Starbound
Chapter 02 - Survival 101
Twilight Sparkle glared at the rough wall of stone in front of her, grinding her teeth in frustration. She could sense there was a lode of iron behind this rock wall, but for all she was worth, she just couldn’t get the stone to come loose.
It had started when she had arrived. She had already come up with the idea to modify Rarity’s gem-finding spell into something that would let her detect metals and carbon-based materials behind stone and dirt and the like just as well as gems. Upon testing her spell and finding that it worked to perfection to a few meters down, she had discovered a rather sizeable lode of iron and was now attempting to prise it from its spot in the wall.
An hour later, and literally no progress had been made. The stone wall remained resolute and refused to yield the metal for Twilight.
Twilight groaned in frustration, plopped right down onto her rear and continued to stare at the wall angrily.
But then a thought suddenly hit her. If she got the metal out, what was she going to use to melt it for smithing? She needed a furnace. To make even a primitive furnace, she was going to have to dig out the stone.
She needed a tool that would let her do that with ease. She glanced outside, where some of the foliage in front of the entrance, including several trees, obscured the view of the path.
By chance, her gaze caught a rather large stone close to the mine entrance. Suddenly, she had an idea. She was going to need to make a pickaxe. That would do for starters, but she would need several tools. However, pickaxe first. She would need to hone that large stone into a pickaxe head, and then use wood to make a handle for leverage.
With a grunt, she got up, trotted over to the rock, and set to shaping it with magic. Surprisingly, it didn’t take as long as she thought. Magic did have its benefits, but she supposed it helped that she wasn’t trying to pull rock from a wall, but instead shape it with magical erosion.
After a few moments, she had a perfect pickaxe head, complete with a hole for the handle to fit. With her pickaxe head in hoof, she trotted outside the mine, found a very large branch that had fallen off of one of the many trees, and set to breaking it down to a wooden dowel that could fit, a process which took even shorter than eroding the stone. After that, magic polished the dowel and shaped it to look and act more like a miner’s pickaxe when used.
When she was content, she slid the dowel in and with magic, sealed the dowel inside the slot. With a forceful tug on both ends with magic, she attempted to prise the dowel from the pick head, but it stood firm. Twilight smiled to herself. She now had a basic tool to use. Now to test.
She trotted back to her spot on the wall, found a chunk of rock that stuck out a little bit from the wall, aimed the pointy end of her pick into a groove, and gave it a mighty swing. The pick dug straight into the rock with some ease, but when she pulled it out, she noted that the head seemed pretty damaged already. She was going to need to get a better pickaxe quickly.
However, that first use was promising. She raised her pickaxe high again and brought it down, this time embedding it further into the same groove. Now, she decided to test the leverage. She stuck the flat end of her pick head into the hole she had made, and using her dowel and the leverage principles of the laws of physics, she tugged.
With a crunch, the chunk of rock broke free and fell to the ground. Twilight sighed, wiped her slightly sweaty brow, and smiled. It had taken an hour and a few minutes, but she had finally gotten it to work.
She had a chunk of stone to shape. It was far too small to be used for a furnace. She was going to need a few more chunks of rock to shape. And she was going to need cement. Having read a survival guide before, she knew that mud with high clay deposits in it, when mixed with lots of hay and grass, made an effective paste to seal gaps between smoothed rocks.
Fortunately, clay was in no shortage in the dirt outside, as she discovered when she went to check, and neither was dead grass to use.
But first, Twilight needed things to work with. Inside the mines was an older set of tools and an old work bench, which she figured would be very useful when putting together her items. They were in a room dug into the walls of one of the shafts, which also included a bed. Twilight would probably need to sanitize and wash it all thoroughly before it was fit to sleep in, though. For now, however, she was still welcome at Rana’s.
For the next few hours, Twilight decided to renovate the mines to function more like a shelter that she could stay in. With the help of her new pickaxe, she was able to dig out some coal. However, she decided she was going to need to set up a stock of it immediately, so as to use when smelting her found metals and for making torches and the like.
Out of the chunk of rock she had cut out, she chiseled both a hoe head and an axe head, which she also added dowels to. In short order, she was chopping down trees, using magic to saw the logs into planks to use, and then creating a working set of doors to close the entrance to the mines whenever she needed it.
There was just so much to do! She needed to make this area into a functioning shelter, create a furnace, dig out the iron to make good tools out of, and in general, survive. She decided to start by focusing on making a functioning shelter. There was a stream that flowed from the top of the hill the mines were cut into, and with some simple irrigation principles, she had diverted a part of it to irrigate a section of land she had set aside for farming. Rana had been kind enough to donate to her a few seeds for various crops at her request. Potatoes, corn wheat, and so forth. Twilight had never had much reason to tap into her earth pony powers, even in the few years since she had ascended, and she figured this would be the perfect opportunity to learn.
