Halo: Contact Equestria

by Dead_Account_0

Hold Her Steady

“Weapons Officer!” Captain Lairsey stood up and shouted, struggling to be heard over the havoc of his surroundings. A low siren sounded in the background while an assortment of figures sat hunched over various consoles, frantically typing on keyboards. Fluorescent orange lights bathed the bridge in their sickly aura, a hum of low urgent talk filled the atmosphere; the bridge was on high alert. A broadside from the alien plasma cannons had torn a hole right through the hull, wiping out the entirety of E-deck along with most of D-deck and F-deck. Casualties were already in the triple figures, a bad thing for a four hundred strong crew.

“Aye cap’n!” Weapons Officer Mackellar was crouched over her console, coordinating with the shipboard A.I. over how to inflict the most damage with their last shots.

“Load up the nuke and the cannon. If we’re going down, we’re going down fighting,” Lairsey ordered.

“Sir! We don’t have to commit ourselves to this suicidal action! We still have our slipspace drive!” Navigation Officer Okano called from his section.

“What good would it serve us?! We’re bleeding power, fleeing will give them the advantage. They can travel faster through slipspace and hit us hard the second we show up. No! Hold her steady! Prepare to fire all guns!” Lairsey was adamant, hope was not a luxury that he could afford. The facts were clear, they were going to die. The way he saw it, they may as well take as many of the xeno bastards with them as they could.

“Captain! If there’s a chance of survival we should take it! After this shot we’ll have no ammunition anyway!” Ensign Kowalski jumped up from his chair and practically screamed at Lairsey, “you can’t doom us all to die!”

“We flee we die anyway! Where do we flee, eh? Earth is our last bastion, there is nowhere else! We stay, we fight, and we die, so Earth can be saved!” Captain Lairsey wouldn't back down, he had given them an order, they should be following it.

“Earth is already lost. Lord Hood is trying to stem the bleeding but the patient is already dead,” Operations Officer Kendrick said plainly, a gloomy expression on her face.

“I’m the Captain, I make the orders!” He left a slight pause to let that sink in before continuing, “Are. We. Ready. To. Fire?!”

“Aye cap’n!” Mackellar fiddled with some dials and turned on the A.I. interface. A human-like figure made of glowing red light, dressed in a typical world war II-era officer's uniform, appeared on the dais by the gunner’s console. “Patton, have you established how to maximise damage output?” Mackellar’s voice had a tinge of glee at the thought of hitting those Covy bastards with both barrels.

“I’ve made the changes on your targeting computer, time to stick it to them,” It said, mirroring how excited Mackellar felt. It then laughed, before vanishing as quickly as it appeared.

Captain Lairsey fiddled with the silver necklace around his neck, his last reminder of his wife and children who had been slaughtered mercilessly by the Covenant horde, like so many others. Hundreds of systems lost along with billions of lives. Earth was where the last vestiges of Humanity were gathered. The war was entering zero time, Admiral Keyes had led a last ditch effort through a portal concealed on Earth with half of the human fleet and the majority of the Covenant Separatists, intent on killing the last of the Covenant Loyalist’s so-called “Prophets”. Fleet Admiral Lord Hood was left with the remaining forces to try and hold back the Flood, a parasitic race of spores that desired to wipe out all life in the galaxy, as well as the remaining Covenant Loyalists. Hood’s defensive stratagem hadn’t planned for a small Covenant force returning from deep-space, to help defend the Covenant Prophet however. Six ships were all he could spare and now theirs was the only ship left, A Stalwart-Class Light Frigate: The UNSC Hastings. He was sure the Covenant was playing with them or this was a ploy to lure out Hood’s remaining ships. The Covenant assumed the Hastings was crippled, after their broadside hit the main power plant, but they were wrong.

“Captain!” Communications Officer Waters disturbed Lairsey’s train of thought. “Why don’t we empty our salvoes and cripple their engines allowing us to blast away safely!”

“And endanger everyone down on the planet? We should aim for their weapon systems and disable them!” Crewman Palsey countered with a hard hitting point.

