Flight to Nowhere

by computerneek

Mistaken

“I’m home!”

He chuckles at his own announcement; Thiz won’t be home for another- he glances at the clock- forty-five minutes. At least, that is; he never knows when his brother stays late until he gets home. Thus, he declines to allow the door any significant swing beyond that required to let himself into their empty home, and locks it behind him.

Once inside, he makes his way to the kitchen, where he sets his bag on the table before popping the fridge to prepare himself dinner. Unfortunately, neither of them has had much time to make any elaborate meals lately; thus, he satisfies himself with, let’s see, that leftover pizza looks good enough.

Once he completes the appeasement of his appetite, he retrieves his bag from the table and makes the living room into his next destination. Here he removes a book from his bag, kicks back on his recliner, opens it to his bookmark, summons his tea, and sets about reading…

Only, unfortunately, his tea doesn’t come- rather, his ‘no tea’ comes, as Thiz would call it: His empty teacup. After taking a sip, he scowls at the mug- and back to the door into the kitchen. With a raised eyebrow, he sends a moment of his energy on an inquisition after the teapot; turns out it’s empty. Fortunately, this takes only five seconds to fix; unfortunately, the teapot is now full of ice-cold water. Meh. Another five seconds, while it and a tea bag are floating towards him, makes it steaming hot water. As it reaches him, he inserts the bag and diverts the energies surrounding him into a minor time distortion spell, reducing the steeping time from ten minutes to ten seconds. Finally, he dismisses the teabag, pours his tea, and returns the pot to the kitchen.

Now, he takes a sip of his tea, and starts reading. He normally doesn’t consider himself to be a bookworm, but this book falls right into his interest zone. After all, what part of metapositional hyperspace manufacturing wouldn’t interest him? He still thinks the name is unnecessarily long- ‘pocket dimension’ describes them quite well- but regardless. Earlier this week, he’s finally made one himself. It had been unstable- it collapsed in just a couple seconds- but he’d still made one. A little study in this technical manual should allow him to correct that minor issue.

He turns the page. He plans to get through at least a decent amount of this today, before Thiz gets home; if he does, he might be able to use one to reduce the noise levels in his work zone-

WHAM.

He winces at the noise; not only had the doorknob undoubtedly punched into the wall yet again, he’d dropped his book and spilled his scalding tea down his front.

“Whiz!”

That would be Thiz. For some reason, he sounds much more excited than normal; thus, while he semi-casually eliminates his spilled tea, he hazzards a response. “What broke?”

Thiz, already almost twenty feet from the door, freezes, turning back towards it. “Uh…” In his excitement, he’d thrown the door open with his mana… Then what? He’d really just flung it- and mana has a nasty habit of doing damage when used carelessly like that. Fortunately, he’s only torn one hinge and punched out about eighteen square inches of drywall… Oh, the window’s broken as well. He straightens up, still out of sight of the living room he’d heard his brother from. “Uh, nothing!” he states, even as he directs his mana into the repairs. The hinge is easy enough, as is the window; the drywall takes more energy. Finally, he closes the door, and turns towards the living room, racing his way in.

There, he freezes again, gazing across the room at his brother’s scowl. “What?”

“‘Nothing’ doesn’t take that much power to fix,” Whiz states.

Thiz hangs his head. He’d forgotten about Whiz’ fancy detection spells. “I let it hit the wall.”

Whiz raises his eyebrow. “What about the hinge?”

“I… I got careless.”

“The window?” Whiz sighs, but doesn’t wait for a response. “Just don’t do it again, please. What had you so excited?”

Thiz takes a deep breath, and bursts back into his excitement- much like how a cannon might ‘burst back into action’ when someone lights it. Unfortunately, his stream of utterance is fairly long and far more incomprehensible than anything its volume has a right to be.

At least hearing problems are unheardof in Shielgicians, Whiz considers, as he waits for the noise to finish. When it does, he puts a hand next to his ear, like he’d had trouble hearing.

The signal has its intended effect, just like the last thirty times. Thiz rather abashedly repeats himself, at approximately one third of the pace- reducing it to a hurried speech, still plenty comprehensible- and one eighth the volume, still clearly audible. “I made a portal!” he screams. “I made a portal! It’s still a little nondescript, but I made a portal!”

