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// Chapter 1: The Dead World 
// Story: Equestria 485,000 
// by Unwhole Hole 
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They stood in silence. Not one among them spoke, and their movements were slight and deliberate. They were waiting, watching, and listening to the slight change in what in ages past might have been referred to as an engine.

            These creatures were tall and slender, with bodies that had been shaped by countless millennia of evolution in microgravity. Each of them was a quadruped with a similar nearly pearlescent coat in shades that varied from white with the most extreme subtlety. Each bore a pair of wings on their back, although none among them could fly. Their faces were long and severely narrow, with enormous black eyes that caught the glow of the room’s dim white light and reflected it as they turned. Their manes were long and shimmering, and from each of their foreheads stood a horn that would never know the sensation of magic. They were alicorns, but none among them had even the slightest conception that this state was anything unique.

            Suddenly, the frontal display ignited, filling the curving front of the room with an image that pushed away the mathematics and symbols that had represented the galactic void beyond the vessel. An alarm sounded, its volume rendered quiet by the ship’s systems. Glaring red text scrolled across the screen.

            “Captain,” said one of the alicorns, turning her head toward the center of the bridge, the holograms over her eyes already shifting as she did, “it is a signal. On low-phase transmission bands. The origin is several deep-space buoys.”

            The captain swiveled toward the screen, suspended and pulled by an arm from that contained the interface that linked her brain directly to the ship’s systems. In this state, her body had long-since atrophied, and in all likelihood she had lost the ability to walk decades ago. This, of course, did not bother her in the slightest. It was a sacrifice she had willingly made, giving up something she had never valued much in exchange for a freedom that so very few could possibly understand.

            She looked at the text. “Can you translate the message?”

            “Not immediately. The language predates the dialects in our database. I will need to perform a manual analysis- -”

            “Don’t bother,” said a voice. Every member of the bridge crew- -there were only three, excluding the captain- -stiffened at the sound of it, a far lower and stronger voice than their own. Their eyes, being large enough to see backward over their shoulders, swiveled toward the rear door to witness the pony who had just entered.

            She was like them, but only in that she was an alicorn too. Otherwise, she could not have been more different. Her body was almost a third their height, with limbs that were far stockier and stronger than theirs. Her coat, so much coarser than theirs, was a shade of violet so dark that it dazzled their sensitive eyes, and all among them knew the legends that her horn and her wings both still functioned perfectly.

            The captain did not turn, both out of dignity and the fact that her own eyes were nearly blind, sacrificed in favor of the sensors that her ship provided her. “Goddess,” she said, still watching the scroll of red text, “your thoughts?”

            “It’s Equestrian Universal.”

            One of the other alicorns- -her name was Starry Nebula- -actually used her slender neck and turned her head toward the divine being that had entered their presence. She bowed deeply, but barely had lifted her head before asking her question with great urgency. “That language- -”

            “Has not been used in nearly four hundred thousand years? I know.”

            “But the text- -”

            “It is a warning. ‘By the divine authority of the Four Princesses of Equestria, this area is hereby declared in a state of eternal quarantine. No ship may enter, for no ship has reason to approach this sacred place. All those who do not heed this warning will face a dire fate’.”

            “How long winded,” said the captain, clearly not amused by the statement or by the sudden nervousness that seemed to overtake her crew.

            “Captain,” said another of the crew, nervously. He was a male, although sexual dimorphism had long since ceased in his species and he looked almost identical to the mares around him. His name was Golden Star. “I am detecting several energy signatures coming from the buoys and the surrounding asteroid debris!” He turned suddenly, something that was somewhat dangerous for a pony with hollow bones. “The readings are consistent with weapons!”

            “Weapons?” said Inky Nebula. She seemed gravely concerned as well. “No weapons have existed since the Last War! We do not have protocols to counterattack!”

            “I am already increasing the hull density and assuming defensive geometry,” said the captain, calmly. “These buoys are ancient, nearly prehistoric. If they fire at all, that should be enough. I will not even need to engage the external field architecture.”

            “You don’t even need to change the hull density,” said the violet alicorn. She stepped forward toward the rim of the bridge, and summoned several large holograms around her. The others watched in awe as she interfaced with the ship manually, using the telekinesis from her glowing horn to rapidly manipulate the circular panels surrounding her.

            The alarm klaxon suddenly stopped, and the red text vanished.

            “The energy signal is dissipating,” said Golden Star, sounding more amused than relieved. He turned to his left. “Goddess, if I may?”

            “I deactivated the system.”

            “And you knew how to do that?”

            She turned to him. “Of course I know how. I built it.”

            They all paused, because they all knew the implication of what that meant, and the weight it carried in this long-forgotten sector of the universe. The third crewmember, an almost green colored mare named Heliotrope, turned slowly toward the others. “After all this time…I am indeed surprised that the defense grid is still function.”

            “Only barely. I remember creating a lot more buoys than this. Many of them must have been destroyed, or failed, I guess. Although, for your own edification, the weapon system relies on condensed magic. Even after this much time, if just one of the array had fired, the hull density would hardly have mattered. I would have been left to complete the mission all on my own.”

