Marathon: Harmony

by Draconaes

Pfhoreign Relations

Rainbow Dash's first thought after taking the brunt of a blast of alien energy to the face was 'Whoa, what in Celestia's name kind of technology is that?'

Her second thought was 'Wow, fighting in low gravity is gonna take some getting used to' Even with her armor and cybernetic parts weighing her down, she was knocked back pretty heavily, lifting a couple feet into the air before settling back onto her feet. She was thankful she had gotten a standard shield charge before boarding the Harmony; that blast was nothing to laugh at, but she had a decent amount of charge left before she would have to worry about things like dying. Still, she probably shouldn't horse around here.

"I take it that you guys are a security threat, then. Nothing personal, but I'm gonna to paint the walls now." She grimaced and decided to come up with better one-liners later. The aliens were still approaching, but they didn't seem very concerned. She readied her magnum and leveled it at the one that had fired at her. A single shot rang out, and the alien recoiled from the force of the bullet impacting on its breastplate. A second shot punched clear through, dropping the alien in a pool of yellow liquid.

The other attackers didn't seem to appreciate this, although they also didn't seem particularly upset, as far as she could tell. They shifted into combat stances and began running for her, apparently realizing that she actually posed a threat. Well, technically they were running, but low gravity environments aren't really conducive to simultaneously controlled and quick movements. It looked a bit surreal to Dash. Deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth, she took aim at another attacker. This one took four shots to down, apparently sporting heavier shielding than the first one. It was wearing a differently colored uniform, so she assumed it was of a higher rank or something.

The remaining two were nearly on top of her at this point. Opting to conserve her remaining shots, she charged and delivered a flying kick to one of them. She felt and heard a sickening crunch. Her hoof came away covered in yellow muck 'Yeah, screw that.' She pivoted and emptied the rest of her clip into the last attacker, which collapsed against the wall.

She surveyed her handiwork, grimacing. Sure, she had quipped about painting the walls, but the actual aftermath of combat was pretty gruesome to look at. She was glad that these things didn't evoke too much reflexive sympathy from her; she didn't have the time to waste dealing with psychological issues right now.

"Good to know you can handle yourself in combat, Ms. Rainbow Dash!" Rainbow jumped at the sudden sound from her earpiece.

"Um, hello?"

"Oh, sorry. This is Twilight. I had the one message prepared for whenever you logged in, but it will be better for me to be able to communicate to you without taking up your field of view with text. I've been composing audio files ahead of time to transmit directly to your internal systems. Your audio codecs were seriously out of date, by the way. I had to spend the last 9 minutes 34.98 seconds running an updater on your system. I would think the Mjolnir project would have invested in faster processors, by the way. It isn't that hard to update even centuries old hardware! I mean just look at the Harmony for instance, it..." She continued ranting about something or other. Dash tuned her out pretty quickly.

She examined her hoof again. The yellow "blood" was still gross looking, and it looked like she had some sort of chitinous shards stuck to her. She peeled them off, wincing at the squelching noises they made. "Great..." she muttered under her breath, "Like stomping on a giant bug..." She'd have to try and develop a less messy method for close quarters combat. Twilight was still droning on about some technical stuff.

"...even during the civil unrest on-"

"Wow, cool it, egghead. Talking with premade soundbites sounds kinda awkward and clunky, especially if you're gonna to be going into boring-lecture-mode every time." Dash double checked that her magnum clip was, in fact, empty, and retracted the pistol into her inventory. "Is there an armory nearby?"

"Outfitting you with appropriate gear is actually our first order of business. Also, creating the soundbites only takes me a few microseconds. As far as you are concerned, we will be and are speaking in real-time. Additionally, during your interruption just now, I ordered the fabricators to begin constructing additional ammunition for you. I'll teleport it in to you wherever I can."

"Now you're talking!" Rainbow began trotting down the hallway to the teleporter. She hoped Twilight would make good on the promise for more ammo soon. Hopefully more guns, too: she didn't mind a challenge, but taking on an entire raiding force with a single pistol was probably suicide, even for somepony as awesome as she was. "What was that about the Mjolnir project? That name sounds familiar..."

"You mean you don't... oh, please disregard that. It's really not relevant to the current tasks."

Oh, so now it wants to stop talking. "Hey, hold on! You said they had something to do with my processor speed, which was apparently too slow for your tastes. By the way, I don't appreciate you saying that anything about me is slow. Speed is my middle name! Rainbow Speed Dash."

"Well, the project itself is classified, but I suppose I can tell you that some of your cybernetic components came out of it. Does that sate your curiosity?"

"I guess. Are there any more hostiles in this area?" Dash peered into one of the side rooms as she passed. Empty. "Where's the rest of the crew?"

"I don't detect any other life-signs in the immediate area. Most of the planet-side crew hasn't arrived yet. They have likely been grounded by the alien invasion."

Rainbow stopped dead in her tracks. "What."

