5: Silent Witness
This was the day. Alexia Tune was doing the final checks on her exosuit to be one of the first Terrans to step out of the solar system, Equis notwithstanding. It was a personal matter for her. She was one of the three Terran Princesses, and her people’s defense was always at the forefront of her mind. Her daughters had fully inherited Alexia’s ideals and were more than willing go anywhere to aid their mother.
As for the armor, it was matte black affair that covered her entire body from snout to tail, to protect her from vacuum and possible biological agents. The suit was covered in the latest unobtrusive exoskeleton, giving her a moderately sleek and nimble figure while augmenting her already considerable strength.
Both of her daughters and the rest of the female troopers were in similar states of readiness in the armoring room. Since the armor required the user to be nude underneath, the men were in another room, not that it bothered the ponies in either case. Unoccupied suits in various customized models for the human and pony soldiers rested on steel gantries, ready and waiting for use. The harsh fluorescent lighting and loud metal floors were accompanied by technicians making sure each suit was up to par.
Of the three of them, Violet was the first to finish and cantered over to her mother, who was still standing on a dais while a pair of human technicians monitored the final boot up sequences. “I’m going over to the CC. The portal to Silent Witness should be opening soon.”
“Alright, I’ll check on the guys before heading over myself,” Alexia replied as her wings were finally freed from the start-up lockdown. “They’re new blood, so we haven’t had a chance to train with them much.”
Violet gave her mother an irritated scowl, but said nothing sarcastic aloud due to some of those soldiers being in the same room, so she kept a neutral tone. “Well I trust we’ll all get along just fine.” Leave it to the legislators to force us to take troops from all over the world instead of those most qualified. Still… I doubt the council is stupid enough to give us a bad group just to satisfy politics. Not now of all times.
With Aurora joining her sister in the Command Center, that left Alexia alone to review the men as they left their respective armoring room. Shame it’s not co-ed, nothing wrong with flashing a bit of skin. Alexia calmed down on her dirty thoughts as she stood in the hallway with Captain Koss, a career soldier in the special forces. The woman’s muscular yet lean features were entirely hidden by her equipment, but she still stood a little under six and a half feet. It made Alexia wonder if she was a child of recent human genetic engineering. “If I may say, Princess Alexia, I strongly suggest you and your daughters refrain from being the first ones through. There’s no reason to risk all of you at once.”
“I understand your concern, Captain,” Alexia replied warmly. She lifted her right wing to reveal a faint network of azure glowing runes. “Alicorn magic is impossible to replicate, but it does allow certain contingency options so long as the portal remains active.”
Koss knew when she was looking at something above her pay grade and simply gave a curt nod in reply. “Glad to hear it.”
A scarce few seconds passed before the men started walking out of the armoring room. All eight of them snapped crisp salutes at their two superiors. Alexia didn’t expect to find anything physically out of order since the technicians were the best the world had to offer. Instead she was using her suit’s heads up display to read the brief files on each trooper has they walked by. Let’s see the other half of what the council sees as Terrankind’s first ambassadors…
A bulky man lumbered by who rumbled the steel floor under his weight. Corporal Bukov, the “Sleeping Giant”. I wonder how he got the first part of that nickname.
Next up was what Alexia could only assume was an earth pony version of Bukov if his muscle mass and heavy gait were anything to go by. The stallion’s ears matched Alexia’s horn in height, and she was already over a foot taller than normal ponies. Sergeant Boulder, the “Rock Giant” from the European mainland. I can already see those two bickering over who is the better giant.
Pushing such musings aside, Alexia entirely missed the third human soldier when an armored thestral emerged. She was utterly stunned by her soul tether becoming visible and leading straight to him. The stallion bowed his head and passed by, completely oblivious to Alexia’s shocked euphoria.
Koss cocked an eyebrow as the last soldier passed by, and spoke over the radio so no one else would hear. “If the armor was a bit more revealing, I’d ask if you saw someone you got the hots for.”
So Crimson came back as a third generation immigrant? Alexia mused with mounting excitement. She teased a lock of her bangs with her magic. The hair had been uniformly azure for too long, and yearned to have herdmate colors once more.
“Princess Alexia, radio check,” Koss said aloud, snapping Alexia back to the present.
“Huh? Oh, right.” She went through the HUD and found it was still set to the default channel. It was something she was going to leave alone until after the portal was reopened. “Thanks, captain, though we’re not due to leave until eighteen hundred hours.”
Is she really going to evade her sudden infatuation? You can’t hide everything behind these helmets. “Of course, Princess,” Koss replied diplomatically. With the last of the troopers leaving the hallway, Koss snapped a salute. “I’ll see you in the CC, ma’am.”
Alexia returned the gesture with a wing elbow. “Very well, Captain. Glad to have you with us.”
Alexia watched the human officer walk off with her thoughts racing at the discovery. She pulled up the thestral’s short info prompt, while informing her suit’s computer to start a deeper background check. Alrighty then, so what is Crimson’s new name… Alexia fell on her haunches and draped her wings over her eyes in utter embarrassment. “Slim Shady?” Alexia blanked for a moment. “I wonder if he even knows about that old song.”
