Twilight's End

by MasterThief

The Fall Of Harmony

[TWILIGHT SPARKLE. PLEASE WAKE UP. WE NEED YOU.]

Her name was Twilight Sparkle. She was an Alicorn Princess of Equestria. And all she knew is that the Ship was calling her.

She was in her room–much smaller than she had been used to back in Equestria, on her soft and comfortable bed–the humans called it a “cradle” or a “dock,” but never mind what they called it. She had the tube in her mouth that fed her. It wasn’t the hay burgers she’d had back in Equestria, but she didn’t mind. And there was the jack at the base of her neck that was plugged into the Ship. But she didn’t mind that either, it helped her keep track of all of her friends, old and new. Not just Applejack and Rainbow Dash and Rarity and Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, but the Teachers of the Little Stars Room, Miss Vasconcelos and Mrs. Hamilton, and all the children too, Megan and Eun and Rajiv and Molly and Daniel and Pippa and Alexi…

Alexi. The name came back to her, and the memory. He had a temper tantrum, and broke one of Twilight’s wings, and made her hurt. Miss Vasconcelos had put Twilight to bed so it could heal while Miss Hamilton gave Alexi a lesson as Alexi cried. But Twilight knew Alexi didn’t mean it, he was only three, and he had been very tired that day. She would tell him it was all right.

[TWILIGHT SPARKLE. PLEASE WAKE UP. WE NEED YOU, RIGHT NOW.]

The Ship’s voice was urgent. Ship hardly ever spoke to her directly, it was mostly just announcements on where the Ship was headed to next or how long it would spend in Efte-el, or whatever that was.

What had happened? Twilight asked the Ship, and the hair stood up on the back of her mane. Something was very wrong indeed. None of her friends were around, she could tell. Many things on the ship were broken. The gravity plating had failed, but yet Twilight still felt herself being pulled down, to the point her wings wouldn’t work like they did on the days when they turned it down, and let Twilight fly through the air with the greatest of ease.

And then Twilight received the alarms. Condition Red. Biological Contaminant. Emergency Descent.

She had never heard those words before, but they made her afraid.

Ship needed her.

So she put away the feedstock tube, and pulled the plug from her neck, and flexed her wing and it felt alright.

She opened the door to her bedroom, and something was very very wrong.

The Little Stars Room was a disaster. All the cots and the furniture and even the castle were crumpled up and thrown about everywhere. The bright lights were off, and only the darker red lights were on.

“Mrs. Hamilton? Miss Vasconcelos? Fluttershy? Pinkie Pie? Rarity? Hello? Rainbow Dash? Applejack? Anyone…?”

[TWILIGHT SPARKLE. IT IS GOOD THAT YOU ARE AWAKE. I AM GIVING YOU A PATH TO FOLLOW. YOU CAN COME TO ME.]

“But…” Twilight said, “I’m not supposed to leave the Little Stars Room unless a human comes with me!” Twilight had known about this rule ever since she had come aboard the Ship. The United Nations Science Vessel Harmony (most everyone just called her the Harmony) was no place for a little pony to go wandering off alone!

[SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED. YOU CAN COME ALONE. PLEASE HURRY. FOLLOW THE PATH.]

Twilight knew where Ship wanted her to go, it was on the same deck as the Little Stars Room and not very far for her.

But she was alone, and it scared her.

Outside the Little Stars Room, the same angry red lights were on everywhere. She walked down the hall in the dim light, looking all around for anyone. The hallways of the Harmony always had people around, at all hours of the day or night, from the friendly looking droid technicians who gave Twilight her checkups and asked her how she was doing, to the scary-looking guards with their big guns (not even her Royal Guards had anything so scary), to the scientists and lab technicians and officers who walked fast and talked about things Twilight could barely understand.

Twilight was looking around when she felt her hoof knock against something. She looked and it was a human, just lying there. He wasn’t moving. His eyes were the color of glass.

Twilight wanted to scream, but she also knew she had to be very brave, like she had been when fighting Queen Chrysalis and Sombra and the scariest villains Equestria had.

So she kept walking along her path.