Whiz raises an eyebrow. “Nondescript?” He rises from the recliner, generating a portal of his own to cross the room to where Thiz is standing. “May I see it?”

Thiz rounds on the now deserted room, lifting his hands in front of him. He closes his eyes, muttering the ‘incantation’ to go with it.

Whiz smiles as the portal appears. It would appear he’s having trouble with the first stage; the gateways are a little fuzzy around the edges, and about as solid as a brick wall. This is to be expected, if he’s still using that ‘incantation’ nonsense; those things are tools used to teach new spells to inexperienced casters, but usually get in the way of an expert like himself.

Not that he didn’t also use an incantation to help him with his ‘metapositional hyperspace’ last week. Strangely enough, he’d actually produced one the first time he’d tried casting without the incantation. “Nice. What happens if you omit the incantation?”

Thiz scowls, his wobbling walls of wasted mana dispersing rather messily. “Uh…”

“Nothing happens?”

“Uh…” His face almost glows.

Whiz raises his eyebrow. “Does that have something to do with the pressure loss at the school today?”

“Uh…” He stares at the floor.

Whiz nods. “So, working on the destination?”

“Uh…”

Sigh. “You know you’re not in trouble, right?”

“What? But-!”

“Yes, I know, six pencils were lost in space. So? They’ll be coming back next week. Though, if you can solve your destination issue, that was a perfect portal to Omega Centauri.”

“To-!” Thiz stares at his brother. Omega Centauri is a star system- and almost a six day journey away on the fastest portalhoppers they have!

Whiz nods. “Yep, the pencils were found in the Clairvoyant’s boat bay about fifteen minutes after you sent them.”

The staring contest resumes for almost two seconds, before Whiz interrupts it again.

“Though, with that kind of a new record, they want you aboard the Entrepreneur as well.”

This finally snaps Thiz out of his trance. “What? The Entre…?” He fades off in the middle of the name of Shielgic’s latest- and fanciest- exploration vessel. Coincidentally, it’s the same ship his brother is already assigned to.

---

“Three, Two, One!”

The portal opens flawlessly, creating a gap between outer space and outer space. Nevermind that the two spaces that the very short gap connected were over six thousand light years apart. Within seconds, the ship accelerates to maximum velocity- all the way up to 0.3c. Moments later, they strike a path through the portal.

Unfortunately, while the portal was quite stable, space on the other side wasn’t quite so much. As it turns out, the ship’s shields are insufficient to tolerate the diffuse fury found in the fringes of a supernova… At 0.3c, almost directly into the heart of it. The Captain successfully backs his ship away from the epicenter- and, in so doing, purchases enough time for his crew to reach the escape pods. The ship’s sturdy forward armor, while not designed to take such a blast, should suffice to protect the pods- and the small craft in the launch bay- from harm. Thus, when the ship inevitably becomes unlivable, his crew will survive. Once they escape the blast, they will have to either slow the ship or turn it around; there’s a reason they normally only move forwards at maximum velocity. At the same time, they will be able to reoccupy the already heavily damaged ship, perform repairs, and return home.

Whiz, thankful for the high-density mana field maintained aboard ship, carries his nearly-unconscious brother down the hallway at a dead run. That forward armor won’t hold for long- unless he misses his guess, they’ve got as little as thirty seconds to reach the pods before the ship loses pressure. Rather unfortunately, it’s a civilian design, so virtually all of their air will be lost with the first hull breach. Magitech hadn’t taken his (expensive) recommendation- and now, he and the entire crew will pay for it. Quite the price for saving a few coins.

They’d been at the core of the ship. Fortunately, that leaves him relatively close to the launch bay; he should be able to reach the bay and, possibly, one of the shuttles a couple seconds before the ship loses pressure. As soon as it does, he knows, he’ll be on his own as far as mana is concerned as well- all of the stored power aboard ship will go out with the air. Even if that happens, though, he’s stored up enough in his person to maintain his run for almost five minutes before he runs out… and suffers a sudden death. Too bad he’s not good enough with those metapositional hyperspaces to use them to simply “dodge” to safety.

