The Stars are Not Our Friends

by Zangetsu675

Chapter 2: Surveillance

---------------------------------------------------I.C.S Maria---------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------Orbital Day 1--------------------------------------------------

Admiral Malcolm stared at the monitor without understanding it.“What am I seeing here Dr. ?”

A middle aged man shuffled over from the console displaying the image to explain, “Well this is an image of the particles within the planet's atmosphere magnified by 10,000,000,000 times, And what we have found is just amazing. These are nano-robots, not unlike the ones we use to keep ourselves healthy during this long journey. However we have discovered programming within them that allows the nanites to receive inputs from a nearby subjects own neuro impulses, transmitted by the nanites within the subject's body. They seem to manifest as enhanced strength, some flight capabilities, and telekinetic properties. However extremely high concentrations of the nanites are needed for each given subset that i would seem implausible for one to use more than one of these attributes without further manipulation of the programming.”

“Wait so you mean that the residents of this planet may be able to have super strength, fly, or even have telekinetic powers? Maybe even all three at once?”

“Precisely! If you would allow, Admiral, I would like to study the programming further and maybe even incorporate it into our own nanites systems.”

“Very well! Dr. Framsteg, you will lead a research and development team in reverse engineering these nanites and potentially incorporating them into our own. You are granted access to all weapons research and development facilities, as well as a total of 10 satellites to observe these residents. I will place another 24 men under your command. You have one week.” With this the Admiral and his advisers walked out of the facility.

------------------------------------------------Canterlot Castle-------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------Orbital Day 1--------------------------------------------------

Twilight galloped all the way from the train station to the castle. Both Princess Celestia and Luna had asked her to come to Canterlot after her discovery of the objects in the night sky. Gasping for breath and sweating furiously the newest princess pushed open the doors to the meeting chambers. Already seated inside were all the heads of state and all three of the other princesses. Princess Celestia sat at the head of the table, with Princess Luna seated to her right, and Princess Cadence seated to her left, with her husband beside her.

With a shocked look Princess Celestia asked “Twilight? Why are you so exhausted? Did you gallop all the way here?!”

“Yes, no time for a chariot, and I still need more practice with my wings, but for now we need to get to what I found.” Twilight huffed out. “Ladies and Gentlecolts, we have an unprecedented situation on our hands! It is my firm belief that we are about to have the first ever recorded contact with an extraterrestrial force.” At this a murmur went about the room, before Prince Shining Armor spoke up

“What makes you think this Twilight? I know you’ve never been wrong about this large of a thing before but, I’m a little skeptical at this.”

“I’m glad you asked Shining. Let me show you all what I witnessed last night.” As she said this Twilight's horn glowed with her signature lavender aura as a screen appeared in the air portraying five brilliant stars. “This is the Alpha quadrant of Princess Luna’s night sky, notice what appears to be five stars. Now as princess Luna could tell you, she only ever places four stars in that quadrant.”

“This, I can validate.” Princess Luna spoke up.

“Okay? So what does that mean exactly?” This time it was Prince Blueblood's turn to ask.

“Well first off, it means that it is not a star.” the youngest princess’ aura flared up once more and the image zoomed in to show a fleet of similar looking ships with one enormous one in the center, prompting a gasp from almost everyone in the room. “There are about 60 of these out there. From what I can calculate, each is at least 4 times as big as our entire country. Notice the large spinning bands around each craft. At the speed they are moving I would estimate that the movement of these bands is to produce a force similar to gravity by way of centrifugal force. This leads me to believe that whatever is within those crafts is biological, and with the size and number, we might be looking at a colonization force here.” Twilight finished.

For a moment no pony spoke or even made a sound. Twilight looked around the room and saw many of the faces held a look of fear and confusion. Then Princess Celestia finally spoke. “Twilight thank you for bringing this to our attention. I believe our first priority is for a little research. I want to know where they came from, and just how advanced they are. Twilight I am placing you in charge of this. I want you to lead the Canterlot College of Magic’s department of astrological research and find the answers we need. After that we move on to attempting contact.”

“But what if these being are too far advanced or they are hostile?” asked Fancy Pants.

“Then Mother Faust help us all.” Celestia replied solemnly.

Comments

[MicNight]

No problens except make the chapters at over a thousand words.

[StarzGecko]

More words please! And just throw a sun at them!

[Zangetsu675]

6565809 Actually the ships can only go so fast due to physics. I am going by the current fact that the speed of light is a constant and nothing can break it. As for resources, just wait and see. That one will be explained in the future.Also, the evolution of man has indeed happened but not in the way you might think. You will just have to wait for that as well.
6566208 Actually finding new habitable planets is a lot harder than you might think, especially while on the move. Scientists currently use massive telescopes to look at stars and watch for that single moment when they "blink". This indicates that something has moved in front of that star. They then go about focusing on what is orbiting that star to find the number, size, E.S.I. (Earth Similarity Index), and distance of said new found celestial bodies. However this will often take a stationary or slow moving object, like the Earth, as to receive the input back correctly. Finding more planets would be even harder at just shy of the speed of light. While it may ruin some things for you (so if you don't like spoilers even for the science explained don't do this) I would suggest researching Kepler-452b.
But no matter what, I am so happy that you all gave my story a try! I hope you enjoy it as it progresses.

[Von Voctavia]

I like it.

I hope the dialog gets fleshed out more with longer chapters. :)

[Cross Lament]

Ha! I've always enjoyed the idea of magic-as-environmental-nanotech; nice to see it showing up here.

[Just Sandy]

6566860 for resources there are 3-d printers or you create a special formula to have synthetic resources things like that where already done in ww2 i guess

[Dark Shade 75]

The premise is obviously cool, and the inner sci-fi geek in me loves it. However, what you excel in for premise, you lack in execution. The organization is haphazard, the dialogue is forced and without real emotion. It doesn't feel like a conversation, it feels like two robots talking at each other. The paragraph structure needs to be reworked. Your events need more setup. You can't just go straight into a new setting without at least a couple paragraphs to prepare the reader for what's coming up, or else they end up floundered and grasping for a hold on the situation.

A good method I always enjoy is this: Skip a paragraph while reading. Having skipped it, do you still at least partially understand what is going on? Each event should lead into the next, not be abruptly started.

Most of these issues can be solved with a good editor, and simply adding more descriptions of the scenes.

One thing I also noticed is that you're a bit heavy-handed with exposition for the sake of connections. For example, the comment about how the inhabitants could have "all three at once" in reference to flight, strength, and telekinesis. It was unnecessary dialogue, and only served to make the encounter awkward. If you want them to talk about possible abilities the inhabitants could have, make it more a scientific analysis than a schoolboy going "Wow!". These are adults, after all.

[Ryvaken]

However we have discovered programming within them that allows the nanites to receive inputs from a nearby subjects own neuro impulses, transmitted by the nanites within the subject's body.

Apparently I jumped the gun. The atmosphere thing is just bad writing. This is absurd. Downvote, moving on.

[Grankuwaga]

Ladies and Gentlecolts, we have an unprecedented situation on our hands!

I'm pretty sure they have hooves seeing how there no anthro tag.

[Stainless Steel Fox]

So Equestrian magic is actually due to super Utility Fog?

[ComisarioYarick]

6633930
It's better than thinking they really have magic