‘Leader, I do believe that is an Equine doing the backstroke, in the middle of Deep Space.’
Kaan
Necromancer-class Guided Missile Cruiser Cleric
500 Orbital Units from star Tau Ceti
22nd April, 2241 (Earth Calendar)
To say that Leader Tonkin Kaan was confused was an understatement. The Tau Ceti star system was something of an enigma to all in known space. It was a type G8V star, and long-range scans showed that the fourth planet in the system was basically perfect for carbon-based life.
But for as long as anyone could remember, the system had been off-limits. Curiosity was getting the better of her. Tonkin Kaan was a sinai, her race could be best described as oversized snakes with two raptorial forelimbs, the ends of which held long, sharp talons that—according to tradition—were meant for ripping apart the flesh of hunted animals, but the prevailing theory of biologists said that they more likely had evolved them to aid in climbing the odd tree, or rock wall to evade predators that were even larger than they were.
Tonkin Kaan was an impressively sized sinai. She neared five metres in length, in the queer metric system of the humans of the Solar Alliance, but she preferred the use of the galactic standard unit that the backward humans refused to use. The Ter was standard everywhere, but Solar Alliance space and the Ter was 1.13 of the metre, making her 4.4 Ter long. Her scales were a ruby red, and her vertically slitted eyes were sapphire blue, a rare and attractive combination. She knew that she was a well-desired female for this fact alone, but what she prided herself on was her natural intelligence. She had been top of her class at the Sinai Junta Naval Academy, and that had allowed her to fast track her way through the ranks to Starship Leader.
She commanded the besKaH, the Cleric, a member of the Necromancer-class Guided Missile Cruisers. The largest and most powerful vessels the Sinai Junta had ever devised. She could go anywhere she wanted to and do anything that she pleased.
Except—Well that was where Tau Ceti came into play. Tau Ceti had been off-limits to the peoples of known space for longer than the sinai had been space fairing. There was a subspace beacon that broadcast its message on several wavelengths for twenty standard lightyears in all directions.
Warning! The Tau Ceti Star System is under strict quarantine, do not approach within two hundred Orbital Units under penalty of death.
She had ordered the ship to approach the system, and stop at five hundred Orbital Units. Everyone in known space knew that there was some sort of automated defence system that enforced the quarantine, and it was no secret who had made the installation. The oldest and most powerful race in the galaxy were a race of insectoids, known as the ulix’ith’nail, which—roughly translated—meant ‘The Others’. To use a human turn of phrase, they had been the thorn in the side of the Sinai Junta for nearly a thousand years.
Well, now the Junta had a starship that could handle anything that could be thrown at them. No one had been inside the Tau Ceti star system in some five thousand years, but today, she was going to make it through. She was prepared for every eventuality.
So she had thought anyway, it turned out, though that she was not prepared for this. ‘What am I looking at?’ she asked in the sinai language of IskharasH.
The junior officer at the tactical console frowned. ‘Leader, I do believe that is an equine doing the backstroke, in the middle of Deep Space,’ he hissed out in response.
One of the external cameras was showing them a winged equine, with large purple eyes that almost seemed to bulge out of its head. Eyes that looked unconcerned, as if this was just another Thursday for it. It had a straw yellow mane of hair that was a big tangled mess, with a tail to match, and a white coat covering its body. There was a mark, which looked like three purple balloons on its flank that seemed odd to Kaan.
The creature was clearly doing the backstroke, swinging its forelimbs in wide circles that quite frankly didn’t seem like it should be anatomically possible. That, of course, was only a minor detail, what was more anatomically impossible was the fact that the equine was doing this in the vacuum of space, and it should probably have been more concerned with other things, such as the fact of there being no air to breathe.
‘What are your orders, Leader?’ the junior officer from the tactical station asked.
Kaan, being too dumbfounded by the creature casually ignoring all of the laws of nature to think of any. Her first impulse would have been to turn around, go back the way they came, and pretend that none of this had ever happened. She was about ready to order just that when the creature turned its head and gave the camera a cartoonish grin and waved at them. It turned and started swimming towards them at a speed that didn’t seem like it was physically possible. Next thing that they knew, the creature did a Swan dive into the camera and suddenly emerged into the combat information centre by jumping out of the view screen, while humming the last few bars of the human composer Johann Stauss’ piece, Blue Danube.
