//------------------------------// // Chapter 7 // Story: Into the Black // by CORACK //------------------------------// 2 hours after the destruction of the Jassarie... When the escape pod exited the gate, inbound from System 29537, Commander Viettar knew something had gone horribly wrong. He marched down to the docking port and waited for the hatch to open. 15 crewman exited the pod. 15 out of a crew of nearly 8000. Captain Thrux was not among them. The only bridge officer that had survived Celestia's retribution was the science officer, Cikrak. He ran out of the pod and hurried over to Commander Viettar. "What happened to the Jassarie?" Viettar asked. "Gone. You need to lock out gate activations from 29537 right now," Cikrak said running past Viettar and heading toward the lift to the command deck. "What happened?" Viettar asked as he followed Cikrak onto the lift. "I can't explain it," Cikrak said. "That doesn't mean I won't try, but I don't think I can. Did you get our comm probe that we sent earlier?" "We did, but we didn't know what to make of it. The orbital information you sent us is impossible." The two officers arrived on the command deck. Viettar gave the order to disable inbound gate connections from System 29537. "Let's take this into my office," Viettar said. Cikrak followed Viettar into his office and began to explain what had happened. By the end of Cikrak's tale Viettar was shaking his head in disbelief. "The gate only registered a class 3 civilization and you are telling me they somehow managed to destroy a Ravager class starship while it's shields were up? The evidence is undeniable, but I still find it impossible to believe." "Sir, I don't know how they did it, first we got hit with a beam of energy. That actually did register on the scanners. It was as far as we could tell, purely thermal energy, except it was focused, like a laser. None of the atmosphere around the beam had any measureable shift in temperature. Unlike a laser, the beam was visible, also it was quick but not traveling at anywhere near light speed," Cikrak said. "But that didn't destroy the ship, just disabled it?" Viettar asked. "No sir, we took heavy damage but the ship was still intact. If we hadn't been held in place we could have left." "Tell me more about that," Viettar said. "Well, it was shortly after we nuked one of their cities. A pale blue glow enveloped the ship it was as if we were being dragged across space. We ended up fixed in place over one of their larger cities, and when I say fixed, I mean fixed. We were too low to be in geostationary orbit, yet our position was dead stationary above that city." "Did you detect anything at all during this time?" "Other than the glow, no sir. Sensors showed absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. " "Ok Cikrak, I'm going to make up a full report based on the information you sent us earlier and what you've provided now. I want every survivor to go over this report and look for any discrepancies before I send it out. Then all 15 of you will sign off on it, I don't even want to think what Central Command is going to say about this." "Yes sir," Cikrak replied. "You are dismissed." Commander Viettar got to work compiling the report, it took him two weeks to get the entire thing completed. It went through several revisions and was the single longest report Viettar had ever worked on. In the end he had included reports from all 15 of the survivors directly attached to his. Ordinary policy was for the system commander to summarize crew reports that were being sent up the chain, but in this case he felt including the entire report was justified. Viettar was just finishing the final revision as Korthack walked in to his office. "We just received a message from Central Command, looking for an update System 29537, they want to know they haven't heard back from Captain Thrux and how soon they can expect new workers for the Empire." Viettar hung his head and shook it slowly. "I'm just about to send it, but I dread the results. Once they read this, we'll be lucky to keep our lives Subcommander." Viettar looked back to his computer and saved the final notes he had made. Then he hit the uploaded the report into a comm probe and sent it through the gate. It would take at least a week to make it back to Central Command's nearest outpost. He had that long to live anyway. ##### One month turned into two, then three than four. Even for a base this far out, to have heard nothing in so long, was an unusual thing. Viettar had heard nothing back from Central Command. He sent numerous inquiries, but nothing came back at all. He tried to contact friends who worked in Central Command, but again, no responses. It was as if his communications weren't even going through. Finally towards the end of the 8th month, nearly enough time for a message to make it half way back to the home world of Vi'Macs Prime, a