Into the Black

by CORACK

Chapter 5

Swift Wing helped Arctic Skies haul his luggage up onto the platform. He and the rest of the squad waited patiently for the train to Canterlot to arrive. He glanced at a large clock hanging over the platform, it read 12:30. The train was due to depart at 1:00 PM so it should be arriving at any moment. Swift Wing was looking forward to getting back to Canterlot, Manehattan was interesting but a bit large for his tastes. With any luck he'd be be able to return to Vanhoover after finishing up his current mission. Then again, with all that was happening he suspected he might have to stick around the Capital for a while.

Arctic Skies had not attempted to talk to him about the contents of the letter and for that he was thankful. In fact, the older stallion hadn't said much of anything. Instead he sat there, deep in thought.

He looked over at the large clock next to the train schedule. Based on what Celestia had told him, the ring would have arrived by now. The station radio was playing music from a local channel, wasn't his favorite type, but he kept an ear focused on it. Every time there was a break in the music, he thought it was Celestia, switching over to emergency broadcast to make her announcement of the ring. Each time though, the next song started playing seconds later.

#####

Luna wrote some figures down on the paper in front of her. The ring had arrived. As she had guessed it did not land, instead it had taken up orbit around the planet. Had it not been day time, she suspected the ring would have already been noticed by one of the other major observatories scattered across Equestria. In fact it was close enough that even smaller privately owned telescopes could certainly see something.

All four princesses, the rest of the elements, Shining Armor and Spike sat quietly watching the projection from Luna's spell. Even Rainbow Dash, who must have been bored out of her skull by now, didn't move a feather.

The ring was close enough now that the view from the spell was perfectly clear. In fact, Twilight had come up with some modifications and now Luna was able to pan the image around the ring. The surface of the ring appeared to be made of metal, and it was extremely smooth. In fact, as far as Luna could tell, it was one solid piece. There were no visible markings, no fasteners of any kind, nothing. She still had quite a bit to go though, and she hadn't even looked at the inner portion of the ring.

#####

The view screen showed a very smug looking Captain Thrux. Viettar knew this he would not like this conversation.

"Commander Viettar, I have just transmitted orders from Central Command. You will activate the gate. I will be moving my ship to the System 29537 in 5 minutes," Thrux said.

Viettar looked over to his command console and confirmed the orders.

"Yes sir," he said with a sigh.

Thrux cut off the communication without another word.

His techs had managed to dig up the code that the ring was using. After carefully going over the code the techs determined that there was indeed a bug. If the ring was unable to properly determine any planets orbit, it would throw an error. The orbit for that planet would be left off the map, but a note was supposed to be made detailing the error. As long as at least one body had a proper orbit, the map would display and properly show details about any errors. Unfortunately the code wasn't designed to handle a situation where no orbits could be determined. That unlikely problem hadn't been handled correctly and instead of returning details of the error, the system was retuning nothing.

That was also the reason for the unknown recommendation. Recommendations were based on proper returns from all report sections. When the system map returned nothing, the recommendation subroutine didn't exited with an unknown value. The strange thing was, the only way the system map would be completely blank was if none of the orbits could be mapped properly. Why that would happen was anyone's guess.

Viettar let out a grim laugh. Maybe there was an undetected black hole in the system. A small part of him hoped that Thrux flew right into it.

Viettar hit the comm button on his desk.

"This is Commander Viettar to Subcommander Korthack. The Jassarie has permission for gate travel to system 29537. Inform Commander Thrux he may get underway."

#####

"Captain Thrux, we have just received permission for gate travel."

"Excellent, take us in ensign."

The Jassarie's sublight engines engaged and it entered the ring. There was a flash of light and the ship exited.

"We have now arrived in System 29537."

Thrux looked across the bridge at the view screen. It was centered on the planet the ring was currently circling. At least one major city was visible, but much of the planet's surface was green forests or yellow plains.

"Set a high orbit above that planet, drop communication probes across all major land masses."

He turned to Lieutenant Cikrak, the ship's science officer.

"Start mapping the planet, then map the system, I want to know exactly what the Empire has just acquired."

The Jassarie dropped down into a lower orbit and started deploying comm probes. Comm probes were dropped from a ship directly into a decaying orbit. They would last about 72 hours before they burned up in the atmosphere. This was plenty of time to start deploying more permanent communication satellites.