“It’s all pointless anyway; they keep their crucial systems are internally, to prevent just that kind of thing!” Kendrick said, bringing everyone down again.

“Just fire and run,” Waters pleaded, “staying here after firing would be suicidal and we still have our slipspace drive.”

“I am the captain. I will not take insubordination lightly. Everything being said, it seems a majority of this crew are cowardly blowhards, who will not face the music. But, let it not be said that I ignore the pleas of my crew. Let us solve this democratically, with a vote. But bear in mind that we are the final line between Earth and the Covenant.” Lairsey finally conceded but only partially.

“Everyone who wants to run with their tails between their legs say aye.” A chorus of aye’s sounded in reply.

“And if you want to die in a blaze of glory say aye.” Only Lairsey, Palsey and Mackellar sounded off.

“Fine. Patton!” Lairsey changed his stance and summoned the A.I.

“Orders, Sir?” the red figure questioned as he appeared on a dais by the Captain’s chair this time.

“Plot us a safe trajectory out of here,” the Captain ordered.

“I’m a repurposed army A.I, remember, I don’t know none of this naval poppycock,” The A.I. scoffed.

“What’s so different about a targeting trajectory and a slipspace trajectory?”

“Enough for me to be useless at the latter,” Patton grunted before vanishing again.

“Fine.” Lairsey breathed deeply and rubbed his forehead. The Captain was forced to resort his second option. “Okano, prepare us for a random jump.”

“That’s not entirely safe sir…” Okano began but Lairsey interjected.

"Just do it!” the Captain shouted, his face now flushed with anger.

Okano pressed a few buttons and crossed his fingers, before turning to the crew and saying, “Ready.”

“Mackellar, now,” Lairsey commanded and Mackellar hit the large red button, triggering the release of their last Shiva nuclear missile, as well as the last MAC round as it barrelled from the front mounted gun. The MAC round shot straight into the shields of the Covenant Cruiser in front of them, dispelling the shields. This allowed the Shiva missile to hit the ship itself, causing massive explosions of red and blue. The plasma inside went supernova, causing the ship to tear itself apart in an eruption of blinding blue light.

The remaining two Covenant ships noticed this and turned quickly, pointing their plasma turrets straight at the vessel that they had assumed helpless. Just as their blue energy began to charge up ready to fire, the Hastings shot forwards, powered entirely by its two hidden secondary reactors. Fortunately Patton also specialised in power management, allowing easy routing of energy away from damaged and redundant systems, and towards important ones. In this case they had drained all power from life-support on the bottom three decks and the weapon systems to power the engines, much to his reluctance. When up to speed the power would be leeched from the engines, to power the slipspace drive. Two huge plumes of plasma shot forward narrowly missing the frigate as it sped forward on its last reserves.

The Captain sat back in his chair and turned on the intercom. “All remaining crew members. We are attempting an emergency slipspace jump. Please head quickly to the nearest safety area and buckle up if you want to live.” The Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine needed a running start and they had to completely clear Earth’s orbit before use. This meant that the Covenant ships had time to close and, with their vastly superior engines, it was only a matter of time. Everyone was on the edge of their seats in anticipation as their speed increased.

“Thirty seconds until we reach the speed threshold required to slip,” Okano announced. After a few more nail biting seconds, Okano spoke again, “twenty seconds.”

“Hang on, the enemy ships aren’t pursuing,” Crewman Chan said from the radar table.

“What?” Lairsey shouted in confusion.

“They’re readying to fire!” Chan called out.

“Ten seconds,” Okano shouted. At that exact second the ship was hit by a plasma torpedo, shot from one of the Covenant vessels behind. The ship shook but maintained speed.

“Status report!” Lairsey demanded as he climbed back into his chair having been thrown out by the blast.

“Slipspace speed achieved!” Okano shouted struggling to be heard over the high pitched wails alarms going off as a result of the hit.

“Divert all power to slipspace drive!” Lairsey ordered equally loudly.

Okano hit the button and all energy in the ship, except for life support, was routed to the drive. The drive then spun up tearing a hole in space, which the ship ploughed into, before the hole shut behind them. “Slipspace achieved Captain.” Okano exhaled deeply and lied back in his chair. “We should be arriving at our destination in sixteen days.”

