//------------------------------//
// 2.1: Vaan'Ai 
// Story: Our Little Homeworld 
// by Horizon Runner 
//------------------------------//


Begin Episode 2: Open Your Eyes



Date: 1/22/1216 KDS.
Time: 1:01 P.M.
Mothership Position: High Orbit, Hoorsuk Ring System.
Location: Pilot Briefing Room 

Rainbow Dash tried really hard to hide her anger as she trotted towards the briefing room. They’d been having a good time, damn it! If it hadn’t been for the stupid alert call, she could have spent the entire afternoon with… her. They could have taken a walk—Fluttershy didn’t like flying that much—down the big corridors that ran through the Mothership’s spine, or commandeered a conference room or something and put on a movie. Sands, they could have just gone to one of the observation bays and just kept on watching Hoorsuk spin on by.

But the call had come in, and Rainbow Dash wasn’t about to be derelict in her duty. Fluttershy had understood—because she was amazing like that—and they’d left off on a good note.

…Yeah, a goodbye kiss was a pretty good note.

Rainbow shook herself, trying to clear the blush from her cheeks. Spitfire wouldn’t have called me down here for no reason, she realized with growing sobriety.

The briefing room was pretty the same thing Rainboom had back on the Baserunner—tiered seating, podium and projector screen in the front. Simple, effective, classic.

Also astonishingly big. Like, holy crap, there were supposed to be a lot more than ten pilots big. Easily a hundred, two hundred more seats, and room in the back for ponies to stand if that wasn't enough.

Right now, though, there was only one pony present, sitting near the front.

Dash approached, and Blossomforth craned her neck to shoot her a grin. "Hey, Dash," she said as Rainbow too the seat behind her. "Figured you'd be the next one to get here. Take the access tubes again?"

Dash noted with a twinge of disdain that Blossomforth's coat was starting to grow out again, and her green-pink mane had a few noticeable tangles in it. Not that it made a huge difference up here where there was no sand or risk of heat stroke, but still. Combine that with her short stature and slightly chubby build, it was easy to assume Blossomforth was weak and/or lazy.

Which would have been a serious mistake.

"Faster than the trams, B," Dash replied, flexing her wings with feigned indifference. She wasn't surprised that Blossom had showed up first—the tech crews bunked two rooms away, and she was practically a gearhead herself. "Any word on what's going on?"

Blossomforth shrugged, turning her head forward. Tangles aside, her mane always made Dash think of these little mint candies she'd found in this one town the Company used as a refueling stop. Green and pink. She guessed that Blossomforth's mane probably didn't taste the same.

Dash missed those mints, though.

"...Dunno," Blossomforth said after a moment of silence. "Could be a drill, but the timing is weird. Can't be a show because there's not really an audience for it. And it's not a test for those new fighters, because those aren't even done yet speaking of which—"

She whirled, and Dash had to stop herself from recoiling slightly at the sudden excitement on Blossom's face. "You've seen the Blade, right?"

Dash nodded, and Blossomforth made a sound somewhere between a squeal and a laugh. "Oh Celestia I'm so excited! My tech buddies think they're probably going to be running test flights before we make our next jump. I'm gonna be a Bomb Jockey!"

"Y'know B," interjected a voice from behind them, "that name generally scares ponies away."

"Hey Thunderlane," Dash said, offering a hoof to bump as her squadmate sidled up to them. He met it with his trademark lack of enthusiasm, and Dash had to roll her eyes. Thunderlane had the "I'm too cool for this room" thing going on ninety percent of the time, and the other ten percent was taken up with acting like a sulky teenager. Probably writes poetry in his cabin too, dork. 

He sat next to her, shuffling his wings with a flourish as he did. "I guess you're not signing up for test duty," Dash said.

Thunderlane sniffed. "Nope."

"Wuss," Blossom scoffed, batting her eyes at him. "You just know Dashie and I will make you look bad."

Thunderlane shrugged, and Dash got the sense that his disinterest today was more than just acting cool. Whatever was on his mind, it wouldn't have been like him to share. Instead, he offered up one of his bored little smirks. "You two bring your wings, I bring my head."