comm probe from Central Command exited the gate. It had a message for him, just two words. "Stand by" Another two months passed with no additional updates. Viettar was standing on the command deck getting status updates from his men when the station received the signal for gate activation. He gave the order to bring the gate up on the view screen. A massive ship exited the gate. The Jassarie was a Ravager class, 2 kilometers long and almost half a kilometer in diameter. It was an older ship design dwarfed by modern miracles of engineering. The Tck'Wrath, a Desolator class Titan exiting the gate was 20 kilometers long and 6 kilometers in diameter. There was only 5 of these ships in the entire Chk'rain fleet, and this was the only one not commanded by an admiral. It's massive bays held 125 bombers and an equal number of space fighters. It even carried with it 2 destroyer escorts, one attached to the front and one to the back which would separate from the ship in times of combat to provide screening. Not that a Desolator needed screening. It was designed to take on fleets and win. The secondary weapons on a Desolator out powered the primary 10 terawatt lasers of the Jassarie by a factor of 10. And there was 20 of them. The main guns were made up of 3x3 batteries of 15 petawatt lasers. A combination of 100 point defense lasers and 150 of the smaller point defense railguns provided overlapping anti fighter coverage from every possible angle of attack. Imperial class V shield emitters provided protection to shrug off multiple, simultaneous hits from the main guns of any other class of ship in the fleet. In the unlikely event that the shields were breached, 25 meters of refractory armor provided additional protection. "Sir we're receiving communication from the Tck'Wrath, it's directed to you and for your eyes only" "I'll take it in my office," Viettar said. Viettar sat down at his desk, he straightened his uniform as best he could and he opened the comm link. "This is Captain Uthzar of the Tck'Wrath. Commander Viettar, take a shuttle and report to my ship immediately, bring Cikrak and the rest of the survivors of the Jassarie with you." Uthzar ended the communication right after relaying the message. Viettar quickly left his office, he gave Subcommander Korthack orders to have the rest of the survivors report to the shuttle bay, grabbed Cikrak and headed out. "Where are we going?" Cikrak asked. "We've been ordered to report to the Tck'Wrath," Viettar said. In the shuttle bay, the rest of the survivors of the Jassarie were waiting. They boarded Viettar's command shuttle and flew towards the Tck'Wrath. Viettar was nervous, even in the best of times, the Chk'rain didn't look kindly on failure. The failure in this case had been Captain Thrux's, but with him gone, it was likely Central Command wanted someone to blame. The shuttle flew over to the Tck'Wrath. This was the first time Viettar had seen a Desolator class ship in person. The size of the thing was immense. His shuttle pilot requested clearance to dock and pulled into the main bay. Viettar and Cikrak were escorted by ship security to the bridge. The rest of the survivors were sent somewhere else. Viettar didn't want to think about it. Upon reaching the bridge he was greeted by Captain Uthzar. "Please escort the Commander and the Lieutenant to my office." Viettar and Cikrak were led inside followed by Uthzar. Security was ordered to leave the room and remain outside. Viettar tried his best to not look nervous while Cikrak hung his head low, he had already accepted his fate. Uthzar took a long look at the two officers. "You may both sit down. and relax, you will not be dying today," Uthzar said. Viettar couldn't help it, he let out a long sigh of relief as he took his seat. "Lieutenant Cikrak, I want you to think very carefully and tell me exactly what happened in 29537" Uthzar said. "Sir, the report..." "Yes, I read your report, and I read Viettar's report, and the reports of your other 14 crew members. I want to hear it in your own words." Cikrak spent the next two hours going over the details of the Jassarie's destruction. Uthzar asked dozens of questions about every minor detail. An additional hour was given to Viettar to bring up anything Cikrak had forgotten or missed, that Viettar had read in the other crewmembers reports. "You are probably wondering why I am here and why you are not drifting out an airlock," Uthzar said bluntly. "Yes sir," Viettar replied. "I spent a lot of time looking at both Cikrak and your service records. They are both exemplary. Yet this alone would not have normally saved you. I argued very strenuously to not send the Tck'Wrath to 29537. We don't know what happened to the Jassarie and leaping into this unknown, weapons hot, is not going to end well for anyone," Uthzar said. Uthzar sighed. "Central Command is nervous. The Heliosian rebels managed to