Sons of Equestria

Chapter 1: Making Headway

  I woke up and saw Max already up, typing away on the drop pod’s boards.

  “What happened back there?” I asked.

  “Oh, you’re up, well by the readings the ship was quickly surrounded by an unmatchable energy reading and then thrown into a forest.” Max replied. I slowly tried to get up but found my suit lock up.

  “Sorry, Jason, but your scan isn’t done yet, I’m not sure how you faired in the crash. So hang tight until I am done.” He relaxed and allowed Orion to scan me. “Alright, you check out, you’re good to go.” I got up to my feet and looked out the monitor’s screen. All I could see was a whole bunch of trees, not really a surprise being as we were in the middle of the forest.

  “What is our best course of action, sir?” Max asked me as he continued to type a few things.

  “Do we have contact with P.E.T. H.Q.?”

  “Negative, sir, it fell just as the bolt hit our ship.”

  “Crud… well still the best thing to do would be to contact the locals, our mission was to making peace with them, now it’s only changed to a race against time where we still need to make peace, but now we have to do it before U.N. can get here, which all in all won’t be too long.”

  “Then let’s go, this pod is basically dead, I’ve been trying for the past few minutes to see if I could revive it, but being as it is the Gohoritykah that can talk with metal and machines and I cannot, I doubt my efforts shall prove fruitful any time in the future.” With that he slammed a button that caused the door to fly away from the pod in a jet of air.

  “Taking air readings, if negotiations ever begin I bet the locals will want to be face to face with us.” I said as I took out a scanner from my chest plate compartment. “The readings show Earth-like environment. Alright let’s head to the castle, come on let’s hurry.” With that Max crouched down and preformed a powerful jump that send his flying forward, and using his wing his controlled his movement through the trees wing no difficulty. While he flew I decided to just run old fashion style. My life detecting radar was going crazy as the forest life flew off in every direction. I had to turn off my mass detecting radar being as it would be useless in this forest.

  We continued to run through the forest that seemed t never end. Several times Max had to touch down to perform another jump to keep himself going. We soon reached a clearing and decided to rest up a bit. Even though we probably ran five to ten miles or so we weren’t really exhausted being as during training I had to run several laps around the track in my suit of armor when it wasn’t on, meaning two and a half tons of metal were on my shoulders. We stopped more for Max to have time to absorb some sun light to keep him going since the last time he did so was a few hours ago. I handed him a jug of water while I simply saved mine for later. The bottle’s neck was too thin to fit a wrist through it, but Max simply grew out and exposed finger that touched the water and lowered its level rather quickly until a quarter of it was gone.

  “I should be good now, I got a good amount of sunlight and enough water to give me enough sugars for a little while, but for now we need to push on.” I nodded and got to my feet and began to walk. Being as Max was Rahgahgogarian, it meant that walking took a very, very small amount of energy in contrast to running, unless it was in the open sunlight then he could do either veritably nonstop. Even though we were in the forest and it was to be expected, I had the feeling that we were being watched. My life force radar showed that there was a living being moving along with us. Being as the Rahgahgogarian genetic research project was a success, I was able to talk to Max with my mind, although I rarely ever did since it felt weird, but this instance was good enough for me to want privacy while we talked.

  “Max, I think something is trying to follow us, my radar is saying that he is keeping a certain distance from us, basically observing us. Here’s the plan…”

  The pony walked behind the two giant, every so often swinging to the side to have a better view, but for the most part he preferred to stay directly behind them. He knew that they probably were already aware of his presence, but he didn’t much care. He noticed the one in a metal suit walk in front of his friend, and being as his friend was bulkier than he was he was fully hidden. He continued to walk behind them, trying to observe them until the time was right. Suddenly he was grabbed by nothing and dragged behind a tree, soon the nothing around him fazed into a metal suit as the cloak wore off. One word crossed the pony’s mind ‘Amazing’. The other one came back met up with them. This one had no mouth, but his eyes were red and looked as if they were single eyes instead of compound, its skin was like that of a spider in that it was hard and shiny.

  I held the pony in my arms; I quickly noticed it had a horn and what appeared to be a branding mark, which was to test tubes, one pouring into the other.

  “If you are trying to impress the locals with how passive you are then you aren’t all that impressive as you think you might be.” The pony said to me. I let him go and instead of running as I expected he simply stood where I had left him and shook off some debris and swiped his mane’s bangs to the side.

