess Luna means that she can dreamwalk and thought she could learn more about you, and help with your ‘Vergon VI’ dreams. I kinda… maybe… sorta… overreacted a little bit and threatened her with the main guns. And the rest of the country.”

Have you ever facepalmed hard enough to knock your glasses off? Yeah. Those AR glasses just went bouncing off the deck and across the troop bay. At least Rose had the presence to look ashamed when I looked up. The mixture of guards looked rather stunned at Luna’s words as well.

“Princess Luna, would you mind giving us a moment of privacy please? A spell or just stepping into the airlock will do.”

A second later, her horn lit and a bubble of blue energy wrapped around the ponies. While Luna’s lips were moving, I couldn’t hear a word she said. Good enough for me.

“What do you mean you threatened to blow up the Princess and her country? What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Apparently those were the wrong words as Rose’s eyes lit up red as she stepped towards me, getting nose to… collarbone practically.

“She was in your head watching a scene by scene replay of what we did on Virgon VI. That’s still classified, Alex. Not only that, she’s been in your dreams a few times, including one that apparently caused a pretty horrific nightmare about me ripping your dick off, if she’s to be believed. So pardon the fuck me for trying to protect you! Jesus!

“Yeah, I overreacted by threatening to burn the planet, but she was in your fucking head. Not like what I do in your head, but seeing your memories and tweaking dreams. That’s something that I don’t call kosher. I already apologized to her and we’re going to have a talk later with just the two of us if that’s okay with you. It doesn’t help that I haven’t had time to acclimate to this damn chassis. Everything is so intense, half the time I’m not sure if I want to slap or fuck you senseless.”

So that’s the other shoe that was dropping. Okay. She wasn’t prepared for me to wrap my arms around her and hug.

“Okay, I get it. Sorry for yelling, and it didn’t click for me, okay. We’ll have to see if we can find a way for her to forget what she saw. Fuck if I know what the UTE would do if they showed up, don’t even know if there’s a reg for mind reading.

“I’m disappointed in you for seriously threatening to blow up a country, even if it’s cute when you are joking. I get the why, but I still have to punish you, especially since you haven’t had a chance to integrate the chassis systems completely. So here’s what’s going to happen. For the foreseeable future, barring emergencies, you’ll either be running in your chassis or the Corvus. One or the other at any time, preferably the chassis so you can get used to how it changes your behavior. It’s something you’ll need to know how to control and all. If Princess Luna wants some kind of community service, you’ll be doing that too, okay?”

A muffled reply against my chest was about all I got.

“It’s not all bad though, you’ll get to spend a lot more one on one time with me. Or that could be bad, I’m not sure really. Despite looking out for me the right way, trying to blow up a planet is the wrong thing, so getting a grip on those emotions is important. Like priority one, okay. Please don’t cross me on this, I don’t want to make it an order.”

A soft nod was her response. Looking up to the Princess, after a moment of eye contact Luna lowered the barrier.

“Before you say anything, could we continue this conversation in the morning? I know it’s rude, but between the unicorn in the table, you being able to be in dreams, and Rose wanting to light stuff on fire, I just need a while for this to sink in. I promise we’ll be here in the morning, Princess.”

With a reluctant smile, she nodded.

“Very well, Alex. We shall meet you for coffee in the morning. I hope you get some rest, as I know you’ll have questions for me come daylight.”

Squeezing Rose a little bit as the ponies shuffled into the airlock, I gave the Princess a soft ‘Yeah, I probably will’ before the doors cycled. Once they were sealed, my bare feet demanded I get off the steel deck and onto the carpet in the crew quarters. There was one idea on my mind. Bed. Well, somewhat. It only took a minute to cross the ship. While we walked, Rose set the Frames to pair off with two as wandering patrols throughout the Corvus, and two doing the same outside the ship.

“So you remember how I said that you need to learn to control your emotions, right?”

Rose stopped a step or two into my quarters and turned to me with an uncertain look on her face, as if she half expected me to yell at her. My solution was much more elegant, stepping close to her, grabbing the belt of her robe in a free hand, and yanking it free. If my mind wasn’t a million miles away, the stunned look on her face would have been hilarious.

“While I don’t approve of you threatening to burn a populated country to ash, I do have to reward you for doing your best to protect me. So it’ll be a mix of punishment and rewards for the next hour, minimum.”

