Aegis VI
Chapter 1: Hard Landing
“Captain’s Log, date 4.21.1093. We are currently drifting through the Wraith Quadrant of the Bynri Galaxy, outside of IER boundaries. Signs of extraterrestrial life have been minimal. Morale is high as we push on with our mission. We have had little unnecessary contact with Command since we last had our regular check in outside the moon of AG3-41 but will continue to provide updates at regular check-ins and intervals. This is Commander Sparkle, signing out.”
Twilight stepped back from the comm box, taking a breath of recycled air. The hum of the Harmony’s engines vibrated in her ears, and even through her lace-up black boots she could feel the cold steel walkway in her hooves. Neon lights painted her face bright green and red and shimmered as she walked toward the bridge. Passing a porthole, she got a momentarily glimpse of space and the stars, diamonds twinkling in the omnipresent, never ending black stretch that was space. Thoughts of home crossed her mind, of her family in Canterlot and her friends back in Ponyville. Of course, she had her best friends for a crew, but she never did stop thinking about going back…
No. Not until they completed their mission.
They had been tasked by Princess Celestia herself to explore the outer reaches of the Intergalactic Equestrian Republic for extraterrestrial planets and life-forms, and so far they had been unsuccessful. It had been Rainbow Dash’s idea to venture into the Wraith Quadrant, a foreboding sector of space where trade cruisers and military patrols continually ventured into and never came out. They were outside of IER boundaries, and Twilight could not help but feel a little unsettled.
She came to the doorway to the bridge and swiped her ID card. The doors slid open, revealing the bridge of the spacecraft. The bubble cockpit revealed nothing but glittering stars, and the blinking red light on the console showed that the ship was on autopilot. In the pilot’s seat, a flight-suited, rainbow-maned pegasus sat snoring with a long strand of drool hanging from her mouth.
“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight snapped, and instantly her friend was alert and awake.
“Yeah, whuh, huh? Whus goin’ on?”
“You were asleep again, Dash! C’mon, do you want us to veer off course?”
Rainbow Dash yawned. “Relax, Twilight. The autopilot hasn’t failed us yet.”
“That’s Commander Sparkle, Dash.”
“Whatever.” She kicked back her hooves and settled into a comfortable position in the swiveling pilot’s seat. The bridge was empty except for the two of them. Twilight sighed and slid into her commander chair.
“Any life-forms?”
“Negative,” Rainbow Dash answered. “Last habited planet we passed was Aegis III, at least twelve gallops from our current position.”
“Twelve gallops and nothing?”
“Affirmative.”
“Son of a parasprite,” she cursed, punching buttons on a keyboard. “We haven’t logged any samples since ES-103, and that was ages ago!”
“Well Fluttershy can do a lot with just that, y’know.”
“We need more! Princess Celestia is counting on us!”
Rainbow Dash sat up. “You know what, Twi—er, Commander Sparkle? Maybe we’ve done enough. I haven’t been back on Equestria for ten years. Nopony has, and I’m beginning to want out.”
Here we ago again, Twilight thought to herself.
“It’s been ten years since the Wonderbolts turned down my application, and here I am piloting a ship in the farthest reaches of space! Sure, I’m with my best friends, but even I can’t handle you for ten years straight! We have families, Twilight! You have your parents! AJ has Big Macintosh and Apple Bloom! We’ve done all we can. We need to go back.”
“Not until the mission is complete. We have a quota, Dash.”
“What?!” She sat up. “This is the first I’ve heard about a quota!”
“What, you didn’t know?” Twilight said smugly. “Yeah, we’ve got a quota. One hundred logged samples of alien or unknown evidence in the outer regions of Bynri. Then we head back to Caballine Galaxy and back to our families. Do you know how many pieces of evidence we’ve logged?”
Dash rolled her eyes. “How many?”
“Forty-nine,” Twilight replied, drawing a gasp from her pegasus pilot. “And that means we have to find fifty-one more pieces of evidence before we can go home.”
“Jeez, Twilight, look around us! We’re in deep space! I love a good adventure as much as the next pony, but we’ve been out here for a decade, and we’ve found practically nothing! The only IER colony in Bynri is on Aegis III, and we passed that a year ago!”
