Starbound

by Rytex

Penguins

Twilight Sparkle dashed down the hill as the tree behind her exploded, sending fragments of wood flying all around her.

WHY THE TARTARUS ARE THESE THINGS ATTACKING ME!? she wondered as she ran.  WHAT THE BUCK DID I EVER DO TO THEM!?

You existed, her brother’s nagging voice said.  Remember, not every species is as gentle as ours.

Twilight rolled her eyes, even as she ducked behind a boulder in time for another explosion to erupt on the other side of her little shield.  If she could just get down to the mines…

Jack dashed through the town, surprising several Avia as he madly sprinted toward his old shelter.  He had seen a smooth black flying saucer fly past, and he knew very well what those were.

Ludicrous as the concept sounded, space penguins were attacking the planet.  Or more specifically, the place the distress beacon had been set up.  It would seem they were the ones who knocked out the Enterprise.  He’d been hearing rumors of a few of these saucers flying around and pirating off of unsuspecting stellar travellers.

He had even encountered and defeated one himself.  They had been foolish enough to think they could mess with someone running around a planet occupied by Apex.  Jack had found an Apex facility, grabbed an ion blaster, and proceeded to disable the ship, which then fell out of the sky and exploded, leaving Jack to search through the debris to find something useful.

Something that could, perhaps, help the trapped being escape.

Well, he or she had to survive first.

The shelter was a little more than two miles away, but Jack was in shape enough to jog most of the way and run even faster the rest of it.  It wouldn’t take too much longer...

Twilight was hiding in a small bush.  The strange ship was flying around the hill, searching for her.  However, it had beamed down several creatures to search manually.  At first, Twilight had to rub her eyes with her hooves, but it looked like penguins were attacking her.

And yet, there they were.  Five penguins, about half her size.  And they were carrying strange, L-shaped devices, except one, who was carrying a long cylinder of some kind.  They were searching through the brush, attempting to find her, likely to kill her and take her things.

Take my things?  Prioritize!  Life first, things later! she thought.

The landing party of space penguins were aiming their strange things at everything that so much as shifted, including more than once her bush.  And every time they did, she would tense up and suck in a breath, then release it in relief when they aimed away.

The one with the cylinder jabbered in penguin language to the others, and they started to spread out.  Twilight knew it was only a matter of time before they found her, so her best bet would be to attack first and gain the element of surprise.  However, she would have to do it in a way that didn’t alert the ship to her location.  The last thing she needed was to have hellfire rain down upon her.

Taking a deep breath, she directed the flow of magic into her hooves, and through them, into the ground.  Willing the energy she was manipulating, she guided it into the trees, the bushes, and the ground beneath the penguins’ feet.

A branch suddenly swiped at one of the other four penguins, catching it completely by surprise and sending it flying into a half-buried rock.  The remaining three instantly whipped their L-shaped things around and pointed them at the tree.  A series of loud bangs and small bursts of light emitted from the Ls, and Twilight saw small holes being punctured in the trunk.

A miniature cannon? she thought.  It must be firing a ballistic of some kind, and since they’re able to punch their way into a tree that deep, those things have to be done away with.

The dirt under another penguin suddenly shifted.  Before it could react, a small fissure formed in the ground.  The penguin toppled in, before the dirt closed up, burying it completely.

Twilight allowed herself a small smile.  She had the upper hoof now.  The penguins had no idea what was happening, and they had yet to communicate to their ship what was going on.

A vine on another tree dropped down, ensnared a third penguin by the neck, and then yanked it sharply up about two meters off of the ground.  The last two penguins, including the one with the cylinder, were looking wildly around.  Twilight seized her chance.  With two quick bursts of magic from her horn, both penguins’ weapons were sent flying out of their flippers.  As they turned to face her, two more quick bursts of magic sent them both flying into the same half-buried rock the first one had hit.

She let out a sigh of relief.  Up above, the alien ship was still floating around, searching for her, and it seemed to give no indication that anyone aboard knee what had just happened below.

She felt the magic in the ground, feeling that the penguin buried was now unconscious, and so she released it.  After the buried one was taken out of the ground, she dropped the hung one, whose collision with the ground also knocked it unconscious.

Twilight trotted over to the fallen penguin that’d had the cylindrical object.  The fact that it was the only one with this weapon seemed to make it the leader, which likely meant it had a better weapon than the others.

She examined the strange metal cylinder.  One end was open, but the other was closed off.  All in all, it looked like yet another cannon.  This being said, she turned it over, open end down, and sent a magic probe to feel and free any ammunition.  A few inches in, her probe felt something, so with the proper exploration and procedures taken to prevent an untimely firing, she managed to release whatever was stored inside.

