Steel & Stone

by Ineptus Astartes

Rating: teen
Tags: Human, Twilight Sparkle, Main 6, Princess Luna, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Other, Adventure, Princess Celestia
Length: 20563

They came from the stars. They told us 'We come in peace.' They brought us War.

The Galactic Union, a conglomeration of dozens of races, Humans, Vurkuristar, Kugs, Vernid and more. Constantly waging wars of apocalyptic proportions against their vile foes.

Equestria, a world of equines who value peace and friendship above all else and who never know true hardship.

One unexplained malfunction in the computer-brain of the flagship of the Fifth Expeditionary Fleet of the Union brings Equestria into the light of a blood-soaked galaxy. For good or ill.

(huge thanks to Carnelian for the cover art and telling me how to submit)

(Huge thanks to 'the guys' who participated in my Venture Command strategy game that inspired this fic)

Published 2012-11-20 16:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2012-12-08 19:41:02 UTC

From the Stars

UISV Starry Ice

“Commander?”

Commander Rantus Grendel of the Galactic Union Fifth Expeditionary Fleet regarded the head technician.

“Yes, technician?” He asked.

The technician was a Hargule, one of the many xenoform races within the Galactic Union, a conglomeration of races separated by hundreds of light-years. The Hargule were one of the less common races of the Galactic Union, a race who’s guttural voices colored their Galactic Universal Speech. They traced their roots back to Hargonnen, a violent desert world in the Hadron cluster and stood at a stocky five feet when unaugumented. Their biology gave them immense strength, though not nearly as much as the Vurkuristar. Their arms were comparatively short to their longer, bulkier legs and tusks sprouted from their jawbones. These tusks dominated their faces; emerging from their dark brown hides and making them speak with very clipped tones.

“Engineering wishes to inform you that we have almost completely exhausted our Ferrerium stores. The ship has been travelling for nearly twice as long as she should have been and we only have a few more hours to coax out of the fumes left in the engines. Once we stop, our Ferrerium stores will be depleted. That, on top of the engine damage from running constantly for half a century will make our in-system burn last days and our engines will have to cool down for several years if they survived the heat wash. We’ll be dead in space.”

Commander Grendel sighed. The old commander had come quite a long distance from his beginnings. He had always loved sailing the stars. He had often heard of ships that had vanished, only to be found hundreds of years later, their crews withered away and their frozen passengers eaten in desperation. It was a grim fate and one that Grendel had no wish to have.
“Get as much power out of that engine as you can, the Astrographer charted the nearest system as little under a light-day from this spot, correct?”

The technician nodded his head. “That is correct,” He admitted.

“We've been traveling for half a century technician, and I've been awake for ten years of that, I will be very disappointed if we fail just short of possible salvation. I’m going to give a fleet-wide command, understood? Rout the command to the Spirit, the Twilight and the Wake. I can only assume their engines are just as debilitated by now.”

“With all due respect, the Red Wake is a Technocracy ship and is likely far more efficient than ours by a long shot.”

“Nevertheless, we can’t risk it, order every ship to execute a Vernid Drift,” said the commander, turning to the comms officer.

“I am afraid I have no record of that maneuver,” said the helmsman from his station, guiltily.

“A Vernid Drift is when you fire all engines at full power for one point six hours and then cut them for an in-system burn. The inertia should take care of the rest for roughly five hours. Then fire the arresting jets. We should ‘drift’ into the system. I thought that maneuver was well-known. it was popularized at the Battle of Aphranti.”

The Hargule nodded. “I will order engineering to brace the engines for this…strenuous act.”

The alien adept took his station at the engineering console as the commander turned back to the helmsman. “Did you get all that?” asked the old commander. The helmsman nodded.

“Then make it so.”

Grendel’s flagship, the Starry Ice had had a long and venerable history, going all the way back for hundreds of years when humanity first contacted the alien races of the S-X star systems and torn their worlds apart for the precious Ferrerium hidden within their crust. This ship had fought in the corporate wars during that time, even during the Death of Sandswept, when the desert world had been blown to smithereens and robotic salvage drones tore the Ferrerium from the dead rocks. It had even had the honor of escort to the Carrion Bird, which had been the historical vessel where the hand of humanity had clasped the claw of the Vurkuristar. It was a mid-aged ship, and Grendel was not sure he should be pushing its engines so hard but the alternative was a cold, horrible death. Between that and arriving at a planet where Ferrerium might be found at the cost of a three-year layover, he would take his chances with the planet.

Grendel stood and prepared to wake his charges. Thousands of personnel were stored in the belly of the Ice, deep in hibernation. They would be expecting to arrive at the world of Haddon-56-A, a colony world unsettled and directly in the path of a Scourge fleet.

Oops.

Grendel blamed himself for that failing. It had been no fault of his, but he still felt responsible. Something had gone dreadfully wrong with the ship, and so it had with the rest of the slaved fleet. Suddenly, spontaneously and completely unexpectedly the ship’s navigational computer had gone haywire, like some mad sprite had jumped into its circuits and started hitting them. The malfunction tore them from their projected course to somewhere completely different and had brought then nearly thirty light years into uncharted space before waking Grendel and the command crew to oversee the ailing fleet. The star maps had had them traveling blind for decades now, and there was nothing they could do except stop or start the engines, every time it was a blind jump. No one could figure out what caused such a devastating error. Commander Grendel just counted himself lucky that they had not collided with a star or nebulae. It was almost like the ship had a safely planned route without knowing it.

As this thought entered Grendel’s mind, it gave him an idea, normally he would disregard it, as probes were usually only useful to scout out battle areas before a naval conflict or planetary invasion, but now that he was entering an uncharted star system, he would want to know exactly what awaited him.

“Van, launch a superluminal probe, see if there’s even a few asteroids out there,” he said to the bipedal mantid at the controls and the first mate of the thirty-being crew. The lieutenant routed the command through to astrographer Tenson, on the probe deck, and moments later they heard the ship shudder as the faster-than-light piece of metal shot from their hull.

Captain Darius Xarxes, the reserved and normally quiet individual and the only combat officer on the bridge spoke his mind for the first time in nearly a week. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” The man’s voice was deep and resonant, fooling most into believing the Galactic Union Intelligence officer was a paragon of honesty and virtue, this was, of course not the case, the man was a killer, but he was also often the voice of reason the few times he spoke to those not in his shadowy department. “The probe could be detected by any possibly hostile factions and alert them to our coming.”

Grendel shook his head. “If there is any hostile force there with the ability to detect a superluminal probe as something more than a flash of light then they would have zeroed in on our drive emissions and light reflections years ago. In any case, it’s already launched.” He gestured top the comm. Station, where little lights flashed as the probe dumped the data it was collecting into the ship’s computer.

The probe was now data, its internal cores sending messages as it burned itself away within moments. Nothing could survive more than a few hours traveling at lightspeed. Even then, it would be impossible to drop out of lightspeed, hence why the interstellar travel of the ships of nearly any race in the galaxy was just a hair’s breadth under lightspeed. It took decades, sometimes even centuries to get anywhere but there was no realistic alternative.

“Sir! Something’s coming through! A planet!” shouted the comms officer.

Grendel hardly believed his ears. “Feed it through, feed it through!” he yelled. This was good fortune He had assumed he would arrive at this star and find, if he was likely, a nebula, an oort cloud and a few proto-planets or clouds of dust.

The ship shuddered slightly as bits of information spanned distances immeasurable and collided with the receiver node. The data sent tangible impacts vibrating through the colossal spar of a ship.

They comms officer nodded and spoke.

The data we have shows…a planet…it’s terrestrial! It’s Inhabitable!...holy shit…it’s-”

The officer’s last statement was drowned out by the adulations of half a dozen xenoforms, clicks grunts whoops and hoots.
“This is a military vessel, you will respect the chain of command, do not speak out of turn,” demanded the commander. “What was that last?” he asked of the comms officer.

“The sun…it appears to be orbiting this world…”

“The readings must be off,” grated a voice like wood and rock scraping a hollow tree stump. In fact it was the smashing of arachnoid pedipalps and the lashing of a bladed tongue on inner mouthparts. Its owner, Bo’sun Ugor, a Vurkuristar of herculean proportions was glaring at the comms officer with all four of his glowing blue eyes, though to be fair all any Vurkuristar ever did was glare. They were the most violent race in the Galactic Union and were first discovered as a cannibalistic race of stone-age savages on a jungle death world.

“Excuse me?” Asked the comms officer. “I should know what this says,it’s my job. And it clearly says that this system is geocentric.”

“But that’s imp-” began a few crewers, Grendel raised a hand. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, the news that our stop is within reach on impulse drive is....well, it’s a one in a billion chance. And we should capitalize on it. Officers, with me, we’re going to wake the cargo, Octavius, Ugor, you have the bridge.”

The comms officer and bo’sun nodded as the others cleared out of the circular room and boarded the tramway to the cryo-bays. When all was silent and the humming of machinery was the only thing that could be heard, Ugor turned his chitinous form towards Octavius. “You cannot be right.” He grated in passable galactic. “It goes against all that we know, it’s the reason we can’t travel faster than light. Not even the Draug or the Technomancy can do it. It defies physics.”

“Say what you like. It’s still there. A sun orbiting a world…could be a faulty reading though,” murmured the comms officer.

The vurkuristar shifted his massive bulk slightly on his station-throne. “I hope so…”

Octavius looked at his xeno collegue. “Why?”

Ugor grunted. “I know more of your kind than you, it would seem. Didn’t your ancestors believe that Sol orbited your world? How would the public react to a seemingly divine phenomenon?”

Octavius looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure.”

“But you know it in your mind.” Said Ugor. “It would end in war. Religious zealotry would raise it’s ugly head yet again and there would be war.”

UISV Starry Ice -Central Tram

Commander Grendel surveyed the rest of the bridge team on the way to cryo storage. As they passed through the empty parts of the colossal ship he ignored the ghost town that it seemed to be for the time being and instead focused on the eight people with him. The first mate, Van was a vernid, a member of that mantis-grasshopper species from vernox and the first spacefarers humans had ever met. His dark round eyes bulged from an angular chitin-plated green face, unreadable as always.

Glancing back foreword, Grendel took a moment to watch the ship as they passed through it.

It was a hulk, a vessel manufactured by the military hardware company Thayne&Kamisk, it was built in accordance to Vernid designs, a long, central spar separated the crew quarters from the cryogenic storage and the holds of the vessel. All in all, it was twenty kilometers long and had had to be manufactured in high orbit of Vernox. The central spar housed the barracks for the troops, factories, processing plants, armories, hangers and all the like. The tramway went directly down the vessel’s spine.

Spine was an apt word to describe the central tram of the Starry Ice. The vessel was nearly a living thing itself, a behemoth of steel, adamantium and deuterium; it was the fifth-largest type of spacefaring vehicle designed. Its bridge was its brain, the sensory antenna below that was its eyes. The blink-wave caster was its mouth. The tramways were arteries that brought creatures through its metallic body. The huge plasma reactors were its heart, powering the rest of its body and pumping superconductive Ferrerium gas through its veins to its thrusters. It’s lungs were the skyscraper-like triple-converters that converted the compressed Ferrerium gas to energy. It’s liver and kidneys were the hundred-foot tall air scrubbers, that filtered out poisons and the regulators, which kept the myriad of life forms alive, even if they could not breath oxygen-rich air.

Four kilometers of Cryogenic storage bays were its stomach, where, soon enough, ten thousand soldiers, workers, crewers and civilians would awaken and give the vessel life. The fact that beings could survive in this near-city was a testament to it’s power and the complicated computer-brain of the ship. It had to monitor each living thing locked in it’s guts constantly and care for them, feeding them nutrients and slowing their heart rate. Keeping every creature locked in suspended animation that had to be perfectly tailored to each being, Even races so similar that they could undergoes the same medical procedures, like Humans and Kugs needed to have the cryo-bay they resided in for years to be perfect for them and them alone.

Grendel was torn from his musings by a voice.

Head Chirurgeon Sevros Heller stood a bit removed, his acolyte behind him, they were checking their arm-displays and their vacuum suits were white, with the red cross blazed on the shoulder. It was Heller who was speaking.

“What was that?” Asked Grendel.

“Sir, I was requesting permission to activate the cryo-bay thawing machines warmup procedures.” He gestured at his arm console for emphasis.

“Granted,” Said Grendel.

The thawing process that would wake the people on the ship, one at a time. It was slow and arduous but it was better than waking them all at once, where a malfunction could be catastrophic, if the things overheated. The tramway began to slow down, as they arrived in cryo storage.

Stepping out, the first thing grendel noticed was the cold.

It was utterly frigid, even through his temperature-controlling vacuum suit it was uncomfortable. His un-helmeted head bore the worst of the cold; he could hear teeth chattering at it took a moment to realize it was his own.

“This way.” Said the chirurgeon. The others followed him.