Both Dash and Blossomforth opened their mouths to respond, then glanced at each other, shrugged, and conceded it. Say what you would about Thunderlane's attitude, he was ludicrously good at doing flight plans and paperwork, to the point that Firebolt used to outright tell him to make up the squad's itinerary. Spitfire didn't do that, of course—being competent enough to give coherent orders—but she still treated him as an advisor. General rule of hoof seemed to be that if Thunderlane told you to do something in a sortie, you did it.

"On that note," Blossomforth said, "do you know what this meeting's all about?"

Thunderlane's wings gave a restless shift. "I don't, but I have a guess."

Blossomforth waved as Flitter and Cloudchaser—the wondertwins, colloquially—entered the room and took their seats behind Dash, then leaned in closer. "Well?" she asked.

"Look," Thunderlane said. "If I'm right, you'll know when the bosses come out and tell us. If I'm wrong, it's just a bad dream anyway."

"What're you guys talking about?" Soarin asked, coming up and sitting next to Blossomforth.

Dash turned to answer, then stopped at the sight of him.

Soarin.

Whose coat was currently colored hot pink. Soarin, whose face was covered in an impressively feminine suite of makeup. Soarin, whose mane was tied into a sand-cursed braid.

This was not how Soarin normally looked, needless to say. "What's wrong?" he asked, straight-faced. "Something on my face?"

"Soarin," Blossomforth said, holding a hoof across her mouth to stop up her laughter. "That's a bold look."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Very, ah…" Dash thought for a moment. "Striking. Yeah, striking."

Flitter snickered, and whispered something to her sister, who started outright laughing. "Oh sweet Celestia," Cloudchaser moaned. "You didn't."

"I have no idea what you're implying," Soarin said. "I deny any allegations of misconduct including but not specifically related to gambling. Also, Crossfire is a dick. A bag of dicks. Salted dicks."

"You lost a bet," Dash intoned. "That I understand, but how even…"

"Well, we don't have money," Soarin explained, closing his eyes and rubbing the bridge of his nose with his hoof. "And there was this mare in security who does makeup, and Crossfire is a flankhole who cheats at cards. I can't prove it, but he totally is."

Flitter was laughing so hard by this point that she could barely seem to breathe. "Oh Celestia," she gasped. "And then Masterpiece walks in—"

"Masterpiece," Soarin cut in, "as it turns out, is a surprisingly chill guy. He also knows a surprising amount about cosmetics. And he's a flankhole too."

Everypony laughed. Cloudchaser managed to keep some form of dignity, but Dash and Blossom weren't so reserved. Even Thunderlane, for all his stoicism, let out a wheeze of barely suppressed hilarity. Flitter fell out of her chair.

"Yes yes, it's all very funny," Soarin said, rolling his eyes—sands, he was wearing eyeliner. "But shouldn't we be more concerned about, the, uh, 'mysterious call to action' thing?"

Flitter climbed back into her chair, still shaking with hilarity. "It's just gonna be… a drill," she said. "...Right?" At the silence, her giggles faded to chuckles, then cut out altogether.

It seemed nopony really knew.

"Hey," Dash said, just to break the silence. "Where's that other guy… Toffee, or something?"

"Licorice," Blossomforth corrected. A frown crossed her face. "Not really sure where he's been. I haven't seen him since yesterday. Did he come back to the barracks last night, CC?"

Cloudchaser shook her head. "Not that I saw. He said he was going to, quote, 'hang with some Manaani friends.'"

"Manure." Blossomforth's lip curled into a smirk. "Bastard got lucky without inviting me."

"He'd better get back here soon," Flitter said. "Cloud Kicker really doesn't like it when he's late—"

Speak of the nightmare, and in it flies. Before Flitter could put a period on her sentence, the sound of hoofsteps down the aisle caught everypony's attention.

Licorice looked, in short, like he'd been run over by a truck. Any complaints Dash had about Blossomforth's mane and coat applied triple to him—it looked like he was wearing boots of hair, even. In the desert, he'd have passed out in minutes. His gait swayed with the obvious influence of a hangover, and his head hung like an overripe fruit on his neck. All of this was amplified by the sheer size of him—he was almost twice as tall as Blossom, and half again as tall as Dash.

But when he looked up, strangely, his eyes reflected none of that, warm gold against his red coat and white mane. It was as if his mind was awake and his body was asleep.

He stopped in the aisle, staring silently at Soarin. They stayed like that for a moment, until Soarin waved nonchalantly. "Hey Licks," he said.

"Hey Soarin," Licorice replied, voice deep and scratchy with lingering sleep. "Bold new look."