The comm probes were designed to do 3 things. First they would pick up and relay any local communications that were too weak to make it out of the atmosphere. This would give the Jassarie additional data, most of which would be used towards enhancing the translation software to better handle local languages, something in this case that was sorely needed, but it would also start building databases on those native life forms.

Much information could be gathered from these transmissions. Local customs, religious data, entertainment. On more advanced worlds, comm probes would attempt to gain access to any computer networks that it could in efforts to enhance the data collection.
Second, the comm probes were equipped with powerful optical sensors that could work in conjunction with other comm probes. This allowed the Chk'rain to get visual information on the local inhabitants without landing on the planet itself. Lastly, the comm probes were equipped with powerful transmitters, this would allow the Thrux to transmit a message to the entire planet at once.
Thrux leaned back in his chair, now all he had to do was wait.

#####

Rainbow Dash was beyond bored. She was half considering taking a nap but if something did happen she didn't want to miss it. Suddenly there was a flash of light in the center of the ring. Before she could figure out what had happened an object started coming out of the ring. She gave a quick shout, alerting everypony else.

Luna wasn't sure what to make of this new object. It was quite large, at little over a mile long, and maybe a quarter of a mile in diameter. She supposed it must be the gate builders version of a ship, though instead of sailing the seas, it traversed the stars. It was somewhat cylindrical, except the bottom part was flatter and the top was curved. It had a large number of protrusions on the top and there were a great number of metal spikes on the front pointed in a forward direction. Running along the sides of the object where what looked like massive, but sleek turrets, though judging from the size of the ship these turrets were as large as an Equestrian frigate.

The ship started to move towards Equus. Luna adjusted the field of view provided by the Deep Space Imaging Spell, so she could watch both the ship and the ring at the same time.

"Twilight, prepare to transmit our pre-recorded greeting. Send it in Equestrian, if we receive a reply, we can test the translations spells and see if any of them give us a meaningful translation. From there we can modify the radio translation spell to send an appropriate response."

Twilight walked over to the transmitter Luna had setup and got to work. Meanwhile the ship had started a low orbit of the planet. Every once in a while there was a small flash of light that came from the ship. Luna zoomed in to get a closer look. For a few minutes nothing happened, but then a small round object shot out of the ship. Luna wasn't sure what they were, but judging from the number of flashes she had seen coming from the vessel, there were now dozens of these things in various orbits around Equus.

"I'm ready with to transmit," Twilight said

"You may start the transmission," Celestia said.

#####

Once the comm probes had started dropping the amount of data on the planet below exploded. Thrux was skimming through that data while waiting for the ship to complete its orbit. The planet itself seemed to be about 65% water. It had 3 major landmasses and a number of large islands. The largest of the 3 landmasses also contained the highest population. The biggest city they had yet spotted was on the northeastern shore of that continent. Visual data showed that the native live forms on that continent were some form of colorful quadrupeds.

This is where the first bit of confusion came in. All other intelligent races the Chk'rain had encounter had some form of grasping appendage. The Chk'rain had claws, The L'raxians had talons, the Thrull had tentacles, The Heliosians had hands, the list went on. This species appeared to have hooves. How they built anything, Thrux did not know.

The next bit of confusion came as he was browsing images of these quadrupeds. So far, three different types of quadruped had been found in the database. . One type was plain old quadruped, the second type had a horn, and the third type had wings. The problem with the wings was that they were much too small to possibly support a life form of that size. He double checked the planet data. Gravity was 1.3 of standard. Even on his lower gravity of his home world there was no way these things should be able to fly. Yet, he had a image of one of them hovering sitting right in front of him.

"Sir, I've been going through the data we've gathered and it looks like there was a transmission sent out from the center of the largest continent directed at us."

"At us? Are you sure? How would these primitives even know we're here?" Thrux said, a confused look on his face.

"Yes sir, looks like it was sent out about half an hour ago. We still only have enough data for a partial translation. The computers have been busy working on enhancing the translation matrix, but it is going to take more time. It is, as all the other transmissions we've picked up have been, audio only."

"Let's hear it then."

