" That's one hour, so far so good I guess," i said to nobody as I watched the ship's clock, I began the deceleration process and waited for space outside to appear normal. Once the engines had stopped I would have to inspect the core and driver coils to ensure they were in optimal condition. I decided that I would also activate the onboard android once I was done, I unhooked my harness and began my little excursion to the drive section, it sat between the living area and main thrusters, it was rare that I would ever have to go there other than routine maintenance and inspections, once I got to the bulkhead door I donned a protective suit to make sure I wouldn't get killed by magic radiation, I opened the outer door and waited for the cycling sequence, I stepped into the reactor room once the inner door opened, in the center was the massive cylindrical reactor casing surrounded with many tubes and cables that interconnected it to the whole ship. I went to a control panel nearby and started a diagnostic sequence, and began the long and boring job of inspecting the driver coils, each nacell has 12 coils and each coil is very complex and requires much scrutiny to inspect, making the inspection of 36 coils a nightmare, I wa happy that I'd only have to do it once myself, the android could handle it once the initial report was filed.

3 hours later I dragged myself into the decontamination room/airlock to scrub myself of radiation, after the door latched I watched the magic beam wave over me rapidly as it neutralized any harmful substances, I removed the suit once it was done and walked back out of the ship's reactor room, I floated back to the bridge and was about to strap in when I remembered the android, I got back out of my chair and walked to the storage unit for the android. "Alright let's get you working," I pressed the activate button in the wall and watched he door unlock and fold away into the walls and floor. I saw the lifelike automaton's eyes light up a pale blue and heard the boot up noise, then it ran it's test program, all of the limbs actuated a bit and it spoke a test phrase, which was also manufacturer's information.

"Archmagic android model B, Name: Selena, created on the 25th day of the autumn harvest, created by Canterlot magic design."
Even its voice was very lifelike, albeit it did have a slight metallic twinge to it but it was far better than any robot or magic golem I'd ever seen. "Hello Commander Dusk, I am ready to fufill any duties required of me, please state a request," Selena spoke her boot up phrase, after which in could request an one of 4 modes to use, maintain, normal, defend, or system check, maintain was a maintenance protocol in which she would make repairs, defend made her act like a guard, system check made her run a diagnostic on herself, and normal activated her personality and she would act like a relatively normal mare.

"Normal mode," I spoke to the machine and it got up out of its container and walked up to me

"Hello Commander!" she spoke in a happy tone and waved a bit. I got a better look at her, she was well proportioned and her coat was a similar color to that of Luna after she returned from the moon, her hair was a slightly shiny indigo her hair went just past her shoulder blades, had cutie Mark was supposedly an image of the ship and she wore a skin tight jumpsuit, on her back I saw sockets for her wings and on her forehead was a horn, it was longer than that of most unicorns and had little patches of metal and a small antenna sticking off of it. She was pretty well endowed, not so much to make things dificult but enough to make her lifelike, I forgot what she could actually do, but at least I had somepony to talk to.

"Hello Selena, how are you,"

"Running at full efficiency," she said in her odd voice, it had a similar tone to Luna but she didn't use the old style of speaking.

"Good, I'll call you if I need help with something," I didn't really know what to ask her to do so I would just let her do whatever until she had something to do.

"I'll just stay here, I like watching the stars," I found it somewhat eerie that a machine had feelings but it was also pretty cool.

"I need to fill out a quick report then I'm going to warp,"

"Okay, I'll keep an eye on the readouts," her mind was linked with the ship, she could control everything onboard, I was pretty glad she had an emergency off switch.

"30 minutes later I'd finished the report and sent it off. "Alright strap yourself in, I'm activating the drive once it's charged enough which is about uhh now?" all of the displays went dead, only the analog instruments still did anything.

"I'm detecting a malfunction in the main computer core, let me rectify it, done!"

" okay lets get underway then, it also looks like we found this mission's glitch,"
Less than an hour later it happened again, triggering an emergency stop.

"Uhh it happened again, anything you can see that's causing it?"

" I can't detect why, it's just happening, it feels like I'm being probed by something, but I can't tell what,"

"Can you pull up security camera feeds? I want to make sure we don't have a hitchhiker,"

"Here you go," her horn lit up and a flat hologram appeared in front of her face, it had one of the many security cameras open, this one was in the processor room of the main computer.

"Cycle through them....No....no ....no.....no.....no......wait, hold on, what's that?" I pointed to a bluish blob on the screen,"zoom in on it......is it moving?"

" yes it is, very peculiar, I've taken several pictures at various zoom levels, I am also recording video" I looked at the blobby shape on screen, it was attached to the underside of the ship near the scanner array, I ran a sensor pulse, then I saw the object detach and fly away from the ship at alarming speed.

"The fuck was it? Is my question, but I suppose we've answered the question: are we alone, the answer is a resounding no."

"We may never know, but we might be under surveillance, I will work on analysing the data and sending it home,"

"Good idea, I'm gonna go check the hull, little bastard better not have done anything shifty," I walked to the back of the bridge and went down to the bottom of the ship, and entered the vehicle bay. In the bay there was a small planetary shuttle, it looked like a futuristic fighter plane with stubby wings although it only had a tiny magic cannon as defense, there was another shuttle-ish thing, this one was a rover, it's back lower portion would do the flying and the upper part with the cabin was a streamlined and surprisingly fast rover, the utility ship was a bullet shaped ship with a retractable arm and only very small thrusters. I boarded the utility ship and launched it, a magic forcefield was used to ensure the hangar wouldn't depressurize, once the bay doors acordion folded off to the sides I gently eased out the ship and flew along the bottom to the massive sensor bar, I inspected the place where it supposedly was and found nothing, I felt extremely unnerved by this fact. Once I completed checking it several more times and still finding nothing, I went back inside with some minor paranoia.

At around dinner time I made my way to the kitchen and used the food synthesizer to make a veggie sandwich, I also had MRE's but they were for emergencies, Selena was also there, once I'd gotten back in I'd noticed she seemed to stay relatively close by unless I told her to do something, currently she had her forearm removed and she was using magic to maintenance it.

"Hey, Selena, ya think you could answer some questions for me?"

"Yes you may,"

"Can you leave the ship or survive without the main computer?"

"Yes but why do you ask?"

" hypothetical but relevant information, I guess, and I was bored,"

"Can I ask you a question commander?"

" Sure, ask away,"

" why did you sign up for this mission?"

"Wanted to see space, and maybe find aliens, and because I thought it would be fun"

"Thank you, I was never told why you picked this mission."

"You're welcome, I need to go get the ship going again, I want to get to our first destination in a somewhat timely manner.

Author's Note

I know I'm bad at grammar, I'll fix it at some point, and the plot is gonna be slow for the first few chapters.