Success! The ship held pressure until right after he successfully sealed the hatch on this little shuttle! As such, not only has he managed to save the tiny ship’s internal atmosphere, but the mana still inside its hull as well! He drops his brother into a seat in the passenger compartment, leaving his mana to strap him in, while he rushes the cockpit himself.

The cockpit he finds empty. Oh well- he’s a halfway decent small craft pilot himself, so he drops into the seat, buckling in with a single burst of power. Finally, he reaches out and hits the comm.

“Shuttle 03 airtight,” he announces. Anyone aboard ship will have felt the message traveling through the surrounding mana; even where there is none, his message will have been carried by such a small flow as to be negligible. Now that he’s announced his shuttle’s status, as ready for any other survivors to come aboard through the airlock, he sets his hand on the control receiver. With this, he’ll be in control of said airlock- and be able to watch for anyone approaching his ship.

Suddenly, a terrified voice breaks over the mana. “Ahh! It’s breaking throu-!”

It cuts off with frightening finality, but Whiz refuses to give way. Shuttles 03 and 04 are the largest small craft this ship has berthed; as such, they are also the ideal gathering place for the crew.

The docking clamps transmit a sudden violence into his shuttle, as if they had hit something. He feels through the controls, preparing himself for a rapid launch, in case the ship falls apart. While his shuttle likely cannot tolerate anything that the Entrepreneur can’t, he might be able to take cover behind its parts until they’re far enough out to make a break for safety. Unfortunately, he can’t do that while he’s still docked.

Another voice sounds out on the mana. “Abandon ship! All hands, abandon ship!”

Whiz waits a half-second before replying. “Shuttle 03 has space,” he announces. The Captain’s signal had the overtones produced by the Entrepreneur’s communications amplifier, not those mounted in the small craft. He’s not feeling anyone at the ship’s controls, though.

“No time! Launch now!”

The docking clamps fly open almost instantly, a small puff of thrust propelling his shuttle into the middle of the alloy cavern, still closed against outer space. “Shuttle 03 off dock!”

As he still drifts rapidly into the center of the cavern, a beam of blinding light pierces through the back of the bay, shredding its way forwards- and incinerating at least three shuttles before it breaks its way through the forward bulkhead, into the ship proper. This light disappears almost as soon as it appears- and so does the Captain’s signal.

Whiz spends almost a half second relaying his own com signal through the ship’s amplifiers- a quarter of which aren’t functioning anymore. “Mayday, Mayday,” he announces, on the long-range transmitters, set for home. “Entrepreneur, taking heavy fire!” On his way through the systems, he’d noticed most of the escape pod launch bays weren’t responding- and he couldn’t find the engines.

Even as he does this, he whips his shuttle out the hole in the exit door, curving sharply as he examines the ship’s surroundings.

The supernova that had originally threatened them is nowhere to be seen; space itself is no threat. However, as he dodges another beam of focused light with a vicious swerve- good thing this shuttle is a military design, albeit a little dated- he identifies the real threat.

Hundreds… No, thousands of ships litter space in front of him. Many of them appear to still be gaining their bearings- but at least three appear to have opened fire already. In his cursory glance, he fails to identify the hostile vessels.

“Entrepreneur, declaring Code Lima Charlie! I repeat, Code Lima Charlie!” It’s at this point something scores another direct hit on the larger ship, and he feels the long-range transmitters disappear. Another laser beam wipes out the last of the escape pod launch bays- and he has yet to witness a single pod escape the ship.

Not that he’d be able to pick any up, even if he spotted them. Thus, he must assume the rest of the crew dead, and releases his link to the Entrepreneur’s systems. It’s now up to him and this agile shuttle to escape alive, if possible. Hopefully, his Code Lima Charlie got back to Shielgician space. That’s the code that any exploration vessel is to announce if it travels somewhere and encounters an extremely powerful foe. The code that declares the ship as lost with all hands, the code that informs them a rescue will be futile due to excessive enemy presence. This code had been developed- and used a lot- during the war with the Delubrians, but had never been announced since. Thus, certain he’d just caused waves in Magitech Command, he makes a break for it.

At this point, the only way to possibly save his shuttle- more hostile ships are opening fire, and their aim is getting better as well- is through a metapositional hyperspace. He closes his eyes, concentrating- and, in the blink of an eye, the shuttle disappears from the face of the universe.

