When We Saw the Universe

by KKDW

Chapter 2: Twilight

During my time with the resistance I recorded a log of each day’s events; it’s a habit I’ve kept up till this day.

– Extract from When We Saw the Universe by Captain Twilight Sparkle

“Dominator II crew member’s log, 771 days after the Bolkarn invasion of Equestria, Captain Twilight Sparkle recording. The Dominator II has now carried out a successful raid on the Bolkarn mine on the planet Krankor rescuing a total of 57 slaves. However 28 slaves were killed in the process along with 25 of our own. Amongst the rescued slaves was Sergeant Lyra Heartstrings’s partner Bon Bon. On a personal note I am glad that the two of them are now back together though I need to ask Sergeant Heartstrings whether or not she plans to stay with the resistance after this. The Dominator II is currently proceeding towards Xentrill and will make the jump into Hyperspace at 15:30 ship time. The time is currently 14:58. End of log.”
Twilight’s horn lit up, enveloping the log recorder in a haze of violet light. There was a click as it was switched off.
“File that recording with the other’s Starswirl,” she said.
“Affirmative, Captain Sparkle,” said a monotone voice from a computer screen mounted on one wall.
Starswirl was the Dominator II’s Artificial Intelligence Computer Operating System. It didn’t have an official name and most of the crew would refer to it with their own nickname so only Twilight Sparkle referred to it as Starswirl. Some would just refer to it as Computer or Voice and Twilight knew that a few would call it Dominator. Rainbow Dash liked to call it Daring 2. What anyone else called it Twilight didn’t know.
“Now entering Night Period,” the computer announced which was followed by the lights dimming.
“Starswirl, keep the lights up for a little longer please.”
“Acknowledged, Captain Sparkle.”
As the lights brightened again Twilight went over to the computer screen on the far wall of her cabin. Her cabin was a little larger than most of the others, partially because of her rank but mostly because Twilight did more than just sleep and wash in here. Most members of the resistance would regularly engage in combat against the Bolkarn but not Twilight, at least not very often. Twilight was an organizer, preferring to coordinate the battles from above and while she’d often do that from the bridge of the Dominator II she’d sometimes operate from her own cabin. Aside from the main computer screen there were three more that could display footage from cameras sent to monitor the battle along with a radio set up to communicate with all the troops they’d sent down.
Twilight had also made heavy use of the shelving space which was mostly crammed with books except for a small gap which had housed a book that she was currently reading. There were also various files relating to the activities of the Bolkarn and the resistance along with reports of space pirates, astronomical activity and what little information they had on a being known only as the Red Star-Fighter.
Twilight opened up a program on her computer that allowed her to receive messages from other ships, Xentrill, and their various spies and contacts they had within Bolkarn occupied territory. Those spies would often send them reports about Bolkarn activity as well as information on the various mines they had scattered across the galaxy. Before heading to Krankor Twilight had received a set of photographs of the mine showing the various slaves that were being forced to work there. It was in one of these photographs that she’d spotted Bon Bon, or at least a pony that she thought could be Bon Bon. She’d been in the background and out of focus but from what Twilight could make out her color scheme was right and she was definitely an Earth pony. Both Lyra and Bon Bon had lived in Ponyville before being captured by the Bolkarn and while Twilight had never really spoken to them she did know them both by sight.
This time she had a few messages informing her of two more planets that the Bolkarn had invaded along with reports of two successful attacks on Bolkarn mines and unfortunately one unsuccessful one. The Sky Piercer had been sent to the planet J14C-X and had the misfortune of arriving at around the same time as a Bolkarn ship delivering more slaves and a changeover of Bolkarn wardens. The Sky Piercer had been completely destroyed, killing everyone on board. Twilight slammed a hoof down on the desk in frustration; this was something their spies should’ve warned them about. Twilight didn’t have any information on the planet’s operations since the Dominator II hadn’t been given that mission so she didn’t know if they knew when the Bolkarn ship would be there or not.
