CHAPTER VIII
If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Oh my God this pink thing is fucking brilliant. Alien species with superior technology lands in your back yard? Give them a cupcake, then suicide glitter bomb them. I’m still chuckling as I get up and start brushing the worst of the colourful paper crap off my suit, flicking through open radio channels currently on fire with the chatter of spectating crew members commenting on the live video feeds of the first meeting. The general intra-crew channel is useless for any meaningful communication, courtesy of a certain two idiots cackling so hard they can hardly speak.
“—and then, and then... It bite handle—” Kolya bursts into screaming laughter again, never finishing his sentence.
“Ka-boom!” Sasha roars into the net before breaking down into incoherence.
Click. ‘CREW2’
“—either mad as a scavenger, or it has pink cojones the size of a—”
Click. ‘SCI1’
“—psychology, gift-giving seems to serve a similar societal function, but they can’t have any natural predators or how else can you rationally explain—”
Click. ‘TAC1’
“—I swear to God, I had my finger on the trigger, cross hairs on that suicidal pink thing—”
Click. ‘OBSRV’
“Ace.”
“Yeah?”
“Send someone down with a holo-projection table. I think we’re ready to negotiate.”
*
“Sun and moon, I thought I’d seen every crazy stunt possible in basic training.”
“I’m still not sure that my heart didn’t stop when she bit that trigger.”
The sergeants shake their heads in unison, Plate Mail removing his helmet and running a hoof through his sweaty mane.
“Eh, what’d I say? Pinkie’ll pull through.”
“Okay, girls. Nothing to do but get in there. Come on.”
“Yes, too late for a proper introduction now, I guess. Let’s hope we can show them that some of us can behave with class.”
“Don’t be such a stick in th’ mud, Rarity. Ah think Pinkie made a plenty good first impression, judgin’ by the reaction’ of that important-lookin’ one.”
“But something terrible could’ve happened!”
“But it didn’t, and now we don’t have ta break the ice.”
“Well, that may be, but—”
“Girls, focus! This is no time to be bickering.”
“Ladies.”
“Yes, sergeant?”
“...good luck.”
“Thank you.”
Resolutely leaving the formation of guardsponies, five remaining element-bearers trot across the intervening distance, the bipeds turning to observe the newcomers. Twilight steps up to the leader, peering into its flat face through the transparent visor. A small pair of amber eyes looks back. She nervously clears her throat.
“Hello. I don’t presume you’ll understand me, but... my name is Twilight Sparkle.”
She points at herself, carefully repeating her name, before fully extending a foreleg. The tall alien seems to understand her intention, trying to emulate the unicorn’s self-introduction and doing a horrible mess of mimicking it, but catching the basic rhythm of the name. Pointing at itself, the visitor lets out a short barking sound, before grabbing the extended forelimb with it’s dexterous fingers. The movement appears oddly familiar, although the weird way of grabbing the extended foreleg feels strange to Twilight. The creature lets go of her hoof after a brief squeeze, straightening up and partially turning back towards the ship.
“Hey look, they’re bringing something down,” exclaims Rainbow Dash, bringing the group’s attention to two bipeds ponderously lugging a large piece of furniture between them.
“It’s... a table?”
“My, I guess they do have some manners, after all.”
“That looks awful heavy...”
Thoughtfully rubbing her chin with a hoof, Twilight grounds herself and concentrates, a light glow enveloping her horn, the luminescence quickly spreading to the table. To a yelp of surprise from the two carriers, the heavy table levitates into the air and smoothly glides to land between the two negotiating parties. With an accomplished look, Twilight turns back to the leader.
Said leader is staring at her with an expression which the unicorn would almost call astonished. Feeling her smile wane she turns to her friends for support, finding only similar confusion.
“They seem a little... surprised,” Rarity offers.
“How could they be? They obviously have powerful magic at their disposal! The sergeant said they utilized levitating transports earlier!”
“Ah guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
*
“Did I just— did that horse just generate a flux pin field? Or did someone spike my coffee with acid?”