Whatever he had expected, it most certainly wasn’t this. Metapositional hyperspaces are usually simple spaces- like deep space. With small adjustments, one can fill them with air, add a floor, and so on; he’d opted for an empty one. The portal in is harder than a normal portal, but is effortless to him nonetheless.

But while he’d expected a starless expanse similar to deep space, what he got is something else entirely.

A wall of color blazes across the windows, much like a portal to a hyperspace that doesn’t exist would look like. Only thing is, portals into a non-hyperspace will instantly shred anything that passes through into absolutely nothing. So, why is he still alive, let alone able to look at these colors? The shuttle’s sensory relays show him absolutely nothing- well, aside from the random colors he can already see in the windows.

Then, he realizes, there’s a building pain in his chest. He tries to stem it with his mana, but it ignores his effort as it spreads throughout his body. He makes one final attempt before praying to himself that his brother fails to experience this pain- by either landing safely in his hyperspace or by a swift death- and giving in.

In the passenger compartment, his momentarily conscious brother makes a similar prayer, praying Whiz can get them out of whatever situation they’re in. He passes out again long before he can assert what had happened after the alarms started blaring- or how long it’s been since then.

---

Whiz gasps in his first breath in hours when the pain finally goes away. His seat is no longer nearly so comfortable as it used to be, and he doesn’t feel quite right.

Before he can begin analyzing exactly what had changed, another absence also strikes him: Those colors. Mind, the buffeting of the wind drew his attention to that absence, but who’s counting? At some point, his hand had come off of the control receiver; now, as he catches a glimpse of the ground far too close for this speed, he reaches for it once again, taking ahold-

Wait. He can’t seem to feel his fingers, but since it only takes a touch to connect him to the ship’s controls, he settles for pressing the now fingerless limb against it. It takes him a second to settle himself into the ship before he lights up the engines… Which, of course, require mana. Unfortunately, it seems all of the mana on board had escaped at some point, though it’s still airtight; as such, he’ll have to settle for the less powerful emergency thrusters and aerodynamic controls almost no one uses anymore. Fortunately for him, he’s trained with them for just this situation. His personal mana- also somehow depleted, but his body produces the stuff- is sufficient to operate these controls.

It takes him a few seconds to regain control of the vehicle, stabilizing it and guiding it in for a landing in the grassy field he sees up ahead. The town he’ll pass over before he reaches it, unfortunately, doesn’t appear to have any landing bays. He reaches for the comm amplifier with his other, also fingerless, hand; he’s still not sure why they didn’t add an activation circuit to this thing from the main controls. They had for the Entrepreneur. He depresses the key, activating the transmitter, and draws in a quick breath while he waits for it to come fully online.

“Ent-!” He cuts off, releasing the key and almost losing control of the shuttle, at the sound of his own voice- at least a few octaves higher than normal.

Then, of course, there’s the reflexively twitching muscles on the top of his head, and the echo. This tiny space normally doesn’t produce any noticeable echo; when he’d watched with his mana once before, the echo is either too small to be noticed or synchronized close enough with the original vocalization so as to go unnoticed. In order to generate a disguised but loud enough to be heard echo, he’d have to be yelling- but he’d heard his strange new voice echoing slightly.

He takes a deep breath, restabilizing the craft, and depresses the key again, this time expecting much of what he gets.

“Entrepreneur, Shuttle 03, requesting emergency landing,” he states, trying to ignore his new voice, and releases the key again.

He flies towards that field for five seconds, repeats his request, and waits another five seconds.

Finally, he decides to take it into his own hands, and depresses the button one last time. “Entrepreneur, Shuttle 03, executing emergency field landing.” He diverts his attention back to his landing, activating the emergency thrusters as he loses speed over the field.

Emergency field landings are never fun- nor smooth. Thanks to the invariability presented by the emergency thrusters’ solid fuel, he has to adjust carefully on their numbers- and time the ignition of additional thrusters so as to touch down as smoothly as possible. This one wasn’t his best landing, but it was mighty close. The shocks and springs on the shuttle’s wheeled landing gear are able to handle the impact shock as the next set of thrusters go out. The shuttle bounces twice before it settles on the grass, just moments before the last set of thrusters go out.

