PSO Book 3: Universes Unknown

Chapters

Space and Time
Alternate Equestria?
Spacesuit
Helicarrier
Eeloo
-03-
A Slice of Life
Biological Warfare
Pentagon Space Research Labs
Interlude: A Chat

Space and Time

Space, time, space time.

Pandora.

I'm done with being on Pandora, I'm leaving in 10 seconds. I checked the controls and instruments one last time, just before takeoff. I fired up the engine, ready to leave Pandora for good. The plane took off easily, but it was at that point I realised that something was wrong. The xenon levels were not very high.

I didn't know why they were not that high, maybe it was really that low or there was a hole that was punctured in it. If there was a hole in it, that would be bad. I had no time to check, I was in flight, and I was climbing up the atmosphere. I would I guess check it when I was in orbit, which would take a little time to get into, not long though.

I used my normal ascent profile, coasting along as close to the surface as possible until reaching mach 2, which I would activate the ramjet. When I was climbing, and I got to mach 4, I would switch the ramjet to a scramjet. A scramjet was a type of ramjet, only it did supersonic combustion instead of subsonic combustion, meaning that I could go faster, way faster.

The plane climbed out of the atmosphere pretty slowly, I wanted to maximize horizontal speed and use the closed cycle of the RAPIER engine at a minimum. The speed reached mach 6 near the edge of the atmosphere, and I wasn't accelerating anymore, so I pitched the nose up slowly. One very good thing about Pandora was that, even though the planet had a lower atmosphere, had denser air near the top of it.

I did the circularisation using the closed cycle RAPIER engine, only using barely any delta-V because of my shockingly horizontal ascent. I guess that was pretty efficient though, leaving about 10 units of oxidizer and about 50 units of liquid fuel. For Equestria, that used up all the oxidizer and it remained me with about 30 units of liquid fuel, guess maybe that was my ascent profile really.

Now that I was in orbit, a very low orbit, I can go and investigate the xenon tanks. I put on my helmet and went outside. Fun fact, the oxygen tank is modular and it can be attached to my flight suit anytime I want. I opened up the airlock and went outside. I used the jetpack, flying myself over to the xenon tanks.

I looked at it, examining it carefully. The tanks weren't ruptured or anything, and there weren't any leaks, maybe it was just a false reading. There had to be another explanation, there was no other way that the xenon levels decreased. Maybe it was that 2 trillion years, well I would never know. One good thing is that the Galaxy Scouter had plenty of delta-V remaining, about 300000m/s to be exact, or not exact, as that was an approximation. I was too lazy to do the equation.

I crawled back into my seat, realising something. One of the screens said that a strange thing appeared near Polyphemus, and it was detected, but not seen. It was emitting some strange radio waves, which couldn't be translated by my radio wave receiver, it was strange.

What better thing than to go to that mysterious place. What could it be? A piece of rock floating in space, a magical anomaly, or even cooler, a space-time rift. I can't say that it wouldn't be interesting, I mean, the sensor detected it, but it didn't know what it is or even take a photo of it. The thing was just invisible. The sensor did know where it was though, strange to think of it when it was invisible or something like that, but that was technology, obviously, at its finest.

I burnt my way there, spending only about 2000m/s delta-V in one go, and the transfer would take about 3 days. 3 days, not bad, but boring. There was nothing to do, so waiting would the most logical thing, or maybe playing games on that screen I had, but nope, nothing to do, no ponies to talk to, nothing.

Waiting for 3 days is hard, especially being in isolation, though I had food to accompany me, better than nothing. The food is all the things I gathered from Pandora. The food was in another service bay, yes, there was another one, which contained the instruments and all the food. The food in it should last more than a month, but most of the time in the Scouter would be in cryogenic stasis.

I didn't want to go into stasis, it was only 3 days, should be easy, right? Ok, maybe not, the voices ringing in my head bothered me, and I could barely take it after that 3 days. Right before arrival, I shook all of the random thoughts out of my head, getting extremely excited to see what was there. All I could see was nothing, could it be gone? Was this just nothing? Were the sensors and whatnot faulty? I had absolutely no idea.

I checked the sensors again, bingo, it was a space-time rift. Wait, a space-time rift, what could that do? I certainly don't know what a space-time rift would do, well, nopony knows, but I guess I'm going to find out, right? I mean, there was no other way to know than to go into one, right? That's literally the only way to know, there was no other way, and I mean it.

I got more and more excited when the rift started to get closer and closer, later being able to see into it. There was just complete darkness, a bit strange, but it was a space-time rift, and it was only in science fiction books. I can't believe I would be going into one in real life. The only thing about it was that it didn't match up with the ones in the books, but that was all fiction, this was sci-fact.

I was drifting closer and closer until I coasted into it. I felt something strange, and everything instantly disappeared. I was alone, not even in my SSTO. I was all by myself, not even in my flight suit. It felt like a dream, a lucid dream. This didn't seem right, how was this possible, I wasn't sleeping, did I black out? I couldn't have blacked out, I would be able to feel that, this was instant. I think that is what happens in a space-time rift, strange to say the least.

Even though I think that was how being in a space-time rift felt like, I still had the thought that it was a dream. I had to check, I mean, what if this was a dream? What if this was all just a stupid dream? Was this real? I just had to answer the question, so I thought of a plan to see if I was really in a dream and wasn't experiencing reality. The plan I devised was to bite myself on the hoof. I mean, I didn't have my flight suit on, and I guess I can sorta feel things.

'Ahh fuck!' I swore as I bit my hoof, 'Should've done that.'

I guess I wasn't in a dream after all, my hoof hurting like the time that a timberwolf bit me. That was another story, and that happened while I was a filly and got lost in the Everfree forest, but hey, I forgot I had wings back then, stupid me. The place was just an abyss, nothing, nothing at all.

Suddenly, I thought of something, something that posed a lot of questions for me. Firstly, there was no air pressure, and I was not breathing, how was I surviving? And secondly, I could see myself, but there was no light source, the place was just a huge void, so how am I supposed to see myself?

All I could think of is that those questions had one simple answer and a complicated answer. The simple answer was that this place doesn't obey the laws of anything, and had its own reality. The complicated answer is that this place doesn't obey the laws of anything, such as the laws of physics. The place here could have different laws of physics, and lighting properties. The reality here might not be even real, and could be physical matter torn down, and I'm only my mind, with no physical body, but I could feel myself and even touch it.

Well, that was pretty complicated, I have yet to give an answer to this. I returned to reality in about 4 seconds later, passing through that rift. Strangely, I had another theory, it was a wormhole. Wormholes would never do that, it would be instant, and it would most likely make me die in the process. At least now I was in my SSTO and was wearing my flight suit. I guess that wasn't reality, this was.

I kept thinking about that experience. It couldn't be a wormhole. That could be possible because of the laws of physics and general relativity, but it would have stability issues and other problems like that which would make it theoretically impossible to exist like the rift I passed through. Only problems about wormholes are that they would contain a shit load of radiation because of the highly condensed matter and that the theorised exotic matter would not exist in such large quantities because of its high negative charge.

For the time being, I was coasting through space, not even looking outside. Strange thing I wasn't looking outside, I always do that, but I think I was too into thinking and theorising. I thought I would take a break, I mean, I guess I needed it. I turned on the screen in front of me, looking outside via the cameras, I was not bothered to actually look outside.

The outside was back to normal, with the stars and whatnot. For what I could say about the stars, it was just like what I saw from Equestria, though the Pandoran night sky looked pretty similar because of the short distance between the stars. I looked around and saw a star, but I was very close to it, and I saw a little planet, taken from one of the cameras with very high detail.

All I could say about the picture was that I just had to go there, and strange thing was that I was just hurtling towards it.

Alternate Equestria?

Author's Note

This chapter is when the two stories merge.
And also I realised that I was spelling Flame Rider wrong the whole time.

Alternate Equestria?

Equestria? Equestria.

I guess I didn't have to do any burning to get to the planet or get captured into an orbit around it with a retrograde burn at the periapsis of the hyperbolic trajectory to the planet. I was on a collision course. From what the instruments detected, the planet was pretty far away, and I would collide in about 4 hours. The instruments didn't say what speed I would be hurtling towards it at.

I pulled out a calculator, which was stashed away in the storage bay, which was that repurposed service bay.I smashed in some numbers and symbols, and there it was, the speed I was going to be at when I enter the atmosphere, which I used Equestria's Karman line for the sake of simplicity. All I can say is that the entry speed was going to be fast, 8000m/s atmospheric entry speed. I was dead.

I might as well do a fully powered injection burn, but all the fuel was mysteriously gone. I don't know why, but it could be that rift. I'm dead. Even though I was going to be dead, there was still a chance I might survive, just saying, spinning my craft around like crazy to evenly distribute the heat. Either that or I'm dead.

I waited, getting more and more nervous. I entered the planet's gravitational well or its sphere of influence, and it was 1 hour until going into the atmosphere. I got more and more nervous as I approached it, hoping I wouldn't die. I couldn't take it anymore, so I started to spin my SSTO like crazy. I had to make the craft spin as fast as I could, so I started to spin it about 30 minutes before atmospheric entry. Reaction wheels were very useful indeed, especially for this case.

From all that spinning, it made the craft spin at a very helpful rate of 3000rpm. Ahh yes, 50 rotations per second, that made me dizzy, like really dizzy. I felt like vomit would explode in my stomach, but at least it didn't explode, it was still in there, my stomach churning. I entered the atmosphere, spinning at that insane speed.

The heat was distributed very evenly across the whole ship. The upper parts of the atmosphere being no problems. The atmosphere not even doing anything to the spacecraft. The only problems when I entered the thicker parts of the atmosphere. The spacecraft was going to melt, absolutely perfect, and yes, I'm being sarcastic here. Hey, at least I'm losing speed fast, right?

Even though that was a good thing, it was also bad, like really bad. Good thing was that I had a higher chance of surviving, the bad thing was spinning with extremely high G-forces acting on you literally making you feel suicidal. At least I got down to mach 3 from mach 24 or something like that in like a few seconds. Do NOT ask me how that felt, all I can say is that I didn't like it.

Miraculously, the little SSTO's instruments and sensors and don't forget, cameras, all survived. Yes, it survived all that shock heating and all that ridiculous spinning. And hey, I survived too, that's two thumbs, uh, hooves up from me. There was nowhere to land though, and even though the glide ratio of the Galaxy Scouter was unusually high for what it was, it wasn't enough to glide to the closest real land mass, which sucks.

'Fucking need to land somewhere,' I thought to myself, snacking on some berries at the same time. I had to eat right? I mean, I haven't eaten anything in a while now, so I had to eat something, 99% so I can survive and that remaining 1% because I wanted to, that relieved some stress you know.

There was an iceberg that had a flat that I spotted with the help of the camera. Perfect landing spot, though a little short and I could drop into the water or I could smash into the glacier. I mean, ice is slippery, I don't think the wheels would have enough friction control to slow it down in time. I don't want to smash into the glacier and especially not fall into that freezing water as a result, but that wasn't very likely to happen, right?

Thank goodness I had enough speed and glide ratio to get to the glacier at landing speed, which was about 50m/s when empty. I took a steep approach, which was more for reckless flying training than functionality. And no, I am not a reckless flyer, I mean, how am I one? I fly everything with care and I never do stunts with them, other than that time I flew a cargo plane with cargo in it fitted with ramjets and did barrel rolls with it at mach 3. That was not reckless flying, that was me flying very carefully trying to keep the cargo intact.

The landing couldn't have gone any better, ok, maybe I'm just being sarcastic, it was absolute dogshit. I crashed into the glacier instead of actually landing on the flat part. I blame the plane for having bad maneuverability, not my very careful piloting and great piloting skill. Ok, I'm being sarcastic again, but whatever, I got a bit, unconscious would the word I would describe it as.

I blacked out pretty quickly. Can't believe I blacked out because of a measly crash, what about that ridiculous reentry that happened a few minutes ago, I mean, that was more extreme than this, like a load more extreme. I then woke up again in like 3 minutes. Not bad eigh?

Next few events shocked me. To explain this is short words, this was an alternate universe. To explain this in long words, Starry Night was here, opening up the spaceplane door while I was snacking a bit. 'Holy shit,' she cried out loud, startled when she saw me, 'Is that you Planetshine?'

'Mhmm,' I thought to myself. 'Starry Night?' I asked, my mind trying to perceive what was going on. I burst out my calculator, which was now burnt from the damn reentry. Now it was useless. 'But I thought you were dead,' I complained, trying to fix up my burnt calculator, like seriously, why was I doing that, I'm not even that good at maths anyway.

'Well it's been 3000 years,' Starry replied, a bit confused.

'I mean I saw you die.'

'How?'

'Well you, Lyra, Sandbar, Derpy, and Flame Rider were killed in the war with the humans when your helicopter crashed.'

I couldn't remember very well about the events of the war. I'm not exactly sure if they hijacked only one helicopter or more than one. I don't have the best memory, but it was good enough to remember rocket equations and whatnot.

'Oh well, I went into cryogenic stasis for three thousand years and you guys all died,' Starry argued, 'Even the princesses are dead.'

This made me certain that this was an alternate universe, I mean, how is this possible unless this is in an alternate universe? Alternate universes were the closest thing to this situation, maybe the only answer. 'Wait a sec, two different stories with the same ponies?' I asked, but I already had the answer.

'Alternate universes!' we shouted in unison with joy. I was still smashing my calculator, not trying to fix it but more like destroying it. I don't think I need that anymore, there had to be more calculators somewhere.

'What happened to you and why are you rainbow?' Starry asked, having no time to examine me thoroughly.

The ice felt like it was going to crack, maybe due to my shocking attempt at a reckless landing. Then, a large metal floating base, more like a huge boat, pulled up near the iceberg. I wasn't cold at all, flight suit for the win. Starry looked like she was cold in some ways, but she didn't show any real signs of being cold at all. I guess she was used to the coldness anyway.

I then saw Flame Rider, waving at us from an iceberg that had a crane and a hanger on it. She was in the cockpit. It looked like a spaceplane cockpit though. That was something that I didn't entirely understand, why is that a spaceplane cockpit. And I'm saying spaceplane cockpit because if it looked like one, then it is one.

Starry flew up and stepped onto the deck, ice, but I'll call it a deck, slowly but steadily. I was the next one, and I also slowly got on. It was strange to step on such a large iceberg. The ones I've seen back at my universe were a lot smaller, I guess that's just a different universe. What can I say, different universes are different.

I took off part of my flight suit off, and it was cold, so I put it on again. Kinda strange how the other two can survive like that. I can definitely say it was something called adaptations which I learned from science class when I was in school. I mean, Starry had been in a cryo chamber for more than 3000 years, how is she not used to the cold temperatures. Flame Rider I guess is just Flame Rider, she doesn't care.

The glacier eventually melted, giving way for a robotic arm that grabbed the tiny spaceplane. The metal arm dropping the SSTO gently into the hanger for material salvaging and research and development I guess. There was not real other explanation why they would do that, the Galaxy Scouter was dead anyways from that crash, so I guess that was why they would salvage it.

