Star Trot

Chapter 3: Hostile Action

Listen to The Normandy Attacked.

Deck 1, Bridge, PSS Equestallation,

Deep Space, in front of unidentified alien ship,

Stardate 64429, 0107 Hours, Shipboard Time.

“RAISE SHIELDS, FULL ALERT!” Twilight shouted on the impact of alien torpedo.

“Raising shields, captain.” Cadet Spike answered, trying to keep calm as the alarm that belonged to full alert started going off(A long beep every few seconds.).

Everywhere on the ship the lights had dimmed upon the alert starting. Red lights flashed on and off in sync with the alarms, and computer panels had darkened a bit.

“Status report!” Twilight commanded Rarity, who had braced herself to her work station when the ship took the hit, and was still recovering from the shock.

After a second Rarity went through all the damage reports that had come in, and she reported “Hull breaches on decks five through nine. Eighteen wounded and still counting.”

Before Twilight had time to say anything, Rainbow Dash shouted something.

“Captain, they’re firing again!” was the commander’s feverish message, and indeed, they could see another torpedo incoming.

“Evasive mano-“ Twilight started, but the torpedo hit before she could finish.

This time the damage was mostly deflected by the shields, but there was still a notable shake and some panels were sure to come loose due to the hits.

“Shields down to eighty-five percent” Spike reported when the brief shake was over.

“Captain, I suggest we return fire or get out of here!” Rainbow recommended to the captain, her face lit up by the red alarm lights every two second.

“No. Evasive manoeuvres, get us away from their nose cone.” Twilight answered strictly. She wasn’t about to fire on aliens they hadn’t had the slightest of contact with: This could all be some misunderstanding.

As Spike brought the ship about so they wouldn’t be straight in front of the enemy ship anymore, yet another projectile was fired. Compared to the speed and manoeuvrability of the small warheads, the Equestallation was much too slow and unable to dodge it. When it hit, the cadet reported “Shields down to seventy percent!”

Two other hits landed on them, Spike reported the shield integrity yet again. “Shields at sixty-no, fifty percent!”

“CAPTAIN SPARKLE!” Rainbow shouted, shocked and annoyed by her captain’s irrational behaviour. Sure, she could understand that Twilight didn’t want to shoot at a new alien ship, but the crew was in danger here, and it didn’t look like the aliens were the diplomatic types.

“Fine. Fire sparklers, target their shield and weapon systems. Bring us about and prepare for FTL travel.” Twilight admitted and commanded, finally realising that they couldn’t contact the aliens at this time.

Spike began both navigating the ship to point away from the aliens so they could escape, and returning fire. If it wasn’t such a stressful situation, it would have been fascinating to see the young dragon’s claws fly over the his command terminals.

When the ship started moving, it also fired a few bursts of directed energy through its Sparkler banks. The giant lasers hit the enemy at their cannons and-

“Fired sparklers at full power, no damage.” Spike reported. Their attack had been fruitless.

“Fire 3 torpedoes.” Twilight commanded, and then commanded over the intercom, “Applejack, prepare the engines for FTL speed.”

“Aye cap’n” Applejack shouted from engineering. Down there everything was hectic: repair crews were on their way to the hull breaches, and on top of that they had to power up the drive core again.

The three torpedoes were fired, all of which hit supposedly strategic targets. Spike took a look at their attack’s result, and then said “If these readings are correct, we might have lowered their shield integrity by one percent.”

Twilight was about to shout that they should to FTL speed as soon as it was possible, but then the aliens fired again.

It seemed like positioning themselves at the side of the ship again wasn’t such a smart idea; the majority of the cannons were there. A volley of five torpedoes was fired. When they started hitting the ship, the shaking was enough to make an engineer who was running over the bridge fall.

After the shaking was over, Spike shouted “SHIELDS DOWN!”.

This was enough for Twilight to know that they would need to get out of here, or ponies would start dying. “Can we go to FTL yet?”

“No captain, I need ten more seconds!” Applejack replied over the intercom, nearly panicking due to the damage that had been dealt to the shields.

Immediately after the words had left AJ’s mouth, an alarm went off on Rarity’s console. “Oh dear…” was the only thing she could say, but everypony on the bridge could see what it was about.

The aliens were firing three more torpedoes, all at two second intervals. The first one hit close to the engines, the second one at living quarters and the third one behind the bridge.

