//------------------------------//
// Chapter Three 
// Story: Moment of Honor 
// by Cold Fire 
//------------------------------//

Chapter Three
It’s human nature to make war. You don’t see animals doing it. In fact, they seem very much at peace with themselves, so can you really say humans are smarter than them?
-Jonathan Carstairs, 738 P.D.

“Preliminary scans show significant signs of life. Possibly sentient life, based on these habitats here,” the sensor tech reported. “How sentient, I can’t say. An expedition would have to be made with exobiologists just to determine if these are actually structures or just hollowed-out rocks.”
“Thank you, Krimanson,” Tremaine said. “Let me know if you find anything more.”
“Aye, Sir.”
Stalwart and her companions were in orbit around the unnamed star’s only planet, a pretty blue pearl smack dab in the Goldilocks Zone of liquid water. There were pretty obvious signs of life, but the sensors hadn’t detected any signs of advanced communication, which suggested the life here was either not sentient or in its very early stages of development. The sensor tech had still done well to spot the not-too-obvious habitats, and Tremaine had still done well in congratulating him.
Honor looked on the scene with pride. She knew exactly who would be making first contact. It would be her, Scotty, Harkness, Lieutenant Surgeon Montoya, and a few exobiologists. Montoya was another friend from Basilisk, just like old times. She turned back with Nimitz on her shoulder, and she went to prepare for her expedition.
One hour later, Honor, Nimitz, Tremaine, Harkness, Montoya, and the rest of the small skinsuited crew launched a pinnace down into the oxygen atmosphere on the planet. The crew didn’t know if there were any harmful bacteria in the air, so they weren’t taking any chances. The pinnace descended on counter-grav, and as Honor watched, the sky went from black to a very pleasant light blue, enough to make her homesick, even though this planet was only .9 g as opposed to Sphinx’s 1.37 g. 
The pinnace landed in a clearing about 55 kilometers from the nearest observed settlement, and the crew cycled out of the airlock. They looked around at the scenery. It was a very pastel-colored world, and even the few birds flying around were very bright. The exobiologists were taking their preliminary measurements, and all signs suggested the air was perfectly safe to breathe, with no harmful substances and a very nice temperature. Honor was the first to take off her helmet, and she inhaled the sweet, clean air. The rest of the crew followed suit, and soon the were in their uniforms looking around at the beautiful world they had found.
Suddenly, Tremaine said, “Locals at six o’clock.” The party unholstered their pulsers, but kept them down low in a non-threatening manner. Honor turned to look in that direction, and saw eight strange creatures walking towards them. No, not creatures, ponies, and they were trotting towards them. Five of them were winged, and three of the winged also had horns. There was another horned pony without wings, and they were all colored very much the same way the landscape was. The ponies came up to them, and both parties stood there for a minute, looking at each other. 
Suddenly, the cyan pony with the rainbow mane blurted out impossibly, “Who the hay are you guys?”
Honor was astonished. They had just made contact with a sentient, alien race of ponies who also spoke Standard. The chances against this must be literally astronomical! The rest of Honor’s party was also taken aback by this, but Honor recovered the fastest. “I’m, ah, Admiral Honor Harrington, and this is the rest of my party. We’re here for, well, never mind. Um, may I ask how you know Standard?”
“Standard?” The purple horned pegasus cocked her head quizzically. “Is that what you call your language?”
“Yes, do you call it something different?”
“We don’t have a name for it, but we’ve been speaking it since before anypony can remember.”
“Um.” Honor stared off into space, thinking about the implications of this. She didn’t need any linguists, that much was certain, but she needed her technology experts to assess how far these ponies are so that she doesn’t reveal anything too excessive to them, jumping them too far ahead. “Would you mind waiting here for an hour or so while we bring in some specialists?”
“Sure,” the white horned pegasus replied. “Twilight, would you mind staying here? I’m sure you can handle anything that needs handling.”
“Of course, Princess,” the purple one said. “It’ll be a snap. Oh! We didn’t introduce ourselves, did we? Pardon me, that must have been very rude. Ah, here. This is Pinkie Pie,” Twilight pointed to the pink pony without any wings or horn, “Applejack,” this was the orange one of the same breed as Pinkie, “Rarity,” the white unicorn, “Rainbow Dash,” the brash cyan one, “Fluttershy,” the yellow pegasus that seemed perfectly content to hide behind her pink mane, “Princess Luna,” the dark blue horned pegasus, “Princess Celestia,” the white horned pegasus, “and I’m Princess Twilight Sparkle.”
“So you brought out all of your rulers here to meet somebody that you didn’t know anything about? Nice,” Tremaine said.
“Scotty, these ponies obviously have a very trusting society. This isn’t a bad thing,” Honor replied.
“Oh yeah! You can go fetch your specialists now. We already have ours here, so we’ll just wait. I hope the verdict is good. Bad verdicts lead to mistrust, and mistrust leads to chaos. Let’s not have chaos.” What wise words from such a happy pony face.