New Friends and New Enemies

Chapter1 The Hunt.
Special Thanks to AdmKline for editing

Pulling his ship out of the tumble, he now had two choices - attempt to crash land his escape pod or die. Having been caught by their moon's gravity and his escape pod's vector having been altered he did not have time to change his course to avoid a planetary landing. His ship was simply going too fast. That meant he would be stranded on the planet until pick up came. He launched his distress beacon as it would move to the proper position for transmission. The suited man closed his eyes as he fired his braking jets in small bursts, attempting to slow his speed enough to a safe atmosphere entry speed.

As he approached the planet he could hear his music starting up. A smile came to his hidden lips as he heard David Bowie's “Space Oddity” start to play or “Major Tom” as some people knew it. The music would help him focus on his timing for landing.

As the instrumental part came to an end the lyrics came on. He was finishing his pre-entry sequence and he used the lyrics to time his entry into the planet's atmosphere. His speed measured at least mach 20. He had to slow his speed to mach 15 before he hit the atmosphere. Any faster and his ship would burn up on atmosphere entry. Too slow and it would crash and burn before he could reach a heavily forested area he had chosen as his landing spot. As his ship sped through the vacuum of space he looked to one monitor seeing images of a castle from a distance as well as various villages.

As the countdown started in the song he was carefully firing the braking jets to bring his ship to the desired speed of mach 15 then as the song reached the point where it was "Liftoff" his ship hit the atmosphere. Now it was just a matter of keeping the ship on the proper decent angle for its controlled decent. There was nothing he could do to change his flight path which would take him over what looked like a city, several communities, one very large castle built into the side of a mountain, over a smaller town near the base and then into the forest deep enough that he hoped it would be several days or a week before his crash site was found.

His ship began to slow in speed thanks to the friction of the atmosphere as well as the occasional firing of the braking jets. After several nerve shaking minutes his ship streaked through the sky issuing several sonic booms as his speed finally reached the subsonic just after his ship went past the massive castle. He fired his braking jets at full power as he sailed over the night shrouded town. His ship entered into the forest as the vessel put power into the internal inertial dampeners to save his life as his ship landed with a massive jarring impact as it skidded across the ground, knocking over trees and starting a small fire in the area his ship landed. Despite the dampeners, the landing was extremely rough, knocking him around and leaving him dazed as the gas that had kept him conscious was no longer effective.

The blast from his experimental ship, the impact of that energy wave combined with the blind jump and now the crash landing had taken its toll on him. His body had been forced awake by a aerial adrenalin stimulant pumped through his mask. Safe in small quantities, long term exposure was dangerous. So for now... he was left in a daze rolling his head back and forth recovering as best he could.

"I thank you for coming so quickly with your friends Twilight," Princess Luna said with a kind smile.

"Of course Princess Luna," Twilight Sparkle said. With her were the rest of the Elements of Harmony - Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and of course Rainbow Dash.

"I loved the shooting star you had come down! It was beautiful!" Pinkie Pie said with her usual spurt of energy. Despite having been asleep thirty minutes ago she was wide awake and with her usual bursting energy.

Rarity and Applejack looked at her and both were thinking it should be forbidden for anyone to be that perky at having just woken up. The two of them had been sleeping when they were summoned. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy had been both getting ready for bed. Twilight as per her almost usual routine had been studying.

"I would thank you Pinkie Pie but I was not the one who caused it," Luna said softly. That got the attention of the Mane Six. "Also, when it first appeared it was on a direct course to hit Canterlot Castle until it changed its course halfway through the decent."

"But that's impossible," Rainbow Dash said only to catch her self, "Unless...."

"Unless it was under someone's control!" Fluttershy said in her soft voice.

"Exactly. Whatever it was was being guided down to avoid hitting Canterlot. I need you six to investigate the crash site and find out what it was that crashed. Do not put yourselves in any danger. Simply investigate the crash site and report back here. And please do be careful, if anything happens to you six my sister Tia will tie my tail in a knot."

"Your mane perhaps, but not that tail of yours." Princess Celestia teased before she yawned out a bit tiredly. "Be careful our Elements of Harmony," Celestia said allowing the six to depart the castle.

As Twilight and her friends left the castle, Applejack asked in a slight tired voice. "So uh... Twilight, How we gonna find where this thing landed?"

As they got to the courtyard there was a large shadowy grey pegasus stallion of the Lunar Guard holding his position with a carriage behind him. The group looked through Canterlot's main gate to the Everfree Forest and the smoke cloud that was flowing up from where the object landed.