Twilight was thrown out of her chair, hitting the ground head first. For a moment, everything was a little blurry for her, but after five seconds or so, she could see the damage that had been done.

Sparks came from severed power wires that hung from the ceiling, some wall panels had come loose and there was a fire next to the navigation consoles.

Behind Twilight, Rainbow(who had managed to remain in her chair) shouted “Applejack, I need that FTL drive NOW”

“Sorry Commander, that torpedo took out them drive coils. We need at least an hour to get ‘em fixed, if not more!” Applejack feverishly replied from engineering.

After hearing this, Twilight shook her head and got up, recovering from the blast. She returned to her chair and said “Spike, try to shoot at any more torpedoes they fire at us. If you manage to find a weak spot, hit it at once. In the meantime, get us as far away from the alien ship as we can. Engineering, get the shields and FTL engines back online. Everything else is a secondary priority excluding main power and life support. Rainbow, get down to engineering and help with any repairs: They need all the help they can get. Sickbay, prepare for more casualties. Rarity, send out a distress call to all nearby Equestrian ships and let’s hope someone picks it up. I also want a damage report every time we get hit.”. This was the reason she was a captain: In case of emergencies, REAL emergencies, she could remain calm and easily command a ship full of wounded ponies.

Everypony on the bridge stared at the captain for a few seconds, and then all confirmed their orders. Rainbow left for engineering, Spike called up a more precise targeting interface so he could hit projectiles and Rarity got to work on a distress signal and damage reports.

Deck 11, Main Engineering, PSS Equestallation,

Deep Space, in front of unidentified alien ship,

Stardate 64429, 0120, Shipboard Time.

Engineering was a mess when Rainbow entered. Steam came from a multitude of pipes, some other pipes had fell onto the floor(wounding several ponies) and it was clear that everyone was focused on the repairs. Nothing else mattered right now.

“Dash!” was shouted from behind a console at the other side of the room. It was Applejack, as was to be expected. She seemed to be trying to fix something at the engine core whilst also trying to do something at a panel. “I could really use some darned help over here!”

The rainbow pegasus galloped over, and asked “What d’ya need me to do, Lieutenant?”

“Just grab somethin’ that could be used to weld, anything, and weld them pipes over there!” Applejack said, and she pointed at a few leaking pipes near the engine cores. “They’re leakin’ coolant, and if that continues we could have us a core overload.”

“Right, on it.” Rainbow replied as she began searching for anything to mend the broken pipes. Her eye fell on a hyperspanner; that would have to do. She picked it up with her mouth and flew over the leaking pipes. As the commander began welding, she noticed that things were looking worse than they had thought. The coolant leak was only the beginning of the damage: Multiple key power lines to the core were severed, but others were working on that. The most worrying thing was damage to the fuel intake, but Applejack was working on that herself, so that was also being worked on.

Snapping out of it and going back to her work, Rainbow focused on the coolant leak. It wasn’t hard to mend a simple coolant leak, she just had to make sure that she didn’t get any coolant on her. ‘That stuff is cold’ she thought to herself. ‘And not just normal cold, at least 25% colder than standard coolant. 25%!’

Not much later, she was done with the pipes. “Right, done over here!” she shouted over to the lieutenant. “Need help with those fuel lines?”

“Nope, rather have people from within’ the engineering department handle this. No offense, but can you work on those power lines instead?” The lieutenant replied, pointing at the severed power lines near a maintenance catwalk around the core.

“Sure, I’ll get on it.” Rainbow answered, and she flew over to the engineers working on the power lines. Just as she landed and was about to get to work, there was another hit. She tumbled down from the catwalk. Opening her wings just in time, the pegasus managed to land safely. “WHOA!”

With the hit, all the lights except for the emergency lights went out.

“What in tarnation…” Applejack muttered, as Rainbow tapped her badge(which also happened to be a communicator) and said “Rainbow Dash to the bridge. What was that? I thought Cadet Spike was shooting any other projectiles?”

“Yeah, sorry about that!” could be heard from Spike, who sounded stressed out as  he shouted across the bridge. Then came a response from Twilight. “One of them got through. We lost all main power, so we’ve only got emergency lighting, internal sensors, life support and communication… some of the main elevators are still online too.”

“Well, this can’t get any wors-“ Applejack attempted, but was interrupted by something suddenly illuminating a wall. It was one of the aliens materialising on the ship.