“I will go to the farthest reaches of space in order to complete our objective!”
“Our objective?!” Rainbow Dash shouted, leaping from her seat. “No, it’s your objective, you toady, sycophantic stupid piece of—”
“Stop, please!”
Fluttershy walked onto the bridge dressed in a lab coat with her mane tied back behind her. Following her were Spike, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie. Applejack must have been off repairing the faulty coolant chamber in the engine room. Spike took a breath.
“For the love of Celestia, this is the fourth argument you two have had in a week! What’s the matter with you?”
“It’s her!” they yelled simultaneously, pointing at one another.
“Oh come now, girls, pointing hooves won’t get us anywhere. Now what is it that is irking you both?”
“I wanna go home to my house, to Tank, and she wants us to find fifty-one new pieces of alien evidence!”
“Well, I’m really sorry to tell you this, Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy began, quietly and reserved, “but Twilight is correct. We do have a quota. Collecting xenobiological data is essential for forming new colonies on other planets in our universe.”
“But why do we have to do it? Why can’t we be off fighting alien deathworms and Changelings over in the Phantom Quadrant with Shining Armor? At least they’re having fun!”
“You think that’s fun?!” Twilight shouted, stamping her hoof on the metal floor. “My brother could be dead right now. Every day I check my messages to see if I get a notice from the navy that Shining Armor was killed in action. And fighting deathworms isn’t fun, Dash! For Celestia’s sake, did you ever see Shining Armor when he returned from assignment?!”
“What do you mean?”
“I talked with him four months ago after he and the rest of the navy had won back Satyr’s moon in the Phantom Quadrant from the Changelings. His face was ragged. His eyes were dogged. He looked like he had seen the face of Death itself! Do you really think that’s fun, to watch all your comrades die in a fireball, or to be eaten alive by deathworms? It’s not fun, Dash! It’s the farthest thing from fun!”
Deafening silence filled the room, checked only by the occasional beep of a monitor and the hum of the ship’s engines. Suddenly an orange and yellow head poked up from a service hatch near the rear of the bridge.
“What in Equestria is goin’ on? Y’all havin’ another fight?”
In response, Twilight stormed off, cursing under her breath. Applejack looked confused.
“Was it somethin’ I said?”
* * *
“Twilight, you’ve got to stop this.”
“Yeah,” Spike said, echoing Rarity. “Fighting with Rainbow Dash isn’t getting us anywhere.”
Twilight stopped pacing the length of her cabin and looked at the group of ponies. “I will not tolerate such insubordination on my ship! You all should know that by now!”
“What does insubordination mean?” Pinkie Pie chimed in. “I never read anything in the flight manual or the objective list about insubordination!”
“I don’t think that matters right now, Pinkie,” Fluttershy said softly, sitting down on Twilight’s bed. “But Rainbow does have a point, Twilight. We’re all in this together, so we’ve got to work together.”
“She wants to go home,” Twilight answered, averting her eyes. “We all do. But that can’t happen. We’ve only completed half of our quota. We need to complete our objective.”
“Um, could somepony remind me again what we’re getting out of all of this?” Pinkie Pie said, looking around. “Was there some kind of reward?”
“Reward?” Twilight stepped towards Pinkie and clenched her teeth. “It is our duty to obey Princess Celestia and to serve the IER in all ways possible. We’ve been assigned a very important task, and—”
“Important?” Rarity scoffed. “Please, Twilight. We’re merely gathering evidence of life forms for the IER Scientific Sect! We are mere peasants to the Republic!”
“What?!” Twilight snapped. “You watch your tongue, Rarity! I’ll have you know that we are on a very important mission to gather life forms from planets that nopony has EVER explored!”
“I mean absolutely no offense, darling,” Rarity said, batting her eyes. “But you’ve got it all wrong. I respect you as Commander and as a friend, but this mission is piecemeal. Unimportant. Boring, even.”
Twilight nearly burst with newfound rage. “Why, you son of a—”
But at that moment, an alarm went off above their heads, a klaxon-like whoop accompanied by a pulsating red light. Rainbow Dash’s voice came over the intercom.
