There was a moment of breath-holding suspense when the hatch opened, the alien vessel seeming to react as though trying to dodge some sort of attack. One of the pegasi crew members leaning out and waving to them seemed to alleviate some of the tension though, and within short order they had resumed their previous position. The particular hatch that they had lined up with didn't happen to be the landing hatch (the only one with a built in ramp), and as such some improvisation was needed. Fortunately, between an extendable ladder and some spare planks of wood, a decent walkway was able to be improvised. Careful modulation of the exterior gravity field buoyed the bridge up as it slid towards the other ship, eventually knocking against the opposing hatch with a dull thud.
A moment later, the other ship opened its doors and one of the occupants stepped into view, and once again the Arcanum's scanners lit up. Surprisingly little was able to be learned this time though, as the occupant was wearing some manner of metal suit over their entire body. It had four limbs though it only was standing on the back two, similar to a pony rearing up. At the current distance it was impossible to make out finer details. As it crouched to inspect the jury-rigged walkway, its legs bent in a way that made the crew grimace. Apparently finding it satisfactory, it stood back up and waved to the interior of the ship, the moving shapes within implying other beings inside. The creature took a tentative step, and the crew member manning the artificial gravity had to scramble to increase the power.
"Luna's gibbous moon it's heavy! That thing has to weigh half a ton!" As the metal creature walked forward, an impressive balancing act considering it was only using two legs, they were forced to shift the opposing gravity to match it. Too much applied overall would break the bridge around it, while not enough would cause it to sink down under it's weight. After a short period that felt much longer than it was, the creature stepped onto the Arcanum. If it was aware of the multitude of spells that immediately began washing over it, it chose not to respond to them. It was only now, when it was right in front of them, that the crew at the hatch realized just how much bigger this thing was than them- It was nearly twice their height, and monstrously broad. The fact that it was wearing what looked like a pony's weight in metal plating certainly didn't make it any less intimidating, and the pegasus who had the poor fortune of being closest to it was trying to resist the rather overwhelming urge to turn tail and run like a madmare. Fortunately, Quasar came trotting around the corner at that very moment (she most certainly had not been skipping when nopony had been watching, thank you very much, nor had she been wearing a smile so big it nearly split her face in half) and calmly dismissed her. Snapping off a salute, the Pegasus tried not to break into a gallop until she was out of sight. Looking up at the monolithic creature, Quasar stood tall and tried to look commanding- a difficult feat when the other party looked like some manner of golem.
Quasar had known better than to assume that this creature could understand her, and so she had come prepared. She wasn't much good with language spells, so with this in mind she had one of the unicorns on the bridge (she had been skeptical about the benefits of having somepony with a background in linguimancy on board, lesson learned) throw a quick enchantment on a blank crystal. It was a quick and dirty version of a universal translator spell, and while this one might be poorly put together (she was having to constantly feed it mana to keep it from running dry and burning out) that same crewmate was currently tasked with putting together some quality translator crystals. For now though, this one should handle the job just fine.
"I am Captain Quasar of the spellship Arcanum, hailing from Equestria. To whom am I speaking?"
There was a moment of tense silence, broken by the alien slowly raising its forelimbs up to its head. It seemed to do something to its neck, the motions hidden by the jutting metal of the chestplate, which caused a plume of some sort of vapour to spill forth as a seal was broken. Grabbing the metal helmet, it lifted it off, revealing a head utterly devoid of hair. The similarities to pony features were almost disturbing- it lacked a muzzle, but it had two eyes, an obvious nose, a mouth, all arranged in the same general layout as any pony might have. It smiled, wrinkles forming around its eyes, and crouched down to come level with Quasar.
"Victor Caliban, serving on the Lonely Star and of the Sons of the Horizon. How is it that you're fluent in our tongue?" Quasar opened her mouth to respond, only to be abruptly interrupted by a grating, metallic voice- a voice issuing from the newest creature stepping through the hatch. It had the same shape as Victor, but its armour looked somewhat different. It didn't look as heavy or as uniform, and almost seemed closer to metal robes than anything else.
"That should be obvious, even to one of the Sons." Reaching up, the newcomer removed their helmet as well. This head had more than a little hair on it, from grey hair that hung to his neck to a moustache that hid most of his mouth. The reason for his voice was immediately clear, as his throat looked to be as much machine as flesh. "They revealed themselves when they chose to. Clearly they would have had the means to study us for some time unobserved." He cast a wry smile at Quasar. "Heironymous Gaunt of the Machinists. I'm quite curious as to how you were able to maintain a hologram large enough to conceal your ship. Or for that matter, why your ship seems to be made out of wood." He did a very poor job of keeping the revulsion out of his voice at the last word, though to his credit he managed to keep his nose from pointing upwards.