Another report was about a planet called Bandraginus V. The resistance had been receiving information about the planet and a Bolkarn mine on it and they’d been making plans for an attack; in fact Twilight had been told that there was a chance that the Dominator II might be sent on that mission. But according to this message the whole planet had disappeared. They hadn’t received anything from their spies on the planet for a few months now, though that wasn’t particularly unusual. But an unmanned probe had been sent to fly past the planet recently, hoping to get some photographs of the mine from orbit, and there was no sign of it. Another ship, the Sunlight Rider, had been sent to the area to investigate. Twilight hoped they’d find something, and started thinking of possible reasons for its disappearance. Maybe the Bolkarn had taken a leaf out of the resistance’s book and hidden the planet in Hyperspace. No, that couldn’t be it. If they were doing that then why hadn’t they done the same thing with all the other planets they had mines on or even their own planet?
Twilight had a quick glance through the other messages; there were minor updates about various plans and missions, a message from Fluttershy who was currently on Xentrill, and some spam. Twilight rolled her eyes at those as she deleted them, she’d installed filters to try and stop those kinds of messages coming in but they never seemed to work. After that Twilight turned off the screen and spoke to the ship’s computer.
“Starswirl, is Sergeant Heartstrings in her cabin?”
“Affirmative, Captain Sparkle.”
“Good, I’m going to go and talk to her.”
“Information,” the computer said as Twilight approached the door. “Lights in Elevator B have ceased to function.”
“Again!?”
“Affirmative, Captain Sparkle. Suggest you take an emergency shaft down to Level 10.”
“Starswirl, how many times do I have to tell you, I can’t do ladders and if I did I am not climbing down twenty levels!”
“Acknowledged, Captain Sparkle.”
Twilight donned her translator headset before stepping out of her cabin and headed down the corridor. She glanced up at some of the lights strung along the walls, even with the lights dimmed for night one of them was flickering. There was one light flickering in almost every corridor on the ship. She heard a crash behind her and looking round she saw that one light had fallen off the wall. That happened a lot to.
The light’s had been installed after the Dominator II had been captured by the resistance, originally it had belonged to the Bolkarn. The Bolkarn’s home planet, Bolka, was the closest planet to its sun and subsequently should’ve been uninhabitable. However the planet’s rotation rate was almost the same as its orbit and subsequently life had evolved on the planet’s dark side and the only light they received was reflected down from its only moon. Bolka’s moon had an orbit period that once again was almost exactly the same as the planet’s rotation and so was always visible at the same point in the sky. As a result of these factors the Bolkarn didn’t require much light and their spaceships were often very dark so the Dominator II and a few other ships that the resistance had captured had been refitted to include lights and a few other new features, the ships Computer Operating System had been one of them. Light’s had been installed in various rooms without a problem, the corridors not so much, leading to long rows of lights haphazardly screwed to the walls with long exposed cables leading to a nearby power source. Unfortunately the refit hadn’t been perfect and some parts of the ship would occasional break down. Thankfully this hadn’t happened to anything that was too important, yet.
When Twilight stepped into the elevator she saw that the computer had been right about the lights, she lit up her horn as the doors closed. The descent from the 30th level to the 10th took a few minutes and Twilight was glad when it was over. She didn’t want to spend too long in a dark confined space and there was a chance that the elevator would break down in mid journey leaving her stuck inside. She didn’t want to have to go through that again. She passed by the canteen, which had a lot of noise coming from it, and eventually reached Lyra’s cabin. She was about to knock on the door when she heard something from inside. It took a few seconds for her to work out exactly what she was hearing since the sound was almost being drowned out by the noise from the canteen. When she realized what it was her face turned slightly red, but she smiled as well.
“Good for you Lyra,” she whispered and walked back to the elevator, deciding that she should talk to Lyra another time.
Twilight stepped back into the elevator, deciding to head up the bridge instead. However due to the design of the Dominator II the elevator didn’t go all the way up to the top level where the bridge was so she had to get off on the 50th level, where another set of doors at the back of the elevator opened to let her out, and get another elevator that would take her to the top.