“All hooves on deck! Repeat, all hooves on deck! Everypony to the bridge, pronto! You gotta see this, guys!”
At first they were bewildered. Ten minutes ago they’d been floating in the middle of space just outside of Aegis VI. Could they really already be in the planet’s orbit? Rainbow Dash sounded afraid, very afraid, and anything that could make her shiver was worthy cause for alarm. With that in mind, everypony made for the bridge, stumbling over and bumping into each other, each trying to force her way to the front of the Harmony.
When they all piled onto the bridge and looked out the window, they thought at first that Aegis VI had been struck by an asteroid, as a large black trench dominated the planet’s surface.
“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight called out, heading to her commander’s seat. “What happened to the planet?”
“Nothing did,” Rainbow Dash said, her voice shaking.
“Then what’s that trench?”
“T’ain’t no trench, Twi,” Applejack replied. Twilight looked closer, and upon realization, her blood ran cold as ice.
A Nikorian deathworm sat in space a few thousand miles from where the Harmony hovered. It was monstrous, at least a hundred miles in length and about fifty miles wide. It was black but stood out like a sore hoof from Aegis VI’s sandy surface. It was a segmented deathworm, a Nikorandus morticus alien from Nikor, a planet in the Caballine system dubbed ‘forbidden’ to commerce and exploration by the IER. Each spherical segment was covered in millions of tiny tentacles, white and covered in highly flammable excretions. It had fins and a tail, both scythelike and menacing, but its mouth was what scared Twilight, and indeed all who had ever seen a deathworm, the most. Wide enough to take a bite the size of a small country out of a planet, it was lined with millions and millions of small serrated teeth and a tongue that excreted the same flammable toxin that its tentacles did. What baffled xenobiologists like Fluttershy was that the Nikorian deathworm needed absolutely no oxygen to survive, thriving in space and using natural thrusters in its anus to propel itself through the vast regions of space.
Twilight’s eyes twitched involuntarily. Her vessel was an exploration craft, not military. And even then, Shining Armor had mentioned that it had taken the combined power of three Stallion-class Superships to destroy one deathworm. Thankfully the worm seemed dormant and unaware of the ship’s presence.
“Kill engine power to ten percent,” Twilight ordered. “Ready proton cannon, but do NOT fire. We’re getting out of here. Rainbow, take us out.”
Rainbow Dash looked up from her pilot’s seat with glittering eyes and a bemused expression on her face.
“Finally,” she whispered. “Some action.”
“What? No, wait, RAINBOW DASH, DON’T—”
Twilight nearly fell out of her chair as Rainbow Dash punched the throttle and sent the ship hurtling towards the gigantic beast. Applejack and Fluttershy had their hooves knocked out from under them, and Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Spike all fell forward on their faces. The deathworm became bigger and bigger until it filled the viewing window. Rainbow Dash suddenly left the pilot’s seat and pressed a button on the dashboard in front of her.
A gleaming, spherical pulse of red energy shot out of the ship’s proton cannon and sailed off toward the worm. The Harmony slowed to a crawl about fifty miles outside the creature’s skin. Twilight was about to berate Rainbow Dash when the ball of energy sank into the worm’s flesh, creating a minute explosion that was like a tiny flare in comparison to the enormous beast. Suddenly the worm shifted.
“Oh, damn,” Applejack whispered.
“Rainbow Dash, you grease-turd moron! What the hell were you thinking?!”
“I—I didn’t—”
“Oh, DAMN! IT’S COMIN’ TOWARD US!”
They had little time to react before a splitting shockwave nearly tore the ship apart, presumably from the worm’s soundless roar. It had turned on a dime and now faced the Harmony.
“Get us out of here, Dash!”
But Rainbow Dash was frozen in her seat, her eyes wide with perplexed fear. Meanwhile the worm had stopped roaring, and millions of tiny white things began to erupt from his back.
“Oh my…” Fluttershy gasped.
“KYLODITES!”
Indeed they were kylodites, tiny, fleshy little living tentacles that grew on Nikorian deathworms. Many a trader ship had fallen prey to a sudden attack by the kylodites, who like their host, did not need oxygen to survive. They approached the ship with alarming speed, like millions of tiny white tendrils shooting towards the craft.
