//------------------------------// // Contact // Story: Warpony 3k // by boredhooman //------------------------------// Bridge of the Fruit of Truth, Arcis System, ~1,000 years later "What do you think we should do, Captain?" A pony said, walking to the center of the large, metal room that composed the bridge. She stepped around the main briefing table, her hooves making surprisingly little sound on the metal-grate floor. "It's of xeno construction. Destroy it," a female pony said, in a rather serious tone. The first replied, "Well, I find it rather interesting." "Interesting? It's of xeno construction! The Codex-" the captain answered, before being cut off. "Calm down, Captain. You are under my orders, and I don't think that this is Eldar technology anyway. Same technology base, but not the same according to the scans," she responded in the same calm tone as before. "I’m sorry, but I can’t just-" the captain objected. The first gave him an amused look before turning back the center of the room. "Captain Sida Aspicium, you are under my orders. I will handle any troubles with the Empresses myself." "Yes, Minister Sparkle," Sida said, calming down at the older mare’s words. "Now, calm down, I’m very interested in this discovery, and you could learn a thing or two," Twilight said, as if talking to a young child. She looked at the logic machine's display, studying the strange object before her. "No, this isn't Eldar at all." "Ma'am, it's powering up," a sensor officer said, reading the output from his screen. "It appears to have been dormant until we reached a certain distance," Twilight turned towards the sensor monitor, squinting her eyes to read the rapidly scrolling lines of text. The officer continued, "It appears to be waiting for a signal." "I wonder what it could be," Twilight thought aloud. "It looks like it could be a weapon... no, it's rather far away from a planet. Suggestions, Captain?” Sida thought for a second. "It's not a weapon. If it was then it would be abandoned. You don't just abandon giant weapons. So, that would mean that there would have been a battle." She walked over to the viewport, as the ship was resting in visible range. "That would have meant a lot of floating debris and damage to the structure, which doesn't appear to be present. Without a battle taking place, the local system would have been the local production planet or something of the like, and this is a completely explored system with no ruins," She turned to face Twilight, "Which would leave us to a transportation system." Twilight stared at her as she finished her rant. "That's a rather... accurate conclusion." "The dark energy readings are similar to Eldar ships breaking the light barrier, are they not?" "Wha- Oh, right! Assuming you are correct, maybe this construct could act as a highway, letting ships travel great distances while they use smaller scale drives for shorter jumps!" Twilight concluded. Sida turned to the vox systems officer, "Alright, let's get this show on the road! Call in the rest of the battle group and send a probe through!" At her word, a small probe was sent from the battleship, sending back navigational and other relevant data. Within minutes it got close to the unknown object, and the probe began to receive signals from it. Confused at what to do next, the controller on the bridge ordered the probe to send the signal back. What happened next both interested and confused everypony in the room, except for one adolescent dragon, one of the many onboard techpriests. As seemingly random bits of data were sent back and displayed on the main screen, the techpriest walked up to the logic machine's core. Connecting one of his bionic tentacles, he began to interface directly with the ship's machine spirit. He looked closely at the incoming data, working through the ship to discern what exactly they were getting from the strange object. Several minutes into his mental journey, he found something - repeating lines of code. Small and random, but the patterns were there, buried in the data. He let his eyes open in surprise at what he discovered next. By the Omnissiah... It's actual code! The data isn't just background noise being sent out, He turned to Twilight, who was now hovering close to him, wanting to learn about any information he found. "Madame Sparkle, that data is not random! Through the ship's spirit..." "Oh, here we go again with that stupid machine religion again," Twilight thought to herself. "Oh, Omnissiah help me, I..." the tech priest continued. "Of all the things to worry about worshipping, and they pick machines?" Twilight tried not to roll her eyes. "I'm gonna need to deal with this sooner or later," "...I just need to..." "Oh, they're not hurting anything," Twilight put up her best "interested" face. "Whatever, they're still loyal to the empresses. I'll leave them be," "...and we can send something to the other side!" he finished, catching his breath despite the lung implants he'd received upon graduating apprenticehood. "I still think-" Twilight perked up at that last sentence. "Wait, you can do that?" "Yes," the techpriest responded. "I just need the probe's mass and enough time to figure out an acceptable format in which to send the data, and I can get the probe to the other side!" Normally Twilight would be annoyed with the priest's volume, but not only was she a young and excitable pony once, she was looking forward to the experiment too. She nodded in approval to the priest, who eagerly reattached to the ship. She remembered when she wasn't four thousand years old, back in simpler times when the most a pony had to worry about was a bunny infestation. A side effect of being bonded with the Elements of Harmony, she and the other ministers were blessed -or rather cursed as they sometimes thought- with immortality. She and the others were still able to be killed, but had not aged a bit since that