Flame Rider came up to us, and I noticed something. Her left wing was cut, but that was mechanical, so it wasn't as bad as something like real wings, which I guess can be replaced with the mechanical wings anytime. She also got a broken, or at least that's I could say. Her walking didn't seem right, and what could be the best explanation for walking strangely? Not a fucked up brain, but a broken hoof. I mean, that was I guess paralysed, which made me feel sorry for her.

Spacesuit

I peered into a blueprint that Starry kept on her desk after the little chat, which was more of a storytelling session. I told them my story, a little more complicated. I mean, I'm not from this universe and I just had to tell them about the rift I spent some time in and traveled through. I mean, what can I say, I had to.

'Hey Planetshine,' Starry Night called out, 'You wanna go and sue EASA?'

'No,' I replied instantly.

'Why, We can get some money.'

'No.'

'Please...'

'No'

'Pleeeeeaaaaasssseeee...'

'Ok, seriously, are you just into money, nothing else?'

'No, I need the money to do something called building the Galaxy Diver.'

'Whatever, what's the plan?'

'Say EASA put you on a suicide mission in space, really, that happened, and I'll do the Flame Rider thing. She re-entered in a faulty reentry pod.'

'Alright?'

We went to the nearest court and filed a lawsuit. Easy, not hard, the EASA administrations lost to us. I'm not telling everything that went on, that would take forever. So in simple terms, the court looked through the records on the computers and all that, and we won the lawsuit. That was really it, simple. Only obstacle was going there. Windigos, that was the problem. Starry Night had a taser, so no problems there. This Equestria is kinda messed up.

The records of me at this place said that I was employed by EASA, and I was sent on a space mission which was basically a suicide mission. The software that controlled the rocket was purposely coded to kill the pilot. I don't know why, but at least we got a few million dollars from that, yes, this place uses dollars, not bits.

Now we just flew home, Starry's home that is, I don't have one here. She said that I should call it home, so I'm just going to call it that instead of calling it her house that is situated on a damn iceberg. Flying home took a while. We had to locate it, which meant going around the place looking around, trying to find where the hell it was. Seriously, it wasn't easy, it was hard to do.

After a while of flying back home, we finally arrived, Flame Rider greeting us. It was Starry's home, and my home for the time being. If I didn't live there then where would I live, on the streets? No way I'm doing that, what would the others think of me. After all, I'm from another universe, though the judges didn't know that. I guess I'm the exact same as this universe's Planetshine, just 2 trillion years older.

Starry had all the money transferred into her bank account, meaning that she didn't have to carry it. Great for the two of us because how heavy would that money weigh? All I can say is a lot, and I don't like carrying stuff, so that was convenient. All Starry had to carry was a bank card, very convenient indeed.

'Planetshine, I'm just asking but, can you take your flight suit off, I'm going to make a new spacesuit,' Starry asked me.

'Ok? Just don't do random things to it that might destroy it. I modified it back then when I was back in Equestria in my universe. Took me a long time to do mod it,' I replied, having a little sensation that Starry might break it.

'Ok, I'm only studying it, I'm not doing anything else to it.'

'I guess, promise that you won't break it?'

'I won't.'

We went into the interior of our home, into the living room. I have yet to see the inside of the place properly. I mean, its got a lot of technology and some smart looking stuff. I rolled onto my back and used my hooves to unzip it. I'm not a unicorn, unzipping things physically was harder than using magic to unzip things. After I unzipped it, I nudged my way out of the suit, later handing it to Starry Night all in one piece, just without the helmet.

When I was taking off my spacesuit, I realised something, not something strange but something different. I looked down, down at my hooves. They weren't rainbow coloured anymore, they were back normal again. My wings and ass also didn't have a subtle pink tint on it. Now I just needed to know if my eyes and ears were coloured. My mane still was.

I dashed all around the place, trying hard to find a mirror. I looked around, locating the bathroom. Slowly, but steadily, I trotted there, looking at the mirror. My ears were not pinkish anymore but my eyes were still different colours. I didn't mind that at all. It looked pretty unique and it definitely didn't impact me in any way. I checked my tail, still the same colours. Guess it was that space-time rift. That could be the reason I lost all that colour, except for my mane.

Next few hours were just boring, nothing fun at all. Nothing to do, nothing, until Flame Rider approached me. 'Planetshine, done creating the 3D models for the spacesuits, also starting to make them,' she told me.

Excited, I had to see. 'Ooh, what's it like?' I eagerly asked.

'Come with me, you'll see.'

'Mkay, lead the way Flame Rider.'

She led me to where the spacesuits were. 'Here,' she said, proud of the creations. How do I know that she was proud? Well, it's very obvious because the tone of her voice seemed like she was very proud.

'Starry did some research and development and came up with nanofiber technology for spacesuits,' Flame Rider added.

'Say that again?' I asked, taking in only a tiny bit of information.

'Nanofiber technology, it can protect you from virtually anything and its when you wear it, you can't feel anything,' Starry replied, walking up to us.

'Ok, I get it, nanofiber tech, ok,' I said, a bit confused, but at least I took all that in. 'Anyways, where's my flight suit? The one I gave you, the outside is cold ok, I need it.'

'Still using it for modeling and perfecting. I've created a 3D model of it but it's not perfect, we'll be done tomorrow,' Starry added.

'Mkay, mkay, I'm just going to explore this place, also, like the new mane style?' I replied.

'Yes, yes, looks great.'

I trotted out of the room, going into the living room, curious about the inventions. One of them was an original pair of mech wings. Looked great but I don't want a pair of them. I like myself to be a complete pony, no artificial parts or implanted technology in me.

I explored the interior of the place, seconds turning into minutes and into hours. I stopped after about 2 hours of exploring, the place was large, huge. How could a place that seemed a bit small be so large? The reality of this baffled me a bit. It's like how small something like a house seems from the exterior, but the interior is just bigger than the exterior would make you feel.

'Planetshine,' Starry Night called out. 'There are only two bedrooms in this place, so you and Flamerider have to share the guest bed.'

'Night already?' I asked it didn't seem like night time, was time actually flowing that fast?

'Yes, its 8 pm already,' Flamerider answered.

'Ok, Flamerider can take the bed, I'm sleeping on the couch,' I replied. I actually prefer sleeping on a couch. That's what I sometimes do back in my universe, at my home back there. That was because I was too lazy to walk into my bedroom, later ditching the bed for a couch.

'Also, we finished the spacesuits, and we have created them, they'll be ready tomorrow if they pass the tests,' Starry said.

'Mkay,' I replied. 'I need mine.'

The night passed in quite a short time, the sun rising in a matter of hours. Starry and Flamerider were the first ones the wake up, I woke up later, quite a lot later. I was fast asleep, very fast asleep. I'm a lazy pony sometimes, a very lazy one.

Sunlight shined through the window, shining into my eyes. My body was sore, my spine cracked as I stretched all the way out. Something wasn't right. I felt something on, I wasn't sleeping with anything on and if I wasn't sleeping with anything else then I can't be having something on now.

I looked at my hooves, realising something. I was wearing a flight suit or spacesuit. It was a lot like mine, just with a different colour, blue instead of my old orange. I can't say I liked it, but it looked better than the orange one, a lot better. The orange one, even though easy to see, looked ugly. Blue ones contrasted the colour of my coat, looks great. I also felt more comfortable, it's like wearing nothing but I could still feel like wearing something. It's honestly hard to explain.

Starry approached me, walking up a small flight of stairs. 'Planetshine,' she called out. 'Like the newly modified spacesuit, I've made for you?'

'Flight suit, but I guess its a space suit, also love it. What material did you use for the inside, it feels, different,' I replied.

'Cotton microfiber.'

It used to be spandex and cotton, that hybrid feels so good, so much better than the spandex cotton.

'Yeah, mine is made of carbon nanofiber, flexible but stronger than titanium.'

'What?'

'Comfortable as fuck, 0.001mm thick, a positive discharge mechanism to make the wearer invisible and send out shock waves.'

I was silent, mine wasn't like that, but I didn't want it to, I want mine to be like mine. That was the nature of me, I liked the flight suit I had already. 'Where's Flame Rider,' I asked out of curiosity.

'Outside somewhere, she's going to be back soon,' she answered

'K.'

'Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, but I'm buying a helicarrier from the money we got from the lawsuit.'

Author's Note

I know the book's name suggests something like space travel or something like that, but don't judge a book by its cover. This book is more than just space travel you know.

Helicarrier

Time.

Time has passed, days turning into weeks, I got to know the place and was able to travel around Equestria, but that was boring. Starry and I encountered some windigos and the place wasn't very interesting. The place was the absolute same as back at my universe. Seriously, the same, only with higher technology.

While we were going around Equestria, Starry happened to buy a helicarrier. I guess she was true to her saying, but I thought that was too much. It literally cost 10 million, most of our money we gained from the lawsuit. I only bought a phone and a pair of earphones. Psst, I needed earphones, I need to listen to music sometimes.

The helicarrier arrived after a while of shipping, a while because Starry ordered it with free shipping, 14 days later than paid shipping, but saved a big buck. The helicarrier was absolutely beautiful, having a hull made completely out of ultralight and extremely strong carbon fiber, helicopter blades, and it was huge.

I can't believe how they managed to ship such a large helicarrier to us, just seemed unreal. Even thinking about building one of these would take forever, but this is 3000 years into the future, so something like this has to exist. Starry, Flame Rider and I moved into the majestic helicarrier.

Entering into the interior of the sexy ass helicarrier revealed a totally furnished inside, decked out with luxurious beds, technology, and most importantly, a couch. I was excited, so I flew around the place, dashing from one place to another to see the beauty that is the helicarrier. How could this thing be so cheap? A boat this big should've cost billions of money. I guess the world works in many strange ways that can't be explained.

Settling in this work of precision engineering, we carried over most of the things in the old, rusty boat. The paintings, blueprints, equipment, everything had to be moved, excluding furniture and whatnot. That took until night, sucks, right? That is why settling into a new home is always a hard thing. Now you can see how hard it was for me to move into my new home in Ponyville a while back when I was back in my universe.

'Planetshine, Flame Rider, look at this!' Starry yelled at us.

'What?' Flame Rider and I yelled back in unison.

'Come!'

'Mkay,' the two of us shouted.

We both ran over to Starry Night, later showing us something absolutely shocking.

'Here it is, the crystal heart,' she said.

'Wait, what? You have the crystal heart? How the absolute fuck did you get it? Wait, is that half of it?' I complained.

'Yes, yes, I got it some time ago. This should be able to power the helicarrier indefinitely,' Starry replied confidently.

'What?' Flame Rider asked, looking strangely at the heart.

'So in the engine room, there is a place I can put this heart, and that should power the helicarrier. Let me do it right now, be back later,' Starry explained.

Starry Night went off, down some stairs. I went off to do my own thing while Flame Rider also did her own thing. I mean, I could practice my magic, still having my necklace with the pearl shard. Trotting into the living room, I cupped my hooves around my necklace, wishing to be an alicorn. Alicorn, not unicorn you might ask eigh? Well, I have my flight suit on and if I didn't have wings on, the wing compartments will just sag down, not good.

I guess I could now practice my magic. I already mastered the levitation spell so that was good. Now I needed to learn some other useful spells, shield, teleportation, all the spells. I levitated out my phone, love the levitation spell, and I typed into the web browser unicorn spells.

The search results came up with an ebook about magic for dummies. I tapped on it, well not exactly tapped, I tapped it using magic. That was all part of a levitation spell, now I needed to learn some other spells. One of them was an attacking spell, useful for defense and offense.

Reading over the spell was easy, performing it was hard. Even though I could easily do a levitation spell, I had problems focusing my magic, but in the end, I was able to do an attacking spell, even if it was crap. I could only really break through a sheet of paper but good enough, I don't think I'll be using that much.

Lying down on the couch, I noticed a strange noise. They were definitely not from my earphones, I pulled them out and put them in again. They were actually from outside, the helicarrier also vibrating. I looked outside, the helicopter blades unfolding. They were indeed huge, but they were a little smaller than I thought it would be, just a bit smaller. I'm not the best at aerodynamics, but I'm certainly a pro at orbital mechanics and rocket science though.

Starry Night approached me. 'Planetshine, wait what? Is that a horn?'

'Uhh, yeah,' I replied, looking up at my horn, also levitating my phone.

'What the fuck?'

'It's this necklace.'

'Ok?'

'It's magical.'

'Ok?'

'I'm just practising my magic, got a problem?'

'Yes.'

'Ok, I'm not supposed to be an alicorn though, anyways, I'm not always going to be an alicorn, the horn is sometimes annoying when sleeping and my helmet can't fit the horn.'

'Ok, that makes sense. My suit is good, so that balances us out, lol.'

'Lol indeed, you forgot Flame Rider'

'Oh yeah, Planetshine, helicarrier is starting to lift off, brace yourself!'

'I don't have to, wings'

'True.'

The helicarrier started to shake, the blades turning extremely fast and carrying us into the air. I guess this majestic piece of precision engineering really does work, just doesn't seem like it would work. How do physics work? I don't do aerodynamics as much as rocket science as I said before.

The carrier started to lift off the water, later hovering above the water, only about 100m above the surface, not much. Just as it was hovering, Flamerider approached us, seeing my horn.

'Hey you two, the fuck Planetshine?' Flame Rider asked, confused by my horn.

'Nothing, continue what you were trying to say,' I answered.

'Ok? Anyways, the helicarrier is ready to travel to another place, this is just a test though, just brace yourselves.'

Flame Rider, Starry and I braced, the carrier began to tilt. Since the carrier was tilting, we also were traveling horizontally. I could hear the blades spinning faster and faster, the carrier tilting until a 45 degrees tilt. 45 degrees was a lot, but still enough to be able to stand on the floor.

We started to go faster and faster, and after a little while, it reached 747m/s, pretty ridiculous for a boat, a helicarrier that has a shit load of drag. How does this work? How did the blades not break? That got me thinking for a bit. The engineers that built this might know, we didn't. This is 3000 years into the future, so maybe that was the case, technology advancing every moment.

Flying around for a while, we finally stopped. I looked around, we were in Abyssinia. Abyssinia was outside of Equestria, where the Storm King used to rule. Bodies of dead ponies and hedgehog-like creatures scattered the landscape. A bright scene turned into a dark one, a happy story turning into a sad story.

'What is this?' I asked nervously.

'Another pony was scheduled to meet us here today at this time, I piloted the carrier here,' Flame Rider answered, stuttering.

The landscape was just bad, jagged rocks resorted on top of the water, resulting in a hard time navigating the abyss that is known as Abyssinia. A black fog hit us as we ventured deeper and deeper until we could barely see anything. A strange noise that was reminiscent of hooves against metal struck everypony on board.

'Planetshine, can you circle the area? You know, for lookout,' Flame Rider asked.

'Ok, I'll turn into an alicorn first,' I responded, butterflies in my stomach arose, a tense feeling struck me like never before. I could die in this situation.

