//------------------------------// // 2015 project - The Child of Solace - Prologue // Story: RoMS' Extravaganza // by RoMS //------------------------------// Prologue. “Ponykind looked at the stars and dreamt of bigger things. But dreaming was not enough. The equines jumped and reached what they wished upon for too long. Soon however, they understood they had lost their way into the coldness. Wherever they searched, their shared and beloved cradle was nowhere to be found. Although we cut our own roots, it never saved us from our animal wickedness.” Glitter Pie, last leader of the Free Republic of Apel. ₮ ₰ ₣ ₪ ₹ ₸ ₢ ₸ ₹ ₪ ₣ ₰ ₮ We meet once again, my dearest enemy. I busted open my alarm clock with the back of my hoof. With my eyes still closed, I heard it fly across my bedside table. A second later, it crashed on the ground, splintering all over my room in a screeching echo. The cacophony didn’t stop until the screws and bits had stopped scattering across the darkness that filled my flat. “Fuck off,” I spat at the machine as I kept munching on my pillow already soaked in my saliva. The beeping didn’t stop though. My doorbell was laughing at me and the scapegoat of an alarm clock in between. I took a long breath of the hot and wretched air that flooded my room. I wanted to lie down and fall asleep again. But I couldn’t. I shambled around and tried to reach my bedside lamp with the tip of my hoof. Clumsy, I pushed it off too. Porcelain bits blanketed my room, joining what I could already call my own little mess. My morning couldn’t have been finer. “It’s not locked!” I bawled at whoever was repeatedly buzzing on the doorbell. My door slid open with a hydraulic hiss and a blinding light flared in my small room. I wailed and forced myself back under the blankets. Couldn’t ponies know I had better things to do… like sleeping?! She, because it was she, gagged at the stench that greeted her muzzle. I heard her step outside, take a long, deep breath, and walk back in. “Starscape?” the mare probed carefully. She knew I knew she knew myself well enough to know how legendary my morning grumpiness was. “We’ve reached it.” “Already…?” I mumbled, sighed, grunted, and other whatnot-ed that would make her go away. “Yes, Captain,” she answered as she rubbed her nose. “You’ve been asleep since we jumped in hyperspace.” “Perfect,” I retorted with a smile. Captain’s advice: hyperspace jumps are, believe me, the most boring thing out there. It’s just nothing but being patient. And when you stay in the cockpit, the only thing you see outside is just some plain white space in front of you. Sometimes there is a bit of blue, pink, and yellow of course… but that’s all. Otherwise, it’s just a concentrate of boringness. In hyperspace, ships drive themselves. “You’re awaited on the deck, Captain,” she said. I muffled my discontent. “Why?” I spat. “You still haven’t told the crew why we spent our stipend on jumping to… there.” Her voice broke as she searched for her words. “And in regards to the Erikean Space Laws you, as a captain, are subject to, you have breached the code more than eleven times during the past twenty-four galactic hours...” Big sentences in the morning were such a relief. “...which the first was not explaining to the crew the purpose of the mission, which grants your right-hand the right to build up a mutiny against your persona. Moreover, you entered coordinates without the consent of our navigator, who I can’t find anywhere… and I wonder if we haven’t left her on Erikea. Furthermore, no information towards where we were heading was disclosed. This grants our flying operators the right to claim the next whole stipend we will receive, which our armament personnel is firmly opposed to.” I stuck my tongue out at her under my fortification of pillows and thick bed sheets. I even squeezed my head between my hooves but that didn’t stop me from hearing her rant. “This place has a name, Albion,” I rambled. “Uh?” She chuckled gravely. There was no need for critics from her, her voice alone was stinging enough. “Since when?” “Since I, captain Starscape, gave it one.” I shuffled across my mind for the less stupid idea I could find. “I’m calling it Finistère. Isn’t’ it beautiful, Albion?” She sighed deeply and held her hoof to her face. I was such a disappointment and I wasn’t even going to let her speak. “I asked the ship to reach an unexplored solar system that was discovered last week by some Erikean space telescopes. That’s why I didn’t inform the crew. The coordinates… weren’t really registered as an authorised space jump destination.” I, too, could spit out long sentences in the morning. It was hurting my temples, though. I giggled. I could nearly see her eyes rolling from under my bed sheets. “I’ll inform the crew about the situation,” she dropped her words like an anvil above my