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Co-Author: Architect
“A journey is not about the destination, rather it’s about the lesson one has picked to learn along the way.” ~ Princess Luna.
Life on the starship was predictable. No, it was worse than predictable. It was horribly, awfully, dull. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, and once you’d explored the ship, no new ponies to meet. To alleviate the boredom, Twilight will often spent her time reading all the book they had brought along or tinker in her lab with various inventions. Most of her crew (being mortal, unlike her) had gone into cold sleep, only leaving a few awake at a time to keep the ship running and on course.
After spending an afternoon messing around with a computer (or as she put it 'wasting my time'), she headed to her cabin. Stifling a yawn, she swiped her keycard on the reader, but her pager buzzed before she could step inside. " Princess?” It was the on duty navigation officer for the current shift rotation. “Can you come to the bridge? There is something here you need to see.". Finally, something different to do, she mused to herself.
"This better not be about another meteorite in our path Officer Lyra!" Twilight shouted when the double doors opened to reveal the bridge. Not after the last 15 times you called me up here, she added in her head. Lyra was already standing at attention when Twilight walked in, and marched forward to meet her. "No Princess, I called you up here because our initial target is not what we expected." she started before she continued "It's inhabited by humans. If you look at the screen over there, it seems that they are currently at war with each other. I would advise not settling here and instead head for another uninhabited planet."
Well, this is an interesting turn of events Twilight thought, "I'm surprised Lyra, you haven't freaked out after seeing humans in real life. You have a Phd in Anthropology after all,”she said teasingly, smirking. Come on, Twilight! she thought to herself, even Pinkie Pie would have made a better joke than this. Sigh, I wonder how the others are doing.
“Oh, I got over that obsession after I broke into your lab several times to read your notes and use that scrying lens in your observatory. But still, it would be nice if I could catch one so i could study them in, person.” Lyra replied as she smiled seductively. Twilight snorted at her joke, while also remembering the time she’d caught Lyra in the act. Lyra had apologised on the spot multiple times but Twilight, seeing the untapped determination in her, instead welcomed her into her circle of researchers. Lyra had proved to be a very helpful pony, often staying up for days in the observatory monitoring the humans, copying their schematics and sketching the blueprints of certain parts of their spaceships, raw data that proved highly useful in advancing their understanding and ability to replicate it.
Turning to view the screen Lyra had indicated earlier, she saw it was focused on a battle taking place on the planet below. The two sides, while similar in shape, had strikingly different designs and color palettes. One of them was composed of blocky power suits, reinforced by the occasional much larger mecha, painted in red and gold and clearly piloted by a human soldier. The other was bare steel and neon yellow, streamlined and fluid where their opponents were sturdy and immovable. They didn’t seem to have any humans at all, and operated completely independently, but were still perfectly synchronized. It was both eerie and impressive to say the least.
As the armies clashed, and metal flew, Twilight decided that this wasn’t the best place to land. “Lyra, set a course for the next planet on our list. After that deploy a communications beacon to inform the other starships."
"Will do Princess," Lyra replied.
Andromeda Alpha, Year 253 A.P. (After Planetfall)
"General, progress report on our war with the Slavic Federation. I expected our new Aegis units to turn the tide, and they don’t appear to be helping. How are we supposed to make this planet into a new Earth at the rates things are going?" Suzanne Fieldings, was ranting again, strutting back and forth like an angry pea-cat while she vented at her military officers.
"I’m sorry to say this, Miss Fieldings,”The general replied, “but our enemy has developed a new unit of their own. They call them CARVRs and they’re wreaking havoc with our Battlesuits. They can also tank a few hits from the Aegis, and are canceling out what would have been an advantage. Instead of us crushing them like we should be, we’re only forcing a stalemate."
Turning to the science advisor, she asked: "How long is it before our anti-gravity drives are compact enough to able to fabricate those LEV Tanks?"
“A few more months, at least,” he answered, flipping through some information on a tablet, “And another few after that before we can one up and running.”