Casting such humored musing aside, Alexia attempted to refocus on the file inspection but was interrupted by the station wide PA system. “This is Citadel speaking: portal activation in thirty minutes.”
Alexia huffed impatiently and closed the file. I better see if the Silent Witness probe survived. If Shady made it here of all places, his background is probably clean enough to wait for now.
The Command and Control center was designed similar to an amphitheater with each row being a few steps lower than the one behind it.
Every terminal was alight with three dimensional holographic interfaces as the operators monitored events. For those without stations of their own, namingly the alicorns and various officers, a large screen depicted multiple camera feeds on the currently inactive portal along with various readouts.
The room was currently well lit in white light and the aroma of black coffee permeated the air. Above all the forward displays was a countdown timer nearing zero. The operators were hard at work, making sure the portal’s systems were ready for activation while Alexia and the others could only sit and wait. With tensions running so high, no one bothered with small talk.
“Portal activation in five, four, three...”
The room’s red alert lighting clicking on. The very air itself was charged with electric mana as the space station prepared itself. A wrinkle appeared in the middle of the massive portal ring which grew to fill it entirely. Alexia watched the monitors as the wrinkle finished resolving itself into a window into another solar system.
Station Commander, Reese Jarvas, tapped his comm headset. “Silent Witness, status report. Is it safe to keep the portal open?”
“Affirmative, at this time, mission control.” The synthetic voice sounded oddly melodious for a military AI. “The two installations residing here appear to be abandoned.”
“Show me,” Reese commanded.
Several live video feeds appeared on the monitors with the operators receiving a treasure trove of data relevant to their fields. Half of the images focused on an oblong station which caught Alexia’s eye first. It was a colossal affair that for all the world to be like looked a water navy dock that stretched for at least thirty miles and half a mile high. Thousands of what appeared to be construction cranes and booms bristled across the three sides that were visible. Dozens of ships from what she assumed were personal fighters to a dreadnaught the size of a skyscraper were all ruined hulks. Most were still tethered to the dock in some form or another, while other ships looked like they had drifted all over what a first appeared to be an asteroid belt. However when one of the cameras panned over, it was revealed that it was actually a planetary ring system near a gargantuan gas giant. Must have been slowly pulled around the ring via gravity.
Each of them had been singled out and ripped to pieces by forces unknown, but the huge blackened craters gave obvious clues as to their cause. As for any signs of life, there were none that Alexia could detect. No window lights, no automatons trying to repair the damage, not even any docking lights. The station was dead.
Silent Witness’s cameras revealed that not a single ship was intact, but a few of them at least looked in salvageable condition. “This station was not visible upon first arrival. As you can see here-” The camera feed revealed yesterday’s footage. At first, there was only the moonbase and the planetary rings beyond it, orbiting the looming blue gas giant off to the far left side of the video. In a twisting mass of light, the massive starport materialized with a few amber lights active. However all power to the station drained away barely an hour later leaving it a darkened hulk. “It appears the station was cloaked, or possibly pushed out of this reality, until it’s internal power systems failed. I have attempted to interface with the station, but I never receive a reply.”
A few cameras switched over to show off small wreckage fragments floating quite a distance away. ”Judging by the rate of stellar drift, I can only assume the conflict fought here was conducted close to nine hundred and fifty eight years ago. If anyone was going to reclaim this position, they have probably either forgotten about it, are in stasis, or they are long dead.”
Reese mulled over the information, giving Alexia a chance to forward her own questions. “Silent Witness, this is Princess Alexia Tune.”
”...Ident key verified. Logging you in, Princess. How can this one serve you?”
Reese was a little miffed by the distraction, but it gave him an opportunity to give new orders to other station personnel.
“Is it possible the… shipyard? Appeared because we opened the portal, and the on-board AI thought we were it’s masters?”
“This is a scenario I had not contemplated. To my knowledge, we have no information on Koridost sensor or FTL capabilities. Your theory is within the realm of possibly, but more information is needed to go further than speculation.”
One of the techs near the commander spoke up. “Sir, I’m reading zeros across the board on the station. Whatever that cloak or displacement defense was, it sapped everything. It might be possible that the power system simply ran out of fuel, or could be keeping its emissions low to avoid detection from long range scanners once it realized no Koridost forces were in the area.”
Reese Jarvas’ eyes shifted to Alexia for her silent input. Yet before she could give any, Silent Witness spoke ahead of him. “There is still a danger however.” Silent shifted her camera to the installation sitting on the surface of a continent sized moon with a smaller installation sitting on its surface. ”This installation, potentially a command center for the mining efforts, is still powered, and has electronic countermeasures in place. As per the Dole Directive, I have remained out of contact with the installation. The probability of a hostile AI overwhelming my security is a 90.453% certainty.”
Commander Jarvas saw Alexia nod in his direction. “We have a team already assembled to investigate it. You may switch to active scanners until we get the team through.”
”As you command.”
Alexia and her daughters stood transfixed by the sheer scale of both the moonbase and the shipyard. “Holy hell,” Violet exclaimed over their private channel. “We don't have the manpower to comb over something that big!”