destroyed a vast number of ships before we caught them. They are worried that whatever power exists on this planet, it will escape 29537 and launch an offensive." The Heliosians were the only Class 1 race the Chk'rain had ever discovered. Class 1 was reserved for other space faring races. Heliosians technology was still far behind that of the Chk'rain, when a gateship discovered the Heliosians' system, 50 years ago. The Heliosians still hadn't mastered faster than light travel at the time, so they had been confined to the local system. What the Heliosians had was innate knowledge of their system and a will to fight like no other species. Having never before attempted absorption of a space faring race, the standard Chk'rain invasion techniques were ill equipped to deal with space borne defenses. It took 15 Heliosians ships to match a single Chk'rain Ravager class, but the Chk'rain had only brought 5 along with some support vessels. The Chk'rain had only detected about 50 Heliosians vessels when planning the invasion, but somehow the Heliosians had managed to hide an additional 50. The Heliosians lost nearly all their ships, but they were able to destroy the entire Chk'rain fleet. Worse still, the Heliosians then attacked the gate, and managed to disable it. The Chk'rain dispatched a new gate towards the Heliosians system. It took 45 years to reach that system. During that time the Heliosians studied the technology of the Chk'rain and learned to duplicate it. The Chk'rain assumed this would happen so they gated in a massive armada while the new gate was still outside the Heliosian system. The armada cruised into the system with the gate, protecting it from any Heliosian attack. It then crushed the Heliosian fleet, but the Heliosians had advanced far faster than the Chk'rain had predicted. They spent 45 years building a new fleet and heavy fixed defenses for their system. The attack was a costly one and many Chk'rain ships were lost. The Heliosians had even managed to repair the original gate, build a 2nd and establish a colony in a nearby star system. It was there that the remnants of the Heliosian fleet fled. The Heliosian system was conquered but the Chk'rain had suffered greatly. Before the Heliosians, the Chk'rain had never lost even a single ship. The fight with the Heliosians had managed to destroy nearly 70. At the time, that was 1/4 of the entire Chk'rain fleet. The Chk'rain didn't have a gate in the Heliosian colony system, normally the fastest way to get one there was to gate in the parts, instead they reestablished control of the old gate and sent it on its way. At least they tried. The Heliosian had booby trapped the gate, it exploded when it was being towed out of the system, taking out a number of tow ships that were desperately needed to bring supplies out of the main gate and back into Chk'rain space. Repairs were conducted on what remained of the Heliosian fleet. It was still no match for the Chk'rain fleet, but the Chk'rain fleet couldn't be everywhere at once. The Heliosian started to run small raids though the Chk'rain's own gate system, all while building new ships in their colony system. The Chk'rain had never thought to secure the gate system before. No other species was around to use it. They worked quickly to add locking codes to the gate system, but before it could be implemented and distributed throughout the gate system, the Heliosians managed 17 separate and highly devastating raids Finally the Heliosians' luck had run out, the Chk'rain set a trap, and managed to bait the Heliosian rebels to commit almost their entire fleet. As soon as the Heliosians gated in, the Chk'rain engaged the new gate locking protocols. The rebels were trapped, unable to flee they fought to the last ship. The Chk'rain then built a number of new gateships and sent 5 of them on a course to the Heliosian colony. The gates would be arriving in 3 years and the Chk'rain would wipe out what remained of the rebels, trapped in their colony system. "I have been ordered to bring the Tck'Wrath through the gate, and reduce the surface of the planet, now designated 29537.1, to ash. I am then to attempt discover the secrets of whatever power destroyed the Jassarie. If I am unable to, or the bombarding of the surface fails, I am to set anti-matter charges on the gate, leave the system and blow the gate." "I had to call in a number of favors, but I was able to get Central Command to put your fate in my claws. I'm not going to have you killed because I am not an idiot," Uthzar said. "Cikrak, you are the only surviving officer of the Jassarie and to throw away potential knowledge when I'm about to jump into the same system where it was destroyed would be foolish." "As for you Viettar, you had nothing to do with this debacle, you even warned that imbecile, Thrux, to not head into the system until more information was gathered. I won't see you take