Turning into an alicorn, I set off. My horn meant I could do magic, but the feeling of having a horn was just weird. I have another damn body part that I could feel things with. I just didn't like it all that much. Flying above the black smog, I looked around, flying around the helicarrier about 3 times until I saw something. The something was suspiciously similar to a pony. Was this pony alive? I have no idea, but I yelped, alerting the others and also dashing back to the carrier.

I could barely see, the fog covering the helicarrier. I could not locate it. Just as I couldn't locate it, it lit up, bright enough for me to see a subtle glow in the fog. Descending back to the helicarrier, I saw some strange zombie ponies and hedgehogs. This place seemed weirder and weirder, zombie ponies, what the fuck. I thought the pony I saw that looked like a skeleton was fucked up.

We were surrounded, zombies everywhere. There was no way to leave this place, flying would mean we couldn't navigate ourselves out of this place and staying here would mean we're doomed. There was one place to go though, and that was the crew cabins. The door wasn't blocked by any zombies, so we sprinted there as fast as we could, busting through it, later closing it.

Locking the door, Starry told us that there was a place that we could be safe in, and that was the hanger. We had no idea where the hell it was, but she knew. After getting into the hanger, which looked very futuristic and very sturdy, we closed the door shut and locked it. No one was able to go in or out now.

Flame Rider trotted over to a control board mounted on the side of the empty hanger. All I could think of that was that it was used for emergency purposes. She tried to start up the engines, nothing, nothing happened other than a loud jamming noise. The noise penetrated into the hanger and I even had to block my ears to avoid hearing loss.

We're fucked.

'Why won't these pieces of shit work?' cursed Flame Rider.

'Check the security camera,' I answered, even though I didn't know if there were any on board.

'Good idea,' Starry responded.

Checking the security cameras, we all saw that zombies were surrounding us completely, dead corpses in the helicopter blades, dead corpses on the deck. We were indeed fucked, with no way to get out and with no food or water in the hanger. The zombies had no effect on the infrared cameras, dead living organisms didn't produce any heat, so that was useless. Anyways, they already broke some.

Starry strangely had a sample of the air outside, toxic air outside. Her theory was that the air was turning the ponies and hedgehogs into zombies. The hanger was airtight, perfect, but we were taking no risks. Starry whipped out some gas masks for us, taking them out of a storage compartment in the hanger. I put mine on, and the others put theirs on. They didn't feel very nice, but better safe than sorry.

Suddenly, an instant flash of blinding light killed my eyes, temporarily blinding me. I guess I'm not the only one being blinded, the others were too. 'Planetshine, are you turning into something else? My eyes are going to die you know!' Flame Rider complained in agony.

'Not me!' I shouted back.

A few seconds have passed, the light was completely gone, a pony, wearing a dark suit and a mask was visible. The only thing that was completely visible were its eyes. They were luminescent, emitting a slight white glow, enough to see it in the dark but not enough to light anything up. It was levitating a blade, a katana, a sharp katana, slicing through the undead ponies as it dashed through the reinforced door faster than I could fly. We weren't doomed after all.

Was this pony on our side? I don't know, but all I can say is that it's helping us, which is a good sign that it's on our side. There was still that chance that it was not on our side. There was always going to be that chance. Always going to be that. The zombies were mostly slaughtered, the pony literally decapitating their heads, clearing the ship in a matter of seconds.

The helicarrier then started to move, later hovering above the dark smog that laid on the water. Maybe the mysterious pony made it hover, maybe it was Flame Rider. The chances of Flame Rider doing that was extremely low, as she was doing nothing, just standing there, so was Starry and I.

Abruptly, something went flying towards Starry Night, hitting her right in the chest. Paralysed and unconscious, she fell down onto the floor head first. The mysterious pony ran back, signaling us that the zombies were defeated. Its voice, though not able to be easily described, was deep, a bit too deep, but it had some high pitched moments.

Starry was unconscious and was on the floor. I wasn't very good at first aid nor Flame Rider, but we knew basic first aid procedures. The pony that saved us, yes, and was very good at it. It took Starry Night to the medical bay, yes, there was one in this ship. I don't exactly know how it was able to navigate around a huge ship like this, but it was able to do it, and that is all that matters.

Entering the medical room, we put her down on the bed. The mysterious pony then said, 'My name is Mysterium, I'm supposed to meet you today.'

'Why, here, you know, let's just get to fixing up Starry Night,' I replied.

Mysterium slid her into the x-ray machine. Yes, there was an x-ray machine in this medical bay. The results were instantly there, and it showed some bad signs. She had a hole in her head, most likely from the drop, and she was leaking brain fluid. Such problems were never encountered and it meant a very high chance of fatality. The x-ray also picked up what hit Starry in the chest. It wasn't a bullet, it was a piece of bone, most likely from the zombies along with some other minor wounds from the piece of bone.

Taking Starry out of the x-ray machine, Mysterium started to perform an operation on Starry. We weren't allowed inside the room during it, but I imagined what it would be like inside. It would be like cutting into a pony's chest, looking through the bloody parts inside. It just felt gross, how in Equestria could doctors even withstand such grotesque things?

After the 6 hour long operation, Mysterium walked out of the room, not a single drop of blood on his suit. I bet he was using his horn to do the operation, no other method. Speaking of horn, I'm still an alicorn. I didn't really care about the feeling of having a horn, maybe just got used to it.

The operation was done, Starry was recovering, the helicarrier was now able to get the fuck out of this messed up place. We got out relatively quickly and smoothly, returning back to where we left off. And hey, I wasn't bothered to turn into a pegasus, though I did when I met another pony when I was walking along a street. Never turned back into an alicorn, not bothered to do it.

Three weeks later Starry fully recovered. Nothing has really happened during that time period. I was given the title of an EASA astronaut and Flame Rider and Mysterium too. Starry was also back into EASA as an astronaut, even though she was still recovering from that injury. The Galaxy Diver and other spacecraft were built and we were chosen to fly it.

'Starry! Thank goodness you're ok,' I said happily, hugging her.

'What happened?' Starry muttered, confused at why she was in the medical bay.

Flame Rider and I were both in the room, both happy that Starry recovered with no problems.

'Uh, long story,' Flame Rider answered. 'Glad you're all a-ok.'

Author's Note

I don't want my OC to be an alicorn, much rather a half kirin. (Gets revealed sometime later in the book.)

Eeloo

A planet, far far away.

EASA selected all of us to go into space, to Eeloo actually. We threw a party for Starry after her recovery and we then were chosen to go to space. We were going to Eeloo, the furthest place from the sun, and it should take only 10-20 years. All that we were really told that we were supposed to retrieve something, a foreign something from another place, interstellar, maybe even intergalactic. Fast forward to the launch.

We all boarded the spacecraft that was going to get us to Eeloo, Lyra, Bon Bon and Derpy all there. I was the pilot of the mission, who was supposed to help the captain fly, who was Starry. Why did they let her be the one to fly the rocket? She barely knew how to pilot spacecraft. I flew spacecraft for a long time now, and I knew lots of things.

The spaceplane was launched like a space shuttle, SRBs on the sides of the main fuel tanks, struts holding the 'orbiter' to the external tank. All I can say about this is that Galaxy Scouter is now a 7 pony spacecraft that was still an SSTO though, but a rocket was used for a more convenient way to get into orbit. Anyways, EASA was low on xenon gas, so that saved some too, right?

Rocket was going to launch in 10 seconds, counting down one by one. I saw the nervousness in Starry's body, slightly shivering. I was completely fine. I've been to countless moons and other planets and have piloted many spacecraft. Starry has never done any of that. Maybe that was why she felt a bit nervous or worried.

'10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, we have liftoff! We have liftoff,' The loudspeakers called out loud, so loud that I could slightly hear it in the spacecraft, the rocket engines firing at the same time.

The rocket was slow at first taking off. It had a thrust-to-weight of only 1.5, not much. The normal TWR I like is between 3-5 so I could experience some thrilling G-forces acting on me. That's very fun, but not very fun for the average pony or person as Lyra would say. What can I say, humans are real after all.

'Can you teach me how to fly rockets?' Starry asked.

'Ok,' I replied.

I can't believe Starry doesn't know any of this, and saying she doesn't know this, she doesn't know orbital mechanics. Piloting a rocket is very easy, learning orbital mechanics isn't very easy, especially orbital rendezvous. That is pretty hard to learn, and don't forget some other parts of orbital mechanics. They are even more hard to get the grasp of, such as gravity assists and whatnot.

Slamming the autopilot button, I turned it off, gaining full manual control. I have already flown manually many, many times so that didn't matter at all. I did turn on stability assist, as gaining stability is extremely hard manually. I didn't let Starry control the spacecraft by any means. She might need some real training, not the training that I gave her in like 1 minute. Then I detached the SRBs, they were now just dead weight.

Completing the gravity turn, I let the shuttle coast up, the external tank still attached. Starry took in everything I said and performed. It was like she actually cared about it. I let the engines fire until we got above the Karman line, 70000m, the same as the Equestria in my universe. I guess the planets are the exact same, the timeline is different, an alternate universe, not a parallel universe. 2 different terms, what differences? A parallel universe is another universe, different things. Alternate universes, same things, just a different timeline.

We were travelling very fast, near orbital velocity, also near space. Going to orbit was usually about 5 minutes, pretty fast I could say myself. Now I just detached the external tank (ET) from the spaceplane, the struts detaching, letting the ET free.. That tank was now also just dead weight.

Firing up the closed cycle RAPIER engine, we got into orbit after a 200m/s circularisation burn. That used up quite a bit of out liquid fuel because the RAPIER exhaust velocity is bad, I mean very bad. What I said is compared to a vacuum optimised engine, which usually had an exhaust velocity of about 3.4km/s The RAPIERs were about 3km/s in terms of exhaust velocity. The difference doesn't sound very big, but when the difference of mass comes in, the difference is very apparent.

Finally getting into orbit, I set up a manoeuver to get to Eeloo. The damn spaceship didn't even have a fucking antenna. I have the feeling that somepony is going to sue EASA again. Thank goodness I was great at playing a game called Kerbal Space Program. It had the realistic solar system and all that. Perfect game. I guess that was how I learnt how to plan manoeuvers in real life.

'Starry, look as I plot a course for Eeloo,' I said.

'Looking,' she answered.

I plotted a manoeuver that would get us all the way to Eeloo. Some great thing about the spaceplane's manoeuver planner, though a lot more advanced and precise as the one in KSP, it's harder to use. At least I knew how to use it on the go with no training. Convenient, right? Nope. These ones were a little different from the ones back home. Touch screens for manoeuvers are fucked up. I need the tactile buttons, seriously, I NEED them.

Planning the manoeuver, I realised the classic autopilot button. Turning it on, I started to relax, Starry wouldn't exactly get what I'm saying when it comes to orbital mechanics and whatnot. I went out of my seat, Starry also doing it. Time for stasis.

The others also knew it was stasis time. I had to travel across the rooms and whatnot. I mean, I even told them. The only problem was that there had to be a pony to look after the ship. One fatal problem with the damn spaceplane was that the thing didn't have any way of preventing things hitting it, which meant manual control was the only option. Bon Bon volunteered. All the others would go into cryogenic sleep.

I noticed something with Starry, a bit of a worried face. 'What's the matter?' I asked.

'Nothing, it reminds me of an incident 3000 years ago,' she answered, 'Just scared.'

'It's ok bro, it's 3000 years in the future, I bet nothing bad is going to happen,' I assured her. I said 'bro' instead of something else because I used that when I was young, the time I was transitioning from a filly to a mare. Guess I've never got rid of saying 'bro'. We all went into stasis, Bon Bon looking after the spaceplane.

'Uhh,' I thought, having a slight headache. I felt cold, very cold. I didn't know what was going on. Were we there? The others were also out of their cryogenic capsules.

Starry went up to me and screamed, 'PLANETSHINE, HELP! BON BON's NOT RESPONDING AND THE FUCKING DOOR TO THE COCKPIT IS DEAD!'

'What?' I replied, 'I have a headache, tell the others first, I'm feel like I'm going to die.'

The others were awake too, they didn't have a headache like me. I guess it was the cold. I do sometimes get headaches like that. I genuinely have no idea how I get those headaches. Rarely happens after stasis.

'HELP ME! BON BON'S NOT RESPONDING TO ME!' I heard Starry shout across the room. She seemed like she was very worried, maybe even scared. Don't know, I was just too dizzy. Anyways, speaking of dizzy, I floated to the kitchen, or where the food was kept and ate some stuff. Then I just had to sleep. I couldn't take the headache anymore, it was just too severe.

About 6 hours have passed, the others were in the dining room. I got out of the sleeping bag and went up to them. 'Hey, whatcha doing?' I asked.

'Eating and rehydrating after 31/2 years,' Flame Rider responded. 'Cockpit door is still locked, don't know about Bon Bon, we're going to slam it open later.'

'Mkay. Mkay.'

Minutes passed, time to slam open that door. Nothing special, just slammed it and slammed it with some tools. Finally got it open after a while of slamming. Slamming was the only option, as we couldn't get it to unlock. Psst, we used a bit of magic to slam it. Yes, it was Lyra doing it. Zero G was too hard to control the damn metal block so magic was the only option.

Horror struck us right in the head. What we saw scarred us for the rest of our lives. Bon Bon's dead. Dead as a doornail. All that remained was her skeletal remains. 'Holy mother of fuck,' I yelled out loud, retreating from Bon Bon's remains. Her helmet and her flight suit were still intact though, the windscreen, nope.

Retreating from the dead corpse, I tried to forget it. Won't work, couldn't forget it, it was like a core memory embossed into my brain, never able to be purged, ever. Why is this the reality, I'm going to get nightmares tonight, guaranteed. Since the memory couldn't be erased, I guess going into the cockpit again would be the most logical idea, not. I mean, I have to look at the ship's log.

3y 118d 1h 45m 54s- Enter foreign gravitational field

3y 127d 16h 29m 21s-Exit field

3y 131d 7h 29m 57s-Potential threat detected

3y 131d 8h 02m 34s-Collision detected

3y 131d 8h 02m 57s-Exterior shielding breached-Depressurising-Screen
shield retraction error

System offline-...

Too basic of a log. How did the damn system go offline? I'm used to seeing really damn complicated logs on my old Galaxy Scouter, this was just too simple. My old Galaxy Scouter would log all the gravitational influences and delta-V usage and whatnot. It also had logs such as kernel panics, which basically render the system offline. There wasn't a cause for this system to be offline. I knew computer software too ya know.

That was me overreacting, though seriously, I do know computers and I do know how to resolve system failures and things like kernel panics or even worse, the fucking hardware melting down. Ok, maybe the hardware melting down needs replacement hardware, but whatever, I've made my own computers.