After disembarking from the first elevator she ran into Captain Quell coming the other way. Twilight said a quick hello to him which he returned as they passed. Quell was from a race called Ujelks, a species that slightly resembled a mythical creature Twilight had read about called a centaur which had the top half of a humanoid with the bottom half of an equine. The difference between them and the Ujelks was that the Ujelks lacked heads. Instead they’d have each of their eyes in their shoulders with a mouth in their naval. Though it wasn’t what Twilight would consider a normal mouth, it was actually a hole that never closed which they’d use to speak with a series of clicking noises which her headset would translate as a bland monotone that would suck any emotion out of the original speech. Twilight often wondered how the headset’s translation into Ujelk speech would sound. The Ujelks weren’t the most unusual life forms Twilight had encountered out in space; she’d met equinoids, humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking-treeoids, and super-intelligent shades of the color blue. Speaking of which...
“Oh, good evening Captain nVVe,” Twilight said as she saw a large ball of blue light float through one of the corridor walls.
The blue light floated directly in front of her face and pulsed with a series of flashes in different shades of blue.
“Good evening Captain Twilight Sparkle,” the translator said.
This was what the orange visor was for. Some species in the universe didn’t communicate with speech or any other kind of sound and instead had a language which relied on visuals. Some of them would use sign language, nVVe’s apparently nameless race (generally referred to as the Blue Lights by others) would uses flashes of different colors, and Twilight had even met one race that communicated with eyebrow movement. The visor could also translate writing.
nVVe flashed again. “I assume Captain Twilight Sparkle is heading towards the bridge.”
One thing Twilight had noticed about nVVe’s race was that they would always refer to someone by their full name, and always their name. They’d never shorten it or use ‘you’ or ‘they’ or similar words. Twilight had once seen another of nVVe’s race holding a conversation with someone whose full name consisted of ten different names, ten very long names.
“As a matter of fact I am,” she said. “What about you then?”
“I am heading the same way Captain Twilight Sparkle.”
“Great, then let’s go there together.”
Twilight carried on down the corridor with nVVe floating alongside her, they didn’t talk to each other while they walked mainly because nVVe would need to be directly in front of her for the translator to work. Twilight got into the elevator first and even though she didn’t need to she waited until nVVe was inside with her before closing the doors. Before she could press the button to send the elevator to the top level nVVe floated upwards and straight through the ceiling. Twilight stared at the bit of ceiling nVVe had gone through and sighed before pushing the button.
nVVe’s race was quite definitely the strangest she’d encountered. They didn’t need to eat or breathe, they could pass through solid objects, and they didn’t need translators to understand what somebody was saying to them. Of course that particular trait wasn’t very unusual. Twilight had encountered a few telepathic races like the Orbitals that could also do that, in fact it had been a telepathic race that invented the translators, but they achieved it by reading the minds of whoever they were speaking to. She had no idea how nVVe’s race did it.
Twilight had heard that nVVe’s race didn’t even have a home planet, they just existed in space. She supposed that this made sense, gravity had no effect on them and she’d seen that they could survive the vacuum of space so they certainly wouldn’t need spaceships. She’d heard stories about some of them boarding spaceships and being accidentally left behind when the spaceship set off since they would just remain stationary, passing through the spaceship as it moved around them. Twilight had also heard that they could survive in Hyperspace where anyone else would eventually drift apart if they didn’t have protection, though Twilight had yet to see this particularly trait herself.
The elevator reached the top level and Twilight stepped out onto the bridge. The bridge was the only room on this level, of course with the shape of the ship there wasn’t really space for anything else in this part of it though the bridge itself was a fairly large room. Unlike the rest of the ship the lights on the bridge weren’t dimmed for night period as the bridge was always set to ‘day’. Because of this instead of being on duty during one of the two periods like in other parts of the ship the bridge crew would alternate in five hour shifts.
Lined along the walls of the bridge were a series of screens and consoles, each one being monitored by a different crew member. A wide window stretched across the far wall through which Twilight could see uncountable stars and a planet in the distance. Mounted on either side of the window were two projectors that served to project a holographic communications screen just over it, the hologram itself would be transparent so the crew could still see through the window. Twilight had heard of other ships which didn’t have a front window but rather a screen which would show the outside of the ship via a camera mounted on the ship’s front and sometimes rear ends and this screen would also be used for communication. Near the front of the bridge there were a few desk consoles and on an elevated platform in the very center of the room was the commander’s chair.
