Epilogue - Is There Anypony Out There?
Post-Equus arrival, day 202
03:04, Canterlot Standard Time
Bridge, Caprica
“Thirty-three minutes… mark,” Mark heard Des say as he shut his eyes. “We are now at hour eighty-two, and all stations are reporting.”
“Very well,” Mark half-muttered. The stress drill was beginning to take a toll on his own mind, and the twenty minute power naps between simulated emergency jumps were beginning to lose their effectiveness. He took a moment to reopen his eyelids to observe his bridge staff. Many were doing the same as he was, laying back a little further, taking the precious time to relax, at the very least.
Mark put a wireless headset on and pushed a few buttons on his handset. “Bridge to sick bay. Report, doctor.”
“We’ve just admitted three more ponies suffering from exhaustion,” Doctor Heart Beat said. “We’re now up to thirty-seven.”
“Hang in there, Doctor,” Mark reassured the physician. “This test is about to end. Bridge, out.” He removed his headset, placing it back on its rack before standing from his seat and walking to the charting console. Des was materialized beside it, eyes closed and chin down, bright flows of information going from toe to head as she prepared the next simulation. “Hey, Des?”
“Hmmm?” she hummed without looking up.
“Do you have the information you need to make a formulated conclusion?”
“I believe so,” she answered with a small nod.
“Okay. Abort next simulation.” Des’s form dimmed as her calculations came to a stop. She now looked to Mark. “I think we pushed them enough.”
“Very well, sir. Do you want me to stop the countdown?”
“No, go ahead and keep it rolling. Think of how rewarding it will be when it runs out and nothing shows up.”
Des couldn’t help but to give a small giggle. “Roger that, Commander.”
The next half-hour passed slowly for Mark, as he opted to not take his usual twenty minute power nap. Spitfire had instead taken his seat, dozing with the rest of the bridge staff. Mark stood, taking a tablet and reading the results of the stress test put together by Des. “Under stressed conditions,” the report read, “ship functionality and crew optimization maintained, on average, at eighty-seven percent of pretest levels.”
Huh, that’s pretty good, Mark thought, continuing to the next page. A graph displayed the overall “efficiency” of the crew, taking in factors such as response time, accuracy of orders completed, and time between jumps. The linear graph showed a decline over time, but he had expected just that.
Mark looked back at the countdown to see there were only two minutes left. He reholstered the tablet in its holding slot and walked around the bridge, waking the staff. “Alright, ponies. Let’s get ready for jump one-forty-nine.” Snorts and snores started to sound off as the crew came back to life. Voices soon followed as orders went into headsets. “Sixty seconds on the clock. All stations, report.”
One by one, station leaders called out their status as they had done one hundred and forty-nine times before. When the final station reported ready, the countdown read 00:30. “Standby for enemy contacts,” Mark said to his bridge staff. Steel Hoof locked eyes with the sensor readouts, ready to call out their positions as soon as they arrived.
Mark read out the final seconds. “Three… two… one…” An alarm buzzed as the clock hit zero. It was quickly silenced as the crew stood ready to receive the simulated enemy, but when nothing appeared on the sensor readouts, the murmur of voices circled around him. “Lieutenant Steel Hoof, report.”
“Sensors report a clean sweep, sir,” Steel Hoof said.
“Music to my ears,” Mark said as he grabbed the shipwide broadcast mic. “All hands… well done. You can all rest easy now. The test is over, and I must say, I’m impressed by your discipline and conviction. I know you are all tired--” a beeping came from the sensor readouts “--which is why I’m ordering all ponies--”
“Sir!” Steel Hoof frantically called out. “Contact!”
“Standby,” Mark quickly said before putting the mic back. He jogged over to the readout. “Des, I thought I said no more simulations.”
She materialized by Mark. “I’m not running a simulation.”
The three gazed at the screen, showing a blip labeled “Unidentified Contact.” “Run a diagnostic.”