            The others stood in silence, now suddenly realizing how close they had come to a grievous fate. The captain lowered her head in the direction of the goddess, the translucent and luminescent beams connecting to her skull glimmering from the motion. “Then I thank you, Goddess Twilight Sparkle, for protecting my ship and my crew from my own poor judgement.” She paused. “However…for future reference, I would appreciate being briefed on potential hazards to my vessel BEFORE I encounter them.”

            “There was no hazard,” said Twilight. She turned to the captain, mostly without expression. “I deactivated them. I told you that.”

            The captain stared at her for a moment, but decided that getting into a urination contest with a goddess was hardly appropriate. There were more pressing concerns.

            “You don’t like me here,” said Twilight.

            “You are our honored guest.”

            “That neither denies nor confirms my assertion.”

            “No,” said the captain, somewhat curtly. “It does not.”

            Twilight looked at her with the same blank, disinterested expression that she held most of the time. The captain stared back, both with her read eyes, as bad as they were, and the sensors she had close to her physical body. Eventually Twilight just shrugged. “It is your ship, captain.”

            The captain acknowledged this with silence. The sound of the engine then began to change.

            “I am taking us into the system,” she announced. Her tone was distantly grim.

            The room fell silent. Each of them turned their attention toward the front of the room, where the captain had elected to display their surroundings. The representation was not that of passing words, at least not in a realistic sense. The lack of light and the distance of objects made doing so pointless; all it would appear as was inky blackness surrounded by an infinite sea of stars, many of which had in the distant past been the domain of ponies.

            The information that came through was displayed purely mathematically, as a system of numbers and equations that showed the nearly systems in the way that the captain perceived them. All present, of course, were capable of deciphering the text with ease. Through it, they saw the passing of the system’s outer planets: a deep blue gas giant, the orbital mining platforms long since having sunk into its crushing atmosphere or drifted out of orbit into the nothingness of space; a larger gas-planet, its surface coated in eternal storms in shades of red and brown, and its moons still surrounded by the long-dead remnants of deep-space relay beacons, infrared telescopes, and the hulking skeletons of long-dead ships; a small red word, it’s atmosphere so tantalizingly close to being livable but with soil that was profoundly barren.

            Then the ship slowed as they reached their destination. They came into orbit around another planet, and Twilight felt her immortal heart quicken in pace almost imperceptibly. With the ship falling into orbit around it, the planet lingered in view, giving all those present a long time to silently contemplate it.

            It was a small planet, at least compared to the several gas-giants in the outer system. Its surface, though, was at least as diverse and beautiful. Instead of red and yellow bands and storms, though, its color was in shades of green, blue, and white, and its storms were sickly yellow. What was left of a moon orbited the world, and even from a distance it was possible to see the indications of the long-abandoned temples and cities that were in the process of being consumed by craters- -both new, from meteors, and old, from something far more deadly.

            “Beginning scanning,” said Inky Nebula after a long pause. Her visor shifted as her own internal sensors merged with those of the ship. Her holographic panels were illuminated with the raw results, and she mentally computed the values to decipher the meaning. “Spectroscopy indicates that the atmosphere is dominated by nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon monoxide, with substantial contribution of hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, water vapor, and argon. Particulate matter is high, showing strong evidence of long-halflife radionuclides.”

            “I am detecting significant contamination with uncontrolled magic,” said Golden Star. “I recommend a high orbit, and the activation of the first shell.”

            “Noted,” said the captain, changing course to fall in line with his recommendation.

            “Further,” said Heliotrope, “I am detecting signs of life.”

            They all turned to her. “That was not in the briefing,” said the captain. “This planet is supposed to be dead.”

            “Apparently not,” said Heliotrope. “Preliminary readings indicate the presence of active plant life, with early estimates suggesting over seven thousand species. Exact enumeration and identification will take more time, but from this data I am certain that it supports a thriving ecosystem.”

            “Even though the average surface temperature is well below freezing,” said Inky Nebula.

            The captain turned to Twilight. “This changes things.”

            “This changes nothing,” replied Twilight, not taking her eyes off the readings. “I predicted that this might occur. The mission remains unchanged.”

            The captain acknowledged her silently, and then turned back to the planet. She too watched the data pass, although through the eyes that technology had given her, she was privy to a view of the world below in far greater detail that any other pony would ever be, perhaps for the rest of pony history. The weight and meaning of this was not lost on her.

            “There it is,” she mused. “After all this time, it’s still here. No living pony has ever set foot on that world.” She turned to Twilight. “Save for you. And the Divine Sisters. You are the last among us who remember what the soil of Equestria feels like under your hooves.” She looked back to the planet, to the world that was to this day known as Equestria. The others did as well- - not just the bridge crew, but every living pony on the ship, each staring at it with their own sensory appendages.

            Not one of them knew it, apart from what was told in the legends- -but all of them understood. This was the planet not of their birth, but of the birth of their species. This was where pony kind had been born, and from where it had spread out through the stars- -only to return one last time on the edge of its final demise.   ��dZ]�-��^�e