At the Speed of Light

by Duct Tape Master

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Other, Original Character, Mystery, Science Fiction, Adventure
Length: 4705

centuries in the future Equus is dead, those lucky enough were loaded onto spacecraft to colonize new words, it has been well over 3 millenia, coming up on four. And something aboard the habitats is afoot.

Centuries in the future Equus is dead... The sun a cold husk of what it once was.

Giant cylindrical spacecraft were created to transport the population on a many thousand year voyage to a new home.

Something among the craft is amiss, and nopony knows why.

Tags will be added or changed as needed,
Grammar help are always wjelome. :derpytongue2:

Published 2017-12-11 01:10:06 UTC
Last updated 2017-12-11 01:10:06 UTC

2. Curiosity and the cat

I awoke again... At least today was my 'weekend'

I lumbered myself out of bed and readied myself for the day.

I grabbed the money I saved up and tossed my bags on. Today I was going to go out and hopefully buy something for myself... Maybe.

As I was about to leave I Heard the door buzzer ring.

I opened it to find a small box.

I picked it up and looked it over, it was from Meteor's family.

I used my talon to cut it open and looked inside... On top was a letter.

I picked it up and began to read.

Dear Tau,

Meteor reminded us that it was your birthday today, so for your gracious services we decided to give you a few little somethings,

Thanks for what you do for us,

-Sincerely Moon, ray, and meteor

I folded uo the short note and stuffed it back in the box while I pulled away the wrapping.

Inside were two things that I never expected to be able to own... A military energy blade, and a pistol

Another note sat below the two items.

We decided to get you these because we heard about the incident last month... We wanted you to stay safe, so we looked around the surplus and thrift shops up top... And if anything it may catch you a decent bit of cash should you sell them.
Stay safe now!

I took the items from the package and put the sword on my belt

I looked at the pistol... It was an old model... On the side it read... White dwarf along the side of the receiver in angular lettering across its strange and similarly angular frame.

I'd seen variants of this gun in display cases at high end shops in the high rises.. It was called the Hybrid rail pistol-2213 Sunshot, This one was odd... It looked to have been modified with some kind of extra power cell, a scope and green targeting laser all built into the weapon's frame it looked as if the devices were infecting the gun... Like some strange alien disease, and it's colors weren't the brassy gold, white, and grey of the original... Instead this one had whitereciever and barrel , with a black handle, and white detailing, the "barrel's" color had shifted slight due to the rapid heating and cooling of it during use, with splotches along the two rails of blues and purples.

The thing with these weapons was their ability to never run out of ammo so long as they could collect magic from the space around the, , they only needed to be "Reloaded" to activate the cooldown cycle and keep the weapon from exploding. I wasn't a professional on them, but they could pack a huge punch according to a TV program that addressed them.

I put it in my bag and went out for the day...

The shops on level 6 were referred to as a promanade, but it was really more of a flea market, strip mall thing, not sophisticated at all, but it served its purpose.

The great thing about it was that few surface dwellers knew of it, mainly a side effect of the government being wary to see what went on down here. We ruled ourselves... Our only contact with outside were a few windows and the nightly broadcast of the constellation projectors coming online, i was an exception because I often went up to do my job and occasionally shop around the cheaper stores topside.

Down here was where I did all my usual shopping and self entertainment.

I walked down a few levels and hopped aboard a tram to the market.

A very fast ride later and I was let out onto the platform, I walked a short ways and came out at the market

It was a bustling network of ponies griffons and zebras all walking around the makeshift stalls buying and selling all arond.

I merged with the crowd and made my way around.

I passed a few stalls and eventually settled on buying a few parts to repair the spaceship toy, some homemade candies, and
A knife... It was basically a multi role knife that the police forces topside carried around... But since I couldn't afford proper kitchen implements I had to settle with repurposed tools and homemade stuff, because the community food dispensers produced only the basic ingredients and simple foods... Grain, powdered, or granulated food items, and stuff like vitamin bars... Which were somewhat edible loaves of... Stuff, that provided all the necessary nutrients to survive other than water, that had to be taken from a different dispenser.

Supposedly the topside homes had dispensers inside every unit... Crazy.

I exited the flow of bodies and ended up pretty far from the station... No matter, I could surface and fly home... I had only traveled a few kilometers around the circumference of the cylinder...