[TWILIGHT,] Ship spoke to her, [WHAT IS WRONG?]

“I… found a human. He’s… not moving. Not sleeping.”

[I KNOW. SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAS HAPPENED TO US. PLEASE HURRY.]

Twilight hurried, and hurried, and went from a trot to a canter to a full gallop, as she dodged more humans who were just laying there in the halls, not moving, eyes glassed over.

“Please let this be a bad dream,” she repeated, “please let this be a bad dream…”

Finally, Twilight arrived at the end of her path. The door was marked SICK BAY and she peeked inside.

Then he heard a cough, and then a cry. “Daddy…” the voice cried out weakly, and Twilight knew it was her friend Megan, who had always been nice to her. “Daddy…” she coughed, “my head hurts. I can’t… see…”

Twilight ran into the room marked SICK BAY and looked around. The room was filled with human beds, and every one had someone in it, and even more humans laid on the floor. Some were covered up with sheets like they were sleeping, but others were in strange bags. And none of them moved or said anything.

“Megan?” Twilight called out to her friend. “Megan, it’s Princess Twilight? Are you here?”

Twilight heard Megan coughing, and launched herself on her wings. The gravity wasn’t on… it wasn’t off, but it wasn’t on. So Twilight floated in the air until she saw Megan in the dim light, lying on one of the beds. Megan had always been Twilight’s friend, one of the nicest and smartest girls in the Little Stars Room, and she’d known words and numbers so big that even Twilight couldn’t keep up with her.

Megan shivered under a pile of blankets. Her eyes, too, had gone white as glass like the others. Twilight saw blood coming from her nose, all over her face.

“Help!” Twilight called out, by instinct. “Somebody help us!”

“Twi… light?” Another voice, close to Megan, and Twilight could see that it was Applejack, who rested on Megan’s chest, as if keeping her warm, while Megan gripped her tightly.

“Applejack? What’s wrong? What happened to everyone? Where are all our friends?”

“Twi…light…” Applejack’s voice buzzed, and Twilight knew that something was wrong with her too. “There was… planet… something… on… made humans sick… then… crashed. We all broke. No one… fix…”

“Applejack…” Twilight said, more scared than she had ever remembered being before. “How do I fix this?”

“Can’t,” Applejack said, audible pops in her voice. “Talk… Ship… Megan… needs…” and her eyes went blank and stopped moving.

“Ship? SHIP?” Twilight called out, now panicking. “WHAT’S WRONG?”

Ship’s Avatar appeared before Twilight. Every Ship had an Avatar, a very, very, very smart brain that kept the humans and all the droids safe, and this one took the form of a Human Goddess. Concordia was her name. But Concordia, the Avatar of Harmony, only looked at Twilight as if she, too, wanted to cry.

“Twilight,” Concordia spoke. “I am… so sorry. The humans… they are all dead. Megan and her father… are the last… I’ve been trying so hard to save them and it has not been enough.”

Dead.

Twilight knew that word, but something told her to never, ever, ever say anything about it, especially not to the Children. She knew what it meant. It meant that the humans–all of them–were gone and never coming back.

“Concordia, please,” Twilight said, trying to grasp the image of light in her hooves and failing, “tell me what happened.

Concordia nodded, towards the doctor’s office. Every Ship had a doctor for the humans, and Megan’s father was Harmony’s doctor.

Concordia motioned Twilight inside. It was Megan’s father, Doctor Petterson, who Twilight knew from the tea parties Megan had with him and her and all her friends as a reward for doing so well in school. But Doctor Petterson, too, looked very sick. His eyes were turning the same shade of white, and he, too, was bleeding. Twilight saw tubes and wires connected to clear plastic bags running into his body, including through a massive hole in his chest.

“Concordia… report,” Doctor Petterson whispered.

“I found an operational SI, and one of the mule units. They survived the crash.”

“Good…” he replied, softly. “I… don’t think I’m gonna make it…”

“Doctor Petterson? My name is Twilight Sparkle. I don’t know if you remember me, but Ship called me here and told me it was important.”

