The Saga of the Tennyson Empire: The Downfall of Equestria

A Word From the Author:

In case anyone is wondering, here are what the native names for aliens featured in this chapter amount to.

1. Vaxasaurians: Humongosaurs.

2. Petrosapiens: Diamond Heads

3. Arburian Pelarotas: Cannonbolts

4. Vulpimancers: Wildmutts

5. Pyronites: Heatblasts

6. Ectonurites: Ghost Freaks

7. Galvanic Mechamorphs: Upgrades

8. Kinecelerans: XLR8s

9. Galvan: Grey Matters

10. Piscciss Volanns: Ripjaws

1. Appoplexian: Rath

The Saga of the Tennyson Empire: The Downfall of Equestria

By: VunderGuy

Chapter 1: Departure

Space. The works of many a writer born on earth, old and new, often romanticized it as an analogue for the days of yore when empires took to the sea in search of new discoveries, profit, and the spread of their own ideals over that of their rivals. For the most part, they were correct with such assumptions. For was indeed, essentially, just the age of exploration expanded upon to heights both infinite and eternal. It will continue to be viewed as such by the general populace of the planet even after the culture from the many aliens that have moved there have rubbed off on them.

I myself am guilty of holding romantic notions of space. In fact, I myself am guilty of holding romantic notions about the sea in an age where one can hicc on the coast of Bellwood and up on the sands of Hong Kong via watercraft commercially available and affordable to even the poorest of the masses. Traveling to other Universes, to other versions of earth have allowed me to maintain these views and, in the case of the latter, gain a few. I can only imagine what work will come about when father or mother decide to make craft designed for commercial trans-dimensional travel legal. I have little doubt after he or she finally set their minds to a single universe for us to conquer that it will be, with the proper regulations such a thing would require of course.

At the present though, as I gaze upon it, I do not view space as a place of expedition, the commerce of goods or services, or the commerce of ideas. I view it as an endless void where the stuff of comets, asteroids, meteors, moons, planets, stars, nebulae, and the wreckages of ships lie in a desperate and futile attempt to fill it with some semblance of substance. I view it now as I reckon the sailors of yore who have ever lost something when moving through a hurricane did. As a cruel place where one moment, whether you respected or feared or not, the live giving light from a nearby sun could suddenly be snuffed out by a whim of probability, leaving what lied below to suffer terribly. Not as a fantastical place filled with limitless possibilities and opportunities that is blessing to be able to master, but as a necessary evil. A place where I had lost someone very dear to my heart. A place that swallowed up my little brother and has refused to give back even a hide or hair of him.

I am Max Tennyson, son of Emperor Benjamin Kirby Tennyson and Empress Julie Yamamoto, and I feel nothing but anger for space now, its desolation and ability to desolate, mocking me.

But…perhaps, like the palace aids and my mother, I am worrying too much. Perhaps I have simply forgotten the faith I have placed in junior. Sure, out of all ten of us, he may have been the weakest and least experienced, but for a Prince of the empire, he who is the smallest is still like a mountain compared to the problems he is likely to face…shouldn’t he be?

I shake my head and smirk wryly to myself. “What do ya know? I AM starting to worry like mother.”

Such thought would do me no good now. Junior was alive. Plain and simple. He had to be. Though my family often joked that he was a chip off the old block (in the negative connotations of that statement as well as the positive), he was much too well trained. Too well learned. Too clever.  Too well equipped. Too savvy in the arts of combat and war despite being a mere decade old. He was fine. Either I, or Kevin, or Carl, or Keone and Yuri would probably end up finding him on some back water version of earth or some other world in some other Universe having conquered the local populace there, made them build him a giant sandcastle that doubled as a water park, and soaking in the sun while on a foldout chair sipping a smoothie while servants fanned him with giant leaves. With everything he had to go through to even be CONSIDERED having his own personal flagship (much less the fleet behind said vessel), I wouldn’t put it past the little rascal.

I take a deep breath. A deep. Calming. Breath. It would all turn out all right. It had only been a few hours since junior’s ships were reported missing from orbit and would take only one for father and his team of engineers to construct the gateway device over Mars. I stand here now, in one of the many dry docks in orbit over the planet, awaiting its completion.