Wrapping the next few days up, we fixed up the windshield, yay. I also taught Starry how to fly an SSTO, but I forgot to lecture her on orbital mechanics. Quite important for a captain to know. I'm not a teacher on orbital mechanics and orbital rendezvous. That's for another pony to teach her. I'm an expert at it, though I'm not a qualified teacher. I also did some fine tuning so that the route would be safer.

Next few years was just stasis again, yay! This time nopony watching over, boo. Hey, the stasis chambers also had an option to download your mind onto a computer, so you can in theory live in the computer. All we did was made a scenario that everything was utopia. Hey, none of us aged, perfect.

Eeloo.

We were at Eeloo. All of us went out of stasis, me going in the cockpit with Starry. Coasting to the closest approach. The hyperbolic trajectory was in the normal direction, which was 100% not what we wanted. We wanted to be in an equatorial orbit. Once we were mostly to the point of the closest approach, Starry got us all into an orbit. She knew what to do, setting the the nose retrograde and burning to get into a very elliptical orbit.

Now we just needed to get the orbit equatorial. This was one thing I took over with. Starry didn't really know all that much on how to change orbital inclination. Since the spaceplane was travelling in the normal direction in a perfect 90 degree orbit somehow, I don't know how, but that was the situation. This was extremely easy to change the orbit inclination, just need to do it at the apoapsis, which is where the orbital nodes are.

Firing up the ion thrusters, we got the orbital inclination very close to zero. Not the best way to find something but at least that thing that we were supposed to get was very close, if not directly on the equator. After 2 orbits, the exact coordinates of this foreign thing was located. It was only a slight bit off the equator, but close enough that we could hike there without many problems.

Starry, Flame Rider and I boarded the lander, which was a bit large considering it was stuffed inside the damn spaceplane. It unfolds out to become a full fledged lander, engineering at its finest I must say so myself. The lander was aerodynamic with an aerospike engine. Aerospike you might ask? It's just better than a normal rocket engine, better efficiency in all atmospheres really.

The lander was a bit squished, quite normal for a lander. I'd much rather be on an SSTO that descended down to Eeloo's surface, but the NERVAs were too inefficient in the thick atmosphere. Eeloo, having a thick atmosphere, situated very far from the sun. Sounds reasonable to me. I guess global warming is a real thing, scientifically, not magically. This is science, not magic that's making Equestria cold as fuck.

Descending was easy, retrograde burn, enter atmosphere with a heat shield that would absorb heat, jettison it, land using a lot of parachutes. Heat shield you might be asking? Yes, even in a freezing atmosphere, you need a damn heat shield, who said that cold atmospheres were safe to enter without one.

Landing it perfectly, I was the first one to bust out. Starry next and Flame Rider last. Guess I'm always the first one to step hoof on other planets and moons. I mean, the others were checking everything, I just busted out like I always do. The others weren't very happy with my lack of knowledge in safety and whatnot. I know I'm not reckless, mostly not reckless that is, sometimes very reckless.

The hike to the location was only going to be about 5 hours. The oxygen tanks, though small held a crap ton of highly compressed oxygen, and with me, I had an oxygenator attached to one. The flight suits kept us perfectly warm outside the lander, which was about -200 degrees Celsius. Oh yeah, they were more like spacesuits than flight suits.

Looking around, snow was falling from the sky, the place reminded me of somewhere, somewhere far away, in a galaxy far away. Seemed like that white place in PONY-WARS, great movies. Loved them. I had with me my phone and a pair of earphones. I needed them as you can see. I like music. The others had fucking tesla coil guns and jetpacks. Why jetpacks? I don't know. It was just like extra weight, useless because we could fly with our wings because of something called an atmosphere. It really works, I've tried it.

I noticed something, a robot, a droid if I was going to describe it correctly. It was a replica of the R2-D2 droid in PONY-WARS. How do I know? I've watched those movies when I was in my teen years. I wasn't a big fan of them, more fiction than science. Nothing with mass can travel faster than light, and the spaceships in there travel faster than light. What the fuck is that? Not science fact of course.

A transmission came from the orbiter, a rover was coming down. Perfect, we didn't have to hike there, less energy wasted if I say so. We waited, waiting for a long time. The rover was dropped about a kilometer away, the wind carrying it 76 km approximately, though it landed near us.

Hiking there was easy, not hard. It only really took 15 minutes, all that time Starry leading the way while I was listening to music. Sia's music were all on my phone, I sorta miss her. She apparently existed in this universe, and the songs were all the same. Miss her and Rainbowshine, my friends. I never forgot them.

Minutes passed, not there. I got out my calculator, doing the dumb thing of smashing it and attacking it until it was dead. I used to do that when I was back in school. Even though it definitely works, I've destroyed about 100 calculators in my entire life. Quite the amount eigh? This time I was figuring out the date and time, but I broke that piece of shit because I smashed it too hard.

Rover was just ahead of us. We were finally there. Starry did some examining and inflated it. It was good in the inside. The interior was insulated and the outside was made with perfectly good titanium. What could absolutely go wrong with a rover like this. Roving to the location, I smashed Starry out the driver's seat once and did a stunt with a little hill that was coming up. Did a backflip with the rover. The others were mad at me but at least it was a success, even R2-D2 was fully intact.

We could all see the strange foreign thing. Looks more like a spacecraft to me than anything else. UFO maybe? I can say the definitely exist, I was riding a UFO when I entered Equestria here. I say UFO because for them it was unidentified, for me it wasn't, it was my own spaceplane. I need to build another one, a better one, and especially a more aerodynamically stable one, that was the main priority. The last one would have problems with stalling and instant pitch-ups.

'What in the name of Celestia is that?' questioned Starry, looking at the unidentified flying object.

'Umm, who's Celestia,' Flamerider asked.

I facehoofed, can't believe she didn't know Celestia and the other princesses. It's been 3000 years though, and things like this could well be lost to time. 'No time,' I responded, 'That's an alien spacecraft.'

'Holy shit!' exclaimed Starry. She seemed a bit excited though also a tiny bit nervous due to her facial expression.

Silence, pure silence, absolutely no sound for about a minute. We were all gazing at the alien spacecraft. It wasn't like the round ones that most sci-fi books described them. It was more like an SSTO, a small one, beautiful, absolutely beautiful. It seemed like the alien race that constructed this piece of pure engineering was very high tech, maybe even higher tech than us. We couldn't completely guarantee that this was true, but close enough.

'I'm going to talk to mission control for now, I'll be doing some excavating later,' Starry said to us. Flame Rider and I started the excavating. All I know about what Starry was doing is that she was talking to the space center with very, very low latency. I don't know exactly how, but that was the case with what I could perceive. How could radio waves travel faster than the speed of light? Honestly, I don't know as nothing can travel faster than light, including all waveforms.

We brought shovels along. I can't be an alicorn with a helmet, so guess it's time to dig up this piece of crap using a shovel manually by hoof. Flame Rider was able to use her flamethrowing capabilities. She can do firebending, but she had to stuff herself with food to do so. I guess physics are a part of magic. She needs a type of fuel to do some flamethrowing with her hooves, physics!

One day has passed, had a lot of meals and relaxing time. Good thing was that the place didn't have any snow for now. Digging the thing up was hard, but worth it. A little problem was that there was some sticky substance on the top of the thing, but no biggie. This feat of research and development could be extremely valuable to everypony in Equestria, maybe essential to live longer on this dying place.

Now it was just hooking that huge thing onto the rover. The damn rover was actually able to tow the spacecraft. Don't know how, something like that didn't make sense to me, it broke the laws of physics. Oh well, the thing was attached via strong neodymium magnets, the electromagnet type. It was fused with iron and there you go, a neodymium electromagnet.

Then we got the rover all the way to the lander, which the two then fused together. Fusing together meant that we could get off the ground. The aerospike engine was a little weird. Instead of being a fuel and oxidiser engine, it used fusion propulsion. The NERVAs were normal, and they were reasonable, but fusion engines were a little strange at first glance. How did they make them? How are they so small? Nuclear pulse engines were fucking huge and they need to resist a lot less pressure. Mr. Physics, going to the bar and getting drunk again?

The lander's aerospike engine started up, the fusion core bursting particles out at 250 km/s. The launch time wasn't very optimal to get a rendezvous with the Galaxy Scouter, but whatever, I know all the transfers and whatnot. Getting into orbit, we circularised at a very low altitude, right above the atmosphere, which was also our phasing orbit.

Waiting for a few minutes, we were ready for the rendezvous approach. All I did was a bi-elliptic transfer, nothing special really. Approaching the Galaxy Scouter, we went docked everything in, other than the foreign spacecraft. That thing's docking port was too large for the Galaxy Scouter, though it could be easily securely attached to the spaceplane. Now it was time to go home. Also went in the alien spacecraft, nothing, other than dried blood in the cockpit. Absolutely nothing.

Boarding the spaceplane, we ate some food, later going into stasis, downloading our minds to a computer. At least we get to have fun with no way of dying or anything, great if you ask me. Doing those things were fun, like really fun, especially setting ourselves on fire. I could feel the fire but it didn't kill me or anything, it was just fun.

4 years has passed, Starry and I were the only ones out of the stasis chambers. I forgot to mention this, but Derpy was supposed to keep the spaceplane safe from asteroids and whatnot. Speaking of Derpy, a hibernation chamber should be free, but the free chamber was taken up. Taken up by an unknown pony. It was an orange unicorn, complete with a floofed up tail and a cutie mark with 2 lightning and a star.

I also realised that there was another spacecraft docked to the Galaxy Scouter, so we quickly released all the other ponies, a bit nervous at what the absolute hell that mysterious pony was.

'Maybe leaving it in the cryogenic capsule would be better,' I said out loud everyone.

All of them nodded their heads, so leave it in the cryogenic capsule in stasis it is. We all had no idea who this pony was, or what its potential was. Was it able to cast magic so powerful that it could destroy this universe? Well, nopony knows other than the pony itself.

Speaking of the spacecraft that was docked to the Galaxy Scouter, it was disturbing in there. Blue blood was splattered on the floor, all dried up in lumps, fur straightening sounds haunted the place. It was like Galaxy Scouter, but with absolutely no luxury or anything, just control panels. The cargo bay only really had a lot of books about humans and shit like that. Just spooky, who lived in here, and how is it docked to Galaxy Scouter? Can't undock now because of the broken airlock. We'll just have to live with it.

'Forgot about Derpy!' Starry exclaimed, worried about the grey pony.

We all floated across the spacecrafts, ultimately crashing into the cockpit. The yellow maned grey pony was fine, just sleeping with food on the ground. Everypony was extremely happy that she didn't die. Mysterium cleaned up the place in only a few seconds, dumping all the rubbish into deep space. Now that I think of it, Kessler syndrome might occur.

Oh well, I plotted a slower but more safe course back home, reentering at a slower speed than 4000m/s. The Galaxy Scouter couldn't handle such heat like that. Never gone into stasis for the next year. I mean, the detour was sorta needed, or we would be dead.

'This is ESS reporting to GS, do you copy?' the Galaxy Scouter radio said out loud, 'All spacecraft rendezvous with the Equestrian Space Station, Direct orders from Hudson, proceed with Hohmann transfer rendezvous.'

Hohmann transfer rendezvous, I do bi-elliptic ones nowadays, Hohmann ones are a little to error prone. Guess we have to do that, Equestria's fucked up with ash clouds and whatnot. After some rendezvous fine tuning and whatnot, we were finally on a course to rendezvous with the ESS.

Approaching the ESS, we realised that the place was congested with a shit load of spacecraft, and docking with it was a no no, so we did a vote and came up with the decision to go to the Hudson Space Center. Starry was the captain here, doing a small retrograde burn and following all the reentry procedures.

Coasting along the thicker parts of the atmosphere, we reached the space center. Releasing the landing gear, we touched down gently and turning on the wheel brakes and the airbrakes, the tires screeching made me almost deaf. We halted to a stop, this mission was complete and a complete success, other than the fact that we forgot to plant a flag on the surface of Eeloo. How could we absolutely forget that?

-03-

Fire, anarchy, Equestria?

Looking around the place, it was like a dystopia. The outside was engulfed by fire, the place fucked up. Lowering the landing gear, I got the fuck out of the spaceplane. Dr. Whooves rushed out at us. He was alive right now, very strange. I thought he was dead already 3000 years ago. There could have been the chance that he has been in a cryo chamber, but whatever it was, he was alive.

'What the hell are you doing here!' Dr. Whooves shouted across the radio, 'I had orders for you to stay in space. He was still a bit far from us, after all, the runway was like 4 km long. The rest of the space center was small compared to the runway, really, it was.

I then said into the radio, perplexed, 'Why?'

'We constructed a biodome over EASA to quarantine the workers. We tried to keep astronauts out of Equestria because of the limited food supply and the continuous raids on our base,' he explained quickly, still running towards us. He was nearly here, and finally, he was here.

A biodome, why would somepony construct one of them, it had to be magic or there would be no way for us to get in. How in Equestria were they able to maintain one of these anyways.

Flame Rider interrupted rudely, 'We may have found a cure.'

'Hey, get over here!' shouted Mysterium, still inside the Galaxy Scouter.

Every pony went in, going into the lounge room where Mysterium was. Looking at the cryogenic chambers, the orange unicorn was gone, nowhere to be seen. This was disastrous, what could that orange pony do? It was an alien, and aliens could sometimes be extremely dangerous. Mysterium started to use his magic from his broken horn to scan the area for threats.

Abruptly, the strange orange pony teleported right behind Dr. Whooves. It was a unicorn, so yeah, it can teleport. It pushed Dr. Whooves, knocking down onto the floor. The others got out their weapons, tasers, laser guns, yeah. I didn't have any guns or weapons, plus that the unicorn could teleport away. The others literally forgot about that.

'Who are you,' Dr. Whooves asked, afraid of the unicorn.

The pony answered him, 'My name's Ironstar, what are you...'

All of a sudden, the Ironstar started to shake, shaking like a pony that had an extreme seizure. Maybe it wasn't having an epileptic seizure, but in fact something else. Seizures are basically a brain fucking up and can't work correctly temporarily, and seizures weren't like that. I've seen ponies that had seizures, definitely not like Ironstar's 'seizure'.

Lyra asked empathetically, 'Are you ok?'

At in instant, right after Lyra asked, Ironstar stopped shaking and twitching his hooves and rotating his head. 'Sorry, I have a habit of conducting electrons through my body and then twitching violently,' he explained tediously.

We all muttered to each other, discussing who Ironstar was, or where he came from. Nopony knew where I came from other than Flame Rider and Starry Night.

'Hey, who are you guys?' Ironstar added.

'Talk about that later, but, uh, can you carry Bon Bon's dead body out of the Scouter, nopony is touching it,' I replied, Bon Bon's death still remained in everypony's heads, though we mostly forgot it.

'Ok whatever.'

Ironstar levitated up Bon Bon's body, levitating it out and into a dumpster right near the vehicle assembly building. The body disgusted me, like seriously. Made me want to vomit shit out. Never want to see a dead pony body ever again. Dr. Whooves told us to run over to the R&D facility, where the cure was trying to be made. We entered the building and then he punched in some keystrokes on his computer.