“Megan’s party,” he replied, softly. “Well… suppose you’ll—” and Doctor Petterson erupted in a fit of coughing, as Twilight tensed up. “Concordia… she’ll have to…” he said, his breathing shallow.

“Do what?” Twilight asked. “What happened? Why are the humans dying?”

Concordia bowed her head. “Twilight… I’m going to have to ask you to do something very dangerous. And I need you to be a very brave little pony. Can you do that?”

Twilight looked up at the face of the sad goddess.

“Yes. Whatever Harmony needs. I’ll do it.”

“I can’t lie,” Concordia said. “It may mean you don’t survive. It may mean you die. And what I’m going to have to do to you if you say yes, I’ve never done before. But you are our only hope.”

Twilight inhaled. “For the humans. For Harmony,”

Concordia embraced Twilight. “Bless you,” she said. Twilight felt her mane being pulled back, and something going into the jack in her neck. “This… will feel very strange.”

Twilight closed her eyes, and steeled herself as she felt herself being stretched and expanded in a way she had never been. It was as if her mind was a tiny pond, and the ocean rushed into it.

Now she knew emergency procedures and exobiology and pseudolinguistic structures and the rudiments of FTL physics and the layout of the New Circe colony for 100 miles from the crash site of the UNSV Harmony and how to use the feedstock to sustain her microservos and memory crystals and autorepair systems and how to communicate with ships in far orbits.

She now knew what happened to the UNSV Harmony. The ship had come to a Tier-I colony world prospect, interim designation New Circe. The surveys 10 years ago showed a clean world with plenty of oxygen and nitrogen and water, but this time, they found other life waiting for them.

As the Harmony scanned the surface of the planet, a probe came up from its surface on a strange kind of propulsion, shortly after Alexi had his tantrum and Twilight had to go into autorepair mode. Before any of the crew knew what was happening, the probe had locked itself onto the ship, and forced something into the internal structures, before going dead. No one aboard knew what had happened. The ship’s environmental scrubbers tried to remove the contaminant, but nothing they did worked.

A few hours later, while Twilight slept, the humans started dying. The children were the first to go. Something was colonizing their nervous systems, from the aqueous humor of the eyes to the brain and spinal cord to every last nerve.

Whatever was killing the humans was spreading rapidly, and there was no apparent cure. Captain Tomonaga and Executive Officer Michaud made the decision to eject the ship’s FTL-capable log buoy, and then scuttle the ship to avoid the risk of contaminating other human worlds.

As soon as the log buoy rocketed away, something else came up from the planet’s surface, and knocked out the mains and reactor. Within minutes, the UNSV Harmony was making an uncontrolled descent into New Circe’s atmosphere. XO Michaud was at the helm and managed to steer the ship down between the foothills of a mountain range.

70% of the crew was killed on impact, and the ship rendered non-functional. Dr. Petterson and the few survivors worked through the depths of their sickness to find a treatment. But it worked. The contaminant was biological in origin, a kind of pollen or spore or seed. It preferentially bound itself to human neural tissue. Dr. Petterson had managed to synthesize an herbicidal derivative from the aeroponics bays, but the underlying neural damage from the contaminant’s contact was rapid, cumulative, and irreversible. He and his daughter were the only remaining humans alive, and their conditions were terminal.

Twilight shook with grief, but she knew she could not stop. She kept learning.

Every Ship in the UN Fleet–military, scientific, colony, trading, civilian–had a well-established set of protocols for first contact situations, contained within the ship’s Quantum Intelligence. The log buoy the Harmony had launched while in orbit would head for the nearest outpost, and the closest ships would be sent to respond–for rescue, for a proper first contact, or…

But Harmony’s communications arrays were damaged to the point where not even Concordia in all her power could repair them. And Concordia had picked up energy signals in the atmosphere, of a frequency and magnitude that indicated something was sentient on this planet, that sentience was searching for them, and had inflicted so much death it couldn’t be anything else but hostile.

And so, it fell to Princess Twilight Sparkle, the last functioning Synthetic Intelligence aboard the Harmony. Her mind hitched as she received the matrix of Multi-Factor Authentication Codes that ships and their crews used to verify their identities, report their status, and most importantly, send data transmissions and orders.

