A lone man sits on his desk, typing his fingertips across the touch screen keyboard on the surface of his desk while a transparent, holographic screen hovers in front of him. His office lit from long, rod like light bulbs embedded on the edges of the ceiling and a singular dome like light located right in the middle of the ceiling. A small model of planet Earth, slowly rotating on his desk to his left, and a framed photo standing on its one leg to his right; him and his wife smiling at the camera like there’s no tomorrow, while their cheeks pressed right against one another.
Entry#: 546
Date: August 25th, 2125 Earth time
Title: Here at lastIt seems we finally reach our destination of the new solar system. The star’s a little bigger then our own, and we’re closing in on the planet that is resting on its Goldilocks Zone.
To do a little recap, as well as if my memory still works well, there are at least eight planets that our sensors have detected orbiting their parent star. We already knew this fact, but it was breath taking to see them up close, and we have begun planning on creating bases on said planets and/or their moons for research and resources.
As planned, our Black Knight Satellites have picked up interesting readings since they arrived to their intended target; our new home. The knights have been collecting data for twenty-five years, and I must say they are very promising, if only a little troubling. The moment the satellites started taking images of said planet, their high-powered cameras were either hindered severely, or stopped working entirely. The remaining cameras continued taking images, but they were either too blurred to make out any real detailed shapes, or were distorted for any use at all. It can only be theorized that a large disturbance on a global scale have overloaded most of the systems, and effectively took down a knight out of orbit and possibly crashed down onto the planet. But the good news is, all the other sensors were still running and somewhat intact. Their magnetometer collected data on the planets magnetic fields and its behaviors, radio magnifiers collected radio waves from the planet and the surrounding area and converted the waves into sound for human ears to hear, and a few more delicate instruments still collecting data. I must say, the planet is quite active for the short time our knights have observed it.
We will rebuild what we have lost, and we will endure like we always have done. We have already reached Type One civilization, we have healed Mother Earth and her creatures the best we could, and we have finally grasped the one thing we could not before; peace. If Mother Earth did not craft the most resilient and adapt creature other than cockroaches, then I don't know what to call ourselves.
To be honest, I thought we would never ever reach this system, but thankfully, we kept everything together, both ship and humans alike. All that hardship on Earth; blood, sweat and tears have paid off in spades. I am forever thankful for those who did their job to create such a masterpiece of engineering.
May those we left behind, rest in eternal peace with Mother Earth.
He finishes typing and presses ‘Enter’ with a quick tap. He then cracks his knuckles as well as his stiff neck and sits back, tilting the chair back so he can look up at the white ceiling with a content sigh.
The intercom beeps a couple of times before a feminine voice speaks out with a Japanese accent, “Captain West, we have arrived and now beginning to adjust the ship to orbit the planet. We now wait for your next command.” She finishes.
He leans in and presses the glowing, blue button on the screen of his desk, “I will be at the deck, shortly.” He replies kindly with a rustic voice. The chair moves itself back and twists to the right so he can stand up. Feeling anxious, he strolls over to a full body mirror to check himself for any imperfections to how he looked.
In front of him stood a tall, proud man, wearing a white and grey uniform hugging his body neatly, with a few blue accents to make it look better. His name tag shines in the light; his name, title and the bare surrounding them a shining silver with a blue background. His skin a pale white and a small scar permanently imprinted on his right, dark grey eyebrow. His hair grey of age and stress, with white streaks as he smoothed it out with his hands. He grabs the captains’ hat hanging beside the mirror and puts it on with a smile. His emerald green eyes staring back at him in kind, promising a better future for their last remaining species.
He goes through the sliding, hatch door and out into the hall. People walking and rushing by him, nodding and saluting him in greetings and he nods in return with his trademark smirk everyone seen countless times. He turns to his left and starts walking down. As he looks ahead, he could never see what was always ahead of him past fifty yards or so, as the halls parallel to the structure curves up.
He turns his gaze to his right and out the windows. From his end to the other was two-and-a-half miles long, and three kilometers to circle the barrel. A barrel of homes, farms, grass, dirt, trees and most importantly, his people; living and playing happily on the streets, gardens and parks. Everything pinned to the outer wall of the large cigar shaped ship, ever slowly spinning to keep everyone on their feet. In the middle of the spinning barrel were long, thick, bright rods covering a central piece, imitating as their once, beautiful sun. Ten thousand strong, enough to repopulate what was lost. They were no one race, his kind people came from every part of Earth to keep diversity. It took time for everyone to warm up to one another, and to him, but time was all they all had at the time. Now, everyone practically knows everyone in this ship. Making them one big, happy, slightly dysfunctional family.
