Heat Death

by ScottTrek

The Distant Sound of Drums (Part 1)

Author's Note:

Bloody hell i never thought id dig this out of its shallow grave.

Shutout to Bronzedragon for asking me if i was ever gonna pick this up again and stimulating my writers vanity for praise.

Also yes the 3 year gap since the last chapter is lampshaded

(2500 years after the time of the Mane 6)

(Last day of the Tellos War)

The planet Arcana 4 hung like a jewel, its red volcanic surface glowed like a furnace. Magma streams criss-crossed and mixed across the surface in an ever shifting web of fiery oranges and deep bronzes. The surface light filtering through and reflecting through a thick celestial ring that shimmered with a hundred different colours and flowed with sparking electric plasma streams. The whole system seemed to morph and reorder with a life of its own as if it were the beating heart of some great ethereal creature.

It was by far the grizzliest sight Sergeant Solar Spear had ever seen.

---

(3 Years after the reclamation of the Valkyrie)

(Somewhere at the end of the universe)

“Ma’am… Ma’am? Twilight?” Chief Science Officer Flux carefully prodded her Captain, clutching the night shifts status report. In response Twilight slumped over in her chair and let out a long snore. Mumbling about somewhere names ‘Tellos’ in her sleep Twilight tried to roll over and sprawled across her bridge chair.

The snoring intensified.

Flux looked over to the other bridge officers. “How long has she been out?”

The Changeling Helmsman Thaxis peered back and shrugged. “Maybe two hours?”

Aurora peered up from her Operation station. “She was dozing when I took over from night shift as well.”

The three crewman looked between each other. “She’s been doing that a lot lately hasn’t she?” Thaxis said carefully.

Another moment passed… and the flicker of doubt they all felt passed. “Well,” Aurora said, “If it’s between Twilight having a few naps a day or the entropy shield giving out I know which one I want.”

“She certainly deserves the rest!” Thaxis grinned and swivelled back to his work. Flux decided to sit at her own station and work on processing her results.

None of them truly doubted Twilight. Even if she had been acting odd of late. She was Twilight after all.

It had been a pretty good few years since the Princess and the mega-droid Forge had rescued them. The Valkyrie was standing up very well even if 90% of the ship was still derelict, though in truth everything now outside the central core was pretty much useless. They’d been slowly salvaging the wrecked sections; either for useful parts or raw material to feed into the main reactor.

Flux carefully looked over the summary her report. Three years they’d all managed to survive in the void. Three years of watching the last of the spatial anomalies fail and fade out. Three years to come up with a solution.

Flux carefully angled her screen away from the others.

---

(Above Arcana 4)

Solar Spear peered past Zephyr as a particularly volatile chunk of debris burned it way past the tiny shuttle he and seven of his most skilled operatives were cramped into. “Steady buddy,” he grumbled, “I’d rather not get splattered across the entire star system.”

“Have I ever let you down?” his friend grinned from his seat, deftly teasing the control sticks and sending a small jolt though the shuttle. Outside they skimmed over an engine nacelle, still leaking azure plasma into the void.

“It’s not you I’m worried about.” Solar Spear muttered. The entire ship has creaked with the manoeuvre. At least at this more measured speed his flying was no longer shaking their bones to pieces.

To avoid detection this shuttle had been stripped down the barest essentials, no combat-shields, little armour, and tiny directional thrusters pushing them along. Even the standard navigational-deflector was switched off to make them appear nothing more than drifting debris.

Given the danger they all really wished they knew what they were doing out there.

Debris ringed the planet like a ghastly metal halo. The wreckage of dozens of vessels from both sides of the battle tumbled though the void. It had been a brutal battle for both sides but far more so for the Equestrian Alliance. Two Alicorn class dreadnaughts had been destroyed and another crippled, and worse Prince Dusk Shines flagship had been almost completely slagged by the planets massive orbital ferro-cannons. The Prince himself was MIA, possibly dead. As heavily defended as the planet was they’d had to make play to break through, every couple of days the planeside forges could pump out another Tellosite battle cruiser.

“Stupid shuttle.” Private Helm grumbled from his seat, “All it’ll take is one of those Worms to look out a window and we’re stuffed.”

“Actually,” Jupiter Belt, their resident Tellosite specialist. “The Tellosites will be in their hibernation cycle after that much activity. So nobody will be looking out of any windows.” She gulped and stared over the shoulders of the solider opposite. “That being said if their automatic sensors pick us up the entire Hive-mind will be alerted at once. And since there’s no one else out here for them to shoot at…”

“Thank You Specialist. But tell me,” Solar Spear asked, “But would they be expecting an incursion like this?”

Belt thought for a second. “No, a ship this size couldn’t penetrate the planetary shield. So they wouldn’t use resources looking for something like it.”

“Excellent.” Solar grunted, “Now everyone shut the buck up!” Zephyr nodded at Solar Spear, glad for the quite so he could concentrate. As the tiny ship weaved its way through the debris Solar Spear glanced back at the small squadron. He’d been ordered to assemble a squadron from his platoon almost immediately after the space battle had ended; Code Black and right from the top.

Some kind of package needed to be recovered from deep within the debris cloud.

His chosen squadron were all well practiced in zero-g manoeuvres. Though he did have to question why so many of them were needed for a simple recovery op. The only two he hadn’t picked was Zephyr and Jupiter.