Imagine her surprise when a miniature rocket fell out.

A… rocket? she thought to herself, scrutinizing the small metal object.  She used magic to scan the rocket, and what she found almost made her drop it.  Fuses had been stored in the point, and if any of them were tripped, it would explode.  But the way in which these were arranged left no doubt that this was its intended purpose the entire time.

A tool of science, made to take objects beyond the area gravity could affect, and it had been weaponized.  There were few things that could make Twilight Sparkle truly angry (such as the repeated failure to come up with a scientific explanation for a physics-and-logic-breaking Pinkie Pie), but nothing ever came as close to taking something used for a purpose as normally-harmless as science and turning it into a tool to kill beings.

A truly wonderful idea then presented itself to her.  Murderous, yet wonderful.  What if she turned their own weapon against them?  Sure, she could not properly use that metal cylinder, but with her magic, she was sure she could fling it at the velocity needed to properly trip the fuses.

Without pausing to think after that logic train, she flung the rocket at the ship high above her.

To make a long story shorter, she had been right.  She could fling it fast enough to cause it to explode.  What she was not able to do, however, was penetrate the ship’s exterior with it.  The rocket exploded on its underbelly, but aside from sending it reeling slightly, it did apparently no damage.

And it alerted its occupants to her position.  At once, it responded with laser fire.

Twilight, unable to react, was hit directly by a red beam of energy that sent her flying into a tree, but she didn’t notice.  She was screaming in sheer pain.  It felt like every hair on her coat was on fire, and so was the skin underneath.  She looked down at herself to see several burns all over, several patches of hair burned off, and several open and oozing spots on her body.

The ship fired again, this time missing her narrowly.  But the impact of the blast sent her careening sideways again, through a bush, where the branches added scratches and dug the open wounds even deeper.  The situation did not look good.

Twilight saw another group of penguins running toward her now.  They were aiming their weapons at her, but they weren’t firing for some reason.  Did they want to take her prisoner?

A series of sharp popping reports rang out.  At once, all six of the penguins keeled over, penetration wounds erupting on their bodies.

Twilight looked around wildly and saw a strange, bipedal, armor-covered being running toward her, carrying a weapon that looked similar to what the penguins had been carrying.

“Are you alright?” it asked in a voice that sounded like a typical stallion.  “Can you understand me?”

Twilight nodded weakly.  The being knelt down, picked her up with its arms, and started to carry her towards the shelter.

“I’m guessing you got hit by the penguin ship,” it said again.

“Y-yes,” Twilight said shakily.  She was becoming increasingly distressed; he was cradling her touching her wounds while doing so, and she could feel no pain!  She had to have been third-degree burned!

“It’s quite alright, I’m here to help,” the being said, obviously mistaking her distress as fear of it.  “By the by, how do you know English?”

“I-I think th-that’s n-not an appropriate topic to t-talk about right now,” she said, before crying out as a line of pain lanced up one of the wounds it touched.

“Oh dear,” it said, looking her over. briefly.  “You have multiple third-degree burns, severe lacerations, and, hang on,” he added, turning her face to stare at the strange helmet that covered its own face, “spell Cat for me.”

“C… a… t.” she recited.

“Okay, good, your brain seems to be functioning fine.  Doesn’t look like you’re concussed, which will make this easier.”

The light around them vanished.  The being had gotten Twilight into the shelter.

“This all your handiwork?” it asked as it approached the bed.

“Y-yeah,” she said.

“Good.  Might help save your life.”

The being reached into a pouch and pulled out a smaller little kit.  Upon opening it, Twilight saw a series of syringes filled with different colored liquids.  He picked up a smaller machine included in them, which had an injecting end as well.

“These are stim-packs,” the being explained.  “They stimulate certain parts in your body, be they cells, eyes, et cetera, but first, I need to make sure you have a compatible biology to where these will work.  That’s what this is for,” he indicated the small machine.  “This is going to be a bit painful,” it warned, putting the injecting end on her bare skin before pulling a trigger on the strange machine.

Twilight hissed as it stung her.  Still, if this was what it took to save her life, she gladly accepted it.  The being sat there, watching her.

“W-what’s your name?” she asked. “And w-what are you?”

The being reached up and pulled off his helmet, revealing a strangely-proportioned face, with red hair growing out only the top of it, and blue eyes.  It kind of looked a bit like a primate’s face.