the blame for his bad decisions, no matter how many friends he had in Central Command." "Commodore Uthzar?" Cikrak asked. "Yes?" "Permission to speak freely?" "Go ahead." "Central Command is making a huge mistake sending your ship to that system. I don't think it matters if they send your ship, or a fleet. If it were up to me, we'd blow this gate and establish a quarantine zone around the system large enough that no gate could lock on." Cikrak said. "I don't know about anything so drastic as that, but in general I do agree with you, but I have been given my orders and I will follow them. I assume you will as well?" Cikrak nodded. "When are we leaving sir?" Viettar asked. "Right now, I want both of you on the bridge, follow me." Uthzar stood up and left the room with Viettar and Cikrak following him. He ordered the conn to set course for the gate. Shields were raised, weapons were brought online. The Tck'Wrath flew into the gate and exited in System 29537. ##### Celestia felt the ship enter the system the moment it left the gate. It had been nearly a year since the ring had arrived. The ponies of Equestria had spent that time planning and rebuilding. Within seconds she teleported to Equestrian Space Command, where Luna was already waiting. Equestria didn't have any ships yet, but the ponies had been busy. They built a large command center on the base of Canterlot mountain, with a state of the art communication array. Just outside every major city, a smaller array was built and staffed 24/7 so cities could be reached and given updated orders instantly. There were backups spread across the country, some close enough to cities that they could respond if the city itself was hit, some in the larger towns. Luna was already sending out a warning of the incoming ship to all other facilities. Sirens could be heard in the distance, as ponies fled out of Canterlot. All across the country ponies began to evacuate the cities and head for the hills. Celestia grabbed the mic for the main transmitter and sent out a message to the incoming ship. ##### "Commodore, incoming message from 29537.1... uh, it's in Chk'rainian sir." There was a murmuring among the bridge crew. Some of them had heard stories about the destruction of the Jassarie and the strange beings that inhabited system 29537. "Put it through," Uthzar said. "This is Princess Celestia of Equestria, you have violated our space, cut your engines and explain your presence here." "This is Commodore Uthzar of the Titan Tck'Wrath. I have come to investigate the destruction of one of our ships." "Your ship launched an unprovoked attack on one of our cities." There was a momentary pause. "I crushed it, killing all aboard. I regret my actions, but do not take this regret for weakness. We will defend ourselves if attacked again." Uthzar cut the communication. "That's all I need to know, open fire on the planet, launch all missiles" The Tck'Wrath carried an full load of 1000 missile. It could empty that load through its 25 launchers in 60 seconds. The Chk'rain no longer bothered with fusion warheads. Instead the missile was nothing more than a large cylinder of metal with a very powerful engine attached to the back of it. The missile was shot out of the launcher at 10000 m/s. The engine kicked in and accelerated the cylinder under 300 gravities of acceleration for up to 60 seconds. The resulting impact of each missile had the kinetic energy equivalent to a 25 megaton nuke. Not quite as big as the fusion warhead that obliterated Manehattan, but they were cheaper to make, safer to store, and the Tck'Wrath had 1000 of them. ##### Luna sat in Space Command headquarters surrounded by 25 unicorns of the Royal Guard. Each of them casting their own copy of Luna's Deep Space Imaging Spell. The 25 separate views covered 90% of the skies over Equestria. Luna herself cast a tracking spell on the 25 DSIS viewing images. It would highlight any moving objects contained within the views that were too small to track visually at the present magnification. Within seconds dozens, followed by hundreds of small glowing streaks exited the ship and accelerated towards the Equus. Luna looked on with grim determination. She concentrated, her horn glowing fiercely, pulses of blue light rose out of her horn and flew upwards. The streaks started to disappear. First one, then 25, then 100, the 200. Still more came at the planet. Luna sent more and more pulses skyward, hundreds of missiles were disabled, but hundreds more still came at the planet. Though the magical energy needed to stop the missiles was but a small fraction of Luna's power, she hadn't been expecting to deal with so many and had been caught off guard. Celestia saw her sister struggling and quickly joined in the defense. In less than a minute every single missile had been stopped. "We will have to develop an area effect spell in the future Tia," Luna said, breathing