Technician M’kai was poring over a holographic screen set into a pane in his chest as he walked, no doubt preparing to aide the medical personnel in deactivating the cryo-freezers. He seemed unperturbed by the cold. The blunt Hargule’s half-mechanical body twitched and hissed as hydraulics worked and compensators shifted. His face was almost hidden by a steel plate with two glaring red eyes that shone like embers; a thin rime of frost covered his steel face. The sinister effect was somewhat spoiled by the conflicting blue glow of the screen he was gazing at but he had never cared for other’s opinions on him, only content when surrounded the cold efficiency of machines. His tusks were made of worn metal and it was common rumor that he had replaced half of his brain with a computer and used the opportunity to delete his emotions entirely. Technicians tended to be heavily augumented, though not on the level of the Technocracy.

The Hargule was accompanied by four hideous menial-servant-droids and a pair of ugly combat androids. The servant robots scuttled or rolled only partially aware of themselves. Each was built around the ruins of a living brain, usually tube-grown. The combat droids were both walkers, however one was bipedal and built with sharp, violent angles and had a large machine gun set into its side while the other was armed with a pair of talons wreathed in disruptor fields. They too were powered by nearly-dead organic brains.

There were individuals in the galaxy who believed that androids should be ‘freed’ and given rights. Grendel felt no ire towards them for their naïve ways. Androids had no personality nor any self-awareness, they simply used organic materials in tandem with electronics to produce a more efficient machine. Apparently the Technocracy had made them by warping the operating systems of captured Biomancy troops. Grendel shivered in spite of himself. And not from the coldness of the cryo bays.

They reached the main controls without delay. By now, Grendel’s breath was audible in puffs of vapor and his grey eyebrows wore frost. He imagined he looked like a lost mountain explorer. The place looked like some ice world, there were even icicles in places where boiling coolant pipes had leaked.

The control room of the cryo-bay was built like a circle, with a single series of buttons in the center. The Chirurgeon ran the customary diagnoses. No one had died but there were one or two cases of possible cold-related illnesses from the freezing process. M’kai stepped up and tapped a sequence of buttons. There was a hiss and a red light flashed. “The subjects are awakening from their slumber,” said the technician.

Grendel felt that M’kai could have voiced it more politely and less like a prophecy of doom.

Ponyville: Equestria

Near the center of the small town known as ponyville on a library carved from a living tree, Twilight Sparkle was humming to herself as she set up her equipment on the roof. Star charts, quills, parchment, a telescope, protractors compasses and a small writing table. Stargazing was oen of her less-known hobbies and provided a welcome release from the daily routine.
Spike trundled the last of the stargazing equipment upstairs and sat down, panting slightly.

“Jeeze, Twilight, what’s the rush about?” he asked, referring to the purple unicorn’s rush to get set up.

“I’m monitoring that moving star I told you about. If my calculations are correct, it’s gaining speed and should be as big as a pinhead by tonight! I can finally start to observe its surface!”

Spike looked doubtful. “Isn’t the fact that a star is moving towards Equestria kind of bothering you?”

Twilight waved a dismissive hoof. “I’m sure the princesses can handle it. Now help me set up the telescope, remember, the sooner I finish setting up the sooner I can finish this week’s stargazing and the sooner we can have dinner.”

“We’re going to Rarity’s afterword, right? You said we were going to the carousal boutique after dinner.”

Twilight laughed. “Yes, we’re going to Rarity’s, I need to see if she finished fixing up my Smartypants doll.”

“I just wanted to make sure you didn't forget.” Muttered spike, who quickly picked up a large glass lens almost as big as himself and screwed it onto the end of the telescope. “So, any ideas why that star’s moving?” He asked, changing the subject.

“Nope,” said Twilight. “In fact, I was thinking about looking it up tonight-”

“Hey!” said Spike.

“After we get back from the boutique.” Finished Twilight.

“Oh, alright then.” Said Spike. “I’m gonna go downstairs now.”

“Spike, I need you to help me document.” Said Twilight.

Spike sat down on the bench behind her. “Alright.”

Twilight put her eye to the eyepiece of the telescope and aimed it at the sky above the Equestrian sunset. The whole universe was laid out before her. It was amazing, a true marvel of nature.

Twilight had studied under the princess herself, and knew astronomy by heart. Each star was a light in Celestia’s realm, each one placed there by the goddesses’ forbears, and one day Celestia herself would become a star when she tired of ruling. They were hundreds of miles high at least, thousands at most. She’d heard tell of pegasi who tried to fly there but none had ever come back, space was the roof of Celestia’s realm and was not meant for mortal ponies to enter.

She searched the sky for the new star, it had appeared roughly seven years ago, and she hadn’t noticed it was moving until just about a year ago. It was currently, as she said, almost as big as a pinhead, which was huge for a star; it must have been at least five miles across If her books on speculative star sizes were correct. As she focused on it with her telescope, turning dials to make the star look bigger, she saw something very odd. The star flashed with light for a moment, like far-off lightning. The pulse of light was followed by something even stranger.

Twilight pulled her eye away from the lense, glaring at her telescope. She could have sworn she just saw a thin ray of light jet from the star for just a second. She chalked it down to her overexcited imagination and went back to observing it, completely forgetting to dictate this all to Spike. The further she zoomed in the stranger it seemed, until it was the size of one of spike’s claws. It was still alight, but what struck her was how the light seemed to bend and waver around it. Its edges glowed with starlight but the center seemed…dark grey. It looked like someone had drawn a thin vertical slash across the center of the star no bigger than an ant’s leg.

Twilight jotted this down and charted it quickly. IT was closer than yesterday by a little bit but she had yet to see it actually move.

Taking her eye from the eyepiece, twilight trotted to the trapdoor in her foot, opened it and made her way down the long, sloping ramp and into the tree proper and into the kitchen, where she fixed herself a light snack -a lettuce and tomato sandwich, and headed back upstairs with her plate. After a few bites she set the snack down, careful not to disturb Spike, who had fallen asleep amid the papers and was drooling slightly and returned to her telescope, putting her eye to the lens again.
To look out at empty space.

Twilight’s eyes widened as her first thought was the star’s gone out, Which she quickly quashed. Stars didn't just ‘go out’ there had to be an explanation. She turned a dial and zoomed out. The star was quickly found several inches to the right of her original point of view. She gasped as she observed the point of light. It was moving, crawling slowly across space with a speed that made Tank seem like a racepony but it was visibly moving.

“YES!” she squealed, leaping into the air and pumping a hoof, inadvertently waking up Spike, who had dozed off. As the young dragon blearily opened his eyes he saw the lavender unicorn sprinting around the roof of the tree house and periodically
jumping up into the air with exultations of ‘yes!’

“Twilight” He grumbled. “Whas goin’ on?”

Twilight Sparkle halted her celebration and looked at Spike. “The star is moving!”

“Didn’t you already know that?” He groused.

“Well yes, but I can SEE it moving!”

Spike looked uncomfortable. “Is it getting bigger still?”

“Well, yes…”

“So, doesn’t that mean it’s coming towards us?”

“Of course not, it’s…oh.” Trailed off twilight, then she perked up. “But as I said, the princesses will deal with it. I’ll tell them now.”
Spike obediently produced a quill and scroll.

“Dear Princess Celestia.” She began. “Over the past year or so, I have been tracking a moving star. IT has come to my attention that this star is on a beeline for Equestria or near enough to Equestria to cause significant changes (if possible) I just thought I’d bring this to your attention.
Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.”

Spike blew a quick burst of flame over it and watched as it silvered and shot towards the distant spires of Canterlot.
Twilight watched the star for a few more moments before making a happy sound and starting back towards the trapdoor.

“Twilight?” Where’re you going?”asked Spike.

“To do some research.”

“But Twilight! Rari-”

“Spike, I have a feeling this is far bigger than me checking on Rarity’s sewing job OR you ogling her flank. This is unprecedented! If the star is visibly moving it must be going faster than Raindow dash on her best day, Spike! This is huge!”

"But-"

“No ‘buts’ spike, I’m really sorry but how about this? We can go over to Rarity’s tomorrow and I’ll see if she has any spare gemstone cuttings she doesn't need.”

“Alright, fine.” Grumped spike, crossing his arms but Twilight was already racing into the library with a shout of “And ready a checklist of all the books about stars!”

Spike sighed, "Checklists? Aw man, I knew that star was no good."

Ferrus Animus

Ferrus Animus

Cryogenic suspension is a marvel brought to creaturekind by the vernid. It consists of an incredibly complicated procedure of stimulating the brain with waves of energy and electrical pulses to slow it down to the point of being nearly dead. The body is asleep at this point, and experiences things astoundingly slow, even dreams. Which can seem like a lifetime in seconds. Each thought takes hours to travel around the brain. The process involves a single needle, punched into an area in the human or Kug spine, though the Vernid link directly to the brain, as do the Vurkuristar. Ice wraiths, by comparison, stay fully aware the entire time, and as biologically immortal beings, simply freeze themselves into a solid block of ice and ‘meditate’

The needle penetrates the spine, injecting micro-machines into the spinal fluid, these minuscule machines slip through bones and spaces that require intense magnification for the human eye. They are slightly smaller than cells.

In any case, these marvels of engineering make the journey through the center of the spine and into the braincase, where they enter hibernation and begin their building process. A fluid known as ‘Zexon’ in the vernid tongue and ‘ synthetic Element Five (SE5) in Galactic, is manufactured out of the nanobots themselves. They completely marinate the brain in SE5, slowing thought, preventing decay and slowing the effects of time.

Of course, it’s actually a chemical reaction that is incredibly lethal is taken in the wrong dosage and an overdose is often considered a method of humane execution by many governments. Nevertheless, in the proper amount, it negates the effects of existence on the brain. There are side effects, drowsiness and a slowed thought process are common.

There are many other fluids and chemicals that keep the rest of the body functional. For instance one fluid locks cells in a constant position until they are fully unfrozen to prevent them from bursting in the icy temperatures. Another keeps organs constantly sedated. All in all, much of the body in cryogenic suspension is biologically dead save the brain.

The unfreezing process constitutes a simple reactivation of the nanobots in the braincase, these machines then redirect the fluid to areas where it can be expelled form. The mouth, mainly. They then exit via the way they came and self-destruct once they have left the body. The body is unfrozen, this process only takes hours, rather than minutes. Then the body awakens and becomes aware again.

UISV Starry Ice: Equestrian Oort cloud.

Trooper Sharn awoke to a mouth that felt like it was filled with distilled numb, skin that felt like it was so dry it could crackle and a cold like he was immersed in an arctic ocean without the dampness.

He was vaguely aware of the cryo-coffin’s defroster warming him up, and tried to straighten. His back screamed in pain and gunshot like pops echoed in the confined metal box, the first sound his ears had heard in decades. They clanged in protest and so he lay there. Feeling returned to his limbs slowly as small tubes pressed against his skin injected him with nutrients and stimulators. The rest of his joints popped as the chamber vibrated and the chemicals unclenched his muscles for the first time in nearly fifty years. He could feel strange fluids exiting his body and tried to spit up whatever was making his mouth so numb but his lips couldn’t move. There was no feeling in his tongue. It took him a moment to realize he hadn’t opened his eyes.
Sharn opened his eyes laboriously, the lids felt like they had been weighed down with anvils. Sharn felt something wash over his face and realized that there had been some sort of liquid film over his eyeballs. He blinked and took in the cryo-coffin.
He was laying down in a rectangular box-like space, tiny metal arms were removing varied injectors form his flesh and he saw that a wide tube led from the ceiling to a mask over his face.

Two little red lights opened up above him and scanned his eyes. The tube snaking down his throat hissed and sharn felt something move around inside of him. Nanofibers retracted form his heart, liver and stomach as the nutrient injectors and the tubelike breathing assistant unplugged from his innards.

His recently un-marinated brain told him that this thing had been plugged into him for decades, and he could feel tiny nanofibers retracting from the insides of his lungs. With an obscene slurping noise the tubes withdrew from his lungs and stomach up through throat out of his mouth and into the mask over his nose and mouth. The mask lifted off of his mouth and nose and he let out a gagging, bubbling stream of green fluid. The same stuff, he realized, that had been his brain’s salad dressing for…what? Twenty years? It felt like more and less at the same time. He finished throwing up the last of the SE5 and gagged. He still couldn’t form coherent words and was perfectly content to lie there for hours while his body was brought up to speed. He wondered if this is what druggies on a high must feel like. It wasn’t boring, it was just…there. After several decades at least of ‘sleeping’ in this coffin-machine he let five hours drift by while he regained lucidity.

After five hours passed, Sharn opened his mouth and spoke for the first time in ages. “Thrrruuuuugggghhh…throughgggh….i’mmm…thrrrrooough wiiiith…thiiith…thiiit…” he managed to slur in his numbed state.

His eyes, now wakened flickered to the display, Haddon was only twenty years away so it should only show twenty years in-what? The timer showed ’50 Yrs in suspended animation: GUI-O/R Sharn’

He disliked the frigid cold of space on principle; it was an unpleasant sensation to wake up to.

But waking up to discover that you were thirty years overdue? Quite a lot worse. Thoughts ran through his mind. Had the ship been derelict for all this time? Was he the only survivor? Was it a malfunction? Did they overshoot Haddon?

