Steel & Stone

by Ineptus Astartes

From the Stars

UISV Starry Ice

“Commander?”

Commander Rantus Grendel of the Galactic Union Fifth Expeditionary Fleet regarded the head technician.

“Yes, technician?” He asked.

The technician was a Hargule, one of the many xenoform races within the Galactic Union, a conglomeration of races separated by hundreds of light-years. The Hargule were one of the less common races of the Galactic Union, a race who’s guttural voices colored their Galactic Universal Speech. They traced their roots back to Hargonnen, a violent desert world in the Hadron cluster and stood at a stocky five feet when unaugumented. Their biology gave them immense strength, though not nearly as much as the Vurkuristar. Their arms were comparatively short to their longer, bulkier legs and tusks sprouted from their jawbones. These tusks dominated their faces; emerging from their dark brown hides and making them speak with very clipped tones.

“Engineering wishes to inform you that we have almost completely exhausted our Ferrerium stores. The ship has been travelling for nearly twice as long as she should have been and we only have a few more hours to coax out of the fumes left in the engines. Once we stop, our Ferrerium stores will be depleted. That, on top of the engine damage from running constantly for half a century will make our in-system burn last days and our engines will have to cool down for several years if they survived the heat wash. We’ll be dead in space.”

Commander Grendel sighed. The old commander had come quite a long distance from his beginnings. He had always loved sailing the stars. He had often heard of ships that had vanished, only to be found hundreds of years later, their crews withered away and their frozen passengers eaten in desperation. It was a grim fate and one that Grendel had no wish to have.
“Get as much power out of that engine as you can, the Astrographer charted the nearest system as little under a light-day from this spot, correct?”

The technician nodded his head. “That is correct,” He admitted.

“We've been traveling for half a century technician, and I've been awake for ten years of that, I will be very disappointed if we fail just short of possible salvation. I’m going to give a fleet-wide command, understood? Rout the command to the Spirit, the Twilight and the Wake. I can only assume their engines are just as debilitated by now.”

“With all due respect, the Red Wake is a Technocracy ship and is likely far more efficient than ours by a long shot.”

“Nevertheless, we can’t risk it, order every ship to execute a Vernid Drift,” said the commander, turning to the comms officer.

“I am afraid I have no record of that maneuver,” said the helmsman from his station, guiltily.

“A Vernid Drift is when you fire all engines at full power for one point six hours and then cut them for an in-system burn. The inertia should take care of the rest for roughly five hours. Then fire the arresting jets. We should ‘drift’ into the system. I thought that maneuver was well-known. it was popularized at the Battle of Aphranti.”

The Hargule nodded. “I will order engineering to brace the engines for this…strenuous act.”

The alien adept took his station at the engineering console as the commander turned back to the helmsman. “Did you get all that?” asked the old commander. The helmsman nodded.

“Then make it so.”

Grendel’s flagship, the Starry Ice had had a long and venerable history, going all the way back for hundreds of years when humanity first contacted the alien races of the S-X star systems and torn their worlds apart for the precious Ferrerium hidden within their crust. This ship had fought in the corporate wars during that time, even during the Death of Sandswept, when the desert world had been blown to smithereens and robotic salvage drones tore the Ferrerium from the dead rocks. It had even had the honor of escort to the Carrion Bird, which had been the historical vessel where the hand of humanity had clasped the claw of the Vurkuristar. It was a mid-aged ship, and Grendel was not sure he should be pushing its engines so hard but the alternative was a cold, horrible death. Between that and arriving at a planet where Ferrerium might be found at the cost of a three-year layover, he would take his chances with the planet.

Grendel stood and prepared to wake his charges. Thousands of personnel were stored in the belly of the Ice, deep in hibernation. They would be expecting to arrive at the world of Haddon-56-A, a colony world unsettled and directly in the path of a Scourge fleet.

Oops.

Grendel blamed himself for that failing. It had been no fault of his, but he still felt responsible. Something had gone dreadfully wrong with the ship, and so it had with the rest of the slaved fleet. Suddenly, spontaneously and completely unexpectedly the ship’s navigational computer had gone haywire, like some mad sprite had jumped into its circuits and started hitting them. The malfunction tore them from their projected course to somewhere completely different and had brought then nearly thirty light years into uncharted space before waking Grendel and the command crew to oversee the ailing fleet. The star maps had had them traveling blind for decades now, and there was nothing they could do except stop or start the engines, every time it was a blind jump. No one could figure out what caused such a devastating error. Commander Grendel just counted himself lucky that they had not collided with a star or nebulae. It was almost like the ship had a safely planned route without knowing it.