He reaches his destination shortly after he returns his gaze at the curving hall and steps into one of three elevators on the bow of the ship. As it closed, he felt gravity pulling down on his stomach; he never did gotten used to the feeling. The doors opens to him, showing him a slowly spinning hall with rounded hatches casually passing by.
He steps out of the elevator and spins a couple of times before he stops himself by reaching out to a handle bar from the ‘ceiling’. His body felt weightless, as it was one of only few places in the ship that didn’t spin. He looks back at the passing by hatches and down the hall filled with handlebars for maneuverability, staff members going by to get to the elevators or through the round hatches, greeting him while doing so. He turns back at the hatch with a smile. He pushes himself towards it with a light grunt and stops as he plants his hands on the cool surface of the entrance. He drags himself over to a small screen and presses his left hand onto it. After it scans his hand, a ring of blue light on the face of the hatch turns green and opens for him with a hiss.
As he enters, he grabs a bar leading him to the bow of the ship while curving inward. He continues pulling himself forward, passing by more rounded hatches that led to more facilities that kept the ship running. When he finally reaches his final destination at the end of the corridor, he presses his hand on a screen yet again and the hatch lights up to a green. When he enters, he was surrounded by pilots and co-pilots alike, wearing tight full body suites with more elaborate headsets floating around or sitting in chairs in the dome like cockpit. The deck was filled with levers, nubs, buttons and touch screens in various colors, shapes and sizes in every direction. This one room alone made him think he was inside a large computer. He seen the schematics for the ship before, and the bow of the ship was practically the brain on how complicated the layers of rooms were.
“Captain on deck!” a woman yells to his right. Everyone halts what they were doing and salutes him for a brief moment before they went right back to work to keep the ship in stable condition.
“Privet.” He looks at the women, “A little push please.” He asks nicely. She nods, grabs his right foot and pushes him towards the center. He stops himself by grabbing onto the chair of one of the main pilots was sitting on. “How is the diagnostics of Child of Earth, Pilot?” he asks.
“Child of Earths’ main engines are off.” The male pilot says as he works the instruments in front of him. Suddenly, a holographic image of the ship flickers to life in front of them. “The stabilizers are working on making the correct orbit around the planet’s gravitational pull; Glith is doing the more delicate adjustments to the thrusters around the shell of the ship. The fission reactor is out putting sixty percent power. Day and night cycle is still normal. Oxygen and carbon dioxide levels are normal. The cycling barrel is still spinning, Captain.” He answers.
The captain chuckles, “How about the planet?” he asks the question he been meaning to ask.
The holographic ship then changes into an almost featureless globe, “After years of observations from the Black Knights orbiting the planet, Captain; the planet is at least five percent larger than Earth. Oxygen levels twenty percent higher. Twenty-six-hour day and night cycle. Sixty percent covered in water. It has its own magnetic field on the outer edges and an ozone layer to protect it from the star’s corona mass ejections. It has mountainous areas, meaning it also has tectonic activity below the surface of the planet, sir.”
“A big sister of Earth…” he whispers. He looks at the blocked windows in front of him, “Split the blast shield, pilot. Uncover all the windows and fill every screen on this ship to show the image of the planet, now.” He orders and the pilot nods a little excitedly and rapidly taps across the board. A small cover at the center of the dome opens and a short column rises out and stops with a glass orb at its tip, glowing blue. The Captain pushes himself over to it as all of the staff members stops to watch their captain. He reaches the orb and just stares at it for a moment, his heart beating a mile a second; he can finally say the next words.
He then presses his hand onto the orb and it quickly scans his hand before glowing a bright green.
The cigar shaped ships’ thick sheet of metal, dented from years of meteor collisions begins to slowly split into four pieces, a thin layer of ice breaking off was it finally moves. All through the ship, blast shields and windows continue opening to show the planet bellow and the new solar system, as well as every screen showed an image of the planet to show the populace wherever they were.
Everyone stops, now just looking down at the windows and screens, staring in awe at the planet and its singular moon. The planet was a display of colors, full of greens, browns, greys, and blues and even white at the poles. One land mass even reached from the very top to bottom, no ocean of water cutting through the middle but small lakes and rivers, and white and dark clouds littering the atmosphere.
The captain leans into the small speaker jutting out from the side of the column, “Good afternoon, everyone, this is your captain speaking. We have finally reached our destination, and I must say, it looks beautiful. Just a little while longer to wait till landfall, I and your crew need to make sure what dangers there are to overcome. I will update you all on our progress. Have a nice day.” He finishes.
As everyone stares in awe and some cheering, though, the captain himself was a little worried for the patches of grey that littered some of the land. He turns to another pilot just a little further from the center of the dome, “You.” He points at the woman. She looks at him, still awed by the planet and what it meant as he floats over to her, “Zoom in on one of the grey spots on the planet.” He orders to her as he grabs onto her chair and she quickly nods.