“Forget I said anythin’…”

Deck 1, Bridge, PSS Equestallation,

Deep Space, in front of unidentified alien ship,

Stardate 64429, 0125, Shipboard Time.

The main bridge wasn’t in any less chaos than Engineering. Multiple engineers had arrived to repair the damage that had been done, all of them trotting around, but their progress was going slow. The fire next to the navigation console had been put out, but that hadn’t fixed things: Multiple wires and subsystems that should be hidden behind panels were visible and clearly broken due to the heat that was there moments earlier.

Twilight had been talking to Rarity about other ways of defense when the torpedo that took out main power had it. After the short communication with Engineering, they didn’t have time to resume their conversation because there came yet another message.

The words “Intruder Alert!”  could be heard over the entire ship in the voice of Applejack. “We got ourselves an alien in Engineerin’, materialised right ‘n front of us.”

Twilight got up from her chair and immediately began asking questions over the communication lines: “What does it look like? Is it armed? What is it doing? Does it have l-“

She was interrupted by Rainbow who apparently had enough of the captain’s rant and got close enough to Applejack to speak through the same commlink. “Captain!” She just said. It was just one word, but it was enough to snap Twilight out of it.

“Right, right… Well? What does it look like?” Twilight replied and asked with genuine interest and a tad of annoyance. This had been the second time in the past thirty minutes the Commander had spoken to her in a rather rude way… When this was all over, she would have to confront her about that.

“I haven’t seen anything like it, Cap’n... It’s got four legs like us, but it’s skin’s all charred and grimy, a bit like gravel, I s’pose.” Applejack replied. “So far it’s just standin’ there, starin’ at us, bu-wait, t’is moving now.”

“Where is it going Lieutenant? What is it doing?” Twilight barked, annoyed that she couldn’t see what was happening on her own ship, but also excited because a brand new life form was aboard their ship.

“T’is headin’ towards an information console.” Applejack answered. A few seconds passed, and then AJ added “It appears to be doin’ something with a console, not sure what. We have security teams here cap’n, armed and ready. Should they open fire?”

“Negative, it might be trying to learn.” Twilight replied, and turned towards Rarity. “Ensign, could you find out what it is accessing?”

“But of course, Captain” Rarity answered with her usual flair, but not without stress. She accessed the internal sensors, and began reading the readings out loud. “At the moment it’s downloading non-classified data like our home planet, star charts and those matters.”

Twilight nodded. “That’s okay, let it get what it wants. As I said, it’s trying to learn; maybe it can figure out that we’re not a threat to them.”

“Wait for a moment, Twilight… Now it’s attempting to access restricted files like shield frequencies, blueprints and weapon schematics.” Rarity said, tone shifting to wary.

“Okay, that’s not good…” Twilight mumbled. As a captain, one of her most important duties was making sure that the Equestrian Federation’s technology didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Reluctantly, she gave an order to Engineering. “Applejack, order the security teams to stun the alien. Only stun it, no more.”

“Got it, cap’n.” Applejack replied, and she could be heard talking to the security officers down in Engineering. “Y’all heard the lady, stun it.”

What happened next was slightly unnerving for the ponies on the bridge to hear: Weapons fire sounded from engineering, after which the alien growled angrily, apparently not getting stunned easily. Rarity raised a hoof to her mouth in shock, terrified by the noises of the angry alien downstairs.

“Cap’n, it ain’t goin’ down if we put sparklers on stun. Permission to turn the power up, the alien’s headin’ towards us.” Applejack said rather feverishly. ‘Said’ was an understatement, though: It was more of a mix between saying and shouting, which was understandable judging the situation of an assumingly hostile alien walking towards her.

This time, Twilight didn’t doubt her decision. The alien clearly didn’t have any good intentions, and it was time to put a stop to its actions. “Permission granted, Lieutenant. Just make sure you don’t kill it.”

There came no reply from Applejack, but Rainbow Dash could be heard saying something among the lines of ‘putting up the heat’. Soon after, the sound of lasers intensified, and then stopped completely. “Aright cap’n, we took it down.” Was reported by Applejack, and she quickly added “No casualties on our end.”.