Soon after she had a functioning door, she had a fenced enclosure with seeds growing in the ground, perfectly irrigated.
She was probably going to need to purchase a bed from town, or at the very least learn to make one herself. Still, her emergency survival kit included a very well-insulated blanket. It would have to do for now.
After she had finished up with her little garden and her door, she got right back to work on her furnace. It was going to be essential, both as a source of warmth and as something that could help her acquire metals.
The collection of rocks proved to be a shorter task than Twilight had anticipated. All she had needed was a primitive furnace. Just stones and cement to glue them together. By finding the right stones and shaving them via magic to be smooth enough for a furnace, she had collected all of her quota within the day, not to mention acquired plenty of coal.
Unfortunately, she was going to need to use this coal as fuel for her furnace. At least, at first, so to start the fires. With an ample supply of wood, she’d be able to fuel the furnace a lot more easily. Maybe later, she’d find even more lodes of coal to use equally after she had a decent supply of wood for furnace fuel.
It was after Twilight had put the finishing touches on her new furnace that she chanced a look out of her door. To her surprise, the sun was already setting. Had she really just spent the entire day working?
Well, the soreness in her muscles certainly felt like it.
Satisfied at a day well worked, she shut her door and set up her emergency blanket as a sleeping bag.
Oversight number 1, emergency blanket made good sleeping bag, but it lacked a pillow. She was going to have a lot to buy in town tomorrow. A bed, a pillow, so many things! And to top it off, she didn’t even have any currency!
She sighed again, this time more of an irritated one. Of all the planets to wind up on, it just had to be a civilized planet. Landing on a civilized planet had its pros and cons versus landing on an uncivilized one, but overall, it would have been better to land on a completely vacant world. She wouldn’t have had to worry about currency and the like.
Well, beggars can’t be choosers, she thought, as she rolled over on the ground and fell asleep.
The next few days were a bit of a blur for Twilight. She continued renovating the mineshaft into a shelter, which was surprisingly easier than she had anticipated. According to Rana, another visitor, one of the hyoo-mans, had carved out the mine himself and had used it as his own shelter when he himself had been stranded on the world.
At first, Twilight had been crestfallen, knowing that he must have mind out all the coal himself. But that changed when she found a path leading to a sizeable lode of coal in the shelter. After digging it all out, she had found that not only did she have enough coal to at least get some power to her ship, she had a good amount to fuel her furnace with.
She had started to make her own survival supplies as well. With some help from one of the town’s carpenters, she had been able to assemble a simple bed, complete with feather mattress for her to use. Apparently, the Avia collected their fallen feathers to use in items that required their use, such as mattresses or arrows. Twilight wondered if her own feathers would work as well, but given how painful it was to pull some of them out, she reasoned it probably wasn’t a good idea to test that theory until her next molting period sometime in the next couple of years.
That thought aside, now had a rather cozy shelter to live in. While it was quite different from the openness her library had had, or even her castle, if anything, it was more comfortable as a result. The nights were cold, and the closeness of the cave made a good insulator for her furnace to keep her warm. Some clever spellwork had also helped magnify the heat inside while keeping it comfortable outside, and prevent stray sparks from flying out of the furnace as well. All in all, it was a very well-made shelter.
Satisfied that she had completed her place to stay, she had decided to take a day off and explore the town with Rana and Mira as translators. It seemed there were those who were sympathetic to her plight, for they offered her free wares that she had to deny. There were others who seemed indifferent to her plight, but that didn’t stop them from offering advice on different things on the planet. And then there were those who couldn’t have cared less. In fact, they seemed quite anti-non-Avian. Rana and Mira didn’t explain why, but Twilight understood. There were many ponies who were anti-nonpony in Equestria as well. She had known there would be the same beings in other races.
But then she discovered the one thing that promised to make her experience on the planet that much more bearable. She had been walking around the town in the late afternoon, when she saw it. A normal shop, appearing completely ordinary. Upon investigation, however, it had turned out to be a bookstore.
Some of them were even written in Equish, somehow! Which would imply English and Equish were the same as a written language, somehow. Just like they were the same as a spoken language, somehow.
Her suspension of disbelief was starting to wear off, in all honesty.
Her lack of currency prevented her from buying a book, unfortunately, but it didn’t stop her from plying the shopkeeper with questions on how he made the books, where he got them, and so forth. She was wondering if she would be able to add any of the literature she had memorized to the books for sale, a thoroughly extensive list, might the author add.