head. “Viking will not be happy.” “Perfide Albion,” I called her. “You can tell my right-hand he can go fuck himself with a rotative laser beam.” “You’re still awaited,” she pointed out. “And you know I don’t like that first name.” “I know, Perfide.” I was smiling. An eye out of my bed cover, I saw her scan the room with her picky bleached-blue eyes. They would have been beautiful if she wasn’t itself a fully snow-white mare. White coat, white mane, nearly white eyes… where could I find some contrast in that? Her icy eyes wandered on my left and she grinned widely. She had perfectly white teeth too. I look at the mare by my side, emerging from the sheets. “So she was here all along… I thought interracial relationships were forbidden,” Albion said matter-of-factly, her judging eyes locked on me. “Your ability to abide by the law is formidable, Starscape. The count goes up to twelve. You’re close to breaking your own record.” “You don’t even know how high I can get.” My bed companion snickered with her crystalline voice. There was no pun intended. “Are we still in Erikean territory, Perfide?” “No,” the Earth Pony mare answered flatly. “We’ve left the Diktat’s area of expansion since we’ve jumped.” “As such…?” I drawled. I took advantage of her lack of answer and looked on my right. A red Pegasus with a charcoal mane pinching her lips together was facing me, holding the bed sheets up to her torso. Her cheeks couldn’t be redder. We grinned at each other like two children being caught after another misdeed. Oh, she was good. She giggled as if she could read my mind. “As an Erikean citizen, Captain, you have to abide by the law of your native nation in case no other set of administrative obligations applies...” I rubbed my forehead. Under the blanket I felt my lady’s hoof slowly crawling and oh, oh, oh mama mia… We both looked at each other and shared one same snarky smile. She winked at me, slowly licking her lips with the tip of her tongue. I felt butterflies at the tips of my forehooves. It was going to get good, if only... “... and so, as these rules do apply in each nation that calls itself civilised, you are not by your status to have a relation with a peg… Do you even listen to me?” “Albion?” I cut her off. “Could you… just give me back my privacy? Like… go away?” She tilted her head on the side and let the words sink in. A massive pout drew on her face at the sight of my large, overbearing smile. Funny how such awkward situation could speak a thousand words and carry more meaning. “Is that an order?” Her icy eyes darted at me. “Yeeeees…” I confirmed, avoiding her cold irises. Her shoulder dropped a little and her head slowly hung low. “You promised me not to do that, playing with my freedom.” She whispered, looking down as she poked the ground with her hoof. “You’re breaking my own freedom, try to enforce laws that don’t work on my ship, and you’re the one complaining?” I huffed, burying my face in my left hoof. The look of her face was going to give me such guilt. I breathed in slowly. “I’m just asking you,” I mumbled, glancing at her from behind my hoof. Oh come on, I hadn’t betrayed her or wanted to be hurtful. What did she have to be that of a clenched-butt with ponies that didn’t go her way!? She had been the one to sneak up on me during my good time. She was the wrong pony… this time at least. “Pleeease,” I begged. Disgruntled, her frostbiting eyes glared daggers at me. Hopefully, she hadn’t lasers built in those. Not yet. “Earth Ponies,” she grunted with a mimicked huff as she turned away, her tail whipping in the air. “Androids…” I muttered back. Question. How do one recognise an android aside from their way of speaking? Butt staring! Don’t get me wrong on that one, I’m not a perv’. It’s just that androids don’t come out of the factory with a cutie mark. She gasped, bit on her celluloid tongue, and her shoulders dunked low. She left in silence and, once she had completely dragged her white butt outside, the door slid back close. I and my bride enjoyed a dim darkness once again. My eyes thanked me. I went back looking at my little red Pegasus. She was not smiling anymore, staring at me with her hooves crossed on her chest. “What am I standing accused for?” I growled. She didn’t answer. “Not you too, Amaryllis!” I put my head between my hooves. “Why does everypony have to give me the stare?” “You hurt her,” she said with her sultry voice that sparked shivers down my spine. How could I stand against her hawkish green eyes, standing like islands in the middle of a crimson red sea of silk-like fur and frizzling feathers? She was, without a doubt, beautiful. How could I resist? I held out my hoof but she pushed it away. My hoof hung mid-air, she crawled to the side of the bed and let herself fall on her hooves. She stretched her wings and preened the ones we had mangled