"New entry... log 228 of the year 2984"
"Transmission from Scout 2nd Class, Jack Callahan to Captain Seamus Callahan."
"One more star, Shea. This is my last chance. If I don't find anything at this one, I'm fucked. The Admins will send me back out for another five years. Alone. I can't fucking stand this anymore. I'd take anything at this point. An exploitable asteroid, or even an H3 cloud. Anything. The paygrades don't concern me at this point, I just need something to return to Motherwill with. If... If I do get sent back out. If I don't find anything, tell Eva I love her. I hope she can wait for me. Just to be sure, I'm going to make a copy of this transmission if you can't pick it up. I'll at least see you again at the rendezvous, right? Just don't wreck my damn ship this time, bro.
-Scout 2nd Class, Jack Callahan"
"End of entry..."
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It was a quiet, clear Friday night in Ponyville. Twilight Sparkle sat on her balcony next to her telescope and admired the quiet serenity of the night sky. "Isn't this relaxing, Spike?" she asked her favorite assistant. "Spike? Spike, where are y--" The small dragon was curled up in a chair snoozing, having already stayed up much to late after his normal bedtime. "Sorry, Spike, I didn't realize you had fallen asleep!" said Twilight with a small chuckle. The baby dragon still slumbered peacefully, recovering from a long day of stocking an exceptionally large book shipment Twilight had requested from Canterlot. Smiling at her number one assistant, Twilight turned back to her telescope, scanning the sky for her next subject. "Equus Major... Equus Minor..." she started listing off stars as she identified them one by one. "Hm, that's new..." Twilight pulled away from her telescope to check the star chart she had laid out on a nearby table. Failing to identify the object she was staring at, she consulted an astronomy schedule Princess Luna had made for her. Again, she found no information telling her what the object she sighted even was. Recalibrating her telescope, Twilight focused on the strange object sitting just below the moon in the night sky.
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"Well, this is a fine pile of shit. Wait, shit can be turned into biomass, this is worse than shit. This is absolute nothingness." Jack wasn't having a good day. In fact, the last five years of his life couldn't be called good by any stretch of the word. Five years of floating through space looking for any kind of usable resources, and all he could find was an asteroid belt that barely had enough iron to build a second scout vessel. Jack only had a month left to serve on this scouting tour, and if he returned to the fleet empty handed, the best case scenario had him being sent back out on another scouting tour. The worst case scenario, and the far more likely, was that he'd be re-assigned to a desk job or popped onto one of the forge ships.
"God damn it, why can't I find anything! I just need a good resource cache, and I'd be golden! A hydrogen cloud, a small nebula, something! Hell, I'd even take a giant ball of space-shit at this point! Just give me something!" Jack yelled at the vast expanse of space before him. The great abyss responded by chucking a lone pebble at the main view port. The small rock, a small piece of debris from some sort of cosmic collision, dinged off of the heat shield like a ping pong ball hitting a tank. "Yeah, well, fuck you too, space. Frigid fucking bitch..." A much larger rock slammed into the ship's nose cone, sending a minor tremor into the ship. "....God damn it."
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Jack floated out of the cockpit of his ship, and went through the bulkhead into the ship's living quarters. The room consisted of a sleep-pod, a small kitchenette, a lounge chair, and a small watercloset nestled in the far corner. Further back in the ship were the life support/grow room, engineering room, and emergency escape pod. The life support room housed all of the essential systems needed to sustain life in space for extended periods of time. It held the controls for the gravity system, an emergency automated first aid station, a biodiagnostic suite, and the grow cubes. The grow cubes were essentially giant Petry dishes used to turn a primordial paste of enzymes and nutrients into food, and one grow cube was specialized to grow specially bio-engineered shrubs that replenished the ship's oxygen supply and keep the CO2 in check. The oxy-shrubs dominated the rear wall of the life support room, and crowded around the bulkhead that led into engineering. Engineering held all of the power systems for the ship, from the engines to the magnetic repulsion shields. The main power core dominated the center of the room, with the rest of the power stations scattered along the outer walls. At the very back of Engineering was a large circular bulkhead that led to the small emergency escape pod and the main airlock. Jack pulled himself through the bulkhead and into the escape pod. While the ship had auto-repair drones and maintenance protocols, Jack still liked to perform a manual inspection from time to time. After all, he didn't have anything better to do while the ship was in transit.
"Seriously, who fucking designed this thing. 'Hey, let's put the escape pod in the back of the ship! I hope it isn't sheared in half by an asteroid or anything while the pilot has to crawl back to it!' Fucking idiots." Even though there wasn't anyone in the ship to listen to him, Jack still liked to complain. It kept him sane, or so he told himself. Suddenly, alarms blared through the entire ship, startling Jack and causing him to slam his head into the top of the escape pod. "Ow, shit, what strange and wondrous new Hell have I stumbled into now?" Jack kicked his small body through into engineering, planted his feet on the side of the core's housing and launched himself through life support and the living quarters straight into the cockpit.
As he pulled himself into the pilot's chair, Jack swung the system monitor into his field of view. His eyes shot went wide as he read the message on the screen aloud. "'Planet detected nearby: preliminary scans have found a previously unknown planet within this vessel's jumping range. Planet may carry large amounts of liquid or gaseous water, immediate worm-space jump recommended.' OH HELL YES, JACKPOT BABY!" Jack punched in the planet's coordinates into the navigation console, and prepped the engine for the journey. The large thruster on the rear of the shipped charged up as a spatial disturbance started to manifest around the ship. As a small wormhole opened up in front of the ship, Jack threw the throttle forward, blasting the ship through to the other side.
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"Spike. Spike! Wake up Spike!" The young dragon bolted up from his slumber as his big sister frantically called to him. "What's the matter Twi? You sound like the sky's about to fall or something." Spike found himself suddenly enveloped in a purple aura as Twilight brought him to up to the telescope. "That's just it Spike! There's a strange meteorite in orbit, and I think it's going to crash near here! I need you to write a letter to Princess Celestia warning her. I'm going to go alert the town!"
Author's Note
Back from two years of inactivity, I'm going to try bringing this baby back! If you're reading this because it popped up in your sub box, I thank you for reading it before, and I will try to actually write it this time. I didn't get too far last time, which turns out to be a good thing. I've read through what I had before and It felt hella rushed, so I've decided to redo the whole shebang.