Zephyr had also received an info packet, though his one apparently also told him what exactly they were looking. The secrecy irked him, but he has come this far trusting in his crew and his Princess. He'd be a fool to back out at this. Besides, he and Zephyr went way back, one of those adrenaline-mad pegasi who had taken to space flight like a duck to water. Solar Spear was the only one who could back up Zephyrs claim to have made the Discord-Cluster run in 1.7 parsecs, even if he’d had his eyes shut and screamed most of the way.

Jupiter was another matter. He’d seen in a few briefings on their mothership but didn’t know her personally like the others. In truth nobody seemed to like her very much. Before the hostilities had broken out Jupiter had been a delegate to the Tellosites; and her experiences and opinions on their now enemy ostracized her amounts the military crews as much as it made her invaluable.

The Tellosites were a weird species. In their natural state they existed as a masses of semi-organic worms, each ‘induvial’ consisting of hundreds of them telepathically linked together and loaded into mechanical exo-suits. Natural technomancers the Tellosites were the only other race the Equestrian alliance had encountered so far capable of wielding magic. Hell; trading with the Tellosites had increased their own ships FTl-Speeds by a factor of three in the last decade.

And then 16 months ago something just… went wrong?

One day all envoys and delegates were ejected with seemingly no reason. They declared war a month later, and again no reason was given. Since then their aggression had been efficient and effective. The peoples of Equestria were no strangers to combat, even in space, but this had been like nothing else.

“Good thing we have Princess Twilight.” Solar Spear thought to himself. So deep in his musings he almost screamed when something heavy clanged into the shuttle. The entire crew jumped as something scraped against the hull. Solar Spear craned his neck so see out of the front view-screen but it was already out of sight. The entire squad jumped in their seats, grabbing from their weapons. Sealed in their suits Tellosites fielded lethal boarding parties.

“Everyone relax!” Zephyr barked. “Capn’, this is the package we came for.”

Solar Spear glared at his colleague. “What could possibly be OUT HERE that you had to keep QUITE ABOUT!?” From the back of the shuttle there came a sudden burst of lavender energy. The airlock swished and the regal for of Princess Twilight Sparkle stepped inside. “Oh… that.”

---

(The Valkyrie. Derelict Sector 28)

Forge carefully laser-cut his way through a section of hull plating. Beneath him the Chief Engineer and the Eldritch siblings crawled inside and began working loose the old computer bank inside. It was peaceful work; venturing through the vacuum of space and returning with valuable parts to keep both the Ponies vessel and his own mechanical body running

With the three ponies not needing cumbersome void-suits they made quick work and computer bank was soon extracted and in tow as they trekked back across the hull. As they passed under the shadow of Forges main body he looked up at himself and pondered. In the three years he had lived with the ponies he had only needed to return his consciousness to the body five times; and none of them had required the massive construction to detach itself from the outer hull of the Valkyrie.

In the early days some of the ponies had regarded his as like some kind of massive tick, a parasite leeching off their power reserves and providing ‘questionable’ benefits that were not worth the resources required. But all that seemed a distant memory now, Twilight was very good at solving such friendship problems.

“How strange,” He thought to himself, “Three years is such a short time in the grand scheme… but now it feels like a whole different life.” Twilight had often told him he was more like them than he realised and it was something he had always taken as a compliment; while flawed, organic life had a lot of attributes to be admired. That being said… the memory lapses he could do without. “There’s something I should be remembering… something in up in there. Maybe Twilight can help me check if she’s not too busy.”

He wasn’t sure why but he didn’t want to re-enter his body.

---

̨“̻P͇̖̻̩̱̲̗à͔̲̠̥t̘ie̹̦̼̤n͔̫̰̮͇͈̲͜c̪͇̫̥̻̹͕̕e͖͙ ̰̦̠̦͍m҉̥̝͈̗y̭̩̱ ̪̭̭́fr̸͖̜i̞̟̘̗̗͚̺e҉̩n͕̗ḓ̳̕…̰̺͢ ṕ̭̳̹͍̣̤a̟͈͇͟t̵̖̜͙̱̹i͎͈̬͎̳̙̪͟e̢͖͍̻͕̜̳͉n̮͖̭̩̲̟͡c͍̖̯̜̜̦e̼̯̞̯ͅ…̛͈͙͇̦̭̣”͏̤̤̬ͅ

Comments

[Bronzedragon]

Thanks for the mention. I never expected a new chapter this fast. to be honest I really expected the usual response which many times is none at all.
To respond that fast and then produce a new chapter in such a short time says as much about you as a person as it does your writing ability.
Looking forward to more.
BD

[kord]

It lives!

please don't let it die again.

[Ponygood11]

Huh. This is cool.

Finding a way to start a new Big Bang would certainly be helpful, or just traveling to a new, younger universe. Speaking of universes, what ever happened to the Mirror Portal?

[FoolRegnant]

God, it's been a minute.

[Cutie Honey]

Wow! Awesome!

[LuxAeterna]

I will definitely have to re-read this fic, I remember quite enjoying the interesting premise!

Two tiny things though - you consistently used a plural instead of a possessive in the fic; Dusk Shines flagship rather than Dusk Shine's flagship. Every time you were indicating someone's ownership of something you missed out the apostraphe. Just something to be aware of.

The other small thing is when they were all shouting, the POV character shouted at them to be "Quite" rather than "Quiet".

[ScottTrek]

8670873
Glad to see you back :D
And thanks for pointing out my poor grammar, i do try but its noether mine or the closest thing i have to an edditors strong point