He saw a light at the edge of his vision, then realized his cryo-coffin was opening. It slid out into a long, thin hallway, where maybe half a dozen others had already done the same.

This cryo-bay was unimpressive. One of a hundred . One might mistake it for a locker room. A simple long hallway with what looked like large, man-sized drawers set one every ten feet on both sides of the hall for five hundred feet. A fairly low ceiling illuminated with glowing white tube lights running down the hall and a rectangular green light set into the center of each ‘drawer.’ Each drawer contained one human being, the green light showed that the creature inside was alive and awakening slowly. Blue meant whoever was inside was in deep suspended animation, yellow meant that whoever was inside was entering animation and red meant dead. There was no red. Through a few showed no color at all. These were empty. Whoever had been in them was now wandering the ship.

Sharn heard a hiss and the thumping of treads. a medical servant-droid rolled up to him and moved to his securing straps.
'Hadn't noticed those before' he thought. It quickly undid his straps an patiently whirred away to itself as it waited for him to get up.

He gave it a once-over. Shaped like a rolling dustbin, it had two thin arms with ten fingers and two thumbs on the end of each ‘hand’ It was all shiny metal and a single short tube emerged from the center of it’s ‘head’ the round dome at the top of the betreaded android, ending in a plunger-like eye.

He stared at it awkwardly. His face was reflected in its surface.
Sharn could see he really hadn’t changed much over apparently fifty years. His head was still shaved down to the skin, which, he noticed, hadn't gotten unnaturally pale in his time in the cryo-coffin, still a bit darker than Caucasian, but not dark enough to be black. He couldn't recall if he was born with or had obtained it. His entire life before joining the GUI-O/R was a complete blank, memories had been ripped form his brain by the ungentle touch of psych-assisted-machines, though he knew his entry had been voluntary. His face was obviously slightly reconstructed, with a skin-patcher scar around his left eye and a few unremarkable shallow scars over the rest of his face. Though he wouldn't describe himself as chiseled, his face was obviously that of a soldier, and he recalled being told once or twice that he was ‘handsome,’ he hadn’t given it much thought. Mainly because people didn't pay as much attention to your skin tone or your supposedly comely features when you towered over them like a giant. Sharn was a very large man. In this it was painfully obvious that he had been augmented, both muscularly and skeletally. Luckily his work was ‘up close and personal ’meaning he was one of the go-to operatives for GUI in the fleet. GUI, or Galactic Union Intelligence maintained operatives like him, who had marketable skills and were fairy independent in the field. His team was not special forces, and not agents either. They were what the grunts called ‘Operators’ or ‘Rangers’ not an actual military unit they were not within the regular chain of command and even had vetoe power over some officers, as he was granted the authority of any agent of the GU government.

The Galactic union itself was based mostly on the Vernid culture, the mantids had been traveling the stars centuries before humanity had landed on the moon and as such were the ‘majority race’ within the government. The government itself was a decentralized mesh of Human democracy, Kug Republic and Vernid Oligarchy. The capital of the Union was the moonlit desert world of vernox, where the heads of the union made their seats of power, the Lords and the councilors particularly.
Each sector was represented by a lord of who each had sovereignty over a sector of union space, they relayed their high-priority orders to system governors, who each ruled over a solar system. The Galactic Union Intelligence concerned itself with the intricacies of state. Assassinations, blackmailing, rooting out Scourge sleepers or Biomancy agents, first contact, establishing beachheads and speaking with the voice of the Union itself.

In any case. Currently Sharn realized that he was going over an internal monologue in front of a patiently waiting machine.
“Er…hello.” He said. Giving it a small wave as he tried to get up. The robot helpfully helped him up.

‘Hello!” IT said in a synthetic voice. “this is Artificial Intelligence Unit forty seven of the Starry Ice.” Sharn sat up and massaged his shorn head. It sounded like two people talking at once.

‘Nice to meet you, Forty Seven,” He said. This robot was probably not truly aware but did have an animal-like intelligence on the level of something rather smart like a dog or a Plaavaan. It probably came of having a vat-grown living brain in that mass of circuitry and wires.

“You are trooper Sharn Space correct?” It asked. In its ‘two-people talking’ voice with an overdone gleeful tone.

Sharn stopped massaging his head and swung his legs over the side of the coffin. “Sharn space?”

“You have no last name listed.” Said Forty-Seven.

“I’m aware of that, thanks, that’s no need to go making me sound like a children’s book character.”

“Apologies, I was dictating the fact that there was a space in place for your last name.’ bubbled the happy-sounding robot.

“Just call me Sharn,” He said. “Without a last name.”

It’s plunger-eyepiece turned up to track his face as he stood, all seven feet of him. He shuffled uneasily.
“ Forty-seven?” He asked, teeth chattering slight. By the stars, it was cold.

“Yes, Sharn-Without-a-last-name?”

“Do you know where I can find some clothes? Because it’s pretty damn cold and…and I’m kind of…” He trailed off and looked down.

“Yes?”

“…Hanging.” He finished lamely

The robot stretched one ten-fingered claw over to the handle above his cryocoffin and pointed. “Fatigues are stored in the overhead containers.” It said. ‘Is there anything else you need?”

“No, thank you.” He said, opening the cupboared.

“Very well.” Said Forty-Seven, and rolled off to meet the next waking sleeper.

Sharn inspected his standard-issue noncombat kit.

One pair of underpants went on first, then a pair of thick woolen socks, then a pair of laughably-fascist jackboots, followed by the pants, the undershirt and the main shirt.

The pants were a stark grey camo color, square patterns of varying sizes in fifty shades of gray comprised the fatigues. He searched the pockets to see if there was a map or anything and did not find anything. The undershirt was boring white, and was comically small, though even in his ‘extra-large’ size, the over shirt fit fairly well, as these things were adjustable. It looked pretty much like the pants only it had buttons and two sleeves. Searching further, he found a plain brown faux-leather belt a communicator pad, which clipped onto his belt and a hat. He picked up the hat and something clinked inside. Removing the offending object, he realized it was his most important bit of gear on the ship, this was his very personality.

He clipped the GUI badge/ID to his belt as well and walked out of the cry-storage room and into the main hall of the cryo-chambers. A hundred other halls branched off from here, and most of them still had their doors closed and locked down. A dozen were open and vacant and ten more were being exited at the moment. Sharn took stock of the room.

Two dozen beings milled around the large, grand-central station sized room, all dressed in BDUs like him and exited out of the large open blast doors. Sharn noticed a holographic map to the various quarters of the ship and set off to his designated area.
Sharn made his way down the halls and passed holo-displays that showed the outside and a few huge open doors where workers were starting the factories. As he boarded the main tram, Sharn tapped a Kostag on the shoulder. Kostag were colonies of hundreds of bivalves that together made up a single sentient being. It looked like a humanoid shape made of mussels and clams and oysters.

“Yurs?” It bubbled through its various waterlogged passageways.

“My cryocofin’s year counter said that I’ve been in hibernation for fifty years, you know anything about that?”

“Nur. Myne surd furvtee yurres ash wuurl.”

“Your counter said fifty years as well?”

“Thurrrs Wurrt ouy surrrd.” It gurgled at him.

“Yeah, that is what you said,” Said Sharn. The tram slowed down. “This is my stop.”

“hurrrv uy nissss deeee.” It sloshed.

“You too.”

Sharn approached his team’s assigned barracks, there was a dispenser rack set in front of it. Sharn grimaced and selected a Styrofoam cup and held it under the dispenser, which let a semi-solid green slush flow into his cup. It looked like the primordial soup. This nutrient paste would have to make up for his fifty year fast by starting him on a liquid diet for several weeks.
“Ech. Down the hatch.” He muttered, and downed the nutrient paste. He nearly let it all back up again, it tasted like pure disgust in liquid form but forced it down and shuddered. It had to compensate for all that time in cryo after all.

The door to the barracks was the same gunmetal grey as everything else, and hissed open when he tapped the pad set into the wall.

The room was walled on four, boring sides gray like everything else on the vessel, each wall displayed a holographic window that displayed space and one wall had a computer terminal set in its side. Eight small cells for varying creatures were set into the walls. A pad inside changed the cell to suit whichever creatures inhabited it. Four beings were in the room, the most noticeable being Urak, the bull of the squad. He sat on a gray metal bench next to the wall.

Urak was a Vurkuristar, one of the gigantic ‘homo locustae’ bipedal lobster-men of Vurka. He and his kind stood at a man and a half high, as bulky as a big tree, powerful as a tank, sturdy as a boulder and covered in black chitin/scales. A vurkuristar filled no earth-familiar classification, much like most species. They as a race were ‘kind of mammal, kind of lizard, kind of crab, kind of lobster, kind of fish and kind of bug.’ Their huge hands had four, plated and clawed flexible digits, each hand was connected to a lobster-like giant forearm, with enough strength to rip a light tank in two and their massive legs held their hulking bodies upright, their heads were almost helm-like, with four arachnoid pedipalps forming their armored mouth, four eyes, two pairs stacked on either side of their hair-thin scent-feelers glowing a cold blue.

The Vurkuristar had been sitting on a bench set into the wall, watching as Sharn opened the door, after a moment of looking his squadmate over, Urak gave a clack of recognition and turned back to his work, painstakingly cleaning his beloved axe. Sharn could see that the Vurkuristar’s cell was heated, humid and had its bed folded out to ‘extra large’ to make the jungle-dwelling alien more at home, though a poor mockery of his homeworld.

Next to the hulking alien’s cell was another containing a snoring human, evidently their medic, James Malicant had been brought out of cryo-storage a few hours ago and was deciding to catch even more sleep. His cell was stark and bare, without any regulators on.

Two others stood in the center of the room, discussing something, one was a human female, Haley Karras, who was currently gesturing animatedly to her ‘rival’ Trizar, the human and the Kug had always had a friendly sort of competition going. Haley, had her blonde hair cut short, though the cryo-tubes had not been kind to it, sticking it out in every direction. This was one of the reasons Sharn always shaved his head, less fuss.

Trizar was standing with his thorny arms folded over his white underbelly and chest area. His face was not a forgettable one, beady eyes, a long hooked nose, a thin, cruel mouth filled with razor teeth, all set into an alien absolutely festooned with black, bony spikes. His tail swished slowly behind him as he gave Haley an ‘unimpressed’ look.

The sixth member of their squad was evidently in his own cell, judging by the fact that the steel door was closed and the window was showing only swirling fog. Sharn could see that ice had formed on the outside of the door. The sixth team member was known as Frost , though that name had been foisted upon it by the human members of the team, it’s real name was something that only it’s kind could produce. They always assumed it was a ‘he’ because it’s personality seemed more masculine, though as far as they knew the alien race known as Ice Wraiths had no names or genders. They required refrigeration suits, and no one even knew what they looked like under there. Some speculated that they were incorporeal and others speculated that they were carbon-based.

Sharn took all this in as he found himself a cell on the right wall, Haley and Trizar greeted him.

“So,” He said. “What’s the deal? according to the star charts,” He jerked his thumb at the far wall, where a holographic map was displaying the milky way, with a superimposed ‘not mapped’ over the map. “We’re certainly not where we should be.”

Haley sat down next to Urak and leaned against the alien’s chitinous arm, with muscles as big as her torso. The Vurkuristar grunted at the invasion of his personal space but did not move. Haley paid his noise no mind. “According to the computer, we’ve been traveling for twenty more years than we should have been.”

Urak spoke up, smashing his pedipalps together and grinding his barbed tongue over his inner mouthparts and thrumming vocal cords. “We seem to be lost.” He growled.

“Well done, Urak, Trizar is thankful you have told him.” Hissed Trizar in his reptile voice. Kugs always spoke in third person. It colored their sarcasm, unfortunately for Trizar, who found the concept amusing and indulged in it whenever he could.

“You’re welcome, spikeback.” Grated Urak, bringing his huge axe up to his left eyes to inspect the edge. “So, Sharn, did you see Vaanse on your way here?

“No, I was wondering the same thing, I guess she isn’t out of cryo yet,” Shrugged Sharn, referring to the final member of the squad.

Urak set down his weapon, seemingly satisfied that it had been cleaned of anything that had accumuled on the blade and unscrewed the handle from the blade. “Maybe vernid take longer to wake up,” he boomed as he inserted a plasma battery into the axe’s handle.

Haley stopped leaning on the Vurkuristar and got up and sat down at a terminal. “I’ll see if I can find anything about where we are, it’s really bugging me.” She said.

There was a loud, clear hiss, and a humanoid figure stepped from Frost’s foggy cell, the room temperature dropped slightly as Frost stepped out. The Wraith stood on two articulated legs, part bulletproof fabric and part adamantium, he was roughly six feet tall, the arms of his refrigeration unit were long and tubelike, bending at an elbow joint and terminating in three spindly fingers and two thumbs, everything was encased in adamantium, and lights blinked form a panel in the suit’s arm. The head was roughly humanoid, with a circular shape and a protruding grillplate, which emitted a few whisps of frozen air every time the Wraith exhaled, other than that, the faceplate had no features.