"That won't be too hard to do," Rainbow Dash said the obvious.

Snapping his head up and hitting the head rest the being inside the torpedo looked around as he heard a number of alerts being spoken. "Cancel alerts, begin bioscan." The inside of his life support pod was filled with static electricity, the bioscan performing a complete scan of his body.

~~Scan complete. Minor concussion, ribs L2 and R5 micro cracks detected. No internal hemorrhaging.~~

'Minor injuries' he thought, "Status of environmental suit?"

~~Suit integrity intact at 100%~~

"Status of Stasis unit?"

~~Stasis system off line, Stasis generator damage. Scans indicate materials needed for part fabrication two thousand two hundred twenty-five meters south-south west.~~

"Great, fucking great!" He said. The stasis generator was the one thing that could help keep him hidden from locals. One of the protections the pod had would allow it to tunnel deep underground, then place him into suspended animation. That would keep him safe from discovery. But first he had to repair the system. "Download location and direction of materials into wrist computer. Upon departure activate burrow system and descend twelve meters. Release and unlock survival pack."

~~Alert! Alert! This world is preindustrial. Avoid contact with any sentient inhabitant at all reasonable cost. Lethal force is not authorized except in extreme situations. Confirm acknowledgement of this message.~~

"Message understood and acknowledged." Reaching forward he took hold of the release lock and pulling it started to slide the smoking hatch back as the outer surface of the pod was still over two hundred sixty degrees Celsius. As he placed his heat resistance glove on the outside surface it sizzled. He grabbed hold of his large survival backpack which held a number of survival tools, his Gauss Rifle as well as an over coat. The Gauss Rifle was also called the Rail Gun. A rifle that accelerated a metal slug to supersonic speeds. There were very few creatures or machines that could take a single shot from this rifle much less two. Granted it was often considered overkill but to the military there was no such thing as overkill, just kill.

Getting out of the pod he held his Sniper Carbine, a rifle which served as an assault rifle, a sniper rifle, and personal defense weapon. As he moved away from the impact sight he turned back and looked at the night sky then turning his attention to the 'torpedo' as the hatch sealed and a number of the interlocking plates lifted up and started to rotate. The reaction caused the escape torpedo to burrow deep into the ground. Only when it was out of sight did he turn to look at the forest around him that had not been decimated from the impact. The trees oddly looked vaguely familiar, similar to trees on Earth. He shook his head which caused some pain and took it as confusion due to his minor concussion.

He headed into the forest as it failed to register to him that he had left tracks behind him.

"Someone's a scaredypony!" Scootaloo said teasingly to Applebloom who scoffed at the idea of being afraid.

"I am not!" she retorted. "I said I don't think it's a good idea to go wandering around Everfree Forest at night like this."

"Come on, if we can find the fallen star we might get our cutie marks!" Scootaloo said as her small wings flapped at an incredible speed propelling her along on her scooter while behind her in their wagon Applebloom and Sweetie Belle rode along with her. Despite being nearly the middle of the night the three Cutie Mark Crusaders were always doing wild and crazy stunts in an attempt to earn their Cutie Marks. Sweetie Belle held up a lantern on a stick that provided Scootaloo just enough light to see where she was going as the trio finally reached the area where the shooting star had fallen to the ground. The area was covered in fire spots. Heat and smoke rose from the ground. The trio were careful as the approached a long gouge in the forest floor, all three wide eyed and in shock.

"Imagine if this had hit somepony...." Sweetie Belle was cut off by Scootaloo.

"Don't... even think that," she said and shuddered at the idea. In the entire area for seventy-five feet around the gouge in the ground trees had been snapped in two, bushes were burning... and the ground was charred as they moved along the nearly flattened ground. Finally as the neared the gouge it was Applebloom who first saw the strange depressions in the ground thanks to the lantern light.

"Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, look at this!" she said as she got off the wagon and moved over to a pair of strange tracks. "Tracks coming from the place of the fallen star!"

As the trio investigated they saw the tracks leading off into the forest."Could somepony have been hurt?" Sweetie Belle asked as she hopped down from the wagon onto the ground.

"Maybe, Let's follow them!" Scootaloo said.

"Scootaloo, are you sure that's a good idea?" Applebloom asked.

"Of course! What could possibly go wrong?"

All that did was make Sweetie Belle and Applebloom roll their eyes as the two got back into the wagon to let Scootaloo pull them into the Everfree Forest following the strange tracks.

They were unaware of the sickly green eyes watching them as a small bunny in the forest suddenly turned into a bird and flew off to tell her queen of what she had seen.