"A-actually, we just got here no more than a half hour ago. We didn't really expect to be encountering anypony else out here, at least not this soon. I can't speak your language either, just had somepony on the bridge put a translator crystal together." She held up the crystal for them to see briefly, only to flinch back as Heironymous lifted up his arm and made it... well, do things that she was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to do. Thin metal struts peeled off of his arm, anchored near his wrist and up until now laying flat and unnoticed up his arm to his shoulder. Each was tipped with some strange device, from lenses to prongs to things she didn't have a word for. All these various things swivelled around like the legs of some giant spider to focus in on the crystal. The devices filled the hallway with a momentary cacaphony of digital screeching before whipping back to lay flat and dormant against his arm once more. He lifted his arm up, staring at his wrist for a moment, before shooting Quasar a silent and distrusting look. It was only then that Quasar realized she was cowering a little bit. She wasn't the only one that noticed, either.
"Keep your probes to yourself, gearhead. You'll have your chance to poke at machines later, after we've met them properly." Victor couldn't keep the growl out of his voice as he rounded on Heironymous. "This is first contact with a new race for god sakes, we hardly need someone like you giving them the wrong idea." His face turned into a smirk. "Don't go getting angry at them just because they can do more with their wooden ship than you could with a full Machinist lab. I saw your face when the hologram came down." Quasar watched, shying back, as the two aliens seemed to be moments away from coming to blows. After a moment of tense silence, Heironymous backed down with a grumble.
"Far be it from me to start a conflict with the Sons. Besides, I'm more interested in seeing how this boat works than engaging in pointless squabbling." Victor was clearly working to restrain himself at this point. "Now, are you going to show me around, or not?" Gulping, Quasar gave a nod.
“C-certainly. If you'll follow me, I can give you both a tour.” Turning away from them, she gave a subtle tap to her comm crystal and spoke in a hushed enough voice that the newcomers couldn't hear her. “Engineering, put some rust crystals together and gather a security detail. Our guests are heavily armoured, and I want to be able to stop them if they start something.” A quiet click-click from her crystal gave a nonvocal confirmation from Engineering of 'message received'. Forcing an amicable smile onto her face, Quasar turned to the newcomers. “Well, since it's nearby, why don't we start with the mess hall?”
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Making a rust crystal was actually harder than it sounded. It needed to effectively turn nearby metal into a super-magnet for oxygen, and then dilate time a little bit. It was far easier to induce rust through a chemical mixture, but the tradeoff for ease of creation was ease of application. A rust crystal only needed to shatter near some metal for it to take effect, and it couldn't be rinsed off. That said, the precision needed for the enchantments meant that few people bothered with the crystal form.
That didn't stop Tymbal from making them in batches, however.
Being a Changeling, Tymbal was not as gifted with magic as Unicorns. She had never let her lack of raw power stop her from mastering raw theory however, as displayed by the growing stack of glowing, pockmarked rubies piling up next to her. Most unicorn thaumatechnicians would probably take near ten minutes to make a rust crystal, since the process itself was, like most enchantments, really quite inefficient- almost all enchantments required the creator to brute force the magic to some extent. Tymbal simply didn't have that option, lacking a unicorn's strength, and as such had become almost disturbingly good at paring enchantments down to their most basic form. Since her enchantments were several orders of magnitude more efficient, they were several of orders of magnitude easier to cast. This meant that instead of ten minutes to make one, it took her closer to one minute to make ten. After amassing a decent pile of the things, she pulled out an empty workbelt and stuffed the pockets.
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“So to answer your question, most of the cables aren't metal at all, just a suspension of very finely ground quartz in mineral oil. We only use platinum for the high-capacity lines, since it's more conductive.” Quasar wasn't sure why, but around the time she'd started explaining some systems Heironymous had started grinding his teeth. She thought for sure he would have cracked one by now, but perhaps giant alien teeth were stronger than Pony teeth. It still concerned her, though. “Uh... Mr. Gaunt, are you alright?” He took a shuddering breath and gave her a somewhat madcap grin.