“I have consulted with the Artificial intelligence of this vessel.” It said. “We are off course due to a malfunction in the system that had not been discovered until the crew awoke form cryogenic hibernation approximately ten years previous. We have been zeroing in on a random star to get our bearings. We are separated form the Galactic Union.” It spoke in a synthesized and bass voice.

“Alright…”Said Haley, standing up. “So, Frost, why’re you out and about?” She asked.
“We are to report to briefing on deck S within the hour. Captain Xarxes wishes to speak with us” It said.

Canterlot: Equestria

Celestia, goddess of the sun, empress of Equestria gazed pensively at the sky.

She recalled something about moving stars. Something her father had once said his father had witnessed. Of course, that was nearly two thousand years ago. Nevertheless, she did wonder.

She knew she could move equestria’s star. But not from its path. That would be devastating.

Alicorns had always had special connections with the Equestrian sun and moon. She had never told her little ponies about the truth, how each star out there was probably bigger than the sun and how she could not control them. She had never lied; of course, she simply hadn't disproved the existing theories. Publicly.

And now, some stars where coming to her. Twilight was brilliant, but fettered by society, she tended to learn from books, rather than go and look for evidence herself, and so she believed that, at most, the new star could cause a forest fire if it hit the planet and a hot summer if it missed. She also assumed Celestia could do something about it.

Lifting the sun was a horribly stressful tasks, originally done by, she had heard, hundreds of alicorns, but they had all eventually died out or vanished, she assumed that they were exploring other stars. Once in blue moon, someone with a powerful telescope would notice a slight shift in some stars, or notice several coming into being for a few decades then vanishing. She took this as evidence that somewhere out there, the rest of her kind were regulating their own worlds.

She never dreamed that these were, in fact, giant metal hulks plying space lanes for decades at a time and transporting commodities, but more often carrying vast armies fit to drown entire worlds in wars of bloody attrition against nightmarish foes and that each of those wars were fought on a mind-numbing scale. Billions of soldiers thrown into the meatgrinder of battle. Each one proud to die for their nation and their people.

She never dreamed of the foes these billions of martyrs faced. She never knew of their epics, their conquests, their great tales of heroism. She had never heard of the famous Battle of Aphranti nor the Treaty of Forez, the epic battles of each race. Stalingrad, Kurgain, Vennehurm, Monah’vun. World Wars and Tribal conflicts.

She never knew. She simply looked at the sky. Perhaps, she thought to herself. Perhaps these moving stars were Alicorns returning from space.

She searched the nighttime sky until she found them. The other night, Twilight sparkle had given her its location. It was indeed moving across the sky.

Celestia heard the clatter of hooves behind her. “Luna,” she said, without turning. Do you have any thoughts on what these might be?”

“Truly? You ask me?” Said Luna, coming over to stand next to her. “You are the sun goddess. Are not stars suns?”
“I just want your opinion, Luna.”

“Fine, have you considered that they are just very large comets a very long way away?”

Celestia nodded. “They would have to be the size of Equestria though, to be seen form here. Still deadly.”

“Perhaps, sister,” Said Luna. “We are meant to die? Perhaps it is the end times, we are the last Alicorns, after all, when we die…so too shall equestria.”

Celestia shook her head. “Luna. Equestria would endure. But it’s soul would be gone. In any case, this thing seems more likely to smash the world than just us.”

Luna nodded. “I am sorry for my pessimism. There’s been quite a lot on my mind as of late. I’ll fly up into space tomorrow night and arrange some asteroids out past the moon, that will slow whatever it is down, at least.”

She turned to leave, but Celestia stopped her. “Luna, what’s weighing on your mind?”

“How do you know something is?” She asked.

“You just said it was.”

“Oh, yes…I’m sorry, I was down by the gardens and I noticed that…” She bit her lip like an uncertain foal.

“It’s Discord, isn’t it?” Asked Celestia.

“Yes. I had a dream the other night.” She said. “About Him.”

“And?” Asked Celestia. “What was he doing?”

“He was…laughing..and he said something to me.”

“what did he say?”

“He said…he said…I see your dinner guests have arrived. Anyone’s guess what he meant by that.”

“Lulu,” Admonished Celestia. “It was just a dream.”

“Yes, but…he kept making food-related jokes all through the dream.”

“Like what?”

“Well, he…he went on at length about flour and bread and tomato pudding.”

“Tomato-”

“-Pudding, yes.” Said Luna. I know all his stuff about how great tomato pudding was and how he was happy at how his signature dish turned out was all hooey but the rest felt…real.”

“Luna, these dreams mean nothing. I once could have sworn he reached out from his statue nearly fifty years ago, before Twilight sparkle was even born and did something huge, but nothing happened. Relax.”

Luna pointed a hoof up at the sky.”Relax? I thought I was going to help with the giant flaming ball of possible fiery death.”

“Of course, Luna.”

Ponyville: Equestria

“Twilight! Twilight!” a bouncy voice intruded upon a frantically searching unicorn’s nervous breakdown.

Twilight Sparkle looked up from her book ‘A study of stars’ and spoke up. “Sorry Pinkie, I really can’t talk right now, I’m researching something BIG.”

The door flew open regardless and an exited pink pony burst into the library. “BIG? As in party BIG? Or just celebration big? Or, Ooh! Ooh! Superduperfatastical BIIIIG?”

Twilight didn’t turn around to look at Pinkie, instead she continued speed-reading her book. When she spoke, her voice was slightly impatient. “Pinkie Pie, not everything has to involve parties or candy or big explosions.”

Pinkie snorted. “Silly Twilight! EVERYTHING’s a cause for at least a get-together! In fact, I might just throw a party in honor of parties existing!”

Twilight sighed and closed her book with a snap. The magical aura surrounding it disappeared and she began to search the shelves anew. “Pinkie, you’re more excited than normal, and I can’t deal with that right now, what did you want?”

“Weee-eeel.” Said the ecstatic earth pony. “Since Rainbow Dash and fluttershy are going to Cloudsdale to look at that new flight museum, I wanted to know if you wanted to help me and Applejack look after fluttershy’s animals!”

Twilight selected a book and finally turned to regard pinkie Pie. “Sorry, I really can’t I’m trying to find something really important.”

Pinkie trotted over to twilight and looked over her shoulder at the new book she had selected. “A guide to celestial bodies. Huh. I thought she was just like us, only…bigger.”

“Excuse me?” Asked twilight.

“I mean,” continued the party pony, “she IS a goddess and all but I didn't really think she’s so different she needs her own guide…oh! Maybe there’s a hair-moving organ! Y’know since it’s all wavy.”

“Pinkie Pie, what are you going on about?” demanded Twilight.
“Your anatomy guide to royalty book!”

“Huh?...Oh...No,” Groaned twilight, exasperated. “It is NOT a book about princess celestia’s anatomy.”

“But it says ‘A guide to Celestia’s Body’ If it’s not anatomy, what is it? A naughty book?”

“No. No!” Twilight showed her the title again “Celestial bodies means a heavenly body, as in a star or a sun or the moon, that’s how the princess got her name.”

Now it was Pinkie’s turn to be confused. “Why are you studying stars? And why was the Princess named that?”

Twilight thought about telling her the truth about the moving star, if she did, it would likely mean that half of ponyville would know it by tomorrow and predictably overreact. “Er…a star’s moving across the sky. I can see it at night but it’s a lot slower than a shooting star.”

Pinkie looked sympathetic. “Aww, that poor star, he must feel left out, we should throw him a par-OUUUT!” Twilight interrupted her with an exasperated scream “I can’t concentrate with all this blather!” She magick’ed the pink pony towards the door.

“But Twilight, what about Fluttershy’s animals?” asked pinkie as the door closed on her.

“Fine, fine, I’ll come over tonight.” Twilight growled as she closed the door.

She waited for a few moments after the door was closed, then sighed and trotted back to the shelves.“Ah, finally, I can get to researching without any-”

“Hey Twiligh-” started Spike, entering the room with a truly venerable book in his hands. Twilight interrupted him with an anguished wail of “INTERRUPTIONS!” Knocking the infant dragon onto his back.

Spike picked himself up and gave twilight a Look. “I was about to say I found something about moving stars,” he grumbled.
“What?!” Asked Twilight. “What’s it say?!”

Spike held up the book “The Deific Wars,” read the title. Twilight frowned. “Spike, this says ‘wars’ there haven’t been any wars in Equestria for nearly a hundred years.”

“Yeah, this is about some war before even the princesses were around. It mentions, ahem,” Spike cleared his throat. “And We didst behold an awesome spectacle, the very stars themselves where moving and it was seen as a sign that the doom of the land had come and -” Spike trialed off. “Dang.” He said. “The rest of the pages are too rotted until page four hundred, where it talks about the first time Celestia and Luna imprisoned Discord.”

Twilight sighed. “Everypony knows that. That’s how Luna got possessed by Nightmare moon. It was one of Discord’s ‘tricks’ If I recall my history classes correctly”

“So the book wasn’t any help?”

“No, sorry spike. Listen, I’m going over to Fluttershy’s cottage with Pinkie and Applejack tonight, can you get my Smartypants doll from Rarity’s by yourself?”

“Sure thing, twilight!” said Spike.

“Good, now…wait…what time is it?”

“One in the afternoon.”

‘I stayed up all night looking for books?”

“…Yeah.”

“I’d better get some sleep before I head over.”

Several hours of sleep later, Twilight wandered along the road to Fluttershy’s cottage, her saddlebags were full of her overnight things and a small telescope.

When she got there, the Cottage was where it always was, sitting on the edge of the everfree forest like a small hillock. Pinkie and Applejack were outside, the party pony bouncing around, getting acquainted with all the animals, and Applejack actually doing the work and feeding them. She looked up as she saw her unicorn friend approach. “Well howdy Twilight, how yall doin?”

“Just fine, Applejack. How are you?”

“Jus’ fine, though a mite confused, y’wonder how Fluttershy can feed all these here animals and still afford food fer herself.”

“I think she has an arraignment with the Helping Hooves society.”

“Well that would explain it, hey, what’s that scroll?”

“Scroll?” Asked Twilight. “Oh, this? I brought a letter from the princesses.”

“Really? What’s it about?”

“Oh, just a topic I've been working on, I discovered something possibly harmful and princess Luna is going to go sort it out tonight.’

“Mighty decent of her. Nice to know we won’t have to go on some quest to save Equestria again.”

Special thanks to:

Carnelian: For the cover art and useful advice.

Everyone who participated in my home-devised strategy game: Venture Command: For inspiring this fic and setting the background

Captain Sigma: For useful criticism. I promise not to make this cliche, captain.

Ircriket: here is more, hope you enjoyed.

Bronybro: Here you go, I hope it lived up to your expectations.

Karikamiya: Ta-daa! I'll try to get one up every week at least. though little problems might make me a bit late with that, y'know, little things like internet cut-offs, insurgents making good on their 'we'll go back into the jungle and keep fighting' threats, car bombings, falling off a mountain, ect. *third world problems*

Everyone who viewed the story, 'specially those of you you who thumbed it up, got me to get out this chapter sooner. never thought five out of six people would like this fic. Makes me happy.

As always, please do leave a comment! any type is welcome.

A Comet's Lament

(Author's notes:

Damn! Ten thousand words! most I ever did in one chapter or in one post anywhere on the internet.

In any case, here's the newest chapter of Steel & Stone, luckily I have some of the next chapter written out so it will probably come sooner than the monstrous wait this took. Apologies for that. Anyhow, enjoy)

CHAPTER III-A COMET'S LAMENT

Sharn sat in the briefing room with the other six of his squad. Vaanse had arrived earlier, apparently she’d been held up by a droid malfunction where a bunch of the robots had gone to armory instead of medical. The vernid seemed uncaring however.
Everyone was in full uniform or BDUs now. The four humans and the Vernid wore the standard pants and shirt, Frost idled in the corner, his fridge-suit was made of color-shifting fractal pattern camo. Urak wore his kind’s form of clothes, ‘secondary chitin’ armor plates painted in the GUI grey and Trizar wore spray-on combat gel, since putting cloth on a being covered in sharp, foot long spines was monumentally stupid.

They all watched, silently, as Darius Xarxes entered the room. The man had graying hair wore in a military flat-top and held his hands behind his back.

“Gentlebeings.” He greeted them.

They affirmed his greeting by their varied ways of nodding assent, mandible clacks, pincer-taps, tail thumps and hissing hydraulics.

“The information you are about to receive is classified at level 45 clearance.”

Everybeing straightened slightly.

“Recently, we've made our in-system burn into the Oort cloud of this system, dubbed Resonance, in the newly-named Sabre sector. The system contains seven worlds, eighty-four moons, three dwarf, trans-Neptunian objects, and an anomaly we have dubbed “Raven-one.” As a Raven probe was the machine that alerted us to its state. Now, questions.”

Vaanse, the technician, raised her pincer-hand.

“Vaanse,” nodded Xarxes.

“You say we’ve made our Burn in the Oort cloud, why not go further in?”

