Riley was thoroughly fed up, but at the same time a little excited still. He had just successfully communicated with a previously undiscovered alien race, and maybe even gained their trust and cooperation. He had a lot more to learn, of course, and the computers were still chewing their way through more material, but it was an excellent start. He only wished they had more time to study.
He had spent the previous few hours in a dark room, studying the language in even more depth, ready for the next wave of talking. He was feeling fairly confident he could now hold a conversation correctly, even if his pronunciation was a little off at times. The effort had left him grouchy, however, and some of his engineers gave the distinct impression that they were actively trying to be obtuse.
“Can we just build a new one?” Thompson asked, pushing back from his desk. He was a thickset man of African descent, originally a marine but enlisted into the engineer corps after passing various aptitude tests. He was a competent electrical engineer, and Riley was pleased to have him along, even if he did speak before thinking sometimes.
“I don’t think you need me to answer that,” he said tiredly, not looking up from his screen. “We outfitted for war, I don’t think it was expected that we would destroy our comms. gear, and lose both our backup transmitters. We just don’t have the parts or the time to fabricate them.”
“But we’ve got at least four fab plants,” he complained.
“Two, actually, and one of those is damaged. The other is busy making much needed medical supplies, and once it’s finished on that the priority is getting the fleet back in the air. You’ll be waiting a long while to get time on that.”
Thompson picked up a new report, absently reading it during their conversation. They were sitting in the belly of Alpha Two, one of the three engineering ships in the fleet. Unfortunately the other two had been lost during the encounter with the Thala which drove them to the ill-fated jump in the first place, their relatively precious cargo gone for good. Pieces of equipment were scattered all around, and several engineers and technicians sat at the benches working on repairs to all manner of items.
“Guess it wouldn’t help us even if we did get a subspace transmission out,” Thompson mused aloud. Riley was glad to see he was thinking for himself. “Wherever we are has got to be outside of known space, or we’d have bumped into this lot before. Without the beacons ain’t nobody coming to help us, even if they know we’re here.”
“Indeed. Sadly, we’re very much on our own, until we can get our warp drives functioning again.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to sooth the headache he still had since the ponies’ shockwave attack. He was exhausted still, deep sleep was difficult at the best of times with the implants, but when they were on the fritz it was even worse. Even if he had wanted to sleep there wasn’t a lot of time, since arriving there had been an endless stream of tasks to see to and projects to coordinate. It seemed as if every piece of technology they possessed now had something wrong with it, and in the back of his mind he was aware that it wasn’t actually that much of an exaggeration.
On top of the endless list of official duties he had to perform he had the constant presence of the ponies, this strange new race they had stumbled across. The scientist in him was utterly desperate to study and observe, but the soldier told him to get on with fixing the ships and getting their people off this strange new world.
He looked at his wristwatch – a totally unnecessary luxury, but he liked the way it felt, even if the computers in his head made it an obsolete piece of technology – and realised he was due at the admiral’s quarters in a few minutes. As well as being a trusted aide, he was one of the only people in the fleet who could currently communicate with the equine race beyond simple phrases, and acting as a translator was something he could foresee taking up a lot of his time soon.
From the ships’ rosters he knew there were two other augmented engineers left alive, but neither of them had lived with their implants for more than a year, and it took many, many painful years before a person’s mind fully integrated with it. It was an uncomfortable few years at the start, more of a hindrance than anything, but at times like this it really proved its worth. Their powerful computers had been able to cross-reference many thousands of pages of alien text and provide an invaluable index into their language. With the implants Riley was able to lookup into this vast database, and learning a new language suddenly became a few hours’ work.
Of course, it would take weeks before he could truly speak it like a native, but the important thing was that they could communicate now, without resorting to charades and grunts.
He knocked politely on the door to the little conference room they had set up adjacent to Williams’ quarters before opening the door, aware he was a few minutes late. He nodded to the admiral and assembled captains, all in their full dress uniform. He suddenly felt conspicuous in the scruffy shirt he had been wearing in the engineering bays.
“Thankyou for joining us, Mr Collins,” Williams said calmly and without trace of humour. Some of the other captains glared at him and he nodded cordially at them.
