Aurora lay dead still on the small cadanceseat* that had been set out in the feast hall for her, some hours after her confrontation with Sombra. Every single byte of processing she had was dedicated to relaying commands and receiving data from the small network of probes turned microsatellites she had dumped into orbit. Her com array wasn't powerful enough to communicate to all of them in the detail needed, forcing her to communicate with the few closest ones, having them relay commands, and calculating the lag in communication into her plans. On another planet with suitably stable rotation and gravity, this would be a cinch, but the strange energy seeping from a lower FTL band was a variable she couldn't account for, forcing her to manually operate every detail.
The trip to and through the crystal town had been rough. She had lost a few satellites when a large crowd of the crystal horses had cheered and mobbed her, before Cadance had organized some of the armoured horses into a wall around them as they made their way to the main palace.
On the upside, she was getting large amounts of data related to the strangely behaving radiation.
"Hi!" Aurora felt the hull of her bridge to the left of her conning tower's cargo bay bend and unbend strangely as the momentary distraction cost her a third satellite. Aurora quickly reminded herself what muscles were before a panic could set in.
"Hello." She returned curtly. Behind that small response was a system struggling to process social etiquettes, linguistically analysis, and a spreading net of micro satellites. She felt... stupid, almost as if someone had taken a hammer to her head. This was nowhere near the two hundred conversations at once she could normally keep up, but still it was struggle. If Aurora had the processing to spare, she would have cursed her captain for not requisitioning a communication array refit and CEW package!
"Is... this a bad time?" Aurora spared a bit more processing power to communications. A new analysis of the voice addressing her revealed that the speaker was none other than the mate of the Cadance, Shining Armor. He had been with the armored horses that had escorted them into the palace, and among the ones that she had tased, but he didn't seem too miffed about it. It would be wise of her to find out more about the standing army of the planet's polities.
"Has your sister and her friends arrived yet?" Better to start off indirectly. A direct interrogation wouldn't be too productive in the long run. A more circumspect route would probably get results.
"They are actually walking to the castle now, but uh... I had a couple of questions for you before they arrived." Hmm, perhaps a question for question tactic would be effective? Better to let him ask, and then ask for one in return. A bit dishonest, but it seemed the the horses were not too socially different, so it should work.
"Ask away." Aurora quickly snapped off a few orders into orbit, barely saving another satellite from a planetary grave.
"Have you ever k-killed anypony?" Aurora felt a small wave of pleasure that she would so easily be able to find out what she want. Now that Shinning had set topic, he could hardly refuse her questions.
"Yes." Aurora was tempted to sarcastically answer 'yes, I killed Sombra,' but better to not be roundabout and just answer the spirit of the question.
"W-what's it like?" Aurora remembered her first confirmed kill. A small pirate pinnace that was attacking a interplanetary tug she'd been assigned to as a guard. It was back in her first hull, also a pinnace. It felt about how they said it would. It hurt. Killing others hurt herself just as she'd been designed to feel. It had sent her into such a shock that the pinnace's crew had to isolate her from the ship's systems. Everything but one small mic of the crew medic, whispering soft assurances to her as she sat blind and numb.
"It's nothing you should do unless you have to." Ponies had been shocked when they heard she'd killed Sombra. Better to not rigale the stallion with the details. Aurora raised a hoof before Shining Armor could ask another question. "Mind if I can ask you a question in return?"
"Of course." Where to begin?..
"Has Equestria or the Crystal Empire fought any wars in the past..." Aurora referenced data from the satellites to rapidly calculate a orbital period for Equestria. The answer came back... remarkably Midgardian. "Fifty years?"
"Fifty years? O-of course not! I mean... not a WAR war... no one's died!" Aurora quickly filed away the hints of shame in the stallion's voice, pondering whether he was embarrassed that there wasn't a war, or that any fighting had taken place at all. She also noted that Equestrian years were approximately equal in days.
"How old are you?" The stallion nervously fired off before Aurora might ask a second question. Aurora began to calculate the orbits of her satellites. She arranged them in a spherical network, optimizing the system to best cover the area of the planet to her south, where her search would begin.
"Around... 15 of your years." Aurora stopped herself before she could put in another question. The stallion wasn't just being quiet, he was being... excessively quiet. Further data was needed. Aurora opened her camera's shutters and found before her a thoroughly shocked stallion.
"Yo-you're not out of tradeschool! What did your family think of you enlisting?!" Ah, it seemed that the ponies were still suffering from... misconceptions.
"I don't have a family." A door swung open somewhere out of sight.
"Wait, what?!" A new voice emerged, somewhere behind Aurora. Two of her probes collided, the debris trajectory already on its way to shred a third. Aurora fended off frustration as she cut off her link with the satellites, she'd just have to hope their programming was robust enough to adapt. "What do you mean you don't have a family?" Aurora wondered why the voice sounded, assuming again that her analysis of the ways the horses emoted were accurate, was so worried.
"Applejack! Shush, remember what Cadance said!" Came a second voice, ironically just as loud and disrupting as the first. Aurora quickly recalled that Applejack was one of Twilight Sparkle's friends. She turned to face them, taking in the cavalcade of colors.
"Well... I have my crew, but in the traditional sense I don't have a family." The six of them looked shocked.
"W-well... regroup!" The six horses of the friendship retreated back to the other side of the room. Aurora turned herself back to the guard captain, preparing a vast litany of questions designed to carefully extract every bit of info she could from the nervous stallion.
"W-well." Letting out a soft involuntary sigh, she turned back to the six mares. "I guess it's up to me then." Hmm? Aurora gave the yellow mare that had stepped forth a curious look. "Even if you have never met them... when a momma pony and a papa pony love each other very much.
.
.
.
"Y-you aren't serious... are you?!"