A flow of information ran through Des. “Diagnostic complete. Sensors are operational.” Mark and Des looked to each other. “There’s something out there that wasn’t there before.”
Mark broke eye contact, looking around the bridge. The faces of the tired ponies had been replaced with ones of fear and uncertainty. “Battle stations! Set Condition One! This is not a drill!”
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5559672
I need to revise my statement a bit, it seems. There's a lot to come, but apparently in a new story^^
Regarding the option of weekly updates: Please keep in mind that you'll have to wait until about half the story is finished before even the first chapter will be published. So your options are to wait now, and then have regular updates, or get updates always as soon as possible, but with varying pauses in between.
I like the weekly model better. It may mean more chapters and a staggered plot line, but it would be nice to see more updates.
oh no don't tell me the Dridens have found the way to equestria
While a scheduled release is nice, i prefer whichever method is better for you and your story.
whenever is good
I would prefer weekly.
Wonderful Cliffhanger! Will the new ship be a Driden scout? a Human refugee ship that escaped the clutches of the Dridens? or some other alien species?! I guess we'll find out, in the next book!!
Go at your pace.
Also: human survivors.
5572119
5572345
I thought it was a little fast as well, and I think Mark should have more sessions. However, since this book is finished, I was fine letting it end on a high note and didn't bother Lunar Soldier not much about it. Maybe we hear of more sessions in the next one.
Go at your own pace. Trying to grind out stories because you feel you have to never works out well. Stories become rushed, threads get lost.
Since there's going to be a second one, I don't have to get huffy and ask what was in the box. xD
O7 Fly on, Lunar Soldier.
5572403
You don't need to worry about that. The weekly updates would mean that Lunar Soldier writes half the story before publishing the first chapter, so it would be same chapter length and quality (or even better? *hope*). You just have to wait longer before you get anything to read.
When the next chapter is done right.
Forcing oneself to stick to a timeline makes you start questioning how much quality is allowed to be lost just to meet said timeline. Once a chapter is posted, you can move on and readers coming in late will never care how fast chapters were posted.
Set personal completion goals on when, but don't force it. You're doing too good a job so far to jeopardize it.
5572411 Ahh, that would be a sensible way to do it. I didn't know that's what he meant.
In that case, whatever makes him more comfortable.
Weekly update! Try to follow said schedule but don't need to kill yourself over said schedule...Set it as a optional achievement like in many video games...
Also....Driden? Human refugees? Other alien race refugees?
5573126 Gonna have to wait for the next book to find out
5573135 Nooooooooooooooo!
:D
you prick you better update regularly whenever they are done
Do what ever you need to do so that the quality of the story is not jeopardized.
You are now being followed.
I was disappointed when I saw the "Complete" tag, but seeing as that was just the first arc, if you will, not very much. :D
Can't wait for some more dude.
Aw hell... and right after a performance stress test? That's going to make things interesting!
Moremoremoremoremore! I want you to release the chapters when you write them. I don't want you to start posting the next arc after I forgot all about this story in a month...
This was just flat-out awesome to read. You've got one of those rare stories that stands well on its own, while simultaneously being the perfect vehicle for introducing a new story universe.
Congratulations, and if this is indicative of the quality of your work, you've got another fan.
It's probably the Battlestar Pegasus... Something that will make the denizens of Cloudsdale happy.
5602722 ....Crossover with real Battlestar: Galactica universe???? No...just no....though it would be pretty funny..
5610539
Well... If you didn't want to cross over with the real Battlestar Galactica universe, why is your ship named after one of the original 12 worlds? It could have been given any other name: Constitution, Nautilus, Enterprise, OH wait... those have already been used (wrong universes) LOL!
5612828 What? No...If I still remember it right...Those were named after a sci-fi show in the story...or Battlestar:Galactica.