“Apologies for my lateness,” he said, once in English and once again in Equestrian, turning to face the five ponies that were sat on the other side of the table, sitting perched neatly upon ornately decorated cushions on the floor. Riley wondered how long they had been waiting, he was only a few minutes late but the situation already felt tense. He guessed that the atmosphere must have been a little awkward since neither side could understand the other until he arrived.
Riley took a seat at the head of the table, looking down between the two lines. He studied the five ponies that had come, Twilight Sparkle and the orange earth pony (he had been reading up on their races) that had been held captive with her. The garishly coloured pink creature that had been seen snooping around everywhere was sat furthest from him, and next to her was a light yellow pegasus that he thought he recognised from the assault on the treehouse. Finally there was a tall, slender unicorn with a coat the colour of fresh snow and a mane of deep purple. Despite the dirt in her fur and her slightly messed up hair she was radiating an aura that could only be described as aloof.
Introductions were made, and Twilight attempted a second version of her ‘Welcome to Equestria’ speech, which was, frankly, adorably terrible. He avoided translating the most frilly parts, and noticed wryly how her companions eyed one another awkwardly during the monologue. The admiral took it gracefully, as Riley knew he would, and for his part he did his best to translate the response back again without losing the elegance and punch of his words.
A few researchers had been expending a little effort studying some of the scanned and machine-translated books from the library, trying to gain an insight into the culture and history of the planet, but of the some twenty thousand pages they had scanned the vast majority were from tomes on obscure science or mundane and wordy volumes about cookery or flower cultivation. Additionally it was not always clear whether a passage was from a fictional book or a factual retelling of an actual event. The result was that they still knew vanishingly little about the world they were currently marooned on.
The conversation started along logistical lines, arranging water supplies, food and general trade. Williams had announced that the majority of the casualties from their battles had been dealt with and were recovering well, then offered the use of the fleet’s medical facilities to the ponies. Riley knew of some half hearted studies that had already had made on deceased ponies, and their physiology was very similar to that of a human being, down to a surprising overlap of DNA. That specific question was one to address much later on. No doubt tissue samples would be taken back for later analysis.
“I am glad to hear that your people are recovering, and once again I offer our apologies for attacking you first,” Twilight said sombrely. “If I had paused for thought, many lives could have been spared.”
“It was regrettable, but there are no hard feelings,” Williams responded, polite and calm, yet still maintaining an undertone of fairness. Riley tried to reflect that in his translations, but it was hard to know how successful he was being. “I trust your injured are being cared for? Again, if we can help, please do not hesitate to ask. It’s the least we can do for you.”
Twilight looked up and met his gaze again. “Thankyou, our injured are recovering well, although there are still several ponies missing, even after we’ve identified most of the… those who are longer with us.” She trailed off, looking away again. Fluttershy looked about ready to cry. Riley glanced at the assembled officers, noting a few sidelong glances. Like everyone involved they surely felt a lot of guilt for the massacre as well, they had stopped using lethal force as soon as they realised how little threat the ponies presented, but even that was too late for some.
The admiral handed over to one of the other captains, an aging woman from Alpha Nineteen, one of their heavy, lumbering supply ships, to explain the significant events in human history leading up to their arrival in Equestria. O’Neill was her name, and he knew from past experience that she could talk until the stars expired. He settled back in his chair, preparing for the long haul with an inaudible sigh.
“It was towards the bitter, decaying end of the 21st century that mankind finally took to the stars, veritably chased from our own planet by disease, famine, war and chronic overpopulation. Our very society teetered on the precipice of collapse even while corrupt superpowers fought over the scant few resources we had left in the cradle of our creation, like so many selfish children, unable to see past their own noses as they rushed headlong into disaster. Our offworld colonies suffered terribly, their delicate balance upset as if a small boat in a tropical storm. They were, naturally, still heavily dependant on the ready supply of goods and medicine from Earth and with civil wars tearing apart the megacities they were isolated and in danger.