Soarin nodded, and Licorice nodded back, and everything was weird. Then Licorice nodded again, and sat down a row behind the twins. His wings shuffled, just as huge as the rest of him.

Dash had to stop herself from staring. Licorice was one of the most recently arrived pilots, and Dash didn't know much about him, but holy sands. She'd met a few built-up pegasi in her day—that Snowflake guy from security was almost cartoonish—but Licorice looked like he'd been born gigantic. She wondered how he fit into the cockpit at all.

She didn't have time to observer further. The door by the stage swooshed open, and Spitfire strode in, followed closely by Cloud Kicker.

Dash expected Cloud to notice Soarin and crack a joke. She didn't. Dash also expected Spitfire to grill him for coming to the briefing without washing his face. She didn't, either.

Spitfire took the podium, while Cloud took a seat in the first row. The looks on their faces were carefully blank, but Cloud's body held all the hallmarks of barely-suppressed pre-mission terror. Dash hadn't seen a case so bad since back home. Spitfire was more composed, enveloped by an aura of deliberate calm which only served to further highlight the rigid set of Cloud's shoulder blades. Celestia, her wings were shaking.

Spitfire spoke, calm and clear. "All right, ponies!"

She hesitated, and Rainbow caught a flicker in her expression as her eyes scanned the room.

Dash had seen that look before, on her father’s face. It was the look he wore when he thought nopony was watching, when was leading the Company on a really bad job, and knew that some of his troops weren’t coming back.

That was… crazy. No matter what was going on, there was nothing out here that was any more dangerous than some flying rocks. Dash shook her head, trying to rattle some sense into her imagination.

"Listen up!” Spitfire barked, without any trace of hesitation. “Talk is time, and we don’t have much of the latter. The Khar-Selim isn’t where she’s supposed to be. In fact—" she hit a button on the podium and a projector spun to life. Dash recognized it as an orbital path chart, calibrated for Hoorsuk. The Mothership was represented as a tiny dot, at the very edge of the planet's rings. A point on the rings was marked with a big red circle, labeled K-S.

Beside her, Dash heard Thunderlane mutter, "Hate it when I'm right."

Spitfire continued without missing a beat. "—She’s buried in the planet's rings and sending out a distress signal. Our job is to zip in, figure out what happened, and take whatever actions are necessary to make sure that the Khar-Selim gets back here in one piece. Failing that, our job is to provide overwatch while shuttles fly out to rescue her crew. Questions?”

Blossomforth's hoof popped up, and Spitfire gave a nod. “Do we have any intel on what happened to the Khar-Selim, ma’am?” she asked.

"All we know at present is that she's broadcasting a Vaan'Ai."

Dash's brain stalled as the room froze into silence. She was not an expert on spacecraft design, but ships the size of the Khar-Selim did not send out Vaan'Ai signals. And if they did, there was rarely any point going in for a rescue.

Spitfire shattered the freeze. “You're all familiar with the codes, so I don't have to tell you how bad that could be. We launch the moment you’re all in fighters. Cloud, can I count on your squad to hang back and watch the Mothership?”

“Sure thing, ma’am,” Cloud Kicker replied. The shaking in her voice was barely noticeable. “You sure you don’t want us for backup?”

"Not expecting that kind of trouble," Spitfire said, "But even if I did, I'd still want you near the home base." She turned her attention back to the rest of the pilots. "We're treating this as a rescue op, which means we're running on somepony else's clock. If you need more info, ask once we're in the sleeves. Dismissed!"

Time: 1:12 P.M.
Location: Docking Sleeves. Cockpit of recon fighter Alpha-Zero-Two.

"Pre-flight checks complete, all clear," Rainbow Dash reported. Silence answered her. Spitfire hadn't said a word since she'd gotten to her fighter, and it looked like she wasn't about to break that trend until everypony was ready to fly. Bucking great.

She leaned back to rest her helmet against the shock cushion and tried to relax, but her muscles weren't having it. This whole thing smelled like manure.

The flight deck crawled with techs, and Typhoon stood on an ordinance cart, hollering orders across the floor. The docking sleeves were still retracted back out onto the deck, but Dash could see Soarin and Thunderlane jogging towards their ships. Soon they'd snuggle in, the sleeves would close up, pop them out into the hangar proper, and then…

What, exactly?

