Olivia was in the range, the newest section of the base constructed at her request. The stone here still had that shiny, segmented look, reflecting the recently-printed adhesive of the construction process. The Forerunner had apparently not considered firearms proficiency to be important enough to be worth maintaining—clearly it hadn't been paying much attention to the world they lived on. Equestria was a dangerous place, and it was her responsibility to keep her crew alive. Somehow. God only knows what I'm supposed to do as a talking horse.
Some part of her wanted to walk right out of the base, find the deepest ravine she could, and throw herself in. Whatever else the Forerunner was, it had been right about not showing her the recording. Now that she had seen what it was willing to show without an order, she almost wished she’d gone all the way. Maybe I will… not knowing everything is worse than knowing nothing.
A loud, mechanical buzzer echoed through the range, and Olivia drew her pistol. The gun clung through her flesh to the magnetic implants she had recently had installed in her hoof, pinching painfully, but that didn't matter. She could aim now, sighting down her left foreleg as targets lit up one at a time. She pulled the trigger with a slight twitch of one of her leg-muscles, which would relay a signal from her implant to the gun. Each time it fired, and each time the target vanished in a faint flash of light—neither the gun nor the targets were real.
One soldier with a gun isn't enough to keep a whole crew safe. I'll have to insist the new crew all gain proficiency themselves. The implants would be easy—none of them were awake yet, so ordering a few changes to the existing array of implants wouldn't even require a surgery. Well, not one they would ever know about.
About a minute later, and another buzzer sounded. Each of the remaining targets vanished with faint flashes of light. "Test complete, Major Olivia Fischer. Your personal firearms proficiency is 2A. Congratulations." Better than she'd ever been as a human. Despite her lack of hands, this new body had eyes like a bird of prey. I guess it's a good thing the natives don't have implants, or else I might have to be afraid of them too.
After a quick shower, Olivia found a message waiting for her, a response from the translation team. She read over it quickly, expression darkening. Given everything she had already learned, the "good" news from her translator wasn't as positive as she would've otherwise thought.
But considering the odds of ever seeing another planet, I shouldn’t complain. It was a shame the last generation had been produced younger than maturity, or else Dr. Irwin could've told her if the ponies had bars. What Olivia really needed was a long night, some rough drinking, and maybe some rough men. The order didn't really matter.
But she wouldn't be getting any of that, and neither would Dr. Irwin. At her order, the translator would continue her mission. Learning it would be a bitch, but so was learning to function with stub-legs and no hands. If I could learn Mandarin, I can do Eoch.
Maybe she would, but not for some time yet. The translation team had well over a year allocated, and that mission was well on its way. That meant Olivia could focus her attention on more pressing matters. "Central computer, are you there?"
"Affirmative."
"I assume this landing site was chosen for good reasons."
"Affirmative. It possesses significant deposits of uraninite, iron, and mineral-based oils beneath impermeable clay layers. It is also remote enough for the furthest extreme of this civilization that the risk of discovery during the formative stages was remote. A decision was reached to avoid more hospitable locations with equivalent properties, as many were in closer proximity to native settlements or might attract them during the decades necessary to establish a manufacturing and resource-production infrastructure."
"If I remember my handbook..." Olivia began, rising from the console and setting off down the hall. The worst offender her new body had was the clopping sound of her hooves, a noise she tried to ignore with great difficulty. Every step was like a tiny nail driven into her eardrums, a reminder of how little the real Olivia had cared about what became of her mental offspring. "We're supposed to build somewhere. Outside the range of existing civilizations, right?"
"If it is possible, yes," the probe responded. "Predictions suggest an existing civilization would be more likely to acquiesce to a request for a colony to a power which already has a foothold on the planet. Modeling based on observations recorded by translator G3.01 indicates this prediction is more likely now that native bodies have been adapted."
Olivia nodded, though of course she knew the Forerunner didn't care whether she acknowledged it or not. In many ways, it didn't care about anything. It wasn't a person, wasn't a general intelligence. It was a bucket made of rules filled with data that sloshed around until something fell out the other end.
"I want to be far away. Further than the natives will ever find us. Somewhere we could build a whole city and never get discovered unless we want to. We have satellites, you must have a place in your database like that. Find me the closest one."
There was no pause. Either the Forerunner had already considered similar parameters, or it was just so smart that there was no delay to its computation. "I know of several sites. One is a tropical island surrounded by hostile seas, which the natives avoid for reasons I cannot determine. The other is a more remote, mountainous region. Not a single individual of the various native equestrian races has been observed traveling towards this region of the planet. Based on calculations incorporating the—"
"I don't care," Olivia interrupted. "You already said tropical island, so let's shitcan the other one for now. Can the Sojourner go that far?"
"With cargo," the Forerunner responded. "Several times on a single tank of fuel. You should be aware, however, that I cannot determine why no settlement has taken place here. The natives possess sailing ships, as well as airborne vessels which propel themselves via unknown means. Both avoid the island, even though it is within easy sailing distance of another continent populated by individuals of a less technologically sophisticated species."