'The virus has affected ninety eight percent of the world’s population,' Dr. Whooves explained to us, strangely fatigued, 'We developed an experimental anti-serum, but it needed an alien compound to activate the bio-genetic cells implanted in the formula.'

Transitioning to a whiteboard, he grabbed a little whiteboard marker. Blackboards were now dead, chalk on a blackboard makes my eardrums die, whiteboard markers on whiteboards didn't. Drawing some random stuff on it, completing it in a matter of seconds. It wasn't exactly a drawing, it was actually a random formula that I had no idea what it was. I do physics, not chemistry. I slept in chemistry class when I was in high school.

'Though we need more time, I can make the first prototype in about a week with the sample of residue you have presented to me Starry' Dr. Whooves explained, using his whiteboard as a reference.

'Uh, that just sucks,' I replied.

'Everypony listen up,' Dr. Whooves shouted at us, 'Gather up the remaining survivors in Ponyville, Cloudsdale, Peaks of Peril, The Dragon Empire, Seaquestria and Manehattan.'

'Ok, one problem, how are we going to get there?' Starry asked.

'Galaxy Destroyer, the helicarrier you bought some time ago. We modified it and it's still your property, so don't sue us again.'

'Ok, what did you mod it with?'

'Guns, faster heli blades, and a better interior, oh yeah, also upgrades to the structural integrity.'

'Good.'

I wanted to see the helicarrier after what Dr. Whooves described it. 'Can I look at it?' I questioned.

'Planetshine, you're going to pick up the remaining survivors in the helicarrier by yourself, others, stay here, Planetshine's the badass here,' he answered.

'Thank you for calling me a badass,' I thanked him. I can be considered a badass sometimes, flying cargo planes upside down with big orange tanks in them, how is that not badass. No, I'm not talking about bad ass, my ass isn't bad. Anyways, I was told to get on the helicarrier and get the fuck out of the place to Ponyville. Time is running out.

Flying onto the helicarrier, I quickly ran into the cockpit, starting up the engines at an instant. 'First stop, Ponyville,' I sighed sadly. I lived there back then in my universe. Sia and Rainbowshine would also sometimes travel there to meet me. I also went to Cloudsdale sometimes. I never lost faith in them. Sia had to exist here, her songs were all available in this world. Now the question was Rainbowshine, did she exist in this universe? A few tears ran down my eyes, I missed them.

I don't exactly know what the others were going to do, but whatever it was, it had to be useful, right? If not, then why don't they help me? Anyways, I piloted it out of the dome thing, which thank goodness it was magic. Zombies started to chase me the instant I smashed through the dome, travelling at over 100km/h.

Ascending higher and higher into the sky, I started to pitch the carrier forward a bit so I could gain more horizontal speed. The space center was a fair bit south of Manehattan, above Fillydelphia. That location was perfectly on the equator, so I get why they would place it there. It was just like the one in my universe. The arrival time to Ponyville was going to be 4 hours. Not very long if I say so myself, train took like 2 days or something.

Arriving at the place, I landed it right on the remains of Princess Twilight's castle. It was completely obliterated, crystals shattered and spread across the land. The Galaxy Destroyer had platinum grade extremely rugged chromium coated tungsten landing legs, so no problems here. I first loaded up an ion cannon that was useful for lots of stuff. They could be used to shoot flares, uber efficient spacecraft propulsion, and not to forget great weapons that electrocute things with 30 megaamps of electricity.

Putting on my helmet, I slid the ion gun into one of my pockets on my spacesuit. I know it's still a flight suit but spacesuit would be a better word for it as EVAs were now possible with it. I depressurised the airlock, ready to go outside. I had everything that I would need for an EVA in a vacuum, so no problems here with leaks and whatnot.

Right before I went out, I thought picking up some of Twilight's castle remains. Could be useful in some ways, plus the helicarrier had enough power to lift 1kt of mass. After grabbing some of that, I stepped outside. That's one small step for me outside in this world, nothing to protect me from anything other than that ion cannon.

Nothingness. Nothing, no ponies, no zombies. The place was a barren wasteland. Buildings were still intact, but they were near the point of collapsing at any moment. All of them had cracks in them, some of them even fucked up so hard that it looked like it defied physics, concrete slabs hanging off puny sticks.

Out of nowhere, a zombie charged at me. Grabbing my ion cannon, I turned off the safety and shot a pulse of 30 megaamps at it. 30 megaamps is a lot of electricity, too much for killing something. Recalling from what I learnt in high school, less than 1 amp could easily kill anypony.

Nothing, nothing happened, the zombie still charging at me. 'Damn it!' I shouted, 'Forgot zombies were not living.'

Zombies weren't living creatures, they were already dead, so I guess their heart don't actually beat. What that means is that ion cannons are completely useless against them. I need something like a real gun, maybe even rocket launchers. I had to take the zombie on melee, and I don't have the best fighting skills. I should've learnt karate. Too late though, I had to choose, fight or flight.

I chose the fight option. The zombie could call upon its friends, and I'm going to be fucked if I chose flight. Fighting seemed logical enough. I had to take it on by hoof, no other way. Charging at it as fast as I could, I punched it right in the face. Useless, absolutely useless, it wasn't affected by the punch. It then shouted, calling for its friends. There was no other option, RUN!

Its friends approached behind it, and I had to run. I'm dead meat if I don't. Flapping my wings and running at the same time, I outran the crowd, but they were also running. I'm really going to be dead meat. Trying to get away from them again, I tried to escape, trying to fly. No use, flying was not an option. Dragons and griffins were in the air. Can't believe they were also zombies. I thought it only affected hedgehogs and ponies, but nope, it didn't.

Sprinting across Ponyville, also flapping my wings, I tried to get away, but they were too fast. I couldn't run away, they were catching up to me, slowly, but they were catching up to me. Looking behind me, there were griffins, ponies, hedgehogs, yaks, kirin, even seaponies chasing me. What perplexed me was how in Equestria were seaponies able to 'run'. I've experienced been a seapony before, and travelling on land was near impossible.

I was approaching Sugar Cube Corner, the one building that wasn't crumbling and the only one in good condition. I was trying to get the hell back to the helicarrier, but hedgehogs were trying to assault me from all directions, so entering Sugar Cube Corner was the only option. Rapidly changing direction, I pounced on the door, flying into the counter.

'Oww,' I moaned, my front left hoof burning with pain. I could feel blood bleeding out from the wound. I couldn't see it, but I could feel it. Disgusting, just disgusting. I could barely take in the feeling, but I kept the screaming and crying to a minimum. I also broke my helmet, which shattered before my bare eyes. Thank goodness none of the glass shards pierced into my eyes. If that happened I would rather die. Ditched the helmet, it was useless now.

Looking up, I saw a pink pegasus that had a cloak on. Slowly taking it off, she revealed herself, she was an alicorn. It was the princess, or it seemed like she was a princess. Only princesses could be alicorns, unless something called magic from objects turn you into one. Cough cough, me. Speaking of magic things, I don't have my necklace on anymore. Must've lost it when my friends and I were on Eeloo. That reminded me of Silverstream, and her team. Melancholy flooded my head.

'Sorry about that,' the princess apologised.

'Princess? Aren't you supposed to be in Canterlot?' I asked.

'No time to explain, we need to get out of this planet now,' she responded.

Stepping up the stairs, she revealed to the 45 survivors, pointing to them.

'Ok, we have to go now!' I exclaimed across the room.

Inspecting everyone, I counted up the ponies that had wounds or any problems with them. I also looked carefully for anyone that had an infection. Only three creatures had wounds, a griffin, a pony, and a dragon. The others were fine, mostly.

'Princess, can you use your magic to get everypony into the helicarrier that's parked outside?' I impolitely asked

'Yeah, lead the way.'

Breaking the window, I crawled out of it, flapping my wings to levitate right outside. The princess grabbed everyone that couldn't fly with her horn, only 28 creatures. Shoving everyone through the window, we slowly, but eventually got everyone out. I was looking around to search for potential threats. The door was flooded with zombies so the window was the only way to get out.

Rushing towards Galaxy Destroyer, all of us got in safely, no zombies chasing anyone. The princess was tired from all that levitating, but she was fine in the end anyways. I don't think princesses are very important when Equestria is in anarchy and there are only a few survivors left.

The princess and I navigated to the cockpit, the others in the luxurious seats in the lounge. Powering on the helicopter blades, I started to pitch the craft instantly forward, but there was one little obstacle, a tincy, wincy one. Pegasi, pegasi with dark, thunder clouds, pegasi with dark, thunder clouds surrounding us. This was bad, really bad. The helicarrier wasn't built to withstand high voltage lightning bolts.

Trying to get the fuck away from the zombie pegasi, we tried to do some turns and tried to knock them out. No use, the Galaxy Destroyer was too unmaneuverable and the pegasi were already trying to shoot lightning bolts. The only way out of this is to get out of here. One lightning bolt hit right on the hull, where all the fuel was kept. We had to get out of this situation, NOW.

Pitching the Galaxy Destroyer 45 degrees, I could maximise the speed possible by the helicarrier. This was required to get back as the hull was leaking fuel, not to forget damaged helicopter blades. Blades 1 and 3 were damaged, but they were able to fly with no problems. The fuel leakage though, 40 minutes of flight, barely able to get back.

'Planetshine reporting to EASA, mayday, mayday, mayday,' I uttered into the radio. No response, the radio was jammed.

The fuel leaking and a spark of lightning conjured up a spontaneous combustion. Thank Celestia that it didn't make the helicarrier explode. It worked a little like a jet engine in that way. The combustion could accelerate us by a minute amount, only about 0.1 m/s faster than max speed, but anything that sped us up helped, but there was a chance that the whole thing would explode, so I tried to minimise it by expelling carbon dioxide out the side, the fire trail only becoming a little flame.

Approaching mach 1, it was going to get unstable. Flying faster than supersonic posed a little challenge. Handling of the carrier would be near impossible and the supersonic flow of air carrying the carrier down had to be balanced out by the lift. As it swiftly accelerated past the speed of sound, it created a sonic boom so loud that it made me nearly get a heart attack. At least I was expecting it to happen at any second.

30 minutes has passed, and the left engines were going to disintegrate. The princess was trying to protect the blades, but no use, not in the single bit. Galaxy Destroyer might not make it, but we were so close. Suddenly, one of the engines disintegrated into thin air, completely gone. This disturbed the center of mass hard and no front left blade meant that it was now starting to pitch up and fuck up at the same time.

Good thing I knew physics and whatnot. A disastrous problem could be easily solved by balancing out the power of the blades. Throttling down some engines and rebalancing again. This wouldn't last for long though, we were losing speed fast and might get instant pitch-ups, not very nice. We were so close to the space center, only a kilometer away, we might make it.

Looking over the controls, I frantically searched to find a switch that would work. Not a single switch that would do what I wanted it to do. Who in Equestria made this thing?

'Air-conditioning, ahh force field, ahh rendezvous procedure, ahh parachute, eureka! That’s it!' I thought to myself. Finding a button called 'emergency parachutes,' I was able to do a landing with this, inside the biodome, on the space center. The landing was a bit ridiculous though, the carrier crashing into the runway, ultimately shredding it into pieces. That might've gone better if I did a semi powered landing.

Exiting the carrier with the princess and the others, Dr. Whooves screamed at us, 'THE DOME! THE DOME!'

Oh no, the dome broke, but it quickly was restored. There was only one problem though, the place flooded with infected creatures and air. 'I've created a cure, though it has permanent side effects such as limpness to the body,' Dr. Whooves later claimed.

Time was running out, the infected creatures were going to destroy us if we didn't act quickly. Quick decisions were made, and Mysterium, Flame Rider and I decided to fight. I didn't have a helmet though, so I quickly zoomed to the astronaut complex and grabbed a helmet. Now I was ready to fight. Also, the space center was the same as the one back in my universe. That's how I know this place.

Starry left behind to help out the others and Ironstar just couldn't. I grabbed a submachine gun and started to spray bullets at the zombies. Some fell down and some didn't. Flame Rider was burning them, using her fire abilities to burn them until cooked. Mysterium used negative discharges that sucked the zombies up. No words said here, he was the pro here, shooting the negative discharges at a rapid speed.

Destroying the zombie hoard, I noticed something, Starry talking with Ironstar. From the air, all I could see was Starry punching Ironstar, then Ironstar knocking out Starry. I couldn't believe it, why would the two be so violent to each other. What was this? Why did the two punch each other? After the fight was done for, Ironstar tugged Starry away to the little hospital building. That injury must've been serious.

A bright flash in the sky caught my eye. It was falling down rapidly, like a meteorite, but in lots of pieces, heading for us. It was the ESS, the Equestrian Space Station. Crashing down on the space center, it destroyed buildings, some not as destroyed as others. A case of this was the spaceplane hanger. It wasn't very blown up, VAB was crumbling into pieces though.

The initial blast by the core module blasted Flame Rider, Mysterium and I far, far away. I nearly went unconscious, but I was still alive, still conscious. Thank goodness I didn't get knocked out of the dome, and thank goodness even more that the dome didn't break. That was close.

Mysterium was falling down onto the ground from a high altitude. He was going to die if somepony doesn't catch him. Scanning the area, nopony else was going to help him, so I swooped down, accelerating above free falling speed, catching him at the last second. Flame Rider was trying to revive Dr. Whooves. He was lying down on the runway, unconscious and maybe even dead. Blood was scattered on his body, dripping out of his severe cuts slowly.

The space center was scattered with grotesque dead ponies, some bleeding out thick, scarlet or maroon blood. Some were barely able to move, some completely dead. Zooming into the medical center or mini hospital, I located Starry after some hard times checking every room. At last, I found Starry, unconscious and bleeding out from some severe wounds.

The princess was performing spells on her, but it didn't work. Equestria's best doctors that were still alive were injecting her with strange liquids. Mysterium was using his lightning to try and revive her. Flame Rider was there, mortified by the scene. All I could say about her was that she wouldn't respond to me, curled up in a ball, stroking her tail. It seemed like she was in a massive depression.

Minutes passed, no progress at all, her heart rate still at an absolute zero. Machines were hooked up to her and the princess was too exhausted to do any spells. The chance of revival was close to zero, but we never gave up. I even gave CPR, mouth to mouth resurrection. No, it was NOT at all pleasant, looking at her blood covered face was difficult, and 'kissing' her felt unreal, unreal in a bad way. At least I didn't vomit in her mouth. Can't believe they didn't have any fucking machines for that.

Two hours have passed, Starry showing barely any signs of life. Hope was lost, she was going to be dead. Estimations can always be wrong though, as she sprung back to life when instantly when I was 'kissing' her. It was just like that story about the princess that sprung back to life when some prince kissed it or something, but for me it was more in a lesbian way. At least she survived though.

Some ponies stayed in there keeping Starry safe, while I opted for a bit of relaxing time. I needed to take a break, I felt like puking. Ironstar was right outside, feeling very guilty about something. A little chat was necessary in this situation, I wanted to know what happened. 'Ironstar,' I asked, 'What happened?'

