Awkward Conversations And Other Stories

by No one is home

Beyond the Silver Sky: Waking the Dead

Sunrise Aurora got… strange after that second day at the site. She kept insisting she could “put him back together”, that she could “fix him”. To be honest she was making fair progress with her obsessive work. We all wrote it off as being confined to the lander. We were no longer making expeditions to the grave site for obvious reasons, and orbital communications had been out since the incident. We all assumed at the time because of the seismic activity.

Without our array in order docking with the main ship was nearly impossible. Our best bet would be to shoot the lander itself into orbit with Equus and send out a distress signal. We had just made the most important discovery in pony history. We weren’t ready to run just yet. But we were scared. We were all scared as hell. All but Sunrise and she just poured herself into her work. We envied her… at first.

And her work WAS important. If she could restore these creatures we could bring back not just a new tribe of pony, but perhaps a link to an age forgotten to history. Obviously we couldn’t bring back a whole statue to work with. It was our disturbance of the site that brought the Guardian. That much was obvious. If only we could contact it. If only we could let it know what we intended. Shadow Snap had taken the option of making contact off the table almost immediately. He was deeply convinced that what Judith and myself interpreted as a warning was instead a threat, and Captain Moon Glow had ordered that everypony was to remain within the lander except to make the repairs needed to dock with the main ship.

I was able to get our short range communications working well enough. We had coms, and we could send out short range drones, but the more I worked the more I realized that our array didn’t seem at all damaged. Shadow Snap had gone so far as to suggest that I was deliberately dragging my hooves, while Sunrise simply sneered and wrote my failure off to “biped incompetence”. But the simple fact was, the magic components of our com-tech just wasn’t receiving the power it needed. That aether was going somewhere, but the problem was not technological.

Unfortunately, Sunrise continuously insisted that her magical scans didn’t indicate there was any loss of power at all. Captain Moon Beam was a unicorn herself, though not nearly skilled enough in magical analysis to trace the flow of aether through our ship's tech, she trusted her fellow unicorn in matters of magic over a mere biped. After all, everypony knows our tribe had given up our magic in ancient times in exchange for hands and fingers. We were the bastard descendants of earth ponies. Unless you believed in ancient human conspiracies. I counted myself lucky that our crew was far too educated to fall in with that particular nonsense.

I don’t know why none of us realized what was happening until it was too late. It started with a sudden power outage, as the ship's aether suddenly surged away from essential systems. I was scrambling to correct the problem. Sunrise had locked herself in her lab, and Shadow Snap was threatening to cut open the door. It had become obvious then that the obsessed unicorn had been siphoning power from the ship to fuel her own magical experiments. There was a brief panic before power was restored. That was when everything went to hell.

Shadow Snap had gone outside to evaluate the situation, and I was below decks testing newly restored systems, when there was a loud crackle of magical discharge followed by a short gurgling scream from Captain Moon Glow. The next events happened so fast there wasn’t even time to sort them in my mind as separate event. I had run into the forward observation deck. Judith ran past me towards the airlock with only time for one panicked word, “Run.” That when I saw the thing Sunrise had awakened.

It was a living broken statue of a pony, floating in a clearly visible aura of green magic that danced around it like flames. One eye was obliterated by irreparable fractures and the thing only existed to the broken remains of it’s withers, with contrails of magic trailing behind it like viscera from a bisected corpse. Shadow Snap pushed past me roughly only to be encased in magical fire and left a smouldering heap of charred remains. So I did the only thing I could do, I ran.

Judith had already started the lunar rover, I only thank the Sky King that she had waited for me. Though I must confess even now to a feeling of guilt that I had for one moment of fear as the airlock doors opened had doubted that she would. I couldn’t blame her if she hadn’t. What could either of us have done against that crystalline horror. And she had no way to know that I was even alive. It was her faith that saved my life that day.

So we fled to the only place there was for us to flee. As we drove recklessly across the lunar plain I looked back to see the ship rising into the sky and I realized we had only escaped from one death to another, as we had only the provisions loaded in our singular rover and we were trapped on the surface of the moon. It brought me some degree of peace that Flitter Shade must have survived, as the traitor Sunrise could never pilot the ship on her own. Of course this meant that the murderous thing she had conjured forth was no mere monster. It had intelligence enough to know it needed the pilot. It had some unknown and unknowable plan, and we were helpless to stop it.

We set up our emergency shelter on the edge of the graveyard and quietly prepared ourselves to become its newest memorials.

Author's Note:

Well that escalated quickly. Things aren't looking none too good for James and Judith right about now. They're safe from the horror on the ship, but the moon is a harsh waifu.

Comments

[Boulder]

Sunrise had locked herself in her lab, and Shadow Snap was threatening the cut open the door.

to
Well this is getting dark, trying to follow who is who and what is a little hard with all new characters, might have to write a little cheat sheet to keep track of them.

[Not so New Brony]

through our ships tech

as the ships aether

ship's

Well, guess the survivors will need help from a the 'creature' that gave them the warning to survive...provided he didn't get onboard the lander at the last second to stop that crystal horror's return to Equestria, though they'd probably stumble upon wherever he's been living the past millennium or so.

Guess the humans stopped popping up in Equestria by now if the human descendants are considered part of the pony race. Also, Sky King? Will we get an explanation on him in later chapters or do I have to assume that more alicorns appeared in between the time skip?

[No one is home]

7469077 Characters thus far:
James - Biped pony (new tribe), solar, technition and science officer
Murmur Judith Solitaire - Earth Pony with goat heritage, lunar, archeologist and technical assistant
Sunrise Aurora - Unicorn, Solar, Magical Anylist
Moon Glow - Unicon, Lunar, captain (deceased)
Flitter Shade - Umbrum, pilot
Shadow Snap - Pegasus, Lunar, Security Officer (deceased)

Also, typos banished to the dark side of the moon.

[No one is home]

7469100 Typos were incinerated by the lander's engines on take-off.

I doubt the guardian would abandon his duty just to save a planet he himself abandoned long ago. I'm not saying his name, because spoilers, but we all know good and well who he is by now. He tried to warn them, equestria is likely on it's own.

As to the Sky King and the Night Queen, I don't want to drop too many spoilers, since I will be getting to them eventually. I will say there are definitely NOT any more alicorns than there were at the time of Prince Silver's coronation, though.

[Boulder]

7469227 Thanks, saved to Word file. 2 dead already? Sounds like a Dr. Who episode.

[No one is home]

7469296 "Hey Captain, what's with the red shirts?" - "That's just the new uniform for senior officers, I wouldn't worry about it."

[Boulder]

7469333 Oh-ho, now it's Treky-ism's.
i0.wp.com/www.rowsdowr.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/stormtrooper-vs-redshirt.jpg?resize=600%2C429
Nearly as bad as Stormtroopers who can't hit the broadside of a Mon-calamari Cruiser.

[Daremo]

Events ahve taken a definite turn towards sci-fi horror.

If this were a movie, I'd pay to watch it in theaters.