New Friends and New Enemies

Prelude
New Friends also means New Enemies
By Shadow-mane
Special Thanks to AdmKline for editing my works!
Thank you!

Klaxons blared, red lights flashed throughout the doomed experimental vessel. The jump drive test had nearly sheared the starship in half. The sounds of metal being bent, twisted, echoed through the ship's structure. Explosions rocked the corridors as the lone occupant ran to his only chance of life - the escape pod. All the ship's data logs were being put into the pod's data recorder. His environmental suit helped him despite the loss of atmosphere in the ship as he got to the pod. The hatch was open as he climbed inside the twenty foot long, eight foot diameter tube, often called an 'escape torpedo' because of the similarity in design it held to weapons used by oceanic war ships. The 'torpedo' was little more than a two jump vessel - the first jump to get the ship away from the area, the second jump to direct it to home base.

Reaching up the man grabbed the hatch bar and with all his strength pulled the sealing hatch forward, locking it into place as support braces closed on the hooks to his suit's built in harness, and pulled him tightly back into the pod's seat. The inside of the tube was pitch black except for a red light which now turned green. Less than one second later the pod was launched at over mach 10. As the pod left the tube, the experimental vessel Pegasus lost her antimatter containment. The resulting uncontrolled mix of matter and antimatter all but obliterated the ship. The blast wave enveloped the pod sending it tumbling through the blackness of space.

When the Pegasus detonated the crews of the survey ships that had been in the area to observe the test jump watched in horror as one of their finest test pilots was thought to have just died. That was until the beacon of the escape pod signaled that it was intact the occupant alive. This sent a swarm of small recovery ships in the direction of the tumbling pod. That was until the tell tale signature of the pod's jump drive kicked in. A backup program in the pod had been lead to believe that it had been fired on and as a result, the escape drive activated and in a flash of light the 'torpedo' vanished.

Inside the pod the occupant had been rendered unconscious when the pod took the blast wave and saved him the horror of learning that his pod had made what was called a 'blind jump'. Under normal conditions when a jump was made, the ship disappeared from its current location and reappeared someplace else. Some might call it a form of teleportation. Carefully planned under controlled situations, a normal jump was harmless. A blind jump was anything but. A blind jump was what pilots called it when their ship's navigation computer had in effect made an portal jump without destination coordinates. One could appear inside an asteroid, inside a planet, or even the heart of a star.

The 'torpedo' continued to tumble as it appeared on the other end of the jump. Gas was released inside the pod to awaken the occupant. The monitors around him took a few moments for him to focus on, as he realized that the Co-ordinates of his location had been scrambled. The computer voice in the escape pod spoke to him.

~~Warning. Warning. Planetary impact in T-minus seven minutes thirty seconds. Jump drive recharge time, T-minus ten minutes. Warning, Warning. Prepare for crash landing.~~

Inhaling the gas that flooded his mask he looked through the eye monitors at the planet and said. "At least I didn't end up inside the planet. Computer, disable warning. Transfer control to manual flight control." Then almost as an afterthought, "Play track selection thirteen at T-minus five minutes twenty seconds to impact." Grabbing hold of the two control handles the escape pod despite her damage opened up her wings and lifted an air foil as the pilot struggled to bring his ship out of her death tumble.

Data rolled up one of the monitors on the inside of the ship confirmed the planet was unknown and equivalent of Earth is general size. Similar atmosphere, although oxygen levels were five percent higher than Earth, and inhabited by a preindustrial age sentient carbon based lifeforms. Which meant pre space flight. Still he had no choice but to crash land. He had been caught in their moon's gravity and his escape pod's vector had been altered to impact the planet.

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In the land of Equestria in Ponyville, Princess Luna was out enjoying the night with two of her Lunar Guard beside her. A lot had happened with her in the last two years since her return from the moon and being freed from being Nightmare Moon, the most important being that she had as some said 'lightened up'. Tomorrow night was Nightmare Night. She was looking around at the festival decorations enjoying the atmosphere.

Before she had been feared and even shunned but now she was loved and accepted by the ponies of Equestria. Strolling through the streets she heard the rapid clip-clopping of tiny hooves running up towards her and perhaps a dozen or so young colts and fillies swarmed her. All at once they asked her about the Star Shower tomorrow night, asking if she would make it Star Shower now and tomorrow night as well. She could not help but laugh softly as she told them "Foals, foals, settle down, settle down. One at a time, please." She lowered her dark head and neck down to their level. "Now, what is this about a Star Shower you have heard about?" she asked softly.

The fillies and colts all told her yes, they had heard that tomorrow night that she would summon a Star Shower for Nightmare Night. Narrowing her eyes as a playful smile crossed her muzzle she lifted her head to look at her two guards behind her. They were doing their best to look stoic and on duty, but it was clear to Luna one of her stallion guards had loose lips. "I had wanted to make it a surprise for everypony. I wonder who let the secret slip," she said with a half chuckle. Luna had spent the better part of two days using her magic to set things into place so that tomorrow the Star Shower could be seen by everypony. Of course came the requests for an early show but sadly she had not planned for one.

Turning her attention back to the fillies and colts, she was just about to answer them when a flash of light erupted to the northeast behind the castle in Canterlot. Turning her attention to the sky she could see a streak of bright fire race across the sky from the direction of Manehatten. The midnight blue Alicorn flared her wings protectively. Her eyes watched the streak of fire as circles erupted from it at various parts, almost like rings of clouds being pushed around it. It made no sound as she watched the fireball streaking in the direction of Ponyville. At first it seemed like it might hit as the fire streaked across the night past Canterlot and then over Ponyville. As it past overhead the sound erupted, very similar to when Rainbow Dash performed her Sonic Rainboom. The sounds made the glass windows rattle and the wind whipped up wildly as the object streaked across the sky and then seemed to land deep in the Everfree Forest. A cloud of smoke lifted from the heart of the forest followed by the sound of a crash in the distance.

After the impact the colts and fillies erupted into cheers, many of them thanking Luna for the special treat. Of course while Luna smiled she looked at the parents of the young who had come to get them from pestering the Princess. One of the Stallions asked, "Practicing new ways to use the Royal Canterlot Voice, Princess Luna?"

Hiding her displeasure at the turn of events, she simply smiled sweetly and said "Maybe." She then spread her wings and took off returning to Canterlot with her guard in formation. She didn't teleport to the castle, not wanting people to think that there was anything other then a show of sorts. But Princess Luna had not planned that at all and in her mind she knew something wasn't natural about whatever came from the sky. If it was it would have made a much bigger explosion in the Everfree Forest.

Upon arrival at the castle she saw her sister Celesita in the courtyard. She shook her head as some of the guards were picking up shattered glass. Canterlot had been closer to the object's decent and the sonic booms had been much stronger. Princess Celestia shook her head as her younger sister landed. The older princess looked at her younger sister. "Over doing it a little bit?"

Surveying the damage to some of the glass windows she said softly. "Tia, you know I would not have intentionally intended to cause damage or harm to anyone. Beside, what ever it was I had nothing to do with the object from the sky. I can also assure you it was not natural."

The multi-hued maned mare turned to look at her young sister to see if she was actually serious. Luna then said "We may have trouble. What ever it is is not of our world."

With a nod Celestia agreed as Luna turned to her Guard captain. "Captain, please bring Twilight Sparkle and her friends to the castle as quickly as possible and extend my apologies for either rousing them from sleep, or taking them away from the festival preparations." The Guard captain bowed his black armored head to her and at once went to carry out his princess' wishes.