In essence, it is quite similar to the portal he and Uncle Kevin had built for Project Omniverse, only on a scale that would allow for the passage of spacecraft through and much less self-contained. In the simplest of terms used by commoners, one could say it was a giant needle like tower floating in space that fired off a bolt of green energy that expanded into a rift between dimensions at about a hundred miles (a hundred and sixty one kilometers) ahead of it.

I chuckle.

“Father and Uncle BOTH would see my head stomped into the ground by the heel of a Vaxasaurian for such a gross oversimplification.”

Indeed, they probably would. Something I find to be very ironic considering how father was said to and still HAS a tendency for simplifying the unimaginably complex.

I am brought out of my musings when I hear the characteristic footfalls of armored feet behind me. Turning around, I find a Forever Knight, part of the crew I requested for this mission, running towards me.

“Prince Maximillius!” He says before coming to a halt and bowing on one knee. “Mi Lord.”

“Rise Lieutenant Felonious.” I say, absentmindedly waving my hand. “Why have you come to me?”

Getting back up to his feet completely, he said, “Me and some of the boys are gettin’ a little testy waitin’ for that there gateway to finish being built, and were just wonderin’ if we could maybe, possibly, order some take out while it’s bein’ done and all.”

I fix him a stern glare.

“You want me to allow you and several other Knights to breech military protocol on a highly sensitive mission, perhaps the single most important mission you or I have ever been on, just to sate your desire for biochemical sustenance?”

Felonious scratches the back of his helmet with one of his armored hands, the sound metal on metal ensuing.

“Uhhh…yes…Mi Lord.”

I maintain my glare, intensifying it to the point that I feel Felonious begin to feel like that armor of his is akin to a frying pan over a fire. Suddenly, I let up on my gaze, reach into a pocket on my royal regalia, and tossed a credit chit towards him. It came as a surprise to him, if the way he fumbled about before catching it was any indication.

“Very well then. Get me something too. But make certain that whatever take out you get involves chilidogs. At least ten. Understand?” I ask him.

Felonious stares at me for a few second beneath his visor before he snapped to attention and saluted me.

“Chilidogs were exactly what we had in mind, Mi Lord!”

I waved him off and with audible glee, I heard him run down the gunmetal grey corridor, make a right, and disappear. I huff and, despite myself, I smile. Turning back towards the window, I continue gazing, this time with a small ember of renewed optimism burning in the pit in my stomach. Or perhaps, it is merely the anticipation of the feast soon to come. Either way, for the moment, I feel a bit more content and at ease than I did before.

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“Attention all personnel newly assigned to the E.T.S. ‘Dagger of Damocles’! Boarding begins in T-Minus now, so get your rears in gears ya lousy stinkin’ maggots! Cuz let me tell ya something grunts--” Said the Appoplexian intercom announcer.

Exactly one hour later, construction of the gateway device had finished and I begin to make my way towards one of the loading airlocks, a pair of chilidogs clenched firmly in each hand. This was one of many such airlocks designed for the boarding of the…smaller races that crewed the ship. The humans that comprised the Forever Knights, the Petrosapiens, Arburian Pelarotas, Vulpimancers, Pyronites, and Kinecelerans that would join them in a scrap, the Ectonurites and Piscciss Volanns that would offer support on the ground, and the Galvan and Galvanic mechamorphs in charge of keeping the ship and everything mechanical running smoothly. Below, I could see one of the immense cargo bay doors opening to allow for the passage of vehicles, supplies, equipment, and the…larger members of the final race to find themselves serving under my command today. Seven of them. Merely as a…precautionary measure, of course. Though I a no doubt my own prowess, that of my men, my ability to command them, or there ability to follow orders, it has never hurt my family to be prepared. In fact, from the tales they have told me, lack of preparation has only ever hindered them in near fatal ways (and often times, others, in ways just plain fatal).

Stepping aboard the ship, I say, “Bridge” and, a moment later, appear in that location within the vessel. There are several consoles manned by Knights and Petrosapiens and a few by Mechamorphs who were fused with their workplace or chose to perform their tasks without doing so. I pay little attention to them though, as I make my way towards the command throne in the center of the room. I am surprised when I find that the rear end of another is already planted firmly on it.