The Dominator II’s current commander was General En. En was from a race called the Neyn, a humanoid race that came from a planet covered almost entirely with water with only one landmass which they originated from. Due to them all coming from the same confined area of the planet the entire race shared the same pure white skin tone while other races that would be scattered across the surface of their home world would have some color variation. En was rather tall for her race, coming just under seven feet high. She was almost completely bald save for a an inch wide strip of black hair that went across the middle of her head and continued down the back in a long braid that extended all the way to the ground. She was dressed in the dark green uniform of her planet’s small military, which consisted of a sleeveless jacket with matching pants along with a pair of heavy black boots and thick black gloves. When she’d first heard about the Neyn military Twilight had questioned why a race that only consisted of one nation would need a military. She was told that there were a few other races living in their planet’s oceans and they engaged in war with them on a few occasions. Once they advanced to space travel and made interstellar contact they’d also need a military to defend against a possible alien invasion. Though the planet had yet to come under alien attack probably because of its limited amount of land, even the Bolkarn had left it alone, probably due to its limited amount of land.
General En herself took her position very seriously and Twilight had never seen her smile, she always had the same glaring frown plastered across her face. Sometimes it made Twilight feel uneasy when she was talking to her. She was also one of the few beings Twilight knew that didn’t bother using a translator headset. Instead she’d worked hard to learn all the different languages of the various species she had to work with. And for those languages she couldn’t speak, like the language of nVVe’s race, she’d just learn to understand it and hope that they’d have some way of understanding her. Right now she was talking to nVVe who was hovering a little way from her face, normally they’d stay relatively close to the floor if there was one.
Looking around the bridge Twilight spotted Rainbow Dash talking to one of the console operators, an equinoid that was slightly larger than a pony and with a pair of arms where a Pegasus’s wings would be. Rainbow Dash spotted Twilight and came bounding over to her. These days Rainbow Dash was keeping her mane slicked back so she could show off a long scar she now had across her forehead. Rainbow was rather proud of that scar and while Twilight understood why she wasn’t sure she’d want to show off something like that to everyone.
“Hey Twilight,” Rainbow said. “What’s up?”
“Oh nothing much, just felt like coming up here for some reason, something to do I guess.”
“I know, right. I just get so bored sometimes.”
“Well what do you normally do to stave off boredom?”
“Duh, go flying. But I can’t do that can I.”
“Well I guess it’s a good think we’re going back to Xentrill, plenty of time for you to go flying there.”
“Plenty of space too, I just feel so confined in this thing.”
Twilight had to agree with Rainbow; sure she couldn’t fly and would often spend a lot her time indoors studying but she did like to sometimes go outside for a walk or to just do some reading out in the open. Of course the environment on Xentrill wasn’t the same as back in Equestria but outside was still outside wherever you went.
“Speaking of Xentrill, I got a message from Fluttershy.”
“Awesome! What did she say?”
“Oh not much, she asked if we were both okay and said she’s looking forward to seeing us both again and she wishes we were going to be on Xentrill for more than a week.”
“So do I really.”
When returning to Xentrill a ship would remain there for a week to allow for maintenance and to give the crew a rest while its period out in space would last for at least a month. The only occasions when a ship would stay on Xentrill for more than a week would be if maintenance couldn’t be completed in that time.
Their conversation was interrupted with an announcement from the computer.
“Hyperspace jump in five minutes.”
“Thank you, computer,” General En said. Then she picked up a radio attached to her chair. “Engine room, standby for Hyperspace jump.”
While she’d been using her native language when speaking to nVVe this time she spoke in Universal, a language that had been invented specifically for aiding communication between species with the idea that it would be easier to learn this one language then to learn countless other languages. A sound idea though it hadn’t quite worked out as planned, Twilight had been trying to learn it but in about a year and a half of doing so hadn’t gotten very far.
“Well, I guess I’ll go and get some sleep,” Rainbow Dash said. “What about you?”
“I’m going to stay here a little longer; I want to have a word with General En.”
“Ok, see you when the lights are on.”
