CHAPTER TWO: SURVIVAL
---
Daniel had just barely enough fuel left on board to enter a low orbit around the planet after three days on cruise. As Wolf 4 slowly starved, so did he. His last meal was back in the commissary with Adra, and that was days ago. He wondered if the Deus ex Machina remained in United Fleet hands, or if the Faction had won.
He rolled the craft over so that he could look upon the surface. A cursory glance revealed a world lush and green, shockingly like Earth before the Great Burning. Initial scans revealed a small village near the edge of a dense forest. Surrounding the forest were open fields, perfect for what may be a very rough landing. With the forest nearby, he could immediately find a place to hide, provided he survived the landing.
He reactivated his astrometric sensors. Perhaps there would be no more nonsense readings. Nevertheless, they still insisted the ridiculous idea that this system’s star orbited its planet. Even worse, the Moon’s orbit should not have been possible by any known laws of planetary motion. He ignored those, and focused on setting landing coordinates on the surface.
Daniel waited until his selected landing area was on the night side of the planet, and used the last of his remaining sub-light fuel for the atmospheric entry burn. Systems indicated that the heat shields were intact, and only the port side landing skids suffered serious damage that was never repaired. Something was wrong with the fuel lines that fed the port side landing engines, but it was too late to do anything about it.
Daniel had never entered a planet’s atmosphere before. He found the experience both fascinating and absolutely terrifying. Wolf 4 was engulfed in blazing yellow plasma for several minutes. A brief glance at the main display indicated that hull temperature was peaking at over 1,500 Kelvin. He immediately regretted looking at that data and shut off the display.
Gradually, the searing plasma faded, and Daniel felt the wings catch the wind. In response to the detection of an atmosphere, the bioscribe armed itself, ready to scan the first sentient life form it encountered.
Still supersonic, he deployed the airbrakes, slowing the craft through the transonic barrier and emitting a loud sonic boom just as he passed over the settlement he had previously seen from orbit.
Probably not the best way to enter without being noticed… he imagined Adra telling him.
Completely beneath his notice at this point, the high pitched beep from the computer went unacknowledged. Daniel never knew that the bioscribe had found and scanned something...or someone.
As he approached his selected landing zone, he decided it was time to deploy the landing skids and hope for the best. He would rather try to land on broken skids than attempt a belly landing of a space fighter. Daniel closed his eyes, and pulled the lever.
---
It was not often that Rainbow Dash flew at night. She was a pegasus who relished her sleep, and the day’s weather duties had been tiring. However, tonight of all nights, she tossed and turned, unable to find sleep until her impatience got the better of her.
The colorful mare decided to clear her head with a flight in the cool, crisp air of the night. She walked to the window of her lofty house made entirely of clouds, and took a deep breath of the night air before leaping out of the window.
Her wings carried her over town, where she flew in wide, lazy arcs, just enjoying the feel of the breeze in her mane.
It wasn’t long before a bright light that looked like a meteor caught her eye. It came streaking down from the heavens, and it appeared to be heading in her general direction. Rainbow Dash was straining her eyes to get a good look at it when it suddenly emitted a thunderous crack the likes of which had only ever been heard when she herself performed a Sonic Rainboom.
Whatever it was, it was fast. She had to get a closer look at what may be the only thing to match her for speed in living memory.
As the object dimmed from its previous glow, it began to grow in apparent size, and assumed a defined shape. To her eyes, it looked vaguely like a metal dragonfly that flew tail first. However little the cyan pegasus knew about it, she was smart enough to tell it was some sort of flying machine. The only creatures who built flying machines, however, were those that were themselves flightless.
She flew up alongside it, now that it was going slower than the speed of sound. With her closer vantage point, she could see a clear glass canopy on top. She flew closer to the object, and looked inside. What she saw nearly shocked her out of the sky.
Inside was a creature unlike any she’d ever seen before. It wore a dark grey and gold military uniform, and looked forward at the controls of its machine and out the front of the cockpit with an intense focus, not even noticing that Equestria’s fastest flyer was right alongside it. Still in shock that she was looking at what was most likely a living alien from another world, she failed to notice the small cylinder that extended from the top of the craft, and shined a dim red light at her for several seconds.