As this thought entered Grendel’s mind, it gave him an idea, normally he would disregard it, as probes were usually only useful to scout out battle areas before a naval conflict or planetary invasion, but now that he was entering an uncharted star system, he would want to know exactly what awaited him.

“Van, launch a superluminal probe, see if there’s even a few asteroids out there,” he said to the bipedal mantid at the controls and the first mate of the thirty-being crew. The lieutenant routed the command through to astrographer Tenson, on the probe deck, and moments later they heard the ship shudder as the faster-than-light piece of metal shot from their hull.

Captain Darius Xarxes, the reserved and normally quiet individual and the only combat officer on the bridge spoke his mind for the first time in nearly a week. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” The man’s voice was deep and resonant, fooling most into believing the Galactic Union Intelligence officer was a paragon of honesty and virtue, this was, of course not the case, the man was a killer, but he was also often the voice of reason the few times he spoke to those not in his shadowy department. “The probe could be detected by any possibly hostile factions and alert them to our coming.”

Grendel shook his head. “If there is any hostile force there with the ability to detect a superluminal probe as something more than a flash of light then they would have zeroed in on our drive emissions and light reflections years ago. In any case, it’s already launched.” He gestured top the comm. Station, where little lights flashed as the probe dumped the data it was collecting into the ship’s computer.

The probe was now data, its internal cores sending messages as it burned itself away within moments. Nothing could survive more than a few hours traveling at lightspeed. Even then, it would be impossible to drop out of lightspeed, hence why the interstellar travel of the ships of nearly any race in the galaxy was just a hair’s breadth under lightspeed. It took decades, sometimes even centuries to get anywhere but there was no realistic alternative.

“Sir! Something’s coming through! A planet!” shouted the comms officer.

Grendel hardly believed his ears. “Feed it through, feed it through!” he yelled. This was good fortune He had assumed he would arrive at this star and find, if he was likely, a nebula, an oort cloud and a few proto-planets or clouds of dust.

The ship shuddered slightly as bits of information spanned distances immeasurable and collided with the receiver node. The data sent tangible impacts vibrating through the colossal spar of a ship.

They comms officer nodded and spoke.

The data we have shows…a planet…it’s terrestrial! It’s Inhabitable!...holy shit…it’s-”

The officer’s last statement was drowned out by the adulations of half a dozen xenoforms, clicks grunts whoops and hoots.
“This is a military vessel, you will respect the chain of command, do not speak out of turn,” demanded the commander. “What was that last?” he asked of the comms officer.

“The sun…it appears to be orbiting this world…”

“The readings must be off,” grated a voice like wood and rock scraping a hollow tree stump. In fact it was the smashing of arachnoid pedipalps and the lashing of a bladed tongue on inner mouthparts. Its owner, Bo’sun Ugor, a Vurkuristar of herculean proportions was glaring at the comms officer with all four of his glowing blue eyes, though to be fair all any Vurkuristar ever did was glare. They were the most violent race in the Galactic Union and were first discovered as a cannibalistic race of stone-age savages on a jungle death world.

“Excuse me?” Asked the comms officer. “I should know what this says,it’s my job. And it clearly says that this system is geocentric.”

“But that’s imp-” began a few crewers, Grendel raised a hand. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, the news that our stop is within reach on impulse drive is....well, it’s a one in a billion chance. And we should capitalize on it. Officers, with me, we’re going to wake the cargo, Octavius, Ugor, you have the bridge.”

The comms officer and bo’sun nodded as the others cleared out of the circular room and boarded the tramway to the cryo-bays. When all was silent and the humming of machinery was the only thing that could be heard, Ugor turned his chitinous form towards Octavius. “You cannot be right.” He grated in passable galactic. “It goes against all that we know, it’s the reason we can’t travel faster than light. Not even the Draug or the Technomancy can do it. It defies physics.”

“Say what you like. It’s still there. A sun orbiting a world…could be a faulty reading though,” murmured the comms officer.

The vurkuristar shifted his massive bulk slightly on his station-throne. “I hope so…”

Octavius looked at his xeno collegue. “Why?”

Ugor grunted. “I know more of your kind than you, it would seem. Didn’t your ancestors believe that Sol orbited your world? How would the public react to a seemingly divine phenomenon?”