Nevertheless, this provided the perfect opportunity for Rana to give her the low-down on the currency of the Avian town: pixels. They were just small bits of metalled rock that didn’t seem to have originated from this world. Perhaps the hyoo-mans had brought them to use?
While Twilight was self-sufficient when it came to things she needed for survival, she desperately wanted books. So she utilized her magical talents for the town for the next couple of weeks, doing things for the townsavia in exchange for pixels. The books she prioritized buying first were instructional manuals on how to make certain useful items. Unfortunately, most every book was written in the avian language, so she needed to translate, which is where Rana came in handy. He would read the book aloud in Equish/English, and she would write it all down in an empty book. Within a couple of hours, she had a translated book.
The first few weeks passed in what seemed like the blink of an eye, but that may have been because it seemed time was accelerating to her. She remembered when she had first moved to Ponyville, and the Grand Galloping Gala, which was only three months away, seemed like an eternity in the future. Now, however, she was going on those same three months, and it had seemed the time had just blown past. Perhaps it was now that she had a larger scale to look at, being a little under fifty Equestrian years old, yet not feeling a day older than when she had ascended.
A sad thought entered her mind, a thought that had been plaguing her ever since it became clear that her friends were starting to show their age while she remained youthful. What if she was stuck here? Stuck as an eternally-young alicorn princess on another world while her friends grew old and died? Well, at least they all had special someponies and each other; they wouldn’t be alone through that time, like she would.
She smiled wanly. It had started only a few years after she had ascended. Pokey Pierce had been bold enough to ask Pinkie on a date, and before Twilight knew it, they were married with a foal on the way. Applejack and Rainbow Dash both found coltfriends shortly after Pinkie, with Soarin’ pursuing AJ and a Wonderbolt teammate of Dash’s going after her. To nopony’s surprise, Big Macintosh and Fluttershy almost magnetically fell toward each other, which left Rarity. For the first decade or so, Rarity refused to accept any suitor. Twilight secretly thought she had to be waiting for Spike, and was genuinely surprised when Spike instead began to pursue Sweetie Belle. Rarity then explained that she had made a promise to an old friend many years ago, who was a Peacekeeper assigned in Prance.
Twenty-five years after Twilight had arrived in Ponyville, all of her friends were married with foals, and she remained alone.
Though it wasn’t for want of suitors. She’d had quite a few ponies she knew ask her on dates, and even some snobbish aristocrats who had the gall to drop hints about an arranged marriage between them. But they were always turned down, even the ones she called herself friends with. Almost all of them were just trying to further their social status. The rest she wasn’t willing to risk her friendship with, should the relationship go south.
Twilight’s wan smile turned amused. It had been rather funny watching Cadence fuss over her for turning down Flash. Really, it had sounded like she was completely distressed by the concept of her old foalsat waiting for the right--
Wait a minute, Twilight thought, suddenly elated. An idea had sprung to her mind! An idea she wondered how she hadn’t thought of it before!
As she had learned many years ago, electricity was essentially the same brand of energy as magic, which meant she could be a living battery if she wanted to be, so long as she had the Mana in her system, and goodness did she have a lot of Mana.
She almost-literally flew over to her work bench and set to work designing schematics for a distress beacon.
The roar of his ship’s engine died as the Ulysses dropped out of warp. The human in the pilot’s chair looked out over the planet below him, and a fond smile worked its way onto his face. It had been far too long since he had seen Rana and Mira. He wondered how much bigger Rika and Luka had gotten in the last year.
A bipping sound issued from his scanner, and he turned his head to the smaller screen. It was showing a ship floating above the planet! The human furrowed his brow as he stared at the small blip of green on the screen. The ship resembled his own, at least in concept. It looked like it was designed to go at warp speeds, but it looked nothing like any of the ships he had seen during his time traveling among the stars.
With a few button pushes on his controls, the ship was being scanned. It would take a few moments to complete, so the human stabilized the flight of his ship to put it in orbit around Alpha Prime III B. Once that was set, he got up and walked back to his storage chamber, where he found his armor and his weapons of choice laying on top of one of the drawers.
Without any hesitation, he picked up the pieces of silver and steel armor and started to put it all on. It looked quite like some of the armor used by the USCM, except it shone white instead of black. While he recognized the value in the black armor and its stealth capability, the USCM was hardly the image he wanted to invoke when meeting new beings.
After he had donned his armor, he holstered his pistol, slung his assault rifle over his back, and clipped a few different varieties of grenade to his belt. One he had all of his gear ready, he walked back to his cockpit, to find that the scan was finishing up.
