Planetfall
With the dull hum of the wraith drive powering down, the UGS Possibility dropped back into existence. Aboard the craft in a room rather simply marked ‘Bridge’ with a plaque, there sat a smooth pod coloured white and gray. One would not know it if one was unfamiliar with United Government spacecraft design, but contained within this pod was the captain, with the rest of the scant crew in similar pods around the vessel.
“Clark, engines to point two percent. Nicole, prioritize power to shields and scanning. Pearce, weapons on standby, shields up.” Jack Fair, both captain and science officer, mentally commanded as he personally initiated all common scans, the data rapidly flowing into his mind as he also took in the distorted view of every direction around the craft. There was one star nearby, and definitely one planet judging by that speck passing in front of it, although he would have to wait for the scan results to come back to know exact details.
“Yes, sir,” a chorus of three minds responded as he felt the various changes throughout the craft the same as one might feel a change to their own body, albeit with far more precision.
Several fractions of a second later, the scan results flooded in as the star filled abyss around them remained static. It appeared to him that there was no gate there, and the star was of main sequence, much like Earth’s, at a mass one point three four seven six times the sun’s. Additionally, there was indeed only one planet, with no significant resources that might be of use. All in all, a fairly useless system. It is then that he notices something off, a small spot got skipped. Although hard to notice, there seems to be a small spot where there are just no readings. Strange, perhaps there would be something of interest here after all.
“Clark, orbit these coordinates at a distance of point zero zero three AU,” Jack said as he sent off the coordinates, the engines slightly changing direction as he sent off the result of the scans to the rest of the crew, including security. “Security, on alert,” Jack stated.
A hitherto unknown presence responded with a simple “Roger.” As they approached the anomalous spot, still with no readings on the location from any of the sensors, Jack reflected on how creepy the security detail the higher ups assigned to his craft were. He suspected that they just dumped the bastards on him in order to make them not their problem any more.
Dropping into orbit around the point, he attempted to acquire a visual, only to find nothing there. For whatever reason, this point just didn’t want to show up in the sensors. Perhaps there was some sort of issue with the software making it glitch out. He might have to submit a bug report after this and maybe a patch if anyone on board could determine why it wasn’t working.
However, just as he let his guard down he heard a small buzzing sound and smelled copper. Before he had any chance to react to that there was a loud pop, and space around the craft changed entirely.
“Clark, Nicole, Pearce, report!” Jack said on instinct, mind trying to process the fact that there was now a planet below them. A very green, very close planet that the craft was in decaying orbit above, in fact. It was rather unclear to him where it came from, to say the least. With no response after several seconds, he was forced to believe that comms were down, and he sure as fuck couldn’t fix them from here. With a spark of an idea, he attempted to initiate contact with several of the other systems manually, only to get no response. It seemed like he was shut out, and judging by the lack of any action by the other members of the craft, everyone else was too. Ten seconds until atmospheric entry, if his calculations held up. They may just have to ride it out and try to regroup on the ground, it would not be smart to be out and not latched into something safe during entry with the vast majority of systems down.
He hoped that the rest of his crew was smart enough to realize that, even those creepy first-gen marines. It would be a terrible shame to lose anyone if the sync system was down as well. He only hoped that the craft armour would hold just fine, as the shields were most definitely down.
Atmospheric entry began as the craft started to heat up and shake, although it held without issue. He wasn’t afraid of the entry heat; however, he was afraid of the impact. On the plus side, they weren’t going straight down, they were going at an angle, so at least the craft would likely not be entirely buried… Hopefully.
As the body of the craft heated up more and more as they were fourty-five seconds from impact, he could not help but notice that they were coming up on an oddly shaped mountain.
“Sister, we need to stop it!” Luna shouted, horn lit up bright blue and sweating in exertion from the strain of trying to redirect what seemed to be a falling star.
