1 - Into the Dark / Hope Renewed
“Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another.” — Plato
Rainbow Dash - 8th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony
749556.65 A.H.
Lunar Orbit - Equus, K3 Sector
Equus hung in the inky black sky, a blue and green marble floating in a pool of crude oil. The sun lit the planet from the rear-left, drawing a crescent across its face in shadow, revealing a wondrous sight nopony but Nightmare Moon had seen before. What Rainbow’s eyes beheld now was something even the Nightmare herself had never seen.
Luna curved away below Rainbow, filling nearly all of her view of the universe below: a seemingly endless blanket of silvery-gray dust, pockmarked with endless craters; the moon from orbit, with the planet Equus rising above the horizon. If only there was time for a photograph.
Rainbow did not see Luna in the sky below Equus. Nor did her eyes fall upon the endless black void of space. None of these things mattered. Her wide eyes were fixed on a single object visible through her seat’s window: the starship.
It resembled a cigar, long and cylindrical, with rounded ends. Spine-like towers rose up from the dorsal segment, and combined with the talon-like forward-swept wings to make the ship look like a predator flying towards its prey. Its bow was fitted with a ram, something Rainbow would never have believed anyone would place on a spaceship. Nor did she even once imagine someone would shape a spaceship’s bow like a skull.
The elongated, twisted, grinning visage bore down on her, dull silver, pockmarked by micrometeor impacts, and lit by the dull red light of hidden lamps. It was the perfect complement to the ship’s colors, black as the void and accented in deep crimson, silver, and gold.
Rainbow’s chest heaved as she struggled to get enough air. Her wings flared, flapping madly. Her seat’s crash harness dug into her shoulders and chest, the straps refusing to break under mere wing-power.
The alien craft seemed to swell as three large flaps on either side opened up, the long blade-like flaps giving the ship the appearance of having both powerful wings and outstretched claws.
“Let me out!” Rainbow shrieked as she thrashed against the straps.
There was nowhere to go, even if the lithe stallion sitting next to Rainbow had unbuckled her. The Hoatzin was a small shuttle, scarcely large enough to transport two ponies, some personal items, and the alien clad in T-34 battle armor which sat at the Hoatzin’s helm.
Six hundred kilograms of compressed alloys swung towards the shuttlecraft’s rear as its pilot pointed to Rainbow without taking her eyes off the controls.
The pilot’s voice wasn’t recognizable as male, female, or even organic. The T-34’s speakers were optimized for being heard through explosions and gunfire deep in an irradiated trench, rather than pleasant conversation. “Keep her quiet! The last thing we need now is a panicked poni thrashing about.”
The stallion’s rust-colored fur made a shushing sound against the fabric of his black hoodie as he looked at Rainbow. The black ship growing ever larger in the window seemed to glare into his soul, and he shrank even further back into his seat. “I’m not sure I can, Penny.”
Penny groaned and put both hands to work once more. “What's-your-name? Blue? If I can’t focus, we have no chance!”
Her left hand tapped a series of commands into the shuttle’s computer, instructing it to push more power to the engines—enough to make safety inspectors cry. Her right hand flew over the comms panel, sending a flight plan to a distant starship.
Rainbow twisted in her seat to look towards the controls at the hulking, industrial figure which dwarfed the command seat. “Let me go! I can carry us to safety! Well, not you. Not in that tank! Jump out and we’ll—”
The stallion took a deep breath and shut his emerald eyes tightly. “You can’t fly in space, Rainbow!”
Rainbow bared her teeth and growled, smashing her hooves against her seat’s armrests. “Ugh! I need to do something! It’s going to take us, too!”
Far below the shuttle, the Dawn of Destiny heard its mistress’s call and fired up its thrusters, slowly rotating in place as it searched for the right angle to burn a trail towards her.
Penny grit her teeth and resumed overcharging the Hoatzin’s q-thrusters. “You can be quiet! I have a plan. Pan, we may have to ditch your things.”
The black ship moved forwards on a cloud of black smoke, as if its passage made the universe itself burn. Rainbow knew full well that smoke could not billow like that in a vacuum. It had to be an illusion, or a hologram. Not that it made the hellish ship any less terrifying as it grew larger and larger in her window.