“Oh, just fine, just fine. Don't worry about me, I'm just... marvelling at your ship, and its rather thoroughly electricity-proof circuitry.” Flipping out more of his arm tools, he set them to running scans over the cables. “Not that there's anything... disgustingly wrong with using a known insulator as a medium for transmitting energy, of course...” he missed the caustic look Victor shot him. Tymbal set to work sealing the wall panel back up once Victor withdrew his tools, having started tagging along once she caught up. Being the Head of Engineering gave her a perfect cover for being there, and when it came down to it there wasn't anyone else on the ship Quasar would rather have beside her if a fight broke out- Tymbal wasn't a violent Pony by any stretch, but of all the Pony races none were as well adapted to combat as Changelings. Between their chitinous hide, fangs, flight, and horn, even an untrained Changeling was a dangerous, mobile opponent. The way that the aliens were carrying on, Quasar was a little worried that Tymbal might get put to the test.
For his part, Victor thought he was doing a fairly solid job keeping his threats to Heironymous out of sight of their hosts. He was certain that none of them had noticed him tasering the Machinist when he was trying to stealthily take a 'sample' of their wiring, and more than once he'd had to hold a magnet near Heironymous' back where he knew the man's mechanical kidneys were located, producing a pained grunt and interrupting him from whatever he was currently trying to palm from the ship. He had known the man put more value than was healthy in his machines and research, but to casually steal during first contact? Victor had nearly reached his limit with his straggly-haired companion.
“Incidentally, I'm curious about your own people.” Victor was distracted from his anger by Quasar piping up. “I mean, you're the first species we've encountered from somewhere other than our own planet. What's the world you're from like? Does everyone there wear...” she gestured at the alien's metal outfits. Victor just blinked, slightly stunned for a moment. Not an hour into first contact and these small things had managed to ask a somewhat taboo question- taboo to those who knew their history, at least. He struggled for a moment to find an answer, trying to find a way to explain that didn't cast his entire kind in an unfavourable light.
“My people... lost their homeworld a long time ago. It was a lush and beautiful place once, but industry crippled it and war later destroyed it. There's nothing left there but an asteroid belt now.” He realized as he was talking that he wasn't doing a very good job sugar-coating it. “We don't call any single world our own anymore, but we're not in danger of going extinct by any stretch. You can find us in pretty well any corner of the galaxy.” He grinned, despite himself. “I can't help but feel that we're doing this a bit out of order, I should have introduced us a bit better from the start. Anyway, the term that we once used for our kind was “Human”, but most of us have come to adopt the name that the rest of the universe uses for us:” His grin became a little bitter. “Cultists.” Quasar and Tymbal, until now listening quietly with wide eyes, shot a worried look between each other. Victor sighed.
“Cultist is the singular, at least. As a whole, we've come to be referred to as the War Cults. See, we've always been a divided people, even when we shared the same world. As we took to space and our numbers grew, it just got worse. Without national borders, we divided ourselves on other lines, ranging from the colour of our skin to our beliefs or our values or goals. I suppose that our dedication to our various causes seemed a bit intense to outsiders, since it earned us our new name.” Quasar gulped, rather glad that she had a Changeling with rust crystals next to her.
“A-and what about the 'War' part of that title?” Victor's smile became a sad one.
“There's an old saying from before we lost our homeworld- 'At the end of the day, long as there are two people left on the planet, someone is going to want someone dead.' There hasn't been a recorded period in our history where there wasn't a war going on, and it seems even destroying our homeworld couldn't break that habit. That's not to say all of us enjoy war or fighting, far from it, but there's enough that we've all been painted with the same brush. Take the faction I'm from for example, the Sons of the Horizon- we aren't a military group, really. We're explorers. We're often out at the edge of known space, and if we're armed and armoured it's because we don't know what we'll encounter, and we need to be prepared in case it's dangerous.” Feeling vaguely reassured, Quasar nodded. Tymbal was keeping a decent poker face, but it was clear she was on edge a bit herself. Clearing her throat and pulling on a smile, the Changeling stepped forward.
“Well, I suppose I can guess what the 'Machinists' are interested in then... why don't we take a tour through engineering next?” That got Heironymous grinning, at least. It still wasn't a friendly smile, but it seemed to at least be a step in the right direction. They continued on in uneasy silence for a short distance, until they stood outside the door of Tymbal's domain. The floor faintly vibrated with the hum of machinery. Tapping the door with a hoof, it slid open, revealing the pulsing heart of the ship. "Gentlealiens, welcome to Engineering!"
Victor was keeping a close eye on the horrified looking Heironymous as they walked into the chamber. The room itself was absolutely bristling with machinery, but not the kind he had ever seen the Machinist working on. Crystals featured prominently in most exposed machinery, and those that seemed free of them also appeared impossibly anachronistic- one entire wall consisted of a bank of massive iron wheels driven by pistons located higher up, like the repurposed wheels of some monolithic steam train. The huge pillar in the middle of the room, its purpose impossible to determine, had a massive timing chain running into its base from a large aperture in the ground a few feet away. Heironymous was opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water, seemingly incapable of speech, as he looked from the antiquated machinery to the touchscreens that they were apparently using to control most of it. The technician that Tymbal had left in charge looked up, beaming as his boss returned.