“Good question, first off, our fleet is comprised of four ships, all slightly damaged from overcharging the engines, Our ships, like always, cannot approach these worlds, as both the mass would cause significant changes of possibly apocalyptic proportions onboard the vessel and second, because we’re not sure about what will happen when a vessel of significant size tries to close with the second planet from Raven-one. We have tagged this world with the name of Harmonius Repose, or simply, Repose, as it will be our reorient point for at least a year while the engines cool down.”

“What’s Harmonius Repose that makes approaching it so deadly?” Asked Malicant.

Xarxes took a breath. “We fear that due to our vessel’s mass, once it enters the solar system proper, we may be sucked into orbit around this world. Every celestial body in the system orbits around Repose. This includes Raven-one, its sun.”

“What?!” demanded Haley.

“I know it’s a bit to wrap your head around, but you’re GUI operators, you adapt, correct? Just bear with me, here.”

Sharn noticed that their captain was being uncharacteristically patient.

“We launched a probe while entering our burn two days ago, the sun is indeed orbiting this world. As you can imagine, this is unprecedented and highly classified. From here in the Oort cloud, we can observe the sun without the grunts and techs knowing. For now, as far as anyone not in the crew of your transport vessel is concerned, the system of Resonance is just a standard star with a couple of airless rocks.”

“You say airless,” Pointed out Trizar. “Is there a world with breathable air here?”

“Yes,” Said Xarxes. “And that world just happens to be Harmonius Repose.”

Urak let out a throat-rattle. “I can see where this is going…” he grated.

“Yes,” Said Xarxes. “As Galactic Union Intelligence Operators, you as a team speak for me, and I speak for the galactic government. You alone have been trained for first contact and beachhead procedures, so I won’t mince words, you will receive your mission soon and you all know what it’s going to be. But for now, questions.”

“World overview?” asked Urak.

“Terrestrial, more like old earth or Kugazn than Vurkuristar, it’s got the same atmosphere as earth had during the late Triassic to early Jurassic so expect big creatures and possibly an influx of predators. It should be livable for most. Urak, the air on Vurkuristar is laden with poisons and much thicker than onboard a vessel, so you might feel lightheaded on Harmonius Repose.”

Sharn raised his hand. “So, confirmed life? And confirmed mission to Repose?”

“Yes to the first. Plants and trees and so forth. A secondary probe was fired and indicated a scattering of large reptilians in the mountains as well as what seem to be population centers of something, though they may simply be large colonies of termite like life forms or simply mounds, Superluminal probes are notoriously inaccurate.”

He waited for more questions. There were none.

“Now, to your mission, as I’m sure you know, Galactic Union ISVs are unarmed, so we’ll be keeping the sublight warships in the belly of the Sprit of Mars with us for protection. Luckily, we have a sublight transport vessel for you, she’s a Javelin-Seven freighter named the Comet’s Lament We’ll have you doing all the work, along with a representative from the Technocracy.”
“With all respect, sir,” Asked Sharn. “Why are you having us do this? This seems…convoluted.”

Xarxes frowned. “Don’t question me, ranger, but I’ll humor you. Again. What we have here is potential for mass-panic, the fact that this world is doing this unnatural thing cannot be divulged to anyone. This is need-to-know, understood? We can’t get too close because the world might pick us up and lock us in orbit before we can get close enough and because of the ‘sun
problem’. So, were sending you and a platoon of troops in a freighter, A million tons of adamantium is nothing compared to the Starry Ice, the Spirit of Mars, the Twilight or the Red Wake, the Ice herself is a regiment-carrier ship, same for the Spirit, the Twilight is an ordinance-carrier and the Red-wake is crewed by xenophobic technophiles. We need to get a team on the ground, and you’re the only ones trained for this. Got it?”

They all voiced their assent.

“Good, assemble in hangar twelve for launching, enjoy a few hours transit to Repose then get your boots dirtside! Suit up!”

-bridge-ISV Starry Ice
“So,” said Grendel. “First a perverse sun and now natural planetary shields.”

He heard Octavius lean over to Ugor. “Something out here is either the weirdest physics-bender or a god is piss-drunk mad at us” Grendel ignored him.

“Yes sir.” Said the man in charge of the scanners. “The asteroid field around Repose was arranged in a grid-pattern planetary shield. We got massive energy readings coming from the world’s moon at that point. We think that it’s a possibility that the world is home to race advanced enough to create a sort of macro-tractor and move all of the asteroids into an intricate pattern.”

“Hmm…” Grendel steepled his fingers on the arms of his chair. “Interesting, classify this at a clearance of fifty.”

“Yessir. Should I alert the GUI team?”

“No. No! They’ll be capable enough; I don’t want anyone else knowing about this though. That includes Xarxes. He too is to know nothing about this.”

“Sir…he’s…that’s…”began the tech.

“Treason? No. I don’t trust that Intelligence spook. That’s all.”

“Uh, yessir, I’ll keep him out of the loop.”

“Good, now, about those that is going with our Intelligence team?”

First mate Van turned to him. “Xarxes is putting together a team and crew at the moment; we’ve identified a crew of five for the Comet’s Lament, as well as a four-being pilot team for the landers, the fighter and the cargo shuttle. We’re sending a platoon of Astromarines and a six being team along for ground-based vehicles as well as a chirurgeon and the technocracy representatives to be selected.”

“Good, I want their boots on the ground within six hours. Understood?”

The vernid tapped his mandibles in assent.

Grendel turned his gaze out to surrounding space, pointedly ignoring the blasphemous sun in the distance.

The Red Wake was drifting far to the right. The vessel was a black knife, and the glowing red impulse engines lent it a demonic appearance. The Red Wake was an exploration ship. It was armed with who knows what and while it contained the only members of the Technocracy’s ‘explorers’ on this trip it still chilled him. The Technocracy, or ‘Empire of Alpha Centauri’ deserved the nickname: ‘the empire of hatred’. They were…disturbing to put it lightly.

“Open a holo-channel to the Wake.” He ordered.

Octavius responded immediately and Grendel stepped up to the holopad. Within seconds, he was treated to a panoramic view of the Red Wake’s black interior, lit by a hellish red glow. Red, green and yellow dots indicated the eyes of the Technocracy personnel. They were robed as monks, space-black and blood-red were the only colors on the robes, while mechanical and otherworldly appendages slithered from their confines. The commander of the Red Wake and the leader of the Technocracy’s forces, Archon Zyne sat on the ornate throne in the center of the room; his red eyes glaring out from under his hood, nothing else could be seen of his face like the Reaper of old.

“Speak.” It bluntly told him in a robotic growl.

“We have arrived at resonance; I request that you send us an envoy or representative for our away team to Harmonius Repose.” He inwardly cursed himself, he should have made it an order, the Archon would see this as him being subservient.
“You will take Versor who has recently gained the rank of Technomancer. He will be accompanied be tetriarchs Nergal and Mephasm as well as his entourage of combat and servant androids. /terminate link/”

Grendel shivered slightly as the link went dead. The Technocracy’s people had been classified as separate from humans when their DNA had become so tampered with they were rendered sterile and sexually incompatible with humanity. They now carried on in their secret empire, being grown in vats into the orders of technology: Warplocks, Engineseers, Mechanites, Technocrats, Tetriarchs and Computines. They had no gods but instead worshiped ‘void spirits’ whom they believed created the universe as a giant machine, and praised metal and machines above all else for their efficient cold ways. Thus they augumented themselves and tore away their humanity to become closer to the void-spirits by being closer to their vessels –machines. It was disturbing.

“Octavius, how many superluminal transmissions do we have available?”

“One hundred, sir.”

“Send one, direct to Vernox.”

Superluminal transmissions were faster-than-light transmissions, with a rough delay of a day for each hundred light years they covered, they were data, and could as such travel faster than light, as modern physics dictated, data had no upper limit in speed but could not change back to anything solid. Their expense was nearly a thousand thrones per word.

He cleared his throat. “Ahem.”

“Have found Geocentric system, roughly thirty years travel from Vorstag. 1 planet terrestrial, sending away team, requesting orders, technocracy officials upset.”

Octavius nodded, and sent the message; the ship shuddered slightly as the beam of energy shot towards the distant star of vernox roughly two hundred light years away.

“I didn't realize the Technocracy was upset, sir.”

“You learn to read them Octavius, they were extremely upset. Likely because of the perversion to science this star system is.”

“Is it that much of a problem for them?”

“Likely.”

Ponyville-Equestria

Twilight Sparkle sat on a bench in front of sugarcube corner, a parchment floating in front of her.
‘Dear Twilight sparkle. This news is alarming, but not entirely as bad as Spike predicted it would be. I have no doubt that together Luna and I can move this new star or simply nudge it if we cannot. Rest assured; Equestria is safe. Last night, Luna arrayed asteroids in a shield above our world just in case.
Princess Celestia.”

“Oh, hey Twilight!” came a scratchy voice, accompanied by the flapping of wings. Twilight Sparkle looked up to be greeted by a friend of hers, Rainbow Dash. “What’cha reading?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Twilight. No need to bother her friends with doomsday prophecies that would be easily averted,” just a letter from the princess.” She lit it with magical fire and let the ashes drift away in the breeze. “So what brings you here, Rainbow?”

The Pegasus hovered in the air and looked both ways conspiratorially. “Well-eeelll…Me and fluttershy went to Cloudsdale last night and stayed at a hotel, y’know, because it was too late to head back to ponyville. Aaaanyways, when we woke up, Fluttershy saw that there was a flock of vultures up Reeeeeaaaly high.” Rainbow dash went on about their trip to the vulture flock that was up ‘reeeeeeally high’ on some mountain and how Fluttershy did something helpful for them involving some lost eggs but then said something that made Twilight a little nervous.

“So while Fluttershy was talking with them, I decided to see how high I could get. I mean, why not? I was pretty high as it was. Last time I came down when I couldn't breathe but I figured I could still go higher than that if I went really quickly and REALLY fast! So anyway, I was going up to that space where the clouds are below you and the air’s all frosty and it’s hard to breathe, right, so I looked up, and I saw this weird speck in the sky, and it was glowing! Cool huh? It was like a star in the daytime! And THEEEEN…It got bigger, like, a LOT bigger, all of a sudden! in fact, if you squint you can kind of see it from here.”

“What?!?” gasped Twilight. “where?!”

Rainbow, still flapping raised a hoof. “I’m not done yet. I noticed something else about this thing; If you look at it just right, it’s not just one glowing thing, but four!”

Ponyville -Equestria-

Twilight Sparkle had gathered all her friends together at the library. Applejack looked apprehensive at what Twilight was telling them, Pinkie looked exited, Rarity looked as demure as she always did, Fluttershy was terrified of ‘sky monsters’ but was convinced if anything came from the sky it would be friendly like anypony else and Rainbow Dash was excitedly butting in every now and then.

“So in short.” finished Twilight, her eyes closed and a hoof raised. “I believe that it’s probable that the same star, or stars, that I’ve seen is connected somehow with this celestial formation Rainbow saw.”

“Now just a moment Twi’,” said Applejack, raising a hoof of her own. “Yer sayin’ that movin’ stars and big shiny shapes are the same thing?”

“Well, I've yet to come to a conclusion, but it’s unlikely that this is a coincidence. I have my telescope set up on the roof, so this evening I’ll be able to look closely at it and see what it is.”

“Ooh! Ooh! Maybe it’s a giant space dragon! We can welcome it and it’ll be all happy and we’ll learn a new thing about friendship! And another welcome party!” exultated Pinkie Pie.

“Pinkie, Darling, I really doubt parties are the way to go with ominous glowing dots.” Pointed out Rarity.

“Plus if it was a dragon, how could it breath? There’s no air that high.” Said Rainbow Dash.

Applejack spoke up again, in a thoughtful tone. “Rainbow, are ‘yall sure that this is what you saw? I mean, you were deprived of air, it could mean that you were hallucinating’”

Rainbow stood up n her hind legs, wings steadying herself in indignation. “Applejack, let me ask you something. I. Do not. Hallucinate.”

“But…that warn’t a question.”

“What?”

“Yall said, ‘lemme ask ya sumthin’ Implyin’ a question.”

“Whatever,” waved off Rainbow Dash. “I still think that whatever it is, it’s not alive, probably just some shooting star coming our way.”

“Well…’ started Fluttershy timidly. “If it is, we always have a tradition of watching meteor showers, right?”

Twilight nodded at this. “Yeah, it was probably just a shooting star coming our way, we can go up on the roof and we can take a look with my telescope.”

As they started upstairs, Pinkie Pie suddenly stopped, standing stock still and then shivering like she was standing in a blizzard. “Twitchy Pinkie, twitchy Pinkie!”

“Pinkie?” Asked Rainbow, as the rest went upstairs, not noticing the pink-pony’s convulsions. “What’s wrong?”

Pinkie looked up, her hair was slightly less poofy. “I felt the pinkie Sense.”

“Something’s gonna happen?” asked Rainbow, arching an eyebrow.

“Yeah…something Big…and I don’t think it’s for the best.” Said Pinkie Pie in unnaturally reserved tones.

“Like with the hydra?”asked Rainbow.

“Like…bigger, this was the biggest pinkie sense attack I've ever had!” she said, back to her chipper self. “Let’s go join the others!”

