When All the Sky Is A Path, When All the Space Is Luxury, Where Then, Is It Truly Free?

My name is unimportant.

The howling wind outside the cockpit highlights the tension of the events around.

Who I am is unimportant.

Explosions ring out in all directions, shaking the ship with each shockwave and peppering the cockpit glass with shrapnel

What matters is where I am, and what I’m doing here.

Alarms ring out as the pilot forces his ship into a nosedive, throwing off his pursuers as he descends into the lowest safe depths of the mile deep stormclouds below.

This land used to be called Equestria… but after years and years of war and pollution, all that is left is the Skyways.

Engines fail as chaff from above descends into the depths of the top 300 feet of the Surface Storm and shreds the air intakes into so much flaming shrapnel.

Welcome to Skyfree. Try not to land.

I suppose it all started a few years ago.

It was a routine flight. Orbit patrol in the Skylar sector.

Everything was quiet. Steady. My patrol ended in five minutes and I was just about to head back to base for a night off and a few beers.

And like everything and everyone cursed with the phrase “May you live in interesting times” …

Well, there’s a reason why I’m stranded far away from home in an unknown star sector in an unknown galaxy in a world that I’m not even sure is in the same Universe as my home.

Just as I activated my turbo jets to swing myself back into a course for base, my controls all went dead, the engines went into hyperdrive, and I, and my beloved Wrathmonger Battle Frigate Vera, was sucked into a rainbow colored portal and swiftly knocked unconscious from the forces.

Unknown Time. Unknown location. Height: 20,000 feet.

Out of the shattered, flaming wreckage of an airship crawled a figure, its limbs chitinous and with three fingers. All around, burning plants and soil marked an impact trail stretching across three quarters of the six hundred foot long Agri-helicarrier.

The pounding feet of hundreds of panicking feet thundered across the deck as they sought shelter below, their screams drowned out by the roar of the engines and the howling winds.

It was to this sound that Kon’jreetar awoke, shaking his head fitfully and shredding the helmet off of his head to allow his compound eyes to see properly through the haze and smoke. Chitinous lids flitted closed over compound eyes, their thin membranes tinting Kon’jreetar’s vision a pleasant yellow as his secondary eyes flitted about in the thermal and ultraviolet spectrums.

As he chittered in distress and pulled himself free of the wreckage, his full body brought itself into view. A praying mantis-like head, topped with two main eyes and six secondary eyes clustered in a hexagon formation between his main eyes. Four backwards sweeping antennae, two long and thin, two short and spiny. His mouthparts were framed by the mandibles of a stag beetle. A long, sinuous neck led from his head to his torso- that, seemingly, of a humanoid torso covered in chitinous plating. Six arms came from his torso, his main pair long, with three elbows and a three fingered hand upon each. His secondary pair smaller, more proportional to a human’s, with six fingers, and finally a vestigial pair, reedy and used only for the most delicate of movements. Below his torso continued on a centipede’s body, long and coiled, with a single pair of legs for each of the hundreds of segments making up the lower half of his body.

As it was currently, his body was battered and burned, his flightsuit shredded and his electronics malfunctioning. Kon’jreetar didn’t even have the strength to pull himself upright, forced to simply lie on his back and stare up at the strange bipedal creature above him.

A few words, indistinct and hazy, but translatable nonetheless filtered through his ear holes as his vision faded into unconscious blackness.

“Twilight, the hell is this… thing….?”

“I don’t know, AJ, but it sure did a number on the fields…”

First Engine Technician Twilight Sparkle sighed worriedly as she waited for the mysterious creature to wake up.

“Any sign’a change?” Primary Agri-Engineer Applejack asked, idly fingering the trio of apples embroidered into her lapel.

Twilight shook her head, causing her magenta streaked indigo hair to fly out of its normally neat and tidy bun. “None. None of our sensors are equipped to deal with this kind of thing. There isn’t even any real indication of a humanoid cardiovascular system a- Wait, what’s that?”

Twilight pointed through the observation window, a bewildered expression on her face as she beheld Kon’jreetar’s body rapidly shifting through a bewitching display of colors, finally stopping on the flat matte black with rust red highlights that he had first been spotted with.

“What’n the-!?” Applejack pressed her face against the glass, green eyes wide in amazement.