“The invention of the sub-space warp drives saved us, as a race, at last facilitating rapid transport between our now struggling colonies and allowing mankind to finally explore the stars, like those brave, fearless pioneers that once headed out into the endless blue oceans in search of new shores…”
Riley was becoming exceptionally bored of translating without being able to actually contribute to the discussions. His mind had made up plenty of things he wanted to ask. Instead he was amusing himself by intentionally slipping progressively more and more inappropriate words into his responses for the ponies, wondering how far he could go before they realised it was purposeful. The whole meeting was being recorded, and one day someone else would no doubt review the logs, then he would get a mild telling-off, but that was in the future and at that particular moment Riley felt very much like living for the moment, as rebellious as that may be.
To his deep satisfaction Fluttershy, the fragile-looking, quiet little yellow pegasus had blushed a few times now, and Twilight had started peering at him suspiciously, to which he simply grinned slightly, not meeting her gaze. He knew his game was over when he caught Williams staring at him, equally suspiciously, and he shrugged theatrically and returned to translating O’Neill’s unnecessarily flowery prose as accurately as he could.
“…the third race we stumbled across was, to our great and lingering misfortune, a heinous, ethically challenged, brutal and warmongering species that had stripped their own barren homeworld of any other life, save what they farmed to survive and procreate. Some one hundred peaceful, and one might event venture to go as far as to say prolific, years had passed since last we encountered a sentient race, and we all wish now that several more hundred could have passed again.
“Human envoys never returned, our precious goodwill gifts were shot from the heavens and within a scant year their twisted, hideous warships were bearing down upon our sacred home system with murderous intent.
“Fortunately, mankind is nothing if not resilient, and to this day we fight fiercely to protect our loved ones. Not once have the Thala horde landed on our homeworld, not once have they taken a colony that we didn’t wrestle back from them, and not once will they ever dull our spirit!
“We prevail, but at terrible cost to our own. Their species is a hivemind, the individual means nothing to them, the concept of family stands as alien to them as they are to us. The terrible casualty count for our species since the wars began nearly one hundred and forty years ago is unthinkable and unforgivable. There is not a family alive today who has not lost someone dear to them, and many have lost everything, mothers who will never see their children grow, and poor, lonely children who are stripped of their parents before they are even old enough for school.”
Riley stopped to sip his water, mouth dry from so much talking. O’Neill was in full flow. He was alarmed to see Fluttershy in tears, even Rarity had lost some of her formal façade and rubbed at her glittering eyes with a paw. Hoof. Thing.
He didn’t get a lot of time to rest as O’Neill charged onwards with her single-handed war against respectable storytelling, either unheeding or uncaring of the distraught reactions she was producing on the other side of the table. He risked a glance at Williams and fancied the man was regretting choosing O’Neill to narrate. He was tapping his fingers irritably on the tabletop.
“…and despite their best efforts they were repelled at Ganymede by the valiant seventh fleet, who remarkably won the campaign without a single vessel lost. Our fleet, the highly respected and eminently successful 1st Jovian, was in transit to Xerxes-8 when the remains of the Thala scourge passed us by. Even decimated as they were our fleet was wholly unprepared for the fierce and frantic battle we were about to encounter. They dropped on top of us, straight out of subspace, intent on revenge or worse. We fought until we were sure to be defeated, then fled. Our only hope now was an unbounded entry into subspace, and to pray to any gods that were listening in that dark time that the Thala warships would be unable to fix a lock on our trajectory.”
She paused for a dramatic breath and looked around at her audience. “Fortunately, it looks as if our ploy worked. They did not pursue us. Our processors found your planet as a nearby mass anchor for the return from the void-abyssal, and we burst out of the warp almost directly into your atmosphere. We lost several more craft in that turbulent entry, but the majority of our fleet has survived.”
There was a heavy silence in the room as the story finished and the two parties dwelled on it.
“You poor things,” Fluttershy murmured weakly, barely loud enough for Riley to catch. “You have suffered so very much.”
Riley was becoming more adept at reading the pony’s expressive faces, and in his opinion Applejack looked deeply ashamed. “Y’all came here for refuge, and we attacked you without so much as a warnin’.”
He watched Twilight closely, she had slumped on her cushion and was looking down at the floor, mouth slightly agape, not meeting anyone’s eyes. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, she was clearly taking this very much upon herself.
“Twilight,” he said softly, and she looked up at him reluctantly. “I think it’s time for you to explain ‘Attacked again’ to us.”