  “But it isn’t very polite to sneak behind someone.” I said back at him.

  “And it isn’t very polite to use active camouflage to grab an innocent observer, especially a college graduate who has his Masters in science.” He shot back at me with a smile.

  “Well I don’t take to most scientists.” I replied bluntly.

  “Well aren’t you a fine fellow.” He said with a smirk.

  “Well, if you can’t get us an audience with you leader than run off and find someone that can. We need a talk.” I said getting to the point.

  “Well, I do know the personal student of the Princess; I guess I could put a word in for you.”

  “Tell her that we’ll be there before she knows it.”

  “Yes sir.” He while striking a salute. He suddenly charged off in some random direction, I could only hope he knew where he was going. I looked to Max, who simply shrugged. We both had no idea how things would go. Max and I set off again towards the city on the mountain.

  It had been a few hours of walking and for the most part it had been uneventful. We walked through the forest as we had done for hours before, and again my life detecting radar picked up a large group of things coming up behind us. I pulled out my stun focus rifle as Max took out his stun charge shotgun. I knew these were predators, mostly because their walking patterns were circling us and drawing closer with each pass. Whatever these things were, they were asking for a fight, and if that is what they wanted then that is what they’d get. I couldn’t say I saw any creatures; all I could really see was trees and an occasional shifting bush. Suddenly one of those bushes jumped out at us. It landed on top of me and opened its wide mouth exposing its teeth. I slammed it in the face with the back of my gun, thus getting it off of me. I noticed that all the bushes around us were now these ferocious creatures. If these were to be given any nickname it would probably along the lines of deceiver or cunning. I pointed my rifle at one of the beasts and squeezed the trigger, setting off the shot of electricity which I expected to stun it, but instead caught it on fire. I set the blaster from focus beam to repeater and started to let out round at the monsters, that decided to run after the violent death of what I expected to be something of a leader. I locked my rifle back onto my back, and in response the suit encompassed it with some of the suit’s metal so it could still perform active camouflage.

  “Time to run; we might get late if we keep up this pace.” I said to Max who nodded in response. He both took to our ways of getting places fast, and being as the forest began to fall into a plain; it became much easier for Max to keep up the speed. I activated the boot boosters that caused me to run increasingly faster. Soon we were in plain sight of anyone who did as much as glance our way. We came to the foothills of the mountain on which the city was founded. The mountain was as big as any mountain I had seen previous to this. Suddenly we were approached by a line of ponies in armor; I could only guess that this was going to be our escort for the day.

  The pony ran on until he reached the library, once again the ringing of the bell was absent, making him feel a pang of disappointment.

  “Twilight, are you in?” He said as he came through the door. Twilight appeared around the corner that led to the kitchen.

  “Oh Doctor…”

  “Cut the pleasantries, Twilight, they’re here!”

  “Who’s ‘they’… oh wait… you don’t they ‘they’, do you?”

  “Yes I do, and they are requesting an audience wish the princesses. I told them I would see what I could do. Can you send a letter quick?”

  “Yes, yes of course, I just can’t believe that they are here. It took them long enough.”

  “Yes it did but what matters now is that they are here! Let’s get a letter together and send it off!” With that Twilight grabbed a quill and parchment and began to write her letter to Celestia and soon gave it to Spike, who quickly sent it by flame to Celestia.

  Celestia was in her private study when the letter arrived. She opened it and read over it and lowered it and looked into the distance in thought.

  “Sister, what is wrong?” Luna asked, who at this time was reading a few books on the progress of Equestria during the five hundredth year of her banishment.

  “Do you remember back when I told you about how my student said she had been in contact with a being from another planet, or should I say, universe?”

  “Yes, Sister, I remember.”

  “She says that another pony went to the crash site of what we thought was a meteorite and found two strange bipedal creatures, one matched the description of the beings true form and the other was completely different. It ends up that the meteorite was a hollow space craft that they call ‘drop pods’ which they use like row boats except for planetary based travel and not aquatic travel. It appears that they ask the pony to find a pony who could gain an audience with us for them.”

  “So are we going to allow them an audience with us?”

  “We have no real choice in that they already said they are coming and we have no way to contact them.”

  “What should we do?”