“Amazing…” Twilight muttered, scribbling down notes on a clipboard held loosely in the magenta glow of her magic, hands otherwise occupied with a separate set of notes. “Although the subject appears insectoid, it still possesses incredible color changing capabilities most often found in cuttlefish and octopi… And look at all those limbs…. simply fascinating…. I wonder if it has an internal bone stru-” Twilight’s nearly whispered monologue was cut off when Rainbow Dash’s voice echoed out over her communicator, shattering her concentration in the process.

“Hey Twi! Come down to the repair station stat! We found some really cool stuff in that weird buggy dude’s ship!”

“On my way, Dash,” Twilight nodded resolutely and turned to Applejack, “Sorry to leave you hanging, but Rainbow has something for me to look at.

“Okay, this stuff: Absolutely flocking amazing,” Rainbow Dash waved her hands at the wreckage of Kon’jreetar’s ship, still mostly intact even with the forces it suffered through.

“It’s certainly advanced, I’ll admit that,” Twilight mused, “but what exactly makes it so much more amazing than what you have?”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, “One, it’s got tech way beyond our stuff. Two, it’s magitech stuff. Three, have you seen the weapons on this thing? I ain’t no weapons techie, but this stuff? Oh man, it’d blow a hole straight through even our best kinetic shields!”

“Wow… what kind of a civilization must this come from for weapons this powerful…?” Twilight murmured, laying a hand upon the hull, then stepped back with a tiny squeak as it shocked her. “It’s still got online defenses!?”

“Yup. ‘S why we haven’t tried to take it apart to see how it works,” Rainbow nodded, then stretched languidly, her black-with-sky-blue-highlights flight suit catching the light and letting the three toned rainbow lightning bolt on each shoulder sparkle. She rolled her shoulders, then smirked at Twilight, “Anyway, I’m gonna get my midmorning flight in. Check ya later egghead!”

With that, she dashed off, snagging her wing pack as she dove out of the open doors of the docking bay and down into the whirling updrafts of the open atmosphere, bright blue wings of magic unfolding from her pack and carrying her aloft along the winds with a brilliant streak of rainbow light forming in her contrail.

“.... That girl, I swear….” Twilight muttered, fixing the collar of her labcoat and adjusting her tie.

“Um, excuse me… Twilight…? The um… subject… is waking up… just thought I’d let you know….”

Blinking at the timely interruption, Twilight responded with a hasty, “On my way!” and sprinted off, her labcoat flapping behind her as her boots impacted the metal flooring until she disappeared with a flash and a loud popping noise.

Pain… pain and the smell of antiseptics, the kind that carbon based lifeforms use. It itches horribly, and…

Hold on.

I’m naked. Why am I naked. I was wearing a flightsuit.

And why in the seventeen hells of D’ransst is the light so-

“See? Awake. He’s even moving.”

Who the dremarth is that?

… She sounds nice. And pink.

“How can you tell it’s a he?”

Other than my rugged chitin and absolutely stunning chromatophores?

… This one sound purple.

“Oh, well usually the brighter animals tend to be males, and plus I found what looked like male reproductive organs near the joining of the thorax and lower body.”

Oh what the ankranz!?

“You molested me in my sleep!?”

“...”

“...”

“.... I shouldn’t have said that, should I?”

To borrow a phrase from the Earthlings….

Oh fuck all kinds of duck.

“I shouldn’t have said that, should I?”

The strange creature’s voice came as a surprise to both Twilight and Fluttershy. They had expected some sort of harsh, animalistic growling, or even incomprehensible shrieking.

They certainly didn’t expect to hear the rich baritone of James Earl Pones rumbling out of the creature’s mouth, along with a faint overlay of organic clicks and whirs.

“... Fluttershy…?” Twilight asked faintly.

“.... Yes Twilight?” Fluttershy asked, a curious blush on her face.

“... Did you accidentally molest the alien?”

“Eep!” Fluttershy ducked behind her hair and tried not to let her blush set her head on fire.

“.... Can I get out of here now?” Kon’jreetar asked, shifting his lower section so that what passed for a pelvis on a human was hidden from view behind his lowest arms.

“Y-um y-yeah… uh… you aren’t going to hurt anyone, are you?” Twilight questioned, hesitantly reaching for the door to Kon’jreetar’s holding area.

Kon’jreetar shrugged, a strange rippling motion starting at his top arms and ending at his last pair of legs, “I just want my ship.”