The creature took a bow and let out a giggle. ‘Talk about breaking the fourth wall,’ it said and turned its head and winked as if other people were viewing the event from a place outside reality, which Kaan thought was absolutely ridiculous, but considering what else this creature had just been doing, it was at the very least consistent.
‘Who are you? What are you?’ Kaan managed to hiss out.
‘I’m Surprise! And I’m a pegasus pony, sort of, kind of, used to be, I’d give you my back story, but someone’s already done that in six hundred thousand words or so, we’d be here for ages if I tried to recap it all right now,’ Surprise said, turning her head slightly to the right and giving people only she could apparently see a wink.
‘I’ve had just about enough of this nonsense!’ Kaan hissed out angrily and pounded on the command console with her talon.
‘Oh! But nonsense is my middle name!’ Surprise said with a toothy grin. ‘Surprise Nonsense—’ Surprise interrupted herself and crossed her eyes as if she was thinking very hard about something. She frowned and shook her head to clear it. ‘I guess I don’t have a last name, what’s your name?’
‘Tonkin Kaan,’ Kaan hissed in reply, for she was at a loss to say anything else.
‘Nice to meet you!’ Surprise said with a bright grin. ‘We’re going to be good friends!’
…
30th April 2241
The first thing that Kaan had tried to do was shove Surprise out an airlock. In hindsight, she really should have known that wasn’t going to work. It was only a few minutes before Surprise was back on the ship and regaled her about the time that her friend Pinkie Pie accidentally blew her up with a stick of homemade dynamite. Surprise had survived this thanks to what she called a healing factor and mentioned explicitly that shooting, stabbing, exploding, and dismemberment had all not been enough to stop her in the past. Which meant that Kaan was already out of ideas on how to get rid of her. Worse still, Surprise never seemed to need to sleep, and as such, Kaan had not slept either. Now, a week later and on a slow approach to the defence perimeter, she thought she might check out a laser from the armoury and turn it on herself to end her misery. Kaan believed that the defence perimeter might have been built to keep people from meeting Surprise. If so, it wasn’t doing a particularly good job.
Surprise’s antics over the last week had been taxing to the mental health of the crew, particularly Kaan herself. She had this annoying habit of appearing from literally nowhere. A crewmember might open a locked bulkhead door, and find Surprise doing something impractical. Like on the second day, when she resumed her impossible swimming through the corridors while humming the Blue Danube. The engineering staff were refusing to go into the ship’s maintenance tunnels after one rounded a corner and found Surprise in one, there to make silly faces to anyone who passed by. On the third day, the protein sequencer in the aft crew mess had somehow been reprogrammed to only dispense tea and biscuits. Kaan had ordered that the mess be sealed off. The final straw, to use another human turn of phrase, came when Surprise held an impromptu tea party in Kaan’s office with honoured guests being, the fire extinguisher from deck seven, a bundle of unobium superconducting wire, a spare tertiary processing node, and a slab of a strange smelling meat that no one could explain the origin of.
Then came today, when Surprise had taken to merrily skip down the corridors, following Kaan wherever she went, singing pop songs from Earth’s twentieth century, how Surprise knew these songs, Kaan had not the faintest of ideas, but it was a real horror.
‘Young man, there’s no need to feel down. I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground! I said, young man, ’cause you’re in a new town, there’s no need to be unhappy!’ Surprise sang as she skipped along.
Kaan recognised the song as belonging to the ‘disco’ genre, and she was pretty sure that it had been developed as a form of psychological warfare. How Surprise knew this form of torture was beyond her, but she knew that she didn’t want to know.
‘It’s fun to stay at the YMCA! It’s fun to stay at the YMCA! They have everything for you men to enjoy! You can hang out with all the boys!’ Surprise sang as Kaan zipped around the corner.
Despite their large size, sinai were much quicker creatures than anyone expected.