  “I want you to go to Shining Armor and ask for a battalion of his finest troops to rendezvous and the base of the mountain. If anything we want as few ponies to hear of this as possible until we hear what they have to say. While you are doing I am going to write a letter to all of the minor princes and princesses to tell them to come here. You and I should be there when the two creatures come so we can properly introduce them to Equestria.”  Luna nodded and unfolded her wings and took off towards the military complex while Celestia started writing letter to the minor princes and princesses of Equestria.

  Luna and Celestia waited in front of their mountain city with their battalion of guards, which included Captain Shining Armor himself.

  “Princesses,” Shining said, “what are we to expect from these guests of ours?”

  “That depends on which of the two you are referring to.”

  “Well, the troops would like to know about both of them.”

  “Both of them are bipedal, and by all reports, taller than both Luna and I. The human is wearing some sort of full body armor that doesn’t allow you to see any of it, the other creature appears to be in no armor and completely reliant on its tough exoskeleton. The human’s suit allows him to turn invisible and possibly many other things we cannot fathom, while as the other creature’s abilities as still uncertain as of yet.”

  “To sum it all up, we are about to meet up with two gigantic warriors from another universe, who if they chose, could kill us all right now.”

  “True, these are warriors who have great potential, but by all signs they are being as passive as possible towards us, in fact I can say it is likely they might want to forge an alliance with us, but only time can tell.” Suddenly two gigantic figures appeared over the horizon coming towards the group at a great speed. The two slowed down when they came closer, giving the ponies only more time to let the realization of how tall and muscular they were.

  A soldier ran up the stairs to the main deck in his search for the captain.

  “Damage report, sir, we sustained heavy damage to the hull and minor damages to the engines.” The commander continued to look out at his view of the cosmos, looking as if he ignored the minor officer.

  “Estimated time until we can sail on, we are in a high priority mission.” The commander said, not even looking over to his inferior.

  “The Gohoritykah and human engineers are working at full speed and saw it may range from three days to two months, sir.” The commander walked towards his minor, who so happened to be a Gohoritykah trainee.

  “Then tell me, will the drop pods launch?”

  “N-no sir, the engines were damaged in such a way that all power was cut to the pods.”

  “Then tell me, how did a disabled ship that had been hit by a full power, focused energy manages to return fire and much more penetrate our double shields?” At this moment the towering human superior gathered the trembling Gohoritykah into a corner as it shivered in fear.

  “It was an ion canon blast, sir, very few, if any, shields are rated on either side of the war to be able to stop them, in fact for the most part ion blasts warp the energy field causing it to breach without losing any power, sir…”

  “This is agent 7860 reporting in to U.N.S. Hailstorm, come in Hailstorm.” a voice echoed from the speaker that the commander had been standing by. The commander, still referring to the cadet said, these final to the Gohoritykah before it ran off,

  “Tell the men to repair things as fast as possible; we can’t afford any more mishaps.” At that he sprinted off as the commander walked up to the sounding speaker. He laid his hand on the module, causing an image to appear. “Agent, how come we received fire from your end?”

  “My apologies sir, I was trying to convince them I was dead releasing all suspicion. It ends up that two of them survived and dropped to the planet below.”

  “And yet you did not shoot them down?”

  “No sir, I did not, the ship only had enough power for one shot and to continue running the ship’s vital systems. But I did make sure they would be unable to contact U.S. headquarters.”

  “You did that right at least, tell me what you know, when you know it. This is U.N.S. Hailstorm out.” With that the commander turned off the screen and walked into the council room. In the room were eleven other of the ship’s commanders from the different decks, all of which were mixed humans and Gohoritykah. “Hello gentlemen, let us begin.” With that he took his seat at the head of the table.

  The different commanders gave their reports of damage to their sections, it ended up that every layer of the ship had some damage done by the blast, while most decks that were farther away suffered things more like shattered windows while closer decks had collapsed roofs and crumbling floors. Fortunately for everyone on board, the ship’s artificial atmosphere was rated to expand twenty feet from the ship’s walls.

  “Well men, I do have good news amongst all this disaster. It appears our inside agent on the U.S.S. Sailfish has remained undetected and unexpected. The two survivors don’t expect him of treason, only of death, thus giving us an edge in this race yet. I do expect that U.S. forces will make contact and alliance with the dominating race of this world, but as shown in sector ML16, we can still beat them and gain the races of the world.” At that the ships commanders cheered and quickly returned to their places of command on the ship before all fell to complete disorder.