“How the fuck? It doesn’t have any equipment! Are you telling me that horn the size of a flashlight can create quantum levitation at a distance of over ten meters? Fuck you, it’d have to run on fusion power for that.”
“Stop mewling, bitches, this is amazing! Get me sensors on that creature! We’re all going to be rich and famous!”
“Way ahead of you, sister.”
I’d say the scientists are pretty excited, considering how their language only veers into the vulgar when they get their hands on something really juicy. Julianne is almost climbing over the table in her hurry to get to the horned creature, wildly gesturing with a pen she pulled out of some god-forgotten pocket or another. The unicorn backpedals in obvious distress, apparently never having stood on the receiving end of a rampant scientist on the hunt for new knowledge.
“Ma’am, if I may, I think it’s about time to get to the business at hand,” Xavier remarks through a private line. I nod in agreement. This has been fun, but we have a lot of work to do, and the first step is to establish a line of communication to the natives. I loudly clear my throat over the speakers.
“Julianne. You’ll get to study the ponies all you want later, but right now you’re just slowing proceedings down.”
With a guilty start, the head of science on board turns back to our side of the table with a sheepish smile. Wistfully tearing herself away from the levitating pen, having finally gotten the unicorn to understand her wishes, she trudges back to her original position with a sigh and contents herself with casting longing stares at the other party.
The six ponies—decided, I’m going to call them ponies, they’re too small to be horses—gather on the opposite side of the table, heads barely reaching over the rim. Right, tiny quadrupeds. How rude.
I key two spots on the table, legs whirring softly as they contract, lowering the top of the piece of furniture to a more miniature equine-friendly height. The ponies sit down, except for the lavender one. She levitates a book out of its bags—damn, that is a cool power—rifling through the pages and flipping the book around on the table after finding the page it’s looking for. I lean over.
It’s a picture of a highly stylized unicorn and a... gryphon. You know, half eagle, half lion, all fairytale.
Hey, no formal education doesn’t mean I can’t be well-read.
On the page the two creatures of myth are apparently talking, illegible but clearly different lettering flowing out of their mouths—or beaks, in one case—interweaving in the middle of the page and continuing to the other party in the script they’re using. The whole picture looks like a holo-animation artist trying to emulate ancient heraldic designs, but the intent is clear. I glance at Xavier.
“Bypassing the fact that there we’ve stumbled upon a whole plethora of non-existent mythological creatures—”
I stop to rub my forehead, quickly realising the damn helmet is hindering my efforts.
“—right, negotiating with an unicorn, never mind. Anyway, bypassing the gryphon for a second, this looks like translation to me. What do you think?”
“Ma’am, if I hadn’t just seen that purple thing just do what it did, I wouldn’t hesitate a second. As it is, I request permission to be the test subject.”
“Your dedication to duty is admirable, you stuffy old man, but you’d have me put another of my crew in harm’s way to protect myself? Fuck you.”
Expression mostly hidden by the face mask, he smiles at me with his eyes, a rare gesture of warmth from the severe old man.
“...and that attitude is why this crew would follow you through the fires of hell and back. But no. First mates are expendable. Captains are not.”
I try to stare him down for a long while. It doesn’t work.
Never does.
“Fine. But carefully.”
“Of course, captain.”
“Don’t— just get on with it.”
Xavier steps forward, gesturing at the unicorn.
*
“Ah think they understood wha’cha want, Twi’,” Applejack comments as the black-clad one points at first itself, then Twilight’s horn.
“Um, I’m not sure they really know what you’re going to do,” pipes a quiet voice from behind the group.
“What makes you say that, Fluttershy?”
The timid pegasus peeks out from behind the assembled group, gaze flickering over the glassy-eyed alien before skittering to the ground.
“Um, it’s the... body language of the large black one. It looked a little like a bear... with a cub. I think it’s unsure of what’s going on, but doesn’t want the other one to be in danger, um, or so I think...”
“But it’s just a translation geas,” Twilight huffs in exasperation, “how can they understand divination and world-walking magic but be amazed by the simplest of unicorn spells?”