Rainbow went over the pre-flights again. Still good. She checked the squad link, which helpfully informed her that only Spitfire's fighter was currently ready to fly.

Well, technically it had been Lightning Dust's fighter, but it was a lot easier to fix a burned-out engine than a ship which had fallen into the atmosphere. Some folks might get sentimental over it, but in the end, a fighter was just tech. What bothered Dash more was the obvious blank space at the end of the roster. Bitch she might have been—might be, Dash reminded herself—but Lightning Dust had been part of the team. Going up without her felt like bad luck.

Soarin's icon blinked, then switched from yellow to blue. Pilot in cockpit. A few moments later, his voice came through the radio, just as Thunderlane's icon turned blue.

"Soarin here. Pre-flights are good."

"Thunderlane, pre-flight checks complete."

The moment his comm clicked off, the sleeves began to slide out into launch position, and Spitfire spoke.

“All ships,” she said, sounding alarmingly calm. “Out of the sleeves. Rendezvous in standard parade formation.”

Dash gulped down her fear, and went. The sleeve opened before her, and she and the rest of the squad hurtled out into the hangar. Spitfire took the lead, led them out into the black.

Rainbow Dash had been looking out at Hoorsuk all morning, but the screen didn't do it justice. Here, she could feel the size of the planet, this huge blue thing just hanging there in space. It was like coming out of a long tunnel and finding a mountain waiting for you, huge and silent and unconquerable. Alone, it would have been hard to tell the distance, but Hoorsuk's rings spanned out above the Mothership, resolving into a sea of ice and dust. Watching the rings stretch away towards the planet, Dash felt smaller than a grain of sand.

“Don’t get distracted by the view,” Spitfire said "As of now, this is an active operation. Everypony copy?”

“Yes ma’am,” spoke the choir. Dash grit her teeth, tearing her eyes away from the planet.

A huge shape passed them up from behind, and a radio broadcast accompanied it. “This is resource harvester First Hoofstep. We’re you’re relay, squad one. Plan is to have you guys scout things out and bounce the sitrep off us, since the dust is so thick. With us, you should be able to get word back to Fleet Command as soon as you come into range.”

“Roger, First Hoofstep,” Spitfire acknowledged. “Tight-beam comms only until we reach the Khar-Selim. That goes for everypony out here.” Spitfire paused. “Before we leave—Research team, any change in the signal?”

There was a pause, and the sound of somepony fumbling with a comm panel burst over the radio. “Th-this is research. No change. You… should probably hurry, though—their orbit is faster than ours, and the intercept window is closing.”

Dash craned her neck, and caught just a glimpse of the pie-slice research ship, drifting not far from the mothership, its sensor mast pointed out towards the rings. Wonder if that’s Twilight Sparkle speaking. She sounds super nervous. Probably not a good sign.

“Roger.” The hud flashed a command. “Squad, on me! Delta up and move out!”

They ascended towards the rings.

Time: 2:11 P.M.
Location: Research Ship Planning Area

Twilight Sparkle tried to keep her focus on the matter at hand. So far, she wasn't doing a very good job.

She leaned in towards the dozen screens she had up over the table, eyes shifting to take in as much raw data as possible. An empty coffee cup rested in her hoof, next to six more strewn across the table. Liquid lightning pumped through her veins and pooled behind her eyeballs.

And yet, all she'd managed thus far was to confirm that the situation wasn't changing.

"Nothing new?" Bon Bon asked from across the table, where she had her own screens set up.

"Nothing," Twilight responded, eyes never leaving the display.

"You could take a break, y'know. It's been two hours."

"So could you," Twilight shot back.

"Um, Twi? I'm Lyra."

Twilight blinked, then looked past the screens. "Bon Bon" had indeed switched with her marefriend at some point. "Oh. Hello."

Lyra raised an eyebrow. "You sure that caffeine isn't rusting your brain?"

Twilight determinedly focused her attention back on the data feeds. "Doesn't matter. If there's something to see…"

Twilight sat bolt upright. No way. Her eyes tracked two energy charts, an unusual little spike. She'd been so focused on the signal itself that she'd completely missed what was happening around it. "Found something," she said.

"Good news?" Lyra asked hopefully.

Twilight banished the windows with a wave of her hoof and called up several new ones—spectroscopic readings, IR detectors, anything that… there.