Octavius looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure.”

“But you know it in your mind.” Said Ugor. “It would end in war. Religious zealotry would raise it’s ugly head yet again and there would be war.”

UISV Starry Ice -Central Tram

Commander Grendel surveyed the rest of the bridge team on the way to cryo storage. As they passed through the empty parts of the colossal ship he ignored the ghost town that it seemed to be for the time being and instead focused on the eight people with him. The first mate, Van was a vernid, a member of that mantis-grasshopper species from vernox and the first spacefarers humans had ever met. His dark round eyes bulged from an angular chitin-plated green face, unreadable as always.

Glancing back foreword, Grendel took a moment to watch the ship as they passed through it.

It was a hulk, a vessel manufactured by the military hardware company Thayne&Kamisk, it was built in accordance to Vernid designs, a long, central spar separated the crew quarters from the cryogenic storage and the holds of the vessel. All in all, it was twenty kilometers long and had had to be manufactured in high orbit of Vernox. The central spar housed the barracks for the troops, factories, processing plants, armories, hangers and all the like. The tramway went directly down the vessel’s spine.

Spine was an apt word to describe the central tram of the Starry Ice. The vessel was nearly a living thing itself, a behemoth of steel, adamantium and deuterium; it was the fifth-largest type of spacefaring vehicle designed. Its bridge was its brain, the sensory antenna below that was its eyes. The blink-wave caster was its mouth. The tramways were arteries that brought creatures through its metallic body. The huge plasma reactors were its heart, powering the rest of its body and pumping superconductive Ferrerium gas through its veins to its thrusters. It’s lungs were the skyscraper-like triple-converters that converted the compressed Ferrerium gas to energy. It’s liver and kidneys were the hundred-foot tall air scrubbers, that filtered out poisons and the regulators, which kept the myriad of life forms alive, even if they could not breath oxygen-rich air.

Four kilometers of Cryogenic storage bays were its stomach, where, soon enough, ten thousand soldiers, workers, crewers and civilians would awaken and give the vessel life. The fact that beings could survive in this near-city was a testament to it’s power and the complicated computer-brain of the ship. It had to monitor each living thing locked in it’s guts constantly and care for them, feeding them nutrients and slowing their heart rate. Keeping every creature locked in suspended animation that had to be perfectly tailored to each being, Even races so similar that they could undergoes the same medical procedures, like Humans and Kugs needed to have the cryo-bay they resided in for years to be perfect for them and them alone.

Grendel was torn from his musings by a voice.

Head Chirurgeon Sevros Heller stood a bit removed, his acolyte behind him, they were checking their arm-displays and their vacuum suits were white, with the red cross blazed on the shoulder. It was Heller who was speaking.

“What was that?” Asked Grendel.

“Sir, I was requesting permission to activate the cryo-bay thawing machines warmup procedures.” He gestured at his arm console for emphasis.

“Granted,” Said Grendel.

The thawing process that would wake the people on the ship, one at a time. It was slow and arduous but it was better than waking them all at once, where a malfunction could be catastrophic, if the things overheated. The tramway began to slow down, as they arrived in cryo storage.

Stepping out, the first thing grendel noticed was the cold.

It was utterly frigid, even through his temperature-controlling vacuum suit it was uncomfortable. His un-helmeted head bore the worst of the cold; he could hear teeth chattering at it took a moment to realize it was his own.

“This way.” Said the chirurgeon. The others followed him.

Technician M’kai was poring over a holographic screen set into a pane in his chest as he walked, no doubt preparing to aide the medical personnel in deactivating the cryo-freezers. He seemed unperturbed by the cold. The blunt Hargule’s half-mechanical body twitched and hissed as hydraulics worked and compensators shifted. His face was almost hidden by a steel plate with two glaring red eyes that shone like embers; a thin rime of frost covered his steel face. The sinister effect was somewhat spoiled by the conflicting blue glow of the screen he was gazing at but he had never cared for other’s opinions on him, only content when surrounded the cold efficiency of machines. His tusks were made of worn metal and it was common rumor that he had replaced half of his brain with a computer and used the opportunity to delete his emotions entirely. Technicians tended to be heavily augumented, though not on the level of the Technocracy.