fateful day, when they bonded with the Elements of Harmony to defeat Nightmare Moon. Outliving all of their family and friends, watching them wither and die, even Pinkie Pie cracked. It took over a hundred years for her to get over it, and even then she was just never the same. Snapping out of it, she watched the techpriest do his work. After only a minute, which she thought was impressive for a completely alien piece of hardware, he finally disconnected. She nodded again, signalling him to send the probe off. He turned to the side, ordering the probe's monitor next to him to send the signal through the probe. Twilight turned back to the viewscreen and watched as the probe flew closer to the unknown object. Although the object filled up most of the viewport, she could only tell where the probe was due to the notifications shown on the screen, placing a blue diamond over the tiny craft. When the probe got close enough, it sent out the data packet and was immediately surrounded by blue lightning from the object. The probe then disappeared, vanishing off of the sensors of the bridge. "Sensor officer, care to tell me what just happened?" Sida asked, walking up to the front of the room next to Twilight. She peered at the odd structure, it seemed to be gradually getting brighter. Turian 16th Fleet Observation Outpost One, Invictus colony, Caestus System, Minos Wasteland Lieutenant Varen was bored. That's all he could describe it. Just... bored. He was stuck in the remarkably barren Minos Wasteland for the past standard month by his superiors, who promised plenty of action against pirates, slavers, and other scum from the Terminus. Well, not that they really needed to convince him. He wasn't here by choice; it turns out that screwing up a small weapons shipment to an already fortified area can get you in a surprisingly large amount of trouble in the Hierarchy. Hearing a notification tone on a monitor, he walked over to the holographic screen. He shouldn't be doing this. He should be on a proper ship, under proper command, giving proper orders to proper ensigns. Well, complaining wasn't going to do anything right. He read the screen, noticing a message box denoting the reason for alarm as an unidentified object. Standard protocol dictated immediately informing his superior, but he wasn't sure that was a good idea. Being stuck here was bad enough, he didn't need to wake up the captain over what could be a piece of debris. He opened up the scan, looking for any signs of what it could be. "Well, that's odd," he thought. "It looks like a small craft but doesn't have any eezo signatures," That was odd to him. There were no eezoless spacecraft as far as he knew, and a piece of metal of that size would imply it was either eezoless spacecraft or a broken off part of a bigger ship. Since there were no Mass Relays around, that meant that it would have had eezoless FTL, which he knew was highly improbable. Furthermore, the only way to send something through a relay was to emit a signal, so that discounted a piece of debris. Which would mean... "Captain we have a problem!" Brief overview of the government of the Imperium of Equuleus, recorded by Twilight Sparkle, Minister of Information At the top of the governmental hierarchy of the Imperium of Equuleus are the two empresses, Celestia and Luna. Being the rulers of the Imperium since the beginning of the it's history, the two are all but outright worshipped by their subjects. Being the most important figures, any and all conflicting orders are deferred to whichever of them is involved in the issue. Ruling from Holy Equestria, specifically the capital city of Canterlot, Empress Celestia handles public affairs such as diplomacy, public relations, and other things of the like. Empress Luna takes of care more internal and classified affairs than her sister. They are not restricted to these roles, however, those described roles are usually how the empresses decide to handle things and have the most experience in. Below them are the six ministers (myself included) who manage the basic foundations of the Imperium's society. I, the Minister of Information, handle things such as education, our information network, and technology. Rainbow Dash, the Minister of Military, handles all offensive and defensive affairs of the Imperial military, such as the Imperial Guard and Adeptus Astartes, or the Space Marines. Fluttershy, the Minister of Medicine, manages the Imperial hospital system and disease control. Rarity is the Minister of Economy and is in charge of keeping the Imperium's economy healthy by managing matters such as interplanetary trade or tax laws. The Minister of Culture, Pinkie Pie, watches over holidays, artistic funding, and other such affairs. And, finally, there is Applejack, Minister of Manufacturing. She handles any matters from the supplication of war machines to agriculture to building constructing. Due to the rather vague descriptions of our offices, jobs are often intertwined and worked on by two different ministers. One example is the research of disease where Fluttershy and I handle new diseases that crop up now and then on frontier worlds, or Rarity and Applejack distributing goods across planetary boundaries. Below us are the Senators, who present concerns, suggestion, and other ideas of interest concerning their particular cluster of star systems directly to the empresses. Under the Senate there is, in a system with multiple inhabited worlds, a Procurator, who is the general manager of the system. Each world is then set up with a planetary Governor, who is elected democratically by the planet's people as opposed to Senators and Procurators, who are appointed by the empresses themselves. In the case of one inhabited planet, there is no Procurator and the Governor goes directly to the Senators. Below the Governors are Mayors, who rule towns and cities and are also elected.