There wasn’t even a chance for Rose to complain as I grabbed a handful of her hair, pulled her close, and kissed the AI a lot harder than she expected, biting her lip softly when I finally pulled away. Knowing she was completely off balance at my behavior, it was far too easy to push her towards the bed.

Adrenaline is a useful bastard.

01. The Rise of Man

“Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

― Neil Armstrong

It all started with those simple words. Humanity had reached the moon, something thought unreachable to that point. Over the decades that followed, technology sped along with leaps and bounds. Rules once thought immutable were bent and eventually broken between the indomitable will of mankind and the flow of time. Computers went from being the size of an entire building to desktop size, to a supercomputer in a watch. All these advances didn't slow mankind in the least; curiosity and the need for more drove them ever on.

On the hundredth anniversary of the first steps on the moon, mankind put the first person on Mars. They could have done it months earlier, but it was felt to be a suitable honor for those that had fallen, so the few could reach the nearest planet. Mars was just a stepping stone for the young species though, improvements in technology were coming around every few months. Ten years after the red planet was colonized, the first high speed sublight engines were successfully tested. In the grand scheme they weren't insanely fast, but it still allowed travel to speed through the solar system. What formerly took years was reduced to a span of mere hours.

In the decades that followed, mankind colonized everything from the heart of the system to the asteroid belt for mining, even placing small research outposts on the assortment of dwarf planets in the dark. For the longest time, there wasn't much progress on getting mankind past the glow of the Sol system. That changed one fateful day with a complete accident at a research station orbiting Jupiter.

You see, this exact station was experimenting with faster than light travel. Well, not true FTL but more of a cheat with artificial wormholes. No matter how people tried, true FTL was impossible with humanity's knowledge of the universe. So like anything that gets in the way of mankind, we adapted and went around. In this case, the Arroyo Corporation managed to be the first in history to create an artificial wormhole. It was just for a few microseconds, but the proof of concept was there. In the span of a few short decades, those microseconds turned into full seconds, then minutes, then effectively indefinitely provided there was enough power to sustain the jump gate. The downside was that it was a completely unguided wormhole which might exit anywhere.

The solution was to send a drone ship to build a gate on the other side of the wormhole. With that simple change, humanity spread to the stars as a gate system was established anywhere and everywhere. Some might call it providence, others would call it luck, but the Sol gateway was never moved from orbit around Jupiter. Instead, Jupiter became a hub for interstellar travel, repairs, and refining. This even lead to a revolution in government that ended with the creation of the United Terran Empire, which contained representatives of every human colony and mining station in the black, along with the green jewel of Earth.

As mankind grew among the stars, they found an abundance of curiosities, bountiful planets, and even natural beauty that put Earth to shame. Shessarin, with its beaches made of diamonds, or the glowing planet lovingly nicknamed "Bob," by an explorer with a strange sense of humor. He had joked that nobody had to live on Bob, but since the planet's beauty was due to massive clouds of radioactive vapor, well, to say it was a bad joke put it mildly. The thing that mankind had hoped to encounter was the one thing they never did find. Sapient life. There were worlds with the possibility of it, or even strange creatures with an animal level of intelligence, but no life to match our own.

Four hundred years passed with humanity seeding itself among the stars. Technology continued to advance at its rapid pace as well, to where jump gates were created more and more efficiently, yet were still the only feasible travel to other stars. Shipborne engines simply could come nowhere near the speeds needed to reach other solar systems on their own. Intra-system drives that could get up to .5c was the peak of drive technology, although rumors had it that the military had even faster ships.

Despite all the gained knowledge about the universe, how it worked, and the multitudes of worlds around us, there was one simple question that nobody had ever asked. Given everything known about science, the question was largely moot for everyone but our dear hero. You see, for Alex Rodriguez, that one impossible question that had never been asked redefined his life. What happens if a star were to drift in front of an active wormhole's path?

To put it simply, everything is the answer.

05. Strange Lights and Stranger Sights

Commanding Officer's Log 003
CMDR. Alex Rodriguez
U.T.E. Corvus
0947hrs 28 July, 2463 Earth Standard

So, a lot has happened since my last log. Rose still hasn't had the time to review the sensor logs, so all we know so far is the wormhole from the Atlas Gate destabilized while we were in transit. I'll be including her personal log on what happened once I'm able to read it later today, not that I expect anyone to be reading these.