The Hargule was accompanied by four hideous menial-servant-droids and a pair of ugly combat androids. The servant robots scuttled or rolled only partially aware of themselves. Each was built around the ruins of a living brain, usually tube-grown. The combat droids were both walkers, however one was bipedal and built with sharp, violent angles and had a large machine gun set into its side while the other was armed with a pair of talons wreathed in disruptor fields. They too were powered by nearly-dead organic brains.

There were individuals in the galaxy who believed that androids should be ‘freed’ and given rights. Grendel felt no ire towards them for their naïve ways. Androids had no personality nor any self-awareness, they simply used organic materials in tandem with electronics to produce a more efficient machine. Apparently the Technocracy had made them by warping the operating systems of captured Biomancy troops. Grendel shivered in spite of himself. And not from the coldness of the cryo bays.

They reached the main controls without delay. By now, Grendel’s breath was audible in puffs of vapor and his grey eyebrows wore frost. He imagined he looked like a lost mountain explorer. The place looked like some ice world, there were even icicles in places where boiling coolant pipes had leaked.

The control room of the cryo-bay was built like a circle, with a single series of buttons in the center. The Chirurgeon ran the customary diagnoses. No one had died but there were one or two cases of possible cold-related illnesses from the freezing process. M’kai stepped up and tapped a sequence of buttons. There was a hiss and a red light flashed. “The subjects are awakening from their slumber,” said the technician.

Grendel felt that M’kai could have voiced it more politely and less like a prophecy of doom.

Ponyville: Equestria

Near the center of the small town known as ponyville on a library carved from a living tree, Twilight Sparkle was humming to herself as she set up her equipment on the roof. Star charts, quills, parchment, a telescope, protractors compasses and a small writing table. Stargazing was oen of her less-known hobbies and provided a welcome release from the daily routine.
Spike trundled the last of the stargazing equipment upstairs and sat down, panting slightly.

“Jeeze, Twilight, what’s the rush about?” he asked, referring to the purple unicorn’s rush to get set up.

“I’m monitoring that moving star I told you about. If my calculations are correct, it’s gaining speed and should be as big as a pinhead by tonight! I can finally start to observe its surface!”

Spike looked doubtful. “Isn’t the fact that a star is moving towards Equestria kind of bothering you?”

Twilight waved a dismissive hoof. “I’m sure the princesses can handle it. Now help me set up the telescope, remember, the sooner I finish setting up the sooner I can finish this week’s stargazing and the sooner we can have dinner.”

“We’re going to Rarity’s afterword, right? You said we were going to the carousal boutique after dinner.”

Twilight laughed. “Yes, we’re going to Rarity’s, I need to see if she finished fixing up my Smartypants doll.”

“I just wanted to make sure you didn't forget.” Muttered spike, who quickly picked up a large glass lens almost as big as himself and screwed it onto the end of the telescope. “So, any ideas why that star’s moving?” He asked, changing the subject.

“Nope,” said Twilight. “In fact, I was thinking about looking it up tonight-”

“Hey!” said Spike.

“After we get back from the boutique.” Finished Twilight.

“Oh, alright then.” Said Spike. “I’m gonna go downstairs now.”

“Spike, I need you to help me document.” Said Twilight.

Spike sat down on the bench behind her. “Alright.”

Twilight put her eye to the eyepiece of the telescope and aimed it at the sky above the Equestrian sunset. The whole universe was laid out before her. It was amazing, a true marvel of nature.

Twilight had studied under the princess herself, and knew astronomy by heart. Each star was a light in Celestia’s realm, each one placed there by the goddesses’ forbears, and one day Celestia herself would become a star when she tired of ruling. They were hundreds of miles high at least, thousands at most. She’d heard tell of pegasi who tried to fly there but none had ever come back, space was the roof of Celestia’s realm and was not meant for mortal ponies to enter.

She searched the sky for the new star, it had appeared roughly seven years ago, and she hadn’t noticed it was moving until just about a year ago. It was currently, as she said, almost as big as a pinhead, which was huge for a star; it must have been at least five miles across If her books on speculative star sizes were correct. As she focused on it with her telescope, turning dials to make the star look bigger, she saw something very odd. The star flashed with light for a moment, like far-off lightning. The pulse of light was followed by something even stranger.

Twilight pulled her eye away from the lense, glaring at her telescope. She could have sworn she just saw a thin ray of light jet from the star for just a second. She chalked it down to her overexcited imagination and went back to observing it, completely forgetting to dictate this all to Spike. The further she zoomed in the stranger it seemed, until it was the size of one of spike’s claws. It was still alight, but what struck her was how the light seemed to bend and waver around it. Its edges glowed with starlight but the center seemed…dark grey. It looked like someone had drawn a thin vertical slash across the center of the star no bigger than an ant’s leg.