The leafy roof of the library was crowded within an hour, with each pony doing his or her own thing as they waited. Fluttershy was talking with some birds perched on a railing as they looked back at her with quizzical expressions, clearly not understanding a thing she was saying, Rainbow was lazily flapping back and forth around the treetop, Rarity was helping Twilight align her telescope ‘just right’ Applejack was producing picnicking supplies and pinkie pie was staring at the sky with rapt attention.

“Alright!” Said Twilight, it’s all set up ,now we just need the big lens.”

As if on cue, Spike came tottering up the steps, panting as he carted the large lens to Twilight yet again. “Here ya go.” He groaned, then sat down heavily and accepted a bottle of cider from Applejack.

Twilight floated the lens over and then screwed it on, making sure the position wasn't off, she put her eye to the scope. “Time for the moment of truth!” The ponies were silent as Twilight remained fixed to the telescope for several minutes.
“Well?” Asked Rainbow.

“It’s…you better come take a look.”

The Pegasus flapped down and then put her eye to the eyepiece.

“..Wow...”

Arrayed in the distance, and made visible by the scope, were four stars in the sky. They had stopped moving. Each one was gigantic, brighter even than the Ice Dragon’s tailstar.

UISV Starry Ice
Sharn looked over their craft. It would be their home from a few months to a year. The craft was big and blocky, a central spar, a frontal personnel area and a rear engine/storage/hanger area. Simple enough.

“So,” Said Vannse, as she watched a pair of dragonfly-like plaavan landers being trundled on board. “looks like we’re getting extra stuff.”

She, Sharn, Urak and Malicant were all kitted out in full combat gear, the journey would take likely only a few hours, if that, but the ferrerium burn on their engines would mean they would have to cool down for weeks.

The difference between their bulk freighter and the giant carrier that was the Ice was simple, an Interstellar Vehicle (ISV) was built for speed and carriage, the Ice and the Spirit carried personnel enough for an entire division, and the Twilight carried ordinance and supplies as well as Ferrerium backups. The ships were so titanically large that they developed internal atmospheres that could be disrupted by large masses nearby, not to mention that large asteroids could be avoided by freighters, but not by city-sized hulks. As a result, the Ice carried her escorts; the escort fleet was comprised of six Frigates, two carried by each ISV. These ships were only about two kilometers long each but unlike the ISVs, they were armed.
The freighter was about half the size of the frigates, and shaped like a bulky bird of prey. It would bring them into planetary orbit in hours, cruising a bit under the speed of light. From there, they could use the plaavaans (named for the predatory flying lizards of Vurka) to Deorbit and set up a research station. The Lament itself was capable of emergency deorbit but it was unadvised.

Sharn inspected the shiny new badge that adorned is shoulder place. Three bars. ‘Mission Commander.’ He had been given command of the mission.

“Vaanse?” He asked. The vernid turned her plated head 90 degrees. “Yes?” She buzzed.

“I notice their loading an Aenir on board. Why?”

A gigantic tank was being rolled up into the Comet’s yawning cargo bay.

“We’re getting a platoon.” She said. “Order just came through from the fleet commander. He says that oxygen levels are high enough that we’ll want military backup in case the life is hostile as well is enormous.”

“But an entire platoon?”

“your kind lost ten humans within the first five hours of landing on Vurka.”

“That was thousands of years ago.”

“And the technology has advanced little since then, we have achieved the most a mortal Union can.”

It was true, the Union troops that made what was referred to as ‘beachhead’ to establish bases on primitive worlds were generally seen as gods or godlike figures by the natives. Nearly two thousand years ago, they had come to what was generally referred to as the highest possible point of technology.

Sharn glanced as a black-robed Technocrat entered the hanger, the metallic man was accompanied by two nearly fully mechanical humans who carried a disruptor rifle each. Behind them, on varied appendages came their droids. A round dozen.
The technnomancer stepped onto the freighter without a word to either of them.

“ Isn't he friendly.” Muttered Sharn

Armor, check, weapons, check, supplies, check. Haley Karras flexed, getting a feel for the exosuit, it raised her height to roughly eight feet and formed a layer protective armor. Her helmet didn't go on yet, the skull-like visage’s eyes were darkened and it hung at her combat suit’s waist. With it on, it was impossible to tell if someone was male or female. The powered armor was meant to turn her into a weapon and protect her as well. There was no logical point for it to be made to enhance her assets. So it didn't

The GUI operator looked to her left and right, Trizar was on her left, fully clad in interlocking metal plates of armor, currently the chameleon program in his armor was set to garish colors that were apparently pleasing to Kugs. His long fingers were encased in Battle-claws, long extensions that would be wreathed in a disruptor field if combat was initiated. His tail would likewise be armed.

The Kugs were a people who had many strange customs, even more than Vurkuristar. This was exemplified in his battle-mask, a construction of adamantium and steel with two eye slits, a long, hook nose to accommodate his own and an insanely grinning mouth with razor teeth, the entire thing made him look like a demon of Earthen myth. They were known for being effective terror-inducers in battle.

To her right was Frost, the Ice Wraith was triple-checking his things, mostly monitoring equipment, Ice Wraiths had always had an insatiable thirst for knowledge.

“We are ready?” Asked Trizar. Haley nodded. “Let’s go find the others and get on board.”

The giant metal doors on the side of the Ice opened like a huge mouth and out of it flew a single silver craft.
The Comet’s Lament looked like a massive bird of prey, a V shaped frontal section, a central body and a bulky rear, replete with winglike attachments and huge engines.

The Ferrerium engines could power this ship for roughly a year of constant travel –not nearly enough to warrant it being an ISV. Like most freighters it had to be shuttled places. This happy fact made interplanetary smuggling nearly impossible.

For a moment, the lament hung suspended under the Starry Ice, before reorienting, and shooting off towards a bright star in the distance.

Harmonius Repose. Known to its people as Equestria.

-IPV (interplanetary vehical) Comet’s Lament

Sharn watched as the speck of the Starry Ice receded into the distance.

The rest of the team was lounging in the passenger room.

The room was with seats facing forward, during the entry into what was commonly called ‘lightspeed’ though was referred to by pilots as ‘cruising speed’

It would take them roughly five minutes to go from a mere few hundred kilometers per second to Cruising Speed. Space was big, and such, the vessels that plied it could travel the circumference of an entire world in minutes. Cinemas liked to show big battles with explosions and what have you. In reality, space warfare was conducted by armed vessels firing missiles and unmanned bomb drones at one another. Lasers were also popular. Railguns were amusingly impractical. While Linear Accelerators might be the go-to weapon for soldiers, in space the shots were outpaced by even the slowest vessel. Instead, most vessels employed Lasers, Hypervelocity Cannons, and Atomics.

Lasers were standard, they shot beams of incoherent light, infantry variants were usually cannons and beamers, that fired powerful sustained beams of light while naval variants were usually house-sized weapons fully capable of scorching a hole in anything. This was usually used for bombardment.

Hypervelocity Cannons used some form of hyperagitated ferrerium to propel a solid slug at near-lightpseed.
Atomics were developed by mankind, they were the most-used weapon, missiles loaded down with uranium or hydrogen charges, built to fly into an enemy ship and rip it apart with a split atom. In some cases, though, they were used in planetary bombardment. These were the worst, lasers left craters, hypervelocity cannons left ferrerium discharge, heady, but nonlethal. Atomics left radiation.

Sharn pulled himself out of his reverie as he heard someone talking to him.
“Sharn, Sharn. You there?” It was Malicant, the medic was unstrapping himself from his seat. “We’re at cruising speed and have a few hours to kill with nothing to do so Trizar’s said he’s gonna try and teach Haley how to play Sallisar.”

“Isn't that the Kug game with all the convoluted rules?” Sharn too unbuckled his crash webbing.

“Better then Urdesh.” Said Malicant, referring to the absurdly complicated Vurkuristar game that was made for a race of perfect predators with superhuman reflexes and four eyes .

Standing up and stretching, the bald human nodded. “Why not?” he said, and followed Malicant to the cargo hold where the others were setting up.

The cargo hold was wide and spacious. With an X shaped pair of catwalks crossing it’s top. One of the five-man crew was taking inventory.

Sharn took a good look around.

The room was brightened by long lamps running across the ceiling and glowing panels in the wall. Much of the hold was filled with supplies and ammunition for the base they were to set up groundside. Several vehicles were in evidence, a pair of Hornet scout vehicles and arralos light artillery platforms predominated, though all were outshone by the massive Aenir tank. The thing could bring down a Tulok with a single shot, it fired anything from solid shot to explosive to thermobaric. Even atomic. It was almost the size of a large house. According to captain Xarxes, it was the heaviest ground based vehicle in the galaxy, only one had been brought by the fleet, and it was theirs. Built for roving over uncharted terrain it would make the perfect mobile ops-center.

Sharn looked up. He felt…watched all of a sudden, and not by the Technomancer in the corner,. Speaking of which…

Sharn approached the Technomancer, apparently named ‘Versor’

It translated, roughly, in the technocracy language, to ‘butcher’ or ‘killer’

He would never understand their obsession with death. The Technomancer motioned him over.

Sharn approached, the Technomancer looked straight at him as he did. His face was a hissing grille and a pair of glowing red eye-lenses. Dozens of mechanical limbs sprouted from the man. Sharn noted the rotary cannon mounted over the technocrat’s shoulder.

“You are the mission commander?” Demanded the technocrat.

Sharn held the red glare. “Yes.”

“I was not informed that an aberration was joining the crew.”

“Excuse me?”

“The…Ice Wraith.” Said the Technocrat, pointing to where the robotlike creature was observing as the others set up their board in the middle of the floor. “You call it…Frost?” The Technomancer seemed like it pained him to grant Frost a name.
“Yeah, we call it Frost,” said Sharn. ‘It’ was not an insult, as far as they knew, the Wraiths were genderless and Frost had done nothing to shed light on this matter.

“I wish to study it, you will order it out of its refrigeration suit for dissection.”

“First off, I’m not even sure he has a body to dissect, second, are you out of your mind? You may be autonomous but you have no authority over me.” Sharn was really quite surprised, the technocrat had been…very blunt in his wishes.

The technocrat walked off. Sharn gawked at his back until he vanished. The 'man' had been human but was now more alien than most aliens. They hated anything not within their near-religious worldview of ‘science is right, if not now, it will be eventually’

He pushed the disturbing technomancer from his mind and watched as the others played their game.
After a while, Urak stood up and made his way over to Sharn.

The Vurkuristar was encased in armor that functioned on the same basis that human armor did, only modified for his crustaceous frame. He jerked a claw towards the door. “I’m getting something to eat, you hungry?” he growled.

“I just spent fifty years in cryo-suspention then got whisked away to some alien world within hours, damn right I’m hungry.” He answered.

The Vurkuristar grunted. “I hope they have some decent meaty creatures where we’re going.”

The Comet’s lament carried roughly sixty people to Harmonius Repose. Thirty of these were soldiers. Grunts tasked with providing support in case things got too hairy for a GUI team.

Herman Rauth was one. Like many, he had joined up for life, in his case, he had no family, like many troops, the Scourge had wiped them out, the mass of warped creatures had come to his home planet and killed nearly everyone. He had signed up for revenge. Now he was in for life.

Currently he was languidly patrolling the corridors in full armor. Not quite what the GUI troops, had. He disliked GUI on a personal level, they were too cold, to clinical, they only cared that the law was upheld, morality be damned. They said they were protectors, bet he’d seen what they’d done to ‘protect’ the Union. Genocide, assassinations, sabotage.
Unfortunately they were a necessary evil.

The ship still had about another hour to go before they entered outer orbit. He was exited, to say the least. Worlds that had life on them were rare indeed, most worlds with such life were filled with Ferrerium, as far as he knew, there were only twenty seven sentient races in the union, altogether there were fifty-nine known sentient races.

Maybe there would be some on this world? He could practically feel the pension it would get him, to discover new life.
Rauth straightened as the commander of the mission ‘Sharn’ went by with a Vurkuristar in tow.

After they had passed, he continued his patrol. He passed several other soldiers, of multiple races on his route.
As he neared the rear gunnery station he heard the alarms sounding.

“PREPARE FOR SUBLIGHT TRANSLATION”

He quickly started towards the nearest crash throne when the ship began shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.

Sharn’s face met his bowl of soup with an amusing splat. Urak roared as the vessel began to shudder. It sounded like they’d entered a warzone.

Sharn quickly removed his face form the bowl. “What the hell’s going on?!” He demanded.

“Y-y-yo-ur a-a-sk-k-k-i-n-g me-ee?” Urak managed as the ship began to buck even more violently.

The loudspeakers blared.

“EMERGENCY SHUT-DOWN OF GRAVITON RINGS”

Sharn slowly lifted into the air as the supersonically-rotating gravity-generating rings in the vessel’s center ceased their spin.
“Disoncerting.” Muttered Urak, as the vessel continued to rock but they remained floating due to the sudden absence of gravity. Urak kicked off of the table. “Let’s head to the cockpit, see what’s going on.”

“Is that wise? Seems like we should get strapped down,” said Sharn.