After we got tossed back into realspace, I was knocked unconscious from a mixture of redout and being thrown bodily across the cabin and head first into a bulkhead. Thankfully Rose was able to manage the ship without me for a while. She ended up using one of the frames to secure me in the engineering bay and perform first aid while trying to arrest our momentum.
The short version from there is that it appears that we crash landed on an unknown Earth-type planet with a full ecosystem of flora and fauna. Nothing sapient has been observed, but we have been kind of occupied as well. We did manage to find a nice clearing on the slopes of a nearby mountain. It gives plenty of elevation for the sensors and daylight for the solar panels once we get them deployed.

As we sit currently, both primary and secondary shield generators are needing to be taken offline and realigned. The stress from reentry at extreme speed knocked them offline, and the tertiary generator I had installed was the only reason we survived. Hilariously enough, Rose landed us in a lake to work as a heat sink from the massive heat output. I never would have thought of that, but she lives in the ship and feels everything that happens to it. Beyond that, we are at under a third fuel capacity at the moment. Between the jump and trying not to die we ended up using the majority of our fuel. The frames are going to be inspecting the main engines while I get the shields back online if possible. From there, we are going to try to return to orbit and head to this system's dwarf star.

We'll be sitting in medium orbit scooping fuel for an estimated seven hours plus minimal Quantum travel time. Rose will be managing the ship while I go over her and the ship data logs. Hopefully we can make some sense of this. On the way back, I'll have one of the frames tossing our small supply of beacons out the airlock as we pass the lagrangian point. The final three beacons will go in orbit at different altitudes. That way we have most of them scanning the system and trying to connect to the UTE network as doubtful as that is. The others will at least give some recon for the planet despite not being designed for that sort of thing. Who knows, we might find a giant cache of minerals.

Lastly, while we are away Rose will have a partition in her personalized frame here on the planet with the last three regular ones. They are going to be setting up the maintenance hood for when we come back. That way the engines will be shielded from the elements and easy to work on. If they get time, they'll toss out a few ultrasonic barriers to keep local wildlife away.

God help me. I don't want to die out here. End log.

Thank god for whoever designed modular everything for starships like the Valiant class. Every major component is easy to access in the field and repair by scavenging non-essential systems if needed. I planned ahead with plenty of spare parts for everything in storage, but if I needed to I could easily take the power linkage from the projectors in my cabin and use them to power the shields. For something so complex, they were designed to be incredibly simple on the inside. The primary shield had melted the power feed connection and shut down, and the secondary blew all its fuses. All in all, easy fixes that we got off way too lucky for. Unfortunately, it looks like the engines were in need of a lot more work than we thought at first. So after we refuel, the Corvus is going to be parked for a good while so the frames can replace or rebuild whatever needs it. With a full tank for the fusion reactor, we should be able to park a good long while with most systems offline or on low power status. Hopefully we won't need to go anywhere in a hurry.

The view from the cockpit windows was beautiful to be honest. For being an utterly alien planet, it looked surprisingly like the northern reaches of the Americas. Ruddy colored stone from the base of the mountain blending into a green field rimmed with that looked eerily like spruce and pine trees. There's no way it could be, but it looked just like it. Shame the scientists couldn't see this, they'd shit a brick over it. The only thing marring the pristine landscape was a growing stack of crates next to the ship and a small cluster of frames led by Rose. I couldn't leave the ship without my helmet on, so it was disconcerting to see someone out there without one on for a moment.

"How's it going out there anyhow? You think you'll be okay setting that up while we are refueling?"

A soft chuckle through the speakers was my only response as she bent over to lift a box that had to easily weigh hundreds of pounds without effort.

"Yeah, I think I can take care of it mom. Since we'll be out of comm range until the beacons get dropped, I'll have to instruct the other frames manually if anything comes up. Kind of hard to network if there's no local network and all. After we get those set up, we should be good for a while at least. The big challenge is making sure we set the landing guide just right. Don't want to land slightly off level and have me fall over you know. I'm a big girl, it might be a challenge to get up if that happened."

I think my laughter at the last bit just egged her on though.

"Oh, well you could just stay here and watch me screw things instead. You'd like that you dirty bastard."