“My name’s Jack Thomas,” he said.  “I’m a human.”

“You’re a hyoo-man?” Twilight asked, curiosity piqued.

“Yeah.  So, tell me, what about you?” he asked as he looked at a device on his wrist, if the primate terms applied correctly.  “Obviously an equine of some kind.  Birds are the dominant species here, monkeys elsewhere, even plant creatures.  But horses?  Haven’t seen you guys before.”

“Ponies,” she corrected.  “My n-name is Twilight Sparkle.”

“Pleasure to make first contact with you, Twilight Sparkle,” he said, inclining his head.  A beeping sounded from his wrist device, and when he looked at it, his face instantly grew a lot more relieved.

“Well, I have good news and bad news,” he said, pulling out one of the red stim-packs.  “The good news is, you’re going to make a full recovery, burned hair and all.”

“H-how?” she asked.

“Red stim-pack contains a chemical that stimulates the cells in your body at a tremendous rate, allowing you to regenerate from wounds a lot faster for a short period of time.  Your burns will heal, even your hair will grow back.  But like with the little thing I injected into you a moment ago, it’s going to hurt.

“With this level of damage,” he said, pulling out a different syringe, this time with a clear liquid, “I’m going to have to put you to sleep for a while, so the stim-pack can do its job without you feeling anything.  Is that alright?”

“I-if it saves my life, go ahead,” she said, laying her head on her pillow. “Alright.  N-now what about the bad news?” she asked.

A boom sounded, and the shelter shook slightly around them.

“Dreadwing is still attacking,” Jack answered.  “I’ll take care of him, and it won’t take long.  Just sleep and heal up.”

With that, he injected the clear liquid into her system.  For a few seconds, nothing felt any different.  Suddenly, she felt as though her eyelids had 1000kg weights attached to them.  Instantly, she fell asleep, snoozing peacefully despite the attack outside.

Jack took a brief moment to study the pony before he went ahead with the injection of the stim-pack.  During his inspection, he checked several things.  Such as the purpose of the horn (where he felt a strange sort of vibrating air as he reached to touch it), the state of the wings (which looked far too short to allow her to fly), and whether or not it was male or female.

When he shifted the tail aside, he found clear evidence that it was, in fact, a female.  What had surprised him and sent more than a few unwanted images to his head was that unlike a typical equine… girlhood, her’s was remarkably human-looking.  Really tough to describe.

Either way, he knew the gender now, and that’s what mattered.  With that, he injected the red stim-pack and watched for a few moments as her skin immediately started to heal.  It was a slow process, but it was noticeable.  Regardless, it would take time.

Shaking his head to (unsuccessfully) clear his head of said thoughts, he reloaded his gun, put his helmet back on, and opened the door to the shelter.  He knew what to do to take it down, and he was going to put down Dreadwing permanently.

Once outside, the hill was now in even worse shape than it had been.  Several sections had been blown off, and Dreadwing’s ship was flying around, looking for its quarry.

Jack calmly walked up to a point where he knew he would have a good firing line of sight for both his gun and one of his grenades.  He needed to make sure he got this absolutely right, or else it wouldn’t work.

Raising his assault rifle, he fired a few shots at the ship.  They wouldn’t penetrate the ship, nor did he expect them to, but they did get Dreadwing’s attention inside.

The ship rotated to get a clear line of fire at him, revealing the laser cannon.  Before Dreadwing could shoot, however, Jack had activated a grenade and tossed it at the gun.

Come on… come on… he thought desperately as the grenade soared through the air…

Before barely grazing the cannon and exploding in a burst of lightning.  The gun coursed with the electrical energy, before exploding quite violently.

“YES!” Jack yelled in triumph.  The most dangerous weapon of the ship had been neutralized, but that still left the penguin crew.  Of whom six were dead, six were incapacitated, and an unknown number were hurt by the exploding gun.  However the pilot, Dreadwing himself, was still alive.

Jack tossed another Electromagnetic Pulse grenade at the ship, having a much larger target to hit, and was rewarded when the second grenade hit the underside.  Lightning coursed over the ship, but instead of exploding, the engines keeping it in the sky shut down.

“Oh shit,” Jack said, scrambling away as fast as he could before the ship could squash him like a bug.  With a crash and a resounding boom, the hulking saucer of metal slammed into the hill, crushing trees and throwing dirt and rocks everywhere.

Jack kept his rifle raised at the cockpit part of the ship, directly in the center of the top.  He knew the glass was shielded by forcefield normally, which protected it from attacks from above, but now that the ship was down, Dreadwing was in danger.

