Celestia waited patiently on the balcony outside her bed chambers for her sister to arrive. It was not unusual for Luna to oversleep at this time of year. In fact, it was expected. As the summer months drew closer, she always began her nights later and ended them earlier. This wasn’t a product of laziness; Celestia did the same thing with her days in the winter. It was a system the sisters had worked out thousands of years ago so each one would have her season of rest. And to be perfectly honest, Celestia didn’t mind having a few more hours to her work day this early in the year. It might not be the case after the solstice, but the extra time gave her the opportunity to produce some magnificent sunsets and sunrises. It was a nice way to reward the hard-working ponies after the ever-challenging Winter Wrap-Ups.
As the sun neared the horizon, the royal alicorn began her work. Celestia was concentrating on this particular sunset more so than most others. She was extremely impressed with the efficiency of her subjects in wrapping up winter that year, and wanted to give everypony something extraordinary to enjoy now that their work was done. She deftly maneuvered her beloved sun around the clouds and far off mountain peaks, creating brilliant streaks of gold that arced across the sky, and painting the clouds vibrant shades of orange and pink. The princess was so absorbed in making the tiny adjustments to the sun’s path as it set that she didn’t notice her sister’s soft hoofsteps coming up behind her.
Luna stopped short in her approach of her white-coated sister. This sunset was a particularly intricate endeavor with the reduced cloud cover after the wrap-up of winter, and she decided it best let Celestia concentrate on her work. Even before her banishment, Luna had never seen her sister invest so much effort in a sunset. When the sun finally disappeared behind the mountains to the west, Luna spoke up.
“T’was a truly magnificent sunset, sister. Without a doubt, everypony in the land was captivated by its beauty.”
Celestia turned to acknowledge her darker sister, whose eyes sparkled in the night, despite the darkness. “Thank you Luna. I thought they deserved a treat after all the work they did wrapping up winter.”
“A treat it certainly was. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you become quite so involved in one of your sunsets in a very long time.” Luna paused, looking up at the remnants of the spectacular sunset her sister had just created. The clouds still had a slight orange hue, and the sky was gradually darkening from the cyan shade it had in the day to the blackness that allowed the younger alicorn’s moon and stars to shine. “But regardless,” Luna began. “You’ve had a long day. It’s time you get your rest, and let me handle the heavens.”
“I suppose you’re right, Luna.” Just thinking about her bed with its soft pillows and luxurious blankets made Celestia yawn in a rather non-royal manner.
Luna let out a small giggle at her sister’s unbecoming display and said, “Good night, sister.”
“Good night,” Celestia murmured dreamily and turned towards the door to go inside. She yawned again before stepping inside, closing the door softly behind her.
With that, Luna began her work. She closed her eyes and her horn began to glow and sparkle as she summoned the moon. When she felt its glow even behind her closed eyelids, she opened her eyes and began to bring out the stars. She let their sparkling light down through the atmosphere and allowed them to shine to their fullest. However, there was something different about this particular night. It was a small thing, barely noticeable against the rich, twinkling array of stars, but there was one small speck of light that was moving, slowly but steadily, across the sea of stars.
Luna was so absorbed in her work that the small disturbance eluded her notice at first. But when the tiny speck wandered into the section of the sky she was focusing on, her keen eyes locked onto it immediately. She eyed the strange object suspiciously, noting its unusual movement. Unlike a meteor, which would shine brightly for a brief moment as it arced across the sky before fizzling out, this thing maintained a constant speed and direction, and did not shine or dissipate.
What is that star doin- Luna thought, but her thoughts were cut short then the object approached the moon. Rather than disappearing behind the moon as all the distant stars of the universe normally did when the moon was out, the strange object seemed to pass in front it, appearing as a small speck against the luminous surface of the moon for a moment, suggesting that it was between the earth and the moon.
After a few seconds, its movement carried on, and it passed the moon entirely, regaining its appearance as small pinpoint of light travelling steadily across the dark sky. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a normal star. Only shooting stars had ever passed between the earth and the moon before, and certainly nothing had ever managed to get so close without falling into the atmosphere and vaporizing shortly thereafter. It was less noticeable now that it wasn’t directly in front of the moon, but now that Luna had seen the strange object, it had her full attention. There was a newcomer to her night sky, and she was going to find out what it was.
Luna’s horn began to glow again as she reached out to the object with her night sky magic, but it didn’t respond. Luna’s piqued interest gave way to a cautious suspicion. The list of feasible explanations was rapidly diminishing. The night was mostly clear, so there was no need for any pegasi to be out this late. And Pegasi couldn’t fly high enough to resemble one of her stars in the first place. So what was it?