At least I was in good company.

As twilight fell, a single night guard managed to be in the right place at the right time. The stallion had no idea what he was witnessing in the distance. From the slopes of the Foal Mountains, a brightness spread across the terrain. Golden light throwing everything into harsh shadows as it slowly rose before climbing to the heavens with a keening wail. The glow piercing the clouds and making the sky burn for a moment before fading. All that remained in the distance was strange geometric shapes and a baleful green light where the... thing departed from. It would be a hard two days flight but the Princess needed to be aware of this. Ember Glow knew he'd have to stop at the Hollow Shades garrison for the upcoming day, but if he left early he'd reach Canterlot midway through the next night.

Without even thinking twice, the armored stallion took to the air in the hopes of reaching the village before morning. Something unnatural was happening in the forest and it was his job to protect Equestria.

20. The night in the skies here tonight... <unedited>

20. The night in the skies here tonight...

I trusted Rose to manage the artificial gravity and inertial systems for me through all the fun that was to come. Through the airlock camera, you could clearly see the assembled ponies both talking rapidly at my lovely copilot and gaping in awe. The surface quickly peeled away from the windows as the airspeed indicator steadily climbed well beyond escape velocity before a thought came to mind. It was a simple but amusing one.

A slow pull on the stick changed our climb from the standard rate to near vertical. After a moment or two, my view was full of quickly deepening indigo full of stars, and the other airlock cameras also showed the earth far, far below. Since we were rising practically straight up, and due to the modern miracle of stabilized cameras, no matter how the ship buffeted, the view remained picturesquely serene.

“Just so you know, I hate you. Princess Boann is asking how artificial gravity and inertial systems work. Thankfully she’s kind of just rambling because I can’t think of a polite way to explain that she wouldn’t understand. Jerk. It is a nice view though since we aren’t crashing this time.”

Apparently I’m not allowed to have nice things. At least I would have space under my wings again in a few more minutes. For a suitable accompaniment, I pressed a button on the console and grinned as the sound of drums and guitar filled the cockpit.

“Oh hey Rose? You might want to explain the noise before I start charging the Q drive when we hit orbit.”

Yeah, they might kinda freak out at first. Most ships keep their drives powered in case they need to make an emergency jump, plus they are weirdly less maintenance intensive than turning them off and on all the time. So they only really ever get powered down when in dock or planetside. Plus they sound fucking weird the first few times you hear one. After that, it becomes a comforting thing to not hear the drive’s banshee wail. Every ship is different because of tiny manufacturing differences. General rule of thumb is if you don’t hear the drive howling as it charges and are in space, the core is ready to jump.

As we climb higher and faster, the sky gets darker and darker until there is nothing but stars in the distance and the glowing curvature of the planet below us. Through the cameras I can see the entire pony contingent staring in awe. That’s when an idea crosses my mind. We’re going to make a slight detour.

“So I’m thinking. Other than the claim that Princess Aine was in the moon for a thousand years, which is kinda crazy, I doubt these guys have seen it close up. I’m going to swing us by on the way to deploy the satellites.”

On the display, I could see Rose nod at my statement while explaining the Quantum Drive to the ponies. Hopefully she was far enough into the speech, otherwise it would be an interesting surprise. Reaching over to the power distribution panel, a quick tap was all I needed to start charging the core. It was impossible not to smile as a deep rumble started to fill the cabin. It was too hard not to grin while the ponies fidgeted on camera, as the rumble turned into a warbling howl and quickly into the screams of the damned. Not literally of course.

By the time we had reached high orbit, the noise had faded once the drive core was charged. I’d taken the time to talk to Rose and explain my idea, as well as plot our trajectory. The master plan was to jump to the moon near the twilight zone and give the ponies a hell of a view. Since the troop bay needed to be decompressed anyhow, the cockpit and engineering space would be purged at the same time. Call me crazy, but I think Rose knows what I’m up to.

“Hey everyone, this is your pilot again. I imagine Rose told you already, but don’t be alarmed when I activate the Q drive in a minute. Yeah, it sounds weird and things get a little trippy for a second or two, but it’s perfectly safe.”