during the night. My shoulders dunked a little and I finally put my hoof back on my soft blankets. “I know. I know!” I was going to skin the skin off my forehead if I kept rubbing like that. “Go apologize,” she asked… advised? Ordered, yeah… ordered. “But…” I intoned. “No buts,” she shushed me with a raised hoof. “Otherwise, no butts.” I rolled my eyes dismissively. “Yes, mom,” I whined. “I will tidy up my room too.” “Start taking care of your ship. Dust was what I put my hooves on when I came in. Now, it could be recalled Pigsty.” She was being picky. Dust was a pretty good spaceship. It was one of those old Erikean frigates. How did I acquired Dust? I have scavenged my baby on a drifting space battlefield. I couldn’t recall the type of vessel though. It was three hundred and fifteen metres long for fifty metres in width and thirty five in height. It was, believe me, a really good old ship. Instead of the two to three hundred millions it should have costed. I just paid the reparation and some few… minor changes. Don’t ask me how I got the money, it’s a professional secret. However, whatever the words I would use, nothing was perfect enough for madame. Looking back at her, I saw she had already put on her dark leather suit, covering every patch of her blood red hide. Only the cybernetic plugs were left, protruding out of her backbone, legs, and wings where skin had been left uncovered. The suit enveloped the implants as it magnetically locked itself on them like a second heavier and sturdier skin. Damn! Aside from those cold crumbs, I was lucky to have tasted some bits of her. Navigators, Pegasi, whatever the name or cast she belonged to, she was damn fine to me. There was just her spooky cutie mark. I didn’t even need to look at the print of it plastered on her suit. I knew it by heart: one wide open bright green eye, such as the pair she had on her face. The crew often joked that she was like our Big Sister, constantly watching over us. She pressed her hoof on the light switch and a powerful white glow burst into the room. Gurgling out a scream, I put myself back under the thick blankets. “Please!” I whimpered. “Tell me when you do that, Amaryllis!” She snarled and walked away from the bed. Her horseshoes of latex and steel hammered on the metal floor. “Viking must be waiting,” she said and the door clicked back down, leaving me alone. “So let him wait,” I whispered to myself. “Everypony wants to ruin my day apparently.” My eyelids opened a blade’s width, I shambled away from my bed and crawled to the round-shaped interrupter. Rolling it to the left, the light intensity degraded to a level I could withstand. Now able to open my eyes, I stood up and dragged myself to my chest and its many drawers. On the wall above was mounted a large and stained mirror. I smiled at myself, checking on my teeth before I took a peek at the first drawer. It contained an old speaker wired to a patchwork of old printed circuits. I had once scavenged all that stuff from an old space wreck. I pushed a button and a cranky old electric guitar riff welcomed my morning. A mare’s voice started slowly, tuning up as the guitar announced the main rhythm. I followed through with my own cranky voice. “I’m being chased, Through the wasteland, And nuthin’ gonna stop me, Now.” Like an assault, the guitar wah-wahed at me through the old speaker. As vibrations crawled on my skin, I reared up and put on my dusty brown leather coat which folded onto my khaki-yellow hide. It was a bit too wide for my small frame. I wiggled on my rear legs. Ponies often said that I had the Daring Do style. Not that I knew what a Daring Do was, nor ponies using the slang. It was something from the past carrying a meaning that had long been forgotten. I guessed it meant savage, strong, powerful… or maybe was I just being a tardy-bit narcissistic? At least I had my white mane. Dishevelled and long enough to brush past the back of my neck, I always had had a hard time putting some orders between my locks. “Rain fire across the galaxy, Bring nether upon my enemy, For this’s Erikean Army’s motto, One that everypony should know.” As I danced at the blaring tune in front of the mirror, I watched my semi-long mane wave back and forth over my muzzle. My stare drifted down to my own cutie mark: a small purple meteor with a yellow trail going down my flank in a curve. My name is Starscape after all... “Ahem…” somepony coughed next to my ear. And… I punched out. After an awkward moment spent looking down at a pony at my hooves, I rushed to his help. “Sorry, sorry!” I apologised, cutting off the deafening music, so loud I didn’t even hear him enter. An old ultramarine stallion with his short yellow mane was laying on the floor, blood spurting of his mouth. I had taken a tooth out. Grimacing, I held him up back on his hooves. His name was Viking, my