“I don’t think we can, try to divert it off towards the Forest of Lecta! There is no way that Canterlot is going to survive a hit from it!” Celestia shouted back at Luna, grunting and bracing herself to not fly off as the winds whipped around the platform they were both standing on.
Without a vocal response over the howling winds and crackling magical energy around them, Luna refocused her efforts on edging it off to the left at the same time as Celestia. Although the path of the falling object still did not change by large amount, it did change ever so slightly. Whatever this thing was, it was massive; the sheer amount of magic needed to change its path charged the air around both alicorns to a degree that would be deadly to any less magically powerful creature.
Several seconds later, something became rather clear to both Celestia and Luna: given how little they managed to change the path, it would hit Canterlot unless they diverted it further. Plan sparking in her mind, Luna said “We need to get closer, we might have enough force to effect it enough if we are both right by it!”
“That is insane!” Celestia responded.
“It is the only chance we have of our citizens seeing another day,” Luna said and took to the sky, carving her way through the cutting winds also generated by their magic as a side effect and ascended towards the piece of the sky. With a moment’s hesitation, Celestia followed by, the magical aura beginning to quell around the platform as they left.
Now that it was a bit closer both Celestia and Luna could see the thing a bit more clearly, and it became abundantly clear that it was artificial. The thing was longer than it was wide and tall, and most of it was harshly angular, with the occasional protrusion from the rectangular prism that was its main body.
Mutely positioning on either side of the object’s trajectory, both Celestia’s and Luna’s horns lit up more brightly than ever as they focused their magic on it once more, now with slightly more grip.
This time, it moved a much more significant amount, thankfully. As the moment of truth came, it started passing between them, and they both let into it as much as they could. It was working, Luna realized with glee as it edged slightly closer to her and she backed up in response. Canterlot was safe! Then, from the corner of her eye she saw one of the outcroppings rapidly closing in, and she knew that this was a very, very bad position to be in the air in. Although it wouldn’t hit her directly, the wind pressure gradient behind it was most likely going to suck her to its side, and there wasn’t enough time to either fly out of the way or cast a teleportation spell.
A shield flared into existence around her just in time as the bulge flew in front of her, and just as she expected, the pressure gradient slammed her and her shield into the side of the object. However, before she could launch off or cast a teleportation spell, she saw something else approaching from the side: another bulge, this one with a long protrusion sticking out of it, and it was quite obvious that this was going to hurt.
With a loud crack, she slammed into the side of her shield as she hit the bulge, it now wedged the long protrusion and the object’s main body. Horn lighting up brightly again, Luna started focusing on a teleportation spell, but was shaken from it by an obscenely tight energy field of some sort flaring into existence over top of her own shield and the object itself, sealing her in place and forcing her to divert her power to stopping the constricting field from crushing her shield and thus her.
While she wasn’t looking downwards and thus couldn’t see the impact, she certainly felt it as everything shook and she was thrown around the inside of her own shield. The last thing she saw before she blacked out was the side of the object as her head slammed into her own shield during the chaos.
Jack’s smile couldn’t possibly go wider at that point. “Pearce, you glorious bastard,” he said even though he knew that he couldn’t hear his praise. Somehow, he managed to get the shields working again, and just in time too. Meters below was a sea of green passing by in a flash, dipping ever closer. Then, they hit the first tree of many as the nose clipped a particularly tall one with what must have been a resounding crack as the upper reaches of the tree splintered against the shields.
A moment more passed without another impact before the craft finally dipped low enough to begin to hit the bulk of the trees with tree trunk after tree trunk borderline vaporizing under impact as the giant bulk crashed down.
The trees seemed to be doing little to nothing to stop the large craft as it dipped lower and lower and started hitting towards the base of the trunks rather than the tops, and then came the second impact.
The nose of the craft touched the dirt first, as would be expected, and shredded the topsoil, but it was clearly evident that the craft was not stopping there. No, where the craft was most likely stopping was the big, rocky looking hill that was coming up.