Twilight began, hesitantly at first, but seemed to relax a little as she got into her own tale of Equestria’s history, sounding rather like a lecturer, Riley thought with the twitch of smile at the corners of his mouth. She told them of the alicorn sisters, of Nightmare Moon, of changelings, a place called Canterlot and the Crystal Empire, a mysterious entity called Sombra, and finally of a crazed despot they called Discord, said to represent the concept of Chaos itself. A lot of it sounded like fairy tales, but then he wondered what their own histories must sound like in contrast.
“Discord had returned, you see,” Twilight was saying, standing up now and pacing in small circles as she lectured. “I’m not sure if Celestia saw it coming or not, but before we knew it he’d laid waste to many of the outlying settlements, causing a new kind of chaos, destruction and death this time around.”
Abruptly she stopped pacing and stood facing the officers across the table, a fierce, passionate fire in her eyes. “You must see, we’re not prepared for this class of conflict, our history has been a generally peaceful, untroubled one. Our wise and benevolent rulers have always been there to guide us gently down the path of peace and good. Our usual approaches just don’t work anymore. We don’t know how to fight.”
The admiral spoke up, having listened patiently. “Princess Twilight, if I have one piece of advice for you, it is this: Never learn. If you can find another way, any other option, take it. Your peaceful nature is, frankly, unheard of. It is innocent and perfect, from what I can see, and to tarnish that would be a crime.”
The unicorn stood in thought for some time, the intensity in her large eyes faded now to sadness written plain for all to see. “I would take your advice gladly, if only I knew of a way.
“When Discord came for my town I panicked and hid, I couldn’t deal with this. I wanted so very much for Celestia to come and help us, but when I went to find her she was busy fighting for balance once more, trying to save everypony at once, not just the selfish few. She and her sister were set against every twisted, subjugated creature Discord could muster. So many other towns and villages, so many other ponies, all relying on her aid. I couldn’t take that away from them, so I returned alone.
“Now, I don’t want to sound as if I am blowing my own flugelhorn, but I’m regarded as the embodiment of magic itself, it is, afterall, how I ended up with these wings. I regarded myself as capable, if Celestia could spare the energy to defend all those towns and cities at the same time, then surely I, the element of magic, could defend little old Ponyville?”
She stopped pacing and stood facing the humans, her lower lip trembling with emotion. “But I committed sin; I underestimated the power of an immortal goddess, and dared to compare myself to Her. What could I ever be to Her Eternal Flame? I’m just a pony with a horn. And when Discord came for us, I crumbled before him. I couldn’t stop him, I couldn’t save the ponies that trusted me. They died and they were taken because of my weakness.”
Twilight stopped talking, gasping for breath, and Riley swallowed the beginning of a lump that he wouldn’t admit was there. The depth and intensity of the ponies’ emotions was staggering. He tried to imagine Earth’s rulers caring quite so much about the loss of a few villagers and found the very concept laughable, even the thought of the exalted admiral caring so much about his charges was unimaginable, yet here was a little alien pony, beating herself up about something it sounded like she had never stood a chance against in the first place.
His mouth was dry from trying to repeat her words quickly enough, she had lost the careful measured rhythm she started with, and nearly lost him in the process. Fortunately for him she seemed unable to continue for the moment, giving him time for a much needed drink. Fluttershy was next to Twilight, her wings wrapped tenderly around her, soothing her distraught friend. The others had all moved closer to her, forming one heap of fur and tails and large, expressive eyes.
“I understand why you attacked us,” the admiral said softly, and Riley tried to copy the inflection in his voice. “And I want to express my sincerest sorrow that it took us this long to learn to communicate. Perhaps, if I had listened to my friend here, we could have avoided some of the casualties you have suffered during your imprisonment. You have my deepest apologies for my oversight, and I will spare you the resources I can to help fix this in any way I am able.”
Riley finished translating, and Twilight looked up with a glimmer of hope in her eye. Some growing level of understanding told Riley what she was going say before she said it, and he looked away, closing his eyes sadly. He heard her push herself back up to her feet, standing proud once more.
“There is a saying – ‘Fight fire with fire’,” she said, blinking back her tears and setting her expression. “You are strong and fierce, such brave, powerful people. Help us, I beg of you. Your courage, magic and experience can save us all!”