"Sounds fascinating. Sounds like it might kill my squishy scientists if I don't investigate it first." She turned for the hall, marching back towards her quarters. "Prepare a fleet of automated drones. I want the entire site examined before my scientists are prepared. Once I have a crew, we'll explore it and possibly begin construction. So, whatever you have to do to ramp up production..." She waved a hoof through the air. "We have time to kill while the translation team is learning Eoch. I intend to see it used productively."
"Input accepted," the computer replied. “Be advised, this will require a significant increase in resource allocation and distribution. This increase cannot be accomplished in total secrecy. It is possible this site will be noticed."
She shrugged. "Well, make us some defenses while you're at it. We can't hide in a hole forever, Forerunner. It's time we roll this train along."
"Command override accepted," the Forerunner said. "Preparation for first settlement on KOI-087.01 has begun. Please provide object designation for the official record."
"Object designation?" Olivia asked, raising one eyebrow. "Not planetary designation?"
"Affirmative."
She hesitated. Olivia had forgotten about this. Asking the probe to get ready to build their first city was a major turning-point. Until this point, the mission might fail. Until the first city was built, whoever was in charge could determine the planet unsuitable and shut the Forerunner down for good. That could never happen now. Now the Forerunner would switch into overdrive, until its computational core became the center of the first city they built. On whatever this place was. Not a planet, but... it seemed enough like a planet from where Olivia was standing.
Planets ought to have good names. "Earth," she said, without thinking. "Best planet I know. We'll call it Earth."
"Input accepted." The probe said.
* * *
Then the manufacturing began. It took weeks, weeks Olivia spent with very little to do. She studied what she could about the dangers previous generations had faced, but found that frighteningly little was left for her to study. Olivia made up the difference by preparing the "Forerunner Base" with every defensive system in their records. She didn't care that doing so would slow the production of the equipment to found their first city. After all, if Forerunner Base was ever destroyed, it would take with it any chance of future generations.
She supervised the installation of concealed, motion-tracking anti-air guns. She worked an earthmover, opening enough space for mortar emplacements on the mountains overlooking the Forerunner. She spent hundreds of hours watching the camera footage from many, many concealed watch posts, placed in an increasingly wide circle around the Forerunner Base. The only thing she didn't do was tackle any of their scientific problems. There were several facing their nascent colony, and it was possible Olivia could've made some progress figuring some of them out. What had killed the previous, human crew? Could future humans be created who were immune to the effects? What about the anomalies about the planet itself? Olivia didn't care, leaving those questions for when the scientists woke.
Much changed in the base besides the defenses. The probe greatly expanded its manufacturing capacity, digging out vast spaces under the ground to make into new workshops. Olivia inspected each new manufacturing area, mostly because she was often bored and didn't have anything better to do. A growing warehouse started to fill with heavy machinery, modular building sections, and more manufacturing tools to be used in the new city. Oliva checked everything the Forerunner made, though the labor was mostly pointless. It wasn't as though she even understood most of what it did.
One place she visited most of all was command, where the gestation pods quietly churned night and day. She spent much of her free time there, listening to music or eating her nutritional supplements as she watched her fellow exiles grow. The vats had one clear wall, so she could look in if she really wanted. She didn't very often—the only thing more disgusting than a baby was a half-formed baby that was also an adult, their body filled with implants and wires in addition to the muscle, skin, and sinew.
"They all look the same," Olivia said, only a few days before her companions were scheduled to be released. "Why didn't you gather more samples? We don't all have to be identical clones."
"A previous order," the Forerunner replied. "It was determined that as little disruption as possible should be introduced to the lives of the native creatures. My only sample was gathered with considerable difficulty and human intervention."
"Find another way," Olivia ordered. "Maybe camouflage drones would work. Maybe you could dig around in the trash. I don't want my city to have hundreds and hundreds of me in it."
"Input Accepted," the Forerunner said. "Suggestion: the translation team is in close contact with aliens. Deploy collection equipment and have that team recover samples."
"Sure," Olivia nodded. "That's fine, but I want you to be doing it too. Their language is important. But might as well let her try. Oh, and... I want something to dye my coat with. I don't want to look the same as the others when they wake up. Maybe a light olive, something regulation." She'd already shaved her mane down to something like a short pixie cut, as short as she had worn it in the service, as well as trimming her tail. "There's a way to do that, right?"
"Input accepted," the Forerunner said, leaving her last question unanswered.
But Olivia didn't mind. She walked away from the screens, over to the wall where the gestation pods were located. Her companions had nearly been completely grown. Tomorrow, they would wake up. Tomorrow she would meet her crew, and take them with her to build a city. Maybe that would make this Earth worth living on.
And if not, there's always the cliffs. Whether she would find her own way to jump off, or send the rest of 'Earth' off first, that she hadn't decided. She would have to see how things went.
Fuck you, Olivia Fischer.