“Right, status report Chief Engineer Johnston,” Lairsey demanded.

The Chief Engineer turned to his console covered with flashing lights and gulped. “Fuck. Systems have gone to hell. That last shot completely destroyed our sensors and communications. Our reactors are losing energy too, they should just get us through slipspace. We’re going to have to hope that we can find a planet with a breathable atmosphere and land, or we’re all screwed.

“We’re going to have to conserve energy where possible.” He pulled up the intercom again and spoke into it as calmly as possible, “All remaining crewman. Please head to the cryolabs. In order to conserve energy we’re shutting down all life support systems. Everyone will be put under stasis for the remainder of this trip, except for Tech Chief Thomas Sutherland and the cryolab technicians, Qazir and Barbanos. He then turned to the dais by his chair and brought Patton back up. "As per protocol 6Q-3C you are to follow any orders given to you by Tech Officer Thomas Sutherland, do you acknowledge.”

“Loud and clear, over and out.” Patton then vanished once more.

“Right everyone lets head over to cryolabs. I’ll get Sutherland to wake us up the day before we arrive,” Lairsey sighed and led them all down to the labs for a nice long cryo-nap.

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Twilight Sparkle was tired, after a long day of helping her friends she had been about to fall asleep, when she suddenly remembered that tonight was the last opportunity for her to see Astrals’ Belt clearly until next year. As the young purple unicorn lay there, an inward battle took place, between her exhaustion and her desire for learning. “Come on, you’ve had a hard day’s work, why don’t we just relax,” Half of her seemed to say. She was exceptionally tired, maybe just a little rest.

“Oh no you don’t! This is our last chance to see Astral’s Belt for a whole year and it’s never clearer than tonight! Think of the wonders we’ll see, this is fringe science! Space! The final frontier!” The other voice suddenly screamed, jolting her awake as she leapt out of bed and galloped into the reading room. That is until she remembered that Spike was asleep, so she slowed down to a much quieter trot.

The library was cut into a large tree in the centre of the town of Ponyville. Inside were many rooms, lined from wall to wall with shelf after shelf of books. Her room sat at the top of a spiral staircase, which she hurried down as quickly and quietly as she could manage. All the furniture was made out of wood leaving a simple motif, barring the elaborate metal telescope she had specially set up on the balcony just outside. While this was still technically a public library, Twilight had read almost every book, some of them multiple times.

She went for her book on astronomy, before remembering that Spike had accidently burnt it after the comet affair. She sighed and called Owlowiscious down to help her.

The small owl let out a hoot as it flew down and landed on her head, nuzzling her affectionately.

“It’s good to see you too Owlowiscious,” she giggled, “but this isn’t a social call, I need help finding a book.”

The owl stood to attention, its wing twisted into a salute.

“I’m looking for a book on constellations, I’m afraid I can’t remember which ones concern Astral’s Belt so I need your help.”

The owl took to the air and flapped over to one of the many bookshelves and quickly returned with a book entitled, Constellations: the Art of the Stars.

“Thank you Owlowiscious, I can always count on you,” She said giving him an affectionate pet on the head. t

The owl hooted happily before flying back up to its perch.

“Right, let’s get set up then,” Twilight said to herself with a small smile, she moved a table next to the eyepiece of her telescope and placed the book open upon it, flipping through the pages to the page on Astral’s Belt. “192 Lat, 217 Long,” she repeated as she twisted the dials under the scope to the exact measurement stipulated in the book. She placed her eye to the eyepiece and peered through. There it was clear as day, seven bright stars lined up in a slightly curved line. The fabled Astral’s Belt, named after the famous wizard and astronomer Astral Light, who allegedly managed to create “golems” by harnessing the magical energy produced by those stars.