To the builders of the very large ring, we <not translated - high likelihood of a greeting> to you. We hope you can <not translated> message and are able to <comprehend / understand> it. As the rulers of the <not translated> of <not translated - high likelihood of local name> we wish to welcome you to the planet of <not translated - high likelihood of local planet name>. We send this <communication / note / message> in hopes that we may <not translated> <no fighting / peace> <not translated>. We detected your ring as it entered our <celestial domain, likely referring to the solar system>, needless to say, it came as a great <shock / surprise> to finally know that we are not alone in the <not translated> When you <not translated> this message, please reply on the same <not translated>. We will be monitoring it and have been working on a number of translation <not translated> in order to <not translated> communications. We look forward to your reply.

Luna, Princess of the Night.

Celestia, Princess of the Day.

"That's the entirety of the message sir, it looks like it was broadcast on repeat. It's still going."

Thrux did not look amused. He walked over to the comm officer and glared at him.

"If this is your idea of a joke, it is not particularly funny."

The comm officer looked very nervous.

"No sir, that's the message, it's still transmitting now, I can bring it up live if you like."

"First off, working on translation ... something?" Secondly, whoever this Luna and Celestia are, they just claimed that they detected the gateship as it entered the system. That is impossible, a class 3 civilization could not possibly have spotted the gateship that far out. Even if they had one of their primitive telescopes pointed right at it. Do we have confirmation of the class 3 rating?" Thrux said.

"At a best guess, they said they were working on translation software. Tech estimates show that there is a likelihood of this group having primitive computers, it's possible they have written software to aid in translating other languages, though I doubt it would be effective."

"As for the classification, I just checked that myself, the computer confirms it sir. We haven't detected any advanced sensors sweeps of any kind, we haven't even detected anything as primitive as lidar or radar. Radio frequencies are aligned with the computers estimates on tech level. They are using electricity but it appears to be from a combination of coal and hydroelectric power. Definitely no nuclear, nor have we detected any oil or solar power in use."

"Cross reference those names, Celestia and Luna, the rest of the database on this planet, I want to see if we have any other information," Thrux said.

"I'll get right on it sir."

Thrux sat back down in his chair.

"Move the ship into position over that large city we identified earlier, it's time we sent our reply."

As the ship rounded the planet, the great city came into view on Thrux's screen.

"You may fire when ready."

#####

"Have we received any reply from the ring or the ship?" Celestia asked.

"Nothing yet," Twilight answered.

"The ship is currently on the other side of Equus, our transmitter will not reach that far, nor would we be able to receive a reply. We will have to wait for them to circle around again. Based on its orbital rate when it exited view before, it should be coming up from the northeast in a few moments."

Luna continued her study of the ring. She had just finished with the outer portion and was ready to work on the inner portion. Once that was complete, she would adjust DSIS and make a visual inspection of the ship.

Celestia was waiting patiently for Luna to finish looking at the ring. She was talking quietly with Cadance when she was momentarily overcome with wave of sickness. Something was wrong, something was horribly wrong but the feeling disappeared so quickly that she didn't know what it was.

Suddenly the radio crackled to life and a voice started to talk.

"We are the Chk'rain, this system now belongs to us, your planet belongs to us. Your civilization belongs to us. You belong to us. Resist and your cities will burn, as the great one now does. Your population will be distributed amongst the stars. There, your very lives will fuel our empire as we..."

Luna shut off the transmission, a dark expression covered her face.

"It appears that they do not come in peace."

#####

The train had left the station about half an hour ago. Arctic Skies made his way to the dining car near the front of the train. Swift Wing followed him while the rest of his squad remained in the passenger car.

"It's going to be an interesting discussion with the Princesses" Arctic Skies said, looking at Swift Wing.

"Sir..."

"Yes I know, I won't mention any specifics, the letter did indicate that, but this whole thing is terribly exciting. It is hard to say nothing. "
"I understand, but let's change the topic," Swift Wing said.

Arctic Skies sighed.

"Very well," he said, turning to look out the window.

Arctic turned back and looked towards Manehattan. This was the first time he had left in over 10 years. Still, it would be good to visit Canterlot again. While he was turning back around a flicker of movement up in the sky caught his eye. He turned and looked up, expecting to see a pegasus doing some cloud work or just flying by. Instead he saw what looked like a shooting star.

"Swift Wing, do you see that?" he said, pointing at the object.

