The Fermi Object

Commander

Commander Firelock was part of the Equestrian Coast Guard. He was actually from a long line of Equestrian military ponies, and looked the part. His jaw was set and held no trace of stubble. His dark grey hair matched his coat and his wings. There was even a rumor that one of his ancestors was the original model for the Royal Guard illusions at the palace.

In short, he was a proud military pony down to the musket and anchor cutie mark on his flank. On the outside, personality-wise, he’d inherited a keen tactical mind, and pressure from his father, who was in the Marines, had pushed him into the coast guard out of a teenage spite.

That isn’t to say he disdained of fighting, he would probably have joined some other branch of the Equestrian military if it weren’t for his father. This lead him into the Maritime Enforcement branch, and thus to Baltimare, where he commanded the ESS Barding, the most advanced steamship in Equestria.

Commander Firelock spent a lot of time at the Baltimare Museum, more time than most ponies, and for a military pony of a certain rank he had a highly advanced interest in astronomy. He had a more or less self-taught bachelor’s in astronomy, and kept a telescope on his ship at all times.

The ponies at the Planetarium there knew him personally, and during his vacation, well, stay-cation, they even let him do talks in the hopes of bringing young minds into the field of astronomy.

The one place that drew him in most often whenever he visited the museum was the Fermi Object. Everypony knew about the Fermi Object. Fifteen years ago it was the most talked-about thing on the planet, and scholars from all over the world flocked to try and unlock its secrets.

Firelock remembered the first time he saw it as a foal, it was a strange thing made of simple steel, and quite frankly boring. At least, until you came around to the side and saw the monsters fossilized into the hull itself, and the Hole. The Hole, where, after floating in space for uncounted years, something had gotten up and left.

“Never thought I'd find you here.” came a voice that echoed around inside the nearly empty museum.

Firelock turned around to see Captain Spitfire approaching him in a businesslike fashion.

“I like to hang around here sometimes.” Firelock tried to reply casually.

“I'd say something like 'you'll go mad staring at something like this.' But from what I've heard you wouldn't go mad if you had to stare at a rock for a week, and it’s been a bit longer than that since you’ve been looking at this.”

“So you've been talking to my crew. What else they been saying about me?”

“Ohh, this and that, they don't know how far away a pegasus can hear things.” Spitfire said in a wishy-washy tone.

“That's something I endeavor to keep them ignorant of.”

“It's nothing you probably haven't heard, something about scrubbing.”

“AH, so you met Dull Blade, he's the pony I can't teach musket discipline to to save his life. He probably knows more about scrubbing floors than he does firing a gun.” Firelock rubbed his chin pensively. “I've actually put in to have him transferred.”

“Well anyways, it’s fortuitous you're here because I was actually going to come get you and bring you here. Wasn't even sure if you knew about this or not.”

Firelock looked back at the object, the sole exhibit in this room, forgetting Spitfire was even there. It consumed his thoughts, shaped his mind.

The unfortunate thing about it is that despite how revolutionary it was to Equestrian thinking about the universe, it was possibly the most useless thing ever discovered from an information standpoint. The aliens fossilized onto the hull had been there so long that any traces of DNA had long been broken down into meaninglessness. The artificial material wasn’t anything special in the slightest, it was just simple steel, plated with ceramics they themselves had developed years ago.

Even the aliens outside of the hull refused to give up any information without a fight, as millennia spent floating through space had done quite a bit to erode at them. Many, many scholars came to study them, and there seemed to be as many theories as there were scholars working on these thoroughly alien species.

In the end only three things ended up undebatable:

1. This object was foreign to the solar system.

2. There had been some sort of cocoon inside the object.

3. Whatever had been in the cocoon had escaped.

It was a sobering thought to Firelock, who remembered looking out at the forests and swamps around Baltimare as a child. The image of how large the cocoon was, the burning fire above the sky, his own shattered window.

Just imagining a creature that could survive that haunted him whenever he cared to remember it.

Firelock awoke from his reverie to find Spitfire awkwardly waving a hoof in front of his face.

“What? Sorry?”

“I was just asking you how much you know about the Fermi Object.”

“As much as anybody I guess...” Then Firelock reflected on that thought. “Well probably a lot more than most people.”

“Good, cause we might have finally tracked down whatever crawled out of this thing.”

Firelock laughed. “What, are we going to track down Bighoof as well? It's been fifteen years now, don't tell me you've been roped into a hoax after all this time.”

Spitfire wordlessly handed him a folder.

“You're kidding me with this, right? We've been seeing variations on this from amateur photographers since I was a foal.” Firelock didn’t even bother opening it up.

“Those were taken by our division no less than two weeks ago.”

That actually caused Firelock to open up the folder and look inside. There were four pictures of a small stumpy creature with blue and red scales centered, and off in the distance the terrain around the creature matched the swamps around Baltimare far too well, matched the fossilized aberrations on the hull.

Firelook looked at the picture, then back up at the Fermi Object. Then he turned to Spitfire, chills running down his spine.

“Why me?” he croaked.

“You're practically a specialist on this subject, you have a strong military background, and you're very close by. We don't expect you to command troops on the ground, but we'd like you in an advisory role here. Also we may have to go into the swamps, and your expertise may be necessary.”

Firelock stared at the picture, which had been undeniably confirmed for him. The obsessive gnawing at the back of his mind since childhood, the fear, the monsters flooded to the forefront of his mind. All of it was real, his fears after all these years were justified. Something that could survive re-entry had crawled out of there and now there were more of them.

“I'll do it.”