Luna trotted to the telescope that was normally used to watch over the kingdom, and trained it on the mysterious object traversing her night sky. What she saw aroused a strange emotion that was some odd mix of shock, curiosity and fear.
It was not a star, nor a weather pony. It was extremely high up, barely visible against the night sky. But from the way it was moving, Luna knew beyond any doubt that it wasn’t a part of the night sky. Even though it was far away, she could tell that it was massive. It was a long, tubular, and came to a rounded point at the front end. It had flat triangular wings protruding from the middle of its three segments, and the rear of the segments was longer and wider than the other two, and looks as if four other slightly thinner and shorter tubes were attached to the rear segment and running parallel to the main structure.
Luna’s horn began glowing again as she reached out to the object with her magic, this time trying to sense what it was rather that manipulate it as she would the light of the stars. What she sensed was a level of enormous mechanical and artificial complexity that she had never known to exist in Equestria before. Whatever this thing was, it was made of thousands if not millions of objects and energies that were constantly interacting with each other. Just trying to imagine it all made Luna’s mind spin.
The last thing she sensed was a presence: a conscious and thinking entity that somehow was in control of every interaction inside the object. But whatever it was it was not a pony; the being had no magical presence that Luna could discern. Even earth ponies had some inherent magical abilities, albeit rudimentary ones compared those of unicorns and pegasi.
At that moment, she finally decided that was enough. Luna backed away from the telescope, still reeling a small amount from the implications of what she had just seen, and went to rouse her sister.
Two hundred and sixty-two miles above the surface of the planet, the U.H.S. Enterprise began its carefully calculated orbital insertion. Small rocket thrusters positioned systematically all over its segmented, cylindrical hull fired sporadically, making minute adjustments to the vessel’s trajectory as it approached its destination. Retro-active rocket boosters ignited and slowed the spacecraft sufficiently as it entered the planet’s sphere of gravitational influence from interplanetary space. Even in the weightlessness of space, maintaining the forty-thousand-ton behemoth’s path for an optimal orbit took all seventy maneuvering thrusters and the network of gravitational sensors and supercomputers working at full capacity.
The ship’s calendars said it was May 14th, 2033. The massive vessel had left Earth’s orbit eleven months, three weeks, and five days prior. It had been built in space, and was designed to be the permanent solution to manned exploration of the solar system. The ship resembled most other rockets, with it’s long, cylindrical hull, pointed nose cone, and four booster pods attached to the base. It was powered by four massive liquid-fuel rockets that bulged out from the rear of the three segments that composed the hull. Each rocket was capable of producing just a little more power that the original Saturn V rocket that first took men to the moon. Protruding from either side of the center segment were the two giant solar wings, each extending more than seven hundred feet away from the half-mile long ship. The front segment, which housed the bridge, crew’s living space, along with all the computers, sensors, and critical systems, was the shortest of the three segments, and came to a point in the front.
It had been a long voyage to get from the Earth to here, but the real story behind the U.H.S. Enterprise and its mission, the crowning achievement of mankind, began with the darkest period in human history; World War Three.
It all began as an American-led humanitarian operation in the Middle East to oust a genocidal dictator, but secret agreements between governments and hidden political agendas escalated the whole mess until it was blown completely out of proportion, and within six months of the first troops landing on foreign shores, every country with a standing military was taking a side in what was bound to be the most intense and destructive conflict in human history.
The major battlefields were concentrated in less developed areas like Africa and the Middle East, but as the war dragged on, nations became desperate and nothing remained sacred. Nuclear strikes became commonplace threats, and even though those threats were never acted on, there were plenty of other means available to any modern nation to wreak havoc upon enemies. In the end, America and her allies managed to outlast the opposition, but not without great sacrifice. Several invasion attempts were made on American soil, and some came perilously close to succeeding.
It was a long and exhausting road to the negotiating table, but soon almost every nation had simply run out of steam. The death toll had managed to cap the dreaded one-billion mark, entire countries had been transformed into barren, scarred battlefields, and even the safest locations were given front-row seats to the horrors of war. Despite there being officially recognized winners and losers, the war really ended because of necessity rather than any one faction’s victory and every nation knew it. Nobody on the planet could sustain the kind of destruction that the war brought on for very long. Even after the fighting was done, the carnage was so great and widespread that it seemed hard to envision anything for the foreseeable future other than a painful, decades-long rebuilding process that would attempt to salvage what was left of a beaten and battered planet.