second-hand. Not even a ghost of a smile on my face, I poked him with the tip of my hoof. The earth pony growled as his right black eye, the only one that still worked, riveted on me. “Shoul’ have go’ with a mutiny,” he spat, leaving a flob of blood between the porcelain and screws on the ground. Speaking of porcelain, he had one bit puncturing his cheek. I had hit a bit hard, I concede, and I couldn’t stop now from looking suspiciously at his right hindleg and the long curved dagger strapped one it. that was one bloody weapon and the exact replica of his cutie mark. “You okay, Viking?” I asked. “Ya know I hate the infirmary,” he said, taking his tooth off the ground and putting it in a shoulder bag hanging on his side. “You know I hate mutiny when Albion is ranting on my ass customs.” “She’s dang pissed.” “No, really?” I fainted surprise. We laughed. As we slowly fell back silent, he looked at the speaker inside the drawer. I chuckled. In the end, he was like our own little snow-white android: curious. Viking raised an eyebrow. “Amaryl’ was dang pissed too. She had those eyes,” he joked about her cutie mark, raising his hoof to his open wide eyes then pointing it at me. Yep, Amaryllis was watching me. It wasn’t something to worry about though. She was our navigator, as such, she had de-facto more authority than me. Not that I disliked that during our shared free time. I shivered at the thought, a large smile drawing on my face. “Hey?” Viking wondered with his raspy voice, banging on my empty-echoing head with his hoof. “Somepony’s still here?” I pushed it away, and muttered, “Yeah, yeah. So, new planet?” A look of disapproval above all measurable levels came from the eyes of my right-hand… right-hoof. Whatever, Griffons had created that term. So my right-hand was going to be dang pissed too. “You spent our salary from our last commission,” he paused and growled, “on coming to... an unknown planet?” I nodded. “You know the scavenger’s proverb: What’s unknown is more than a gemstone.” The Dust’s speakers cracked with saturation covering Viking’s deep, annoyed sigh. Albion’s voice tuned in our ears as she cleared her throat. I heard some ponies in the neighbouring rooms yelp. The old speakers of my spaceship could get pretty loud at some point. “Albion reporting. We will exit hyperspace in five minutes. Destination is an unexplored planet called Finistère, unregistered to the Erikean authorities, making our exploration an outlawed operation in virtue of the Intergalactic Law of Exploration number forty three thousand five hundred and sixty seven, alinea number forty two, modification nine thousand five hundred and twelve...” Viking and I looked at each other. Albion was just that… Albion. I finished buttoning up my brown leather coat and readjusted my captain insignia, a golden horseshoe. I tried to push back some of my white locks behind my ears, to no avail. It was now just between them and me, puffing air at them to get them away from my eyes. Viking and I walked outside and wandered across the Dust: three hundred metres of alloys, armaments, protections, reactors, and crew travelling at something over five thousand times the speed of light. It was prodigiously... backward. I had heard of those new Erikean military frigates, with their built-in wormhole systems. But as always, only the militaries could enjoy those toys. We, the civilians, were restricted to the hyperspace currents, only safe way to travel between two solar systems. Let me mash up this into something understandable. Until recently, the only way to travel in between solar systems was through natural motorways made of black matter that linked each celestial corpse to each other. Only a few were ridable for ships though, making a hyperspace jump quite… bumpy, dangerous. I hoped my crew would never learn that I had made the jump to Finistère through an unsecure current. But that was a secret between me and nopony else. “... Though, due to the amendment number one made after the Erikean war of +761A.M.L, thirty one years ago, we can claim as an Erikean ship the exclusive access to the discovered planets for a proved period of two weeks.” She paused. “After a first scan is made of the existing planets of this solar system, a series of teams will be sent to see if any valuables are found on ground.” Albion was ready to cut the one-way boring conversation when she cleared her throat again. “Captain Starscape is as bad in bed as a paraplegic rock.” A long, overbearing silence suddenly filled the ship. I even felt like it had stopped creaking just to savour this very moment. It was as awkward as the mare who’d just spoken. Suddenly, fits of laughter echoed across the Dust, through the plumbery, the corridors, and the holes in between the different storeys. “Oh, the biat…” Viking whacked the back of my head, making