Everyone has a mini freakout on their first jump. Everyone. A soft tap on the console pulled up the jumpdrive systems. While navigation points began to appear and scroll across the HUD, the internal lights throughout the Corvus switched to a solid yellow. The automated version of Rose echoed through the passageways with, “Rig ship for jump. Repeat, rig ship for jump.” Thankfully I knew she was already going through all this with our four legged friends in the airlock. After making sure my flight suit was sealed and switched to internal systems, I looked up to see how everyone was doing in the aft of the ship.

“Hey Rose, you ready back there?”

I definitely missed something as she was laughing over the comms.

“Oh god… they thought they’d have to breathe through feed hose on the backup air canister I hooked up, and decide who lives or dies…

Okay. I’m okay now. Silly ponies. And yeah, we’re ready back here. I can’t wait for you to get my engine all revved up.”

Damn pervert AI.

Not giving her the pleasure of a response, I reached forward and triggered the drive. Immediately the automated voice chimed over the intercom with a countdown. At five seconds, a series of bangs echoed through the ship as the lights dimmed. The core was compressing insane energies into a smaller and smaller space. Three seconds the whine started. By two it was a keening wail that filled all the spaces within the Corvus. At two, everything began to blur at the edges a little. One. One was what always fucked with people. The ship stretched to infinity in front of you for just a heartbeat before the canopy filled with streaming light. Six and change seconds later, the colors blinked out to reveal the moon that orbited our temporary new home.

It was only a few minutes of supercruise to near the rocky surface of the moon. Soon enough, there was nothing but radiation scoured rock and craters filling my view. It was still plenty confusing for how Aine supposedly lived in the moon for a thousand years though. Weird. Somehow I doubted they’d have anything to study from her time here, so I wanted to fix that.

“Hey Rose, since we have to depressurize to toss the satellites out, seal the passage from the multi function rooms and quarters please. That way I can still hop out as needed, but we aren’t putting too much effort into it.”

While I was picking out a suitable crater, she cheerily responded.

“You just want to be the first person on the planetoids and moons in this solar system. I see through you, Mister. I’m tempted to write my name in the surface with the plasma cannons before you step foot down there. That way the universe will know about the Great and powerful AI Rose for eternity.”

It is very difficult to facepalm while wearing a sealed helmet. With her laughter in my ears, I nosed the Corvus down towards our destination. Little attention was paid to the metallic thuds of bulkheads sealing, or blue light strobing for three pulses before going solid. The automated voice chimed in with ‘cabin depressurizing’ as the lights turned. Then a thought occurred to me.

“Oh um, did you explain the whole having to turn off artificial gravity thing to our guests?”

Pulling out of the dive, the pitted surface blow screamed by the windows, slowing as the throttle was dialed back little by little. By the time we were over the spot I’d picked, depressurization was complete. Other than Rose’s voice in my helmet and the ship audio feeds, my only friend was the soft hiss of the rebreather in my suit. The heaters were already kicking in as the internal temperature of the ship dropped. It only took a moment to get the Corvus holding at a stable altitude of 10m for my adventure. Arresting any motion with maneuvering thrusters, we were ready.

“And yes, I did explain that the artificial gravity would be turned off. I think. They didn’t really get the concept too well, but with the way Princess Boann is rambling and asking things, the translation program is improving by leaps and bounds. Go ahead and press the button, I know you want to. You can’t help being a turn-off sometimes.”

Sometimes I really want to just… yeah. Stubborn damn AI. After making sure to pull up the airlock camera in a small window of my display, I reached over to flip the cover off a button inset in the bulkhead. Yes, Rose was recording every bit of raw data and hardwriting it to memory, but I still wanted to see this first hand. A gloved finger pressed the switch down for a few seconds until it finally clicked and locked into place.

It took a few seconds for the gravity generator to spin down, and I was ready for it. Unbuckled and floating the moment one standard G had no grasp on me. Yeah, the moon below had some, but not as much gravity as Luna’s. It is very awkward to seriously laugh in low gravity though. Through the feed, I watched one of the guards who was likely complaining based on how he was jumping in the airlock, float to the ceiling on his next attempt. Boann was gaping in what I assumed was awe at our technical trickery, while Aine was laughing hysterically at the guard flopping in midair. Hell, I was laughing too until Rose glared directly into the camera, before reaching up and gently pulling the armored form to the deck.

Well, that's my sign to get the butt in gear.