//------------------------------// // 1 - Out Of The Fire // Story: No Mare's Sky // by Anjou //------------------------------// The sunbaked cliffs shimmered with heat. Just beyond them stood great stone formations, which spiraled intricately through the air. Natural arches, with no visible beginning or end, were dotted with immense crystalline spires. The landscape was surreal; not even a master sculptor would be able to reproduce it. “After all these years, the universe can still somehow manage a surprise like this.” Twilight spoke to no one but the winds which whispered past her cockpit. She looked up at the sky, hazy and red, and double-checked the seal on her helmet. The atmosphere was thin and highly acidic, which was certain to be unpleasant to the alicorn, even if it wasn’t quite lethal. “It’s a far cry from home though.” A small hiss emanated from the cockpit as glass separated from the metallic fuselage. Worn and dulled through use, the dust that now stuck to it was an almost unnoticeable addition. Twilight stepped out of her ship, and gave it a quick glance. She closed her eyes and vowed to clean it at the first chance she got. After all, it was only fair for her to take good care of her sole companion. Twilight kept her eyes closed for a moment too long, and her mind began to imagine impossible voices; voices which called her darling and egghead and sugar cube, and implored her to come with them. But when she began to hallucinate colors that she had not seen for hundreds of years, her eyes shot open and she stumbled the rest of the way to the ground. . The rocks were rather soft, all things considered. Twilight was content to simply lay there as the alien sun glared down at her, almost as if it disapproved of her presence. Her formerly white pressure suit was coated with a layer of dust, just like her ship. She wiped at her visor in an attempt to regain some vision, but thick streaks of dirt still clung to it despite her best efforts. At least there was a pleasant, hypnotic hum as her suit’s environmental control system compensated for the otherwise overwhelming heat. After a few more moments of torpor, Twilight decided that she had become acquainted with the ground well enough and stood up, sluggishly. She set about deploying a vast array of sensors at a similar pace. She planted every conceivable scanner, detector, and probe into the rocky surface; each one custom built by her own hooves. Upon placing down the last of the sensitive equipment, Twilight backed a short distance away. The instruments pulsed to life with a vibrant blue glow that pierced the veil of dust which hung in the air. As they began to beep and hum with activity, the alicorn slumped to the ground. Twilight shook her head vigorously, fighting off the last remnants of her daze, and began counting. She typically would have closed her eyes for it, but this time they were wide open – almost painfully so. After counting to 6, as she always did, she tapped her chest plate and waited for the telltale chirp of her recorder. “Begin log #03754. Twilight Sparkle, Captain of the EQS Harmony. Current location: Polis A-II. Initial gravimetric scans detected a class 3 spatial anomaly. Further investigation revealed that the planet’s significant ambient magical fields have casted themselves into natural anti-gravity spells, producing the currently observed geological structures.” She had to pause for a moment and wait for her sensors to return data. They too bore signs of wear, accumulated over the course of her mission. There were quite a few status lights that failed to turn on. And more annoyingly, one of them would flicker at random intervals. Twilight made sure to hide that particular one in the middle of the others, out of sight. Now, they appeared to be slowing down as well. She was doing Equestria a great disservice by not giving complete data sets. She truly wished for a chance to repair the sensors, but she could never shake the pursuit long enough to do so. There was no helping it; the best Twilight could do was gather as many resources as possible and pray for some downtime. She instead turned her gaze to her surroundings and admired them. Deadly, she thought to herself. Inhospitable. And yet, beautiful. Twilight found the comparison with a rose to be quite apt; even the color bore some resemblance. She stood up and walked toward the edge of the cliff. But before she could look down into the great unknown below, her visor was flooded with data. Almost automatically, Twilight’s eyes swept over the stream of numbers, and her mouth moved with them. . “… indicate at least 104 Mt of heridium, in rich surface deposits available for rapid processing. Ambient magic levels are 71.8% higher than the local average, and 132.5% higher than the outer systems. Crystalline structures also appear to amplify any nearby magical effects. Recommend development as a –” An hour of reciting critical information was finally cut off by a soft beeping noise. It was quiet, barely audible over the wind. And yet, its demand for attention was as great and incessant as a siren. “WARP TRANSITION DETECTED.” Those damning words blinked across Twilight’s visor. She stood perfectly still, in disbelief, as it flashed once, twice. Upon the third, she whipped into action. A brilliant magenta glow began at the tip of her horn, and spread to cover everything in her vicinity. The light reflected off of the dust that floated about. It painted the surrounding area in a gentle hue, a welcome reprieve from the harsh red. In the blink of an eye, the sensor arrays were collapsed and stowed, and Twilight was ascending into the cockpit. “Further information included in attached documents. End log.” Twilight tapped her chest plate once more as the glass closed down on her. Her surroundings still glowed with the color of her magic, likely a side-effect of the increased ambient field. Twilight would have loved to experiment on it, but unfortunately she lacked the time. Her hooves began working away at the command console, furiously. The only explanation for the