"I'm not sure," Twilight said, eyes scanning the data. She pulled up a map of the planet's rings, and overlaid her findings. Her eyes widened. "Sands on fire…." 

Lyra was about to open her mouth when Twilight caught her with a look that could have stopped the galaxy's spin. "Get Bon Bon. Now. If she's asleep, wake her up."

Lyra nodded, and moved. Twilight went back to staring at the display. Her horn ignited, magic splashing across the console as she pulled up simulation programs and fed in the data. She extrapolated back, one, two, three hours… and the pattern clarified, becoming exactly what she'd feared.

Raised emissions in the dust, fading slowly. The rings spun, and in doing so had changed the pattern a bit, but if you took that into account… three hours ago, the pattern had been uniform. Regular.

A straight line, and at one end, a tiny sphere of hot gas. Right on top of the Khar-Selim's signal.

Twilight tried to reconcile this with something natural. She wanted to believe she was looking at something… mundane.

Twilight's magic quickly attacked the interface, opening a secure comm line to Fleet Command.

"Journey," she said. "I've found something."

"Go ahead, Twilight."

Twilight's magic moved again. "I'm sending the data itself. I… need you to confirm this." Twilight glanced over her shoulder and spotted Bon Bon coming up the stairs. She looked like she had indeed been taking a nap, but she was quickly blinking away her sleep. "Bon Bon, you too."

"What's going on, Twilight?" Bon Bon asked.

Twilight indicated the charts she had. "Take a look at this. Here—the radiation levels on this particular band of the rings.

Bon Bon tilted her head. "Slightly higher than average, but what… oh." Her eyes widened, and her breathing just stopped. "Oh hells."

"Uh, hey, smart ponies?" Lyra said, putting on a very fake grin. "I hate to admit my own dumbness, but could you explain the scary thing so that I, too, can be appropriately terrified?"

"It's…" Twilight swallowed. "Well, we can't be sure. Something messed with the rings." She pointed to the graph. "Here to here, the dust is ionized, and emitting energy at slightly above the background level. It's broken up as the ring spun, but it looks like the initial discharge was… linear."

"So…" Lyra's eyes widened as she started to understand. "You're saying that something pumped a flankload of energy through the dust out there."

Bon Bon reached over and pulled up another orbital diagram. "If we take the emission rates and the particle density into account… we're looking at gigajoules of power being dispersed into the dust, along a straight line for almost a thousand kilometers."

Lyra's face went completely pale. "Yeah, okay, that's absolutely bucking terrifying."

"It could have been the Khar-Selim's ion engines," Bon Bon said, "but they'd have had to heavily overclock them, and the flight path would have been ludicrous, if not suicidal."

"And…" Twilight swallowed. The words burned in her throat. "There's something else that fits better. Only a theoretical model, but something we've… considered."

Bon Bon looked suddenly very old and very ill. Lyra was about to ask what they were talking about, but Great Journey beat her to it:

"An ion weapon."

The room grew so quiet in the wake of those words that the compartment could have vented without the scientists' notice.

It was so terribly simple. A single altered assumption that explained so easily why many questions about their species, about their history, remained unanswered.

Why did we come to Kharequus? Why did our ancestors destroy all records of the journey? Why, if Equestria truly was a paradise, did we ever leave to begin with?

It seemed, in attempting to answer those questions, the philosophers had made one critical mistake:

They'd assumed that the ponies of Kharequus were alone in the universe.

Journey found her voice first. "I will inform all who need to know of this development," she said. "But this information spreads no further until we are absolutely certain. Agreed?"

"Agreed, ma'am," Twilight said. Bon Bon and Lyra nodded.

"Good." A great weight seemed to fall upon Journey's voice. "Celestia's mane… I never thought I'd… Celestia… I hope you're wrong, Twilight Sparkle. For all our sakes, I hope you're completely, utterly, laughably wrong."

Twilight took a deep, shuddering breath. "Me too, ma'am."

The connection cut out. There was nothing else to say.

And in the silence, Twilight Sparkle started to shake. The composure she'd held onto with every ounce of her strength broke apart, piece by piece. Bon Bon caught her before she could fall, guided her to the nearest chair, but it was too late to stop the collapse.

"No," Twilight murmured, wrapping her hooves around her shoulders. "No, no… please Celestia, no…"

Far away, four fighters sped through the dust, towards the Khar-Selim.