Pandora nodded, his long black and white mane fell over his left eye. “Okay… Is that so we can fight them?”
Penny snorted. “Fight them? Ha! That is a warship. This is babushka’s jam cupboard. We’re going to run for the Dawn, and have the Dawn run for us.”
Rainbow frowned and tore her eyes away from the window yet again. “Dawn? But this is spa— The suns over there! It can't rise.”
Metal rang against metal like a hammer on an anvil as Penny slapped a palm against her faceplate. “Oy, blin… My ship! Not sun up. I see why you had hard time making friends, Pan.”
Rainbow‘s ears lay flat as she remembered the one time she’d heard the alien mention having a bigger ship. “I’m sorry; I haven’t been talking to you for years!”
Pandora rolled his lips nervously and leaned against his crash harness to look out Rainbow’s window at the approaching hostile ship. He’d known Penny as a voice on his radio for a long time. He knew she’d been in many situations like this before.
Hearing is very different from experiencing. “Penny? Can we make it?”
Penny’s left hand curled around the throttle. She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged, her armor’s bulky pauldrons moving amid the whine of high-power servos. “I don’t know.”
Rainbow knew that tone of voice. She heard it every time an expert knew the answer was no, but didn’t want to say so. She turned towards the cockpit, her eyes starting to tear up. “Please! There has to be something I can do. I can’t sit still; if we die, everypony will be lost forever!”
Static hissed through the Hoatzin’s comms. Not the simple hiss of a poor connection, but a harsh, low, rolling hiss designed specifically to cause extreme discomfort to those unfortunate enough to hear it. Exactly three heartbeats later, a discordant melody of decaying electronic whimpers heralded a message from the black ship.
Penny’s voice was sexless and inorganic. The ship’s voice was formless and immortal. It rolled, rumbled, and cut into the minds of those who heard it. “Shuttle, cut engines and prepare to be tractored. Resistance will end in your termination.”
Pandora curled into as much of a ball as his seat allowed, becoming little more than a ball of black and off-white stripes thanks to his extra-long mane and tail. “I— Uh— If we stop, what will they do to us?”
Penny pulled back even harder on the shuttle’s throttle, even though it was already at top speed. “It’s Nova Wing. They shoot me, they enslave you. They’re testing the market with Blue’s friends. They’ll take two more of you, no problem.”
Rainbow narrowed her eyes, briefly entertaining the idea of letting herself get captured to help Twilight and the others escape. “How far is your ship?”
Penny glanced down at the Hoatzin’s sensors. The Dawn had fired up its main engines and with the help of its gravity generators, slipped free from the bonds of Newtonian physics. A miracle of galactic science to be certain, but even miracles have their limits.
Penny’s eyes narrowed as she watched her ship approach the shuttle. Even with the ship able to fly in a straight line to where the shuttle would be able to rendezvous, it wouldn’t make it to them before the black ship was upon them. “The Dawn of Destiny is too far.”
The pirate vessel was within a hair's breadth of the Hoatzin now. The tiny, yellow, ‘A’-shaped shuttle could fly into one of the ship’s main guns with room to spare. Rainbow’s eyes widened as she realized this ship couldn’t possibly have been the one which took her friends. Not unless the Nova Wing’s ships could grow a thousand times larger within a few days.
Penny let out a single long breath. She could float in space for a week before her armor’s supplies ran dry. Rainbow and Pandora…
Penny glanced sidelong at the shuttle’s emergency supplies locker, cursing the evolutionary trend towards humanoid bodies. “If you weren't quadrupeds there’d be EVA suits you could use. Those muzzles… If I had five minutes, I could make airmask fit you. Then we could get somewhere!”
Pandora winced as the thought of being thrown into space as the shuttle exploded around him consumed his mind. “D— Do you really explode if thrown into space?”
Penny shook her head. “Nyet… You swell a bit, then boil. Don’t worry, the vacuum rips the air from your lungs and pops them first. You’ll die long before it gets bad.”
Rainbow flung her hooves up in front of her. “Woah, time out! No! We are so not going to get shot! If we surrender, we can escape and steal a ship. Right?”
“This isn’t a movie, poni,” Penny said as she looked down at the sensors once more. “The Dawn’s close. Forty more seconds… Maybe I can bank on my people’s reputation?”