“You have no sense of daring Sharn, come on, it’s not like we’re facing down a Tulok,” Grated Urak.

“You make it sound like you have.” Said Sharn, floating to the mess hall’s doorway.

“I did.”

“You can tell me all about it later.” Sharn began drifting down the hallway. As they used the prebuilt wall-handholds, the ship continued to shake. They passed a few people clinging to the fixtures and one or two drifting bodies. Sharn didn't know if they were comatose or dead.

“By the Skinner this is bad.”

“Skinner?” Grunted Sharn, as he shoved several drifting crates away.

Urak glared ahead with his four glowing eyes at the long hall that would take them ‘up’ to the bridge.

“Vurkuristar god. Otango in life. His is my tribe.”

Sharn nodded as he pulled himself up towards the cockpit door. Famous Vurkuristar were revered. Not quite ‘gods’ more ‘heroes of legend’ but ‘God’ was the closest word in Galactic for it. They called them “Yavorak.”

They finally reached the cockpit, Sharn hit the button to lower the hatch, as he and Urak drifted inside they saw what the problem was.

Asteroids. Billions of them. Arranged in an almost shield-like pattern.

“Captain!” he yelled , “report!”

“Asteroid field commander, there’s no orbiting this world sir, not without being battered to a metal lump!” the captain of the freighter was a large man with some grey hair at the fringes around the back of his head.

“Can we deorbit?” demanded Sharn.

“In this metal tub? It won’t be pretty but it’ll likely keep most of us alive.”

“Do it!” roared Sharn. “Sound general crash stations!”

The captain looked around. “Sir, with all due respect, wouldn't it be more prudent to evacuate to the savoir pods?”

Sharn scowled. He hated ‘with all due respect’ which really meant ‘you’re a fucking idiot, fuck off’ He shook his head.
“Considering the damage we took, it’s likely that the savoir pods won’t launch at all, and if we crash with anyone in those pods, they will die.”

“Sir!” shouted the pilot. He obviously meant the captain of the five-man crew.

“What?”

The man pointed to the main viewscreen.

Everyone started, and not at the asteroids that were buffeting the ship, or at the floating soda bottle hovering near the ceiling.

“I’ll be damned.” Said the captain.

Before them and growling larger by the second was a blue-green marble. Clouds scudded over oceans and continents.

“It looks like…”

“Earth, Vurka, Kugazn, any green world.”

“It looks…untouched sir.” Said the copilot, a Vernid. “And we’re on a collision course with it.”

“What?”

“Harmonius Repose has us in her gravity well, sir, our space-engines are being crushed by asteroids and we can’t keep orbit in this mess.” The vernid waved a pincer at the asteroids bouncing off the windshield. “We must deorbit or we’ll all die up here. We've already lost the air scrubbers, it’s only a matter of time before asphyxiation.”

“Do it.”

Sharn gawped at the world.

Every world had some metallic presence, even earth, reclaimed as it was still had the gigantic hive-like cities in the British Isles and the northern Eurasian steppes. Kugazn had giant space-rings and Vurka was pockmarked with orbital bombardment craters and nuclear blast zones pounded into the jungle.

“A totally untouched world.” Said another of the crewers.

It seemed like to even land on this pristine beautiful world would be something akin to planet-wide rape, but they had a job to do. They were also beginning their inexorable plummet into its gravity well so it really didn't matter what they thought.
The impact of a skyscraper-sized asteroid on the vessel jarred everyone out of their reverie.

“You two might want to get strapped in, we’re in for a bumpy ride,” said the captain, as he pushed the big red ‘crash alert’ button.

“And an even bumpier landing.” Mumbled the young pilot.

Sharn and Urak quickly pulled themselves into the two available seats and set their adjustments to accommodate their large frames. “So,” Said Sharn, as he fastened his crash webbing, “You know how to make a crash landing, right?”

The pilot spoke back, “I hope so.”

The copilot tapped a few buttons. “Initiating deorbit…shit.”

“What?” Asked Sharn.

“Our ferrerium engines are smashed up worse than we thought; they've overheated and everything, a big, melted, smashed mass of metal. We’re running on secondary engines and thrusters. Steering’ll be hard, we might have to fall back on manual steerage, brace for impact, we’re going down hard,” said the pilot.

“Hard?”

“Yeah, we’re in for a really shitty day today,” said the captain.

The planet was now filling their entire views.

“Entering upper atmosphere.” Announced the copilot.

The pilot began to mutter to himself. “Damned asteroids. We made as pretty a sublight translation as I’ve seen, we could have just stayed up here, but nooo-ooo, his world had to be an ass and have a fuckhuge asteroid belt.”

Sharn started at this. “Can’t we just orbit above the belt?’

“Negative, like I said our ferrerium maneuvering thrusters were smashed to bits. A nearly fast-as-light piece of metal hitting a floating rock takes a lot of damage, as you can imagine. That said, the belt is enormous and these asteroids look like they’ve been lifted right off the moon. They’re not standard space-rocks.”

The copilot checked his tiny little screen. “Hull breaches on decks six and one. Sealing.”

The vernid hit a pair of buttons, sealing the blast doors on the rooms breached. Anyone within was doomed but it would save the rest of the ship.

“Look at THAT!” shouted the pilot. They were approaching the upper cloud layer. The veiwscreen was growing red-hot.
“Scanning,” droned the copilot, his pincer-claws tapping the keys in front of him.

“Well?” Asked Urak, as they settled down in their seats and stopped floating, the world’s gravity had them.
“We appear to be coming down in the local monsoon, the cloud levels are…strongly regimented but yes, there is a buildup of clouds, likely due to ocean winds. We’ll be coming into the local evening, just before sunset, it should be pretty dark down there.”

The pilot interrupted. “Hitting cloud layer in two, preparing arresters, we should level out soon.”

“Wait!” Yelled Urak, do we even know what the hell’s down there? Could be an ocean or we could be flying right into a mountain!”

“Don’t worry, I had this rout mapped out when we started losing altitude, it should take us right into a lake, a nice, smooth landing.”

“Oh, good.” Said Sharn. “Not like there might be giant lake-monsters or anything.”

Urak barked a humorless laugh.

They penetrated the white expanse. The world was grey for a few long, tense, mountain-fearing moments before they shot out, the glowing-red windshield vanishing in a wash of steam for a moment.

“I can’t see anything.”

“Just calm down, copilot, the steam will clear soon. Fire the lower boosters, level us out at sixty degrees for now,” said the captain.

The pilot and copilot tapped buttons and pulled levers, then the pilot shook his head and grabbed hold of the manual steerage. “Control’s fried cap’ we’re about as accurate as a thrown spear right now, hope we hit something soft.”
As the steam slackened and the starship pounded through the driving rain. They all looked at what was ahead of them.

“…Fuck.”

“About sums it up.” Said the captain.

“A lake, you said.” Muttered Sharn, as the looming mountain grew ever closer.

“Oops.”

“Can you steer away?” Asked Urak, eyeing the mountain.

“Manual steerage only works if we can angle the thrusters right. It’s very slow and inaccurate, so no.”

“A pleasure serving with you, sir.” Said the pilot, to the Captain.

“I hated every moment of it.” Retorted the captain, though it lacked the venom a real insult had. A few resigned chuckles were in evidence as the ship thundered down through the torrential rain towards the mountain and their impending doom.
“Wait a moment…” said the copilot. “…is that a…city?”

Sharn leaned forward in his crash webbing as the mountain approached. He felt strangely liberated, knowing his death was approaching.

“I’ll be damned.” Said the captain, for the second time in ten minutes.

The pilot threw up his arms, “great, so our engines are fried by asteroids and now we’re about to crash into an alien city-what the hell is that?”

“What?” asked Sharn.

“Towers.”

Sharn followed his gaze, their path would take them right by a pair of towers, oddly suspended above a mile-high drop by…nothing.

“Must be some pretty decent architects here, I don’t see any gravpoles.”

“You know…I think, judging by our projected path…we’ll clear the city. Might not be dead after all!” said the pilot.
The copilot tapped some more buttons, “I think we’ll pass the towers and city by and land in that giant forest a few hundred clicks away, if I can just get the blasted boosters to fire properly.”

“Look out!”

The captain braced himself in his seat. “Oh shi-”

With a thundering noise, the Comet’s Lament tore through one of the giant towers and continued onward.

The five beings in the cockpit would have been thrown about if not for their crash webbing. They felt something on the vessel come loose with a shuddering however. The starship tilted slightly as it continued on. Alarms began to blare.

The copilot spoke first. “We lost something. I don’t think it was too important though.”

Behind them, the gargantuan three-hundred meter long left wing of the Comet’s Lament scythed through Canterlot like a thrown blade.

“What’d we lose?” asked the captain.

The copilot tapped his keyboard and buzzed uncomfortably. “Um…a fifth of the vessel. Left wing.”

“Motherfucking engineers.” Moaned the captain as the vessel shot over the city.

“At least we missed the mountain.” Grunted Urak.

“Correction, Urak, four fifths of us missed the mountain.” Said Sharn.

Despite the situation and their looming fiery deaths, the cockpit was filled with hysterical, mad laughter like a pack of hyenas. The laughter of dead men walking.

“Forest. Trying to level,” said the copilot, hitting the switches to fire arresting jets. None of them had yet grasped the fact that they had been situated in an area of the vessel with only see-through duramite to protect them and were still alive and relatively unhurt.

“Was a fun ride down.” Said Urak, as the enormous forest loomed. “See you in the afterlife.”

In the holding section of the Lament, the rest of the team was unaware of how really bad it was. All they felt was a shudder as the wing detached.

“So.” Said malicant. “I guess we’re deorbiting.”

Haley nodded, slightly green. She’d always hated deorbits directly from space. They always ended in crashes.
“You holdin’ up Tri?” she asked, turning to Trizar.

The Kug, in his gel-like crash throne nodded. “Trizar hopes we don’t crash.” He hissed.

“So do I, and not the least because there’s a spiky kug behind me.”

The Kug let out a rattling laugh.

Vaanse was silently staring ahead. Frost was standing, having clamped its mechanical legs to the deck.

Malicant turned from his seat. “Frost, are you sure you don’t want to strap down?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re bound to break your bones. Get into a damn seat.”

“I have no bones to break. I would like to experience this crash.”

“…What the fuck, Frost?”

“It would be most beneficial towards the advancement of my knowledge to experience an interplanetary vessel crash firsthand.”

“But…what if your suit breaks?”

“It would be unfortunate.”

In the cabin, the five beings watched, seconds away from impact.

“Brace!” Said the Vernid copilot. The Comet’s Lament groaned as the arresting jets fired, trying to halt their forward momentum.

They hit the leafy canopy with a roar of fire, smashing wood and groaning metal. Sharn’s world slowed, his bionic implants kicking in, heightening awareness, flooding his body with endorphins and slowing his perception of time. He could see leaves being pushed away, smearing the canopy with rainwater and damp branches snapping as they plowed into the rain-soaked evening forest. He saw trunks ripped up as the kilometer-long vessel smashed into the foliage. He saw the cracks in the duramite as they hit the ground, then dirt. Looking around, he could see the captain grimacing, Urak’s pedipalps wide as he laughed insanely at this adrenaline rush, the copilot’s black, unfathomable insect eyes reflecting the carnage in the windshield, the pilot’s open, wide eyes and screaming mouth.

The world snapped back to real-time for him as the ship slammed into the earth, kicking up dirt hundreds of feet into the air and plowing into the mud like a runner sliding onto home plate. Sharn was slammed against his restraints and fought to keep neck from snapping from the force. He heard screaming, and someone throwing up and wondered why he wasn't knocked out yet. In the movies they always went out cold.

Not him. He heard the shattering of Duramite as the transparent canopy smashed open, the tiny stings on his skin as the sharp shards rained down around them and heard the alien world for the first time.

Mostly the snapping of branches and creaking of trees as they were torn to bits, the slapping of wet leaves and the downpour of the rain. Over it all was the tortured grinding metal of the Comet’s Lament being ground into the dirt as it skidded crazily, carving a trench behind it.

He felt the wet leaves and bits of branches slap his face and snap on his armor as they entered the cockpit through the smashed windshield as the vessel’s forward slide began to slow, Urak’s armored eye-protecting plates had slammed shut, the see-through armor film covering them still glowed blue, telling Sharn that Urak was still paying attention.

The captain was out cold, his head flopping every time the ship hit a new tree as it slowed and plowed through the forest.
The copilot was staring at the pilot with his bug-eyes as a branch of no uncertain size smashed through the window and impaled the pilot, tearing through his chest with a crunch like snapping wet sticks.

What seemed like hours later, in fact only a matter of seconds, the ship slowed to a complete halt, slamming everyone into their harnesses. The roar of twisted metal was replaced by the distant cracking of tree branches and ever-present downpour, now invading the vessel through the hole in the shattered canopy.

Sharn sucked in a breath, thanking any deity that would listen for his combat armor; it had likely saved his life.
He coughed heavily spitting up some bloody phlegm, the crash had knocked the wind out of him, and judging by the smoke and steam pouring from the control panels the ship had been hit bad.