She withdrew from the telescope and galloped to her desk, where she began rooting through the drawers. “Where did I leave my drawing pencils?” she wondered aloud with a slight sense of urgency in her voice. She heard another hoot from behind her to see Owlowiscious stood on top of her saddlebags. “That’s right, I showed Rarity some of the designs I made after reading A Manual on Style,” she said with a roll of her eyes, “thanks Owlowiscious,” She opened up her bags and took out a sketch pad and her set of art pencils.

She moved the book on constellations over and placed her sketchpad next to it, opening to a clean page and getting her pencil ready. She looked back through the scope to see Astral’s Belt, still shining in all its glory. Her horn glowed purple as, without moving away from the scope, she began to sketch the constellation. It would look great in her constellations portfolio she had been working on, on and off, for the last year.

After fifteen minutes of the sound of a pencil scratching she turned and reviewed her work. “Perfect,” she sighed happily, “another great addition.” She took one last opportunity to look through the scope, when she saw a small flash like a star. That’s odd, she thought to herself, Is that a new star? She zoomed in to see that the star was moving! She gasped and adjusted the dials, following its path across the sky. It seemed to be out of control and it was heading straight for the moon! She held her breath and zoomed in again, she watched it smash into the gargantuan rocky surface, tearing apart as shrapnel flew apart, spreading around the crash site. It trailed across the ground stopping slowly, until another bright burst of blue light flared at the back pushing it forwards again, almost rolling it over. The object began to slow down again, before it finally ground to a halt. “What kind of fire burns when there’s no oxygen?!” Twilight shouted aloud accidentally, rousing Spike.

Spike was her pet baby dragon and number one assistant, having been with Twilight almost his entire life, they were the best friends. But as a baby dragon, he needed his sleep and was always extremely grouchy at two in the morning. “What are you doing?!” he shouted at her and she recoiled in surprise before realising it was Spike.

“Spike, you absolutely have to see this!” she demanded in a curious mix of excitement and fear.

“Whatever it is, it isn’t worth being up at two in the morning. Go back to sleep,” Spike stated his voice devoid of emotion.

“No, Spike! Look, it’s important!” She pointed wildly at the telescope, the excitement in her voice almost palpable.

“Fine but if it’s just another stupid group of stupid stars,” Spike grumbled as he walked over to the telescope and took a look. “What in Celestia is that?!” he exclaimed as his eyes went wide, “Blue flames! Made entirely of metal!” He turned to Twilight full of fear and wonder. “What is that?! Where did it come from!”

“I came to sketch Astral’s Belt for my constellation map and I saw that, that, thing come shooting through space and crash into the moon!”Twilight went into thought mode, rubbing her chin with her hoof and looking like she was in deep concentration.

Spike ran over to Twilight’s desk and grabbed a scroll and a quill. “I’m writing to Celestia right now, she knows everything that happens in Equestria.”

“No wait, not now, she’ll be asleep, and will be ever so angry if she receives a letter in the middle of the night. But what if it is important, and I don’t tell her, and then she finds out I knew, and then she gets angry, and then she banishes me!” Twilight suddenly started ranting.

Spike sighed, this happened a surprising amount for someone normally so rational. He tapped her on the shoulder and said slowly and clearly into her ear, “I’m going to write a letter and send it, why don’t you go lay down and I’ll wake you up early tomorrow morning.”

“No! No… I mean I’ll dictate the letter first and then I’ll go take a quick nap.”

Twilight and Spike walked over to the desk and Spike dipped the quill into the inkpot. Twilight began to narrate and Spike began to write a letter. It read:

Dear Princess Celestia,

I was observing Astral’s Belt tonight in all its glory when something strange happened, you may already be aware, but I only happened to catch it by chance due to the fact that I was using my telescope at the time. A strange metallic object collided with the moon, it may be nothing but it didn’t look natural, being made entirely of metal and trailing blue flames, which in itself is highly unusual. I was wondering if you knew anything about this.

Your Faithful Student, Twilight Sparkle.

Twilight lifted the scroll in front of her face with her horn and proof-read it, before returning it to Spike to send.

Spike exhaled his magical green flames onto the scroll, dissolving it into a gaseous form as it flew out of the window, and off to Canterlot.

Twilight let out a great yawn.

“I think it’s time we went to bed,” Spike said through a yawn of his own.

