The White House, Mission Clock at 3:50
Archer

We’ve been on Earth for two hours, having abandoned our armor for more formal attire just before we arrived at the center of power for one of the largest nations on Earth. Apparently the existence of aliens with a grudge against the ‘tau’ri’, another name for these humans, has been a state secret for over twenty years. Every time these aliens threatened Earth in the past they were beaten back, and the populace was none the wiser. But after the Lucian Alliance attack on New York, that secrecy is pointless from the perspective of the leader of this American nation, a man by the name of Landry. So for two hours he had been hosting a marathon press conference with the various leaders from Homeworld Command. Right off the bat he committed to declassifying the program and releasing any information that wasn’t sensitive to the public, but that didn’t make any of these reporters calm down. And through monitoring the human’s so called ‘social media’ it was becoming clear that cynicism and fear was the rule of the day.

Off to the side of the waiting room, Dusk was finishing off his attire. Thanks to General O’Neill, he had gotten his hands on a strapping black suit, and had finally put on the tie as the President stepped aside from the podium to allow O’Neill to speak.

“So what’s the word on the street Archer?” Dusk asked.

I shrugged and handed him the tablet that I had been using. “I gotta hand it to these humans, they sure know how to be negative.”

“Considering they seem to think that all aliens must want to kill them, I can’t blame them…” Dusk said. “Maybe they need to hear some good news for a change.”

As Dusk walked over to the door I got up and followed him. As he opened it to the flashes of cameras and the din of reporters doing their thing, everything stopped for a brief moment before every eye and camera in the audience was turned towards the two of us. “Ah, perfect timing”, O’Neill said from the podium. “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Commander Dusk and Commander Archer of the Equestrian Navy. Considering many of you are in a bit of a shock, I think some friendly faces might be a good change of pace.”

Dusk seemed to take the introduction in stride, and took to the podium almost immediately. “Good afternoon everyone, as the General said, my name is Dusk. Now I’m sure that many of you have some questions, so I’m going to answer a few. But before we get into that, I do have something to say…” As I stepped back and took a place next to the General, Dusk quickly straightened out his tie and seemed to relax. “In the six months since I first arrived here on Earth General O’Neill has proved that we were right to place our trust in humanity. If not for this man and his team, I’d likely be dead. I also know how many of you feel. People across this world are frightened, and rightfully so. In your first public exposure to alien existence you were attacked. But believe me, not every being out in those stars is your enemy. My people came to your aid because you came to help Equis when we needed it most. Humanity has earned the respect and friendship of not only my species, but myself personally… With that in mind, I think I’ve made you all wait long enough. Who has questions?”

At once every hand in the room shot up, and Dusk pointed at one at random. “Commander, what do you know about the Lucian Alliance? Are they going to attack Earth again?”

“I’d say that’s unlikely.” Dusk said. “The Lucian Alliance has a set number of capital ships. Those five Ha’taks that were destroyed can’t be replaced because they simply don’t have the facilities to build more. In fact, their entire stock of starships are from abandoned supply depots after the System Lords fell. They’re probably sitting back going over how stupid their plan was.”

“So they’re not coming back?” The reporter asked.

“They won’t get the chance.” O’Neill called out before he took a place at the podium next to Dusk. “Two of our battlecruisers have spent the last three hours launching retaliatory strikes on any known Lucian Alliance stronghold they can get to. While I don’t yet have final damage assessments, at this point we haven’t suffered any casualties.”

O’Neill stepped back and Dusk slid back to take up the podium. “With that in mind, what other questions do we have?”
“Just why would you help us?” A woman yelled from the back of the room.

Even from behind the stallion, I could see Dusk smile at the question. “You know, I ask myself that every day. A lot of it comes down to how my culture views personal relationships… While I’ve admittedly thought some of the ideas of our leaders to be a bit naive at times, we’ve been raised to cherish any sort of friendship. And in the interest of making sure that our friends would be around to help us if something happens, we sent our only ship to aid you… Believe me, the friendship that your species has shown us is completely worth the effort on our part.”