Swift Wing didn't have a great view of the window from his seat so he leaned over as best he could and looked up.

"Yeah, what is it?"

"I'm not sure, let me see if I can get a closer look."

Arctic's horn glowed as he cast the far sight spell he used so many times in his astronomy class. Looking skywards, he saw what a long metal cylinder streaking towards Manehattan.

"I don't mean to switch back to our previous topic, but whatever that is, it doesn't appear to be pony made," Arctic said as he continued to track the object.

It looked like it would reach Manhattan moments. If only he could get a better... FLASH. His entire field of vision was lit up by a second sun.

Then all he could feel was burning. He couldn't see anything but he could hear screams of pain as the thermal effects of the blast ignited the walls of the train and scorched the flesh of anypony unlucky enough to have line of sight on the blast point.

It was hot, so very hot, Arctic Skies could smell smoke and hear some pony coughing, but he still couldn't see anything. A loud rumble overpowered every other sound around him. The windows of the car exploded inward, glass shards shredded his coat, cutting deeply into the skin below. The train car was sent tumbling and Arctic was toss from his seat and slammed violently into the splintered remains of the ceiling. His head collided with something hard and he lost consciousness.

Swift Wing wasn't sure what happened. He was talking to Arctic Skies one second and the next half the train was on fire or smoldering. Even he hadn't escaped unscathed, patches of his coat had been seared off where neither the wall next to him, nor his armor had provided cover. He started to get up to check on the rest of the car when everything exploded. The windows, chunks of the sides of the car, everything. At the same instant as everything had started exploding, the dining car went airborne. It flew right off the track, rolled over twice and landed on its side. Armor or not, that had hurt. Bits of glass and splitters of wood had dug into his parts of his body that weren't covered by the armor. He stretched out his wings, fearing they may have been damaged, but by sheer luck, it felt as they were ok.

He stood up shakily and looked around. He didn't see anypony else up yet, he turned and walked over to Arctic Skies. He immediately turned and vomited onto the floor. The unicorn's face was covered in severe burns. He even thought he saw a bit of skull showing in one partially charred area. Blood was pooling floor, a large shard of wood jutting from Arctic's barrel.

Arctic groaned, his eyes fluttered and he lifted his head as best he could.

"By Celestia's mercy, you're alive!" he heard Swift Wing say. "I'll see if I can find help."

Arctic looked at himself, then up at Swift Wing.

"I don't think there's time for that son," he said coughing up blood. "You need to find out what happened. If that came from the ring..."

"If I go now, you will die."

"I don't think you can change that now, one way or another. Find out what happened, inform the Princesses."
Swift Wing hesitated, but then turned around and flew out of the now open side of the car. He flew towards the passenger car, where the rest of his squad had been. It was upside-down and on fire.

"Rocky Road! Crystal Star! Stone Hide!" he shouted getting as close to the blaze as he could.

He looked up into the sky, if he could find a cloud he could get some rain on the fire, try to put it out. The only thing he could see was smoke and ash. Green wood didn't burn as easily, so most of the trees were simply charred, but the underbrush had caught and there were small fires all around him.

He heard a noise coming from the blazing car. It sounded like movement. Without so much as a thought for his own safety, he charged up to the train, spinning around he bucked open a window. He could make out a faint glow in the smoke. The heat was almost unbearable and his lungs burnt.

"Hello! Is anyone alive?" he said.

"Over here!"

It was Crystal Star's voice.

He made his way towards the sound. He found her trapped, fire on one side, wreckage on another and a large beam coving her only escape route. She was holding the fire at bay with a force field, but she looked to be in a terrible state.

"Thank Celestia, you're alive!" she said as Swift Wing came into view. "Help me with this beam, I'm using all my magic to keep the field up, I can't levitate it out of the way."

Swift Wing tried to kick the beam but it only moved slightly. He braced himself against a pile of rubble and pushed as hard as he could with his rear hooves. Slowly it started to shift until it suddenly gave way and fell down completely. Crystal Star jumped forward and the two ponies exited the train as fast as they could.

"What in Tartarus happened?" Crystal asked.

"Are you OK?" Swift Wing asked.