“Yes, yes, maybe that would be best.” She suddenly remembered how tired she was and sighed, before walking back up to her bed and laying down, falling asleep almost instantly.

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The cryolabs were a large industrial themed room, featuring row-upon-row of cryopods. Each pod held a single crewman in cryostasis, a state of limbo induced by freezing every cell in the body. The large metallic room was filled by a constant white vapour, emanating from the frozen chambers. A low mechanical hum filled the room as the three technicians completed another day of rounds.

Rodrigo examined each console checking that everyone was healthy, its times like this that he hated the fact that the ship had Patton. The military A.I had once been aboard Malta station but had been rescued before its destruction and repurposed for use in a ship. It was therefore useless at many of the basic naval tasks, from slipspace travel, to monitoring cryopods, to steering the ship.

Everything became routine after the first few days, after checking the monitors and making sure everyone was fine, the three cryotechnicians would meet up and play poker or watch some vids. The only areas to still have life support were the cryolabs and the attached break room, where they had set up sleeping bags taken from the supplies cupboard down in B-deck before the systems shut off.

On the fifteenth day however, Rodrigo and Thomas had just finished waking up the bridge staff when Muhammad burst in. “We have a big situation! Power is going out in some life pods. Need to wake everyone up,” he babbled out while making gestures for everyone to follow him.

Thomas rushed to the console. “Shit! It’s shutting down life support in all the cryopods! Get everyone you can out of them! Quickly!”

The three technicians sprinted around releasing the locks on as many cryopods as they could. Suddenly the gentle humming of the pods stopped completely, as power stopped flowing to them. The cryopods couldn’t be opened without power and the people trapped inside sank into the eternal slumber of death.

“Fuck! Fuck! This cannot be happening right now!” Johnston sank into despondency as he sat on the floor.

Captain Lairsey took the pragmatist approach however and asked, “Who got out alive?”

“I don’t know! I don’t care! Hundreds of lives were just extinguished in the blink of an eye.” Sutherland collapsed onto the floor, a complete mess.

Lairsey turned to Muhammad and repeated the question, “Who got out alive?”

“I got four marines, I think Tom got three engineers and Rodd got two medical staff and a Pelican pilot.”

“You did a good job, if you hadn’t done anything, they all would have died. You couldn’t have predicted this,” Lairsey said to the assembled cryotechnicians, “finish waking everyone up and give them the tests you just gave us. Then bring everyone back here.”

“Yes Sir!” They saluted and assembled the dazed crowd.

“Patton!” Lairsey called, a miniature version of the A.I. appeared at Sutherland’s console. “What the hell just happened?! Why in God’s name did three quarters of the crew just die!”

Patton replied simply and tersely, “we left slipspace early.”

“Are you telling me that they all died, just so that we could get there slightly faster?!” Lairsey screamed at him.

“Actually sir, Patton probably just saved all our lives. Had we overshot our destination in slipspace we all would have died as the ship would cease to exist,” Okano said softly from behind Lairsey.

All of a sudden the ship filled with noise as the alarm started blaring. “Collision imminent,” a mechanical female voice announced over loudspeaker.

“Oh for fu…” Johnston started to say when the ship lurched onto its side.

The ship smashed into rocky terrain, completely removing the lower four decks of the vessel. The wreck continued to slide forwards as the two reactors exploded, removing a massive area around the rear of the ship. The crew members were thrown harshly back across the room, several people hitting cryochambers and assorted objects. Muhammad crashed into Sutherland’s control panel with a shower of sparks. They were thrown to and fro like ragdolls before the ship finally ground to a halt. Everything went dark briefly and then slowly lit up again as emergency power reserves switched on, detecting the loss of the secondary fusion generators.

Lairsey awoke to the sharp, acrid taste of blood in his mouth. The room’s soft, white vapours had been replaced with thick, black smoke from the sparking console. He touched his forehead where it hurt and coated his hand in some wet, sticky substance. He tried to open his eyes but found everything red. So he reached up his arms and rubbed the blood out of his eyes forcibly, finally managing to acheive a bleary vision of sparks and dim lights. The Captain sat up to find the entire room was a mess. Muhammad was draped over the smouldering remains of Sutherland’s console. Crewman Palsey right next to him, neck bent at an impossible angle, his eyes empty and dead.

