//------------------------------// // Evacuation // Story: First Contact // by RayneBowDash //------------------------------// Marco Hernandez awoke with a ZAP as the defibrillation pads on his chest delivered a massive shock to his cardiovascular system. >>Revival procedure complete. It took a second for him to open his eyes, which he instantly regretted. Smoke filled his vision, and he barely made it out of his tube before he began heaving sickeningly as he tried, and failed, to stabilize himself by the railings next to his tube. Instead he doubled over and wretched, half-kneeling on the floor, trying desperately to recover. The first thing that stood out to him was the gravity. He wasn’t in weightlessness, as he had expected to wake up in. Instead, he was being pulled to the floor at what he estimated to be about two thirds of earth’s gravitational pull. The next thing he noticed was just how opaque the air outside his tube was. It was impossible to make out distinct shapes past the crew cabin, and lights were flashing along the walls, guiding the him towards the exits of the ship. And then it hit him. They must have crashed, seeing as the ship recognized that the safest place for him to be was outside (hence the guidance lights). The air was filled with smoke, but Marco still opened his eyes to see if his fellow crewmates were awake. 6 of the 7 other tubes were empty, and the last one showed no signs of opening to let its prisoner out. Assuming that the rest had already made it to safety, and wondering why they hadn’t woken the poor guy next to him, Marco manually initiated the defrosting procedure on his crewmate’s tube before fleeing the crew cabin. He would have stayed and helped the kid to safety, but the smoke was clogging his lungs and he could tell that he wouldn’t survive the 20 minutes it would take for the tube to revive him. Marco’s eyes hurt. That was an understatement. He would have been fine with the heat surrounding him, or the lack of oxygen as the smoke gummed up his lungs. But the pain in his eyes was unbearable. He screamed as he ran, climbing up sideways hallways and opening his eyes to slits so he could follow the pulsing lights that would lead him to an exit. Turning a corner, he spotted a blurry figure wearing a gas mask and completely covered in a yellow hazmat suit. “Help me! Get me out of here!” He cried, only to realize that the figure wasn’t human. For one, it was extremely short. It barely reached above his waist, and Marco wasn’t a really tall guy. Second, it was distinctly quadrupedal, standing on four latex-covered legs, its head balanced upon a neck far longer than any human’s. Most importantly, the silhouette didn’t react like he had expected it to. Marco had been trained over many years to know that emergency personnel would save anyone, no matter who or what, in any circumstance, no matter how dangerous, as long as there was a small chance that they could make it out alive. Hell, he was an emergency personnel, he knew he would have. But the figure looked less concerned or helpful than frightened. It backed off a few feet before nervously looking behind it, where Marco spotted a few more of the creatures. To Marco’s horror, however, he noticed that they were holding... Hacksaws, crowbars, and hammers. Fleeing, he dashed toward the exit, opened it with a grunt, and dived out, hitting the floor 20 feet below and dissipating the impact with a forward roll. Looking back at the burning wreckage, Marco wished his still-trapped crewmate luck before assessing his surroundings. They appeared to have crashed in a forest, although the trees unlucky enough to be in the obvious path of the ship were either smouldering or completely obliterated; charred and splintered wood littered the landscape. The trees surrounding the crash site farther away were bent away from the ship, making it painfully obvious that the vessel had crashed with a massive amount of speed, causing the trees to become partially uprooted with only the kinetic energy dispersed by the ship’s impact. Looking around, Marco noticed that still more of the quadrupedal creatures that had been inside the craft were surrounding the place; and more worrying still some of them had spotted him and were alerting the others. Marco began to flee into the forest, sprinting for his life as an army of spear-holding possibly-canids chased him, close on his heels. He didn’t make it far, though, before he was tackled to the ground by a winged variant he hadn’t spotted before. Grunting, he threw the creature off of him and began to get up. It was for naught, though, as he was completely surrounded. He stood up, feeling the extra strain his muscles had to exert due to their atrophie, and turned toward the creatures. Before he could get a word out, however, two more of the flying