Only a few short weeks after the end of the war, a glimmer of hope managed to penetrate the bleak vision of the future. A decommissioned deep-space probe drifting just outside the solar system sent back an unusual image, in which Earth appeared on the wrong side of the sun. At first, the scientists who saw the image dismissed the readings as a fault in the aging probe’s computers. They believed the image was either simply upside-down or the probe’s clocks froze six months prior. But everything was checked, double-checked, and triple-checked, and probes on other planets were reactivated and turned their sensors skywards to confirm the findings. The discovery might have been accidental, but by the time the story went public, there was no argument that there was an Earth-like planet on the other side of the sun. And it was relatively close, at least by cosmic standards.
The proximity meant landing a person on another life-sustaining planet wasn’t as far-fetched as it sounded, but there were still an overwhelming number of unknowns. The best images showed the planet as a pale blue dot, not unlike Voyager’s first long-distance photo of Earth. It was a reasonable assumption that the planet had liquid water and an atmosphere, but beyond that, the only thing scientists actually knew was its location. There was no real evidence of intelligence, or any life at all for that matter. Initially, the plan was to send a probe to orbit the planet and survey the surface before any manned mission was attempted, but this plan was quickly scrapped.
Some of the more forward-thinking world leaders decided to take things to the next level. The probe would have been cheaper and more cost-effective for the mission, but people had been sending robots and probes all over the solar system for years, and a human being hadn’t gone further than the upper edges of the atmosphere since the days of the U.S./Soviet space race. Also, because the discovery of a life-sustaining planet came along much sooner than anyone could have anticipated, computers capable of independently carrying out a mission like this just didn’t exist.
Also, as much as most space agencies hated to admit it, the fact remained that unmanned probes didn’t make headlines, and weren’t very exciting to the everyday populace. People got excited when a living human broke records and turned science fiction into reality, not when a glorified remote-control toy landed on another planet. Sending a man to the new planet would be a cause for great celebration, and show the world that there was hope for peaceful advancement of humanity. People simply needed a cause to unite behind, not as a country or state, but as a single, united race working together to achieve a goal that transcended every nation’s border.
One of the more practical main selling points of a manned mission to the new planet was the near- infinite number of mission outcomes. Based on whether or not the terrain was suitable, a landing could or could not be attempted. Then there was the question of life on that planet. There was probably life there based on what the astronomers could tell, but it was impossible to tell if it was intelligent or not. And even if there really was intelligent life, the beings there might be so much less developed than humans that leaving them alone might prove to be the best option.
There could be a race of sentient beings just as advanced as humans there worth making contact with, or the local inhabitants might still be in their equivalent of the Stone Age. A computer couldn’t make all of these decisions by itself, but a living person could. Rather than sending multiple unmanned missions to gather information, sending a single manned mission equipped with all the tools necessary for every conceivable possibility would reduce the overall cost of investigating the planet.
Not to mention the people of the world desperately needed something to lift their spirits from the dark and depressing rut that the war had dumped them in, and leaders just didn’t want to wait around until a supercomputer smart enough could be developed or for a probe to get there. Just like the Apollo missions brought hope to America when it was bogged down in the disastrous Vietnam conflict, landing a man on another planet would give the world a much-needed distraction from living hell Earth had become. If mankind was ever going to have a chance to take to the stars again, this was it.
The decision was partially influenced by the fact that plans for vessel capable of making the journey already existed. The Manned Interplanetary Exploration Base, or Star Explorer as it was known by the designers, that eventually became the Enterprise was supposed to be the ship that would carry humans to Mars. Construction began early in the 21st century, but the effort was largely abandoned when the war began.
After the discovery of the new planet and the plans to send a man there began to take shape, the design was modified to follow a new trajectory; one that would take it to the far side of the sun. There was, as always, a few downsides to the plan. Getting to Mars was a matter of launching from Earth at a calculated point in time such that the orbits of each planet would bring them closest together, minimizing the distance to travel between home and the destination. Getting to the far side of the sun was another matter entirely.
Because this new planet shared an orbital pattern with Earth, there was no opportune moment to launch that would minimize the distance. The Star Explorer could theoretically hold enough fuel to make the trip and return safely, but the space for crew provisions such as oxygen, water, and food wasn’t quite enough. The only solution was to reduce the number of crew members down to one. That change left a very important question; who would go?
Every nation chose a candidate for the mission. Each was a hero in some way or another. Most were pilots, some were soldiers, and others were professional athletes. The selection committee was comprised of every living human that had ever gone to space, and they spent weeks on end deliberating which person would be sent to the new planet, and quite possibly represent the entire human race another intelligent race, should one be found inhabiting the new planet. The man they chose was Captain Maxwell O’Hara.
