//------------------------------// // Chapter 35: Epilogue // Story: The Warp Core Conspiracy // by Unwhole Hole //------------------------------// “Captains log, stardate 2334.75. The Enterprise is currently departing the planet hereby identified as Equestria, a badly-damaged Klingon warbird in tow to be dropped into orbit in the nearest uninhabited star-system for future recovery. I am...unhappy to report that the diplomatic mission with the planet’s inhabitants was a failure. I am hereby assigning the planet a Class IV approach warning, designating it as a neutral but hostile warp-capable world on Federation border space. The inhabitants have requested that no aliens approach their orbit, and I intend to ensure that Starfleet honors those wishes. Additionally, an alien vessel denoted as of ‘Ferengi’ origin is expected to depart from the planet in the near-future, pending the service of its occupant in accordance with laws of the ntaive inhabitants. As for the fate of the unknown alien vessel denoted ‘Antigone IV’, its origin and, ultimately, destination remain unknown.” Kirk sighed and pressed the button to terminate the log. He leaned on his elbow, watching as the tiny dot of the planet receded into the distance of space. “Captain,” said M’Ress, rotating in her chair. “Permission to speak freely.” “Granted, Lieutenant.” “We are leaving the planet undefended. If the alien ship delivers news of the dilithium deposits, their forces will not stand the barest chance of defending their space. They arguably no longer even have warp technology.” “Which is all the more reason to leave them alone.” “Captain?” Kirk sat up, thinking for a moment. “I think it is clear that they are not ready to join the Federation. Not quite yet. Maybe not ever.” “But Captain,” said Chekov, “if they have produced warp technology, and first-contact made, then it is not relevant that they no longer produce such a reactor. They are still denoted as warp-capable.” Kirk shook his head. “No, Ensign. I think that, maybe, Rarity was right. At least partially. That warp technology alone isn’t the only qualifier for joining the galactic stage. That there are other features to consider.” “Or that they fail to accept the reality of the situation,” noted Spock, looking up from his instruments. “I find their idealism highly illogical. The social construct by which they approach life is simply incompatible with the actual, empirical nature of the galaxy.” “Maybe it is, Spock. Maybe it is.” Kirk paused. “But is it really their fault?” Spock raised an eyebrow. “Captain?” “Maybe it’s the other way around. Not that they can’t accept our way of life, but that we’re not ready to accept theirs.” “Universal peace,” said Uhura. “A galaxy where war and murder are just abstract, empty threats. It sounds nice, doesn’t it?” “I believe that it sounds untenable and unrealistic,” countered Spock. “Maybe,” said Kirk. “And maybe not. Who knows. Maybe someday we’ll grow enough as a people to come back here. Maybe when we’re ready, we can return, and she’ll be waiting for us then.” He watched the planet vanish in the distance, back into the starry blackness of the galaxy. “Maybe there’s something we can learn from them. A kind of...innocence. And I think we’ll get there, eventually. It just might take a long, long time.” From a small vent in the rear of the bridge, Lyra could not help but agree. It was night. The world had become dark, lit only by Luna’s moon. It was a brilliant crescent high above the tops of the ragged, contorted trees, the darkness of its far side lit by the dim lights of the lunar colonies. Celestia looked upward, staring at it through a hole in the ceiling, and passed out of its light and further into the darkness of the ancient castle. Her hooves tapped on the weathered, overgrown stones that had once been so clean and beautiful. Before, in her own rage, she had leveled it all. The ancient castle, where she and her sister had ruled as children, built far away from the pony civilizations that they chose to ignore. A sanctuary of peace and sisterhood hidden deep in the wilds of the Everfree Forest, the untamed land that had been their playground as fillies. Although it was older. Or it had been. The memories had faded, and Celestia could not recall them all. Of strange ruins so very different from the ones she now walked, built with strange curves and stranger architecture, crumbling in a way that was somehow disturbingly unnatural. As if they were neither stone nor metal, nor any substance that she had known the name of. But she supposed it was an aspect of her ancient nightmares. Nightmares that had recently returned, despite her sister’s best efforts. Of a crying man grasping the ash of his dead brother, of ponies tortured in tanks, and of the expressionless face of a man she thought she had loved as he callously pulled the trigger of his laser-gun. She could not sleep. So she wandered. Alone, because that was all she ever could be. Luna had returned to the moon, Cadence to her hole, and Shining Armor to his hive. She had no one left to speak to—save for one. Waiting on what she now understood to be her royal duty to make the hardest decision she had ever made. She entered a large room, the arches of the ceiling crumbling to dust but the stone table beneath it still largely intact. A table where she had once held meetings with great warlords and wizards of untold power, and where she and Luna had played Parcheesi every Thursday afternoon. A table that was now cracked and dusty, populated only with anemic vines crossing it in almost pure darkness. In a shattered piece of glass, perhaps a remnant of a window or a shattered goblet, she saw herself. A reflection of what she had become. The color had returned to her mane, but not completely. The edges still remained vibrant orange--and her eyes still held a strange grayness around pupils that, sometimes, when her day was brighest, narrowed into thin slits. Celestia paused, looking