me bit on my tongue. He was laughing too. The way to the cockpit was a long walk of shame where I met amused smiles, playful eyes, and jokes that could nearly scrape off some of my self-esteem. Damn, I was the captain. Though, that didn’t make me a Diktator. I wasn’t the ruler of Erikea… The cockpit was a large bay located on top of the Dust, with its large windows giving to see a large sea of white that burnt my eyes like hot embers. And there she was, the white mare, waving a hoof at me as I stepped on the deck. That innocent smile of hers could nearly make me forget about her little games. Amaryllis was harnessing herself in the navigant habitacle in the forefront of the cockpit, giving her a privileged sight on whatever was there outside. Wires were lowering down above her head and, one by one, she locked them on her cybernetic implants. She finished with the most delicate part, her wings. She kicked a pedal built in the habitacle and a hundred holograms swooshed alive around her, red, yellow, blue, and green. Finally, a mechanic arm dangled from the ceiling of the habitacle and went locking itself on the back of her head like a helmet. A hiss filled the air, Amaryllis grunted, and all the holograms flashed green. “Navigator linkage routine succeeded. Reported errors: zero,” a robotic voice announced. “Prepare for hyperspace rupture.” The bay was enough to welcome two to three dozens ponies. Yet, it already being swarmed as everypony wished to get a first glance at the system. Thanks to the scanners of the Dust, informations about Finistère were going to be displayed on the window bay quickly after our exit point. “Gooooooood morning, everypony. Amaryllis there, your delightful supreme leader,” The red Pegasus was enjoying herself through the intercom. “We will exit hyperspace in one minute. Once stabilized, Dust’s sensors will take two minutes before giving us results, after that I will divide the crew into teams to explore the planets we might discover.” Amaryllis had put emphasis on the might I didn’t like, throwing me a playful stare. “Any complaints are to be addressed to Starscape, our caregiving captain.” It was my time to wave at my little ponies with an awkward smile. I made my way past Amaryllis’s habitacle, Viking and his dirty yellow mane in my stead. A large series of panels had been built on the edge of the dock, only separated from the emptiness of space by the thick glass windows. Trying not to look at the blinding white outside, I pushed my hoof on my own intercom. My voice echoed in the ship’s speakers and reverberated in my ears. I hated hearing myself talking. “Hello everypony, so thing is, we’re going to have the first hoof on an unexplored system. What’s there is just ours. So let’s cross our hooves that I did a good bet going in first.” Viking pushed me off the intercom with his dagger-branded flank and continued, “And, of course, as we ain’t being payed for last month, crew’s getting the first bite.” He smirked at me and I shrugged in response. What could I say? I may have been a captain, but a captain without his crew. That’s just plain rubbish. Amaryllis’s voice boomed over our heads with radio static. “Exit route in three, two, one!” The whole ship tainted with green, then light blue, and finally a darker shade of purple that degraded into a deep black. We all stayed there in silence. No jump. No sudden braking, nothing. I already said that hyperspace was ultimately boring. “Eeeehm… Amaryllis?” Viking broke the silence. “Light, please.” Through the window bay could be seen nothing but emptiness towards infinity. the blackness was peppered with small dots of light, far, far away. I closed my eyes, and the lamps of the deck zoomed into life, throwing us all in a dim orange glow. “Sorry,” she said from her uncomfortable position, not using her intercom this time. “I told Starscape he should replace the reactor. It tends to malfunction more and more.” “You pay for it,” I challenged, walking away not to hear her rant. I pressed my head on the cold window and tried to see the sun. “Amaryllis?” I called. “On it,” she shouted. No need to look at her to know her movements. She leaned on the left and pulled her right forehoof and right hindleg closer to her body as she tilted her head down, pulling on both her wings. The ship shifted path instantly, creaking as it suddenly tore through space on its left. Like many, I tensed my left hooves to stay upright. Slowly, a dim round yellow light made its way before the window bay. A sun, old and dying out, lit our faces with its cold shafts of light. Even though, as a captain, I had seen such scene hundred of times, if not thousand, it still had its own little effect. The ship beeped, calling many of us back to reality. The window bay suddenly flashed with many numbers, data, and pictures, three of which