Riley sighed and reluctantly relayed the request. He knew what the response would be.
Williams had the decency to look sorrowful. “I am genuinely sorry, Twilight Sparkle, but I cannot grant your request. Aside from breaking a number of intergalactic treaties I simply cannot spare the resources to fight your battle as well as our own. O’Neill’s story earlier may have left you with the impression that our ‘indomitable will’ alone will win the war with the Thala for us, but at the end of the day we are flesh, blood and bone, just like yourselves. As we sit here my very species stands upon the brink of annihilation. Eighty billion lives hang in the balance.
“I’m very sad to say it, but this is your fight. We cannot win it for you.”
Riley choked a little as he tried to translate, hiding it with another sip of water. Watching Twilight’s expression change from desperate hope to crushed despair was utterly heartbreaking, made worse somehow by the caring faces of her friends, doing their best to be strong for her.
These were the kindest, most deserving creatures Riley had ever met and could imagine ever meeting again, and here they were being pounded into the ground, and their fleet was standing before them with the combined firepower of a small country, unable to do a thing to help, all because someone decided that the course of history on new worlds should not be interfered with.
The atmosphere was gloomy as the meeting broke up, the five ponies thanked them formally and left, Twilight beside herself with grief and despair and the other four seemingly not much better. The captains each stood and saluted before leaving for their meals. Riley had worked his way through most of the pitcher of water during the course of the meeting, and he poured the last drop into his glass and hid behind it, head in one hand.
“Are you fit for duty, lieutenant-commander Collins?” the admiral asked formally.
“Implants are playing up, sir,” he responded. “Since the EMP. Takes days for the headaches to go. And I’m tired.”
“That is not what I meant, Riley,” his friend said gently, getting up and moving to a cabinet. Riley heard the sound of clinking glassware and something sweet and strong was put in front of him. He sipped at it morosely. Williams was too observant sometimes.
“I admit, I don’t like it,” he said at length. “I hate sitting here, watching them get fucked over, when it would be so easy for us to help them. It hurts to watch. When you said they’re like children you weren’t far off the truth. They’re so innocent, John. What’s happened to them isn’t fair.”
Williams sighed and sat beside him, glass in hand. “I don’t like it either, my friend. But it is what it is, and it is all too easy to focus on the immediate problems while losing sight of the bigger ones. Out there, beyond these skies, our families are waiting for us, our friends and loved ones are waiting for us, waiting for us to come back and help keep them alive.
“Sometimes I doubt it myself, I think ‘I’ve been at this for sixty years, isn’t it time to hand the baton?’, but then I remember that when you’re balanced on a tightrope above an abyss it’s that tiny extra little weight on one side that causes you to fall one way or the other, that one man fighting to tip the balance on a knife-edge.”
Riley shook his head and swallowed hard, the tears prickled behind his eyes, itching at the artificial circuitry fused to the back of his retinas. He rarely cried, and he would be damned if he was going to do it in front of Williams, in this dismal meeting room. “I hear you, sir, and I know what you say is right, but it doesn’t make it any easier to bear. I just… I wish it could be different. I wish we could help.”
“There’s not a man nor a woman here today who doesn’t,” Williams said, closing his eyes briefly and swallowing the remains of his spirit. He stood and placed one hand on Riley’s shoulder. “It’s commendable to want to help everybody you meet, that is the mark of a hero, but a wise hero knows he cannot save everybody. He has to focus on the things he can achieve with the time given. Keep your head up, Riley, and don’t lose sight of the goal. And please, keep your distance from these creatures. We can’t afford emotional attachments at this stage, and in the nicest possible way, Riley, I know what you’re like.”
Riley nodded mutely and watched the admiral leave the room. He waited for the door to click shut before he finally gave in and let his frustration out in peace.
The act of venting his emotions must have helped him a little, as he managed to get the best three hours of sleep he had managed in quite some time, uninterrupted and quite without dreams of any sort. After he had awoken, showered and changed into a clean set of clothes he felt a lot more optimistic and ready to face the day.