heavily. "Yes Luna, but now we must deal with the ship." Celestia reached out with her magic and grabbed the massive warship and began to pull it towards the planet. ##### "Sir, sensors report that every single missile has been disabled. They've all stopped, dead in space, I can't detect anything wrong with them, except they aren't moving." Viettar stood there looking at the view screens. He had read the reports, but he still didn't believe what he saw. How could a class 3 civilization stop even 1 missile, never mind 1000. A feeling of dread slowly began to overtake Cikrak. "Commodore Uthzar, I strongly urge you to take the Tck'Wrath back through the gate. Blow it up behind us, but get this ship out of here." "Lieutenant Cikrak, I will not..." The image on the view screens changed as a glowing yellow field appeared around the ship. "It's too late," Cikrak said, pointing at the view screens. "Sir the ship is moving... we're being pulled towards the planet!" "Disengage safeties and set engines to maximum power, back us off," Uthzar shouted. The powerful engines of the Tck'Wrath engaged, straining to bring the ship back on course. The Jassarie could manage 50 Gs of acceleration, even though the Tck'Wrath was many times larger, the highly advanced engines of the ship could give it 250 Gs of acceleration. That was just about at the limit the inertial dampening system could handle. The engines started to hum as the strain increased. With the safeties disengaged, they were running at 120%, for a moment it looked like it would be enough. The ship slowed, stopped, and began to back away from the planet. Then the yellow glow intensified and the ship shuddered, then started to move towards the planet once again. "Commodore, the engines have just failed, engineering is reporting it will be at least 10 hours before they can bring them back online." "This is impossible!" Uthzar threw his claws up in frustration. "Do we have a fix on the source of the earlier transmission?" "Yes sir." One of the techs brought up a view of the planet and zoomed in. There was a large facility built next to a mountain. A number of transmitters were mounted into the mountain itself, pointing upwards. "Bring the main guns on line, when we are within 1/4 a light second, open fire." The ship was pulled closer and closer. When it hit the range requested by Uthzar, the main heavy lasers of the Tck'Wrath turned on the planet and opened fire. Nine powerful beams struck out from the ship, portions of the facility instantly vaporized, secondary fires shot up from the facility as the great heat of the lasers caused nearby objects to ignite. Smoke billowed up and covered the facility, obscuring the view momentarily. The yellow glow surrounding the ship changed, and a glowing spherical shield surrounded the ship. The lasers impacted on the shield but were unable to punch through. ##### Fires raged around her as Celestia tried to help the surviving ponies out of the melted wreckage. Luna cast a spell and a massive thunderstorm appeared overhead. The rain slowly began to quench the fires. "What happened?" she asked. "I think they hit us with some sort of energy weapon, possibly very powerful lasers, I did not know they could do that." "That is my fault sister, the detection spells were only setup to track physical objects. I am sorry." "Do not blame yourself Luna. The ship is secured in a magical field, nothing else will be getting out. Are you ready to board it?" There had been much discussion on what to do if another ship came through the ring. In the end it was decided that Equestria needed figure out how the alien's technology worked and start building their own ships. Remaining always on the defensive was a poor choice at best, and if ponies could get out into space, they might be able to find out who these aggressors were and why they were attacking. If another ship returned, Luna was to attempt to capture it, an intact vessel would be much easier to study than the wreckage of the first ship. "I am" Luna said. "Good luck Luna," Celestia said as Luna teleported away. ##### An alarm went off on the bridge of the Tck'Wrath. "Commodore, internal sensors have detected an intruder in the main bay! It's..., I think it's one of the beings from the planet below." Security brought up a view of the main bay on the bridge view screen. Hovering in the middle of the bay was a dark blue quadruped. This one was different than the images presented by the Jassarie's database. First it was a bit larger. The other quadruped were around 1.5 meters, this one was just under 2, not including the horn. Secondly it had a horn and wings, a previously unknown combination. It wore metal shoes of some kind on its hooves, a dark crown on its head and a torc with an image of a moon upon it. In the place of hair, what looked like a partially translucent field of stars rippled in the air, defying