warp warning was that someone was either coming or going. And since she was piloting the only ship currently in the system, the latter was impossible. “They’re getting better at tracking me now,” Twilight said, while staring straight at the sky. She had to wait for the engines to warm up, and looked up out of habit rather than any expectation of actually seeing a ship warp in. The chance of one warping onto her exact location should be nonexistent. Thus, Twilight’s face set into a frown when she saw the flash of light that always accompanied an object exiting warpspace. As luck would have it, there wasn’t a ship. An entire formation of strike craft blinked into existence a few hundred kilometers above her. Five radar signatures materialized on the short range sensors. Twilight shot up from her seat in panic, entranced by the dots that descended upon her. Their jump accuracy must have improved drastically for them to even consider warping so close to the planet, much less each other. But after a few moments of hesitation, she sat back down with a laugh. “Hah! I haven’t had a good panic like this in years.” Twilight would have continued laughing, but several thermal alarms drowned out her attempt. Bolts of superheated plasma rained down all around her, and set the stone below flowing and red. “Warning shots. Well, they seem courteous enough. Probably even have orders to bring me back alive.” The lead ship made a low pass, showing off the insignia of the Royal Equestrian Fleet emblazoned across its wings. Twilight’s radio buzzed with noise as they hailed her. But with a swift flick of her hoof, she muted it before any communications came through. They were brand new interceptors, fresh from the shipyard and far more advanced than the bounty hunters a few systems back. Despite this, Twilight was extremely familiar with their design. After all, she did send back those blueprints just a few years ago. They were built for speed rather than maneuverability, a fact that made her smile as they rocketed over the horizon. Twilight had under a minute before the formation came back around for another pass, and she had a feeling that the second one would be much less friendly. She threw all her magic into getting the engines running; pre-heating the plasma stream, overcharging the ion grid, the entire ship was glowing magenta. It just wasn’t fast enough. All five interceptors came back into view, and were bearing down directly on Twilight. She still needed minutes to lift off, while all she had were seconds. Time seemed to slow down as deadly plasma arced toward her. And time was all Twilight needed. She knew several spells that would give her more of it, but even the simplest one was suicidal to cast on the scale she required. Or at least, it would be back in Equestria. In an act of desperation, Twilight pulled in all the magic around her and cast one final spell. A bright flash of light left nothing behind. She disappeared into thin air, ship and all, and the plasma fell to the ground directly beyond where her engines once were. . The flash of a teleport broke the darkness. Twilight sat, motionlessly, as her eyes adjusted to the night. She ran a hoof across her foreleg to check that it was, in fact, still there. She took in a deep breath and let out a sigh of relief. The surprise of surviving what would have been a lethal spell in Equestria quickly gave way to cold, hard analysis. Twilight had just teleported across the entire world, carrying over a thousand times her own mass. She looked into the night sky as she quickly tabulated a list of spells she always wanted to try, but were too large to safely cast back home. The sky still retained a reddish hue near the horizon, but was almost perfectly clear everywhere else. The night was full of stars, far more than she had ever seen back in Ponyville, and Twilight almost lost herself in an attempt to count them. It wasn’t until she noticed the frost creeping along the glass that she remembered her reason for coming here. “Engines charged, all lights are green. Flight computer, crosscheck all systems… good, prepare for takeoff.” Yoke back, throttle forward. Twilight went through the too-familiar motions of a rapid takeoff. Inertia threw her against her seat, as she ascended swiftly through the atmosphere. She watched the horizon drop away, and failed to restrain a loud cheer of excitement. With adrenaline still coursing through her veins, Twilight barely caught sight of her pursuers out in the distance. She gave them a salute and smirked. “Sorry guys, but I have to run. You know, places to be, sights to see.” The five ships chasing her were reduced to mere specks against the rapidly shrinking planet. True, they were fast, but Twilight was faster. As she approached the edge of the gravity well, she eased off the throttle and stood up. Twilight pulled a copy of her newest data crystal and loaded it into a container. After attaching a tracking beacon, she ejected it out of her ship and looked back toward her pursuers. They were distant and just barely visible, but Twilight still spoke as if they could hear her. “Don’t worry, I got you guys a gift. Hopefully it’ll accelerate gravity manipulation research a few years. At the very least, it’ll get one of you off my tail. It's better if one of you guys gets it instead of those nasty bounty hunters.” With her precious cargo deployed, Twilight sat back down and keyed in the coordinates of a nearby star, just under two light years away. The prismatic yellow-green of warpspace enveloped her ship, as it shot away at thousands of times the speed of light. Even at that velocity, it would take an hour to reach her destination. However, it would take the other ships closer to three. Safe with that knowledge, Twilight curled up and prepared herself for a quick nap. . Exiting warpspace would always generate a significant burst of energy. And so, Twilight was literally blasted awake as she arrived at her destination. She shot up to her hooves as the shock wave rippled through her ship and scattered her dream. "Can't