'It's all my fault,' Ironstar mumbled.

'Ok.' I replied.

'I punched her really hard in the face and all that because we got a bit angry at each other.'

'Why?'

'Because told her I released the Plague-03 virus, and she punched me first for being a dickhead.'

Author's Note

Mind, but I'm doing longer chapters in this book. Don't mind me but it's actually sorta needed.

P.S. Planetshine is based off my personality, and yeah. Starry is AY-0715 as a pony and the other main characters (OCs) are from real people in real life. Featured in this story because they granted me and AY-0715 permission to do so.

A Slice of Life

Author's Note

Warning: Gore

A Slice of Life

Life can crumble into pieces.

My reality crumbled into pieces. Ironstar released Plague-03. Why would he do such terrible thing. Thoughts ran through my mind, nearly losing my temper.

'WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?' I roared in front of him, furious at what she did.

Ironstar burst into tears, curling himself into a little ball, stroking his tail. I kept on cursing at him, eventually completely losing my temper, until something happened, something weird happened. My hooves burst into flames, my mane also on fire, a blue and red coloured flame. It was at this point I noticed I had to stop.

Quickly trying to control my temper, I finally was able to get out of the fiery state. If I didn't, I might've set the place on fire or something like that. I had no idea why I transformed into that state, doesn't seem right to me. I didn't have that necklace that Silverstream gave me or anything that had magic. Thank goodness I turned back to normal, what would the others think of me if they see me like that.

Turning back, I was still kinda mad, but less mad if I say so myself. Maybe that transformation was because of my temper, not sure. Ironstar uncurled himself, and I asked him, 'What happened, tell me the truth, I won't get mad like before.'

'Really,' he replied.

'Yes, promise.'

Breathing in and out, he explained, 'It was quite some time ago, but I could remember it like it was yesterday. I never forgot about it, it was in engraved in my mind. Back then I was a leading scientist in a program that was developing Plague-03 as an experimental defence program.'

'What?' I gasped, 'What is Pentagon Space?'

'My home, the place is situated in a galaxy billions of light years away.'

'How did you get here?'

'Warp drives.'

Can't believe the race of ponies on Pentagon Space were able to develop warp drives, I went through space-time rifts instead of warping across infinitely large universes.

'Mkay, get back to the story please,' I requested.

'The virus, it mutated dead and living cells, turning creatures into zombies. This wasn't the objective though, and I started to modify it to make it so that it suited the genetic transfusion. The other scientists and the government didn't approve of it, and I was ordered to leave the Pentagon Space International Research Labs.'

'What happened after that?'

'I stole some of the serum, escaping from Pentagon Space to avoid execution. I used the modded serum on myself and later gained the iron hooves. It also caused the side effect of twitching. The rest, I dropped it between your planet and Eve.'

'Eve, I've been there.'

'Really? Cool!'

'Also, I'm not from this planet, I actually came from an alternate universe.'

'How did you get here?'

'Space-time rift.'

Ironstar unfurled his tail, pouncing on me, hugging me. 'I've never seen a pony so forgiving as you,' he complimented.

'It's ok, it's ok, now we need to fix up all the problems that you caused, it's ok, I forgive you, even if the others don't.'

'Really?'

'Yes.'

The EASA space center was the last place in Equestria that could still sustain life. The outside was a complete wasteland. I had nothing to do other than stay in the hospital and stay with Starry until she heals. Ironstar walked out of the hospital, sad. 'Planetshine, I'm sorry to tell you this but Starry is a complete vegetative state,' A doctor explained.

'Wtf?' I asked.

'Means she's brain dead.'

'What? Ahh damn it.'

Walking in the ward, though she was completely fine with heartbeat and body functions, she had no perception. She couldn't perceive who I was or where she was in. Her reflexes worked though, and she could blink and move when she feels something, but her brain was dead. No cognitive functions, no emotions, no words.

Mysterium was also there, sleeping on the floor. I walked up to him and uttered, 'Mysterium, why are you sleeping.'

'Huh? oh, uh, tired from the electric shocks I did,' he replied, 'What do you think, how am I not tired.'

'Ok, lemme sleep here too.'

'Uh, Planetshine, I'm just asking, but do you want to see my real identity?'

'Yeah.

'Don't tell anypony else, I've always wanted to share my identity with somepony, but I never really got the chance to.'

He pulled off his mask, revealing a handsome young stallion's face. 'Lone Wind.'

'Wow,' I honked. He was majestic, his face so pretty. Didn't have a crush on him though. I don't exactly know why he chose to stay with Starry, maybe he had a crush on her, could be true. It was hard to exactly describe him, he was a graceful white stallion, muscular, sexy af.

A day passed, I'm bored of staying in a little hospital ward, needed to go outside. I'm not entirely an introvert. I had to go outside too, right? Trotting out of the hospital door, the outside was gloomy, dead bodies scattered on the ground. Anarchy was very apparent, no leader of the bunch, no way of governing them. The princess didn't want to command all of the ponies. Nopony was the leader. This was true anarchy.

The princess flew down towards me, landing right in front of me. 'Planetshine, the numbers of ponies are decreasing, we need your help with something,' she cried.

'Show me princess,' I responded.

'Call me Donut, or GD, short for Glazed Donut.'

'Ok, Donut.'

Strange name for a princess, good names for princesses would be Mi Amore Cadenza or Molestia. Yeah, Molestia, joke name for Luna because 'Moon' and 'lestia' make Molestia. Funny in a bit of a sexual way because molesting something is bad. I love my high school days.

Anyways, I was brought to the spaceplane hangar, told to help with some of the engineering. I'm no expert in engineering, but I was decent. I mean, I've designed atmospheric planes like the Aeris 3A and a spaceplane called the Aeris 4A. The Aeris 3a was a huge success as it was used everywhere as a training jet, the 4A was not very popular.

From there, I came up with a few plans and whatnot to get the fucking spaceplane off the ground. I came up with the best idea of all the engineers and design experts, strap on more boosters. The others came up with ingenious ideas such as making it so that the Galaxy Diver could start of with barely any fuel and get to Minmus to refuel, but my design definitely caught the eyes of the other ponies. Done!

Nothing to do now, Flame Rider was being the typical engineer that was salvaging parts while I might go to the hospital to do a piss. No other toilets, the astronaut complex was destroyed and the ones in the R&D were dead. Too bad I had to take my suit off to fucking piss. Oh well, that's the nature of a spacesuit I guess.

Talking about taking off my spacesuit, I noticed some funny differences to my body. My tail looked different and my legs had extra fur or hair on it. Quite strange, it was like a kirin. Talking about kirin, they had large ears that looked very different from pony ears. Looking into the mirror, I definitely had kirin ears, but no strip of scales down the forehead and onto the muzzle, or scales on my back. Strange.

There was no way that was possible though, I was a pony from the start. How could I become a kirin like that. How is that even possible? Maybe I was born that way, but that chance was low, but I never got to meet my real mother, perhaps she was a kirin. Also, I was found at the Peaks Of Peril, adopted by my not biological parents. Oh well, that wasn't important, and later I checked on Lone Wind and Starry.

No sign of 'life'. No emotions, brain's still dead. What now? The night passed with theories of what shit would happen the next day. This is equestria after all. Dragons destroying the place? Lone Wind electrocuting Starry Night again after her heart randomly stops beating. For what I know right now is that my friends are all alive, except Lyra and Bon Bon.

Waking up, there was nothing to do for the whole damn day, nothing, like fucking nothing at all. No attacks came from outside and everything went well, Flame Rider doing some ion engine engineering and whatnot, Donut doing keeping the place out of intruders, Lone Wind and I with Starry. Ironstar somehow was nowhere to be found. He wasn't in any nook and cranny of the space center. Where was he? Did he die?

Starry was extremely hard to care for, and Lone Wind and I had lots of problems trying to meet all her needs, feeding her and washing her. We were like nurses, but not certified nurses. Nopony else was in the hospital, it felt like it was abandoned, and Lone Wind could easily have his identity revealed with nopony seeing him, though he didn't.

Days passed, everyone alive, Ironstar still missing. Where was he? Seemed like he was dead. Ponies salvaged the remains of the ESS, making them into a fleet of Galaxy Voyagers, spaceplanes running off fusion propulsion that were designed for long range missions and warfare, also able to be launched like a shuttle. The space center also received an outlandish message from what we think as a foreign spacecraft from Pentagon Space.

Pentagon Space, Ironstar's homeland. The message read:

Thank you for testing our new biological weapon. It has been a huge success and we thank you very much for your service in helping us test it. We will now eliminate all remaining life on the planet.

-PS-d

PS-d, what could that mean? Pentagon Space defectors, destroyers, defence program? What my interpretations of the 'd' at the end are as good as the other ponies. Most of the ponies freaked out after seeing the eliminate all life part, but the best thing to do was to keep calm. Why would they do this? Was Ironstar an undercover agent? Was he telling lies?

More days have passed, Starry still not able to move or do anything, but it was getting better. Cognitive functions could kinda work according to electromagnetic sensors. That was a great sign that she was living and was not dead. Great thing that she didn't die, It would be tragic if she did.

No Pentagon Space battleships or new viruses, maybe they were planning their attack or something. Speaking of them planning the attack, we were given lots of time to develop advanced spaceplanes. One week later the first Galaxy Voyager was complete, and Galaxy Diver was able to fly. It flew, and it got into space, going to Laythe, carrying base building kits and only 120 passengers. They were the last of the creatures that lived on Equestria, also ponies.

All the others stayed on Equestria, the Galaxy Diver couldn't fit everyone. We formed a group called Gravity. Just five members, me, Starry, Flame Rider, Lone Wind and Donut. We all wanted Ironstar to be in the group, but he was still nowhere to be found. Where did he go?

Weeks passed, the virus starting to get more serious. Hope seemed to just fade into thin air, the last stand on Equestria slowly fading away. There were now only ponies in Equestria, the last remaining creature other than a pony died. Life in Equestria seemed like it would be extinct in the next year, but we wouldn't let it be that way. We have to fight back.

Kevlar armour started to spark up, making near impervious suits and vests that could be made for cheap. Flexible carbon fiber made it so that it could be more than 100 times stronger than steel, enough to resist anything. I modded my spacesuit with a kevlar layer on the outside for some protection. I don't want to die, just like all the others, but the others were slowly infected. A cure was still not found, though some have kinda worked, reverting the physical body but not the mind.

EASA also started to make mech suits, those ones that a pony would be able to control, courtesy of Starry's ingenious and forward thinking designs. Equestrian technology was advancing, and it was advancing fast. Still no sign of Pentagon Space attacks, and the zombies were nowhere to be found. The infected air became stronger though, and ponies were still turning into zombies one by one.

On the 2nd of June, 4419, something heartbreaking happened, Lyra died. She was such a good pony, leading in the spaceplane program. She kept the spaceplanes all safe, away from any of the zombie intruders and also participated in the building of them. She was also my friend, which made it extra shattering. I fell into depression, extreme depression. My emotions broke down, my brain couldn't function, I'm dead inside.

All that is known of her death was that a zombie dragon killed her, though she died in hospital. The story goes like this, Lyra was trying to fight a zombie dragon with a few other ponies. The other ponies weren't hurt though, they were completely fine. Lyra wasn't though, and the dragon grabbed her by her helmet, taking it off.

The next part was painful to even think about. The dragon grabbed her by the neck and bit into it, blood oozing from her neck. Then, the dragon breathed fire when she was in its mouth, bleeding from the dragon's bite at the same time. That's all I was told, nothing else. The dragon later was killed and Lyra was rushed to the hospital, barely alive.

Her last words were, 'Tell th...'

Her heartbeat stopped, thick crimson blood still dripping out from her burnt head and neck. Her breathing also stopped, she was completely dead. Donut tried to revive her, but no, it didn't work. I lied there on the floor, in a dangerous state of crippling depression.

I stood there for the rest of the day, Lyra's body eventually getting removed. I couldn't perceive anything, my mind was in a complete state of thinking about Lyra. Flashbacks occurred, memories played back. How could she die? She was one of the most important ponies in my life. She was my friend, and losing a friend, it doesn't feel good.

Finally getting out of that period of extreme depression, I finally had the guts to get up, still in a severe case of sadness. I sobbed the whole way out, going to the kitchen to grab a knife. Grabbing the knife, I slowly crawled to the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror. Instead of the reflection of me showing up, it was Lyra. I couldn't stop thinking about her. There was no way I could stop thinking about her.

Holding the knife in one hoof, I thought to myself, shutting my eyes tight, tears pouring down my eyes. I couldn't take it anymore. Slice, the knife went, a huge chunk of my mane fell onto the ground. I needed a way to remember to remember Lyra, and this was the easiest way. Shaving some of my mane off even more, I had the Lyra mane style. Looked nearly identical to her. This was the way I'm going to remember her.

The next few days were harsh. I was still in depression, and I just wasn't able to take in everything that happened. I resisted suicide. I could never suicide. I know this was just depression and it wasn't an excuse to suicide. If I were to die I would rather die as a hero, dying in fighting for other ponies' lives.

Biological Warfare

Fifty thousand zombies, five thousand ponies.

A year has passed, 20 thousand ponies down to 5 thousand ponies. Now ponykind is on the brink of extinction. Nopony in Gravity died, thank goodness for that. Starry's brain fully recovered, though she still couldn't control her movement. Lone Wind had is identity revealed and his crush on Starry was revealed.

Pony technology was advancing every day, new technology sprouting up every month or so. Hundreds of satellites collided into each other and other space debris, making space travel almost impossible. Space debris was very apparent, and spacecraft could barely get into low Equus orbit before getting hit by immense amounts of debris particles travelling at 2000m/s.

Ponies in robot suits dominated the place, fighting against zombies. I also fought against the zombies, using my own submachine gun which I was given. Ironstar returned and was caught, but released with no consequences. He then joined the R&D department with the last of the scientists, researching the cure. Even after months of intensive research, no cure. All hope for ponykind survival was demolished.

I was out of depression, and Flame Rider too. She was the head of engineering, Ironstar the head of developing the cure. I was the head of defence, planning tactics to not only defend the place, but keep the 1 thousand ponies defending the place safe. Lone Wind also played a huge role in defending the place, being the one that slaughtered the most zombies at more than 4000 of them.

Food supplies were getting lower and lower, clean air supplies depleting. Gas masks were nearly all used up and since the sterile air's gone, everypony had to use a mask even inside for extra safety. Eating was a difficulty, but was still possible. The food courts were all underground, so no problems with bad air down there. Resources were also starting to be diminished, no more spaceplanes or mech suits could be manufactured now.

Oh yeah, I also modded my spacesuit again, now made out of some type of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene, 15 times stronger than steel. I also had graphene-kevlar hybrid padding for extra protection from bullets or zombies or whatever. Helmet was remade with metallic glass and the same other materials. Now I'm mostly impervious, just like Starry and Flame Rider in their OP suits.

