The Tale of the Super Secret Spaceship

Chapter 1

Zhane involuntarily flinched as his ship absorbed yet another hit. Those Shivans were getting the best of him and they knew it; their confidence and taste of victory at last was the only explanation behind their relentless and remarkably effective attack. They must be aces or something, Zhane thought as Halcyon performed a barrel roll, narrowly dodging an incoming laser barrage. There’s no other explanation! It’s like they’re some kind of specialized death squadron out to get me! He gritted his teeth and hit a button the heads-up display (HUD). The Halcyon spun and transformed into Warrior Mode, firing the wrist-mounted Shield Breakers at the lead Shivan fighter and tearing it apart with a missile immediately after its shields failed. As two more came bearing down on him, he blasted upwards relative to his attackers and rained green laser Hell on them before switching to the hull-wrecking Razorbeam and finishing them for good.

Zhane breathed a sigh of relief as the last remaining fighter fled in the opposite direction. Taking advantage of the lull in the chaos, he checked the ship’s systems. It didn’t look good; the shields, as resilient as they were, were only a few hits short of collapsing, the Shield Breaker and Razorbeam emitters were about to go offline, and the missile generator was completely burnt out. Heavy weapons were still available but without sufficient power, they too were useless. At least I still have life support and engines, he thought as he attempted to activate the subsystem auto-repair function. He frowned as his scanners suddenly went blank.

“Damn this stupid nebula,” he muttered. “If I’m not flying blind already, my targeting system decides to fail. This sure is a sucky place for a dogfight.” He hit the console to the right of the canopy and grinned as the short-range scanners lit up. “Ah, that’s...better...” His heart began to race as an incoming jump signature set off the ship’s warning system. As the “you are now royally fucked” siren screamed at him, Zhane returned the ship to Fighter Mode and put on a burst of speed, trying to put as much distance between them and whatever was about to emerge from subspace.

Never had a “too little too late” cliché been so well personified as the series of events that transpired in the moments that followed.

Zhane barely had time to look in horror as a gigantic Shivan Demon-class destroyer emerged from a tunnel in subspace. His eyes widened and he could do nothing as a bright red beam originating from the colossal warship razed the Halcyon’s left wing, obliterating what was left of the shields and setting a good portion of the ship alight, eating up precious oxygen as it leaked from the damaged craft. Zhane’s shock from the hit muffled the sirens and warnings screaming at him to take some kind of action, anything to escape the alien death machine. Marshalling what remained of his consciousness and wiping blood from his brow, he hastily set a course for a small nearby planet and transferred all the power his dying ship could muster to the engines. Just as the Demon fired the piercing beam again, the Halcyon’s engines lit up and it took off in the direction of the planet. Hoping the ship’s automated evasive manoeuvres would be enough, Zhane took one last look at the rear-view monitor before slumping to his seat and blacking out.

***

“Wow!” Twilight Sparkle exclaimed from behind her telescope. “That has to be the brightest shooting star I’ve ever seen! Princess Luna sure outdid herself with that one.”

“A shooting star?” Spike asked from behind an enormous cookbook entitled Somepony’s Coming: Gems and Jewels.

“Yeah! I didn’t know Luna was planning one but...” Twilight was interrupted by a low boom that shook the library, causing several carefully-organized stacks of books to topple over. “Oh my gosh! What the hay was that? Did you hear that, Spike?”

“There’s a chance,” Spike mumbled from beneath a pile of of books. Twilight sighed and used her magic to life him out from his prison of print.

“We should probably make a note of this. It’s not every day that a falling star actually falls completely. Spike, if you please...” The baby dragon dusted himself off and grabbed a quill and scroll per Twilight’s request, ready to take notes. “Hmm...” Twilight mused. “You know, we should probably examine it just to make sure we know what we’re writing about otherwise my report’s gonna look pretty silly without any actual information.”

“Do you know where it crashed?” Spike asked.

“That’s the problem,” Twilight replied, somewhat subdued. “The last place I saw it was over the Everfree Forest, at least that’s where it most likely is judging by the volume of the crash and taking into consideration the distance...” Spike gulped.

“Come on, Twi, you can’t seriously be thinking about going in there at...night? Why not just wait ‘till morning?” Twilight gave him a look and Spike remembered who he was talking to. Once something piqued Twilight’s curiosity, there was no stopping her from figuring it out.

“But that’s not for another hour and 25 minutes...technically speaking. That’s practically forever! I can’t just sit here while something as interesting as a skyrock waits for me to study it! Come on, Spike, I might need your help! I know you’re officially off-duty for tonight but don’t you want to see it too?” Twilight asked excitedly. Spike thought about it, resting his chin in his claws.

“20 gems.” There was a pause.

“15.”

“10.”

“Done!” Twilight replied happily. Greedy as he could be sometimes, bargaining wasn’t Spike’s strong suit at such a late hour. As if to confirm her theory, Spike let out a great yawn as he handed Twilight her saddlebags, filled with anything she would need to properly document and catalog her find. “Is that everything on the checklist, Spike?” The dragon nodded. “Perfect! Let’s go!”

***

“Oh my gosh, Spike!” Twilight gasped as they stumbled upon the crash site right in the middle of Froggy Bottom Bog. “What...what is that?” The pony’s eyes widened as she took in the strange sight. To human eyes, the object looked like a highly modified, space-age F-22, only bulkier and obviously dual-purpose; however, to the purple pony’s eyes, it was like nothing she’d ever seen before. She didn’t quite know what to make of it. It looked like some kind of...contraption.

And right at that moment, her precious skyrock was slowly but steadily sinking into the swamp.

Twilight gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and focused on the sinking...whatever it was. Her horn lit up, softly at first, but soon it shone with great light, which she aimed at the object. Spike watched in awe as the light surrounded the skyrock and slowly lifted it from its murky prison. It took a good couple of minutes but finally, an exhausted Twilight was able to relax as the...thing...sat on solid ground.

“Are you okay?” Spike asked with worry in his voice as Twilight panted and rubbed her horn with a grimace.

“I’m okay, Spike. That was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. It’s definitely one of bigger skyrocks I’ve seen, maybe the biggest yet. Who knows? This could be a great find, Spike!” Twilight was excited and rightly so. Not only had she managed to lift the huge object out of a quagmire by using magic alone (which would surely make Celestia proud), she was now the proud owner of an object that had fallen from the night sky, and practically right into her hooves to boot.

“Um...so what do we do now?” Spike asked.

“Well, as much as I’d like to spend the entire night examining this...thing, we should probably get a good night’s sleep and tackle it tomorrow when we’re fresh. It’s really heavy so I doubt it’s going to go anywhere so it should be okay to leave it, at least for now.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Spike replied with a yawn. “Even I think it’s past my bedtime.”

“Then that makes two of us,” Twilight said, using her magic to gently set Spike on her back. “We’ll figure this thing out tomorrow.”

That's the thing that shot him down, just so you know. Property of Volition, of course. I just used it for reference.