With what was certainly a resounding impact the craft hit the side of the hill, followed by it burrowing right through and still going, although they were going much more slowly now and there was a heavily forested mountain up ahead. All Jack could think that here was to hoping that the inertial dampeners held and wouldn’t make him the worst possible flavour of salsa.
This time there was an actually audible rumbling crash as that resounded through the craft as they buried themselves nose first into the mountain-side, although there was no shaking as the craft buried itself deep into the stone, slowly slowing and finally coming to a rest once three-quarters of its length was buried. Then, finally, the shields flickered back out of existence.
For now, they appeared to have come to a nice, peaceful rest in something that looked suspiciously like a forest based off of terran plantlife. Sure, the craft was mostly buried, on one hell of a tilt that one aboard couldn’t feel thanks to the artificial gravity still working, and the shields appeared to be back down, but everything didn’t tear in half and everyone was hopefully alive.
Snapping out of his piloting trance, he mentally ordered the gel that he was suspended in to drain. As it disappeared from around him his eyes snapped open, revealing the rather plain and dimly lit interior. A stressed sigh left his lips as the pod popped open and he swung his legs over the side, then sitting up.
Unsteadily, he got up, making an exasperated noise as he got used to not being one with the craft any more. He supposed that a couple years without disconnecting would do that to a person. Making his way over to the door, he stepped through as it automatically slid into the wall to give him passage.
The marine bunk was the closest, unfortunately, so he would have to check there first. Perhaps it was for the best to have some armed escorts with him, however. The presence of the terran-looking flora could indicate an engineered world, and sometimes a company that owns one of those fills them with all sorts of horrible things to have it serve as a hunters’ paradise.
Walking swiftly down the hallway, he mentally planned out how exactly he was going to do this. Send the marines to haul everyone’s collective asses to the situation room? No, that would most likely just anger someone due to some disagreement between the marines and one of the crew emerging. Now approaching the marine bunk, he knocked on the left side of the door. “Jack here, all clear fifteen six zero five nine ten zero. I need an escort,” he said, making sure to include the code for it actually being clear and not just being under duress generated from today’s date after running it through some formula he memorized.
The last time he forgot to add in that code he got tackled to the ground by one of them while the other three cleared the corridors on either side for threats.
Then, the door swung open and on the other side were four two and a half meter tall masses of smooth gray armour, two of which holding rail rifles, one of which was holding a plasma-thrower, and the last of which was holding a particle beam marksman’s rifle. All very nice weapons and suits of armour, well maintained. “Afternoon, everyone,” Jack said.
“Sit-rep needed,” the leader, Bill flatly said through the speakers of his suit, straight to the point as always.
“Craft crashed in something what might be a hunting world after an indeterminate event, the wraith drive, engines, shields, and most other systems are down, including craft comms. The craft is also buried three quarters of the way into a mountain, so we aren’t going anywhere for a good while. Automated internal and external defences statuses are currently unknown, so I need an accompanying group of two while I gather everyone else up, and for the other two to check around outside,” he listed off as the leader, Bill, nodded sagely and seemed to be formulating a plan behind the emotionless helmet.
“Shelton, Leroy, escort duty, Dominic, you are with me for external security,” he commanded as he hefted his rail-rifle and motioned for the particle-rifle carrying marine to tag along with him.
Stepping off to the side, Jack let the two of the now rather fast moving marines through. “So, I suppose you two are with me, then?” Jack questioned as he turned to walk towards Nicole’s station.
“Yes sir!” both the marines responded.
Jack shrugged. They never were particularly good conversationalists.
“So, sir, any idea how the fuck they managed to crash an exploration ship of all things into a hunting world?” Dominic asked over inter-suit comms as both him and Bill sprinted down the halls to the nearest rear exit.
