The twenty minutes was nearing up, Kelly was ready to go but her captain wants her to keep an eye on Snowlet once more and one extra, though, she doubts she needs to keep an eye on their eldest AI of the ship, well, a copy of it anyways.
She knew the AI since she was very young, in both her childhood and during her path to becoming a Peace Keeper. The AI considers itself a ‘she’ and a type of clone in a sense. She was created and copied from one of the greatest mind on earth at the time, copied and saved all of what was left of the planet within her digital mind, as well as the massive quantum database and has been on the ship ever since. Which might have been the reason why she was a little moody.
There were other AIs and VIs on the ship as well, but none stood out as much as her. All the others took orders and did their job as accordingly with no questions asked, but this one was her own person; she took orders of course, but wasn’t afraid to speak her mind and make suggestions.
“Captain West, I’m sure I know what I am doing.” the AI copy says with a young, French accent.
“Yes, we are a hundred percent positive my copy will do admirably, Captain.” the original says as well with confidence.
The two AIs were currently standing in front of their captain on a projector on the floor; both were a couple inches shorter than him but that alone was considered tall for a woman these days. Their whole body was gently glowing a snowy blue, though the copy was a little darker than the other, both wore a roman robe, had strapped slippers on and had their hair tied in a bun. Their stance said; proud, wise and intelligent, all at the same time and many considers her the core or heart of the ship; the second in command in a sense.
“I, quite literally, nearly spent my entire processer time debating and planning what we should expect about the possible alien contact; whether they be advanced or… not so much like you ordered me to.” the original points an accusing finger at him for a brief moment, the copy nodding in agreement and huffs in annoyance with her arms crossed and a little frown forming.
She may be just a clone AI, but she’s still a person at heart with a little bite of her own, Kelly thinks as she quietly walks up and stands beside her charge nearby as the three continue speaking to one another.
“I know, you two, but it doesn’t hurt to be reminded.” the captain tries to calm both of them down a little.
Their frown deepens a little and looks away at the same time, “Doesn’t make it any less annoying, Captain West. I thoroughly looked through and processed the information and orders you gave out to me two dozen times.” the original says.
Yet sometimes acting like an adolescent teenager, Kelly thinks once more with a small smile.
“Hey!” he chirps cheerfully, “Look on the bright side; at least you can get to examine the natives and their home up close.” he finishes with that same smirk.
Both Gliths pouts a little, knowing well that their captain had just won the argument, “Do you have what I requested?” the copy asks in bitter defeat.
“Yes, of course, Glith. Crawler Mark 3 should be waiting for you in the Heavy Transporter.” he turns to Kelly and gestures to the AI copy, “Commander, if you will.”
She nods and walks up to the AI as Glith 2.0 smiles at her.
“Good morning, Commander.” both of them greets sweetly at the same exact time.
Kelly nods to both of them with a small smile of her own and reaches out for a shake, “Good to see you too, Glith.” she replies.
Both AIs’ smiles’ widen a little and the copy rests her own digital hand on her. Starting from her feet, the AI begins to turn into tiny pixels and downloads herself into Kellys’ suit within a few seconds. Not a moment later, Kelly feels a splash of cooling sensation in her brain as the AI starts to carefully link herself with her mind through a Brain Link Port at the back of her head and her suits’ systems.
“Synchronizing with subjects’ mind and suit… done. Well, as sharp as ever, Kelly.” Glith 2.0 complements through her earpiece.
The captain walks up to them, “You will be looking out for any danger or object of interest like last time. Use the new thermal setting in your helmet to look out for any of those insectoids that are disguised as our own or our allies. Don’t shoot on sight, just warn our allies and if possible, surround it or them. Let our allies decide what to do next and only engage when provoked.” he looks at the AI, “Did you send the orders out to everyone, Glith?” he asks the one standing beside them.
“Of course, Captain West. They are prepped and ready to go as we speak.” she replies with a neutral tone.
“Good.” he than gestures them to the rather large drop ship that looks like a flattened box that could fit eight-tenth of her Keepers in the whole ship, with four rocket engines placed at each corner and the cockpit located at the front-top, sticking out almost like a tortoise sticking out its head from its shell. “Come back safe, everyone.” he finishes. Kelly and Snowlet giving him a swift salute.
Twilight stares up at the sky, eagerly waiting for their new allies’ arrival. It had been nearly twenty minutes now; her friends and everyone else were packed and ready to go with two dozen guards with them, and she made sure to have field supplies packed in her satchel. She just hoped no misunderstandings will arise like yesterdays’ event.
When the ships came into view as specs she was expecting just a few… There were definitely just few, but there was a rather large one being surrounded by other three smaller ships. She gapes at what she sees and she instantly doubts the behemoth would even land within city grounds, let alone within the docks for their airships.
She turns to Applejack and Rainbow to her right with their own stunned expressions.