around the room and seeing nothing. She waited, but upon finding nothing, turned to leave—only to stop as she approached the threshold of the door. She heard a strange sound, not quite a hiss or a pop but something like a deep and terrible growl. Then she smelled it. The sickly-sweet smell of tachyons with a strange and ominous spicy undertone, the scent of the concentrated dark-matter that only the most depraved of wizards had ever managed to concentrate. She turned back to the darkness to see a pair of luminescent blue eyes staring back at her. A shiver rain down her spine, and she lit her horn to drive away both the darkness and her sudden unease. Her glow illuminated a pony seated at the far side of the table. She was strange, but in a way that Celestia could not quite describe. She was an earth-pony of exactly normal size, her coat perfectly white and her mane long, silky, and blond. Her eyes were enormous and blue, with a pattern of complexity that Celestia had never really seen in any other pony. The clothing the pony wore was simple, a kind of thin, formalized armor adorned with crimson and violet. Her cutie mark was not visible from where she was seated, but Celestia had seen it before. An image that had no meaning to her, a stylized depiction of flower heads surrounded by a ring of horns. None of these things alone were explicitly odd. But somehow the presence of all of them at once made Celestia uneasy. The way the pony seemed to stare both into her and at nothing at all, the way her motions were not exactly at the right speed. Either too slow and deliberate or far too quick and sudden, like an enormous skittering insect. And, as Celestia watched, only the pony’s eyes moved, twisting to face her. “I had warned you,” she said. Her voice was soft and melodic to the point of being excessively beautiful. Celestia sighed and approached the other side of the ancient stone table—but did not sit. “That you did.” The pony tilted her head slightly. “And the situation, then?” “They had them in...in tubes. We..are still trying to get them out. But progress is being made." She paused. "But if we do...their magic. It's gone. And their bodies are sick in ways we can’t fix. Some worse than others. One was...one was a little girl...” “And your student?” Celestia lowered her head. “She refuses to speak to me. She’s been traumatized. She panics if she’s near ponies other than Moondancer. She’ll never use magic again...and might never have a friend.” “Apart from Moondancer.” Celestia sighed. “I know.” “At least they have each other.” “But if it had gone so differently...” “Some individuals have proposed that outside the mathematical constraints of a single universe, there are many. An infinite multiverse. So perhaps there is a different version of her that had a much less horrific life.” “Perhaps. But my Twilight is in so much pain, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Celestia paced to the far side of the table, looking up at the tattered remains of a banner depicting a version of her and her sister. A banner made before the ancient wars, and before Luna had been banished to the moon. “And the others. Rainbow Dash...the damage. I can't fix it." "Was my schematic for the implant inadequate?" Celestia paused. "No...but the damage to her spine...it's too severe. She'll never fly again. I hope only that she can get used to being an earth-pony now." "Really? I had assumed I left instructions on how to replace the spine as well. Although not being allowed to dedicate my own doctors to the procedure may have indeed left damage that even we cannot repair." "And Rarity...poor Rarity...” “A fatality?” “No,” snapped Celestia. “We saved her, but...barely. The scarring was...severe. She’s retreated from public life. I don’t even know where she is anymore. Nopony does.” “At least you managed to save one.” “I didn’t do anything. It was the hologram that they left behind. That was the only way she made it through. If it hadn’t been for that...” Celestia shivered. The situation could have ended so much more badly.” She hesitated, not sure how much to say. "Right now, it's working with the alien. Trying to save them." She shook her head. "But the others...I don't think they can be fixed." "Others?" "The ponies in my guard and Luna's that saw...what happened. It will take years, even lifetimes of therapy and support to even start. But they can't unseen it. Even now, Luna's trying to drive back the nightmares, to give them some peace...but it's affecting her too. She won't admit it, but I'm her sister. I can tell." "I am admittedly only familiar with the most rudimentary perspective of what occurred. Was not the slain criminal the one who disfigured your student? Forgive me, I suppose, but would you not feel justified in his execution?" Celestia shook her head, angry and confused. "He...he hurt her. And I'm so, so angry. At him, for doing it, and at me, for letting this happen when I should have stopped it. I...I hate him. I hated him then. I hated him so much and myself so much more. Every time I think of what they did, what I let happen--" She clenched her suddenly fanged teeth, feeling the heat of the rage spreading while the white pony watched on, impassive and amused. She gained control, though, and took a deep breath. "But then he was still a person. I can still hear his brother crying. That man will never hug his mother again. He might have had friends...children. That there might be orphans who will never see their father again and never know what happened to him. He was cornered, afraid, and he lashed out. He took everything from Twilight...but that doesn't justify taking everything from him. Not like that." She looked down at herself. At the changes she could not force away. "When I am...her, it takes everything I have to hold her back. To reign her in. Every ounce of my willpower to keep her controlled as best I can. To keep her from hurting ponies and people. And he...he just pulled