Pandora frowned. “You have a reputation?”
“Chernen most certainly have a reputation,” Penny said as she flipped the transmit switch with one finger. “Privet, druz'ya! Neither of us is supposed to be here. It’s not like we will report you to politsiya. How about you back off?”
Rainbow’s jaw dropped at Penny’s genuinely cordial message. A full second passed before she even thought to protest the alien’s choice of tone, which allowed Penny to continue.
“I’ll be honest. It’s just me out here. No one is aboard my ship. The Dawn is not a warship, but she will fly circles around one. She’ll even dodge your guns for a little bit. Sure, you’ll shoot her down… After a minute or so. She’s an old ship, three generations obsolete.”
Rainbow looked over to her left at Pandora. The rust-urred stallion shrugged, not sure where his friend was going with her speech either.
“She was made in the shipyards of Chern, and I am in sealed Battle Armor. Type Thirty-Four. Fully vacuum-rated, and well, it’s T-34. I’ll survive this shuttle’s end. At least for a second. You know what that means? You blow my shuttle out of the void and I’ll set the Dawn to ram you.”
The black ship’s voice returned, static and all. “We have scanned your vessel. A long range exploration vessel of sixty-kilotons with no ram poses no threat to our vessel. Surrender, or you will be blown out of the skies.”
Penny nodded several times. The guesure was lost on the pirates, mostly because the shuttle was only transmitting audio. If there had been video, the gesture would have still been lost thanks to the T-34’s fixed helmet.
“Of course not,” Penny chuckled. “This isn’t a science vessel, she’s a tanker. The impact won't hurt you, durak. Hitting you will hurt the Dawn’s antimatter tanks. Ever see five-kilotons of antihydrogen go up at once? It just might crack that cruiser of yours in two.”
Penny flipped the comms switch again, breaking the transmission. She glanced down at the sensors smiling at the screen. “Looks better now. If we can dock with the Dawn, I can start a jump. They might not be willing to chase us.”
Rainbow turned her head to look at the dull black ship hull which now completely filled her window. “That was a threat, right? Will it scare them off?”
Penny bit her lip and cleared her throat. “Assuming their scans don’t show she’s using a vacuum reactor now, maybe. Hey, maybe they’ll think I’m spoofing a safer reactor for insurance reasons. Anything’s possible.”
A dull red glow shone through the window, lighting up the Hoatzin’s interior. Rainbow yelled and ducked away from the window, fully believing a beam of red-hot plasma was about to tear the shuttle to pieces.
The black ship rotated as its maneuvering thrusters fired, pitching the bow up and away from the shuttle. It rose upwards for a short distance, then turned clockwise and rolled dowards. A standard evasive maneuver. Crackling green light oozed out from the ship’s extended flaps in a manner similar to Saint Elmo’s Fire as the pirate vessel activated its sSurf dDrive, immediately sliding forwards as its long acceleration to superluminal speeds began.
Pandora gasped as the ship began to retreat. He turned towards the cockpit, brushing his mane out of his eyes and away from his broken horn.
Pan smiled at Penny, as butterflies danced in his stomach. “I knew you could do it, sweetie!”
Penny smiled and looked down at the seal between her neck and her armor. The inside of her helmet was a single large screen. The alloy blast-visor may as well not have existed as far as she was concerned. From the outside looking in, the only thing someone would see was a few cameras set in a thick slab of metal, with a coat of old, chipped yellow paint.
Penny hadn’t dared open her helmet on a world where stone crocodiles and wooden wolves existed.
Penny shook her head. “I may find you attractive, but you haven't even seen my face yet. Save the flirting, Pan. I could be hideous to you.”
Pan rolled his eyes. “If you think I look nice, I’ll probably think you look nice.”
Penny threw back her head and laughed for several seconds. Not at Pan’s statement, but to relieve the tension building in her chest. “You’d have a point if my last partner was a mammal, blin!”
Rainbow’s eyes widened at Penny’s words. “Wait! You guys are dating?”
“Hopefully!” Pandora said with a smile. “If not, still best friends.”