“Very well, Lieutenant. Get it transported to Sickbay so Fluttershy can take a look at it and tell her I’ll be on my way down.” Twilight replied to Applejack, getting up from her chair and moving forward a bit. She then added “Tell the Commander to get down there as well.” before heading towards the elevator. As she stood inside it, the Captain quickly said “Ensign Rarity, you have the bridge.” just seconds before the doors closed.

Deck 4, Sickbay, PSS Equestallation,

Deep Space, in front of unidentified alien ship,

Stardate 64429, 0150, Shipboard Time.

Rainbow Dash was moving through the corridors on Deck 4 at a brisk pace, headed towards Sickbay. The corridors were still dark due to the loss of powers, and every now and again a repair crew galloped past her. ‘This is bad…’ was one of the only thoughts going through her mind, and it was quite true. She had served in the federation for 3 years now, and never had a situation looked this grim. Sure, ships she was on had taken a few hits here and there, but this was whole new level of bad.

Rainbow Dash trotted into Sickbay to find a security team, some wounded ponies from the attack earlier, the (unconscious) alien and Twilight Sparkle already there in the company of Fluttershy. The alien had been teleported over there as it would be a hassle to carry it all the way up there, and it was lying on an operating table with Twilight and Fluttershy standing around it, the latter of them doing a few scans. Twilight had of course arrived earlier, as the Bridge was closer to Sickbay than Engineering.

“Ah, commander, you’re here. The Lieutenant Commander here was just finishing some scans on the alien.” Twilight said as Dash came through the doors, giving her a nod.

“Came as fast as I could, Captain!” Rainbow said as she snapped a quick salute before trotting over to the operating table the other two were standing at. “So ‘Shy, what have ya got?”

Fluttershy was just finishing her scans and quickly glanced over the results. “Well uhm… It’s hard to tell what’s what because the physiology is… different… from ours.” The shy pegasus muttered whilst looking from the alien, to Rainbow, to Twilight. “It appears to have some sort of armor which was protecting it from the sparkler beams. Even though it had that for protection, it suffered from minor internal bleeding… or uhm… I think it’s internal bleeding.”

“Could you clarify on that?” Twilight asked politely, studying the alien avidly. Even though it could have hurt her crew, she couldn’t prevent her scientist side taking over. “I mean, if you can’t be sure if it’s internal bleeding, it has to be completely different from us!”

“Well you see, it appears it’s organs and bones can be folded in any shape it wants… With that I mean it could become flat if it so desires, and slide underneath doors.”  The pegasus looked over her results again before continuing. “This also means the creature’s veins are hard to differentiate… I can’t decide if this it’s just normal or if something is wrong with it.”

Twilight nodded animatedly. She was still looking at the alien with great interest, and had taken in every word Fluttershy said and was processing the information now. The possibility of the creature becoming flat was a completely new concept to her and the federation in general, as nothing like this had ever been seen before.

In a direct contrary with Twilight, Rainbow’s eyes had glazed over completely, and instead she was worrying about the many repairs. When it came to science, it would be an understatement if you would say her attention span was rather short.

Before any of them could say anything, the ship shook violently again accompanied with another loud crash. Most patients in sickbay had been sleeping before, but now multiple tumbled out of their beds, which of course cut their sleep short. Twilight tapped her comm badge and said “Bridge, damage report!”

An answer came from Rarity. “Another torpedo got through, and we got hull breaches in several non-essential storage areas, Captain.”

“Very well.” Twilight replied, and she turned towards Rainbow Dash. “We should come up with a plan of defence soon, we can’t continue taking hits like that.”

“Yeah, that might be a good idea, but it’s already certain that we can’t just break through their shields just like that.” Rainbow said, and she thought for a moment. Even though she wasn’t good at the theoretical stuff, she wasn’t bad at coming up with offense or defence plans. “How about we send a shuttle and give it covering fire, see if we can get it to dock somewhere?”

Twilight pondered about that offer for a minute or two. It was a very good idea in general; if a shuttle could dock and board the enemy vessel, they could either try diplomacy or turn off their shields from there. The downside was that a shuttle was fragile, and she wasn’t about to order some of her crew to go on a possible suicide run.

“That might not be a bad idea, Commander, but it’d be very risky…”

Before Rainbow could respond, they were interrupted again, this time by a sudden change of alarms.  “Ugh, what NOW?!” Rainbow shouted in frustration. A second afterwards, she got her answer.

“Intruder alert on Decks 4, 5 and 12!”