were planets. And one… had an atmosphere. Booya! I was already rubbing my hooves. “Attention, crew,” Amaryllis began through her microphone. “Three planets have been discovered so far. No moons, but one planet does have a series of rings. Viking and team Parsec will take care of the smallest planet, no atmosphere but the surface bears traces of an old volcanic activity. You’re up for some gold mining and meteor scavenging. Nebula and team Cadrant will take care of the second planet, no atmosphere but many water residues can be found on the poles. You’re going to mine some deuterium for the reactor and auxiliary compounds, otherwise we can say adios to coming back to Erikea.” I rushed in front of her habitacle, put my hooves on the glass protection, and gave her my saddest puppy eyes. “I know that you’ll find somewhere deep in your heart…” I started. “Alright, alright,” she sighed and switched back on her intercom. “Captain Starscape will lead the last team on the last planet. I haven’t got all the details yet as it’s nearly behind the sun. Though it has an atmosphere. Crew… eh, what are you doing!?” My head and one hoof inside the habitacle, I struggled to reach her microphone. I finally pressed one forehoof on the mare’s face and reached the mic’. “And Albion, you come with me!” I asserted. Even muffled by the soundproof glass of the navigator’s post, I heard the poor white Earth Pony android vent her no-no. ₮ ₰ ₣ ₪ ₹ ₸ ₢ ₸ ₹ ₪ ₣ ₰ ₮ After we had passed by the first two planets where we left two teams of thirty ponies go down with auxiliary ships and their mining and exploration equipment, Amaryllis pushed on the Dust’s reactors. As we wanted to reached the last planet, she used the natural gravity pull of Finistère’s small sun, we reached the planet’s orbit after a two-hour trip. Finally, we could get some more information on the planet. While the remaining crew was looking at the planet, its atmosphere flashing with monstrous lightning bolts, Albion was staring at me. Was she trying to set me on fire with her icy eyes? But so was life, we don’t often get what we want, as everything. “Captain?” Amaryllis called, this time preferring not to do it through an intercom. I broke away from the stare contest Albion was assured to win –Androids don’t need to blink– and walked up to my navigator. Her green eyes were perplexe. She raised an eyebrow when I put my head in her habitacle. “Something’s wrong, honey?” I hinted. She rolled her eyes and from the tip of her hoof poked on a hologram hovering next to her chest. “You told me the system has just been discovered, am I right?” I nodded, “Yeah, satellites found it one or two weeks ago.” “Well,” she retorted. “I don’t think it is as unexplored as you think.” She moved her hoof across the habitacle, she brought the orange hologram at my eyes level. It was a picture of the planet we had headed to. A red spot was flashing on its surface and like a legend on a graph, the waves of sound signal was live: · · · — — — · · · “Is that?” I started. “Morse code,” she confirmed. “Old signal. Very old. And it’s repeating like a loop every four to five seconds. However, the time gap between two emissions is not constant.” She let silence sink in as her eyes drifted towards the window bay. The same hologram was displayed on the glass so everypony could see. As such, I wasn’t the only one to have unanswered questions. “You tried a contact?” “No. Following the code of navigation it is not advised until we have a clear view on the target. There has been too many pirate attacks in the recent years,” she growled. I nodded again. Albion had her lectured more than once on the subject. “Try to put us in low orbit, so that we get an orbital view of the emission point. Send a message to team Parsec and team Cadrant. I don’t want Viking and Co. to be left in the unknown.” “Okay…” “What is that code?” I asked while I poked on the hologram. I wasn’t literate in morse. I had heard of it sure, but it hadn’t been used for like what… Three hundred… five hundred galactic years. Amaryllis broke her eye contact with me and lowered her head, biting a bit on her lower lip. “It’s a mayday,” she sadly said. We looked at each other gravely. “A what?” I retorted. “Oh, my goddess!” she eructed, shoving her head in her hooves. “A S.O.S., you idiot!” “Ah…” I looked at the planet through the holograms and HUDs showing on two layers of glass between me and space. “Try to make a contact back in morse, there might an answer.” Amaryllis closed her red eyelids and a high-pitched series of fast and slightly less fast beeps filtered through the sound attenuation of the cabin. It emitted for ten to fifteen seconds before she opened her eyes again. What we heard back was silence. We looked at each other in complete bewilderment. The signal red pointer on the picture had disappeared. Only