Lairsey dragged himself to his feet and realised his hand was covered in blood, probably from his head. He felt his forehead again and, sure enough, he could feel a fleshy opening that shouldn’t be there. He tore a sleeve off Palsey’s jumpsuit and wrapped it at around the huge cut on his head. He then hobbled over to an empty cryochamber and checked out his reflection. Looking back at him was a man getting on sixty with dashes of silvery grey in his shortcut black hair and trim black moustache. He checked that his necklace was still on and ensured that his Captain’s uniform was still relatively intact, although his hat was missing.

“Someone help!” a feminine voice rang out, echoing across the vast, relatively empty chamber.

Lairsey sprinted, as best he could with his injuries, to the other side of the room to find a small group assembled. A marine had crashed into a cryochamber with such force that the chamber had smashed, spraying glass across the room and tearing the unfortunate individual apart. The shards of glass had also punctured the throat of one of the engineering crew, who was now quickly bleeding out despite the best efforts of another marine and a pilot. Nearby Sutherland’s body lay speared against the wall by a support strut that must have fallen from the ceiling. His eyes were still wide open as if surprised, Lairsey walked over and shut them with a sense of respect. He turned just in time to see the engineer bleed out, his eyelids drooping shut and hands falling to his sides limply. The pilot was in a fit of tears but the marine tried to comfort her as he helped her stand up and turn around to find Lairsey stood there watching them.

“Sergeant Bunting at your service sir!” he said pulling off a smart salute despite his surprise at the Captain’s sudden appearance.

The pilot pulled off a salute following Bunting’s example and said, “Flight Officer Pritchard reporting for duty sir!” Snapping off the best salute that she could manage.

Kendrick awoke to find she was hanging upside down from a cable by her legs. She began to struggle to loosen herself, before looking straight down to see Mackellar’s lifeless corpse staring back at her. She screamed as she noticed that it was only half of Mackellar’s corpse, the legs being nowhere in sight. Her screams drew attention, as she heard the clattering of boots as a marine and a medic came running towards her, carrying an unconscious Ensign Kowalski sporting a bloodied leg.

They set Kowalski down and the medic began to look at his leg whilst the marine positioned himself directly beneath her and held out his arms. “If you drop now I’ll catch you!” He shouted upwards to Kendrick.

“Promise?” she squeaked.

“Promise.” He nodded, giving her a reassuring smile.

She unhooked her boot and fell screaming into the awaiting arms of the marine.

“Gotcha. I’m Private Leif Eriksson” He helped her stand up and gave her another smile.

“Are you hurt?” The medic ran over pushing Eriksson out of the way.

“No, I’m fine, just a little… shocked,” Kendrick said visibly paling as she saw Mackellar’s legs sticking out from the rubble pile. “I think I’m going to be…” She spun around and vomited all over the floor before fainting.

“I’ve got her Ming; you can take the Ensign over there,” Eriksson said picking her up and carrying her as they continued their search for other survivors.

Waters awoke trapped underneath a pile of fallen struts; luckily one had fallen next to him first preventing the other from outright crushing him. The blood splatter beside him that had once been Crewman Chan had not been as lucky. He lay there silently, trying to gather his strength to push his way out when he heard talking.

“Hey Vic, check it out is that?” a female voice said.

“I think it is!” a male voice replied who Waters assumed was Vic.

“Hey Boss!” the two called in union.

“Laura, Victor, it’s bloody good to see you, from what I’ve heard we’re all that remains of Engineering,” a third voice which Waters recognised.

“Darrell!” Waters called out loud.

“Hey you guys here that?” Chief Engineer Johnston asked the other two.

“Darrell! It’s me Simon! From the Bridge!” Simon called out from beneath the rubble.

“Communications Officer Waters, right? But where are you?” Darrell said, looking left and right.

“Underneath the struts! I can’t move!” he called out.