Rainbow Dash was about to knock a hoof on the glass to get its attention when it did something unexpected. Its facial expression went from one of intense focus to one of desperation and fear.
It reached down to its side, closed its eyes, and pulled hard. Rainbow Dash barely had a chance to get out of the way before a hideous metallic grinding noise emanated from the machine, followed immediately by a blast of heat and a bright yellow ball of flame.
The machine began tumbling chaotically, quite obviously out of control and critically damaged. She wanted to help, but she could only watch in horror as the pilot’s face contorted in his desperate attempts to control the machine. Every time she tried to approach to either steady it with her hooves, or break open the glass and pull out the pilot, the heat forced her back. It was far too hot to approach from any angle.
The pegasus kept trying until the ground rushed up sooner than expected. Rainbow Dash realized that whether she helped or not at this point, that machine was going to crash, and hard.
Fighting back the anger at herself that she couldn't help a fellow flyer in distress, particularly one as fast as her, she did the only thing she could.
Before flying away, she uttered, “I’m sorry...” and pulled up at the last second, only to see the flames suddenly go out, and the flying machine plow into the ground with a sickening crunch, likely killing whatever was inside.
Briefly at a loss of what to do, Rainbow Dash spotted her oldest friend down on the ground...right near the crash site. It was then that she knew all wasn't lost. If the creature survived the crash, who better to help it than her, the Element of Loyalty, and the one pegasus who knew strange creatures like no other.
---
Wolf 4 shuddered violently as the damaged skids entered the wind-stream and locked into position, except for the port side skid. It caught on an internal fuel line and unleashed a spray of chemical fuel meant to power the landing engines. The spray ignited against the still-searing hull, fire quickly reached the fuel reserves and caused a violent explosion. The fighter was engulfed in flames. None of the control mechanisms or aerosurfaces on the port side of the craft were responding.
Wolf 4 careened out of control over the darkened alien landscape until Daniel managed to get it somewhat back in check. Alarms screamed and the cockpit slowly filled with smoke. He was still moving towards his intended landing spot, but the spacecraft was yawing hard to the left and coming in much too steep and fast. Pulling up on the stick did nothing.
He punched the emergency airbrakes, which did not respond. In desperation, he deployed the drag parachute, which was quickly incinerated. As a last resort, he yanked on the eject handle, which also failed. Just now realizing it was on fire, the fighter's main computer activated the fire suppressors, but too late. The damage was done.
Daniel saw the ground rushing towards him despite his efforts to reduce his descent angle, and braced for impact. As Wolf 4 slammed into the hard ground, he was thrown forward, his head smashing into the windscreen and cracking the glass, which left a painful gash. His starved body was thrown forward violently in the harness, cracking one of his ribs.
The impact at least left him mercifully unconscious for the usually extremely painful conversion process by the bioscribe.
The craft slid across the landscape, digging a trench as it went. It caught on a solid underground object and flipped over several times, finally rolling to a stop in a cloud of heavy dirt. It stopped moments before plowing into one of the natives, who had been literally paralyzed in fear. Wolf 4 came to rest on its top side; the cockpit suspended a meter above the dirt trench. The nose of the fighter was resting on the dirt, and its wide v-shaped upper wings were propping up the aft section, thus pointing the dual plasma cannons at the ground.
The witness to his landing caught just a glimpse of the pilot inside the now transparent canopy. Through the smoky air inside, she managed to see a strange creature, one she’d never seen before. Her talent with animals never failing, she could sense its pain. It was a pain that transcended mere physical injury, though the creature certainly did not lack for that.
She could sense anguish, a sort of desperate hopelessness. She recognized those as the feelings of a creature badly hurt with no one to turn to, and then and there she resolved to wait for it to come out, and help it however she could. It was then that a brilliant flash came from inside the canopy, and the battered face of the alien creature inside was alien no longer.
---
Daniel awoke several hours later. Everything hurt. His eyes were clouded with the blood that had dripped into them from the open wound on his head, he was experiencing red-out from being suspended upside down in the crashed fighter, and his lungs burned from smoke inhalation. Breathing was difficult; he had definitely cracked a rib.