As I walked to the stairway up I passed by a dark alleyway leading off to a maintenance tunnel... As I passed it I noticed something... An unusual sound.

"Clickclackclickclackcliackclack.... BZZZZT!"

I quietly walked toward the sound.

As I approached I found the source of the sound...

A strange little robot spider, thing? It was a sort of saucer shaped, brass colored, robot with eight little legs sprouting from its little body, it had two little arms and a single glowing eye? It looked like it was fixing one of the power boxes...

Its eye stalk pointed at me for a brief second before it went back to work... Once it finished whatever its task was... It scuttled, off into the dark alley.

Nopony had ever told me about them... But i guess it made sense considering it would take an army of maintenance workers to keep a habitat like this running smoothly for even a century... Much less three millenia.

Curiosity piqued I decided to mark the location on a map in my mmc.

I returned a few hours later with some more appropriate equipment.

A headlamp, a large prybar, my pistol and energy blade, some food, water, and some old climbing gear originally intended for window washing, and a few other tools and whatnot that I deemed useful enough to bring along.

I walked into the alley and switched the aging lamp on... The tiny crystal in the middle of the mirror on the helmet glowed a warm amber and illuminated the way ahead.

Since everything was recycled I was surprised that the lamp used a natural crystal at all... Usually it would be powered by a recycled unicorn horn wired into a small manufactured quartz crystal instead... That usually indicated that it was made before the horn power revolution of 1107... So my headlamp was over two millenia old... Thank goodness preservation spells exist.

My gun was a mystery... Whatever it used seemed to defy common sense... It would usually be horn powered but it lacked one... But what do i care if it works?

Kept walking until I got to a dead end. An almost featureless wall made of whatever the ship at large was constructed of.

I thought for a few seconds before I decided to see if I could make a spider come out.

I opened the power box and whacked the inside with the pry bar... It was definitely damaged.

I waited by the wall. Soon enough a spider emerged from a small hatch and scuttled off to go fix the box.

The hole wasnt big by any means... But I managed to get inside. Within was a small staging area for the robots... Tools and parts were neatly arranged on the walls, and several broken robots littered the floor... No doubt casualties of the three millenia of service.

Another quick sweep revealed some kind of automated train... It had a rack for maybe fifty of the robots and a spot in the rear for any cargo.

I climbed into the cargo bucket and watched the robot return from outside, it folded up and latched into the rack on the train.

With loud and painfully irritating screeching, the tram began to move.

It picked up speed along the ancient tracks, I held on for my life while it rattled along its tube.

Soon enough it stopped... The robots offloaded and scuttled off into small holes in a nearby wall.

I got off and looked around the dimly lit room...

I shut my lamp off and began to wander.

The room lead to others... Most of them looked like long abandoned maintenance closets.

I opened one and jumped back with a gasp as a skeleton fell out and crumbled across the floor.

Its skull rolled a ways before coming to a stop.

"What happened here?" I asked nopony as I looked around for any indication.

I knew something happened in the deep levels almost a millenium and a half ago... But nopony remembered anything but the simple description that it forced most ponies to stay above level 47...and warned to never venture into the aft section where the engines supposedly resided.

I kinda wanted to figure it out... Honestly the ship was very mysterious... Three millenia of forgetting and degradation hadn't fared well on the public's collective memory...and unfortunately unless it was transcribed, physical and digital data degraded as well, only crystalline storage was sure fire... And those were precious and reserved for only the most important data... Only three crystal discs were ever recorded aboard the ship... And they hadn't been viewed since the ship was launched from the moon all those years ago. Heck the only thing we knew for sure was the name of our little tubular world... We didn't know its destination, nor did we know when... Or if we would ever arrive, and as for the full story of why we left, only a short summary remained... A spell accident caused the sun to die so we left... Thats all we had left.

I kept moving and eventually reached an elevator.

Suprisingly it wanst limited to level 47...it went deeper... All the way to 100...and then some things below all of those only a few letters each... Labeled GRM, SL, and OSE.

I decided to just start where common knowledge stopped... Level 48.

I pressed the button and heard the elevator groan and come to life... It creaked and moaned while its lights flickered eerily and music tried to crawl from wrecked speakers... The long corrupted data and the badly mangled speakers serving to only make static, eerie mumbling, screeches, and groans every so often.

Then it stopped... The lights went dead and I felt the car slow to a stop.