"I think so... but Rocky and Stone Hide... they're dead. Crushed by the other half of that beam," she said, tears welling up in her eyes. "Rocky, I think he died instantly, but Stone Hide, he was trapped under it. He couldn't move. He was burning and screaming. I tried to help, but then the beam shifted and I was trapped too. I couldn't move it... I tried... I tried..."

Crystal collapsed onto the ground. She couldn't hold back the sobs. Swift Wing wrapped his wing around her.

"You did your best," he said. "Now I need you to be strong. I'll be right back."

Swift Wing quickly went back into the dining car to check on Arctic Skies. The old pony was no longer breathing. With a sad look on his face, he exited the train.

"I need to fly up and see if I can figure out what happened. Stay right here," he said to Crystal.

Crystal nodded and Swift Wing took to the sky. He flew up and up, the higher he flew, the more destruction he saw. But he still couldn't see Manehattan's skyline. The only thing he could tell was that the smoke was worse in the direction of the city. He thought he could make out flames, but he wasn't sure.

He flew back down to Crystal.

"We need to find the engine, it has a radio on board. Manehattan was attacked," he said.

"By who?" she asked.

"I do not know for sure, but I will tell you what I do know. And in doing so, I will be disobeying a direct order from the Princesses."

Swift Wing spent the next few minutes giving Crystal a quick overview of what he knew.

"If this was any other situation, I'd think you were playing practical joke on me. Even now, I have my doubts. You are suggesting that we were just attacked by space aliens?"

"I don't know for sure, all I know is Arctic Skies said he saw something that looked, well, alien, streaking across the sky towards the city," he said. "I don't know how or why, but the timing makes it my best guess."

The two ponies marched forward searching the wreckage until they came upon the engine.

"They usually have a radio for emergencies, let's hope it still works."

The engine was in much better shape than the rest of the cars. It's greater mass had kept it on the rails. It was also mostly made of metal, so it wasn't actively burning. Swift Wing forced the door open just to discover the engineer. She hadn't made it, horrible burns covered her body.

"Coal dust probably went up," Crystal said.

They searched the cabin and found the emergency radio. Thankfully it had been in a metal box and appeared to still be in working order.

"You know how to use this thing?" Swift Wing asked.

"Yep, dunno how much range we'll get with it though," she said. "Let's see if we can get anypony."

She clicked the radio on, made some adjustments to the dials and picked up the mic.

"This is PFC Crystal Star of the Royal Guard, is anypony picking up this transmission? Over."

She waited a minute and repeated the message. After several tries and no response she looked over at Swift Wing.

"There's a spell I can try to use, it will boost the range, but I don't know how long the radio will hold up, the more I boost the range, the faster the internals are going to burn out."

"Do it."

Her horn lit up and she transmitted the message again. It took 3 more tries and 3 more boost before they finally got a response.

"PFC Crystal Star, this is ranger station 13. I'm reading you, can you repeat your message? Over."

Swift Wing grabbed the mic.

"It's a 1 way so remember to say "Over" when you are done, " Crystal said.

Swift wing nodded and then started to transmit.

"This is Lieutenant Swift Wing, PFC's immediate superior. I need you to relay an urgent message to Canterlot as quickly as possible. Manehattan has been attacked. I repeat Manehattan has been attacked. Over."
"

"This better not be a joke, or you're gonna be in a heap of trouble Lieutenant Swift Wing. Lucky for you, we heard a mighty rumble about 15 minutes ago, thought it was thunder, but nothing's scheduled for today. What's your position Lieutenant? Over."

"We were on a train heading to Canterlot. We're on the tracks, about 15 miles out of the city. The train has been disabled only 2 survivors. Over."

"We're about 200 miles out on that same line. We've already got one pony flying your way to investigate the noise. We'll dispatch a pegasus rescue crew. They should be there in about an hour. Over."

"Will you relay the message? Over."

"That we will, but let me stress again, this better not be a joke. Over."

"Thank you. Be advised, PFC Crystal is boosting magically boosting this radio's transmit, which may cause a burn out. If it does, we'll lose contact. We are going to follow the rails and head in your direction. Over."

"Thanks for the info. I'm going to get that rescue flight in the air. Over and out."

#####

The room was filled with the sound of bickering ponies. Dash had already volunteered to fight, Twilight was trying to explain that Dash had no way to get to the aliens. Pinkie Pie was sitting quietly in the back of the room, her mane drooping over one eye, with none of its normal puffiness. Fluttershy was doing her best to comfort Pinkie, while Rarity, Applejack, Cadance and Shining Armor argued over what to do next. Spike was watching, unsure of what to do. Celestia walked over to Luna.