For as long as he could remember, Captain O’Hara, or Max, as he preferred to be called, was fascinated with anything that could fly, and although being an astronaut wasn’t necessarily his dream job from birth, flight was always something he wanted to learn more about. Just like other people his age, Max missed out on the glory days of the space race because it ended before he was born, but that didn’t stop him from wondering what those days were like. From an early age, he read about times when astronauts were national heroes and celebrities, and when people began wonder just how far they could go, and what they mind find in the depths of space. Even though space travel within Earth’s orbit was pretty commonplace by the time Max was old enough to study it, he still believed it was the most amazing thing people had ever done, and he desperately wanted to be a part of it.
For that reason, Max became a fighter pilot in the Air Force immediately after graduating college. His constant near-perfect performance in training landed him a spot in the Air Force’s top squadron where he quickly gained a position as a flight commander. That was when the war started. O’Hara’s squadron became one of the most decorated units of the war.
With America being the war’s clear victor, there was a brief period of outrage when the selected astronaut was American, but as Max progressed through the international training program with top marks in every category imaginable, it was clear he was the best choice. Max graduated from the Air Force Academy with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering, spoke three languages, and served as one of the ambassadors to the international conference that ended the war. The world knew who he was and liked him. Max was the best there was, and the needs of the mission outweighed any political or publicity concerns.
As soon as the world knew who Maxwell O’Hara was, they liked him. Any doubts about sending this particular person to a new world and possibly representing humanity were quickly dispelled. But perhaps the biggest reason he was chosen for this particular voyage was because of his personality. Of all the qualified astronauts, he was the quiet one. Max preferred to spend what little free time someone training to be an astronaut could find in peace and quiet. While other pilots in his unit would go out and party to relieve the stress that came with fighting a war, Max stayed behind and read a story. Sometimes he would even try his hand at writing one, but he kept most of that to himself. He was unmarried, an only child, and his parents moved to another country after he was done at the Academy. He was the textbook introvert, and the psychologists at NASA believed he would be best suited to live for extended periods of time on his own. And that was exactly what the mission called for.
However, new doubts quickly arose in Max’s mind as he began his orbit of the planet. He had been travelling for almost a full year now, and for almost a year his world consisted of just the clean white interior of the vessel and the stars outside his bedroom windows. For almost a year the Max’s mind had been occupied with his daily exercises and maintenance duties. The media industry had been kind enough to donate a generous archive of TV shows, movies, music and other things to help pass the time, but they were only remedial activities to keep him from losing his mind en route to the destination.
Now, the reality of his mission began to take shape in the astronaut’s mind. He gazed out the panoramic windscreen of the bridge from the captain’s seat at the dark side of the vast planet before him, and his mind began to systematically list every possible mission outcome based on the information he had been able to gather on the planet thus far.
Below him, the dark side of the planet sprawled endlessly. Something was alive down there, there was no doubt about it. On the vast continents Max could make out the specks of light that meant there was indeed life down there. Whether it was just massive amounts of bioluminescence or artificial light, he couldn’t tell just yet, but there was without a doubt life of some kind down there. With that in mind, the astronaut began to wonder just what was down there. If it was just bioluminescence then it was no real indication of intelligent or sentient life. But if it were artificial light, then the possibilities were endless. If these people were able to create artificial light, they were at the very least technologically savvy, if not just as advanced as humans.
At that thought, Max began to wonder if they were even more advanced than humans. The discovery of this planet had been, after all, a total accident, and it was conceivable that a more advanced race had just neglected to explore the opposite side of the sun, just as humanity had done until now. However, the notion was short-lived in his mind, as there were no signs of other technology besides the light on the surface. There had been radio silence thus far, and the Enterprise was equipped with receivers that could pick up every radio signal physically possible. Max thought the idea of using electromagnetic wave signals to communicate fairly simple, and imagined that any advanced civilization would discover the application, given enough time. In addition, there was nothing artificial in orbit that the ship’s sensors could find. Most of the evidence pointed to the planet harboring no advanced race.
But that didn’t mean that whatever was down there wasn’t intelligent enough grasp the concept of an alien visiting from the other side of the solar system. So the possibility of landing and making contact wasn’t completely ruled out just yet.