I flicked on my light and looked around... Then I heard a heavy creaking... The deep resonance reminding me of the sound no sentient being in their right mind would want to hear... The cable giving out.

I carefully tried to reach for the emergency exit...every gentle step of my paws serving to make more horrid sounds as strands of the ancient cables gave out after millenia of neglect.

Just as I was about to pull the lever I heard one final deafening "THWACK" I felt the floor fall from under me, and the ceiling bowed inwards from the cable whipping against it.

The car dropped. I was left in freefall within it... Screaming my lungs out as I plummeted down.

I tried to grab for the lever... I kept missing... When I finally did grab it the lever broke off...

I curled up and waited to be smashed into an unidentifiable paste at the bottom.... However far down that was.

Then the gravity suddenly reversed, i felt the car slow and stop briefly before it "fell" back down...

I braced my talons on the roof and paws on the floor while I waited for the car to come to a stop right at equilibrium... In theory anyway.

After a solid two minutes of rocking back and fourth along the elevator shaft it finally stopped.

I grabbed my pistol and fired at the emergency hatch.

The pistol uttered a deep loud buzzing thunk and fired a hole straight through the latch on the hatch, the barrel lit up brighly and little parabolic arcs of plasma jumped across the sides of the barrel.

I punched the door out and climbed out onto the roof of the elevator carI hopped off onto a ladder and climbed up to a nearby door... The door to level 99.

I used my pry bar to 'encourage' the doors to open... In other words I pried and shoved until one of tye doors was mangled beyond repair and the other was broken and shoved out of the way.

I squeezed in and looked around...

As with some of the upper levels... It was impractical and unnecessary to have the entire level dedicated to any thing functional, so a few functional bits like piles and cables were tossed in with a layer dedicated to structural integrity.

I saw something resembling a "building" in the distance... I flicked on my lamp, readied my gun, and made a brisk walk to it.

This place was pretty far from the warmth of the cylindrical sun... So it was decently chilly, the only warmth seemed to come from the ventilation ducts scattered about amongst the magic and electricity cables wound around the support trusses.

I arrived at the door and read the faded old sign above the door.

The only thing left of the sign to read said 'Sto. ge' I assumed it said storage...

With my universal door opener I made my way in and let the lamp illuminate what was around me. It was a small room filled with assorted bits of junk scattered on aging rusted shelving...

I decided to try and calm my nerves a bit... I grabbed a little rolled up bundle of herbs and lit the end with a lighter that wws handed down to me by my father...

Supposedly these were pretty detrimental to ones health... But at the moment I didn't care... It calmed me down, and I had a fair few implants that would probably solve the whole health issue.

Another thing about the underground was the black market for illegal cybernetic implants... They were cheap and easy to have implanted... Up top they were heavily regulated. I had a few installed a few years ago... Mostly internal stuff... Improved heart and the like... The ones that were illegal were the modified regenration and immunity module, and a module called a trauma prevention system... Which was probably the most invasive, It rienforced my bones and my organs and even gave me concussion resistance.. Still not enough to be even remotely invulnerable, but enough to improve survivability in an accident.

I puffed at the little herb roll for awhile before stamping the smoldering end piece out on the ground.

I looked around inside the room...

The junk in the room was mostly scrap by now... Anything remotely organic probably rotted away ages ago, so all that was left was a few old trays and some random pieces mangled metal.

I used the magic manipulator cuff to pick up a tray.

I brought it outside and shot it off into the somewhat limited air above and tried to shoot at it with my pistol.

I missed...

This time with the sights I tossed the scrap and hit it on the edge, sending the chunk of steel spinning off somewhere.

A few more tries and I eventually got the hang of hitting it reliably and accurately enough.

Even though no-one had been down here in centuries it couldn't hurt to practice every once and awhile.

Since I was already this far down I may as well just keep going deeper... I was already committed anyway.

I used the MMD to do a quick scan... Mainly to see if there was any way down besides the now defunct elevator.

Author's Note

The pistol is essentially the sunshot from destiny, just to make it easier to envision what it looks like.

The spacecraft is loosely based on the craft from rendezvous with rama, the livable space is on the inside walls of the cylinder, and everything is held to the walls by artificial gravity of some variety.

1. Life aboard the artemis

The artemis... A massive spacecraft designed to save the population of equestria from a cold death by our dead sun.