Jack ran over to the ship, leapt onto the topside of the ship, and went straight to the cockpit, where a dazed penguin sat at the controls.  Nova punched through the glass, his armored hand preventing it from damaging him, and yanked the pilot through.

“The infamous Dreadwing the Pirate,” Jack said, tossing the penguin off his crashed ship.  The penguin was no different from the others aboard, except Jack knew this one was intelligent.  “I’m disappointed.  I thought you would be a better fight than this.”

The penguin pushed himself off the ground, before turning and levelling a pistol pointed at him.  Jack just laughed.  Ballistic guns did nothing to his armor; only the modified laser rifles that the Apex and the USCM carried did anything worth worry.

Dreadwing snarled.

“Human scum,” he said in a strange, boyish-sounding voice.  “You’ll pay for what you did to my ship!”

“How will I pay?” Jack responded.  “Go ahead and shoot me.  I dare you to try.”

Dreadwing did what most others didn’t do in this situation; he actually fired at Jack.  But the bullets hit the armor and bounced off harmlessly.

“Wha--” Dreading said, trailing off.  “How is that possible?”

“Science, bitch,” Jack said, jumping down and yanking the gun away.  “Nicked this set of armor from an abandoned USCM base in Sector Beta.  Was supposedly experimental and on lockdown, but an EMP grenade was enough to shut down security.  Unfortunately, not the best armor out there, but it’s enough to stop you.”

He backhanded Dreadwing, sending the diminutive penguin crashing into a tree trunk.  Jack calmly walked over and picked up the penguin again, before turning around and climbing up the ship.  Once there, he tied Dreadwing down to his pilot’s chair, before heading to one of the higher points on the hill, where the ship’s highest end rested.

And utilizing lever physics, he turned the ship over, belly-up.

It really was quite amazing.  The ship didn’t weigh very much.  The anti-gravity engine must not have shorted out with the EMP.  But whatever the cause, Jack felt like so much more of a man, having flipped a space ship.

Once the underside was exposed, Jack found the six engines placed on the bottom and ripped out five of them.  The EMP had completely fried the ship, but some parts were still salvageable, such as the molten cores he knew this ship carried in its engines.  And he knew this ship’s design allowed for the entire engine to be replaced easily, having seen a blueprint for one of these in an Apex facility.  They had been intended for the Avia, back when the USCM weren't out to take over the universe, but Dreadwing had hijacked the ship during his escape from a USCM facility on the same planet.

Better times… Jack thought.  We were working cooperatively with the other species, and the schism hadn't happened yet...

Dismissing that thought, he took each engine apart, which was pretty easy due to the nature of the ship designs, and found the one component he was looking for:  a metal fusion core that utilized extremely high temperatures of heat.

These cores were a decent size, so once he had his five, he had to carry them two at a time back to the shelter, where Twilight Sparkle still recovered on the bed.  He was pleased to see that all of the lacerations had been healed, and that most of the burns were as well.  In a few more minutes, her hair would return to the state it was minutes ago, before she was hit.

Once all five cores were stored safely in the shelter, Jack returned to the flipped UFO, where Dreadwing glared at him from his upside-down vantage point.  Jack just knelt down and spoke up to make sure the penguin could hear.

“Well, just wanted to thank you for those warp cores you’ve so kindly given me,” he said, patting the ship.  “That being said, so long, enjoy your time in hell.”

Jack took the five engines and tossed them into the opening on the bottom where the penguins were beamed down to, before adding a normal remote grenade into the mix.

He had to run further up the hill to completely avoid the debris from the blast, and while the shelter would have effectively protected him, he wanted to watch the fireworks.  Upon reaching the very top of the hill, he tapped the detonate button on his wrist.

The ship exploded, blasting flaming bits of metal in all directions and digging a little into the hillside, but not enough to cave in his shelter.  Jack watched the explosion, feeling a grim smile appear on his face.  The infamous Dreadwing, scourge of the Alpha Sector, beaten so easily.

Guess that’s why he’s only in the Alpha Sector, Jack thought.  Still, he was defeated, and now none of the beings out there had to live in fear of the penguins attacking them again.

“Well,” Jack muttered to himself, surveying the flaming wreckage of the ship, “now that he’s out of the way, let’s go see about Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight woke up, and the first thing she noticed was that the pain was gone.  For the first time since her departure, she felt… good.  Rested, healthy, generally good.

She surveyed herself.  No burns, no lacerations, and her fur was exactly the way it should have been.  She bolted over to a mirror she had crafted.  Her mane was perfect, just the way she liked it.