The sun had risen on this world, but he could not see out of the cockpit canopy. It was cracked all over and fogged out from the smoke. His body felt as though it was crammed into a harness not designed for it, which could only mean one thing.
The bioscribe…it worked!
He had been trained to use the bioscribe, and thus accepted his new body immediately. He tried to undo the harness, but found that he had no fingers; instead he had a set of hooves. He hit the emergency release for the harness and in his disorientation from the crash he had forgotten he would drop right out of the seat.
The harness retracted, pulling off his tattered uniform with it. Daniel’s head struck the canopy hard, completely shattering the damaged glass, and introducing a fresh hell of pain as he was dumped unceremoniously into the dirt beneath the cockpit.
He groaned and opened his eyes to a complete shock.
So much for subtle disguise...
A large group of natives had gathered to see the strange alien spacecraft that had just crash landed on their world. They all seemed to resemble horses with larger heads to accommodate their sentient brains, but were closer in size to ponies. Both species were lost to Earth 59 years ago during the Great Burning, but he remembered reading about them. Daniel observed that some of the ponies had single horns on their heads, others had wings, and still others had neither.
They were all staring at him. Some wore expressions of pure curiosity, most looked afraid, but all looked downright distrustful of him.
Daniel felt out his new form. He could feel a set of wings at his sides. The bioscribe must have found one of the winged ponies first. He could tell his coat was a slightly lighter shade of the dark grey of the officer’s uniform he wore moments earlier, and if he had a mirror, he would have seen that his mane and tail were similar to the gold trim of his uniform with a streak of fiery orange. Yet his eyes remained the same icy-blue he’d had since birth.
Confident he could stand in his new form, he decided to attempt first contact.
He shakily stood on his new hooves, and began speaking. “Hello. I mean you no harm. My name is…”
Daniel was interrupted by a deep metallic groaning from above him.
You are an idiot… he could hear Adra saying. She would have been right. The entire time, he was standing directly under a crashed spacecraft. Its v-shaped top wings began to give way, and would have left him just enough time to dodge…if he was uninjured.
As he tried to move out of the way of the collapsing space fighter, one of the main cannons broke loose and smashed him on the back of the head. It tossed him forward, mercifully away from the crash of the rest of the fighter, and discharged a shot into the ground which did nothing but make a lot of noise and scare off the crowd.
He was on the ground several meters from the wrecked fighter, and didn’t want to move, as staying down on the ground was so much easier than trying to stand in his condition. As his vision began to blur and grey out, he saw two of the winged ponies float down before him. They somehow hadn’t been scared off by the cannon.
He weakly reached out in desperate appeal before he blacked out completely.
---
Through his injured stupor, the pegasus was dimly aware of few things.
He felt his battered body being picked up by something strong, but gentle.
He felt a sudden wind over his coat.
As consciousness gradually slipped in and out of his grasp, he felt something tending to his wounds.
Soon however, fatigue, hunger, and injury got the better of him. He only managed to catch a few bits of conversation as his head swam towards the darkness.
There were two voices, one very quiet, but very calm. The other sounded brash and panicked.
The quiet voice was the one he heard first, “...he’s made it through the worst of it, there’s not much more we can do for him now other than just letting him rest.”
The brash voice responded, “Are you sure? I...I mean, there must be something more I can do.” It sounded more worried with each word.
“Rainbow Dash, you carried him all the way here yourself, and you helped me treat his injuries. The only thing I think you can do to help him now is something I can’t do.”
“Name it!”
“You saw how everypony looked at him when he fell out of that machine.”
“Don’t worry ‘bout a thing, Fluttershy. I know exactly what you want me to do and I’m on it!”
He felt a gentle touch on his foreleg, and the brash voice quieted down and spoke comfortingly.
“Hang in there, I don’t know how to heal you, that’s Fluttershy’s job. But I’m gonna make sure nopony wants to hurt you.”
And he felt himself slipping from the waking world once again.
---
I’m…alive. Why does everything hurt so much?