He poked his head out of the door of the barracks, looking out into a clear blue sky. It was, disconcertingly, still morning. A few pegasi flitted about here and there, wings shimmering in the sunlight and bright colours unarguably cheerful in the early morning sunrise. He stepped out into the cool air and stretched his arms wide, even his headache had improved considerably, the persistent throbbing diminished to little more than a mild woolly feeling behind his eyes.
To his great disappointment the mood in the engineering bays of Alpha Two was far less hopeful, and Riley felt his spirits bog down the moment he climbed up the ladder into the cramped space, lit with harsh fluorescent light and smelling of burnt plastic and noxious chemicals.
“Doesn’t work at all. Can’t fabricate out of nothing. It’s completely screwed,” a short, angry technician was saying with considerable vehemence, waving his arms at a mess on the worktop. Several other men and women stood around meekly, fiddling with pens or looking at their communicators.
“Jackson,” Riley said by way of greeting, nodding at the diminutive bespectacled engineering chief.
“Tell these numbskulls what’s up. They’ve been wasting time trying to build a resonator matrix for the subspace array, out of sapphires, of all things.” He threw his arms in the air. “Where did you even get them from?”
One of the younger assistants spoke up nervously. “There’s a pony in town, makes dresses, I think. She just has boxes of them, lying around. Huge things, would fetch a fortune at home.”
“You stole them?”
“No!” the lad squeaked and Thompson took an angry step forwards. “Maybe a little. They weren’t using them!”
Riley made a note to get the admiral to schedule a regulation search of belongings later in the day. “Calm down, the lot of you. It’s not a bad idea,” he said, referring to the fabrication attempt on the table. “But I can’t imagine the nanites can do much with sapphire. Corundum is a poor polariser, the machines won’t be able to get the accuracy needed.”
“Right, that’s pretty much what’s happened,” agreed one of the techs. “But it’s chance based, that’s our point. If we make enough of these, luck has it that one of them will be good enough to at least reach one beacon, we can at least move in the right direction.”
“Have you run the numbers? How many will we need to make before chance is on our side?”
The technician fiddled with the hem of his shirt, looking down. “Ten to the five,” he mumbled.
Riley stared at him. “You’re saying that, at full output, even with all four plants going, which we don’t have, you’d have a good chance of getting a single beacon fix within about six years.”
The engineer nodded sullenly. Riley continued, undeterred, “and that assumes you can find someone rich enough to give you half a million sapphires.”
More nods. “Well, it’s good to know we have a ready supply in any case, the RF amps for the grids need rebuilding after all, we blew most of them on the way down as well.”
Riley addressed Jackson. “Is there an alternative? Do none of the ships have even a partially functioning warp drive at all? If we can manage to get one going we should be able to drag the whole fleet through if we break regulation separation.”
“One ship does have a working core,” the chief replied, with some hesitation, and Riley quickly saw where the conversation was going. “Alpha Five. She dumped her telemetry just before we lost contact on the way in, but we don’t know where she’s gone, she was on a completely different trajectory to rest of us. She’s in fine condition, assuming the crash didn’t damage her. Although the chances of the ship herself being undamaged are slim the warp cores are well protected, we’re confident it’ll be okay.”
Riley groaned in dismay. So much was broken. Six of their fleet had originally had the hardware and capability to tear apart the fabric of the universe and transport them across vast distances. Three of those ships had been destroyed during the run-in with the Thala. Another had been lost in the descent onto the planet, one more was completely non-functional with no practical chance of repair, and the last one had crashed goodness knows how many hundreds of kilometres away. They would have stocked the parts to manufacture replacements, but a run of remarkably bad luck had placed almost everything necessary in other craft. The situation was looking increasingly bleak.
Riley swore. “Does the admiral know? He’s going to be pissed.”
“Not as such, we were hoping, you know, you might tell him…”
He rolled his eyes. “Do we at least know where it is?”
“Not as such,” he said again, and Riley decided he was beginning to hate that phrase. “I mean, we can extrapolate its trajectory based on its heading at the time it went dark, and if we can get permission to take a couple of ships up then there’s a good chance we can get a fix on a reactor bleed out, assuming one was breached in the crash, which is pretty likely.”
Jackson watched him shrewdly as he mulled it over.
“So… you’ll tell the admiral, then?”
Riley pressed his lips together into a thin line and shook his head from side to side. “Fine.”