“Greetings Max. I take it two of those are for me?” Said the black helmeted Petrosapien in front of me, a small emerald triangle between his eyes serving as his visor.

Fixing him a glare, I take a large bite out of all four of my chilidogs and, say, with a rather un-princely amount of food in my mouth, “Grand Admiral Tetrax. What a…delightful surprise.”

“Talking with your mouthful again I see. Isn’t that considered rather rude not just by your people’s standards, but those of most of civilized galactic society as well?” He says with a mild hint of sarcasm.

“That depends.” I respond, taking another bite from one of the dogs. “To what do I the pleasure of your company this…fine, galactic, morning?”

“Simple. High command has ordered me to—“

“—by which you mean, my mother sent you.”

“Well…no. Actually. I was sent here by your father…and your mother, to—“

“—ensure that I, a baby, is properly sitted upon.”

He huffs, humored. “Well, that’s certainly one way to look at it.”

I scoff, not amused. “So you admit it then.”

“Admit what?”

“That neither father nor mother trust me enough, I, their oldest and most battle hardened of sons to—“

He holds up a hand and stops me right there. “Stop it. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Looking around the bridge, I see several workers rapidly turn their heads away from me and back to what they were doing, whistling suspiciously forced tunes. I look back at Tetrax, chew, swallow, and open my mouth to speak once more. “Alright. Fine. I no longer speak with a full mouth. Now as I was saying—“

He holds up his hand and stops me right there again, much to my visible chagrin this time. “No. I wasn’t talking about that.”

I quirk a brow at him. “Really? Pray tell, what were you referring to?”

“The fact that your bad mouthing your old man and old woman.”

I am taken aback, and then angered. “Bad mouthing my…you senile, antique store item looking fool, how dare you claim that I--!?”

“—Max, I’ve known you since you weren’t even smart enough to figure out how to crawl on all four of your limbs. I know what you meant behind what you said and I know you would have regretted saying it. Which is why I didn’t want you to finish.”

With a snap and a hiss, he took off his helmet and placed it on one of the throne’s armrests. “Look me in the eyes and tell me, with a straight face, that I’m wrong.”

My eyes match his yellow ones and hold onto them.  For a while, we stay there, locked in an unseen test of wills whose tension could have snapped the tethers of one of those old landmark bridges that few people used anymore in twine. I move my lips to speak, but stop halfway into forming the first syllable. I tighten my jaw shut. I am the first to look away.

I prepare myself for a berating comment along the lines of “Thought so”, but Tetrax utters no such words. Instead, he says, “The other reason I stopped you before you went too far, is because I am not, in fact, here to baby sit you.”

My head perks up at this.

“I was sent here by your parents as a concerned friend of the family’s and as a man with decades more military experience than you do under my belt. I am here to offer any and all advice and assistance I can offer you and your men, whether you like it… or not.”

He rose up from the throne, looking down at my head, a whole two feet below from his. “Technically and officially, that means my role for this mission is analogous to that of Co-Captain, and yours, to that of the real thing. Whether that holds true in reality, is up to you…sir.”

He snatched two of my chilidogs from my hand, walked to the right of the throne and said, “My Quarters”, disappearing in a brief flicker of blue light.

There are few words in all the various tongues of man and alien that can describe the emotions feuding for dominance over my facial features. I am at once ashamed for what I had uttered, for what I had thought, as I am surprised at how I mistook this development for being much worse that it was (presently) and at the fact that Tetrax just up and snatched my chilidogs from my hand. I still wear this odd look when he reappears in another brief flicker, carrying a sword in a sheath with him.

“Here.” He said, throwing it towards me. As I catch it out of reflex more than actual thought (understandable at the moment), he says, “You forgot it at the palace. I swear: absent-mindedness, purchasing exorbant amounts of comfort food for immediate consumption…if it weren’t for the fact that you were you, I would have mistaken you for Julie for how much you’re worrying.”