He opened his eyes and found himself in a soft bed. He tried to sit up, but the effort caused pain to shoot through his whole body. Now out of breath, he began coughing violently, which hurt even more.
Someone came running up a set of stairs and rushed to his bedside. His eyesight was blurred, but he could see a yellow pegasus approach him. She seemed vaguely familiar.
“Oh dear...um, try to breathe slowly,” she said quietly.
He followed the advice, and slowed his breathing. His vision began clearing.
“That’s better, isn’t it? Um…try to rest, you’re badly hurt, but my friend and I treated you…i-if that’s alright. My name is Fluttershy, can you tell me your name…um, please?”
“My name is...” he stopped abruptly as his mind searched for something that didn’t seem to be there.
“My name is...I think...I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“Oh, um…oh my. You might have amnesia,” she said pensively, bringing a hoof to her chin in thought.
She noticed the frightened look he had at the word ‘amnesia,’ and changed her demeanor.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe here. I’m going to help you,” she reassured him.
“What do I look like?”
“Oh, um, you’re not so bad, only a bad concussion and a broken rib, and it looks like you haven’t eaten in a few days. Of course you have a few cuts and bruises, but you’ll be better in no time at all. Your amnesia might take some time to heal though…i-if that’s okay.”
She misunderstood the question.
“Do you have a mirror? I…I can’t remember my own face.”
Fluttershy briefly debated allowing him to look in a mirror, for fear that he might realize the face that would look back is not his original one. However, she then realized that he probably didn’t remember his original face, so seeing his new one would do no harm.
“Oh my…I’m sorry, I’ll be right back.”
She came back a moment later carrying a small mirror in her teeth.
“Please try not to be scared, your injuries only look really bad,” she said gently, and held up the mirror.
The face that looked back at him was thin and gaunt. He was battered, and had bandages across his forehead. Some blood had soaked through the bandages. She said it looked worse than it was, but that didn’t help. The face that looked back at him looked so brutalized that it had to be a wonder he was still alive. There was so much blood on his head.
Oh no…is my skull cracked? Am I going to...die?
A panic began to set in, his heart began pounding and he started hyperventilating as he came to terms with thoughts of whatever near death experience he had apparently just survived.
“Wh- what happened to me?!” he frantically asked, his panic deepening as the room began to spin around him, and he couldn’t help but imagine a crack running along his skull, the bones held together only by skin and bandages.
Through the panic, he felt her yellow hoof touch him on the shoulder, and she looked down at him with a gentle and understanding smile. His frenzied eyes looked up into hers. He felt immediately tranquilized, as if everything would be alright as long as she was there.
“Shhh. It’s okay. You’ll be okay.” She said in a soothing voice, and he felt his panic melt away as she began stroking his mane.
In seconds, she brought him from abject panic to serenity. He had an unusual feeling of implicit trust for this mare. He couldn’t explain it, but everything about her presence reassured him that he would be alright.
“You need your rest to heal, but I’ll be right here, so don’t be scared.”
“Fluttershy…” he asked recalling her name from moments earlier, “what did this to me?”
Her internal debate as to whether he should know yet how he came to be injured was thankfully ended by a knock at the door.
“Oh, please excuse me for a moment.”
Fluttershy ran downstairs and answered the door. He listened in on the conversation.
“Oh hello Twilight, what brings you here?”
“Hi Fluttershy, did you happen to see that thing that landed over in the fields last night?” a new voice asked.
“I did see it, and I heard it too. At first, I thought Rainbow Dash was practicing her Sonic Rainbooms at night, but she isn’t that inconsiderate. It looked more like a shooting star.”
“Did you happen to see what came out of it this morning? Ponies around town are saying that they saw a strange dark grey pegasus stallion come out who they’ve never seen before, and that they all ran off when his machine, whatever it is, shot something powerful at the ground. I’m worried that this stranger could be a potential threat, and that we might need to resort to using the Elements to deal with that threat.”
She was silent for a moment until Twilight asked, “Is he here?” with a suspicious tone.
“Oh Twilight! He’s really badly hurt, and he doesn’t remember anything. Please don’t take him away, he needs my help! He won’t hurt us, I can tell!” Fluttershy pleaded.