The sSurf dDrive is a miracle of galactic engineering. Of all the FTL methods available to the Galaxy, only the sSurf dDrive is safe, reliable, convenient, while remaining cheap enough for even the working class to afford. That said, it is quite slow. Even the fastest ship will take a few minutes to accelerate to light speed, let alone break the light barrier.
The black ship was only a few hundred kilometers away as Pandora smiled. Penny knew what was coming. Her people had a reputation. So did Nova Wing.
The Hoatzin’s sensors detected a small power spike in the black ship’s weapons system: a point defense laser powering up to full. Penny turned around, her cameras seeming to glare at her passengers. “Exhale! Now!”
The explosive demand startled both ponies into compliance. The black ship fired. Penny snapped her crash harness straps like fishing line as she dove to grab both pony’s seats. Compressed dull orange lasers streaked across the void. Penny's hands locked onto the backs of the passenger seats and ripped them off their mounts, their occupants still strapped in.
The distant ship’s shots connected with the shuttle’s hull just as the black ship reached point-two-cC. The Hoatzin’s hull appeared to bubble, blister, and warp. Then it exploded with a flash of white-hot plasma.
For the brief instant the shuttle’s interior still existed, chaos reigned supreme. Rainbow felt the last bit of air fly from her lungs as the shuttle’s atmosphere rushed out to try and fill the inky void.
The pressure wave blew all the shrapnel outwards. No debris cut through Rainbows heart, not even as the shuttle shattered into hoof-sized shards which flew away in all directions. Rainbow and Pandora had an instant to take in the cloud of dust, grime, boxes, bags, and stray equipment around them before it flew apart, a life vanishing into the void. They would join it soon.
The black ship’s illegally enhanced drive bore it ever further away, leaving Equus far behind after mere moments. Soon Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy, Applejack, and Pinkie would be the first ponies to leave their star behind. A shame that first would occur with them unconcious in an observation tank.
Space was not cold like Rainbow had always believed. The sun shone on her nearly as brightly as it did upon Equus and Luna. No atmosphere blanketed Rainbow, wicking away the sun’s intense heat. As her vision began to turn black, she felt her skin start to swell as moisture tried to escape.
The Dawn of Destiny drew near, and Rainbow saw it slide into view out of the corner of her eye. She was a deep blue, boxy, tapered rectangle of a ship, with a big glass dome window on the front. It would have been cool if she knew the sight of that ship a mere thirty meters away wasn’t the last thing she would see.
Pandora’s heart screamed as he saw the Dawn. He had been so close. Over a year of planning, negotiations, and hope, all evaporating into nothing thanks to the pirate’s mothership having stuck around in system for Luna-knows-what.
Rainbow’s vision faded to black, one single thought running through her mind as consciousness slipped away: she had failed. Her friends were lost forever, doomed to do whatever fate their alien slave masters demanded of them. The punishment for her failure: a painful death without a burial.
What did we do to deserve this?
The last thing Pandora felt before the blackness consumed him was guilt. All of this was his fault.
Pandora - 748756.8 A.H.
Two Years Ago
Applewood Community College - Applewood, Equestria, Equus
The last rays of the setting sun shone through the closed blinds to provide a messy dorm room with a dim and dismal light. The light wasn’t entirely to blame for the room’s grim feel: the overhead lamp was broken, as it had been for years, and formerly white brick walls were now gray with brown splotches.
The bed was unmade, covered in sweat-soaked sheets and aging blankets. An oversized and rather ugly desk was covered in old stains, fast food wrappers, and long-empty bottles. A sea of wires, power regulators, and amateur radio equipment consumed the room, giving it an industrial feel. What little floorspace the tiny room had left was covered in dirt, dust, and debris.
A nice, warm, bright lamp would hardly have brought the dorm an air of good cheer, not without the aid of several hours deep cleaning.
Tarnished brass rattled as the doorknob turned. The room’s door creaked at just the right pitch to make everypony within earshot wince. The sound of quiet sobbing filled the room as its occupant stepped inside.
Pandora ignored the notes he inevitably stepped on as he entered his dorm room. At least three or four were slipped under his door every day. They all said the same thing.
Pandora was a small stallion. Almost unusually so, for a unicorn. Fortunately, he was not quite a dwarf. Applewood was predominantly an earth pony town. That made him the smallest guy on campus in both height and muscle. An older, more mature unicorn wouldn’t have cared about such trivialities. Of course, they would also have their magic to fall back on for impressing mares they liked.