“Well, the princess said it herself, Twi, they’re not from around these parts. Now Ah know precious li’l of unicorn magic, but maybe them’s just got other kinds’a spells back home?”
“I know,” sighs Twilight, “but it’s just so... Augh! Okay, let’s just do this.”
Turning to the tall volunteer on the side of the table, Twilight’s horn lights up as the dull glow of the magic spell appears in mid-air and moves to envelop the tensed alien. After completely surrounding the nervously waiting bipedal creature, the purple light gently flows in to touch it.
The translucent immediately mist freezes in the air, like a movie reel stopping in the space of one frame. Twilight’s eyes widen as invisible spikes of power forcibly deform the spell, the colour of the cloud violently flickering into blue as the light on her horn flickers like a candle flame.
With the sound of glass cracking, the magic winks out of reality, both spellcaster and target stumbling back from each other with a yelp, as if pushed apart by a great wind.
“Twilight! What happened? Are you all right?”
“Let me see,” commands Fluttershy sharply, pushing herself to the front of the group and rapidly inspecting Twilight for any obvious wounds. The lavender unicorn is taking short, shallow breaths, still wide-eyed in the aftermath the sudden magical surge.
“I... I don’t know. There was some kind of violent counter-magic...”
“Hey! You! What did you do to her!”
Rainbow Dash defiantly interposes herself between the two groups, wings flared in an aggressive crouch. By the side, the guardsponies are moving restlessly. Sergeant Gale glides over to the group, coming down next to Twilight.
“Miss Sparkle? Were you attacked?”
With a start, Twilight sits up, pushing away the ponies milling around her and grabbing a hold of Rainbow’s tail with her magic.
“Stop, everypony! It wasn’t on purpose!”
“What? But darling—”
“Look! They’re just as confused as we are.”
The other ponies turn their heads towards the opposing group, the intended recipient of the translation spell unsteadily leaning against the low table in an awkward crouch, the other two going it over with worried movements.
The two groups look at each other, apparently coming to the same conclusions.
“If it wasn’t intentional, then what in Equestria...?”
“I think it was a war ward.”
“A ward?”
“Yes, a very powerful automatic defence against offensive magic.”
“But you weren’t attacking them!”
“I know, but the translation spell still requires a certain attunement to the recipient’s thoughts. The ward was probably designed to hurt anyone attempting a distraction or brainwashing spell.”
Twilight shakes her head again, both in frustration and to clear the final vestiges of vertigo from her mind.
“Dangerous defences like those haven’t been used in Equestria for... at least centuries! Princess Celestia won’t allow wards which could hurt anypony who would stumble across them, so I’ve only seen them in theory. I was careless.”
“So it was a mistake. What now?”
“I don’t know. Let’s see if they have any ideas.”
*
“Oi, Xavier! What the fuck happened?”
“I... don’t know. There was something... strange, like a pressure in my head, then my visuals went all distorted to hell. I though I was going to faint.”
“Maybe I can answer that, Eris,” a familiar voice pops unto our semi-private channel.
“Tito? Talk to me.”
“Well, just as that... gas touched señor d’Havillande, every electronic warfare countermeasure alarm in engineering went apeshit. Ol’ Methuselah’s ECM scripts kicked in and blasted every I/O port in his suit, hence the distortions of visuals.“
“So he’s going to be okay?”
“Sure, just some nausea from random electric overspill to his brain.”
Yeah, sounds healthy.
I stand in thought for a second, looking at the visibly bewildered ponies. One of them is looking ready to fight me hand-to-hand. Hand-to-hoof? But hey, protecting your friend from an alien twice your size, and unarmed? I like the style of these equines more and more for every minute.
Okay, easy there, little pony. I’m not dangerous, see? I don’t want to fight you.
“So... what you’re saying—and do correct me if I’m wrong—if I’m not totally ignorant of the finer nuances of condensed matter physics... is that the purple pony with a magical horn on it just interfaced with the data cloud of the Trickster. With her head.”
“Eh, seems to be the only reasonable explanation,” Tito answers, without a care in the world. I can almost see him shrug and reach for the volume slider of his faux-antique music player.