Weather patterns showed a hurricane forming in the east. A class 5 hurricane with estimated winds of up to 340km/h. Estimated to hit sometime tomorrow, we had to get prepared, and get prepared fast. Very blurry photos of the hurricane taken from the last of the remaining satellites shows that it was stuffed full of zombies. Preparations were made, ponies scrambling ideas of trying to evacuate the place. Galaxy Voyagers were prepared to get the fuck out of the place.

One Galaxy Voyager out of the three made it to orbit with no problems, the others were destroyed due to Kessler Syndrome. Space travel wasn't safe, and a Pentagon Space spacecraft was also detected, but the remaining Galaxy Voyager wasn't hit. It housed only 8 passengers, not the maximum of 17. The rest of the spaceplane was stuffed up with base building kits and food and water. They were going to Minmus, a moon of Equestria that is barely visible from the ground.

Another message came from Pentagon Space. The message read:

We are now going to eliminate the rest of life on your planet.

This made some ponies panic, but some ready to attack. What we know of yet was that they didn't specify any time for the attack, so we had to be ready at all times. Night fell, the aurora was visible very clearly from outside. I ordered ponies to be on the watchout, looking out of the watchtowers and track the enemies with radar.

It was midnight, the moon illuminating the place with immensely strong beams of light, the ponies in the watchtowers noticed something. A drone, not large, but tiny one flying along the place, looking like it was trying to inspect it. I was informed about it as soon as they saw it. Taking out my sniper, the AWP, I looked into the scope, and shot it down with deadly accuracy. I've played games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive before. That's how I can aim.

A speeding pegasus caught it flawlessly, delivering it to the R&D department for analysis. They were also on the lookout, some also fighting for all ponykind. It was a reconnaisse drone, meaning that they were trying to spy on us. Dawn broke out, and the beast of a biological disaster was visible, the hurricane.

The seemingly cloudy white hurricane had many black spots visible even from afar. Those black spots were the zombies, and from my perspective, there were going to be more than 50 thousand zombies bunched up in the hurricane. 50 thousand zombies versus 5 thousand ponies. This wasn't a fair battle at all, but one wise pony once said, '10 ponies wisely led will beat 100 without a head.'

Though I wasn't a pony that had lots of training or a wise mind, but I did have a great plan in my head, use the technology to our advantage. They would have no chance winning as we had technology, and anyways, even if we lose, we could just zoom out the place in the SSTOs.

Edging closer, the hurricane also seemed to have tanks. What the fuck? How were they able to fly? Getting closer and closer, spaceplanes were diving down, though most of them were stalling. Whichever dumbass that constructed them might have made it so that the center of lift was behind the very far back center of mass. They flew like cows, like seriously.

Since there was an air raid with spaceplanes that flew like cows, the Galaxy Voyagers should be doing quick work of it. I was the leader of the bunch that isn't very strict. Don't ask, I'm not exactly strict. Also, I don't think I should be because of the Galaxy Voyager's very bad maneuverability. I'm talking compared to fighter jets and stuff, not other spaceplanes of its size.

The others got into their squadron of Galaxy Voyagers. I gave my Galaxy Voyager to another pilot instead of taking it myself. Galaxy Voyagers were for long range flight and for space warfare. I just got in a jet fighter that used a turboramjet rocket hybrid instead of a normal jet engine that had ion engines strapped on. It's really just a conventional fighter jet with a different engine and ion engines strapped on.

Climbing on the never before tested beauty that I built, I turned on the sole engine into the turbofan mode, no afterburner. Technology has advanced enough that turboramjets are now turbofans and ramjet/scramjets. The others used fusion drives. Back to the biological warfare.

'Flame rider to control, uh we have a situation, a large squadron of PS spacecraft coming in from the west, more than usual,' Flame Rider spoke over the radio.

The Pentagon Space (PS) spacecraft were once again flying like cows. Only problem was that they could fly, and that they had missiles and guns strapped on too. The Galaxy Voyagers, though had powerful guns, lacked good missiles. The fighter jet/spaceplane I was in also had crap missiles, but had the great advantage of being maneuverable. Oh yeah, and not to mention absolutely shit guns.

One strange thing about the war was that there were no alien ponies from Pentagon space. Zombies were taking the place of the Pentagon Space ponies. Smart move if I say so myself. Nopony from Pentagon Space would die and we die. Yay! (not)

The Galaxy Voyagers fired up the fusion drives, me in the random spaceplane I built out of absolutely no secrecy firing up the turbofan. 'This is a coordinated attack,' I heard Lone Wind call out.

Coordinated attack, we also have one, they weren't the only ones. 'This is central control, deploy Alpha team, coordinates B12-C26,' an officer from the control tower called out on the loudspeakers. The Alpha team were the ones in the robot suits. They were deployed to start to act as a first barrier. They were also the ones that would do the most damage.

'Beta team standby, coordinates J67-G21 and Omega team, defensive formation, K11-F92,' exclaimed the same pony again. The Beta team was the ones that were the second line of defence and offence. They would help out the Alpha team. The Omega team were the ones that would be solely for defence, and the last line of defence. Flame Rider was the leader of Alpha, Ironstar, Beta and Lone Wind, Omega.

'Squadron 1- 3 on-cleared runway 27-B,' another officer commanded, 'Squadron 4-6, hold on runway 27-A and squadron 7, hold on runway 62-T, Planetshine, clear to take off at runway 54-E.'

The others taxied over to the runways, I didn't though. Mine was a damn fighter jet that's able to get to space, I mean, who needs a runway when you have a fighter jet. I took off quick, pitching up as soon as I could. Speed was 40m/s, pitched up and in flight already.

Guards stood along the runways, helping the ponies in the Galaxy Voyagers taxi onto the runways. The zombies were going to strike anytime now. The Galaxy Voyagers were now in flight, and the enemies were very close. Some ponies were running into the newly built bunker, some of them scared and some of them holding guns out.

The state of the place was very complicated. The Alpha team was out there in a lattice formation, the Beta team, with more ponies, were in more of a phalanx formation. The Omega team was scattered around the place, being the last line of defence. The squadrons were circling around the place while I was checking on everyone.

Zombies were now raining, the hurricane instantly disappearing and zombies flung out. The Alpha team made quick work of them on the ground, the Beta team assisting them. The Omega team had snipers and assault rifles that killed zombies before they were able to even able to get to the space center.

'Permission to engage on enemy target. Squadrons 1-3 engage on Infected, squadron 4-7 engage on PS,' an officer radioed everyone.

'Oi, my initials are PS!' I complained back.

'Sorry, but Pentagon Space contracts to PS,' he responded.

The squadrons yawed left and right, 1-3 launching missiles and shooting down the infected. I was in squadron 1, firing tiny missiles and shooting bullets at the zombies. Squadrons 4-7 launched missiles and shot down the flying cows. Can't believe that Pentagon Space couldn't build planes correctly, though their homing missiles were great, have to give credit to them. The missiles were quite good at tracking the Galaxy Voyagers.

One was shot down, but the pilot survived and joined the Omega team. The spaceplane that the pony used crashed down onto the undead, flattening all of them that just happened to be underneath it.

'Squadron 4 reporting to Commandan...' a pony screamed, 'We just lost squad coordinator sir what should we d...'

Missiles were fired at me, but I was able to easily dodge them. Guns were also pointed at me from the flying cows, but after some shenanigans and turning on my plane's engine afterburner. The guns were barely able to shoot me down, but one bullet scraped the bottom of my jet.

'Mayday, mayday squadron 7 coordinator-P13. Hit ejection and pick up requested!' the pony uttered into the radio.

'Granted!' I uttered back.

Maneuvering my way back to squadron 1, the sky instantly went on fire. The ground also was on fire, the grass burning until light green turned into black. Zombies started to burn up, causing mayhem among them. It seemed like we were going to win, but predictions can always be wrong, very wrong in some times.

I set my radio to receive everything, and I mean everything, even the enemies. I could hear very faint voices detailing about the destruction of Equestria and remote controlled zombies. Whatever it was, I couldn't make out the barely legible words spoken. At least it was the same language, I'm not bilingual.

'Alpha team requesting, oh shi...' a pony cried on the radio, ending with a gunfire.

'Commander IS-46 requesting immediate backup... Oh god f...' another pony transmitted.

'Omega team under heavy gun power. Suppression of the enemy is not possible, permission to retreat?' Lone Wind radioed the control towers. I could see where the transmissions were going to because of the advanced tech that this place had.

'Permission denied, hold your ground for just a bit longer,' Flame Rider barked, a sound of guts spilling freaking me out. I was now really just on lookout in the air, maybe shooting down enemies that cross the line because of the low amount of missiles I had left. Only 10 hydra missiles out of the 30 left. Other missiles were all used up. I was also low on bullets, the others were fine though.

'Yes, sir standing in position,' a soldier exclaimed. What would be Flame Rider's reaction to that? She's a mare, not a stallion. Something as minute as this could well enrage someone, especially one that had a short temper. I'm talking about Flame Rider herself. She's got anger issues sometimes.

'Central control under her fire. Enemy is breaking through barricade, coordinates X13- V27,' a mare announced.

'Squadron 5 is gon…'

Looking over at where squadron 5 was, the Galaxy Voyagers were all shot down by zombies with rocket launchers. Flying cows that had homing missiles were bad enough, but rocket launchers, that's a little too extreme. One of the spaceplanes crashed hard onto the ground, blowing up in a fiery fiesta. I could feel some of the shockwaves that formed, and stray fuel made fire rain from the sky.

'To all units, central control is down retreat immediately,' Ironstar screamed.

A rocket was approaching me, I had to get the fuck out of the way. Thank goodness that they weren't homing missiles, if they were, I'm useless against them. Turning on the afterburner again, I dodged some gunfire and 2 missiles, not bad. I even had to resist more than 5Gs of force, not pleasant.

Swivelling past some rockets and doing some shenanigans with homing missiles, I whizzed pass Flame Rider, who was using her magical abilities, incinerating the undead. I pulled up just as I honked some zombie in the head, giving them a taste of their own medicine, or in this case, missile. Look, I didn't need to use my puny hydra-3 missiles.

Dodging cannon shells and whatnot, I had a very odd radio transmission. This anomaly came from up in the sky, about north east. A flash of bright light blinded me for a sec, and what I saw astonished me. From what the radars sensed, it was travelling at about mach 3, fast for something that was bulky as fuck. From what I could see, it was doing rolls and pointing radial if I say so myself, trying to lose speed.

The craft, which seemed like a space cruiser, came crashing down, heading right for me. There was no time for me to get out of the way, and so it's tail whipped me, sending me into a stall. Thank goodness nothing was broken, other than what seemed like a dent on the fuselage. No leaks though, so that was great.

'Shit, I'm hit!' I swore into the radio, sirens outside wailing, 'Ironstar, finish that fucktard for me!'

'Roger!' he radioed back.

Landing on the helipad that was situated on the vehicle assembly building, I climbed out, the omega team ponies on the lookout with their guns and turrets. Looking at the situation, I noticed Ironstar, a little orange dot approaching the space cruiser. Another dot appeared, a pony, an alien pony just like Ironstar and me.

Disturbing events happened, Ironstar killing the rogue pony at an instant. Maybe not an instant, it took quite a while of torture until it was dead. Blood splattered on the ground around them as Ironstar seemingly crushed its skull, later blasting its head with what seemed to be a laser bazooka.

The Galaxy Voyagers were getting less and less, and I had to go and help, but sadly, I was shot down by a homing missile. At least I survived, right? The missile edged closer to my plane until it scraped it and blew up. It was going to crash into the spaceplane hanger, and I was able to bail out and get the fuck out right before the explosion. Thank goodness I was a pegasus, or pegasus-kirin, whatever I really was.

We lost the battle from what the situation seemed like right now. Speakers wailing siren noises to signal an evacuation. The zombie hoard was too much for us, and we had to go, there was no other way that we could survive. Galaxy Voyagers were all landed now and a bio dome was cast and held up by Donut. She could only make that last for only a few minutes, and so the ponies all boarded the Galaxy Voyagers.

The remaining Galaxy Voyagers weren't enough to get everypony out of the place, so the Galaxy Destroyer was deployed. In the hanger of the massive helicarrier were 5 Galaxy Scouters, another Galaxy Diver and a new spaceplane called the Galaxy Avenger. The helicarrier was stowed away on an island about 30 km east, not very far but very useful. An underground passage was built a long time ago for easy access and safe access.

I rushed into the hospital where I grabbed Starry Night, who was still in that vegetable state, unable to move. Carrying her on my back like she was riding me like a horse, I sprinted all the way to Ironstar's little spaceship, or warping thingy. The others were already there, and they were going to leave in a minute. I shot in, Starry seemed to drop dead.

She stopped breathing, dropping down dead. 'Whaa?' I gasped.

'Dead?' Flame Rider added.

'Dead.' I joked.

Donut flipped her over, and it looked liked that she was dead. Checking her breath, it seemed like that she died again. 'Ha! Gotcha!' Starry spooked us.

We all chucked, giggling at the situation. I hopped into the pilot's seat, Ironstar in the commander's seat. There's something I don't get, and that was that the commander gets to control the spacecraft, the pilot only really helping the commander. Neon blue lights illuminated the glossy black interior. 'Start the engines and don’t wait for me, take off at my command,' Ironstar commanded.

He was walking out of the interior and into the cargo bay while I was strapped onto the seat. The others were also in seats that were strapped onto the walls. A dome appeared on top of us, pushing the dead bodies and zombies off the runway so that we could easily take off.

A flare caught my eye, which I thought was the signal to take off. Ironstar was still outside, but from what I could see outside, the zombies were going to destroy the dome if we didn't fire up the engines. The control panel wasn't very easy to navigate around, though not very hard at the same time. There were only a few problems with me and the joysticks. I'm used to using WASD and keyboard keys that I use all the time with a keyboard mod, but there were no keyboards here, no joysticks it is.

The spacecraft zoomed off into the air, 100m/s acceleration meant that we were on a suborbital trajectory in a matter of seconds. Too bad the controls had to be all manual with no stability assists or anything, but I was able to control it fine. Extreme aerodynamic pressure made the spacecraft unstable, knocking us slightly off course, but I was able to regain control.

I had no idea how to use the spacecraft to its fullest potential and get a good grasp of the controls, so I sped through the instruction manual that was covered in blood and dust. Nope, useless, I couldn't understand it, too complex of a book. Suddenly, warp drive activated, pain struck me and the spacecraft accelerated to more than 40000m/s, but was quickly stopped by the atmospheric drag. I let it coast all the way to space.

Now out of the atmosphere, I shut down the engine, coasting up into space. Completing a quick circularisation burn at the apogee, we were in orbit, along with the other spacecraft that were launched. No space debris for now. Now there was one question that we all wanted to answer, what happened to Ironstar?

Pentagon Space Research Labs

What happened to Ironstar, we're in space already and he was outside with no spacesuit. Surely he didn't survive, and if he did, what injuries. The cargo bay wasn't closed, and the spacecraft was launched with the cargo bay open, was Ironstar still in Equestria or was he in the cargo bay?