"We need to make an announcement, and then we need to prepare."

Luna and Celestia were the only two ponies in the entire kingdom with any real experience in war. Equestria hadn't seen anything larger than a border skirmish in the last 1000 years.

"We can use the emergency broadcast system," Celestia added. "Twilight and Cadance, follow me. Luna, can you and Shining alert the guard? The rest of you, wait for us in the throne room."

Luna scrunched up her nose in confusion.

"What did they mean by "as the great one does now?" she asked.

There was a knock at the door. They could hear a pony shouting from outside the room.

"Princess, an urgent matter has arisen."

Celestia used her magic to open the door. A guard ran in, panting and drenched in sweat.

"Princess, I'm sorry to interrupt, but something strange is going on. There is a strange message coming over. Nopony at the garrison had any idea what was going on. At first we thought it was a joke, but it was being broadcast on every frequency, it completely cut off all other stations."

Luna turned the radio in the observatory back on. The transmission from the Chk'rain filled the room. She quickly scanned through all frequencies. On every channel, the message played, over and over.

"They must be overpowering all local transmitters," she said.

Celestia's horn lit up and she concentrated on the radio.

"There are hundreds of small objects transmitting this message across the planet," she announced.

"Sister, we need to stop this, we can't send out emergency messages until we stop their transmissions."

Celestia nodded her head. Her horn glowed and a transparent sphere of energy expanded outwards. It flew upwards at high speed until it came in contact with the closest comm probe. A magical web of energy surrounded the probe. The sphere expanded higher and higher, faster and faster until it covered all of Equestria. As it expanded more and more probes had their transmissions cut off.

"I have believe I have blocked the transmissions, Luna can you check the radio again?"

Luna switched to the station used by the Royal Guard. The Chk'rain transmission was no longer playing. She picked up the mic.

"Canterlot Garrison, this is Princess Luna, can you hear me?"

"We're reading you Princess."

"Mobilize the guard, have all officers report to throne room. Send two of the night guard to the Canterlot Emergency Broadcast tower I will meet them there."

"Yes ma'am."

"Tia, what about the ship?"

"Move it over Canterlot and hold it there. Then we can be sure it will be in range of our transmitters, when we send our reply."

"I will do so right after I've setup the emergency broadcast."

Luna disappeared as she teleported away.

Comments

[Kevin Lee]

"To the Chk'rain,
"This is Celestia and Luna of Equestria.
"Received and understood your transmissions.
"Our reply: You might want to go ask the Borg what happened to them when they came to visit us. It wasn't pretty what happened to them. It won't be pretty what happens to you.
"A good number of our ponies will now have to re-roll their characters. They're not very happy about what you've done since they'll all have to start all over again at Level 1.
"We shall be merciful. We give you one hour before we toss you into our sun.
"If you wish, you can try to run. You may even use your StarGate to try to escape. It won't make any difference.
"Enjoy the time you have remaining in your lives."

Well, the overall average IQ of the Chk'rain are about to rise several points once Thrux gets tossed into the sun

Edit-->wow! I was close...but Celestia didn't even give them an hour

[Kadigan]

Unfortunately the code wasn't designed to handle a situation where no orbits could be determined.

Hahahahah! :D

Oh sweet, sweet irony. And it's usually a very simple thing to code for - a simple empty() check on the result set would likely do it - had the original programmer (or any maintainer afterwards) envisioned such a scenario... Which, if you think about it, is kinda weird, because such things as rogue planets and stars are a thing (and you wouldn't get orbit information in that case).

And people ask why do I entertain cases that, by all rights, have no right to happen... This, right here. Someday, somehow - be it by operator mistake or a solar radiation-related bit flip - the error will present itself, and I will be right there to catch it! It's called "defensive programming", and the general idea is "I don't know all {failure modes}, so I must guard against those I do know, and then be proactive!"

I don't know. It may be a good assumption that a star system is - as the name implies - centered around a star... But why not include the code that would attempt to automatically detect the orbital focal point, and then report when it's not a star? Especially if there are planets detected, but the orbit result is essentially [].