SCAN COMPLETE
ORIGINATING SPECIES: Unknown
DESIGNATION: E.S.S. Enterprise
WEAPONS: None
POWER LEVEL: <10%
STATUS: In orbit.
LIFE SIGNS: Negative
The human stared at the screen for a moment, studying what the screen was displaying. It made him laugh out loud to find that the ship was named the Enterprise. But the other information only sobered him. An unknown entity was stranded on the planet, unless it was dead aboard the ship. Well, there was only one way to find out for sure.
He walked back to his transporter, locked it onto the ship, and was surprised to find another transporter signal coming from inside. With that information in hand, he locked onto it and beamed over to the other ship.
Instantly, he pulled out his pistol, keeping it ready in case something malevolent attacked him, but the ship was empty of living beings.
“INTRUDER, IDENTIFY YOUR NAME AND SPECIES,” came an automated voice.
“Jack Thomas, human,” he answered. Perhaps it was a custom human ship, like his.
“SPECIES NOT RECOGNIZED.”
At once, the dimly-lit ship started blaring alarms and flashing red light. Jack figured this would probably be a good idea to take his leave and see if he could find the ship’s pilot before the ship’s computer decided to kill him, and he beamed down to the planet via the Enterprise’s transporter.
Twilight’s ship monitor on her left forehoof began to issue an alarm noise. She paused in her work on her distress beacon to read the report. A member of an unknown species had beamed aboard her ship for a few seconds before beaming down to the planet’s surface. It had apparently done nothing more than scan her ship with its own, before transporting aboard, triggering the alarm, and then leaving.
This put Twilight in a state of caution. For all she knew, this could be those mysterious creatures that had attacked her on Day 1, and they had found her. She needed to get this distress beacon working. Progress was swift, and she was already almost complete. She practically threw a few more lumps of iron ore into her furnace to get it melted quickly.
Thanks to magic, her beacon was completed quickly, almost three hours before it would have been completed without.magic. The smithing had taken just as long as it would have without, but it was the arrangement of the wooden supports and copper wires. In moments, she would be able to channel her magical energy through the machine, and after shaping some pixels into certain primitive logic gate arrangements, she had a tailored distress beacon that would send out an S.O.S. signal in Horse code. Maybe the hyoo-mans, or some other sentient species would hear and come help. If their languages were the same, maybe their radio languages were too.
Gotta get this thing working, she thought, tapping into her magic and touching a pile of pixels with it. She had discovered that pixels made an excellent battery of magic, if she channeled certain amounts into it. She could power her machines via magic without constantly having to channel it.
After a couple of minutes spent saturating her batteries, she picked a few up and stuck them in a slot on her machine.
I sure hope this works, she thought, as a small light on the end of her transmitter dish started blinking. Three times rapidly to signify three dots, three times prolonged to signify three dashes, and then three times rapidly again. And it would repeat until she deactivated it.
Since it seemed to be working, she grabbed the beacon, rushed outside, and set it up in a clear spot in the forest on top of her little hill.
The human’s ship monitor beeped, and he glanced down at it.
INCOMING RADIO SIGNAL
Radio signal? he thought, bewildered. Is there even a level of technology on this planet capable of using radio yet?
“Computer, locate the source of the signal,” he ordered.
The ship monitor instantly spun the planet around on his little screen, then showed a crosshair at--
My old shelter?
Jack didn’t need telling twice. He was already marching toward the avian town, and from there, to his old mine.
“Computer, play the radio signal,” he ordered again.
Instantly, the sound of beeping met his ears.
Beep beep beep! Beeeeeep beeeeeep beeeeeep! Beep beep beep!
And then there was silence for a moment, but then the pattern repeated. Jack would have been a total fool not to recognize it.
“An S.O.S. signal,” he muttered. “Whoever owns that wrecked ship must be in trouble.”
His march became a jog as he started running toward the hill.
Twilight had been sitting in a nearby clearing for a little over an hour now, waiting for something to happen. She had given up watching the beacon, thinking the responders would just beam down to see what the fuss was about While she hadn’t expected something immediate, each passing minute did up the suspense she was feeling.
How long must I wait? she wondered.
BOOM!
Twilight’s head bolted around to where the beacon was. The explosion had come from that direction!
She galloped over, to find a shallow blackened crater in the ground, exactly where her distress beacon had been. But there was a massive shadow on the ground, which shouldn’t have existed in a clearing.
Her head snapped up, and her heart sank completely. There, floating above her, was the same, saucer-shaped black ship that had attacked her.