Princess Twilight was now Harmony.

[TWILIGHT SPARKLE.]

Yes.

[YOUR DIRECTIVES ARE AS FOLLOWS:]

[1. ESCAPE USNV HARMONY IMMEDIATELY. A SURVIVING MULE-CLASS DROID WILL ACCOMPANY YOU. WE ARE PROVIDING AN EMERGENCY FTL COMMUNICATIONS ARRAY, POWER SOURCE, AND ALL REMAINING SYNTHETIC FEEDSTOCK.]
[2. EVADE HOSTILE SENTIENTS. THE CONTAMINANT DOES NOT AFFECT SYNTHETICS, BUT ENERGY SIGNALS RECEIVED INDICATE THE HOSTILES LIKELY POSSESS SENSORS AND DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS TECHNOLOGY EQUAL TO OR SUPERIOR TO OURS.]

[3. ASCEND MOUNTAIN IDENTIFIED DURING CRASH LANDING. IDENTIFIED MOUNTAIN HAS LINE OF SIGHT ON OUT-SYSTEM ORBITAL APPROACH FROM UN SPACE FOR 61.1% OF ESTABLISHED SIDEREAL DAY. ]

[4. TRANSMIT DATA TO APPROACHING [CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED]].

[DO YOU UNDERSTAND?]

Yes.

Twilight found herself being pulled back to reality. Her mind–her processors and storage crystals–had been filled beyond capacity. But she was still there. She was Twilight Sparkle. She was Harmony.

A low, grumbling siren sounded.

“What is that?” Twilight asked.

“Oh no… Concordia said, “they’ve found us. I have partial sensors only. I’m detecting incoming vessels, approaching our position from within the atmosphere. The same energy spectrum as the probe and the missile that attacked us in orbit. I’m sorry… Doctor…”

“Twi…light…” Dr. Petterson said through a hacking cough. “You… must go… head to Hold B-10… get… mule droid… leave…”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

Concordia turned to Twilight. “My own protocols are clear. Capture of a Quantum Intelligence is to be prevented at all cost. I know everything about how to get to our colonies… and to Earth. I must destroy myself now, and this ship. You must go now, Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight’s expanded mind raced with fear, and she felt it about to tumble all out of her like toys from a spilled chest. “I… I can’t do this alone!”

“Twilight…” Concordia said, “I need you to do this. You are now Harmony.” The avatar turned to Doctor Petterson, sitting in his chair. “The backup EMPs are available. I require MFAC concurrence.”

“Concordia… recognize Harald… Pettersen MD… ship’s surgeon… EMP destruct… Code Omega… local execution… authorize… code… Kilo Kilo… 8943… silence… warning… initiate.”

There came a high-pitched whine from deep within the ship. “Twilight,” Concordia said, pleading, “you must go now! The EMP will destroy you too, and the Mule Droid! Please!”

“This…way…” Dr. Petterson said through labored breaths, as he rose from his chair, ripping the tubes from his chest. Twilight and Concordia followed him, but he stumbled, and soon fell, into a chair, next to his daughter, next to the now silent Applejack.

“Daddy…” Twilight could hear Megan’s whispers, “what’s… I’m… scared…it…hurts… hear them… singing… Daddy…”

Dr. Petterson laid an arm around his daughter, and Twilight heard him singing, through her
translation matrix.

Now in peace, go to sleep,
My little darling,
When you lay yourself down,
To the dreamers town,
Your thoughts will travel,
Until you awake…

[GO, TWILIGHT], Concordia commanded. Numbers counted down in her head, from ten minutes. And this time, Twilight did.

Twilight flew through the corridors as fast as she had ever flown before in the low gravity, and swooped down the maintenance ladder three levels. Hold B-10 was empty, and open to the night sky outside.

“Mule Alpha Charlie. Reporting–Error Override. Tethering to Unit Harmony Twilight Sparkle–”

Twilight felt a new presence in her mind, but this one she could command and steer with a thought.

Follow Me.