“Damn man, Laura, Vic, get either end of that tall horizontal strut and try and lift it, I’ll try and pull him out when you’ve got the pressure off.”

Laura grabbed one end as Victor grabbed the other and on the count of three they lifted it and Johnston slid him out exactly as planned. “

Are you okay Simon?” Darrell said crouched over him.

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Darrell turned around and saw a guy with scraggly white hair in a white jumpsuit.

“Who the hell are you?” Darrell demanded as the man pushed past him and gently turned Waters over, and then started prodding him to see if it gave a reaction.

“That’s the replacement for Dr. Carter, Stamford I think his name was. He’s a little strange but good at what he does,” Laura said standing behind Johnston.

“He saved my hand when I tripped onto that saw remember?” Victor said to Laura.

“Yeah, he did,” Laura replied.

“If you two would be as kind as to lift the patient, I’ll need a raised surface of some kind, follow me.” Doctor Stamford suddenly stood up and started to walk away.

Laura and Vic carefully lifted Simon and carried him after the doctor while Darrell trailed along behind.

Navigation Officer Isao Okano was bashing the only intact computer in the cryolabs. “Patton! I know you’re still in the system! Talk to us!” He shouted as he hit all the buttons he could on the machine before sinking to the floor with his back against the console. He held his head in his hands for a bit, he knew that when the power went down Patton would have been erased as per the Cole Protocol. After a while he began recovering some composure and sat back up again. It was then he heard the sound of a gun going off. He leapt up and ran towards the source knowing people would be there, other survivors like himself. Maybe they would know what was going on and what to do next, he reasoned to himself.

He rounded the corner to see an enraged marine with her pistol, an M6D Magnum Sidearm, pointed at the injured figure of Tech Officer Rodrigo Barbanos. Rodrigo was lying in a pool of crimson, his hand clasping what looked like a bullet wound.

“Bastard came at with a knife,” the female marine said pointing to the large crude sharp of metal Rodrigo held in his hand. Isao just stopped and stared, making the marine extremely nervous.

The Captain was the next to arrive with another marine and a pilot with him. The marines seemed to know each other.

“Stand down Private!” Sergeant Bunting ordered, meeting the other marine’s eyes. The marine’s arm shook before she gently lowered her pistol. “Hand it here Cass,” he said more softly and held out his hand in which she placed the side arm. Seeing his target disarmed Rodrigo leapt up with an inhuman howl and thrust the crude implement right into Cassandra Whitmore’s eye. The marine fell to the floor screaming in pain as rivulets of blood sprayed from her injured eye. Before Rodrigo could stab again, Bunting pointed the pistol determinedly and fired a shot right at Rodrigo’s forehead. The bullet went straight through leaving a spray of gore, into which his corpse fell.

“Medic!” Bunting screamed as he ran to Whitmore’s side and saw the state of her eye. As if on cue, Cpl. Yao and Pvt. Eriksson rounded the opposite corner carrying their charges. They placed them both gently on the floor before sprinting over to the wailing marine who was rolling around the floor writhing in agony. Eriksson had adopted the unofficial role of aide helping Ming by holding Whitmore still as Yao attempted to check out her eye.

“Stand back! This is a job for a real doctor!” Dr. Stamford said as he arrived with Waters and the Engineering team.

“Private, fetch me something sharp! Does anyone have a lighter?” Francis Stamford was in his element, having helped refugees fleeing from devastated colonies with whatever he had on hand.

“I’ve got one,” Victor said as he pulled it out of his inside pocket and handed it over.

“Damn it Sinclair, you said you quit!” Johnston pointed at him accusingly. Victor just shrugged back.

Eriksson came running back with a syringe full of adrenaline. “It’s all I could find!” he said as they all turned and stared at him.

“I can’t just waste adrenaline like that, Corporal pocket it in case of an emergency later! Mr. Sinclair, use your lighter to heat up the weapon he was stabbed with. Sergeant, Ms. Berneche, hold him down,” the doctor was barking out orders now, the troopers ran around trying to get all their tasks done.