Surprise wins out the skirmish on my face when I take a closer look at the sword and its sheath and recognize it…as…my own…

“Excalibur!” I yell out, looking to my hip where once I thought it was, only to find nothing there but the clothe of my regalia. Looking back at Tetrax, I grin more sheepishly than the flock that had taken residence amongst the ruins of something once called, The National Mall. Before I have the chance to speak, and thus exponentially increase the odds that I shall humiliate myself further, he places one of his crystalline arms on my shoulder and gives me a solemn look.

“We’ll find him Max, and if we don’t, than your brothers will. He might be the runt of your litter, but he’s a tough runt.” He said before smirking. “Not tough enough to survive your mother’s wrath when she’s done with him, but he should be able to live through whatever environment he’s found himself in and the trip back home.”

I cannot say I completely agree with him, no matter how much I wish to. Instead, the most I can utter without mistruth is, “I hope so Tetrax.” I return the smile while going on to say, “I wouldn’t want to miss the look on his face after he leaves the Imperial throne room for anything, after all.”

His smirk depends. “Neither would I.” He says.

Fastening my blade’s sheath to its rightful place, I turn to address the personnel on the bridge. “Has everything that needs to be on this ship been accounted for?”

Like well oiled machines (including those that were melded with actual machines), the crew snaps to attention, one of them saying, “Sir yes sir.”

“Good.” I say, dropping onto the command throne like a sack of bowling balls. After a short bout of stretches, I then say, “Well? What are you waiting for?” and make a hand gesture signaling forward motion. “Let us debark.”

All of the personnel saluted and shouted, “Sir yes sir!”

With that, they requested clearance for the removal of the gargantuan clamps keeping us within the dry dock. The airlocks hiss closed and the cargo bays slammed shut. The other men aboard stopped what leisurely activities they were doing to pass the time and resumed their assigned duties with a seriousness and sternness that was expected of a soldier in his majesty’s service. Receiving the go ahead, the locks unclamp and we are off towards our mission, the dry dock and the planet it orbited soon specks behind our invisible ion trail.

Whatever destiny has lying in store for us, one thing is certain. The throne I sit upon is com-fy. Small wonder why Tetrax was sitting on it.

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In one, single row of metal, four ships are positioned. Spaced horizontally and separated by a few kilometers, Kevin’s ship lays to the far left, Carl’s within the inner left, Yuri and Keone’s within the inner right, and mine to the far right. I take notice of their vessels of choice and think the words, “How fitting” for each of them before my eyes draw towards the bow of my own. There, not even a single kilometer outwards, a bolt of green hurled through space by the gateway expand, stops and splashes the bridge with light intense enough for us to look away for a moment. Our vision returns to normal, and we see the sphere begin to cause ripples in the continuum before transforming into an emerald rift that would have literally swallowed the ship whole had their been and atmosphere for wind to push us. It is of similar intensity, but of the kind we can actually see, and in some cases (excluding my own and Tetrax’s, of course), gaze in wonderment at.

“Cooool.” Said one of the Forever Knight crewmembers.

Soon after, a Mechamorph one said, “Rift is open and stable. All systems remain green across the board.”

Not needing to be told by me, the members in charge of ship movement command the engines to push us forward into the rift. The gateway device back at project omniverse could produce such a thing that could allow for the instantaneous transport of matter from one Universe to another in the time the average human could count to one. Though the device my father and the engineers managed to build was greater by several magnitudes of order, it was still the product of what amounted to meticulous jury-rigging. Masterfully crafted and executed meticulous jury-rigging, mine you, but jury-rigging that still lead to a drastic increase in travel time in order to compensate for a few factors. The energy needed to open and maintain not just one, but four rifts of such immense size and the transit mass of the ships being the most prevalent.

For now, a trip that would once split a second, would now do the same for sixty. I steal one more glance at the three other ships beside mine and wish them a silent farewell and good luck. Once again, despite myself, I dare to hope.

Tens seconds after the ships has completely passed inside, I, along with the rest of those aboard the bridge, am shaken from a tremor that suddenly and inexplicably erupted from the bowels of the ship. The blaring of claxons and sirens is not far behind.

“Report!” Tetrax and I bark out in unison, much to my dismay and his amusement.

“Something’s happened below deck!” Responded one of the Forever Knights.

“I think that’s a given at this point!” I yell back, struggling not to call him an incompetent moron for making such an obvious statement. “What and where!?”