the trigger. Like it was nothing." "I am assuming you were in danger." "I could have survived." "But were you willing to take the chance? To allow this planet to lose its Princess and fall to chaos so that the man who tortured your adopted daughter might survive?" Celestia was silent for a long. She hated the thought of it. The failure she found herself facing. Ultimately, the reason she had driven Kirk away. The reason why she now stood before this pony, still stalling at doing what she knew needed to be done. " I built this world so that decisions like that would never need to be made. And it must remain that way. At all costs." The pony seemed completely unperturbed by the sight before her. “And yet that has occurred. It seems that the political status of this world has reverted to the status quo.” “It...has. For now. But now we know enough to see how bad that really is...and how bad it will get.” “My offer still stands, as it always did. The Federation is a barely legitimate confederacy of warlords constantly plotting new ways to fight new wars. Against Klingons, or Romulans, or the Borg and Dominion when they get here. Whereas the Alliance is committed to much more benevolent goals.” “Like...what?” The pony’s mechanical pupils dilated, and a smile crossed her face. “The empirical truth of limitless economic prosperity. And through it, absolute peace and unity throughout the universe.” She pressed her front hooves together on the table. “Furthermore, we do not build ships out of ponies. Our process for achieving faster-than-light travel is much more human.” “‘Humane’. You mean ‘humane’.” The smile grew. “I am glad you agree, Celestia.” “And I suppose you’re after the dilithium too.” “Of course not. Dilithium is for primitive idiots who use antimatter for fuel. Nor do we require the element zero. Our core assembly procedures are quite efficient. A recent mining operation on the planet Thessia has yielded a substantial quantity within a region of space that formerly contained a highly violent and treacherous society that now has a homeworld totally lacking warfare in the slightest. Because, I have said. The Alliance is committed wholly to bringing peace as often as we can.” Her head tilted, but only slightly. "Unlike those aliens that did such terrible things to your citizens." “Then...what do you want?” “What do I want? What a question. I have ruminated on it for nearly one thousand years. On a personal level, to be less bored by my eternal existence. On a broader term, the evolution of my species. In terms of this project? This.” She extended a hoof, filling the room with a disturbing red light as a hologram was cast over it. A depiction of a device Celestia could almost not understand, but one that she understood was massive. A machine with two vast extensions, something that she suppose might be a starship—or something similar. “What is it?” “A transdimensional mass relay. We will require your people’s assistance in building it, and some of your resources. Ours are unfortunately limited by dangerous aliens that wish to constrain the prosperity and industrial development we bring to our own universe.” Celestia looked at her, attempting to see the barest glint of emotion. There was only an impression of bored joy. "Do you think I'm stupid? "Not especially. Or else I would not be here, would I?" Celestia gestured to the hologram. "I know what that is. What's at the center. This machine, it's powered by a Necroforge." "This is correct. And the fundamental reason for my request. At present, interdimensional travel is nearly impossible. It is only achievable by extremely rare and powerful machines." "And you." "And myself, yes. Only a very small vanguard can pass through at once. But with this, our universes will be connected without limit. The ability for us to summon a literally unlimited number of vessels, should they be required." "And why would we 'require' them?" “So that when danger comes, you can call forth the full force of my fleet. For the defense of Equestria from any conceivable threat. Our time insertion into this universe was planned to make us superior. For now. No threat will dare to approach your world." "But at what cost?" The white pony's eyes narrowed. "At the cost of actions you will never need to see. Never need to even consider." "I mean, what's in it for you?" She smiled. "So that we can gain a foothold in this galaxy, to continue our economic progress here in addition to at home. However, I cannot acheive this from my end. The Necroforge must be ignited on this side. The only being capable of opening the door to let us in is you." "I know." "And of cousre, our actions will be limited to distant worlds. I do not intend to interfere with your world, and I give you my word that Equestria will not be touched without your personal permission.” “Because they will come, won’t they?” The pony nodded. “I think so. But I cannot guarantee it. But this is your decision. Space has bored us. Bored me. The multiverse beckons. There are so many new ways to find our evolution. And you have seen it with your own eyes. The aliens will betray you. They will exploit you. You, and all you hold dear." Celestia faultered. "I need to discuss this with the Council." "And I, like you, am not a fool. The Council is a toy you created to give others a sense that they have any consequential meaning on your planet. But the decision to protect all the little ponies ultimately comes down to you. This is not a matter of politics. This is an agreement between two equals. From one goddess to another." "I know." "Look at me. I am most certainly a pony. You can trust me. Open the door, and we will ask nothing more in return.” Celestia stared at her. She took a deep breath. “You are no pony. But I don’t suppose I actually have a choice anymore, do I?” Celestia extended her hoof. Babylon extended her own, tapping it, and the deal was sealed. Celestia shivered, wondering why her hoof felt so very cold.