Twilight jotted this down and charted it quickly. IT was closer than yesterday by a little bit but she had yet to see it actually move.

Taking her eye from the eyepiece, twilight trotted to the trapdoor in her foot, opened it and made her way down the long, sloping ramp and into the tree proper and into the kitchen, where she fixed herself a light snack -a lettuce and tomato sandwich, and headed back upstairs with her plate. After a few bites she set the snack down, careful not to disturb Spike, who had fallen asleep amid the papers and was drooling slightly and returned to her telescope, putting her eye to the lens again.
To look out at empty space.

Twilight’s eyes widened as her first thought was the star’s gone out, Which she quickly quashed. Stars didn't just ‘go out’ there had to be an explanation. She turned a dial and zoomed out. The star was quickly found several inches to the right of her original point of view. She gasped as she observed the point of light. It was moving, crawling slowly across space with a speed that made Tank seem like a racepony but it was visibly moving.

“YES!” she squealed, leaping into the air and pumping a hoof, inadvertently waking up Spike, who had dozed off. As the young dragon blearily opened his eyes he saw the lavender unicorn sprinting around the roof of the tree house and periodically
jumping up into the air with exultations of ‘yes!’

“Twilight” He grumbled. “Whas goin’ on?”

Twilight Sparkle halted her celebration and looked at Spike. “The star is moving!”

“Didn’t you already know that?” He groused.

“Well yes, but I can SEE it moving!”

Spike looked uncomfortable. “Is it getting bigger still?”

“Well, yes…”

“So, doesn’t that mean it’s coming towards us?”

“Of course not, it’s…oh.” Trailed off twilight, then she perked up. “But as I said, the princesses will deal with it. I’ll tell them now.”
Spike obediently produced a quill and scroll.

“Dear Princess Celestia.” She began. “Over the past year or so, I have been tracking a moving star. IT has come to my attention that this star is on a beeline for Equestria or near enough to Equestria to cause significant changes (if possible) I just thought I’d bring this to your attention.
Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.”

Spike blew a quick burst of flame over it and watched as it silvered and shot towards the distant spires of Canterlot.
Twilight watched the star for a few more moments before making a happy sound and starting back towards the trapdoor.

“Twilight?” Where’re you going?”asked Spike.

“To do some research.”

“But Twilight! Rari-”

“Spike, I have a feeling this is far bigger than me checking on Rarity’s sewing job OR you ogling her flank. This is unprecedented! If the star is visibly moving it must be going faster than Raindow dash on her best day, Spike! This is huge!”

"But-"

“No ‘buts’ spike, I’m really sorry but how about this? We can go over to Rarity’s tomorrow and I’ll see if she has any spare gemstone cuttings she doesn't need.”

“Alright, fine.” Grumped spike, crossing his arms but Twilight was already racing into the library with a shout of “And ready a checklist of all the books about stars!”

Spike sighed, "Checklists? Aw man, I knew that star was no good."

Comments

[karikamiya]

Moar

[Ircriket]

moar please

[Bronybro 117]

This fic, I like it.

MOAR!

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[SC1-Firebat]

I see...
And yet another spaceship arrive to eqestria fic, not that its a particularly good or bad thing. Just yet another one Ive read I guess I have a thing for those kinds of stories.

But sadly from what I read this seems to start like how most of the other ones Ive read. Being that this is still very early this could go many different directions one being something good and the other end of the spectrum a cliche one. And like the other ones Ive read it features a several mile long militarized spacecraft. Now I'm not saying that this story sucks, you can have virtually any premise in any fic and depending how it is executed determines the merit.

“But you know it in your mind.” Said Ugor. “It would end in war. Religious zealotry would raise it’s ugly head yet again and there would be war.”

And I can see the conflict coming a mile away. Not that its bad just mind your execution.

I guess what I am saying is be careful where this one goes. I'd like to see it go somewhere good but its too early to tell.

I do however like the multi species thing you've got going on here with the other aliens besides humans. Hopefully you can make something good out of it.

Like I said, too early to tell, I await more additions to this story.

[Ineptus Astartes]

1659093

Thanks for giving this a shot, I've been going through the other stories like this on the site and trying to avoid the cliches, I do however, unlike most of my stories, have the general plot and story planned out beforehand.