“Damned if I know,” Bill replied as he triple-checked his rifles systems and condition, “If what he was saying about an anomaly wasn’t a lie to cover his own ass, there is a good chance that this isn’t a hunting world and there was Gatebuilder screwery about.”
“That would certainly explain it, but I can’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t them. They have a bit of a tendency of building everything big, flashy, and easily seen, and the Captain made it seem like he has no idea what the fuck happened,” Dominic said as he briefly checked every corner that they passed on the left as Bill did the same with the right.
Nodding, Bill, stepped into the airlock, followed by Dominic before mentally engaging the cycling sequence. Perhaps they got lucky and the atmosphere wouldn’t be horrible acid this time. “I’m sure the crew will figure it out eventually, they tend to if you give them enough time,” he said and shrugged, then opening the external door.
Leaning out, it appeared that they were twenty or so feet above the ground, but the landing area was clear and his motion sensors showed up clear. The skies seemed clear too, but he wasn’t going to assume that they were going to stay that way. “Dominic, swing around up top of the ship, clear up there and keep on overwatch,” Bill said, jumping down and landing on the rocky rubble below with a crunch.
“Yes, sir,” was all the response he got as the marine behind him grabbed the top of the airlock and jumped, deftly using it to swing himself up to the ledge above as the airlock closed behind him, then making his way up the side of the ship. “Suit sensors are showing that the air is breathable by the way, sir.”
“To be expected of any developed engineered world,” the leading marine responded. Looking around with his rifle, still spotting no movement or anything that looked anything even remotely like a hostile, Bill could not help but admire the path that the ship had cut through those trees on the way down. Damn impressive path, that. The entry angle that they came in at must have been incredibly shallow to do something like that.
It was then that he spotted movement in the trees and felt his motion detector go off, but when he turned to face down the distant source it was clear that it was just some small animal in the trees. Even if it was some flame-spewing death beast, it was too far away to be a threat of any sorts.
Then, much to his surprise, his far shorter ranged life-sign detector went off, pointing not even fifty feet to his left. “Dominic, to the edge to cover me, I’ve got something close by,” he said, raising his rifle and slowly edging towards the disturbance hidden by the rubble.
“Confirmed, sir,” the subordinate soldier responded as he moved to the edge above, and Bill hear the sound of him kneeling down, “In position.”
“Acknowledged,” said Bill as he crept towards the disturbance, gun readied and pointed in the direction of the now rapidly closing life sign. Unfortunately, when he was next to it he discovered that whatever it was was buried under a large piece of rubble, leaving him to sigh. He couldn’t just leave whatever it was down there. After all, it could be some sort of ambush predator that would try to get in after he left. Against his better judgement, he bent down to lift the rubble and see what was underneath rather than just shooting it once or twice and moving on. Gripping the large chunk of rock, he flipped it off to the side without much effort using the boosted strength from his suit of armor.
Underneath the colossal chunk of stone was… an injured and bleeding blue horse with wings and a horn. Several seconds of silence passed by as both ancient marines, veterans of hundreds of conflicts, stared in silence at the colourful horse. “Is that a horse, sir?” Dominic asked.
Bill nodded slowly, eyes still locked onto it “Yes, Dominic, that it is. Go tell the Captain.”
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Interesting so far, it's been a while since I've read a good sci-fi fic.
Hhhmm Interesting
8933476
Indeed, hope it pleases in that regard! Feel free to let me know if you have any questions that really, really need answering to make the story make sense, especially later on. I have the whole universe planned out, but I'm kind of worried that I'll skip over crucial details in the upcoming chapters and all that by mistake.
Interesting...
Oh i must say that this has my interest. I excitedly look forward to more of this. Good job!
This sounds AWESOME!
MOAR!!!
XD
A good start; I'll be keeping track of this one.
Looks good.
Got nabbit, this is good.
I like this. More please?
A "Human in Equestria" that isn't a Displaced Brony story? I'm in.
Sir, there is a horse under our ship.
I am aware.
What do?