Rainbow Dash stepped into the elevator and nVVe followed her after the doors closed. Twilight heard a muffled “GAH! Would you please not do that!” before the elevator began to descend. Twilight decided to wait until the Hyperspace jump had been completed before talking to General En. The computer came to life once again and began a countdown until the Hyperspace jump. When the countdown reached zero the view of the stars through the window vanished and was instantly replaced by the swirling colors of Hyperspace. The first time Twilight had seen that happen she’d expected something a bit more spectacular, a flash of light maybe or perhaps a large hole would’ve opened in front of them which the ship would then have flown through, but instead all that happened was the ship would vanish and reappear in Hyperspace without any kind of special effect.
Ahead of them was a large black sphere. This was Xentrill, or to be more accurate the energy shield surrounding it to protect it from the ravages of Hyperspace. Xentrill was almost the same size as Pony-Earth only slightly smaller. The planet lacked any natural satellites or moons which was fortunate as they would’ve caused some trouble when the planet was shifted into Hyperspace. The shield itself was several times larger than the planet, the distance between the shield and Xentrill was about the same as between Pony-Earth and its moon to allow spaceships to orbit the planet inside the shield. The shield itself was projected from six generators that were suspended in orbit around the planet, five of them were simple large disks and the sixth was a ring which projected part of the shield into its center which could temporally be deactivated to allow a ship to pass through.
General En ordered the computer to establish contact with the planet and picked up her radio again.
“This is General En, commander of the Dominator II calling Xentrill control. Requesting passage through the Xentrill shield,” she said in Universal.
“Pass code?”
“There is no pass code.”
The pass code was one of the few phrases Twilight had managed to learn in Universal; of course she’d needed to since the pass code had to spoken in Universal to be accepted.
“Pass code confirmed, shield opening.”
“Thank you Xentrill control, signing off.”
As they drew closer the hole in the shield opened and the ship passed through it with the hole closing behind them. Up ahead of them was Xentrill itself. The planet’s surface consisted of two large landmasses with a few smaller ones dotted around the edges. When seen from space the landmasses mostly appeared to be grey or black thanks to the many cities that occupied it. The rest of the surface was covered in a pale green ocean. Orbiting around the planet was an artificial sun, about a fifth of the size of the planet. The Dominator II was currently on the planet’s night side.
Since they’d passed through the shield Twilight decided that now was the time to talk to the General.
“Good evening Captain Sparkle,” General En said, turning her chair round to face her when Twilight spoke up. “I was wondering when you were going to make your presence known.”
“Good evening Sir,” Twilight responded. “I received a few messages earlier that I thought I should relay to you, that is assuming you hadn’t received that information already.”
“Very well then, what did they say?”
Twilight quickly ran through the information she’d received, specifically the messages about the Sky Piercer and Bandraginus V.
“Hmm... I’d heard what happened to the Sky Piercer but this is the first I’ve heard about Bandraginus V,” General En said. “Do you have any theories about what may have happened to it?”
Twilight told the General about her Hyperspace theory but also pointed out why she thought the idea might be wrong.
“I see. How about this, they’re hiding it in Hyperspace but only because there’s something important about it that warrants it unlike all the other planets they’ve occupied and their home planet.”
“That does make sense sir; actually I’m surprised I didn’t think of that myself.”
General En turned back to facing the front of the bridge. “Put the ship in orbit, we’ll prepare to land once the next day period begins.” There was a “Yes sir” from one of the bridge crew in response. “Now Captain Sparkle I suggest you get some sleep.”
“Of course sir.”
General En gave command of the bridge to another crew member and stepped into the elevator with Twilight following her. General En’s quarters were almost directly below the bridge so she stepped out again almost immediately without a word to Twilight. Twilight carried on down as far as the elevator would go before heading to Elevator B. She didn’t encounter anyone else on her way back to her cabin and when she got there she just climbed into bed. She mentally went through everything she had to do the next day once they were on Xentrill. Then a thought struck her.
“Starswirl, next time I want to speak to Sergeant Heartstrings when she’s doing something... private, warn me,” she said. “In fact that goes for everybody else as well.”
“Acknowledged, Captain Sparkle.”