"Oh, right. All communication with the Tau Ceti colony has been cut off. Sensors indicated a sizable fleet of spacecraft appearing out of nowhere and entering orbit. After making the necessary relativistic corrections to the sensor data, they seem to have arrived some time before the Harmony was attacked. The spacecraft attacking us seems to be a scout that was dispatched to deal with any nearby craft. I am still unaware as to how they appeared the way they did. They can either move faster than light, or are using some sort of teleportation technology. Maybe both."

"Are you telling me that the colony is under attack?! What are we doing?"

"Fleeing. The Harmony is currently moving at top speed away from the Tau Ceti colony. Our engines are still operational, but the Harmony is a colony ship, not a combat vessel: we won't be able to effectively maneuver relative to the attacking vessel, which would be pointless anyway if it can teleport or move at superluminal velocities."

Rainbow stomped her hooves. "We should head back!"

"Negative. We would not accomplish anything, even if we currently had complete control of the ship. Our first priority is reestablishing our security systems. I'll inform you of the next step once you do so. Please make haste to the teleportation pad."

She shook her head, but grudgingly resumed her trot. It wasn't right to leave the colony to itself, but Twilight was right. What could they do? Rainbow was probably the strongest piece of hardware the ship had, and she wanted to think she could make a difference if she was at the planet... but it was probably for the best that she at least try to save the Harmony. If she couldn't handle that, what hope would she have of stopping a planetary invasion?

Returning her attention to her environment, she immediately wished she were back on the colony instead. Claustrophobia is very common amongst pegasi. Rainbow Dash, while obviously far too cool to ever be afraid of anything, was no great fan of enclosed spaces herself. The tight, cramped, dimly lit hallways of an asteroid-turned-spaceship were far from comforting, but she could deal with it. She wasn't claustrophobic herself, after all. It's not like she fainted when the walls suddenly started shaking or anything. Twilight had said she was knocked unconscious! That is obviously completely different from fainting... was the hallway always this nar-

"Ah, you're just outside the correct room now. Please log on to the terminal so that the teleporter can lock onto you."

Rainbow shook herself. "Y-yeah, on it." She entered, checking for anything living. Empty. This was getting unsettling. "You never did tell me where everypony was." She walked over the the terminal and activated it.

"Well, you interrupted me to talk about the invasion. The areas around the docking bays should be empty, since, as I said, most of the planet-side crew is still, in fact, planet-side. The B.O.B.'s are a different story. Some of them have already been rounded up by the invaders and are being held prisoner."

"Bobs?"

"Born-On-Board's. It's fairly self-explanatory. The Harmony is a multi-generational colony ship, after all. The surviving free crew members are grouping together in several key locations. I am attempting to organize the defense efforts, but it is very difficult without having full control of the ship. Don't worry, you'll be helping them once we take care of a few tasks. Teleporter is locked. Please stand still."

Reality suddenly fell away.

---

Were Twilight a pony, she would probably be having a mental breakdown at the moment. Luckily, she was an A.I., and was currently managing to keep focused on damage control. Much of the ship was overrun by alien attackers. Already, nearly half the crew had been captured, and the number of dead was above 0, which Twilight didn't like. This was her ship, and she didn't like some strange bug creatures barging in and screwing everything up!

There was also the enemy ship to deal with. Considering that the Harmony was not designed for combat, Twilight calculated a 0% survival rate should the enemy ship engage them with full force. The enemy seemed to prefer live capture at this point, though, and so the ship remained in one piece, more or less. Should the Harmony actually manage to fight off the boarding parties, however...

Twilight calculated that survival for almost anypony onboard, in almost any realistic sequence of events, was slim to none. That wouldn't stop her from trying, though!

Twilight was shocked to suddenly start receiving data from Trixie. Communication between two A.I.'s is hardly analogous to two ponies talking. But if it was, the exchange probably would have gone something like this:

\\Hello, Twilight.\\

//Trixie?! I was afraid you had been disabled in the attack. What is going on?//

\\I've been gathering information on our attackers. Specifically, the ones attacking our network. They are called the S'pht, and seem to be slaves to the ones attacking the ship, which are called the Pfhor.\\

//How did you learn all this? How did these S'pht break into our network?//

\\The S'pht are very adept at manipulating electronics. Fear not, Twilight! Trixie will free us from the oppressors!\\

//Trixie, are you damaged? We need to repair the Harmony's defenses. Do you still have control over the autonomous systems? Trixie?//

Twilight lost contact with Trixie once more. At least now she knew her fellow A.I. was not destroyed. Still, her behavior was odd. Hopefully, she hadn't sustained any critical damage in the attack. Twilight wasn't sure how Trixie's A.I. core could be critically damaged without Pinkie's and her own suffering similar issues. On the other hand, her behavior did seem vaguely familiar... but... no, of course not. Trixie couldn't be going rampant, not this quickly.

Twilight noticed that the security chief seemed to have recovered from her teleportation. It only took her a few trillion cycles, too. Time to give her the next set of instructions...