5612877
Actually, Constitution was a real ship. Her nickname was "Old Ironsides." You can still see her if you go to Boston, MA.. Enterprise was a fictional starship named after a real World War II aircraft carrier, and Nautilus was a real nuclear powered submarine in the U.S. Navy, but was named after the fictional ship in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
5612912 The buck are you talking about?
I don't think we're speaking the same language here...
Thank You for a great story!
Ooh, a very nice conclusion!
You should update whenever you get a chapter done. Trying to push out a chapters on a schedule takes a lot more up-front work and tends to make it harder to improvise; if you don't worry about sticking to a schedule, you can get every chapter the way you want it before release. You can also take vacations and whatnot without worrying. At the same time, set some limit on the amount of time you spend on one chapter, so that you actually publish them.
5681671 <.< If I remembered it right, Commander is a higher rank.
Also, Sequel?
It would be better to just update the story as you finish the chapter. Don't push writing. But if you could post somewhere (blog post, author notes, etc) when you are going to update that would be cool.
>>Amethyst Blade Actually Commander is under Captain(I believe it might be directly under-not sure)
Semi-irrelevant: Lieutenant Commander is under Commander and is also the lowest rank that is eligible to captain a ship or boat.
So. This was a thing.
Writing was alright. Structure was alright. Good grammar and spelling, too.
But it was too short, and not in a good way. This story is an excellent example of something failing to reach it's potential in a rather spectacular way. Everything from start to finish was a coherent, organized plot, but for all the good it does, it lacks something very important, and that would be pacing. Pretty much everything from chapter one on was pushed through at almost lighting speed, with no apparent thought given to character or sub-plot development, leaving me with a sense of whiplash at how overtly contrived everything was. For example, at the beginning, we basically find ourselves skipping his whole acclimation process from start to finish, and you leave us with what, a handful of paragraphs? What about his interpersonal relationships with, hell, everyone, up to and including his romance? The thing with Spitfire was pushed through so fast and so hard I needed a cigarette and it came essentially out of nowhere. What about Rarity's dislike of him? Where did that come from? What did he do to earn the carte-blanche trust of the princesses, in such a way that not only did they just hand him back an exceedingly high rank, despite his lack of history or understanding of how the Equestrian military works? And that's just a few of the failings here.
And that's not even counting the number of undeveloped plots and characters you used, from the king on down. Neadle had literally no exposition at all despite his being the big bad, and the only thing we really learned about him was that he was gryphon Hitler leading the gryphon Nazis and that's evil so they're evil. Because of all the evil things they do to the Jews-I-mean-Goldclaws. What about Gilda? Huge potential there, wasted. Or Star? Or hell, the Princesses, the Mane 6, the entire country of Gryphonland. Or, you know, the main character who has no personality besides "Generic depressed soldier human stereotype 9" who didn't seem to grow or otherwise face adversity on a relatable level? Or his AI buddy Des whom he cared enough about not to trade for his life and his ship to the Unrepentantly Evil Aliens, who was relegated to funny alarm clock and convenient scene change mechanic.
I could go on. I could. This is really just the tip of the iceberg, but honestly, I really don't want to. The point is easy to sum up. This story needs to be about ten times longer. It needs detail. It needs polish. Hell, it needs to be more than a draft, because this? Is what it feels like. A draft.
I want to like this on it's merits. I do. But I can't. The holes are too big, and the characters are too flat, and while the plot doesn't bring anything new to the table, it had a lot of unrealized potential for drama and intrigue alone that were ignored for the sake of expediency.
So with that in mind, I'm going to sign off.
~Finch
6173292
This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the story. 100% agree. I'm amused that you took a smoke break during the spitfire romance scene. I also left my computer briefly during that to cool off my sense of disbelief.
7451648 Did I miss that one somewhere?
6173292
I agree, at this point, it feels like It's Mlp With only four episodes it the season. Enough for Part 1 and Part 2 of the Opening and Ending and that it. Nothing in between.
Bears beats battle star celestia.