“Applejack, Rainbow…” they both blinks out of their stupor before looking at their friend, “Rally the guards and get ready to move outside Canterlot.” With quick nods, both jumps off the wall and onto the courtyard and began shouting out orders. Twilight looks at the rest of her friends, “Come on, we shouldn’t let our visitors wait for too long.” she receives nods before they carefully got themselves down from the wall.
Moments later, they all meet their Princess at the gates as she smiles at her subjects, “I hope the best of luck to you all and please cooperate with our visitors. They know what they’re doing and are willing to help us in a time of need. Princess Twilight will be the commanding officer for this supply run, and both Commander Applejack and Rainbow Dash are second in command. Princess Twilight will brief you during or once you reach Ponyville.” Her horn glows, opening the gates with her magic right behind her. “Come back safely, my little ponies.”
Kelly watches the landscape going by from the cockpit while holding onto the co-pilots’ chair for stability. It still boggled her to see the alien city just being there, defying the laws of gravity like it was its bitch, and she was sure the rest of her party felt the same. The prospect of learning the physics as to why the city hasn’t fallen yet, how the aliens around the planet can shoot bolts of plasma and levitate objects, and possibly more was a daunting task. They’re going to have to first learn how these physics defying abilities work, then figure out how to harness those abilities to protect themselves, and most likely use it to fight back.
But until then, they have quick a few selections to choose from to combat and protect themselves from a threat, one in particular she wanted to try, but no situation has called for its deployment. She just hopes she’ll get to use one before her retirement. As they get close to the citys’ outskirts, the Heavy Loader ship she was on slows down to a near crawl and steadily descends down to the wide, open road, facing the gate to the city itself, the bastions high like around the castle itself.
As the ship lands down, Kelly sees the large gates opening up, then a platoon of aliens going out of their city and out into the open. She recognizes the purple alien and its companions going up front, waiting and awed at the ships’ large size.
“Landing pads now firmly set.” The co-pilots says as he flicks switches around his console.
The captain of the ship then turns to her, “Waiting for further commands, Commander.” She says and Kelly nods.
“Open up the ramps. We’re burning daylight.” She commands and starts going down the short flight of stairs.
“Of course, Ma’am.” Replies the captain and flips a switch and a couple buttons.
Twilight was brought to her senses when the large ships’ front end, on the base of the aircrafts’ cockpit neck, two entries began to open up with a ramp. Then out walks the familiar, mechanical armed alien, waving them over.
“Come on, everypony. We’re burning daylight.” Twilight commands and leads her party towards the ship, while the other three smaller ships hover about, looking to be on guard.
Just as they were all half way to the ship waiting for them, an explosion blows out from the side of the mountainside, creating a large hole, and out pours the screeching Changelings.
The visitor shouts at them and begins shooting at the screeching monsters that were quickly going towards Twilights’ group. The guarding ships quickly begins shooting at the changelings as well, as well as the large ships’ own defence systems. In all the chaos, Twilight had managed to get her guards and friends into the ship without getting into real harm, some of the guards needing to fight off that got too close. The visitor quickly hops in as well while still shooting at the creatures that got too close, letting the ramps swiftly close.
They all hear a rumble around the hall as the ship begins starting up its engines, then handlebars pop out of the ceilings and sides, so all of them held onto them tightly. Moments later, Twilight feels the ships tilting on its side while gravity works against her stomach. After a while, she hears the weapons stop shooting, so Twilight and eveypony else visibly relax, thankful that they got away.
Twilight smiles at the visitor, “Thank you.” She says, and after moment, it just nods once, confusion very clear in its expression. Then it briefly stops when it spots Rarity, making the nervous mare go rigid like a stone wall. The alien then points to it own eyes with two digits, and points at the mare tensely, and Rarity quickly and shakily nods before the alien moves away.
Twilight gently squeezes her friends’ arm and gives her a reassuring smile, relaxing the mare somewhat. She then notices another familiar visitor sitting on a wall mounted chair with straps around it, secured in its seat. Twilight smiles once more and waves at it. It smiles back and waves in reply. But once it notices Fluttershy trying to hide behind Rainbow Dash, its’ smile turns into a small grin and waves at her as well a little more enthusiastically. Fluttershy squeaks, but returns a little wave of her own with a timid smile.
Twilight sees another dog-like machine sitting beside the seated alien, but she was aware it looked different; sleeker, yet robust. It also seemed more alive than the ones around the castle with life-like, smooth movements. It then looks up at the protector, actually producing sound, saying something it their language. The armored alien looks back between the dog and the Twilights’ group, then shrugs and nods before going up to the cockpit.