His first instinct was to check his comrades, but Urak was already unfastening his crash webbing and the Vernid copilot had already done his. The captain was clearly out of it.

As Sharn unfastened his own webbing and stood up, he realized how lucky he was. He ached a lot and was covered in cuts, but in all likelihood, he should have died. He grabbed his helmet and stood up, ramming the thing onto his head, a Spartan affair, only a pair of teardrops for the eyes and nothing else.

“We all…” he coughed, “we all alright?”

The copilot checked the sarcastic captain’s pulse. “Captian Braig is stable.” He moved onto the pilot. “Pilot Veazy is dead.”
Sharn admonished himself, he should have learned the crew’s names, with a start, he realized he barely knew anyone not on his team. He resolved to become more familiar with his men –if any lived. He looked back at teh pilot's corpse. The man had been well and alive just moments before. you expected this kind of thing in war, not on a beachhead mission.

The vernid clacked his mandibles. “That was a much worse landing than I had anticipated, we likely lost most of our personnel…but we should get out of the ship it’s likely unstable and is gushing flammable fluids.”

Sharn glanced behind them; the hallway had indeed caved in. He quickly fetched a Linear Accelerator Rifle (LAR) from its housing in the wall. The vernid contented himself with a simple Magrifle, a shorter, carbine like affair while Urak had apparently brought a plasma gun with him.

“Let’s get out of this deathtrap.” Growled Urak, smashing the weakened duramite canopy with his powerful servo-assisted arm and gripping the edge in a gauntleted hand to pull himself up and out of the freighter’s sodden cockpit. He unshipped his axe from his belt and flipped it around, offering it’s handle to the vernid, who was unassisted by the bulky armor. The vernid accepted and let himself be pulled out.

“Alright.” Said Sharn, grabbing the edge of the metal frame of the cockpit and hoisting himself out. He leaned in and lifted Captain Braig out. “Let’s see if anyone else lived and hope the damnable thing won’t explode.”

Sharn took a moment to look out around him.

It was getting on an early evening, the land was a dark blue as the rain beat down. Leaves vibrated as water dripped onto them in a drumbeat rhythm and the clearing caused by the landing was being doused in the rain, looking behind the craft, it became clear that the trench plowed by the vessel was only a few hundred yards long. As they jogged away from the vessel, it also became clear just how bad the damage from striking that tower was. A long gash was torn in the hull, coolant gushed out of multiple rents under the cockpit. A savoir pod bay several hundred meters away had been torn open with the landing and the savoir pod within wrecked. The once-relatively proud spacefaring vessel was battered, gutted. Dead. Smoke rose from some of the rents in the hulls.

A wing could be seen missing down near the engine bay, the huge gap lay a pair of corridors bare as well as a crash bay. The second wing had evidently plowed into the ground as the vessel was ‘upright’ but at a tilt to it’s right. A massive gash had been torn in the side and dozens of smaller holes were in evidence, likely caused from the collision with the ground.

“Well.” Said Urak, who had not donned his helmet. “We’re here. Hah.”

Princess Celestia was in her quarters when the Thing passed by. She was reading a letter sent by Twilight Sparkle yesterday night. It detailed that the stars had stopped moving. This was comforting news at least. She could tell Luna that she could rearrange the asteroids into a less precarious position for her, a meteor shower of millions of asteroids would be unpleasant, no doubt. As she began writing a reply, she heard a noise.

It sounded like…like something was tearing, a ripping noise. It was coming from outside and it certainly wasn’t the downpour. The pegasi had elected to allow a heavy downpour for the night as more clouds formed during this time of the year.
Frowning, the Solar Princess stepped up to her window and looked outside.

The sound…it sounded like the sky itself was tearing open. She craned her neck to see what it was but in this infernal rain she couldn’t see past a few hundred feet up. The pegasi had put the clouds extra high this time.
It came like a javelin from the sky.

The roaring intensified and suddenly a giant, smoke trailing shape fully the size of an entire wing of the castle shot by one of the towers. Her heart nearly stopped as it smashed into the west tower and continued on. The tower itself crumbled, its top smashing into its bottom and sending the gargantuan chunks falling to the valley floor a mile below. Her attention was fixed on something else. An enormous…piece of the flaming…thing had broken off with the collision and was spinning through the air scything over the city like a deadly blade. She watched in horror as it landed, pulverizing an entire block with its immense size and caroming into the west gardens, where it plowed up a furrow of dirt and finally came to a halt, steaming as the downpour beat down the fires adorning it’s outer hull

She gaped.

This had been completely unexpected, the first thought to her mind was ‘dragon’ however dragons did not have wings the size of towers that were made of what seemed of be off-white and grey bone with red stripes down one side and giant runes on the top.

Hurrying out of her chambers, the white Alicorn quickly galloped down the stairs. Luna was nowhere to be seen, likely raising the moon now that Celestia had lowered the sun.

After moments of galloping, she realized she could teleport.

With a crack and a flash, Celestia vanished and reappeared in the castle courtyard, where the royal guard was already scrambling. Shining Armor apparently had the situation well under control. Celstia composed herself, the thing was unlikely to vanish by the time she got there, so there was no need of rush. She sedately trotted out of the palace and down towards the west gardens, where several dozen royal guard had already thrown up a cordon.

Shining Armor was there to meet her. “Your highness,” he bowed. “We have made sure nopony can approach the…metal…thing until we ascertain it’s purpose.”

Celestia nodded and started towards it.

Shining Armor spoke up quickly. “This includes you, your highness.”

“Shining Armor, I am not ‘anypony’ and before my little ponies can approach this thing I will make sure it is not harmful, I am likely best suited for the task. Have you sent for Luna?’

“Yes, she is raising the moon, she will be here soon.”

Celestia nodded and entered the gardens.

The devastation was appalling. A long furrow was plowed into the grass, deep too. The thing had come spinning over the city, demolished a block of office buildings and smashed into the gardens. Up close it was gigantic, easily the size of a tower of the castle. The thing was steaming, so it was likely quite hot.

The construct was wide and curved, roughly three stories thick and twenty wide it was an impressive sight. Evidently it was hollow as well, with a few holes scored in the width of it and several long holes that seemed to be a sort of hollow passage down its length.

Construct.

It was artificial.

With the thump of hooves on the wet grass, Luna landed form her frantic flight. Her mane sodden in the rain just as Celestia’s.

“What is that ?” the princess of the moon asked.

“It is…I am not sure, it came from the sky.”

“The star!?” gasped Luna.

“It can’t be, Twilight sent me a letter the other day that the star had stopped moving.”

“Celly, there’s no other explanation.”

“I…it’s not the whole thing,” said Celestia.

“Hmm?”

“I saw it from my balcony window, the…star, for want of a better word, was nearly a kilometer in length, it was like a spear, it smashed into the tower and this bit came off. The…comet, can we call it a comet?”

Luna nodded.

“The comet continued on towards the Everfree. It likely landed somewhere in that vast forest.”

Luna began walking, obviously excited about this thing that had come from the stars.

“It looks…constructed.” Said Luna, taking wing and landing on the top. “See, there’s writing on the side!”

Celestia flapped upwards and landed next to her sister. The rain was slackening off.”Can you be sure? It just looks like lines to me.”

Luna nodded. That’s also a possibility, let’s go inside!”

Celestia was about to protest when Luna took flight again and landed in one of the long hallway-like things where it had been ripped from the comet.

Luna was already looking uneasy. “This is defiantly a construct Celly.”

“Of course, sister.” Said Celestia, looking around at the…corridor.

It was long and curved with the vessel, several open doors of an iron-like substance, possibly steel were spaced at intervals. Luna studied what appeared to be containers before Celestia gasped.

“Luna!”

“Yes?”

“This is a…space-ship.”

Luna’s eyes went wide as she looked back to the container.

It was set into the wall and seemed to contain a trio of clear, possibly glass…things. Each of the glass things was attached by a short of shiny rope to a small container the size of each sister’s hoof, the glass was framed with more of the shiny black stuff.
At this moment, a guardspony landed at the entrance to the corridor.

“Guardspony,” Said Celestia. “Once my sister and I finish examining this thing, you are to put together a squad and take anything that can be taken form this vessel.”

“Vessel?” the pegasus asked.

“Er, yes, just do your duty, guard, what is your name?” asked Luna.

"One Grey Worm, your highness." the guard said.

"Oh? that's an unusual..name, in any case, do your duty." The guard nodded and left to gather his squad.

Celestia and Luna trotted down the corridor, stopping at the first door; it seemed to house quite a lot of complicated machinery and many long things with fins on the end. Celestia was unaware she was staring at Diamond-Boron missiles, each housing a small ‘tactical’ nuclear warhead. She had no idea that the larger ones were referred to as ‘godstoppers’ and a single one could level Canterlot in the blink of an eye. Neither of the sisters knew that the complicated machinery was a belt-feeding mechanism that fired the nuclear weapons like a machine gun in the event of space combat.

They dismissed the finned tubes as irrelevant and largely unimportant and continued onto the next room.

“Luna?” asked Celestia.

“Yes.”

“Have you thought of what creature could have made this? It doesn’t look like gryphon design or diamond dog or anything really.”

“Perhaps…”started Luna.”Perhaps the ship comes from another world?”

Celestia had feared that, and she had no idea what to do about it. “Well, whoever made it was clearly much more advanced than us.”

Luna looked puzzled. “I doubt it,” She said. “nothing here can’t be achieved by simple magic. We’re likely just confused at their different aesthetic taste.”

“Try a detect magic spell on anything here.”

Luna acknowledged and then gasped. “You’re right! Nothing here has an ounce of magic in it!”

Celestia nodded but Luna cut her off.

“Oh no, what if this is an invasion force? What if they’re mad at us? What if they’re EVIL? The world will be swarmed with green-skinned pony-eaters before-”

“Luna! In all likelihood, whatever made this contraption is LONG dead, nothing can survive in space for the time it takes to cross the void between stars, and I highly doubt they are immortal like us. In any case, it’s absurd to assume that they are too different than us, anypony from another world will likely be just as sane as us.”

“Yes…sorry sister,” said Luna, abashedly.

They entered the room and immediately wished they hadn't. Three corpses were the defining feature. And what corpses they were.

They were…strange. It had been generally assumed that anypony from another world would be relatively normal. Four legs, a head, hooves the works, maybe grey and with super big eyes but generally pony shaped. At worst, ‘green-skinned pony-eaters’ like Luna had said.

The first creature looked a bit like Twilight’s dragon, Spike though different at the same time. Pale like Celestia’s fur. It would have stood at roughly her height, if just a bit shorter. A mane covered its head like most ponies and its eyes were close-set and beady compared to a pony’s. It had no real snout, instead having a triangle-shaped snub above its mouth, which was opened in what Celestia first assumed to be a snarl then realized was a silent limp slack jawed pose of death. Its eyes were closed and it was certainly battered. Blood ran from its insides and its neck was at a strange angle. It was strapped into a chair by some strange webbing. The second creature looked like a collection of rocks more than anything else. Unlike the other, it was positively demonic, its skin was as hard as dragonscales and it was impaled upon a spar. It held the spar in one strange clawlike hand while the other dangled form it’s seat. The side of its strange head, (a head that seemed to have no mouth to speak of, just four odd, fat fangs, six limp hair-thin feelers and four eyes, a dull glossy black.) was lolling pathetically.

The third creature looked like the first though darker skinned, it wore a form of patterned green clothing and some sort of armor over its chest, legs and arms. Its head was adorned with a helmet of sorts. Its innards were spilling out.

The sisters looked uneasily at one another.

Aliens.

Dead Aliens.

____________________________________CHAPTER ENDNOTES_______________________________________

FINALLY.

Done with this monster chapter.

In fact, 7,000 words of it are because I didn't want to only have a 3,000 word chapter so I...added...things may have gotten out of hand...

For those of you who feel Celestia and Luna aren't reacting properly, it;s because they're thinking aliens and have been for about five minutes, not enough time for it to sink in really.

I make no claim to ponies, blah blah otherwise I'd be making this a feature film, not a fimficiton.

Special thanks to:

Master109: You'll see their full reactions next chapter, though this was a bit of it here. *grin*

Lightspeed: And humans, of course, technically they're ALL aliens however...

Captain Sigma: As always, gave a great review, I'm a 'hard' sci-fi fan so I like to do stuff the old-fashioned way. luckily, while worlds do change, world wars (true world wars) last centuries. As for your question about the spaces, I liked teh way it set the tone in 'Background Pony' Finally, I took your hint, the bold text thing did throw the story off.

Karikamiya: I LIKE re-posters. Feel free to offer critiques and your views on things.

Me: Hey, Ineptus, you should learn to use the blog.

TheGlassNinja: okay, I get it, he's not a member of the site, but he's a member of another site I frequent and helped me quite a bit with this chapter and the story in general. He also helped iron out the overall plotline.

Liquidjoshi: He is ALSO not of this site but helped me out a bit too, with the way the crash scene would swing in particular.

Everyone who upvoted this story: Thank you.

everyone who reads: Thanks. Comments are appreciated, do leave one. Or type and then hit 'post' urg...you know what I mean.