“May I come in and see?” she asked impatiently, not waiting for a response and coming in anyway. This was bad. In his condition, he couldn’t face any inquisition, and even if he did have his memories, those Elements didn’t sound like something to be taken lightly. The panic began to return.
He heard the two of them coming up the stairs. The first one up was who he assumed to be Twilight. She was a unicorn rather than a pegasus like Fluttershy. Her horn was glowing menacingly and her eyes were narrowed aggressively. It was obvious she didn’t trust him; then again, what reason did she have to trust him? He didn’t even know if he was trustworthy.
He guessed she could probably tear him apart with whatever power was making that horn glow, especially considering he could barely move as it was. He braced for whatever cruel torment she was about to unleash as his heart pounded in his ears.
She approached him cautiously and looked him dead in the eyes.
Her expression softened, and her horn stopped glowing. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anypony with such fear in their eyes.”
His panic ebbed, giving way to a hint of confusion, “Huh?” he mumbled.
“My name is Twilight Sparkle, can you tell me yours?” she asked gently.
“I don’t know. I can’t remember it…are you going to hurt me?”
“Oh no, of course not. Not now. I was only worried from what I heard of you and what I saw of your machine that you had come here to hurt us, but now that I see how afraid you are…” she trailed off.
“What machine?” he asked.
“You don’t even remember that much? This could be bad. The entire town has assumed that whatever came here in that machine is evil and here to cause harm.”
Fluttershy voiced her concerns, “But Twilight, how could they all jump to conclusions so quickly?”
“I don’t know Fluttershy, but it looks like I have some work to do.”
“I already asked Rainbow Dash to go around town to try and stop everypony from being afraid of him.” she replied.
“That’s good, but Rainbow Dash isn’t exactly the most tactful mare. Keep him here, and do what you can for his injuries. I’ll try and keep the townsponies calm and see what I can do to stop any angry mobs from forming.” At that, she turned and left.
---
I knew it wouldn’t work…why didn’t I tell him?
Admiral Richard Emrys felt as though he had betrayed one of his finest officers and few close friends as he watched Wolf 4 bolt off on an overloading reactor. Where he would end up, none could predict. But he couldn’t bear to let Daniel kill himself.
The massive Faction fleet did not move to attack, it simply held position.
“Admiral, why aren’t they attacking us?” the helmsman asked.
“I don’t know…but I have a bad feeling about this.”
The communications officer spoke up, “Sir, I’ve got an incoming audio channel from the lead ship.”
“Open it.”
An older sounding man with a soft voice and a Texas accent spoke. “It's been 44 years, brother.”
The moment he had been dreading for nearly half a century finally upon him, Admiral Richard replied, “...Silas?!”
“This is Admiral Silas Emrys of the Faction attack cruiser Judgement. I must say Richard, I'm pleased to find you still alive.”
“You have destroyed almost the entire United Fleet with the exception of the Deus ex Machina and her escort, you have come in force to surround my ship, and you forcibly subvert members of my crew and tell me you’re pleased to find me alive?” he said skeptically with just a hint of impatience.
“You insult me, Richard. But you’re quite right; though that Dragon-class starship is more than a match for any one of mine, against our numbers you’re hopelessly outgunned.”
“Then why wait? Why not destroy the one obstacle to the ultimate Faction victory now, instead of delaying by talking with a dead man?”
“I am insulted again to hear that my own older brother thinks I would kill him for a victory. I don’t consider it a victory for the Faction, no, for humanity, if I must kill my own brother to attain it.”
Admiral Richard was confused, “What are you saying?”
“I have lead the Faction in martial law for almost 20 years; you are the only remaining Admiral alive within the United Terran Fleet. That makes us the de facto leaders. I did not come here to kill you and wipe out the rest of my opposition; I came to negotiate a peace.”
Admiral Richard’s soldiers would see his fury for the first time in their lives. There was no yelling, there was no fire, only a cold rage that burned in his trembling voice.