Suzanne swore under her breath, then got control of her anger, “Contact the Federation, and offer a mutual ceasefire, with emphasis on the fact that there are no bonuses for either side. If we keep fighting like this we’ll lose all our forces, and then one of those Harmonists could take us both out. I do not want our demise to come at the hands of those nature freaks.” She spun on her heel and stormed out of the room as her subordinates saluted.
As Suzanne stomped towards her office, her secretary came running out to meet. "Miss Fieldings, you need to take a look at this! This is a live feed from the deep space telescope just east of Liberty. An unknown spaceship is approaching the planet! Early analysis concluded that while it is similar, it’s definitely not one of ours." The secretary passed her the tablet computer she was holding.
Suzanne snatched it from her it and stared at the screen. A ovaloid blob that was way too uniform to be natural sailed through space past the moon. The whole ship was tinted a light shade of purple and on the side of the ship was a marking, which consisted of a six-pointed pink star surrounded by five smaller six-pointed white stars.That marking looks like a flag she thought. Seeing a strip of what looks like a windscreen on the starship she tapped on the screen to zoom in.
On the other side of the glass she could see 2 creatures. Although it wasn't clear, she could make out the shape and colour of one of them. The first thing that struck her was the creature's colour, namely that it was bright purple. Then the telescope focused, and she could see it clearly, a quadrupedal creature with a horn on what appeared to be its forehead. The silhouette of the creature reminded her of the ponies she had coloured ìn her colouring books when she was a little girl. However, before she could get a good look at the area around it, the ship turned away, obscuring it from view.
The starship detached something with what looked suspiciously like an antenna from one of the rear ports, then accelerated rapidly away from the planet.
"What is that? Is it a homing beacon?" she asked. Turning to her secretary she said : "Get the boys down at Liberty to monitor the device. If there are any other unidentified spaceships approaching, I want them to scramble the missile rovers in preparation of an anti-orbital strike."
It took a week for them to conclude that the ‘aliens’ sighted were not hostile. Two more starships, one which was colored cyan and another white had shown up in visual range of their deep space telescope. Initially, they were worried about a possible alien invasion but after seeing how the starships had upon getting into range of the beacon left behind slow down before turning away, concluded that that was not the case. They’d also picked up a repeating signal from the beacon, although they had yet to translate it. If ARC could make contact with these aliens, then maybe it would provide the boost they needed to finish remaking this world in Earth’s image, and that was a chance Suzanne was willing to take.
S.S. 20% Cooler, 10 years I.T. (In Transit)
"Princess Dash? Princess's Twilight's starship is in front of us. It’s currently in orbit around the secondary target," the navigations officer briefed Rainbow Dash as she enter the bridge after being woken up from a rather pleasant dream of coming in first in a race against the former captain of the wonderbolts, Spitfire. As such,she had been rather irritated when the darned intercom in her room came to life, asking for her presence on the bridge. Someday, I’ll break that infernal contraption. It’s been nothing but an annoyance this entire voyage, she thought as she recalled last month when she was rather rudely woken up by Derpy Hooves after she had accidentally steered the ship into an asteroid field.
“What about it?” she said somewhat snappishly at Scootaloo, her second in command, “Since when is her ship orbiting around a planet is such a big deal?”
“She’s not just orbiting,” The Nav. Officer replied, “She’s making planetfall.”
“WHAT?” Rainbow shouted, “We were supposed to have a meeting before any of us landed to make sure this was the right place, what is she thinking?”
“What are you asking me for?” said Scootaloo. “She hasn’t been responding to my calls.”
“Well, what are you waiting for then? If she is going down, than i’m following her down there!” Rainbow yelled in reply before getting her composure back. “Sorry Scoots, I’m just worried about her. Just get everyone ready and sorry about the outburst earlier on.”
“Will do Princess Rainbo-” Scootaloo said before she was cut off by Rainbow Dash.
“Scootaloo, there is no need to call me Princess, you can just call me Rainbow Dash. It’s feels wrong for me to ask my god-sister to refer to me so formally” Rainbow smiled. Scootaloo blushed in reply at the attention she was getting before heading to the ship’s intercom control to order the currently working ponies to wake the other up and to prepare for plan