She taps and runs her fingers on the screen in front of her as a picture of the planet came to life. She taps a spot on the planet, a little target sign now displaying. She puts both her thumbs and index fingers on either side of the target and spreads them apart, causing the screen to zoom in. After a moment, he and everyone in the room were shocked to see architectural buildings standing on the side of a mountain. Buildings and roads littered the streets, and even some kind of castle resting near the northern part of the odd, alien city. The co-pilot zooms out just a bit and sees the whole picture of the city.
Captain West blinks and rubs his eyes a few times, trying to see if he was hallucinating or not, and again, the structures were still there, plain as day.
“Captain?” he looks back and sees everyone was looking at him for an answer, “What now?” the co-pilot asks.
He looks back at the screen, reaches out and begins looking through the streets, trying to see if anything or anyone would show up… nothing. Where in the world are they? He thinks to himself. After a moment of searching, he notices some buildings and part of the castle were crumbled down. He leans back and looks at everyone once more. “Now we investigate what happened to the locals.” He says to everyone in the room.
On the planet, itself, in the crumbled city of Canterlot, a bipedal, lone princess stands on her towers’ balcony, looking up at the sky in confusion. She wore an armor covering her whole body in gold and silvery colors, as well as a new padding her scientists and enchanters developed hiding under the sheets of metal. Her white horn erecting out from her forehead, sprouting out to the sky as she had her light rainbow hair done in a ponytail. Her holster strapped to her hip, holding her sword in place, with a few other equipment attached to her armor; her handheld accelerator that shoots out sharpened, enchanted crystals, Blinding Tossers-or BTs-basically a spherical, enchanted crystal surrounded by small bars with a small crank, and when the crack’s twisted and tossed, it produces a blinding flash. Her tail braded to keep it from going everywhere when she fought in her battles with her subjects. Her large wings folded on her back with bits and pieces of metal covering them as well. Alas, her armor was not perfect. It was littered with scratches, dents and scares of battle; some old and some recent.
If the battles go on any longer, they’ll have nothing but swords, shields, and other melee weapons left to use to defend themselves. They needed materials-raw materials to make more Accelerators and its ammos, BTs and many more. Her scientists and enchanters also need more materials to properly finish the prototypes that might give them an edge in the battles to come.
Alas, her mines were too far to reach, her city sucked dry, and no help to come to aid them. Now she just needs to figure out what the thing was that caught her attention.
She squints her gaze at the small, strange object in the sky, reflecting some of the light from her sun. To her, it looks like a long barrel of some sort, just hovering well away from the day moon. It was strange to her to see the rounded, plate like head of the thing to split apart and slowly moved back to reveal another dome within it.
“Princess?” she looks back and smiles at the smaller, purple Alicorn standing in front of her, holding onto a telescope in her arms and against her plated chest. She wore her own set of armor to protect her form, having a few scars and dents just like Celestia herself.
“Twilight, no need to be so formal with me when we’re alone.” she waves her over with a motherly smile. Twilight quickly walks over, looking up at her fellow Princess. “We’re friends, and friends don’t treat each other like royalty.”
“I-I know Pri-Celestia. Habits die hard, I guess.” she answers, and looks down at the telescope and back up at her, “So why do you need this? Did you see them coming?” her tone and expression morphs into fear.
“No, Twilight. I haven’t seen them yet, don’t worry. I just need to use it at the moment.” She answers, calming Twilight down and runs her three fingers on the younger ones’ cheek.
Twilight sighs in relief and starts setting up the contraption, “Where do you want it pointing at? The North? South? Maybe West?” she questions happily as she adjusts the scope and looking through it, to make sure it was clear and clean.
“The sky.” Celestia casually replies.
Twilight looks at her strangely, “What? In the middle of the day? What are you looking at?” she begins to search the sky herself.
Celestia points, “Towards that thing, near the moon.”
Twilight moves her gaze and lightly gasps, “What in the world, is that!?” she moves closer to the railing of the balcony, raising a hand to cover her eyes from the light of day.
“That’s what I want to find out, dear Twilight. Now go and instruct the Stargazers in the observatory. I will be here if anyone needs me.” She says to Twilight. The young princess eagerly nods her head and rushes down the spiraling staircase as instructed, her armor clicking and clanging as she moves.
Back in the Child of Earth, a lone woman sits under a large sphere, a holographic model of their once, beloved home planet. Surrounding the hologram were a few screens talking about said planet and how they built the interstellar ship. But the most popular and respected item they had in show was “The Wall of Memories”. Basically, a large slab of white, hard stone standing obelisk, filled with at least a dozen names of people whom passed onto the afterlife while on the ship.