“Pinkie! Man the ion turret!”
“Yes sir, ma’am s—”
It was too late. The kylodites had impossibly covered a distance of more than five thousand miles in three seconds. They slammed into the ship, biting as they went, eating away at the circuitry. Applejack, Fluttershy, Spike, and Pinkie Pie ran to the aft of the bridge to grab ion blasters and fend them off, while the rest of the crew stayed in front, trying to guide the damaged ship.
“Hang on!” Rainbow Dash cried, and then she sent the ship into a tailspin. Everypony who wasn’t buckled down, which included everypony except Rainbow Dash, fell around the bridge and slammed into one wall after another. Soon they were just above Aegis VI’s atmosphere, and the bright desert surface of the planet was blinding.
Then a low, quick sound, followed by sudden heat. A light began blinking on a shattered monitor. The left engine was on fire!
“We’ve got a flamer!”
“Activate retardant!” Twilight shouted over the sound of tweaking metal. Rainbow Dash smashed a button with her shaking hoof. Nothing happened.
“It’s out! Those buggers must have eaten through!”
“Twilight!” Rarity called, running to the back of the ship. “We have to move, or else—”
“Wait,” Rainbow Dash screamed. “There’s something inbound! Something big…oh, DAMN IT! EVASIVE MANEUV—”
WHAM!
The deathworm came out of nowhere, and only then did Twilight realize how close they had gotten to the gigantic creature. Its massive fin sawed the ship in half, and the engine exploded in a ball of flame that quickly disintegrated.
Suddenly they were in a vacuum, and Twilight felt the air rip out from under her. She grabbed hold of a stray bar as the ship tore up in the atmosphere. Above her, the deathworm roared in victory, and the kylodites abandoned the burning wreck.
The air whipped by and the smoke choked her air-stric lungs, but Twilight couldn’t scream. She focused all of her energy into holding onto the bar for dear life. Rainbow Dash looked back at her, still strapped into the pilot’s seat, her face distorted by the wind speed. Suddenly Twilight had an idea. She grimaced and forced the magic from her body into her horn, and for mere moments she floated with the plummeting wreck of the Harmony, reaching a seat and managing to strap herself in before her magic faded.
“RAINBOW DASH!” she screamed over the howling wind, but her friend could neither hear nor see her through the smoke. The ship continued to fall, ripped in half by the deathworm’s fin. Twilight suddenly caught sight of the other half of the ship, the half on which the others were still on, clinging for their lives—or worse.
They broke through the clouds and saw hard, unforgiving desert beneath them. The air was running thin and when Twilight looked over she saw Rainbow Dash passed out in the pilot’s seat, pieces of scrap metal gouging her face. The ground grew closer and closer, and soon they were only about thirty thousand feet above the ground. The cold fingers of space left them behind, and her oxygen returned to normal, but they were still falling without a chute.
She had just a little bit of magic in left in her system, and she could make out a small line of cliffs in the area they were about to crash into. She stretched over and took the helm, steering with all her might toward the barely-visible cliff line, hoping they could coast along it and maybe slow their fall. Suddenly a dusty cloud lifted, and she could see a small oasis at the base of the cliffs. With all her might, she pushed what little magic she had left and tried to move the ship toward the oasis.
Fifteen thousand feet…twelve thousand feet…nine thousand feet…
She couldn’t hold on. The strain was too much. She let go and the burning wreckage made for the cliff line.
Five thousand feet…two thousand feet…
The ground was rushing up to meet the ship, and a final thought crossed her mind.
I’m sorry, my Princess. I failed you.
Five hundred feet…two hundred feet…fifty feet…ten feet…
CRAAASH!
The wreckage smashed into the edge of the cliff face, tearing it apart once more, and Twilight’s head snapped forward and slammed into a console, shattering it and gouging her face. She drifted into unconsciousness as the explosion of the left engine, which had still been attached to the wreckage, exploded. The explosion cast off the remainder of the ship, and it fell like a stone into the oasis with a mighty splash.
The E.S.S. Harmony lay in ruins in a tiny lake surrounded by palm trees as the cliffs above burned. As debris and other parts of the ship seemed to rain down, it seemed the sky itself was burning.