The machine gets up and goes up to the ponies, lighting up dim lazers located around its lens and begins scanning them one at a time, taking interest in their armor, accessorise, different body parts and so on. The robot then quickly takes great interest on Twilight, as it notices that she had both a horn and a pair of wings. Rainbow and Applejack gives it the stink-eye, but goes unnoticed, or it simply didn’t care. Twilight waves a hand at them to ease them, seeing that the machine didn’t really do much but scan and taking a look at her.
It then locates itself in front of her looking up at her face, somewhat confusing her, but then she takes a step back as she and the rest of the ponies in her charge witness the robot morphing its own mechanical body; either shortening and lengthening different parts. Before they knew it, it quickly pushes its front body off the floor and stands on its own hind legs, though, to Twilights’ amazement, it looked vaguely like a skeletal structure of a regular Earth Pony. It stumbles a little, waving its arms around to gain balance, and before long it stands up straight like it wasn’t a newborn foal getting up for the first time. It looks at its own body and flexes its ‘fingers’ and ‘thumbs’ before looking back at Twilight.
To everyones’ surprise, little projectors lights up around the machines’ body and begins creating a layer of glowing, blank white skin around its body. Twilights’ eyes, and nearly every one of her charges’ own eyes, nearly bugs out as the machine creates a blank, female Earth Pony with glowing eyes, no mouth or nostrils, and no… exposing body parts to show, just a blank canvas.
“Whoa…” Rainbow says and rubs her eyes to see if she was seeing correctly.
“Whoa…” the machine replies with Rainbows’ own voice, but still kept looking at Twilight with a slight tilt of its head, shocking everyone once more.
“Now… that jus’ ain’t right. It’s like a Mime or a Changeling, but different, in a creepy way.” Applejack says next, inspecting the glowing, naked body of the machine, while the robot itself looks at AJ curiously. The mare tries to touch it, but her fingers just goes right through, sending a shiver up through the spine of the ponies watching nearby, while AJ shivers herself before stepping back.
Then the machine begins walking from one pony to another, inspecting them with a blank stare, unnerving some of the ponies. Then, without warning, the machine lets out a loud siren and tackles one of the guards to a wall, dazing the pony, to everyones’ shock and surprise. Before Twilight or anyone could intervene, it grabs both the guards’ forearms and twirls around with the pony in the air and slams the dazed guard against the wall once more with a loud thud, surprizing the ponies with tis amazing feat of strength, its siren still going off.
Kelly rushes down to the cargo hold with the rifle drawn out and sees a glowing blank pony retreat from a flickering pony near a wall. Once the flickering stops, it reveals a dazed, insectoid trying to get back up, holding its head with one hand while it pants.
Without hesitation, Kelly pulls the trigger and peppers the enemy with five shots to its chest, sending it back to the floor. It gasps and wheezes in place, holding onto its bleeding holes in its chest, trying to stop the flowing blood. She quickly gets closer, and just as it looks up at her, she shoots its head once, ending its life. She cautiously steps closer and nudges its limp arm and body with her foot a couple times before lowering her gun. Glith scans the body once before nodding at the Commander, bringing a sigh of relief.
“This the only one?” Kellys asks the glowing figure, while she reloads her rifle and switches it to safety.
“Checking…” she turns to the group of aliens and begins looking at every alien in the cargo hold before turning back to her, “All friendly, Commander.”
“Alright in there, Commander?” pilot asks.
“All clear.” She replies and grabs the leg of the dead alien, dragging it towards a door-like airlock towards the back of the ship. “I’m opening the rear airlock to dispose of the body.” She says.
“Acknowledged, Commander. All clear to open the airlock.” The pilot says as Kelly puts away her gun on the side of her pack and dropping the leg. She sees the little green bar lighting up over the entrance, and she grabs the locking handle and pulls it up, unlocking the door. The door jerks outward and slides open to the side, wind quickly rushing in loudly. Kelly quickly drags the body up-front, and kicks it out, the body itself being pushed against the wind as it falls. She reaches out and pulls onto a red lever on the edge of heavy door, unlocking it so she could slide it back in and properly close it.
Kelly turns to her sitting charge and walks over, the short woman slightly shaken, “Are you going to be okay, Snowlet?” she asks.
The researcher nods, “Y-yeah, yeah, I think I will. Just… give me a minute to calm my hammering heart.” She continues taking deep breaths, then Kelly notices a yellow alien with wings taking its own deep breaths with the help of its companions.
She then hears the pilot speak up, “We’ll be arriving in three minutes, Commander.” She informs. “Should I put it up on a screen to show the aliens?”
“Might as well. It should get the natives ready when the time comes.” She replies as a hologram lights up, showing an aerial view of the land bellow, the torn city and the little town. Another series of blocks counting down once more just at the bottom of the screen. The screen flickers for a brief static and shows a count down from one hundred and eighty right beside the blocks. She looks to her second charge behind her and just notices a Glith lowering her glowing, alien hand. She then turns to the group of aliens when she hears something scrambling for something else and sees the purple alien digging into its satchel frantically.