Finally, he leans back against this disastrously uncomfortable chair, letting out a huff of breath- down and safe, finally- before he uses a momentary burst of mana to unbuckle himself and hops out of the chair… to promptly fall on his face. Funny, he hadn’t tripped over his own two feet in over a decade- but why does his chin stick out quite so far, why does his neck feel quite so long, and why does he feel so fuzzy?
Oh- and why did his feet make that odd clunking noise against the metal decking? He’s wearing rubber-soled boots! … though he can’t feel his toes, and his legs- and arms- moved differently than they did before that ordeal, unless he misses his guess. What had happened? He uses his arms to help him lift into a sitting position, whereafter he lifts one arm in front of him, in order to examine his… Hoof?

Comments

[LostArchivist]

I must say that the two of you have an interesting idea here. Thiz has me thinking of some sort of humanoid with Pinkie's personality, Discord's power, and Twilight's scholarship (and also with hilariously bad luck, Bumbling Conjurer-Style). Awesome, and slightly terrifying.

Few critiques: While I know it's for the sake of plot, I can't really see any sort of ship having crap airlock systems when there's also the possibility of flying into rogue supernovae. Not to mention that it should have been obvious through the portal, even if they went through it at .3c (unless the portal is 2D away from the nova, but then they would not have hit it).

I have no idea what the enemy ships were doing near the nova, unless there was no nova but instead gunfire that they mistook for the nova at first.

Lastly, I am guessing that the two MCs are somehow magic prodigies, but then why are they just on a random ship doing stuff? The descriptions make it sound more like they did ALL of this by accident or instinct rather than anything else, so that normally would imply that they get drafted as top researchers (Einstein-level here) or locked up for safety reasons (theirs, OR everyone else's), so why are they instead on a deathtrap of an exploration and/or colony vessel?

Especially landing in Equestria. Somehow, they manage to do that like everything else so far, and yet I assume the premise is that this is a rare or possibly completely unique event. What made these two special, and what happened for this to occur? You'd need some sort of confluence or major event to do that, but it can't truly be unique because it has to be actually possible to happen.
Possible options: Nova and the weaponry used by their enemy and/or their unique magic talent (because I am still assuming there's some reason these two have managed to do the impossible more than once already) combined with some sort of incident with Twilight's research ("Uh... Where's the test site?"*) or one of the big battles on the Equestrian side?

In short, NEEDS MORE BACKSTORY! (And sorry, Thiz, but two paragraphs would really not do!)

*There's a scene in the Looking Glass Wars books by John Ringo, where they test a small box given them as a gift by their alien allies (They later find out that it's a hyperdrive, of a type heretofore unknown). It has fascinating effects if electricity is applied. For whatever reason, they apply three-phase during one of their tests, and the solar system -- or maybe the universe -- disappears. (Fortunately, some moron genius made a portal machine that allows them to test the thing in empty ones, so they had plenty of spares -- and was also the reason that there's a war on, but that would be spoilers)

Now I want to know what kind of horsies they ended up as. I think pegasus is coolest, but that has no magic capability. With how important magic is to them, they'd almost have to be unicorns instead...
...
The younger has wings...
Uh oh. I'm hoping that means that their magic is not the same as unicorn magic, since it didn't need a horn before (It honestly sounds more like Discord's to me). That would at least mean that it's "only" a magic-wielding pegasus (which is already enough of an anomaly to cause trouble -- but awesome to boot). Alicorn is too flashy -- so if that's the case, the fecal matter is about to contact the rotary air recirculator.
That, or someone is royally buggered.

[LostArchivist]

Sorry. What I should have also said to go with my critiques:

That all said, I liked this story, and I don't want to give the wrong impression of that. I just feel that there are a few things that don't quite make sense or that need explanation. However, even with that, it's well written, and I can see a lot of promise in the idea. (Well, for one, with such OP and polymath-style characters, you are going to get the attention of most of the mane six right from the start, PLUS Discord [edit: and possibly Lyra])

I haven't added this to my favorites lists yet because I want to see more of how this goes first (and that it will actually be continued), but if it does, I see no reason I shouldn't add it.