She smiled broadly.  She was going to need more of that stim-pack stuff.  Though only Jack Thomas would know where to get any.  And speaking of Jack Thomas, where was it?

The door to the shelter opened, and the armored figure of Jack Thomas walked in.

“Well, you’re looking better,” it observed, noticing immediately that she was on her hooves and completely injury-free.

“Those stim-packs saved my life,” Twilight said.  “Thank-you,” she added, giving him a very sincere and heartfelt thanks.

Jack Thomas pulled off its helmet, and then started to take off his armor as well.  Twilight noticed that he wore clothes as well, like most of the rich ponies did, and that his skin was mostly bare, apart from some very thin body hair.

“Are all of your kind like that?” she asked curiously.

“Like what?” Jack Thomas asked.

“Well, hairless.”

Jack nodded.  “I don’t think you’ve met the Apex yet, since it seems you’re stranded on this planet, Twilight Sparkle, but--”

“Twilight,” she corrected.

“Hm?” Jack asked.

“Call me Twilight, Jack Thomas.”

Jack just smiled.

“Call me Jack, Twilight.”

Twilight nodded.  “And, if you don’t mind me asking, are you male or female?”

“I’m a guy,” Jack said.  “And I don’t mean to embarrass you, or anything, but I already know you’re a girl pony.”

“Mare,” Twilight corrected again, blushing slightly at the thought of a stranger inspecting… her.

“Whatever,” Jack said.  “Yeah, we’re mostly hairless.  When you meet the Apex, you’ll see they look like us humans, only hairier.  They went a different way on the path of evolution.”

“Oh.  And what are those?” she asked, indicating a bunch of metal orb things.

“Molten cores.  Used in engines and things.  Plan on using them to repair your engines.  That ship, the Enterprise, is it yours?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then, it’ll take some time, but I can get it repaired without too much trouble,” he said, before yawning slightly.  “How’d you get stranded over this planet, anyway?”

“Those penguins attacked me,” Twilight said, ears drooping.  “We knew nothing about anything outside of our planet, and my ship was prepared in case of a battle, but they struck in the middle of warp.  So now I’m just down here, hoping to find something to get me to another planet.”

“Well,” Jack said, gesturing at the molten cores, “I can use these to fix your engines, but unless you know where your planet is, and have enough fuel to get you there, I highly doubt you’re going to get back to your home planet.”

“I’ve been digging up coal--”

“Not going to be enough to get you anywhere but elsewhere in Sector Alpha, or in Sectors Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Chi.”

“Sectors?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah,” Jack explained, flashing up a holographic image of a group of planets.  “We divided known space into several sectors, based on their threat level as well as resources and the like.  My planet’s all the way in Sector Σ,” he flicked the map, and it zoomed through several planet groups, finally coming to rest on a random assortment of stars.  “Right here, in the Sol system, to be exact,” he added, indicating a yellow star.  “So unless you know exactly where your planet is by our coordinates, we’re going to have to manually just look for your planet.”

“Well,” Twilight said, suddenly appreciating the daunting task ahead, “if it helps you at all, I would have been able to make the trip in one warp jump if I wasn’t pulled out.  Warp speed seemed constant and drained a constant amount of energy in our experiments, at least for us ponies--”

“Warp is constant across all races, Twilight,” Jack said, but he was rubbing his chin with his hand quite thoughtfully as he flicked back to Sector A.  “This actually helps narrow it down a lot.  Since you were only able to make it in only one warp trip, or so you say, this means you could only have come from Sectors A, B, Γ, Δ, and χ.”

“Are there many planets in those sectors?” Twilight asked curiously, feeling that flame of needing to know things suddenly light up once again.

“Quite a few, but if you describe your stellar system to me, I might be able to narrow it down. We’ll have to explore more systems as we go, because I’m only really familiar with Sectors A and B, so we’ll have to mooch Starmaps from other races along the way.”

“We?” she asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” Jack said.  “You’re stranded, and you have no idea how to get back home.  I want to help you find your way, and I’m willing to go with you.  Think of it as a mutually-beneficial relationship.  I get to go exploring planets, we both find your way home, you get home eventually.”

“And I get to see the stars, too,” Twilight interjected.

Jack just shrugged.

“So, do you accept my offer?” he asked, holding out a hand.

Twilight smiled, nodded, and gave him her hoof.

“I do, Jack.”

Jack smiled and ran a hand through his red hair.

“Well then, Twilight Sparkle, let’s go get you home.”