gravity as if lifted by a wind that Uthzar knew was not present in the bay. The tail was made up of another field of stars, similar to the hair. "Depressurize the bay, blow it into space," Uthzar said. The force field holding the air into the bay was dropped and the air rushed out into space. The blue alien landed and began to walk inwards. "Sir, bay is now hard vacuum, but the intruder is still alive." ##### Luna landed when the air began to rush out into space. Hazarding a guess, her presence was known. She grinned, having spent 1000 years on the moon, she was no stranger to hard vacuum. She started to walk to the inside of the bay. She saw what looked like it might be a door. There were some buttons on a keypad next to the door. She poked at them but though they lit up, nothing happened. Shrugging, her horn flared to life and she teleported to the other side of the door. She wasn't exactly sure where to go, but she figured she'd find somepony, or somealien eventually. She started to walk down the corridor. A loud alarm started going off in the halls. She heard what sounded like a speaker play a shipside announcement in the alien language. She cast a translation spell and listened in. ", alert. Intruder detected just outside the main bay. Security report to the main bay." "Oh excellent, they're coming to me," she thought to herself. Hulking armored figures rounded the corner. They aimed, what Luna assumed were guns of some kind, at her. She heard one of the aliens order "Open fire." and the corridor was filled with heat as pulses of coherent light attempted to burn their way through Luna's hide. ##### Uthzar couldn't believe what he was watching in the security cameras. Judging by the reaction of the rest of the bridge crew, no one else did either. First that... thing had walked across the main bay, full exposed to hard vacuum with no apparent effect. The air rushing out of the bay had not affected the physics defying hair or tail of this beast. It walked up to the door of the bay and hit the access button. The doors of the bay wouldn't open while the bay was depressurized so nothing happened. Uthzar felt a bit relieved until the thing's horn lit up and it disappeared in a flash of light. Cameras outside the bay showed it reappear in the main corridor. The Chk'rain had been working for centuries to try to come up with a way to teleport matter and still the solution eluded them. This creature appeared to be able to do it at will. "I've got a bad feeling about this," Viettar said. "I don't think security is going to be able to stop it." Just then, the camera showed the armored forms of security entering the main corridor. Within seconds, they opened fire. White hot beams of light struck at the blue demon, but a translucent blue shield shimmered into existence every time a shot would have impacted. Not a single laser made it through. The creature stood there for a moment, looked around at the guards and made a sound that Uthzar could only assume was laughter. Then it's horn lit again and a brilliant flash went out, momentarily blinding the cameras. When the image came back up, the entire squadron of guards were down on the floor. "Sir, the guards are down, but sensors show they aren't dead. It looks like they are just asleep?" ##### Luna sat down after she finished casting the sleep spell. She looked around hallway at the pile of sleeping guards. She couldn't really get a good look at them in their armor. They stood upright on only two legs, looking to be anywhere between 6 and 7 feet tall, but some of that could have been the armor. There was a short stubby tail that didn't quite reach the ground exiting the back of the armor. It was covered in dark gray scales similar to a dragons. They had 2 arms, similar to a dragons, but ending in a very different looking claw. The end of the claw looked almost like a birds but much larger and with 6 appendages. She then closed her eyes proceeded to cast a dream spell. She connected to each of the creatures surrounding her. She entered their minds, shaped their dreams to suit her own purpose. Using her powers she forced the creatures to dream about day to day activities. She then followed the dreams, watching and seeing what the creatures did, how they got around, what they knew. She saw all of this in their heads, and as the creatures dreamed, Luna learned. ##### Uthzar watched as the creature sat down. Beams of white light shot out of its horn, twisting and turning until they landed on the heads of every sleeping guard. "Scanners show they are still ok sir, not exactly sure what's going on." "Are we detecting anything apart from the creature and the guards? Any sort of energy that would explain what we are seeing? Uthzar asked. "Not a thing." Uthzar wasn't sure what else to do. He sent more guards, hoping to catch the creature unaware while its eyes were closed. The moment they entered the