//------------------------------// // Recovery // Story: Crashland: Equestria // by computerneek //------------------------------// Twilight rubs her forehead, staring up at the…  Well, whatever it is.  She and her friends are staying in their camp, resembling an earth pony camp.  Applejack, Rainbow, and Fluttershy have been teaching herself, Rarity, and Pinkie how to live without their magic. Which reminds her.  She turns her head, to look at the invisible wall marked by that picket fence they erected.  They had originally set up camp on the other side of that fence, outside the invisible dome.  Only, one does not simply camp this close to the San Palomino Desert.  One great example had come just last night, in the form of some kind of giant scorpion.  Twilight had tried casting spells at it, but the powerfully magical creature had shrugged her panicked attacks aside, much like Tirek had her more powerful blasts.  Thinking back, she should have kept herself calm and teleported everypony to safety.  In the event, she’d been too frightened to even think about it, let alone pull it off. So they had abandoned their tents and run away- straight through that invisible wall.  Twilight had stumbled shortly after crossing, tumbling on the ground- and had happened to see when the giant scorpion had decided it would make lunch out of her. Only, it hadn’t been able to.  Its claw had cracked as it suddenly lurched backwards in a blaze of blue lightning…  Right about when it would have touched that barrier, as well.  The creature had roared defiance and struck hard with its stinger- only to lose the aforementioned organ to the next flash of lightning, also along that same invisible wall. All six friends had been staring at it open-mouthed when it suddenly lost the ability to generate a third flash in a blaze of blinding fire and a crack of thunder. They had yet to figure out exactly what had so easily erased that thing from the desert, left an oblong crater two and a half kilometers long, and scorched their fur, though one thing is certain. It had come from inside the barrier. Good thing they had run to the side- relative to the barrier- while they tried to fight the thing, before they ran; their original camp had remained undisintegrated, though a little trampled, and Rarity’s tent had caught fire. She stares at the readouts.  She’d made it, though only barely in time.  Rift One had reached criticality and stabilized hardly seconds before that monster had made its blow with the stinger.  The surge of rift energy it had brought with it had been far more dangerous than the physical stinger itself; nothing hostile could pass through the perimeter shields, no matter how slow it moved, once she had manually restored function to a couple of other shield systems.  The damaged Rift Two had taken the load to keep the rift shield online against that surge- and had blown another control coil, dropping instantly into emergency shutdown. Good thing Rift One had just come online.  It had wobbled as it took the load, but had managed to keep everything running and restabilize as it completed startup procedure and spun up to regular operating power.  Even as it had done so, the ship’s close-in defense grid had registered a threat and responded in kind.  That scorpion, through a stroke of bad luck, had dealt damage to her ship.  The point defense laser that had fired at it had gone full power, dishing out plenty of power to vaporize a heavily armed (and armored) assault shuttle capable of landing as many as two hundred armored soldiers…  Or carrying almost eight hundred unarmored passengers.  Suffice it to say, the creature hadn’t stood a chance- and, honestly, neither had the desert behind it. She decides it’s probably a good thing the point defense weapon had been the first to bear.  Had the ship-to-ship plasma cannon come to bear first…  Well, there’s a reason the thing is rated at almost four hundred teratons.  That defense grid does not play with foes capable of disabling the main warp coils, no matter what state they were in beforehand. And that’s not even counting what would have happened had such an enemy shown while the ship was in space, where her one functional spinal Thunderer cannon could operate.  THAT guided energy projectile could punch through anything, and had blown the top off the scale with its destructive potential.  They’d never been able to measure it, though it’s estimated to be somewhere around ten to the ninety-first power tons of TNT.  It had quickly earned the popular nickname ‘Starshot’ for how closely it resembles shooting a white hot star at the enemy.  Unfortunately- or fortunately, depending on how one looks at it- it’s also powerful enough it cannot operate in atmosphere, else destroy the ship. She shudders, thinking once again about just how much firepower had almost been unleashed on an unwitting scorpion before she turns back to her control panel.  Rift One is on and fully functioning- meaning, she doesn’t have to worry about overloading damaged components.  She activates a couple of rift scanners she’d spent much of the last week patching together- and lights off that semifancy be-a-native system, among others.  