stay," Twilight said, numbly. She knew it was in response to something in her dream, but couldn't quite recall what. In the end, it was dangerous to linger in this system anyway. Those interceptors were in visual range of her jump, and it was trivial for them to trace it. They would arrive in a few hours, less time than it would take Twilight to get in and out of the planet's gravity well. Twilight fumbled with her command console for a while, before activating the long range scanner. It was a shame that she couldn't stick around. There were a number of interesting energy signatures down on the surface that only her sensors could find. She sighed and instead pointed the scanner toward her stars. "I need one far away. One that only I would know of," Twilight muttered as she stared at her display. "Wait. Stop!" she shouted. Her ship was never programmed to respond to that command, so Twilight had to turn the scanner back manually. There was a miniscule signal, one that even she had almost missed. It was distant and small and, more importantly, it wasn't on any map. Of course, her pursuers could still find her general direction, but they wouldn't know of her exact destination. If they wished to chase her, they would have to do it blind. "Perfect." Twilight gave the planet she was currently orbiting one last, longing look. She would likely never get a chance to unravel its mysteries. Twilight laid back against her seat, entered a new set of coordinates, and closed her eyes as the light of warpspace surrounded her once again. "It looks like we'll be here for... a full week..." she finished weakly as she consulted her status display. "That's... a long time for just sitting still. Well, I did bring this on myself by going 400 light years in a single warp." Twilight looked out the window and sighed. The dancing colors of warpspace were beautiful the first time she saw them. But years of staring at them slowly eroded their novelty. While certainly not repetitive, they were too chaotic to hold any sort of pattern; staring at them was like staring at a screen of static. Supposedly, a few ponies had even gone mad trying to look for messages hidden within the lights. Twilight wondered if she had already passed that threshold. She shook her head and looked back down, pointedly avoiding the windows. After a few more minutes of boredom, Twilight pulled up the tables of data she acquired just hours ago. She tapped her chest plate, heard the chirp of her recorder, and opened her mouth. But the words wouldn't come. She just wasn't in any state to unlock the secrets of the universe at the moment, and closed the tables with a limp wave of her hoof. In a bout of inspiration, Twilight looked back up at her display and spoke in a near shout. "Open file, video recording #0001. Begin playback." A lavender nose filled the entire screen. It tilted slightly and began moving. "Testing, testing. Is it working? " The nose backed away and shrunk down into a small alicorn, not much larger than any of the other ponies on screen. It turned around and shouted, excitedly. "Hey girls! I think I got it working this time!" Rarity walked across the front of the screen, styling her mane using magic, as Rainbow Dash's voice cut in over the audio. "Hey, don't mean to be a drag, but hasn't this sort of thing been done before?" The recorded Twilight looked up and spoke, and Twilight herself just barely resisted doing the same. "Not quite. I call this a video camera. It can record everything we do, all our actions and noises, all in real time!" "Oh! You mean... everything?" Rarity turned to the camera and flipped her mane. "Heh, yes. Everything," Twilight replied, suppressing her giggle imperfectly. "Awesome! Can it record me doing this?" Rainbow Dash asked, then did several loops in quick succession. "Yep! Pretty sure it got that too." "Oh my... that sounds nice." Fluttershy finally peeked out from behind everyone else, after learning that it wasn't exactly the sort of camera that made her nervous. "Have ta say, that there's mighty impressive," Applejack said, as she lifted the brim of her hat to get a better view. Suddenly, a pink blur vaulted over Rarity and leapt at the camera. “Ooh, ooooh, how is it supposed to work? What’s inside? Does it steal your soul? Do souls taste like candy!?” All the other ponies disappeared off the lower edge of the screen. Pinkie Pie was soon contrasted with nothing but the blue of the sky. And, as quickly as the pink blur appeared, the recording cut out to static before ending completely. . Twilight took a moment to blink back her reverie. It wasn't her fondest memory, but it was still precious in its own right. Of course she was furious at the time; Pinkie had just smashed thousands of bits and months of research and development into tiny pieces. But the recording alone gave the crown enough excuse to invest a hundred times that amount, and the "I'm Sorry I Broke Everything Can We Still Be Friends" Party that followed was quite memorable. Twilight continued to smile at the blank screen. She then remembered that she never turned off her recorder. But rather than fixing the issue, she just went along with it. "New file, journal. Encryption: personal key. Begin journal #0001." Twilight paused, pondering how to begin. Still in the heat of the moment, she managed to settle upon the ideal phrasing. "... Hey girls." Twilight closed her eyes, and her smile seemed to grow as she continued. "I know you probably won't ever get this. But I still know you'll always be there for me. You'll always be there to listen to me, just as I'll always be there to listen to you. And, well... we've got centuries of catching up to do. I promise that, by the end of everything, we'll be all caught up, together. Pinkie Promise." Twilight swept her hoof across her chest plate, and turned off her recorder while performing the motion. She then tapped her hoof to her visor a bit too hard, and made an audible clunk. "Never did get the hang of that," she chuckled to herself. "But, for now... open file, video recording #0002. Begin playback."