Pandora reached for his laptop bag’s strap and went to pull the bag off his shoulder. He’d never liked the over-the-shoulder strap style. Unfortunately, that’s what was sold here.
Static electricity made the bag cling to his black hoodie. Pandora closed his eyes to keep himself from growling an anger and pulled the strap away from himself roughtly. The coarse nylon strap slid across his face and over the bandage covering the stump of his horn.
Half the dormitory jumped out of their skin as Pan’s pained screech nearly shattered glass.
It took half an hour for the sharp, stabbing pain in Pan’s horn to go away. Half an hour of screaming into a pillow to get all the pain and rage out. Rage at his health insurance for not covering fuzing the end of his horn, let alone reconstructive sorcery. Rage at the campus police for failing to catch the stallions who had cut it off. More rage at his insurance provider for deciding that the hospital stay was all the coverage he could get that year. Then, most of all, blind fury directed at his body for making the wound reopen no less than three times over the last few months.
Despite the boiling ocean of emotion in his mind, rage was still only the smallest part of Pan’s screams.
Over time, the pain faded into the dull background throbbing Pan had become familiar with. Its friend, empty hollowness, rejoined it in tormenting him a few seconds later. His savings, as well as his family’s, had gone to college, and that money had been diverted to Pan’s not-dying fund.
Pan was out of money. He was out of time. He was out of friends.
Pan carefully turned his head and looked at his dust-covered radio set. The bangs of his short mane fell over his eyes. As he pushed them out of his face, he vaguely wished he had time to grow his mane out the way he’d always wanted. Parents can have the oddest restrictions.
With his vision clear, the stallion took a fresh look at his old radio. Pan had loved it growing up. In Canterlot, he could get a signal all the way out to Appleloosa on a clear day. Tweaking and customizing his set had been a hobby unto itself.
His father had given Pan a unique piece of crystal for his birthday five years ago. The first thing Pan had done was install it as an RF modulator. The crystal had boosted his set’s range and signal clarity so much, he’d made a few friends all the way in Neighpon.
Pan had made so many friends talking over the radio. Friends who had slowly, one by one left the hobby for other things.
Pan had left it behind, too, once he started making friends in college. Then his best friend stopped being a friend and decided to share the contents of Pan’s hard drive with the campus at large. Pan’s friendships evaporated. The notes started appearing under his door.
Nothing Pan had ever done was illegal, or even immoral. Just a little perverted. But in a rural town like Applewood, not even a spark of deviance was tolerated.
Today, the last thread of equine relationships unravelled.
Pan eyed his radio’s handset for several long moments as he debated trying to find someone to talk to. “Yeah… Why not? One last try.”
Pan’s eyes flicked over to the radio’s power switch. Instinct compelled him to flip the switch with his inborn telekinetic power. His horn sparked. Pan yelped, thrashing in place as the magic rebounded into his brain, scrambling his nerves for a moment.
As soon as Pan regained control over his body, he punched his bed frame. “Supid! You’re bucking stupid, Pan!”
Getting up from his bed as much as the tiny dorm allowed, Pan leaned forwards and flipped the switch with the tip of his hoof. The radio buzzed and hummed as its capacitors charged for the first time in four months.
Pan took the hoofset off its hanger and lay back down on his bed, holding it close to his lips. There was no switch to press: Pan had built a speech detection circuit into his set. The radio would send when he spoke and receive when he stopped.
“Hey guys, it’s WL7BBQ,” Pan said pausing for a moment after giving his callsign.
No one replied. Either no one was listening on his old frequency, or no one wanted to talk to him. Pan closed his eyes tightly and decided to talk anyways. Maybe someone would hear, and if not, at least he had tried talking before deciding anything.
“I’m not in a good place right now… I stopped talking because a few of the jocks decided to cut off my horn. It’s still… Bad. It won't heal right. Doctors said it could be a year before the end isn’t raw. I’ll probably never do magic again.”
Pan paused again, silently begging for a reply. None came. By now, he knew, his signal had reached the end of his broadcast range. Anyone who would reply would have by now.
His ears drooped down slowly. Pan rolled over onto his side, deciding to talk anyways.