twenty seconds later it went back to life with the same three short, three long, three short beeps. I poked on Amaryllis’s microphone, flooding the Dust with my voice and speaker saturation. “Alright, lads, pack your bag!” I warned. “The planet is inhabited and there is a distress signal coming from down below. This is not a scavenging mission anymore. So let’s get our shiny asses on deck.” Amaryllis punched on a series of button and the light inside the ship turned blaring red, with a loud siren coming from the speakers. “Everypony with their personal transponder flashing, get on to the choppa. The Dust isn’t made for atmospheric entries.” Already, ponies were running to their posts. Looking back at Amaryllis, whose coat made her nearly invisible in the bright red light, I winked. “You better watch on me from up here,” I hinted. “Don’t worry,” she snarled. “I’ll have my guns on your damn plot.” I extracted myself from her cabin and turned around... … and nearly bunked my head on Albion’s. I shook my head. “Only I am authorized to use puppy eyes, Albion.” “I don’t want to go. It’s all stinky and dirty out there.” She caught my sarcastic stare as I looked on my right and left at my very ship. “Even more than here.” “I need a traductor,” I said. “Who knows what’s waiting on that planet? And you’re my spokepony.” She pouted. “I’ll give you a gift if you come,” I promised. Her eyes lit up with hopes. “Promise?” “With a cupcake in my eyes.” She giggled. “Okay, but if I ever get stained, you pay the repairpony.” I facehoofed. “You’re water-repellant, Albion.” She tilted her head on the side and agreed, “You’re right. You’re right.” We were thirty-six to take place in the last navette the Dust had in its hold. On the way to the vessel dock, Amaryllis had briefed us on the planet’s nature: Humid, with a breathable atmosphere but constant acidic rains that made it improper to life. Who was left stranded down there was in bad luck, bad shape, or just close to dying. My crew and I were too poor to get full protection suits and the pressurised suits were used by the other teams as I was speaking. As everything we had, patchwork stuff and makeshift instruments, some of my engineers had created temporary force-field umbrella we could hold in our mouth, giving enough protection for a dozen of us. Advice: give it to the most annoying pony of the group so that he can’t talk. This time, it was me... The surface of the planet was a barren desert of soaked black rocks. The sky was darkened by black clouds with blueish edges, crying a flood of yellowish murk that slid off the shield above our head. At least twice a minute, a gargantuan lightning bolt slashed through the sky. Each time, the light was strong enough to make us all wince. The shattering rumble of thunder that followed made the ground quake. Albion was the only one to wander out of the protection, the dangerous rain trickling off her like clean water. She enjoyed playing under the jealous pairs of eyes darting at her. She tip-toed in between the brown puddles, sometimes jumping wholeheartedly in one. Always, she walked out as white as snow. “Eh, captain?” A grey stallion patted my shoulder. “I’ve got something on the radar.” All who could looked at the small screen sitting in front of the stallion face. Held at the tip of a mechanical arm stretched from a series of contraptions harnessed to his back, it flashed a big orange shape. We had landed at the bottom of an old mountain, beheaded by what seemed to be an old volcanic eruption. As we walked forward we reached the edge of a cliff that gave to a canyon. Crashed at the bottom was a massive shape of bricks and rocks, chiselled and shaped artificially. “It’s a building, Capt’n.” It was, indeed, not Nature’s work. Even though it was the night on that part of the planet, the flashes of the thunderbolts gave us a pretty good idea of the location. Fallen in the canyon in the wake of an apocalyptic landslide, what seemed to be an old fortification had been mangled by time and horrific weather conditions. If there had once been paint on those dark rocks, it was gone now. In between two counterforts made of old pieces of bricks that had to weigh half a hundred tons, we found the remain of an old door. Only a frame was left… “Is that…” a mare gasped. “Pure gold,” Albion confirmed with a nod, lifting a bit in between her hooves, not risking to bit on it and get some acid in her mouth. That part wasn’t protected. Who had lived here was a mystery. Yet, something was still in there and the marking on the stallion’s radar was yet another proof. “We will take the gold when we’re certain the area is safe,” I ordered gravely. Nods answered me and we entered the ruins, careful not to step on any potential traps. As we crossed the open gate, the shield fit snugly the frame and the walls of the