"Tymbal! Good timing, I just finished some calculations. I've come up with a new configuration for the turbine inscriptions that should let us siphon more energy out of the cooling steam on the way back to the boiler, when you get a chance I'd appreciate a second opinion on-"
He was interrupted by an enraged yell from Heironymous, who's steam was clearly NOT cooling.
"This... this is not science! This is absurd! You can't manage interstellar flight with STEAM ENGINES AND SHINY ROCKS!" Heironymous stomped forward, clearly on the warpath. Tymbal reached for her rust crystals, then winced as she realized the damage it would do to her machines. It seemed, however, that Heironymous put a touch less value in the things. Enraged, he marched up to a crystal hovering over a silver spike, scowling at the arcane inscriptions coating the surface of the gem.
"This entire joke of a ship is built on impossibility and backward concepts! There's no electricity in this entire hulk! Everything in here is polished scrap and pipe dreams, and is an insult to every natural law there is!" Rage etched across his features, he raised his fist, his arm tools whipping together to form a menacing looking spike extending past his knuckles. He lifted it to the crystal. "And I've had ENOUGH!"
It was at that exact moment that Victor's heavily armoured fist, nearly the size of a Pony's skull, crashed into the side of Heironymous's face, sending him staggering and spitting teeth.
"I've had enough of YOU, Machinist! You've sneered and poked at everything since you set foot on this ship!" As he advanced on him, Heironymous lifted his weapon with a snarl, only to double over from a shovel punch to the gut. "You're the same as the rest of your sick order, eager to tear apart whatever you don't understand with no regard for what you destroy!" He grabbed the wheezing Machinist, oily black blood staining the white beard of the man's chin. Heironymous clawed at his arm for a moment, trying to dislodge his grip from his chest, before giving up on that and bringing his arm tools into play. Bending like a spider with too many joints, spindly struts whipped forward to smack onto Victor's golem-like armour. For a split second they didn't seem to do anything, simply staying in place. It didn't last however, as the crackling of electricity and the scent of ozone poured over the combatants, Victor's face contorting as his armour was electrocuted. Heironymous chanced a malicious grin as he felt the larger man's grip weaken, only for his face to shift into surprise as his hold came back in force. The electricity hadn't stopped flowing, and the scent of burning flesh indicated that Victor wasn't protected from it. Despite that, he didn't seem to be going down. Instead of screaming in pain as lightning danced over his armour, he roared in fury and pitched Heironymous at the door they had come in through.
Heironymous could feel a few things inside him crunch when he impacted the wall, things he was pretty sure weren't meant to crunch. His breath coming in ragged gasps, his eyes widened when the smouldering form of Victor stepped through the door. Despite not having received the brutal pummeling, the electricity had clearly taken its toll on his opponent. His movements were slowed and clearly pained, and he couldn't hide the grimace on his face. When it came his voice sounded wet, though Heironymous doubted that he sounded any better.
"You have one chance, Machinist. Leave. If you stay I'll tear out the machines inside you and throw you out an airlock." Heironymous had every faith that he would, too. The pain of his crippled form dulling as neural inhibitors kicked in, he pulled himself to his feet, steadying himself with a hand on the wall. Wheezing, he trudged off the way they had come.
Victor managed to wait until the Machinist was out of sight before slumping to his knees with a grunt of pain. Their would-be attacker gone, the Ponies hurried over to him, both frightened of and for him after the ordeal. He smiled at them as they gathered, chattering frantically in some lyrical other-tongue. As the adrenaline (both natural and suit-administered) began to wear off, the haze of pain from the full brunt of his injuries started to pull him down into unconsciousness, he wondered for a moment why he couldn't understand the small creatures anymore. A pity, he thought, as the darkness took him, that this should be the first they see of us.
"Victor? VICTOR? Horseapples, the translator crystal died! Quick, help me get him to the infirmary! I can't lift him alone!"
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"Looks like lightning burns, extensive ones. It's full body and fairly deep, it'd be a longshot if this was a Pony, but we don't have the the time or knowledge to help him in this state. He's got a few minutes at best, I could extend that to a few hours with the ship's time-dilation, but then we couldn't move him out of here. We'd never get him back to their ship with the time he's got."
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"Slipstream, get us back to Equestria as fast as you can! I'm not about to let first contact end with an Alien dying for us, and there's only one Pony who can help us!"