After doubling back through the engineering bay, she managed to give Surprise the slip, and made her way into her office, and opened a drawer to take out an entertainment tablet to take her mind off things when Surprise jumped out of the cabinet with that stupid grin on her face. The pony had this unnatural talent of being able to squeeze herself into impossibly small places. ‘Did I ever tell you about the time my friend Vinyl Scratch launched me into the ocean with a trebuchet? That was a fun day.’
Kaan recoiled in terror and darted from the room. The realisation was setting in on her, Surprise was so incredibly random that she could just casually violate all the laws of nature. There was only one way out, her sleep-deprived mind told her. It was a full proof plan! Nothing could stop her!
She slithered into the combat information centre and smacked the command console to turn it on. ‘Computer! Initiate auto-destruct!’ she hissed out.
Nothing happened. Kaan cursed, the last thing she needed right now was a mechanical failure, she opened up the command console to inspect the circuits when Surprise jumped out. ‘Surprise! It’s me!’ she said with a big toothy grin.
Kaan, for her part, nearly leapt out of her skin and tripped over the console and onto the floor.
Her will broke, Kaan went over to the helm control and began to tap at it madly. She needed to get away from Surprise, and this was the only way to do it. There was a gas giant near the defence perimeter, she set a course and activated the ship’s Cherenkov Drive, and the vessel leapt right into the planet’s gravity well, usually the defence grid would have opened up on them and killed them just as quickly as they tried a stunt so stupid, but the planet got them first. The last thought that Kaan thought before she was crushed to death by the planet’s gravity was how glad she was to be free at last.
Surprise, for her part, was unperturbed, the pegasus pony was so hyperactive that she could literally vibrate through walls when she wanted to. So she had and frowned as she watched the Cleric be crushed beyond salvage by the Gas Giant, Tartarus. Surprise shook her head and sighed. Now she’d have to find new friends to play with.
…
Glover
Dreadnought-class Fleet Tender SAS Gneisenau
500 Orbital Units from star Tau Ceti
6th May, 2241 (Earth Calendar)
To say that Kaptein Cassiopeia Glover was confused was an understatement. The Tau Ceti star system was something of an enigma to all in known space. It was a type G8V star, and long-range scans showed that the 4th planet in the system was basically perfect for carbon-based life.
But for as long as anyone could remember, the system had been off-limits. Curiosity was getting the better of her. Especially after hearing that a sinai heavy cruiser had vanished without a trace near the edge of the system.
Glover was a human woman, 163 centimetres tall, with rust coloured hair that hung to her shoulders, with bright blue eyes and light skin, a heart-shaped face, full lips, and a small nose. She sat belted into the command seat on the bridge of the Gneisenau, a Dreadnought-class Fleet Tender. Ships of the Dreadnought-class were named for famous ships in human history. They were a repair and supply ship, so if the Cleric needed help, they would be the ones to supply it.
So she had thought anyway, it turned out, though that she was not prepared for this. ‘What am I looking at?’ she asked in the human trade language of Afrikaans.
The junior officer at the tactical console frowned. ‘Kaptein, I do believe that is an equine doing the backstroke, in the middle of Deep Space,’ he said in response.
One of the external cameras was showing them a winged equine, with large purple eyes that almost seemed to bulge out of its head. Eyes that looked unconcerned, as if this was just another Thursday for it. It had a straw yellow mane of hair that was a big tangled mess, with a tail to match, and a white coat covering its body. There was a mark, which looked like three purple balloons on its flank that seemed odd to Glover.
The creature was clearly doing the backstroke, swinging its forelimbs in wide circles that quite frankly didn’t seem like it should be anatomically possible. That, of course, was only a minor detail, what was more anatomically impossible was the fact that the equine was doing this in the vacuum of space, and it should probably have been more concerned with other things, such as the fact of there being no air to breathe.
‘What are your orders, Kaptein?’ the junior officer from the tactical station asked.
Glover bit her lip and turned to face the officer. ‘Come about and get us out of here. I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I sure don’t want anything to do with it,’ she said.
She decided that she would leave this incident out of her log. Besides, no one at fleet command would believe her. She was not sure she even believed it herself.