After an incident with a spell, the sun began to rapidly die... So several massive spacecraft were built to save as many as we could.

Twelve were made... Each resembling gigantic cylinders, within resided something akin to a city.

I lived aboard the artemis, habitat 9... The craft ruled over by the daughter of princess Luna, Sefkhet.

We enjoyed a pretty well rounded and fair society similar to what equestria may have been all those centuries ago, albeit with some tweaks to make it work better in our society.

I lived in an apartment in one of the lower levels of the city.

I didn't have a job... At least not yet... The colony was built such that it was viable to live without income... Mainly because the bare essentials needed to survive were piped around the ship so it could be freely accessed by anyone aboard.

The population of our ship was composed of Ponies, griffons, and zebras, in roughly equal quantities, as such interbreeding was very common, with a larger and larger population of half and partial breeds cropping up each year,

Personally I was a pony griffon hybrid... Mostly pony, but with some distinctly griffon attributes... Mainly my wings, legs, and diet.

I had a mostly pony phisique, but my body was more sized like a griffoness, and a big one at that... My wings were that of a griffon, as were my legs, taking the shape of talons rather than hooves, and my hind legs lacked hooves, and instead posessed padded paws where they would be... Much to my benefit, this allowed me to be almost impossibly quiet despite my large frame. The fact that my talons and wings were very owl-like (at leat as far as i could find in the books) only helped this fact, especially my wings... I couldn't fly terribly fast, but i could do it very quietly, and letting my coat grow long only helped it more.

My diet and eating habits were Very much griffon in nature...even though I had teeth they were more like that of a pony, and i had to eat meat as part of my diet to sustain myself and my teeth weren't the greatest for doing that, so i was pretty much forced to forcibly tear chunks from my food and swallow them because chewing it wasn't really worth the effort... I actually preferred eating this way... And since I wasn't that fond of hay or grass, that just made my life all the more bearable when I did have to eat it. I had other oddities that i had to get used to but with time they fit in with my life just as well.

I woke up sometime early afternoon and clambered from my bunk.

I walked passed some things my ancestors passed down to me, all arranged on an old metal shelving unit.

I went to the sink, brushed my teeth, grabbed some food from the dispenser on the wall and prepared for the day.

Even though I didn't have any sort of official job, I made money to buy the nonessential things by foalsitting... Usually for my neighbors, Shining star and Moon Ray, watching over their colt Meteor.

I picked up my Magic manipulator cuff and strapped it onto my right foreleg just above my claw... It was pretty basic in terms of functionality, but for heavy lifting or just convinience of the range of simple spells it could use really helped out in my day to day life. I couldn't afford one of the fancy high end, and high power head mounted units... But my bracer worked just fine for me.

I activated its computer function and looked at my appointments today.

As I expected it was meteor's place again, today was Saturday after all, and his parents usually liked to go out for the day.

I put on my trusty old bags and left.

I walked my way over to their place three doors down. And rung the doorbell.

"Its Tauria

"Come in Tau, it's unlocked!"

I pressed the button next to the door and it slid smoothly open with a soft whirring noise.

I walked into the room, Meteor was sitting on the couch playing with a toy spaceship, probably pretending to be like the tv shows he loved.

We shared a love for that kind of thing... Heck I usually brought along an old remote control spaceship i repaired a few years back after finding it in a bargain bin in an antique shop.

As soon as he looked over he jumped up and ran over to greet me.

"Auntie Tau!"

"hows it going buddy?"

"Amazing! We got to see a movie yesterday! It was so cool!"

"Thats nice... So, what d'ya want to do today?"

"didja bring that spaceship?"

"Not today... I have to replace some parts on it, but I could give you a ride around downtown again?"

"YEAH! Can I call up my friend so we can go play fighter pilots again? PLEEEEEASE!"

"Sure, lemme put my stuff down first while you do that."

I watched him excitedly run off into another room while I took off my bags and set them down in the kitchen.

His parents came up to me.

"So same as usual then?" his mom asked

"yup, same rate as always"

"Great, We should be back by tonight."

"Seeya later then"

They both left and Meteor ran back in with a huge smile on his face.

"She said Yes! They'll be there in ten minutes!"

"Get your gear then, Ill get the harness ready"

"Okay!"

I pulled a homemade harness out of my bag and strapped it on... Its main purpose was to keep him from falling off of me, i made it from some old synthetic straps from an old tram. I tested it with far more weight than it would ever need to carry and it held fine, so it had no problem supporting the foal's weight.