***

The Oval Office, Ten Minutes Later

“Commander Dusk, I must admit that your little speech has done more than I could’ve hoped.” The President said as he led us into his office. “Given the circumstances I’d expect that there would be riots in the streets by now.”

Dusk nodded and took a seat on one of the couches. “Then I take it that my line of bullshit did something good?”

I took a seat next to the President and saw him nod out of the corner of my eye. “We’ve never met your species before but judging by the reaction from the public, they seem to think that your kind really are humanity’s best friends.”

Dusk simply grabbed a pen and a pad of paper off the table that separated the two couches and started scribbling down something. “If my species exists in this reality, then you’ll find Equis in a star system at these coordinates.” He finished writing and handed the paper to the President. “The best pony to talk to would be Celestia, she’s the mare who runs the country that I call home. If anyone would be willing to forge an alliance with humanity it would be her.”

“Thank you Commander…” The President said, folding the paper and tucking it away into his suit jacket. “In the meantime declassifying the unsensitive aspects of the Stargate program will keep the public distracted for some time, so we’ll at least have a chance to see what we find.”

“With that out of the way, I’ve got a question for Archer.” Dusk said as his gaze turned towards me. “Just how did you find me?”

“Right after Canterlot, Amore managed to reproduce a map of reality that Starswirl the Bearded designed. She did… Something to it and programed it to search for your magical signature. Once she did that, the map pointed at both me and this reality.” I explained. “The memory orb I used… it did more than let me live out a selection of your memories. It overwrote my own natural magic to resemble yours.”

“That’s how Kovac found you when he attacked the Grotto.” Dusk replied.

I nodded. “Well, because you were still alive, reality seemed to start becoming unstable. The best guess that Amore came up with, and I don’t care what she said about her research, is that because there were two ostensibly identical magical signatures inhabiting two distinctly separate locations at a given point in time. Where one pony can’t be in two places at once, reality began to react because of a perceived violation of the laws that govern existence.”

“That mare is something else…” Dusk muttered as he slumped back into the couch cushions. “If that really is the case, why aren’t either of us suffering the effects of entropic cascade failure? We’ve been in incredibly close proximity for hours and neither of us seem to be in excruciating pain. Now maybe the effect is being felt by my counterpart in this universe, assuming he or she even exists, and assuming of course that the effect isn’t delayed by distance at all. So long story short I have to agree with you about Amore’s theory.”

While it was good to know that Dusk at least agreed with me, one question came to mind. “What’s entropic cascade failure?”

Dusk shrugged. “Sam Carter could probably explain it better than I could, considering she explained the theory in one of her reports that I read. But regardless of the holes that you and I are seeing in Amore’s line of thinking we still need to solve the present duplication of my own magical signature… So what’s the plan?”

“Amore brought the memory orb along. From what she can tell it’s holding my magical fingerprint, but neither of us can activate the orb because it’s in some sort of lockout. We need you to unlock it.”

Dusk nodded. “Right, because I created it… I can do that.”

POP!

I turned around and saw that the sound of a teleportation spell wasn’t a hallucination, and that Amore had decided to join us. “Do you know why I need your help with this?” She asked, waving the memory orb around.

Dusk had already gotten up and made his way over to Amore. “Just let me see that…” He said, snatching the marble-colored orb from the Princess. He rolled it over in his hands until he found the thumb-sized notch. He quickly jammed his thumb home, and the orb started pulsing in a light shade of blue. “Archer, catch!”

Dusk lobbed the orb high enough to arc over the couch, and I was able to catch it simply by stretching my right hand out. For a brief moment I felt a tingling in my hand, and the sensation quickly moved down my arm before disappearing. “Uh… Was it supposed to do that?” I asked.