“It doesn’t hurt to show them our own symbols for numbers. If the simple block method keeps going on, they might start thinking that’s how we view as time passing.” Glith says.
Twilight quickly takes out her note book and pencil from her satchel and begins quickly scribbling down the symbols as a count down begins just under a map, a little arrow leading them to Ponyville. At least she finally got the sequence of number-symbols for the visitors, though it only counted down from one hundred an eighty, it was still valuable information. She as sure of herself she can crack the code of the aliens’ number system very quickly with a bit more information, then possibly start understanding one another a little bit when using numbers in some situations. Very limited situations, but something is better than nothing.
“Are those numbers fer them aliens?” Applejack asks as she watches Twilight writing down each symbol from over the mares’ shoulder.
“Most likely.” Twilight simply replies, concentrating on writing and taking quick glances at the screen with her eyes with each little ‘beep’.
“Yah think we’re ever goin’ to learn how they speak soon?” the strong mare asks once more, which was soon followed by Rainbows’ own thought on the matter.
“Soon, hopefully. I mean, those creepy-dog-things are useful, but listening to the aliens talking to one another and you can’t understand a single thing? It’s aggravating!” Rainbow groans as she drags both her hands down her face. “We don’t even know if they’re insulting us or something?! Or if they said a funny joke that we couldn’t understand!”.
Pinkie loudly gasps, “Than we don’t know what kind of party or cake they like! Do they even have parties!?” She gasps once more and clasps her hands over her mouth, beginnings of tears forming, “Do they even have birthday parties?” she says while her friends looked at her strangely, though, that got them to begin forming questions of their own for curiositys’ sake, and no doubt the aliens had their own questions, but Twilight kept on writing, questions can wait for later.
After waiting a little longer in silence; the glowing robot continuing inspecting the ponies, Twilight scribbling alien numbers, and the short alien just looking at all of them in curiosity, Applejack tightens her shield on her arm as she and everyone else feels gravity working against their stomachs. “Okay, everypony, get ready.” She says just as the alien guardian gets down from the cockpit, drawing its weapon and saying something to the shorter alien, said alien nodding in reply.
“Aaand… done!” Twilight says then stumbles in place as the ship lands down. She blushes as her friends, a few of her guards and even the sitting alien chuckles at her dispense. She quickly puts away her book and pencil while trying to calm herself down. She then takes out a clipboard with a paper, filled with a simple list of what they need most, and turns to face the group. “Okay, everyone, here’s the plan for this supply run. Our main objectives are water, food and medical supplies.” She points to a squad leader, “Team Alpha, you will search Ponyville Hospital with Fluttershy.” She points at two other groups as the shy mare squeaks, “Team Beta and Charlie, you will search the town with Pinkie Pie, Rarity and myself. Lastly,” she points at the last group, “Team Delta, you will scout and look out for any danger with Rainbow Dash and Applejack while the rest of us search. If any of you find a pony, please take them here and inform me.” She finishes and all either nod or say their agreement. The ramps began opening, a light breeze going in to freshen the air.
“Huh…” Kelly says as she looks at the town, a little battered but still intact, nearly every building being wooden with thatched roofing. A moment more of just staring at the town later, she turns to her Keepers that stood in two rows. She notices the natives quickly getting ready, being directed by their purple leader and separating in different directions. She turns to her own people, “Okay, everyone! Here’s what we’re doing today!” she points to the town, “We’re keeping an eye out for anything that want to cause trouble to our new friends and ourselves. Help out any whom need help, and protect and fight with our allies against our new foe.” She taps her helmet, “Our helmets are now outfitted with thermal cameras that can detect the enemies’ unique heat signature. Once your helmet properly identifies the living beings’ thermal image, the computer will automatically tag it as either friendly or foe.” She brings out her rifle from her back, “Inform me when you find anything of interest as well as the natives. We don’t know if there are still some of the towns’ citizens hiding out in the buildings, so please proceed with caution when you enter a structure. They don’t know if we’re friendly or not. You got that?!” she shouts, receiving a collective, ‘Ma’am! Yes, Ma’am!’. “Good! Now let’s get to work!” she finishes and all of her Keepers began jogging towards the town.
Kelly turns to both her charges, Glith still in her glowing, alien form, “Snowlet, keep close with Glith, okay?” the short woman nods, so Kelly looks at the A.I., “Glith, I know it is very tempting, but please don’t wander far from any form of protection. I know that model is sturdy, but I don’t want any unnecessary rescue missions being carried out. We clear?”
“Transparently, Commander.” Glith replies with a nod.
Kelly nods back with a small smile, “Good. Watch each others’ backs.” She says, pats Snowlet on the shoulder with a reassuring smile before they split to do their own things, but Kelly keeping them in her sights.