“Tito.”
“Mm-h?”
“Get your ass down here.”
“...I knew I shouldn’t have called it in.”
I kick him off the channel, quickly blocking off a couple of other feeds as well. The thought of what must be going on in the science team’s channel makes me shudder.
Xavier recovers quickly—tough as old leather, that one—and we hang back waiting for Tito to get down. Julianne is facing the craft, hands imperceptibly twitching as she sifts through hundreds of screens of raw data, filtering and sorting. Our counterparts are deep in animated discussion, the rainbow-haired one still casting sour glances in my direction.
Maybe they’re mates or something.
Now that I’m on that train of thought, even the winged ones seem a bit scrawnier than the ones I saw earlier. Since Grumpy is still hanging around after Xavier’s little wireless connection with the unicorn, I can get a good comparison, and yep: Grumpy’s bigger. That makes the colourful ones male, right? No, wait, that usually doesn’t apply to most mammals. Are they mammals? Female it is. Are all the males monochrome, I wonder?
There’s an easy way to find out, really, but my scientific curiosity doesn’t carry me far enough to ogle other species. Besides, there’s an even easier method available.
“Julianne.”
“What is it n— I mean, yes, er... sorry, what is it?”
“What gender are they?”
She blinks at me a few times.
“The six with crazy colouring are female, mister centurion back there is male. The soldiers are a mixed group.”
“Right, and you found this out by...?”
Julianne grins at me in a way I most certainly do not want to explore any further.
“Want to see the bioscans?”
“Thanks, I’m fine.”
Two genders, then, like us. My idle musings on the role of gender in pony society is interrupted by a flash of orange escaping the airlock, followed by our fourth human sauntering down the exit ramp. Tito waves at me as he approaches and gives a formal nod to Xavier.
“Hey, Eris. Señor d’Havillande. Juliette... who is not listening at all, I see. Ah well. What did you need me for?”
“Plug me in, we’re setting up a separate, unprotected data space to see if we can use that as an interface.”
“And you couldn’t do with me on the ship, because...?”
“You’re faster than me—”
“That is true.”
“—and you need to get out more,” I finish with a grin. Tito groans as he conjures a shared data manipulation interface from thin air.
“You are an evil, evil woman, Eris.”
“I know. Get on with it.”
I wouldn’t admit it, but I also like to watch Tito do his magic. He’s worked with the Trickster a long time, and he knows the computer systems on the ship inside and out, so his manipulation of the oceans of data stored on the data banks comes close to true artistry. He learned from the best, of course, but since Old Methuselah went into semi-retirement Tito’s been the head authority of engineering, and he does his job well.
The fact that he’s got a great ass doesn’t bother me at all, either. Only two things keeping me from laying my grubby hands on him are: a, that we grew up together, so we’re practically siblings, which makes the whole prospect kind of icky; and b, that he’s gayer than a shipful of refugees from the Holy Will Enclave.
Oh well, I can at least have an aesthetic appreciation, can’t I?
Looking to all the world as a fairytale sorcerer weaving his spells, sans pointy hat and cape, my chief engineer begins his work. Waving his hands in precise gestures and muttering barely voiced commands, I stand back and enjoy the show of coloured grids, flitting swarms of information infrastructure and network modules appearing, disappearing or mutating in bright flashes, the whole process displayed on my visor with laser precision. It’s like watching a house form out of nothing, walls and subsections of wildly increasing complexity bursting over wire-frame partitions and spheres. The whole process takes but a few minutes, testament to Tito’s incredible skill with the medium.
I mean, wow. I would’ve worked on that for hours.
I notice the two unicorns opposite tilting their heads to Tito, as if listening to a barely audible sound, their friend’s eyes flitting between the madly dancing human and their friends. Except for the crazy pink one. She’s groovin’ with Tito. Really well, too.
The horned ones can sense him work! That’s good, maybe this plan will bear fruit yet. I notice Xavier standing next to me, also observing the creative process.
“You’ll try to form a safe environment to communicate in? Clever.”