“My family can’t help me. They’re just out of money. My little sister has runty wings; they got her some alchemy to fix them. She’s in physical therapy now. That’s talking all their time and money. I don’t blame them for it. They committed to that before I got hurt and are just happy I didn’t die… Besides, we’re not on the best of terms. I’m not exactly welcome back home. I told you guys I moved out for good, right?
“Buck… Blaze won't help me anymore either… she… left me… A few hours ago. Or an hour. I don’t know. Feels like forever. Told me to my face that without magic I’m not worth being with and walked away…”
Pan closed his eyes again and waited for several long moments, hoping for any reply at all. Even though he felt certain that no one in the world was listening. Even though he was right.
When standing on the surface of a world, it seems to be all of existence. One can hardly blame the ignorant peoples of the earliest civilizations for believing the night sky was a blanket or a dome, that the patch of ground they inhabited was unique. That it was the center of the universe.
Nor can you blame their more educated ancestors who knew the truth of their planet’s place in the universe for believing they were alone. They were the most advanced people ever to live on their world, and their instruments were the greatest ever built. Those instruments had scanned the heavens and found no signs of life.
Those primitive, lightspeed-only, low-resolution instruments, which by their very nature see further and further back in time as they look further and further away.
Pandora’s radio filtered its signal through the unique gemstone and blasted it out for all to hear. The modulation provided by the small amber stone did more than improve the radio’s range and clarity; it also did the seemingly impossible.
It’s unlikely anypony would successfully make a phone call on their first try by punching in the numbers at random. There were only so many phones on Equestria after all. Pan’s signal left Equus’s atmosphere, as all radio signals do. One and a half seconds later it reached the moon, and the ancient subspace comms relay placed by necessity upon it.
The galaxy is a bigger stage than a mere nation. The odds of a radio signal’s modulation matching the encryption key needed to call a particular ship were next to impossible. But for that signal to be linked up with a random ship—well, Lady Luck approves of those odds.
The relay detected Pan’s signal, accepted the security code built into the modulation, looked up the code in its routing table, and fired the signal halfway across the Orion Arm with a burst of tachyons, a process completely imperceptible to Equestria’s oh-so-advanced sensors.
The signal traveled for many more seconds, until it reached another lonely soul far, far away from Pan’s dorm room. An alien mouth sputtered, nearly choking on the food it had been chewing as the mysterious signal called out to her once more.
A hand tapped the accept call button on a holo display. Translation software had finally decoded the new language, and a reply was sent. The ancient relay on Luna received a burst of tachyons, triangulated the radio signal’s location, and tight-beamed the reply back. A reply which looked like cosmic static to anyone without the right demodulation system.
Pan rolled onto his back and let his left leg hang over the bed, debating dropping his radio’s hoofset. “Oh what’s the point? No one cares about me anymore…”
Pan’s radio crackled and a sing-song female voice with a rather odd accent let out a boisterous greeting. “Opa! WL7BBQ! It’s been months since I heard from you. I’ve just translated your language a few months ago. How are things? Still cheeki breeki?”
Pan’s eyes flew open, and he sputtered and rolled over, bringing the mic back up to his mouth. “H— Hello? Who is this?”
He paused again, waiting for the mare’s reply. A second ticked by, then another, and another. Pan slumped limply atop his bed and moaned. “Buuuuck me! I imagined her. Great…”
Seconds ticked by and Pan dropped his mic. Still more seconds passed, and Pan reached out to turn off his radio.
Then she spoke again. “Oy, blin… Sounds like a really bad time wherever you are. I wish I could reply sooner. You need a hug and a few shots! We’ve got about thirty one seconds of light lag in this call.”
Pan gasped, his ears perked, and his heart soared. “She’s real! Yay!” He dove for his mic, nearly smacking the stump of his horn into the side of his bed. “Hello? Please don’t go! Who Are you? What do you mean, ‘light-lag’?”
Pan stared at his mic for a few short seconds, waiting for the voice on the other side to speak again.
“My name is… You know, I won't make you try and pronounce Chernen in our first conversation. One sec!” She grew silent for a second, and a few electronic blips and beeps came through the speaker. “Looks like in your tongue, my name is Penny. Blin! It’s almost the same. What are the odds?”