It’s time for her to get started in retrieving the ship’s largest and most powerful weapons- and given where they’ve landed, simply feeding power and recalling them isn’t likely to do very well.  Especially since, if the computer simulation is correct, one of them has landed on or near a small town, point down.  Unless she wants to risk killing a large number of natives, she’ll have to make sure the missile’s sublight drive zone is clear before she orders the recall. A second of thought later, and she decides to make similar checks on the others; one never knows what kind of adventurers might come to start looking at the intergalactic weapons of mass destruction, and it wouldn’t do to kill off any possible native versions of Indiana Jones.  The party that the scorpion thing had been attacking has demonstrated sapience, after all. She watches as her first new order goes flawlessly, and that party- which had seemed to be similar to Indiana Jones- abandons the effort.  Exactly where they disappeared to once they finished cleaning up their camp and left her ships’ rift shield, however, she’s not certain.  Even so, it’s nice to know the appropriately-nicknamed ‘invisible wall’ is effective against the locals. A full week later, she steps her brand-new native body- the genetics for which had been cooked up by hours of computer simulation, rather than being sampled from real natives- out of the rift tunnel.  Most people would have been stuck in a stasis chamber so they could project their conscience into this otherwise lifeless body. Not her, though.  Her more powerful- and flexible- mind lets her skip the stasis chamber entirely, operating both forms simultaneously- though it’s still not indefinite, and the ‘native’ form will still die as soon as she disconnects.  Nice thing is, the computer had still been able to feed her mind an understanding of how to use her new form- sampled both from computer simulations and from observations of passing natives.  So, she trots gently forwards, towards the enormous weapon she sees sticking up into the sky.  It looks like it’s nose-down, just like the simulations suggested.  Once she checks the drive zone, it should be a simple task to channel it enough power, through her ship’s powerful wireless technologies, for it to leap into the air and return to its docking location. As she travels, she eventually runs across a dirt path.  It appears to be running in the rough direction of the weapon, so she follows it.  She’d been lucky she had fine enough scans of the area from her momentary pass overtop to locate an area she’d be unlikely to cause an uproar by her arrival.  Unfortunately, the nearest such zone she’d identified has placed her almost ten full kilometers from the missile. Twilight lets out an audible ugh as she flops back down on her desk.  Not one of them had known why, but a week ago, all six had suddenly gotten the urge.  Applejack had muttered something about work on the farm, Rainbow about Ponyville’s weather team.  For Rarity, it was her boutique; Pinkie just wanted a good party with plenty of ponies.  Twilight herself had felt a sudden urgence in taking up her duties as a Princess, from her castle.  Fluttershy had been the weirdest.  Rather than feeling the need to go somewhere else, she had mentioned a feeling that she simply shouldn’t stay- like something didn’t want her there. So they had abandoned their investigation, packing up their camp and returning home.  Here, she’s been trying to further the investigation from afar, but to no avail.  She’s asked Fluttershy about exactly where that feeling had come from, but also to no avail.  Apparently, she understood it as clearly as if one of her animal friends had told her, though she knows not what had spoken- nor how she had understood the invisibly wordless message so clearly without activating her magic. Thus, it’s a complete dead-end.  When she sends spells its direction to garnish what she can, they simply disintegrate against that weird, invisible barrier.  The one even Discord couldn’t penetrate. When she considers it, returning home hadn’t been much of a loss; it isn’t like they’d been able to really do anything while they were there.  They’d been unable to reach any of the mana-manipulating things they’d seen- though Rainbow had almost gotten off the ground inside the barrier before they left; her determined refusal to stop trying to fly had left her wings blurring like a hummingbird while she hopped slightly, almost floating back down to the ground.  After a few days of practicing that, her return to Ponyville had been riddled with Rainbooms and overshots, but she’s recovered from that by now. So, for the last couple days, she had diverted her investigation to the giant spear that had fallen off of it, landing on the edge of town.  They had confirmed, nopony had been hurt; however, the Carousel Boutique had been a total loss.  Unlike the main bulk of the thing, this giant spear is susceptible to her power- though it’s still heavy enough even the Elements can’t lift it.  