Bunting pinned down Whitmore by lying across her whilst Laura held her head still. The distressed trooper tried to throw them off but all she could manage was to frantically wiggle her torso.

Sinclair placed his lighter at the tip of the blood covered, makeshift dagger whilst Yao pulled out his lighter too and helped. Dr. Stamford lightly poked the eye with a gloved finger and Cassandra screamed in pain. “It’s worse than I thought,” Stamford announced, “I’m going to have to remove the eye. This is going to be excruciatingly painful. Does anyone have a belt on?” He turned expectantly only to realise they were all wearing jumpsuits. “Damn, forgot we were all in uniform.”

“We could scar the tissue with fire,” Eriksson suggested and once again received glares from everyone, everyone except Dr Stamford.

“Brilliant idea! It’ll solve the problem of bleeding out and sterilise the wound!” Stamford applauded receiving raised eyebrows from the other remaining crew members.

“What about the immense pain?!” Bunting demanded.

“She’ll be in intense pain anyway; I’m going to wrench her eyeball from her socket,” Stamford said matter-of-factly earning a whimper of fear from the pinned down form of Pvt. Whitmore. “Unless someone can knock her out… wait a second! This is a cryolab; they must have something more than just adrenaline her. Ideally some oxycodone.” Stamford clicked his fingers as he came up with the idea.

“Oxy-what?” Eriksson was completely clueless.

“It’s an opioid analgesic medication synthesized from thebaine,” he said and Eriksson shrugged dismissively. “Painkiller! Like morphine but doesn’t inhibit cryostasis,” Stamford shouted, “now go! The sooner you find some, the sooner I can operate.”

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A large alicorn lay sleeping in her bedchambers, her flowing mane divided into four distinct layers: teal, blue, pink and light green. A scroll suddenly appeared in the air above her sleeping from and fell, bonking her on the head. She started with a jump, looking around to find the source of the disturbance. She found the scroll and opened it up, to see it was from Twilight Sparkle. A friendship report? Now? How unusual, she thought to herself as she began to read, A metal structure… crashed into the moon… check it out? How confusing why hadn’t she been made aware of this.

Suddenly there was a loud knock on the door. “Come in she stated,” putting on her most regal voice. A member of her royal guard opened the door and a small grey unicorn civilian ran inside, sweat pouring down his face in rivulets.

“My Princess,” he bowed before talking hurriedly, “I saw a strange object crash into the moon! It was made of metal and sprouting blue flames! This could be what we’ve feared! Aliens!” the unicorn practically screamed that last word.

Celestia was extremely sceptical about it being aliens, how ridiculous, she had to suppress a giggle for the sake of the unicorn’s dignity. “This event has already been brought to my attention, but I do not consider it pressing enough to rouse the guard at this time. Tomorrow morning I will launch a full inquiry, which you can assist with, if you wish, Mr?”

“Starstruck, Earnest Starstruck.” He held out a hoof then remembered it was the Princess so bowed again instead.

“So, if you would come back tomorrow morning…” she lead on hoping he would get the gist, which thankfully, he did.

“Many apologies Princess, I’ll be back tomorrow.” He bowed once more before walking out again.

Celestia lay back and sighed, tomorrow was going to be a big day,she thought to herself before descending once more into slumber.

Comments

[DJ Cobalt]

epic

[Primordial Deomontus]

yay that was only chapter one

I LOVE how they are long chapters.

[DeltaChevron]

How did the flood get aboard?

[Moon_Fire]

THIS. IS. EPIC. ON SO MANY LEVELS IT IS JUST AWESOME

[Edmar Fecler]

DAMNIT!!!
In my star wars crossover I was planning on introducing my ship into equestria the EXACT WAY THAT YOU DID! (apart from them crashing into the moon)
I really dont want to have to change my story all up because of this, so you dont mind if i leave mine how its , despite the similarities, do you?

AMAZING STORY, by the way. Absolutely love these scifi crossovers, especially This style.

[rainbow_shy]

....... awesome...... lets see ppinkie break through THIS wall

[OoooyVeeeeey]

Patton better have survived or I.WILL.BE.PISSED.