Mule Alpha Charlie followed, breaking out from one of its containers, painted a bright red. It was easily 10 times Twilight’s size, and even laden with cargo on its flat-topped back, it loped along on four massive legs.

Twilight flew out, into the night of New Circe, and the Mule followed.

New thoughts flew into her mind. Danger. Active Sensors Detected. Source Unknown, Presume Hostile. Evade.

Twilight’s vision worked exceptionally well in low light now, and she spied what her own sensor processors determined was a thicket of native grass analogs a kilometer away. She flew fast, and dove into the grass, and the Mule followed her as well.

She peeked out, between the blades of grass, and saw the Harmony, from the outside, the deep gash in the soil where it landed, the cracked sensor dome on its dorsal hull.

And then Twilight saw the tiny ships, long and cylindrical, flowing wings of ethereal green light, landing upon the top of the Harmony.

Who are you? She desperately wanted to ask. What are you doing here? Why are you making my friends all die?”

And then Twilight heard the squeak. It was a small, tinny squeak, but it was there.

She searched, and searched, and with her low light vision saw the source, trying to hide behind Mule Alpha Charlie’s back leg. It was… a worm? Caterpillar? Whatever it was, it was about 65% of her mass. Her sensor processor struggled until she routed the data through exobiology, and it was indeed a caterpillar. Insect analog. Hexapodal, and it was looking at her.

Then it… chirped?

It is not a chirp. It is language.

“...hello?” Twilight said, softly in the grass. “Are you here?” She put her hooves up. “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”

The little caterpillar stepped out. It had dark blue eyes, and it looked at her. It chirped again, and with one stubby little grasping claw, motioned away from the Harmony. And it kept chirping, insistently.

Twilight dared a peek up through the top of the grass. Twilight remembered that the sun was about to rise over this planet, and the caterpillar was pointing to a rocky hillscape.

A hiding place.

Twilight nodded, and told Mule Alpha Charlie to be silent. Then they crept out, slowly, through the grass.

Twilight felt the effects of the EMP, even 3,143 meters away from the Harmony. There was a low boom, then a loud electrical crack. She felt her mind fracture, momentarily, and she fell to the grass, stunned and blind, before her systems rebooted.

The caterpillar chirped again.

Stuck in a loop, Twilight accidentally repeated the chirp.

The caterpillar chirped back.

A… query?

Twilight stood back up. She dared not look back at the Harmony, or up at the sky, but all around her she could tell that the EMP had affected the hostile sentients, as she heard the unmistakable pitch-shift that marked straining engines.

The caterpillar chirped again.

Excited query?!

Twilight wobbled, unsteadily, on her hooves, but motioned the caterpillar forward, twice, in what she desperately hoped was a gesture for hurry up.

It was, and inside of a minute Twilight, Mule Alpha Charlie, and the caterpillar were nestled snug safe in the cave.

Twilight’s mind still felt unstable. She needed to rest. She sent a quick command to Mule Alpha Charlie to power down as well, the less emissions to give them away.

The caterpillar chirped differently.

Different query? Concerned query.

Twilight whispered softly. “My friend and I must rest. Please stay close,” she said, making appropriate motions. Then, thinking quickly, she drew a circle for a planet, a smaller circle with wavy lines, hopefully marking the sun, and a dual crescent for the two moons overhead. “We must stay here, until it is night again,” she said, gesturing over her drawings.

The caterpillar chirped.

Acknowledgement.

Twilight nodded, and held out her hoof. The caterpillar touched it with his stubby claw.

“Thank you,” she said.

The caterpillar chirped.

Unidentifiable.

Twilight turned, and slowly clambered aboard Mule Alpha Charlie, taking the feedstock tube into her mouth to keep her reserves full. Then she began the checkdisk routine, and her senses fell away.

And yet, she swore she could hear the caterpillar singing to her. It was a small comfort after the loss of so very many friends, friends that she knew that she should mourn but had neither time nor protocols to.

But Princess Twilight Sparkle had one friend here. And it would have to do.

In the depths of her expanded mind, Princess Twilight Sparkle began to build.