Pan shrugged. “I don’t know? Most names are pretty similar sounding in the languages I know. Penny’s a nice name. Mine’s Pandora… Not exactly a stallion’s name, but my parents liked it a lot.”
A few more seconds ticked by. “What? You’re joking, right? Who doesn't know about light-lag?”
Pan raised an eyebrow as the term raced through his mind. “Do you mean like, how it takes a radio signal a few seconds to reach the moon because it can only travel at the speed of light? Where the hay are you where that would even matter? Like, in a volcano on the other side of the planet?”
Penny was silent for almost a minute. Pan’s grip on his mic grew tighter and tighter as the seconds ticked by.
Penny took a deep breath. “Okay. Backlog is clear. I need you to wait about thirty seconds before saying anything after you stop talking, okay? How old are you, and is that an adult for your species? Where do you live? Are your parents or guardians nearby? If you are not an adult, do you have their permission to use the ansible network? How did you get my ship’s frequency?”
Pandora blinked several times as he was bombarded with the list of questions. He sat up in bed, scratching at the back of his head with a hoof. “Uh, well, that’s a weird thing to ask. You can tell I’m an adult by how I sound. I’m not squeaky-girly.”
Pandora stopped talking and slowly counted to thirty. Penny snorted. “Ha! Nice try. My last girlfriend sounded something like a jar of marbles being shook underwater. You can’t judge someone by the sound of their voice without knowing what they are. Biologically, I mean. Please, answer me in full.”
Pan shrugged to himself and nodded. “Okay. I’m twenty three years old, and that’s definitely an adult for ponies. Not for dragons though… Oh! Now your question makes sense. Sorry! I live uh, no where? I’m getting kicked out of the dorms tomorrow morning. The only place I can go is a fire watch tower near Ponyville. My uncle can get me a job there on no-notice… I haven't called him yet. Wasn’t sure if I wanted to well… yeah… you know.”
Pandora paused for a moment to think back on what Penny had said. “Wait, what's an ansible network? Am I dialing into some military relay or something? I’m sorry! This is the frequency I’ve used for years.”
Penny’s response came forty six seconds later. “А? You don’t know what the ansi— Where are you? Is your star on the very fingers of civilized space?”
Pan’s eyebrows peaked, his lips pursed. “My star? Uh, I don’t think your translation’s very good.”
“The word isn’t star? Okay, no problem. What is the name of the cosmic fusion reaction your planet orbits?”
Pan’s pupils dilated. The long lag time. The confusion about location involving the names of stars. A network type he, a radio nerd, had never heard of even if just by name.
Pan’s hoof shook as he drew the mic close to whisper into it. “Are—are you not on Equus? Am—am I talking to a secret moonbase? I’m so sorry! I’ll smash this set. No one will know! I didn’t know we’d ever launched any rockets at all! I thought that was just a weird science idea. I’m sorry!”
Pan continued to hold the mic, trembling, waiting for Penny’s reply saying all was forgiven before he flicked off his radio forever.
“What? Nyet! I’m not a base! This is the CS Dawn of Destiny, part-time exploration ship, part-time fuel tanker. Registration number CS-8936-23-90. You can look me up on any—excuse me, Pan, but did you say rockets?”
Pan blinked. “Um, yeah… What other possible way to get into space is there? Get a super-powerful unicorn to teleport you?”
Penny moaned. “Oy, blin… your civilization is pre-spaceflight. Well, this is awkward. So uh, you won't believe me, but you’ve somehow patched what I assume is an actual radio into what amounts to the Intergalactic Network. If I had to guess based on our lag, I am nearly eight light years from your planet right now.”
Pan’s mood soured. “Horseapples. Go make fun of somepony else.”
Pan hung up his mic and went to tun his radio off. “I’m not making fun of you. You, uh… Well, you’ve made first contact for your civilization. Pozdravleniya! You’re the most important person in your history so far. Please don’t hang up. I’m the only person aboard, and I have six days of acceleration left before I get back to civilization.”
Pan paused, his hoof touching the switch, held back by a single empathetic thought. There was nothing Pan understood better than being alone, scared, and in need of a friend. If Penny wasn’t making fun of him, then she was either insane or telling the truth.