He came out with a toy astronaut helmet a little toy laser gun and his own safety harness.

"ya ready?"

"Yes!"

"Okay Hop on!" I knelt down and let him get on, I heard a solid click as he latched his harness to mine via a tough lifeline about 2/3 of a meter long.

I stood up and walked out the door.

Once we were outside on the 'ground level' I spread my wings and gave a powerful flap to get myself airborne, I climbed up until I got to maybe a hundred meters.

I leveled out and let myself silently glide towards the park we always went to... Aka the only park with any reasonable airspace above it.

The ship was built as a giant cylinder built to handle thousands of inhabitants, the dimensions of the inside were mind numbing... 20 kilometers in diameter and 54 in length, with the true outer size of the ship being unknown...lost to time over the several thousand year voyage. The view was stunning. At the ends of the cylinder sat two massive spires approximately 12 kilometers long with six smaller spires half its length and a third the diameter surrounding it.

Sitting between the two spires was the artificial sun a long cylindrical magic reactor that provides power to the ships interals as well as light and heat to the living secton. Flying over the skyline was breathtaking... Seeing the skylines, farms and the massive cylindrical sea between the two halves... More like a channel really. And the sight of cities almost painted on the inside walls of the massive area was breathtaking.

I found the park and slowly decended to the ground where I saw Meteor's friend and her mother.

I glided in and landed in the blue-green grass nearly silent.

The daughter was named snowflake, a unicorn , and the mother named Snowstorm, a Pegasus.

"Hows it going snowy? Ready to get beat again?

" Im thinking that Im gonna break that three time winning streak you've got going."

"You're on"

The game was essentially laser tag... The guns did all of the thinking, it would fire a harmless magic pulse, if it hit the pony wearing the corresponding band then it would count a hit and the band would vibrate while illuminating the hit on the body of the one hit, and it was such a fun game we would get together almost every weekend to play it, even if we didn't have the young ones with us.

We decided that the 'aircraft would be able to take a dozen hits before we had to land back at the park and wait for at least 30 seconds before taking off again, and the 'pilots' would be able to take three before being 'knocked out'

I strapped on my band and meteor did the same, snowflake and Snowstorm donned their gear and we all turned everything on.

"3...2...1...go!" Snowstorm yelled before leaping into the sky and shooting off above."

i spread my frankly pretty huge wings and took off. I was a very strong flier, speed just wasn't my strongest suit because of the drag I produced, but given enough time to accelerate I became more like a flying freight train.

Snow squared took on a very fighter like fignting style... Fast, maneuverable and usually pointing the gun forward, meteor and I adopted a strategy more like a gunship... Slower and less maneuverable, but meteor would be able to swivel all around to aim while I focussed on not getting hit.

Once we were both about a kilometer up the fight really began.

I looked around to see where the others were... I heard meteor start shooting, the plastic gun made audible 'Pew' sounds every time it fired a brightly colored bolt of magic, i heard a few bursts and looked above me.

Team snow was diving at us, shooting a barrage of bright blue bolts while meteor returned fire with a stream of orange.

I dodged left and watched as Snow looped back up for another run.

We danced and swerved around each other, colorful beams of light flashing around like fireworks until one of us was hit... We landed and ascended again, we kept at it for a a solid two hours before we decided to call it quits and go home... The "Sun" began to fade to its night cycle...

We landed and began some idle chat while we all packed up.

"Good game!" i said.

"that was probably one of the best yet... Nice job..."

"Thanks...not too shabby yourself."

"You ever think about becoming a mother? You're great with the foals you sit, so why not take it a step farther?"

"Eh... Not really my top priority... I like taking care of them every so often, but I could never do it full time...just not my cup of tea I suppose... That And I really dont want to deal with being pregnant... Heck... I dont even know whether I lay eggs or give live birth..."

"Well...to each their own, anyway, Ive got to get going, seeya round!"

"Seeya"

After meteor's parents returned home, I headed home, shoved some food in my face and watched the sky core fade to only a soft glow while a holographic image of the stars outside was projected across the sky around it.

I fell asleep a while later after playing some video games and watching TV for a couple hours.

Author's Note

First new story in what feels like eons,

I was inspired by Rendezvous with Rama and the story H'ven Sent.