Aurora rocked on her hooves, but was unable to pry her eyes away from the shipyard. “We’re nothing more than gnats to a civilization that can build on such a scale. I bet they didn’t even bat an eye at killing us all.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Alexia rebuked with a wave of her wing. “Something about this doesn’t add up…”
“You mean like physics as we know it?” Violet countered with stunned awe. “We can’t fight these people. I really hope this derelict means they’re all dead and gone.”
The ponies who joined up with the Mions always said the Herald wanted ponies to remain on Earth after humanity was wiped out. Was the AI just trying to divide us, or is there more to it than that?
”Commander,” Silent Witness announced loudly enough to draw the alicorns’ attention. “I am detecting active signs of post industrial civilization on the seventh planet.”
The gathered Terrans briefly went into confused chatter about the actual presence of aliens, outside of pony kind at any rate. Most of the camera feeds switched over to a distant planet of blues, greens, and browns, but the cameras were not designed to give the Terrans anything more than a beachball sized picture. “What signs?” Reese requested, silencing the chatter to a dull rumbling.
“Artificial radio transmissions from at least ten thousand sources on the planet surface. I had originally assumed these transmissions were background noise caused by the two stations for several hours until noticing the signals did not originate from there.
Searching historical records… Signal quality is on par with early 20th century technology. I am in the process of adapting the code to match our systems… Apparently, there are no visuals, audio only. Playing a sample now.”
An energetic young masculine voice accompanied by wind instruments all but jumped out of the control room’s speakers. “Dela ga bentato felesia! Vege dalmalrio-” the feed was silenced by Reese when he made a cutting gesture.
“Save it for the linguists. I want a translation spell adapted for it, but our goal here is to determine if there is an attack pending upon the Earth.”
Alexia pinged Reese for a private channel. Reese made it a personal point to set a moment aside for her, if only because her age and position gave her insight few people possessed. “Thoughts, Princess?”
“A few. It’s possible the Koridost were observing the growth of this civilization for study, experimentation, or they could be the Koridost themselves. Whatever attacked the station might have caused a colony of theirs to regress technologically. Either way, we shouldn’t dismiss them. They might have some clues as to what happened here in their folklore.”
“Just in case we get nothing from either facility’s computers. I get it. Alright, we’ll keep the locals a low priority. If anything it’ll let the anthropologists have something to fawn over once we verify the two space stations are not a threat.”
“Very well. In the meantime, I’ll send word to the council that we’re going to need a sizable manpower boost.”
Seeing that their mother was busy, Violet stepped up to her sister. Both of them were studying the derelict stations with unveiled awe. “Well, Aurora, you want to claim dibs on who goes where first?”
Aurora tapped a finger on her chin in contemplation. With no hostile aliens around, both the spacedock and moonbase looked more exciting than foreboding. “I haven’t decided yet. Both look like they could advance our technological progress by leaps and bounds. Whatever secrets they hold, I want to see it all.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.021 seconds
Total duration
883 users online
1,320,117 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
OMG IT LIVES *finished reading* huh mass effect much?
short but still good
Crimsom? Thestral? Named Slim Shady? Hah!
I'm really glad you are still writing in this universe.
An interesting idea, a Kordist colony that had regressed technologically. Would humanity take revenge in this reversed situation?
You know what would be horrible? If everything about the Kordist attack was automated, and the original instigators were long, long gone. And out of control purging of all worlds AIs can detect with intelligent life, that humanity was lucky enough to survivor.
... you know... i was literally just wondering about this story... glad it's still alive!
It's happening! Can't wait to see what happened.
Huh. So, first contact is performed by 20th century radio to 22nd century satellite. Well, it is possible that whoever lives there is just picking up the pieces of the previous civilization and adapting it, or the koridost have actually regressed technologically for whatever reason. Possibly in reply to another species who responded violently to attempted genocide, or due to one of their AIs going rogue. Or it could be an unrelated race with relevant mythology.
Mmmmmmm. This was nice even if it did feel a bit short.
Speculation time: earth is not the first planet to overcome and retaliate against this threat. There's no way to know when the space ball was first launched.
Any plan on the next chapter? I've been reading this in one sitting, book one to this, and I am simply intrigued.
Silently watching. Checking up on this every once in a while for new chapters. I have not yet read any of 'a chaotic short' chapters yet, but will as soon as it is marked as complete.
6324703
I wouldn't wait too long. At this rate I might have to relabel this story as a full book
6324717
It does say 2-3 chapters in the description
Regardless, I really do enjoy everything you write. Just wondering, do you have any plans for another series besides a chaotic or the hive series? Or do those continue on for a long time yet?
6324740
I will probably start writing other stories when the fandom dies down, or if i finish either chaotic or hive.
6324750
Well, it might be a while, I heard that the MLP TV show is supposed to continue on until season 9. Heard that in season 3 they signed a contract to continue it for another 6 seasons (or was it in season 4 for another 5 seasons?). Something like that. This is not something that I have verified, or even tried to verify, but I trust his statement.