It’s also thick enough her scanning spells are having difficulty penetrating its hide, to see the inside- and she hasn’t yet found anything she can pry off, by magic or otherwise. Though, the construct on its back looks strikingly similar to the things on the main bulk that had been manipulating such massive amounts of mana.  She’d tried scanning it too- but as near as she can tell, it’s just a whole bunch of metal back there- though very thick, with some layers somehow impervious to her scans.  At least those layers aren’t unbroken.  She can’t shake the feeling she’s only seeing the tip of the iceberg, though- like all those layers of metal are supposed to do something. She yelps audibly when she feels it.  The feeling is weak- far weaker than it should be at only ten kilometers, but it’s definitely there.  Something is using strange magic, so powerfully contained its signature is nearly undetectable, even with all of the amplification spells she has on her observation room, even with her castle’s natural amplification to that same room.  Even with all that, it’s still definitely strange.  She takes a second to zero in on its position…  And almost as soon as she’s done, it disappears completely.  She takes off to gather her friends. Five minutes later, when they teleport to the site, all they find is an empty field.  No traces of any abnormal magic can be found- and they end up returning home disappointingly empty-handed. It’s a nice little town, she decides, pausing on the hill to look it over.  Her missile…  Yep, like she thought.  It seems to have landed on the edge of town, scattering debris onto the streets and destroying a couple of buildings.  She can’t tell for sure, but it looks like the natives are keeping a safe distance from the weapon. At least, what they probably think is a safe distance.  It is designed for genocide against a star-faring race.  Then again, it hadn’t been charged, or armed, before she ejected it- so a detonation right now would yield only about eighty kilotons.  Still, she’d rather not have to deal with a missing country…  And be forced to rebuild the missile.  So she resumes her walk.  She plans to skim around the edge of town; the snippets of language she’d picked up while those six natives had floated around were unfamiliar to her, and not enough for her ship to build a translation matrix. Suddenly, her path is obstructed by one of the natives- bright pink, with poofy mane and tail.  She’s already decided they look distinctly equine- despite the glaring differences, like the ball-and-socket joints in their shoulders.  The native yaps something incoherent at her, and she puts on her best confused look.  The pink native keeps yapping at her, so she eventually tries a different tactic. “Sorry,” she finally mutters, during a pause.  “I don’t know your…  Okay.”  The native had stared at her for a second while she spoke, and left a trail of dust as it ran away, before she had even finished talking. Then, she realizes, she’s figured out where at least one of those six had disappeared to.  She resumes her journey, detouring around town- hopefully not through too many backyards- to reach the missile.  She’d rather not be arrested just yet; if she is, she’ll just gate back to her ship, dye her mane, tail, and fur, and try again, from a different starting point.  She doesn’t know what the local law enforcement looks like, though, hopeful that she won’t have to find out. That is, assuming they have law enforcement. Five minutes later, she’s traveled about a quarter of the way around town when the pink native reappears in front of her, yapping more nonsense.  A blue, winged one- with windswept rainbow mane and tail, an easily recognizable member of that investigative party- joins the pink one.  This blue one seems more confused and bored than the pink one’s exhuberance, sparing a couple of words- possibly a greeting, though the tone suggested an apology- before trying to get the pink one’s attention. Then, she realizes something important.  They’re all girls- so far, at least.  Another similarity to equine…  So, they’re mares…  Just as her ‘native’ form is.  Only, they’re probably fertile. The pink one yaps in response to the blue one, then turns back towards her, yapping incomprehensibly.  The blue one appears to facepalm- or, facehoof, I suppose- before trying to get a word in edgewise. She sighs, looking absently at the bottom of her right forehoof, wondering how painful such an act might be, while she facepalms back aboard ship.  She tries stepping around them, but the pink one is adamant- so she sighs, staring at the ground in front of her for a second before she raises her head.  “I still can’t understand you,” she states- and takes advantage of the distraction, kicking to a full gallop as soon as the pink mare turns her back. Interesting, the pink mare has three balloons on her flank; a glance as she blows past at thrice what most natives ought to be able to reach reveals a cloud with a rainbow-colored lightning bolt coming out of it on the blue one’s flank.  Her own is blank- she hadn’t seen any of their flanks clearly until now.  