After a few minutes of going over possibilities in his head, Max decided that he had made enough life-altering discoveries for one day. He undid the restraints holding him in the captain’s seat, and, using handholds positioned all over the walls, made his way out of the bridge and into the long, empty corridor that lead to the rest of the ship. He could not deny the trip had been an eerie one, living by himself for almost a year on a ship designed to be manned by a crew of no fewer than twenty-five. Sure, Max could be trained to do the jobs of multiple crewmembers, and computers were up to handling whatever he couldn't, but there was something to be said for being quite literally the only living being for millions of miles.
Once outside the bridge, Max strapped himself into the seat waiting for him just outside the port hole, and pressed the key on the panel attached to the armrest labeled “Commander’s Quarters.” Once he pressed the key, computerized motors sent the chair –and Max with it– whizzing down the hall towards his sleeping room. The speed at which the system flung Max wasn’t quite disorienting or nauseating, but it was much faster than he would have managed by grasping the thousands of handholds built into the walls and manually pulling himself around expansive network of tunnels that connected all the accessible locations of the Enterprise.
Max sped past the door to the giant centrifuge where he was required to spend three hours every day to combat the effects of microgravity. He passed the unused crew quarters and living space. Max zipped by the health center, where the myriad of odd and intricate workout machines designed for space were stored. He was also required to spend two hours there every day exercising to keep his muscles from deteriorating. The last thing he sped by was the entrance to the center segment of the ship, which housed the bay where the landing craft was stored.
The craft that would allow Max to land on and explore the planet’s surface was the only thing designed and built after the discovery of the new planet, and therefore the trickiest thing to pack into the Enterprise. The requirements presented engineers with many challenges, among them the needs to withstand atmospheric entry, land without a runway, serve as a place for the astronaut to live while exploring the plant, hold any items, materials, and information for interaction with any alien civilizations, attain orbit independently without any launch facilities, and dock with the Enterprise at the conclusion of the mission.
The solution to all these problems was almost as amazing an engineering feat as the larger space ship it complemented. Its official designation was the Atmosphere-Capable-Exploration Lander, or ACE Lander for short, but Max had named it the Birdie. The Enterprise was named based on a tidal wave of letters from almost every science-fiction fan in the world, but the astronaut had reserved the exclusive right to name the other craft.
The Birdie was slightly smaller than old space shuttles, sleeker, and instead of being powered by rockets, was propelled by six hybrid turbofan/scramjet engines, capable of pushing it to over seventeen thousand miles per hour in the upper atmosphere, which was the speed needed to attain orbit. To reduce its size for storage in the Enterprise’s bay and re-entry, it was equipped with folding wings that could swing back and streamline its profile, but would extend for atmospheric flight. To actually land on the planet, rotating vents would direct the thrust of all six engines straight down, allowing for vertical landing and takeoff from any reasonably flat piece of ground.
After about a minute of whizzing around the ship, the moving chair finally ground to a halt outside the circular door to Max’s room. After undoing the restraints that held him in the chair, Max floated up to the port hole and opened it with the press of another button. He pulled himself inside and immediately went to the compartment under his bunk where he had a camcorder and all of his video journals and mission logs were stored.
As the Enterprise got farther and farther away from home, radio communication became less and less practical. Even at the speed of light, it would have taken a radio signal roughly fifteen minutes to traverse the distance between the two planets, and roughly one month prior, Max passed into the area known as the solar shadow. The solar shadow was the area where the sun blocked any and all radio signals from Earth, and was generally regarded as the point of no return for the mission. In the solar shadow, it was impossible to communicate with Earth without bouncing signals off of probes on other planets, and it just so happened that no planet with a probe on it would be in proper position for such a relay for another eight weeks. This little nuance earned the area a new nickname: the dark side of the sun. Max was now completely cut off from home, and just like the old days, all he could do was make daily mission logs.
The camcorder hadn’t actually been used yet, as a simple written or audio file usually sufficed for daily documentation of activities that were already in planned out well in advance. The only things Max actually needed to record up to this point were confirmations that all mission objectives were being met and all expectations were being satisfied, and a small unexpected change in trajectory to avoid the planet’s moon, which was weirdly similar to Earth’s moon, except that it was somewhat larger. However, the happenings of last few minutes were not described in any of the routines or schedules. The sights Max had just seen deserved special documentation. He turned on the camcorder, positioned it in front of him, and began what was going to be the most groundbreaking news report humanity would ever get.
“Tonight I arrived in orbit of the new planet,” he spoke into the camera. “And what I’ve just seen can only be described as the most monumental discovery in human history. We’ve always asked ourselves, ‘Are we alone in the universe?’ and for the first time ever, there is a definite answer. The best part is we didn’t have to travel thousands of light-years to find it. The answer was hiding right under our noses the entire time. And that answer is simple: No way in hell.”