“You mean feel all tingly and whatnot?” Dusk asked in return. “If that’s the case, then yes. Simply put the orb just restored your magical fingerprint to the default… Which in this case is your own natural magic.”

“Then what did you do?” Amore asked.

“All I did was unlock the orb. Once Archer used it the first time it locked out, a safety feature I created it with to ensure that it couldn’t just be passed around should it have been captured.” Dusk explained. “So the good news is that your potential reality-ending problem has been solved.”

“Excellent!” Amore seemingly chirped. “Now, if you’ll excuse us Mr. President, I need to take my friends back to the Endeavor for a more private conversation.”

I didn’t hear the report of the teleportation spell this time, but instead felt the instant acceleration and saw the flash of pink light that precipitated the change of scenery. As I got up from the captain’s chair that Amore kindly dropped me in, Grey’s avatar flashed to life at the helm’s holotank. “Archer, Dusk, welcome aboard! You’ll both be pleased to know that I’ve completed my simulations.”

“What simulations?” Dusk asked.

Grey’s avatar was replaced by a chart similar to the one he had shown a few hours ago. “Based off of my simulations using the data generated by our transit through the void, I can conclude with an eighty percent certainty that our drive will not survive another trip through the void itself. Simply put, it appears that the rapid heating that the drive experienced during our first transit has significantly reduced the projected point of failure unless the core is realigned in a shipyard.”

“And just what is that supposed to mean?” Dusk retorted.

“It means we will have to jump from universe to universe to reach our home”, the AI answered. “There’s also another consideration… The appearance of an identical Endeavor from a portal as we were departing. With that in mind I can only assume that we need to re enter our reality at that exact point in time.”

“That in itself is a problem”, Amore said, injecting herself into the conversation. “We don’t have a fine enough control of the modified slipspace drive to make sure that we can do just that.”

“So as we work our way home, we try to find out how to do just that”, Dusk retorted. “It’s a simple solution Amore… But I get the feeling that there’s more to this than just that issue. For instance, where’s the crew?”

Amore shook her head and sat down on the armrest of the captain’s chair. “Well Dusk… There’s a bit of a story to tell there.”

***

HMS Endeavor, Mission Clock at 16:50
Dusk

All night I had one question that kept coursing through my mind… Who or what had attacked Canterlot, and how did Celestia know that something was coming? As I finished a series of laps around the main hangar I managed to finally push a reasonable conclusion to the forefront; I don’t have enough information to go off of. Simply expecting to come up with an answer is out of the question at the moment.

“Dusk, where are you?” Amore’s voice rang out over the PA system.

I walked over to a panel on the wall and hit the button blinking ‘respond’. “I’m in the hangar, what’s up?”

“I’ve got a communique from the Destiny coming through. Colonel Young is looking for you.”

For a moment I mulled over the point that Amore had made before making up my mind. “Put it through to me down here.”

The panel made a clicking noise before a brief burst of static erupted. “Dusk, this is Colonel Young… We’ve got a problem that we could use a hand with.”

“Well we’ve got some time, what do you need?” I asked.

“About two hours ago one of the people under my command disappeared, we’ve got a missing shuttle and our sensors have been disabled.”

“Give me a second Colonel…” I pressed a yellow blinking button on the panel and Amore’s face appeared on the screen. “Amore, are we picking anything up on our sensors? We’re looking for a small shuttle.”

“Just a moment... Yes, we’ve got a contact about 260 kilometers away heading straight for the system’s star.”, Amore replied.

I pressed both the yellow button and the blinking ‘ready’ key, linking the Colonel into the ship’s PA. “Colonel, we’ve found your shuttle. It’s heading for the star at the heart of the system.”

“Shit… We won’t be able to catch that shuttle, at least not anytime soon. Any chance your ship can reach that shuttle?”

“Damn right we can… Amore, plot a microjump, get us in front of that shuttle.” I ordered. “We’ll catch your shuttle Colonel, Dusk out.”

Author's Note

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