She finds herself wondering, as she makes tracks away from the two, if it’s specific to them- or if it’s something every native has. She breaks her gallop fairly quickly, glancing back- the two natives seem to be staring after her- before she turns to resume her trot towards the missile. Alas, she is interrupted again.  This time, she’s much closer to her target- and the interrupting native is wearing armor and holding a spear.  This one also sounds male. However unintelligible his words might be, his body language is the opposite.  She sees immediately that he’s a guard, with the intent to stop her.  So, the natives do have law enforcement.  She stops, looking at him; he makes a statement, but she fails to understand. “Do you have a translator?” she asks. At this, the guard scowls disappointedly, looking down at his spear for a second.  After a glance to the side, he then makes to use sign language, using his spear to help him.  Holds it horizontally, like a fence, before driving the tip- momentarily- into the ground.  Into a quite visible line that had been drawn on the ground, actually- her eyes follow it around, where it holds the same distance from the weapon all around.  She’d been about to cross it when he stopped her. She smiles at him, nodding her understanding, and backs away, turning to trot around the missile, staying outside the line.  The guard eyes her for a few seconds and, apparently satisfied he’d delivered the message, turns to head his own way, also along the line.  He’s not the only one maintaining guard. This would certainly explain the unpopulated circle she’d noticed before.  They’ve clearly got an eye out for safety- and, unless she misses her guess, their line is well outside the missile’s sublight drive zone.  Makes sense, given how tall it is.  She proceeds to the other side, just to make sure; the sublight drive zone sticks out on both sides of the weapon. She just reaches the other side of the missile before another interruption appears.  This time, it’s a purple native, bearing both wings and horn.  The one that had seemed to guide the expedition party.  She lets out a soft sigh as, just like her friends, she starts yapping in incomprehensibilities.  Eventually, though, this purple mare pauses- it seems she just asked a question, and is expecting an answer. “Sorry, I didn’t get that,” she states- and turns her head slightly to check the drive zone.  All clear- so, back aboard ship, her fingers strike in the command. The purple mare sighs, facehoofing just like her rainbow-maned friend, and mumbles something more, turning to watch something approach.  She looks too- and spots a yellow native, bearing a pink mane and wings, flying over.  This one lands some distance away, appearing to hide behind her own mane as she walks slowly up to her purple friend. Only, she never gets there.  The yellow mare is only about halfway to her destination when the purple one lets out an ear-curdling scream, leaping into the air and away from the missile.  Interesting, she decides- she’d reacted like that at the very moment the rift bridge was successfully formed, initiating the energy transfer to the weapon- and kicking off the missile’s own rift engine.  That engine can boot in a matter of seconds- though it is nowhere near as powerful as her ships’ engines, only designed to offer the missile the ability to navigate through rift space to its target.  She winces at the scream, noting how the yellow mare leaped backwards as well, apparently alarmed by the scream rather than the activation of the rift engine, and looks up at the missile. Lights have flicked on all along the length of the weapon, illuminating the shadow-laiden side of it in an eerie yellow-red glow while the low hum of the missile’s countergrav-based sublight drive kicks on.  She hears some screaming around, sees guards running everywhere- away from the missile, that is.  One of them pauses to usher her away, but she stands her ground, watching the missile rise fluidly from its tomb with hardly a rumble.  The guard that had been pushing on her stops as he turns to stare up at the weapon.  Finally, the tip clears the ground and the missile rotates in midair, swinging up to point towards her ship as it accelerates in that direction. Satisfied, she turns away from the guard, dropping open a rift gateway back to her ship, and steps through it- though she’s not so certain that tumbling is stepping, per se.  The purple native reacted fast enough, it seems, to grab onto her and tumble through the gate with her- though not fast enough to accomplish what seems to have been her goal, preventing her from going through it in the first place.  Good thing the technology doesn’t care how clumsy you are; these gates are completely safe regardless.  The gate closes silently behind them as they tumble to a stop on the empty transporter deck. Well, she thinks, perhaps now I can get enough samples for that translation matrix? Eighteen decks away, on the bridge, her fingers flit across a panel- and all the doors out lock shut.  A fresh rift gate also appears on the platform, linking back to the grassy field she’d first come out on; translation matrix or not, she will not play prisoner.