corridor behind. The force field spared us the streams dripping from the holes in the ceiling. I loved my engineers. Some walls were covered with rotten and blackened tapestries whose contours and colours had been mangled by time. The wind wiggled in the alleyway through the holes in some few broken windows, whistling in our ears. Ruins, I hated that. You often stumbled across old corpses and notes from a past best left forgotten, prayers to some gods and goddesses, supplications, administrative papers… All the boring stuff. What my crew needed, what I needed, was money to get by the next month. Papers never helped. As we passed by a large hall, a bas-relief carved into a wall caught Albion’s attention. “Look, look,” she said, excited. We closed down on her and found ourselves in front of a sculpted scene that represented six ponies sitting around a large table. I counted two Earth Ponies, two Pegasi, and… “The fuck is that?” I asked. Albion looked closer and snorted. “You have dropped out of history class, haven’t you, Captain?” “Yeah, yeah, I was more interested in blowing stuff up with what I learnt in chemistry.” I rubbed my face, blowing the dust that floated aloft in front of my muzzle. “What…” “Those are Unicorns,” she explained. By the look on my companions’ face, I wasn’t the only ignorant here. “An extinct pony race. I think the last one lived eight hundred years ago. there are many myths about them. It was even before we went to the skies.” “Were they rich?” A blueish mare asked in the background. Albion shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s been a long time. What they had back then might not exist anymore.” I turned back to look at my team. “Well, by looking at the entrance door, I guess we can get some booty out of here. So let’s find the signal first, then it’s first arrived, first served.” With smiles, we left the bas-relief and went down a series of circular staircases. To my stupefaction, everything, though ruined, still stood through some miracles I couldn’t understand. However, I guess I was sharing the same level of uneasiness with everypony as the floor creaked at each of our step. “The signal comes from here,” the stallion whispered, a white Albion watching over his shoulder. “One contact.” He pointed at a nearby door. I heard weapons getting unstrapped and held firmly in more than one mouth. Looking at the ceiling, I saw for the first time wires and cables dangling. Some still in one piece sparked with electricity. It was the first proof of technology we had encountered on Finistère. A distinct beeping was coming from the room. We took position in silence and braced ourselves. Somepony sneezed behind the door. We all tensed, glanced a last time at each other, and took a deep breath. In one charge, we burst in and held our guns to the only occupant of the room. “Don’t move,” I roared. “Identify yourself.” The chamber was room to one single huge computer screwed to a wall. Large and thick red, blue, and green wires was connected to it, running toward a large parabola left in a corner of the room. Large red diodes were flashing on a transmitter cast in the machine. A hand was jerking on an analog interface as the machine spat its three short, three long, three short tones. It was a monster from an era that was far beyond my understanding. But the awe left its place for shock as my eyes wandered down toward the operator. There she was, one single orange filly with a deep purple mane with two streaks of pink. Alone, she stared at us with wide blue eyes, a hoof pressing on a single key, wrestling one long beep out of the machine. Once the surprise gone by, she turned her head from us back to the button and pushed again. Three shorts. Three longs. Three shorts. Again and again. My crew looked in stupor. After a long moment spent observing her, I broke rank and walked up to her. I waved my hoof in front of her blank eyes. “Hey, how are you?” I asked. “What’s your name?” She stayed as silent as a rock, focused on pushing on the keys the same repeated notes. I looked back at my team. “Come on, lads!” I teased. “It’s just a lone filly. I’m sure there is a crash site somewhere around here. If I found that place, I’m sure somepony else did.” My words met a cold silence only a white mare could break. “D- Don’t you see what’s wrong with her, captain?” Albion’s voice seeped in the silence that built between my team and the lonesome filly. “No.” I shook my head as I looked back at her. She was just a filly, weak and innocent in such a remote place. She was … Wait… a filly with a horn. “Is that a Unicorn?” I was breathless. No, wait again... She… She had wings too. Every head whirled in Perfide Albion’s direction. “What is that?” we all blubbered. For once, the white walking dictionary said no word. Her eyes locked on the filly, Albion just shrugged.