corridor, they collapsed, sensors showed that like the rest of the guards, they had fallen asleep. Additional beams of light appeared and dove into the second wave of guards. The ship had more guards, thousands in fact, but Uthzar didn't want to have them all incapacitated. He tried sending in attack drones, but while the creature hadn't killed anyone yet, it showed no such hesitation when dealing with the drones. It's blue force field blocked every incoming shot. It then retaliated sending what looked like a blue beam of energy from its horn. Every drone that was hit exploded into fragments. So Uthzar sat there, watching and waiting, to see what it would do. Not a word was said as the entire bridge crew continued to watch and see what the impossible creature would do. An hour passed, while it sat there, every conceivable scan was run on the creature. Nothing was found. Cikrak worked with the Tck'Wrath’s science officer as they bounced idea after idea back and forth on what to do. The creature stood up and turned its head. Uthzar could swear it briefly looked right at the security cameras. It began to walk down the corridor. It reached a closed door with a keypad in front of it. The creature's horn lit up and Uthzar watched as the keypad registered the correct sequence of presses that would bypass the security lock on the door. The door opened and the creature walked through. "It knew the code! How could it know the code!?" he heard someone say. "Lock down the ship. Emergency containment protocols . Seal all doors and hatches." Uthzar barked. "What good will that do? It can teleport!" Cikrak said, unable to hide the panic in his voice. "Just do it!" The creature reached another door and entered in a sequence of keys. The pad beeped in response but the door did not open. The creature turned its head and looked directly at the security camera. It rolled its eyes proceeded to teleport away. "Sir, it's on sensors again, this time in main engineering." The view screen switched to the engineering deck. Every engineer in sight was unconscious, strands of white light emanated from their heads, twisting and turning flowed back to the creature's horn. Fifteen minutes passed, before it opened its eyes and trotted over to the main reactor. Pale blue light flared into existence as once again this thing used its mysterious powers. For a moment, the entire reactor shimmered, but then the light died down and the creature teleported away once more. "Hello Commodore." Uthzar didn't need the ships sensors to tell him where this blue monster had gone off to, it was standing right in front of him. He reached out slowly with his claw and touched the creature, checking to see if it was in fact a living being. "What are you?" he said in a whisper. "I am Luna, Second Princess of Equestria. Defender of Dreams, Keeper of the Night. This ship is now the property of Equestria. You and your crew will be teleported to the planet's surface. There you will be held as prisoners of war." The entire bridge crew stood there in shock. No one quite knew what to do. Uthzar snarled and reached for his command console. "Not likely." He quickly keyed in his command code and activated the ship's self destruct sequence. "Self Destruct Sequence Aborted. The Self Destruct System is Offline." The display flashed back at him. Luna smiled. "Goodbye Commodore," she said. The last thing the Commodore saw before being teleported to the planet's surface was Luna's horn covered in that damned pale blue glow. ##### It took Luna the better part of the day to teleport all 15,000 members of the Tck'Wrath's crew down to Equestria. She could have done it faster, but the larger the group, the worse the effects of the teleport so she stuck to moving no more than 10 at a time. By the end of the day, even her vast magical stores felt a bit drained. Probing the minds of the guards had given her insight into most of the ship. More importantly, she found out about the reactor that powered the ship, she discovered the engineering crew would have even more knowledge about the workings of the reactor, and she learned that the ship was commanded by Commodore Uthzar, who alone had the command codes to the ship's computers. She headed off to engineering, and learned even more from the minds of the engineers. She found out about the self destruct mechanism and how only the Commodore had the key to unlock the ship's computer and set it off. Luna cast a stasis spell on the device, completely locking it down and preventing the computer from activating it. She was prepared for her encounter with the Commodore, she knew what he would try. She then teleported to the bridge and cast a scrying spell. Celestia had already cast the 2nd part of the spell, so as soon as Luna cast the first part, Through the spell, Celestia could very clearly see Commodore Uthzar and exactly what he keyed into his command console.