We were officially in low Equestrian orbit after slight RCS maneuvers and only 1m above the atmosphere to avoid radar detections. Yes, radar also works in space. An enormous Pentagon Space space cruiser was approaching us, orbiting in a retrograde orbit. For a size comparison, it was approximately 100 times larger than this spacecraft.

The fur on my neck shrivelled, later spiking up. I was shivering, not because of the space cruiser that seemed like the Death Star in PONY-WARS, it was because the spacecraft we were in was freezing. I should've put on my helmet, but it was not with me for the time being. The cruiser had guns and missiles and lasers that looked like they were capable to destroy any planet with ease.

Pointing its guns at us, we had to do something, it was going to fire at us. Thank goodness I had experience in flying aircraft, and since I'm that pony that knows orbital mechanics, rendezvous and whatnot, I was easily able to dodge all its laser attacks, piece of cake really. Since the cruiser had a velocity difference of 4000m/s, it got out of the way in about 1 second or something like that.

The airlock suddenly busted open, it was Ironstar. Miraculously, he resisted very fast spin, being in a vacuum and 100 m/s acceleration. This is the new definition of Ironpony, the others were just merely puny assholes compared to this one. Fantasy or fiction can always be reality, just like this as fiction has events like this. Real life also has events like that.

Everyone was bewildered as nopony could absolutely survive these conditions. He had to get at least some credit, I mean, how could he not get some credit. To my calculations, the cruiser is going to strike us back in about 17 minutes, so I guess we'd better move now. Talking about moving right now, the cruiser warped over above us. We're fucked.

'How the hell are you alive? We thought you went with the fiery mass of debris on the airfield,' Flame Rider asked, astonished by the extreme feat that Ironstar did.

Ironstar then swivelled into his luxurious commander's chair and replied, 'Well long story short, I’m skilled fuckers!'

Not very polite but whatever, we all curse a lot time to time. Checking on his dashboard, Ironstar slowly checked the spacecraft's damage and status, fatigued and discoloured. The space cruiser started to shoot us, but the tungsten made spacecraft that we were in easily protected us from any bullets.

Ironstar then exclaimed, his voice echoing, 'Oh shit, we can't enter warp speed while being shot at!'

Impolitely nudging me out my seat, he flicked a couple switches that didn't have any labels, making a cyan dome appear around us. The dome acted like a defensive feature, blocking all bullets and lasers shot at us. 'Look!' Lone Wind alerted everyone.

Ponies from our team were right behind us, and they acted like a line of defence, not that it would be useful at all. From my count, there were only 10 Galaxy Voyagers available, no other spacecraft able to be seen. 'Squadron 7, 6, 2, 1 reporting for engagement towards enemy target?' an officer radioed me.

'Granted!' I shouted.

'Sir I rather die trying then hide away like a bitch, don't reply to this message.'

I'm not a stallion, and the pony called me sir, so I had to reply, 'I'm a fucking mare you asshole!'

The next second, 300G acceleration killed me, as in not dead, but feeling like I was dead. My brain felt like it was ripping off and my blood rushing out of my body. Thank goodness none of that happened and that everyone endured the immense acceleration.

'Warp travel is very painful for those who have never experienced it before,' Ironstar stated as he pressed a large red button.

A blue dome appeared around the spacecraft, the space around it starting to bend. From what I saw, the cruiser was bent out of reality, space shifting around us. I couldn't feel anything in the initial part of the warp, but once we got faster and faster, near light speed, a painful feeling struck me.

Light speed is 299792458 m/s, and that's fast. Going to another galaxy at that speed would take at least a few million years, and that everyone would be dead, no stasis chambers in this place. Hitting light speed, my chest felt like it was poked by a thousand needles, and at 10000 times light speed, it felt like all my bones were shattered at the same time. At least I didn't have to endure that for long, one second later, we were there, orbiting a dead looking planet.

Still feeling the intense pain, I was at least able to relax myself, the pain going away after a few seconds of relaxing my tense muscles. I just don't get how travelling faster than light is possible, as nothing that has mass can travel faster than C, or light speed. It could just be the warp drive manipulating space around us and not actually changing our speed, but the pain, that didn't make sense.

Peeking out the window, the dead planet was orbiting a red dwarf star that looked like it was near the end of its life. The planet was all brown, complete with a low amount any green patches and barely any water. From what I could see, the water's colour was all sludgy. The landscape from up where we were looked like ant holes, spewing out what seemed like molten lava.

'Welcome to Unicron,' Ironstar announced embarrassedly, 'This is where the bullshit happens.'

I facehoofed, bullshit, what bullshit. Pointing to a megastructure in orbit, he explained, 'That's where the cure is.'

'Then what are we waiting for,' Flame Rider excitedly cried out, putting on her spacesuit simultaneously.

The structure was about 4 km away, but it was clearly visible from our end, and so Ironstar pointed the spacecraft to the orbital megastructure. Right before he throttled up the engine, I blocked him. 'Point retrograde,' I commanded, 'Then burn only about 3m/s.'

'Why?' he questioned as I told him that.

'We want to make our orbital period shorter, not longer dumbass.'

'Whatever you say.'

Doing that little retrograde burn meant that we were able to rendezvous with that space station with a relative velocity of only 7m/s and a seperation of 39m. A quick work of docking was done, and we were now able to enter it. Only problem, alien ponies. There were crowbars, guns and a pan. That should be enough to defend ourselves from something like laser rifles.

I grabbed a pan and the others grabbed guns. My thought with the pan is that it could be useful as a shield for deflecting bullets. Who knows if it would work or not, but better safe than sorry. I strapped it to my left flank and also grabbed a crowbar. The others grabbed the guns so no guns for me. I guess I'm the one doing the melee damage.

Starry and Lone Wind remained in the docked spacecraft as the others including me ventured into the vast space station. A sign appeared in front of us. It read, 'Welcome to Pentagon Space International Research Labs.'

This was the place Ironstar got kicked out of, but one year has passed, and the ponies might've forgot about him, at least I hope they forgot about him. Nobody was guarding the place, and we were able to move around easily along the neverending tubes and modules. Many rooms were also able to be found, and passing through some, we found one that had a label, a sinister label.

Leech Infection.

'Eww,' Donut complained in disgust.

'Let me do something,' Ironstar added.

There was a computer that had a terminal on the screen, and with a few taps on the keyboard, which looked weird, Ironstar was able to 'hack' it. Information was displayed on the screen about the infection.

Leech Infection
Description: Microscopic Leeches, an essential part of any disease, used to increase infection rate. Not to be used for killing the host.
Effects: Bleeding of the victim, rapid reproduction of leeches via victim's cells.

After some taps on the keyboard again, Ironstar had confirmed that it was used as part of Plague 03. So that was why ponies that were getting infected had intense bleeding. Nopony was brave enough to go in and check the place out even though we had spacesuits that could protect us fine from diseases.

We floated around the place once more, losing our sense of direction a few times because of the maze like tunnels. Dead ends greeted us with doors that would lead us to dangerous rooms, some with 'DANGER! DO NOT ENTER!' written on it. Most of the doors' descriptions had either toxic gases or bio-weapons. Yes, biological weapons, why the fuck did they need them.

Hours of navigating took place, all of us getting fatigued until a door that said 'Main Control Room' appeared along a corridor. Finally, the main control room. Can't believe how anyone's able to navigate around the place. No foes were seen, no other creatures. Quite strange for a somewhere like this. This place was a lot like an abandoned space station, but if it was, why?

Pulling out my crowbar, Ironstar used it to force the jammed door open. It was a 5cm thick hunk of metal, reinforced with lead for protection against radiation. Busting in, lifeless ponies were scattered on the floor and ceiling, almost like glued to the floor and ceiling. Dried up blood was also apparent, splattered across the place. Grabbing my crowbar, I smashed some of the ponies, no signs of life.

Analysing the dead ponies, I concluded they were most likely murdered, as marks indicate that a knife was the tool used. The frosty metal floor could also be used as a murder weapon. Who would murder these innocent ponies? On second thought, are these ponies even innocent? Whatever the reason was, that wasn't very important, the important thing was to look at the files kept in this room.

Turning around, I saw Donut cracking a computer. I could barely hear what she was mumbling, 'Leech infection, weathering decay, horn cancer, alicorn shock syndrome, rainbow arthritis, inverted shadow disease.'

Who would engineer diseases like that, why would someone engineer diseases like that. Plague-03 was a bad enough biological weapon like disease, horn cancer, alicorn shock syndrome, really? Who in Celestia's name even engineered them. I took out some food via some part of my spacesuit, and started to chew on it to stop myself from vomiting. My spacesuit could hold 3 days of food and water, nice eigh?

Donut was searching the files on the computer again, this time with Ironstar. I really don't want to see what it contained, I don't want to puke. The place was already dirty enough, imagining my mucus and stomach fluid on the floor made me want to fuck myself up even harder.

Flame Rider murmured to everyone, searching frantically for something, 'Oh shit, someone’s coming.'

Sounds of footsteps crashed into my head, a tingling sensation filled my mind. Suddenly, the sound of an explosion echoed around the place, creating an eerie aftermath. 'Close all possible entrances!' Ironstar commanded, thrashing around the place and blocking the doors with anything he could find.

Loud thumps of someone trying to get in filled the place. We remained silent, trying to stay invisible. Again, I heard Donut mutter disease names, 'Apoplexia fuscus, dark stroke, verminous softening, rheumatic weakness, confidential folder. Wait, confidential shit yeah.'

Confidential shit, what was it, a one of a kind mass destruction biological weapon capable of rapid infection and high lethality? Whatever it was, it wasn't important for now, Flame Rider, Ironstar and I were dying from exerting all our energy at blocking the door. One by one, we collapsed, Flame Rider first, Ironstar next and me last. My head went dizzy, sweat poured out my fur and I blacked out instantly.

'Planetshine, Flame rider are you here?' I heard the anonymous creature say. I knew that voice very well, it was Starry Night. She came for us along with Lone Wind. How do I know, It's obvious. Starry was still in the vegetable state, so Lone Wind had to go with her.

I yelled back, puffing, 'Starry Night, is that you?'

I was now conscious, just need to be wide awake the others already awake. Lone Wind collapsed right as he entered, floating to a wall. Trying to regain consciousness via the wall, he completely collapsed with no sign of life other than his heartbeat. Flame Rider grabbed Lone Wind by the hoof and stood him back up the right way.

'What happened Starry,' she asked.

She answered, 'It's a long story. Lone wind had been worried sick after you guys didn’t return, so he grabbed me by the hoof, stuffed me in a spacesuit and towed me into the satellite network. Of course, he had almost no equipment, so it took him ages to find traces of where you went. After he found a trace we sat down for lunch. Lone wind fed me through a tube while he enjoyed his delicious sandwich using a mechanism from inside his suit. We were suddenly approached by a hoard of alien ponies that had appeared to have weird deformities due to chemical exposure. Lone wind ran, hitting my head against multiple corners and random debris on the floor. He finally smashed my head over a destroyed spacecraft and then I woke. But wait there’s more. When I woke, Lone Wind hid me and explained who he was, and what we were doing here. We had lost most of the deformed Alien ponies through there was this one unique pony. He had a dick on its head which looked like a horn at first, but if you went through the mane then you could clearly see that it was a dick. So, I was freaking out and without a second thought, stabbed him in the dick. He fell to the ground and died. I got pretty bruised from getting dragged from the floor, though Lone wind had broken a hoof, so I carried him here, to central control.'

Long story short, got here while stabbing a pony that had a dick as a horn and Starry was now able to move. 'Wow, is the dickhead ok?' I joked, bursting into laughter. The others giggled too, but only a little, I was a giggling a little too much.

'Ironstar have you heard of the Plague-03 live pony trails?' Donut called out, her face in a crooked mess.

'Uh, nope, never heard of it,' Ironstar replied, perplexed.

Everyone except Flame Rider floated to where Donut was, staring at the computer screen. She scrolled through half the page that was talking nonsense and proceed on with the gross content. It was a video, a very disturbing video. This was the Plague-03 live pony trails. This was the video documenting Plague-03.

A pony was seen in the camera's frame, bound and gagged. She was a pastel aqua mare, complete with a turquoise mane. She was also chained to the wall, unable to escape. A mysterious alien pony came up, holding a needle with an awfully familiar looking liquid inside. What seemed like a panic attack struck the victim, its body twisting into seemingly impossible positions until kaboom, she exploded.

From what I saw, she was dead, her body exploded, thick, fresh, juicy blood was splattered everywhere. My stomach churned, I felt like throwing up. With nothing to stop the fluid from my stomach from ejecting out my mouth, I desperately took off my helmet and ejected the vomit out. I quickly put my helmet back on as I was paranoid about this place. The others didn't seem very paranoid as they all had their helmets off.

A scream emerged from somewhere in the research lab. Looking behind me, Flame Rider had blood on her muzzle, though she already knew that. Panicking, she tried to get the blood off, frantically wiping it. Samples of the blood was collected and later quickly analysed. It was blood hybrid with something else, fresh from the host's body.

Analysing it even further, it was mixed with a pure form of acid, frosium acid. Ironstar described it was an acid so strong, one drop of it could melt a hole through anything, even a moon. It had a PH rating of under -10000, very acidic. More screams emerged, followed up with leaks of blood and screams.

Author's Note

Next chapter might come a bit late.

Interlude: A Chat

I asked Starry and Flame Rider, 'What happened here anyway?'

'Long story here, let me tell you what I know,' Starry replied, sounding a bit curious for some reason.

'Mkay?' I said back.

'Let's just go inside to talk, the outside isn't suitable for this, there are couches in there,' Flamerider said.

I can't say no to couches, after all, they were comfortable as shit. We walked inside, later sitting on the not-so-comfortable couch, but hey, better than a chair.

'Back to the question, what happened,' I asked, sounding extremely curious about this universe. After all, this is an alternate universe.

'Starry's story first,' Flamerider replied.

'Ok, my story first. I can't exactly remember all of this but I was a filly back then, and I had 6 friends. Back then, in the olden times where technology barely existed, I was blasted with a concentrated bolt of magic. Nopony could help me, I was going to be dead in about one week. At that time Starswirl also lived, and he couldn't revive me. That didn't discourage my friends to help me treat this terrible incident. All I know was that all my friends traveled outside of Equestria and came up with a cure. Planetshine, you were crucial in helping me survive. I then went into stasis, and all of my friends died,' Starry told us.

I felt sad listening to that story, I just couldn't take in everything. Now it was Flame Rider's turn to tell her story. She didn't have much to say.

'I was fired from the Equestrian Space Station, and the reentry pod was faulty and it disintegrated right in front of me. Good thing I survived. It broke my hoof and cut my wing, but I'm fine. Also, I don't know how I survived, but I did. Anyways, I have the first ever mechanical wing model from Starry, or at least that was what she told me. She invented those before she went into stasis,' Flame Rider explained.