Given the evidence Pan had, either she was telling the truth, or some odd geography, atmospherics, and possibly ambient arcane levels were messing with their radio signal.
She’s either insane and needs a friend, or she’s an alien and needs a friend. Either way… I need a friend.
Pan picked the mic back up, kicked a stack of failed assignments off his chair, and sat down.
“I’m still here, Penny. So, what’s space like?”
The two talked long into the night. When morning came, Pan hadn’t slept. He still wasn't sure if his new friend was crazy or not, but he knew she was fun to talk to. So fun, he decided to take the job his uncle could get him.
When Pan moved into the Firetower the next day, he took his radio equipment with him. Over the next few months, a friendship was forged between the two. Their daily conversations taught each other about the worlds they inhabited. One vast, the other small, both equally fascinating.
If only they had known then that a third party had tapped their line, and was very much interested in the potential profit a call to the “off limits” K3 Sector had to offer.
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Ah, so you did write it!
9023386 Of course I did :3 I wanted to.
HOOOOO SHIT! IN MEDIAS RES!
Let's get it on!
Meep gonna give it to ya!
Buck waiting for you to get it on your own,
Meep gonna deliver it to ya!
Knock knock, open up the book,
IT'S REAL!
With the scifi, poners, and alien spiel!
Very interesting so far. I see a lot of potential in this.
MAN, do I love space and THIS LINE:
That line gave me chills. So far, this story encompasses exactly what I like about space stories. The writing itself is pretty good, too.
You now have a favorite, upvote, and track. Godspeed and good luck, sir. Hope this story comes a long way. Glad I caught this in the 'new stories' section!
im just gonna get my popcorn! cause:
media.giphy.com/media/ygqMjv2x8KSxW/giphy.gif
Probably
9023708 Is into the dark a reference to something?
9023761
Not really. I just had a story called Into the Black: A Mare's Tale that was another space sci-fi. I figured it was just a funny coincidence, but figured I'd test it, just to see
Is this a sequel? How do I know this story won't die after only one chapter?
9023835 This is not a sequel. If you want my track record for finishing stories, I have only cancelled 2 out of 25. Furthermore, chapter 2 is already written and will be relaced tomorrow if this is featured today.
9023451
Psssst! Meep is female
9023451 The PoV header gave you chills? Interesting! I've always done those for the sake of liking it when movies to them. Is there any reason it grabbed your attention? If I had to make a guess, it's that the stardate combined with the location tag tapped into your expectations for science fiction, drawing on memories of (most likely) Star Trek. I only ask because I've always been bad with narrative hooks XD
Okie-dokie, I'm following this now. It's sounding like I'd be mad not to.
9025769 Hey! You're the guy who wrote Grief is the Price We Pay ^.^ That story was awesome! I hope you enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed it :3
9025777
Well, having read the second chapter and gotten a better feel for Pan's character and what's up with him, it'll definitely be...interesting. Regardless, I've been hoping to find a sci-fi themed fic like this for awhile now, so this should still be fun.
9026046 Don't worry,Pan's just being set up for character growth and development :3
Wow, this starts right in the thick of the action.
RIP Equestria, doomed by coincidental first contact.
Great story so far.
Lately, I have been reading a few sci-fi books off of Amazon.
They are often of lower quality, more poorly written, and full of grammatical errors than most fan fiction I have read her at fimfiction. Professional writers shouldn't loose to fan fiction authors. 😖
9039301 Wait, really? AM I actually better than for-profit self-published authors? Huh... You know I could rewrite this to be non-copywritten once its done if people love it >>
Very interesting beginning
Especially when they're EXACTLY 1 in a million.
Wow, I already feel very sorry for Pandora. I hope he can get his horn fixed with some nano medicine.
At finally got around to reading this, and I'm named for space pirets, but hey they have Harlocks ship so bonus.
Please tell me the Dawn has a snarky AI!
Well I'm very interested to see where this gos, onward!!!
9126097 Hi Nova! Long time no see :3
Slavers? How disgusting. They may as well be Imperials.
You may want to take a look over this again:
For whatever reason, the letters got replicated rather badly, unless it's supposed to mean something. I'm not as meme-aware as I'd like. :D Either way, it seems to have affected every instance of that phrase in this chapter.
???