“You talk peace, but do you have any idea of the horrors you’ve caused today? You must have murdered thousands of honest Terran soldiers by forcibly turning their closest friends against them. My best strategist and my own friend just flew off alone in a space fighter hoping that his self-destruct would kill him before he turned because of your damned rewrite device. He watched the woman he loved turn into one of your red-eyed pawns just before she tried to strangle him, he was forced to take her life with his own sidearm. And now you talk peace?”
There were several moments of silence.
“It is…truly regrettable that such things came to pass, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We have to end this conflict, brother. Take a look at your population counts. Humanity is dying, we need a home. Even if you account for casualties in battle, both our numbers are dwindling just from sickness and depression induced suicides alone; people are losing the will to live, Richard. We cannot survive like this. My lab coats are telling me that by current trends, humanity won’t last another 44 years. I’m here for peace. You can choose to fight me, but I’d much rather end this war with my older brother at my side than in a casket.”
“The United Fleet has stood against the Faction for 44 years for a reason. We fight you because you are deluded enough to think you have the right to conquer inhabited planets just so that humanity can survive. If you want to end this war without having to kill me and destroy my fleet, then you’d better have a damn good offer to make.”
“Think about our past, Richard. Times change, so do people.”
The seasoned admiral sat down in the command chair to think on what Silas had said.
When he was just 5 years old, Richard watched his mother die bringing Silas screaming into the world. Eleven years before the Earth was destroyed, he held his newborn brother and tried to keep him calm and safe. Their father died shortly after in the war that led to the Great Burning, so they were on their own until they reached enlistment age for the Fleet.
Neither of them ever wanted to join the military, but they were left with little choice. Richard waited 5 years so they could enlist together; they trained together, fought together, and watched good men die together. It wasn’t until they had a difference of opinion shortly after the civil war began that they went their separate ways.
All those years ago, Richard told his younger brother, “One day, Silas…one day we’ll meet again. I only hope it’s not under a banner of war.”
And now, the child he held and cared for, the child he grew up alongside; Silas had come back. What were his intentions?
Admiral Richard broke the silence with an enigmatic question that only his brother would understand, “Silas, what banner do you fly today?”
“Today, Richard, I only hope you believe me when I say it’s a banner of peace.”
He motioned for the com officer to mute the transmission channel, and then ordered him to broadcast to all of the remaining United Fleet.
“This is Admiral Richard Emrys, acting leader of the United Terran Fleet. Admiral Silas Emrys of the Faction has offered us peace. While I would normally reject this offer due to their questionable methods, I know my brother. He comes to us in an earnest desire to end the war, and, regrettably, refusing the offer would likely mean all of our deaths. They come to us not just in peace, but in overwhelming force. We are left with little choice. Peace or not, the Faction has won. The United Fleet has fallen. I will go to the Faction flagship Judgement to personally discuss the terms of our surrender. You’ve all fought honorably; I only hope we get to keep our honor after the treaty is signed.”
He nodded to the com officer, who reopened the channel.
“I too wish to fly a banner of peace, Silas. I suppose you want me to come aboard the Judgement to discuss the terms of our surrender?”
“No. I will come to the Deus ex Machina, and we will discuss the terms of our alliance. Some of the Faction’s methods have been…regrettable. I wish to change how we do business; perhaps we can both make sacrifices and meet in the middle.”
Admiral Richard did not know what to think. No matter what advanced weaponry he had, even the rewrite device could not turn something like this into a trap. The faces the two admirals remembered of one another no longer existed, they had aged 44 years. Silas would not place his life into United Fleet hands unless he truly wanted peace. For the first time since the start of the civil war, Richard Emrys felt a glimmer of hope.
---
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Deus ex Machina is a pretty cool name for a ship, I gotta admit.
And amnesia. Fantastic.
Humans have all the luck, huh?
2689795 Heheh, yeah, I was actually told that it's pretty ironic to give that name to a human-controlled war machine, considering what Deus ex Machina actually refers to.
Not all humans are that unlucky, just this one in particular. XD
Brace yourself, things are going to get worse before they get better for our hero. Tune in next week to find out how!
2690896 Should I take that Spike-stache as a good thing then?
2691248
no