variant had grabbed him by the arms and lifted him off the ground, carrying him toward a large wooden cart carried by more of the winged things. Marco screamed, struggling for freedom as he was lifted into the air. He had never been afraid of heights, but the sudden view of the ground rushing away from him was enough to make anyone scared. His thrashings caused the creatures holding him to wobble, before one hit him on the head with the butt of its spear. Defeated, Marco was dumped into the carriage and instantly secured by a number of wingless creatures, who held him down before a smaller version with a single menacing horn on its head but without the gold linings on its coat, approached him with its horn glowing. Marco struggled against his captors, but realized he couldn’t move as his limbs slowly became numb. What’s happening to me? What are these things? Where are we? He thought, as he slowly drifted back into the dark abyss of sleep. ***** Tough Runner had been working on the ship for a solid 12 minutes. Add that to the time it had taken them to reach the crash site and begin cutting away the ridiculously strong metal that made up the outside the of the ship, and the crash site was around 23 minutes old. He had to hurry if they were going to rescue whatever alien technology lay inside. Or... What if there were actually still aliens inside? He pushed the thought out of his mind. He didn’t want to consider it; the prospect of entering an unknown ship was already terrifying enough. Finally, the metal yielded, and smoke poured out of the rough hole they had just created. Fastening his gas mask, Runner stepped into the burning ship, looking around him as he did so. The walls were made entirely of metal, with hanging wires snapping with some sort of magical energy. Motioning to his squadmates that all was clear, he began to explore farther into the depths of the ship. Lights pulsed along the sides, shining through the thick smoke. Celestia, thought Runner, this is creepy as all Tartarus. Anywhere he could see through the smoke was covered in shadow, lit up occasionally by the strange lights. A minute or so into the expedition, however, he heard something. As if on cue, a massive creature came running through an adjacent hall, standing on two legs with long, menacing forearms clutching its face. The hair on the back of Runner’s neck stood as the creature stopped and turned toward him. It let out a shrill scream that was greatly muffled by Runner’s mask before turning and running away, leaving the terrified pony looking back at his equally scared squad. Raising his crowbar, he continued down the long shafts, finally coming to a stop in a well-lit room whose walls were lined with massive, vertical glass tubes. Most of them were sealed and empty, but one was opened and another contained what appeared to be a block of ice with some indiscernible object inside of it. Walking toward the filled tube, Runner was taken aback. Another of the aliens he had seen earlier stood inside, completely unmoving within the ice. As the rest of his squad followed him to the tube, they all stared at the thing before them. It was about twice to three times as tall as any normal pony, with sickeningly jagged joints placed around its body. It had no hair to speak of other than a very short mane on the top of its head, and its skin was an unhealthy white. Its eyes were tiny compared to a pony’s, and its nose and mouth laid completely flat on its face, rather that on a protruding snout. Its forearms were long and thin, ending in flat hoofs with five menacing tentacles each. Deciding that his mission was more important that personal safety, Runner ordered his teammates to pry the thing out of its cell. Before they could touch the glass, however, the ice began to melt. Slowly at first but then increasing in speed, the crystals turned to liquid and drained away into a grate on the floor, until only the creature remained, standing lifelessly inside the tube. A garbled voice announced something Runner couldn’t make out through his gas mask before a large panel descended from the roof of the tube and placed itself over the creature’s chest. --ZAP!-- The ponies jumped as the creature arched its back as magical energy flowed through it, snapping its eyes open and screaming. The voice came again, the panel raised itself to the roof, and the door to the tube opened up to the outside world. Motioning for his squadmates to help, Runner grabbed the creature before it could attack them and restrained it against the floor. One of the unicorns in the group, Mint Dreams, put a sleeping spell on the creature as it laid on the floor, coughing. Picking up the now motionless creature, the group fled the vessel, practically diving out of their exit hole before handing the creature to a group of pegasi.