“A series of explosions in the drive room.” Says a Mechamorph melded to one of the consoles.

“What!? How!?”

“Though I can’t answer the how, I can show you the who via a live security feed I’m currently tapped into.”

“Then hurry up and bring it on screen man!”

A holographic projection, not unlike a large two-by-four rectangular window, appears in front of me. On it, I see the perpetrators of this attack, of this crime aboard my vessel, running through the hallways somewhere beneath my heels like rats running for their lives in a maze. As well they should. For not only do my Co-Captain and I recognize them as rebels from the blasted Null Void, traitors in every sense of the word aboard my ship and not captured or otherwise indisposed of by the negative signs adorning their headbands, but he also recognizes them as something worse. Something far, far worse.

“The Vreedle brothers.” Tetrax says, with a venom in his voice I knew he reserved only for a select few before my time (as well as the thankfully discontinued Alien X smoothie from Mr. Smoothies).

I quirk an eyebrow in vague recognition of what he says. “The Vreedle brothers? You mean, those same Vreedle brothers that—“

“—Yes.” Tetrax interrupts me. “Stay here. I’ll deal with them, personally.”

He is about to speak the words that will teleport him towards wherever those two wastes of and insults to sapience everywhere so that he can give them what they deserve for all of their troubles. A flash of cerulean from the projection stops him however. Blue electricity that was not normally supposed to do so, flows through several of the consoles, shorting them out along with shocking whatever Mechamorph was unlucky enough to be melded with one at the time, and causes one or two consoles to explode violently, pushing back any crewmember caught in the blast radius. The projection blinks from tangibility.

It is not long before the same light that was shown seems to permeate from the very ground at our feet, apparently doing similar things to all of the Mechamorphs fortunate to not have been melded with any equipment as those that had been.

“EM interference!” I yell out, feeling a distinct tingling in my teeth.

“Those psychopaths must have started a chain reaction with the warp drive!” Tetrax yells out. “It’s gonna—“

Too late. Before those words can even be uttered, the warp drive does what he said it would. It blows up. It blows up spectacularly. Not only are our eyes awash with an overloading sense of cerulean, but so to is the ship (in a more literal of ways). As though this were any other of countless times in normal space, my vessel is quickly covered in it, the light signaling a warp jump about to commence. But this is not one of those times. My vessel lays within a rift between Universes. Any number of scenarios could play out, many of them I’d tread carefully to avoid even with father present (especially, you could say), much less with the drive overloading as it now.

“Stop it! The drive from overloading! One of you! Now!” I command to the crewmembers.

“We can’t stop it!” Yells back a Petrosapien. “The interference knocked out our controls, and the first explosions knocked out the restraints it has if this kind of thing ever happened!”

Solemn is how my face becomes. “So, what your saying, is that we are about to make a jump, blind, and that there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Yes.” He replies simply, eyes closed and fists clenched.

I sigh and slink back into my command chair. I look to my right to find Tetrax, his face as impassive as ever at the news. But I can tell. I know. Despite the rough exterior of stoicism he has managed to maintain, he feels much the same way I do. We’re it not for the fact that he was in command and would find it difficult to do so physically, he would be shaking in his boots like I wish I was. But I cannot. I have to be better than that, better than the average serviceman around me. I am there leader. I had to set the example. Even in a situation like this, I am there leader.

“Well then,” I say, masking my defeat well, I think, with the certainty that comes with fooling yourself into thinking you had planned for something unexpected, “let us…boldly go forth into the unknown and see what we find.”

I look towards the porthole to my front. There, at the very tip of the ship’s bow, the cerulean rushed down and up towards, like two rivers of pure blue, coalescing at one point to form a bubble. A bubble whose color was progressively corrupted by the intrusive emerald of the rift as it expanded. It eventually mixes into an ugly kaleidoscope that had taken residence not to far from the vomited up remains I tend to create of whatever creature(s) had been unlucky enough to find themselves in my Great Grandfather’s cooking whenever he pays a visit, or I do.

It is this vast array of wild clashing and nausea inducement that is the last thing burned into my mind before I blackout. I feel the jump as it commences.