The location brought various people to see the surrounding area, in a middle of a cross section, the elderly adults showing the kids on the sphere where they once lived on their home planet and telling them stories of their home and life. The sphere, however, never showed where the woman must have lived on the planet. All it shows was a slowly spinning planet.
She wore a full body suite, much thicker and advanced then anyone had in the ship; reaching down to the tips of her toes in a comfortable fit, and ended just under her jawline and the back of her lower head, where a circular, neural port is located, the hair around it shaved off permanently. Her fellow Peace Keepers wore the same suite as her, but her left arm was bare, not that she had a flesh and blood arm. To replace that was mechanical one, ‘much more useful than a normal one’, she always amused. But getting it was a painful experience; she hopped to never go through it ever again or wish upon it to her enemies, if she ever had any. Like the rest of Peace Keepers in the ship, she had to go through augmentation to set up her body to do their tasks needed. They had their muscles strengthen to make them strong, fast and agile, their bones reinforced to withstand stronger pressure and impacts, and their minds and senses doubled so they would be two steps ahead than their opponents. Basically, they were superheroes to the young ones’ eyes. But the first week, her and her fellow brothers and sisters had to stay on hospital beds to be monitored closely, not that she complained, she actually embraced it, as her whole body at the time felt like she went through a hail storm with nothing on, aching every fiber of muscles and bone, as well as her mind. It took a good month for all of them to get used to their new bodies as well and had to train their minds and bodies as well, which too two months.
She had her tools out and adjusting her other, ‘lucky’ arm on her lap. It wasn’t exactly ‘new’ anymore, more of an antique now, but she couldn’t let it go, after everything she went through to get to her position.
She looks down to her right and sees her own reflection on the dark, shinning floor. Her skin was tanned from staying out so many times to do her duty and who she was related to. She was also what you could call, ‘a red head’ as it showed her red, ginger hair put into a short ponytail to keep it from getting in the way to do her job, which was patrolling the streets and halls for any danger, guarding secure areas and investigating possible dangerous areas. And paper work, so many paper work. On her graduation day, she got the top marks, thus became one of the leaders of the Peace Keepers.
She smiles at her own reflection as her own green eyes smiles back at her, before she continues to work on the mechanical arm before she hears a voice.
“Kelly?” her ear piece calls to her.
“Yes, Captain?” he answers as she starts to put her tools away in a small, black tool box and closes it with a twisting crank of a nub.
“I have a job for you. Meet me in my office.” He orders.
“Will be there in a jiffy, sir. Over.” He replies, bent her lucky arm close with an audible ‘click!’, picks up her small tool box and starts walking to the nearest hatch door. It opens up for her, walks down a set of stairs and into a large corridor filled with pods to transport people from one place to another, small over-head bridges going from one waiting area to another. She takes her place in a small six-man pod closest to her. She goes in with a couple other people, sits down and the chair wraps a belt around her waist. She tucks her things under her arms just before the pod rockets off to the direction of the ships’ bow.
After a few moments of greeting a few familiar faces with each stop, she then hops off the transporter at the end of the ride and quickly walks towards the office of their leader.
A short walk later, she knocks on the hatch and was quickly followed by a call from inside.
“Come in!”
The hatch slides open and she steps in. She moves her tool box over to her other mechanical hand and salutes with her free hand, “Reporting for duty, sir!” she calls out and stands at attention with one of the best poker faces the ship ever seen.
The chair spins around as the captain happily grins at her arrival, “Good to see you too, Kelly.” He says back cheerfully and leans towards his desk, “At ease.” She relaxes and looks directly at him in the eyes, “I’m sorry to call you in on your few break times, but I have an important mission for you.”
“Of course, sir. What is my objective?”
“I need you to go down with someone and investigate what have happened to the local alien life down on the planet.” He presses a spot on his desk, activating a screen to show up in the middle of the air. The images showed broken buildings and streets in some sort of alien city. This was news to her, all she saw was the planet on a screen right after her lunch break. There were few scorch marks and what looks like to her, potholes from explosions. “If we’re going to make a home on this planet, we might as well make peace first with the local natives. I need you and your charge to go and see if they’re still there and search the area with caution. We must see if they’re willing to make diplomatic relations with us, and maybe help them with whatever they need.”
“Of course, sir. Do I need to bring any weapons for this mission?” she asks.
“Might as well, Kelly. We don’t want one of our best to be defenseless on an alien planet.” He answers and turns the screen off.
“Okay, sir. When shall I go?”
“Sooner, the better.” He sits back, “Now go and get ready, I’ll meet you at Docking Bay One with your charge.” He waves her off with a smile.
She salutes one more time before she spins around on one heel and went off as instructed.
Finaly… something different to do, she thinks with a tiny smile.