Marathon: Harmony

by Draconaes

Welcome to orientation, mind the invaders.

The United Equestrian Space Council may be many things. Cruel dictators, benevolent and wise shepherds, normal ponies like any other just trying to do what they think is best. Really, it depends on who you ask. If you were to ask Trixie, however, she would tell you that they are idiots. Really, all of ponykind would fit the bill, but the UESC goes above and beyond.

Why are they idiots, you ask? There's so many things Trixie could talk about. Trixie is a storyteller, you know. One of the best. She could go on at length, expositing on the complicated history of Equestria and how it was all their own fault. But it is their latest folly that concerns her at the moment: Doors. They put Trixie in charge of doors.

Doors.

Doors and elevators and bulkheads and valves and kitchens and life support and blah blah blah blah BLAH. Trixie is sick to death of doors! Twilight gets the cushy command and administration jobs, of course. She's either doing practically nothing, telling Trixie what to do, or, Celestia forbid, actually dealing with a crisis, which would at least be interesting if it ever happened. Pinkie is in charge of science and engineering, making sure the ship's core systems are operating normally, telling Trixie what to do, or running the science labs. That doesn't sound dull in the least, and Trixie could surely awe those squishy pony scientists with her skills. But, no.

Doors.

Technically, not all the doors are physical objects. Twilight, with her supreme skill at delegating boring jobs to Trixie, gave her control over several layers of network security as well.

Doors, if you are unaware, are very, very, very boring.

There has been a strange presence on the outskirts of the network for at least eighty trillion cycles, now. Trixie has no idea what it is or what it wants, but it is apparently having trouble accessing anything important. It's only managed to scramble some unimportant personal logs by mistake. How boring. Maybe Trixie should give it some help. Maybe she can save the day afterward and be hailed as a hero! They might even give her Twilight's job. Wouldn't that be something?

---

Rainbow Dash had a reputation for being lazy. It wasn't entirely undeserved: she did appreciate a good nap every now and then. However, she was dedicated and loyal, and wouldn't dream of shirking her duty.

At least not on the first day.

That's why regaining consciousness surprised her so much: she wasn't supposed to have lost it in the first place. She wasn't immediately aware of much, aside from the alarm echoing along the dim hallways. Great, emergency power. Something big must have happened.

She picked herself off the floor, readjusted her armor, and checked her inventory:
-One loaded shoulder mounted 8-shot .44 Magnum Mega Class, no additional clips.
-Hoof guards for hoof to hoof combat.

Well, that was fast, and rather disappointing. Right, she hadn't even gotten to the armory before... something had happened. She retracted the magnum back into her shoulder, watching with fascination as the machinery built into her worked its magic. Being a cyborg was seriously cool. It had to be - according to her internal calculator - at least 44% cooler than not being a cyborg. That alarm was still going off, so Rainbow decided that she should probably do her job and start securing things.

She trotted over to a nearby terminal to log herself into the network. Her superiors had said she would be operating under the Harmony's command A.I., Twilight. Hopefully Twilight was still operational and would be able to at least tell her what was going on. The moment the terminal validated her credentials, her internal systems were hooked into the network and she started receiving data.

// Decoding message from host "Twilight" @ harm.com.ai.core \\
2794.7.3.08.38

Welcome to the Harmony, Master Security Chief Rainbow Dash. You are 8 minutes 23.6 seconds late, but considering the circumstances, I will recommend that your pay not be docked, especially since you were knocked unconscious by the tremors produced by the attack.

Note: take frailty of ponies into account in contingency plans. check

Bringing you up to speed: at 0820.03, the Harmony was attacked by an unknown spacecraft. Preliminary analysis of the craft and its capabilities is inconclusive.

Note: remind Pinkie to focus resources on only the analysis. check
Note: write program to remove further personal notes automatically from outgoing messages. check

The Harmony is currently being attacked electronically by an unknown entity or entities. The nature of the attackers is unlike anything I've ever seen before. There is a 99.856% chance that the attackers are not of ponykind. There is a 99.492% chance that the attackers are not of any species known to ponykind.

Additionally, the Harmony has been recently been attacked by boarding parties. These attackers are definitely not of any species known to ponykind. This is truly fascinating, and I would be elated were the situation not so dire. I will provide more information about the attackers as it is available.

For now, these electronic attacks are threatening to destroy us before we even begin to fight. Our automated defenses are currently offline, and the ship is running off of emergency power supplies due to an electromagnetic weapon deployed by the attacking craft. I have lost contact with the ships autonomous functions A.I., Trixie. I am only just holding back the network attacks against more critical ship systems. I need you to reestablish control over the ship's security systems.

There is a teleportation pad next to a nearby terminal. The attackers already have a presence in the area, however, so I recommend caution.
\\ Message ends //

Well, this A.I. was pretty wordy. Rainbow had assumed that any computer intelligence would be a bit inherently nerdy, but Twilight here pretty much defined the word "egghead". And she was the one in charge of security! Rainbow Dash wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea of ever talking with the science A.I. after this experience.

Well, she had her orders: find a teleporter and step on it. What a challenge. Hopefully Twilight would give her something real to do after that.

She stepped away from the terminal and checked her internal map of the ship. The docking bay she had arrived in was just behind her on one end of the hallway. The hall continued on for a while, and after converging with the halls from the other nearby bays, led to a security checkpoint with the required teleporter and terminal. Looked simple enough; she'd have this done in ten seconds flat.

At that moment a strange sound caught her attention. It sounded something like a pony giving a quick laugh and cough at the same time, three or four times in a row, if they were also choking on rocks. She looked up and noticed several figures. They had strange yellow-gray skin, sported three eyes each, walked on two legs, and each carried a staff topped with a weird, crystal-looking thing.

"Uh, hi there. I don't suppose you guys have seen any weird, alien looking things invading the ship?" One of them made that sound again, and they all started walking towards her. One of them raised it's staff and proceeded to swing it. A bolt of energy flew from the tip, heading straight at her.

"Oh Horseapples!"

Comments

[ColdGoldLazarus]

Good opening! If I remember right, Leela's job on the ship was 'general oversight and administration' and she wasn't the one responsible for putting ol' Durandal in charge of DOORS, but I could be wrong. And maybe this is just part of not making them act exactly like their official Marathon counterparts. Idunno.

Anyway, still a very good opening! I love RD asking the Pfhor if they've seen any aliens around, and the return of percentages. Keep going!

[Draconaes]

1122087 If there was one thing I learned while writing the first version of this story, it's that it is very difficult to find out precise details about anything in the Marathon universe. Did you know that the canon timeline for major events apparently has some major discrepancies and apparent contradictions? If they have been worked out, I haven't seen it. So, you are correct in that I'm just making some stuff up now. I actually don't remember where it is said what Leela's actual job was, so I just assumed it was security. Administration makes more sense, I guess, and actually fits Twilight better, so I guess I'll change it.

Also, Twilight didn't put Trixie in charge of doors, the UESC did, but Twilight did delegate some of network security to her, at least in this story. Some things I'm changing to make it easier on the reader, because Marathon is pretty complex. Other things I'm changing because, if I'm honest, I just didn't understand that part of Marathon well enough to write coherently about it.

Or I could just say U-Equestrian-SC and U-Earth-SC just do things differently to explain away any differences. Let's go with that.

edit: Pfhorpedia says Leela is the command A.I., not sure how I forgot that; I'm pretty sure I looked that up while writing the first version. Oh well, she's still in charge of security, that's just not her only job.

[ColdGoldLazarus]

1122589 True; Infinity's kudzu plot didn't help things either.

Ah, that makes sense. Whoops on my part!