“... About that….”

“..... It’s wrecked, isn’t it.”

“.....”

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Three months later….

Explosions ring out as the Ponyville Agri-Flotilla comes under fire by pirates

“Dash, watch your six!”

Among its defenses, two ships are deployed, one of them colored sky blue with rainbow edges, the other matte black with alien script scrawled across its wings.

“On it egghead!”

Each ship came with a different design, a different focus that lended itself tremendously to the battle at hand. Rainbow Dash grinned as she slammed down the throttle of her Sonic Rainboom, the sky blue fighter jet’s engines unfolding and extending, control surfaces flipping outwards as hidden panels and thrusters slid into position and blasted Dash straight to Mach 4 in a streak of light.

As Dash strafed the pirates and cut down the number of their own raiding vessels, she saw Kon’jreetar’s Vera dance nimbly between shots, never taking more than a few splashes of plasma across its shield systems.

“Yeah! Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Rainbow shouted, easily slipping past the pirate vessels around her and coming wing to wing with Kon’jreetar.

“Dash, Interceptors on the starboard side! They’re going for the shuttle bays!”

“On it!”

Rainbow grinned, swinging her ship around and blasting off, laughing against the crush of Gs on her torso and throwing herself into a barrel roll, plasma cannons activating and raking hot, flaming death across the sky above the flotilla.

Chaos reigned amidst the sky as hundreds of deployed ships ran defense against the marauding pirates. Dash herself was locked in aerial combat as she ran down the pack of interceptors looking to haul off the flotilla’s limited food supply.

“Oh no you don’t!” The Rainboom’s twin cannons roared to life as Rainbow entered her signature divebomb run, multicolored bursts of mana-charged plasma impacting and tearing through the pirates’ shields like so much paper, each ship exploding into shrapnel that became magnetically locked to the underside of the nearest helicarrier for later retrieval.

“Thirty four down on my side. Attacking the deployment vessel.”

Kon’jreetar’s pleasant baritone echoed over Rainbow’s radio, prompting her to redouble her assault as even more Interceptors began attacking the other helicarriers and ships of the flotilla.

With Kon’jreetar, the insectoid being cursed in his native tongue as he avoided the energy beams and bullets flying through the air. Though they impacted harmlessly against the shields, each impact drained power and enough shots would take down any shield regardless of strength.

Flipping and twirling through the air, Kon’jreetar commanded his holographic control system with the ease of an experienced conductor, dancing Vera across the skies with utmost grace and precision. Panels whirred and flipped as an extremely disproportionately large amount of guns and missiles folded out under the patrol vessel’s wings, along its body, and even across its bottom surface.

“Burn.”

With that simple command, the Vera unleashed its payload, an endless stream of plasma and missiles raking forth from its frame and scoring lines of explosions across the external surface of the pirates’ blocky main ship. Kon’jreetar forced his ship into a dive, coming up underneath the pirate ship’s anti-grav engines and destroying them with well placed shots that punched through the shields with barely any loss in power.

The ship went down, and with it came the loss of power to the drones and Interceptors that the pirate fleet deployed, sending thousands of tons of metal down into the waiting grip of the flotilla.

The main ship itself sunk through the cloud layers below the flotilla and was instantly shredded apart by the vicious winds of the Surface Storm, causing a massive explosion when the howling wind and debris finally struck its drive core.

“Yeah! We did it!” Rainbow cheered, flying loops around Kon’jreetar’s ship as the two ships headed back for the docking bays with the rest of the fleet defenders.

“Good work everyone. We gained enough raw material to repair the ship with a minimal loss of life and produce.”

“Glad I could help,” Kon’jreetar modestly spoke, settling the Vera down for a landing and scuttling down the boarding ramp.

My name is Kon’jreetar of the Sylphis Clan of Anrastris IV.

I am from another world, another Universe.

My circumstances are simple, but I take them with pride.

My job? Fleet defender of the Ponyville Agri-Flotilla.

This world, once known as Equestria, was destroyed by war and pollution until only the Skyways remained.

It is an aerial wasteland plagued by pirates and storms.

The cloud layer below is three hundred feet of safety before you reach the mile deep surface storms that shred everything to bits.

Above the atmosphere lies the Luxury Space, where every need and want is met.

Welcome to Skyfree.

Stay out of my target lock, and we won’t have a problem.