“Let’s hope it works. And I don’t know how much good it will do if she got too scared to try again.”
“She?”
“I asked Jo. They’re female.”
“Right. Well, let’s hope for the best.”
“Yeah.”
*
“What the hay is that one doing?”
“Dancing, Ah think. Or, at least Pinkie seems ta think so.”
The five ponies by the table watch the strange weaving and bobbing movements of the biped in silence for a while, the odd, sweeping gestures combining surprisingly well with Pinkie’s soundless disco moves.
“It’s... casting a spell, I think,” Twilight comments after a while.
“Yes, I can feel it as well,” notes Rarity.
“Tha’s a mighty strange way ta be about it.”
“Actually, Zecora told me that some Zebrican magicians do a kind of casting through dance.”
“But what is it doing, exactly?”
“I don’t know, but it’s fairly powerful. Maybe it’s trying their version of a translation spell?”
“Seems it’s done.”
Offering a polite bow to Pinkie, the new human turns to gesture to something invisible while talking to the leader, who nods and turns to face the low table. In response to a gesture over the tabletop, the central flower-like pattern splits into separate pieces disappearing quietly to the sides, revealing two multi-faceted spheres of dark glass. The spinning objects glimmer in the sunlight as they glide up from the table with a hum.
Lights flickers as the glass globes emit multiple, intersecting beams of light, the barely visible lines fanning out into a prismatic spray and quickly dimming into obscurity in the sharp glare of the sun. As the individual beams grow invisible, however, images coalesce from thin air, two large, red circles forming out of multi-hued static and flashing to hover over both the dancing magician and the leader. Both bipeds tilt their heads to see the circles, before bringing both front appendages together in a twisting gesture, as if turning keys against the flat palms of their hands. The circles flash to green.
Two empty, red circles similarly fizz into being between the two groups. The dancing magician expectantly gesticulates at both Rarity and Twilight, before pointing to the floating rings.
Rainbow Dash hovers up to the nearest circle, suspiciously poking it with a hoof. Her hoof slips through the image without resistance, cutting through the projection where her shadow blocks the beams of the glass spheres.
“This is some weeeird magic, Twilight. Are you sure about this?” the pegasus mutters.
Twilight hesitates for a moment, then steels herself and steps up to the closest ring.
“I think you have to be an unicorn for it to work. And there’s only one way to find out if it works.”
Squeezing her eyes together, Twilight carefully extends her magic towards the glowing red circle, staring down at the unicorn like a large, baleful eye. Carefully probing, she at first feels nothing.
A light pressure washes against her extended senses, like a warm mist wafting over her face. The mist seems to coil around her magic, then abruptly stop and reverse a tiny fraction, adjusting itself to her wavelength. There’s a wholesome feeling of matching components latching together: a tiny mental ‘click’.
HELLO
The sudden sensation startles Twilight. It’s not a language, not even a proper sound, but the intent is clear: a greeting. The series of non-speech continues with a series of clear concepts.
GUEST
IDENTIFY
[TWILIGHT SPARKLE]
The last bit isn’t even her name, just a kind of image of her own magic fed back to her horn. Through closed eyelids she sees the red ambiance switch to a light green.
The process seemingly over, Twilight breathes out a sigh of relief and opens her eyes. She recoils with a gasp, her friends immediately swarming around her.
“Twilight!”
“Twi, is it another ward?”
Twilight waves the other ponies away, her eyes darting about, focused on something beyond the green circle of light.
“No, no. It’s okay, girls. It’s not a ward. Rarity... you might want to see this. My goodness.”
Looks mixed with relief and curiosity now turn to Rarity, the white unicorn looking at the final red icon and swallowing nervously.
“Well, if you’re absolutely certain it’s safe...”
With a sky blue glow, Rarity gingerly touches the immaterial symbol with her magic. With a slight wince as the connection identifies her horn and adjusts itself, she watches the fourth hologram flick into a matching colour with the other ones.
Rarity raises a hoof to her mouth as the link opens and data begins pouring through.
“Oh, my.”
*