Chapter II - The Best Laid Plans of Mares and Men
Darkening Star
Chapter II
The Best Laid Plans of Mares and Men
“Equestria to Twilight!”
Rainbow Dash’s shouting left Twilight’s ears ringing, nearly causing her to drop the quill and parchment she was holding with her magic. “Huh? What?” The bewildered unicorn turned back towards her friends, their expressions ranging from concerned to annoyed.
“Ugh, haven’t you heard anything we’ve said?” Rainbow Dash groaned.
“Sorry, I was just lost in my own world there,” Twilight said, lowering her head. “I mean just look at all of this!” She added, waving her foreleg in a sweeping motion across the room while sliding the quill and parchment back into her saddlebags.
The group looked around the room they now found themselves in: a dim and dark metal chamber, lit only by ceiling mounted green and yellow lights, their sources obscured by the faint haze that seemed ever-present throughout the dome. Strange glowing cylinders and panels were set into the walls, their surfaces flickering with undecipherable symbols or runes, which, of course, Twilight insisted on stopping at and scribbling the symbols down in her notes. The chamber was attached to a half a dozen winding corridors. It looked exactly like the rooms and corridors they had been passing through for the past half an hour.
“Yes, it’s all quite fascinating!” Rainbow said, doing her best imitation of Professor Trottson’s voice and waving her fore-hooves around emphatically. She regained her composure. “Can we go now?”
“What? Are you pulling my tail?” Twilight asked, in genuine surprise. “After all the fuss you made outside, you want to go back now?”
“Yeah, well, it’s getting hotter in here,” the cyan pegasus replied, running a hoof across her forehead. “The humidity’s killing me.”
Pegasi were far more sensitive to environmental changes than earth ponies or unicorns, but even Twilight could tell it was getting hotter. She could see Rainbow and Fluttershy were sweating profusely and they were no doubt having more trouble moving through the heavy, moisture-filled air than the rest of them. The temperature had been steadily rising as they made their way deeper into the structure, as had the humidity. She guessed the relative humidity was well over 80% and that was only making it feel hotter.
Fluttershy was leaning against Applejack for support and panting lightly. “I think… we should go…” the yellow pegasus managed between breaths.
Twilight frowned. “But-.”
“Come on, Twilight,” Applejack interrupted. “Don’t ya think we’ve been here long enough? It’s a long way back to camp and it’ll be dark soon.”
“Alright, alright!” Twilight conceded. “We’ll head back…” she began, looking around the small room they had entered at all the corridors winding off of it. “Just as soon as I figure out where we are…”
Fluttershy’s eyes widened. “Y-you’re lost!?” she stammered in alarm, shrinking back.
“I don’t believe this!” Rainbow Dash said, bringing a hoof to her face.
“I was making a map, honest!” Twilight shot back defensively, a little louder than she intended. “I just got turned around in that last junction-.”
“Save it Twilight.” Rainbow said, cutting her friend off. Twilight may have been lost but Rainbow knew where they were. “All we have to do is…” she trailed off when her ears picked up a faint clanging sound. “Wait, what was that?”
“You heard it too?” Twilight asked looking at each of her friends in turn. They all gave her a confirming nod. As she was turning back towards where the sound had come from something caught her eye. “Look!”
At the far end of an adjoining corridor, a dark shadow could be seen moving along the wall, accompanied by the faint clanging of metal against metal they had heard earlier. The shadow shrank in size, presumably as whatever was casting it moved deeper into the structure, and the clanging sound became harder to hear. When the shadow had disappeared completely from view, the clanging was replaced by a faint whirring, and then silence.
The quartet remained still and silent for a long moment afterwards, waiting to see if the shadow or the noise would return. When neither did, Twilight took a tentative step towards the corridor.
“Come on,” Twilight said looking back at her friends. “Let’s take a look.” She began slowly walking down the narrow hallway in search of the shadow caster. Rainbow Dash shared a glance with Applejack. They both shrugged and followed the unicorn’s lead. Fluttershy looked distraught. She did not want to have anything to do with whatever was down that corridor, but she did not want to be left behind either. She sighed and hurried after her friends, following them closely.
* * *
The air inside the Borg sphere shimmered blue as four figures materialized on a catwalk within the vessel. Upon arriving, the Away Team swept their weapons in a defensive arc around their position, just in case they were beaming into an ambush. While subterfuge was not consistent with typical Borg tactics, during their time in the Delta Quadrant the crew of Voyager had learned that it paid to be vigilant. When Captain Janeway deemed they were in no immediate danger, she and the rest of the Away Team spread out, taking stock of their surroundings.
The area they found themselves in, deep inside the sphere, almost resembled a large hollow torus. The sphere’s core stood at the center; its shape similar to that of a challis or hourglass. The expanses between the core and the outermost bulkheads were filled with countless metal walkways like the one they found themselves on, crisscrossing the expanses, tied together by dark metallic scaffolding. As her eyes traced over the seemingly endless framework, Janeway still found it hard to believe they were only seeing a fraction of the vessel’s interior. The captain supressed a shudder; Borg ships made her skin crawl.
“Janeway to Voyager,” the captain called tapping her communicator. “Seven, status?” She waited patiently for a response, knowing it would take the former drone a few moments to tap into the Borg’s sensors. A short while later Seven’s voice crackled over the comm.
“The Borg did not detect the transporter activity.”
Commander Chakotay’s gaze shifted from the imposing structures within the sphere to Janeway. “So far, so good,” he said.
“Remember,” Janeway added, holding up a finger, “we’ll only have ten minutes to get out once the first charge has been set.”
“The rest of the charges will have their timers synchronize once they have been armed,” Tuvok added.
“Understood,” Chakotay confirmed before he and Lieutenant Paris headed off down the metal walkway towards the core of the sphere, en route for the central plexus. Janeway nodded to Tuvok and the pair of officers headed the opposite direction, making their way towards the damaged power junction.
Upon reaching the outer wall of the torus, the open area around the catwalk ended, giving way to a series of narrow claustrophobic corridors. They wound their way through the sphere, crisscrossing at odd angles and forming an unending labyrinth. The Away Team had to check their tricorders constantly to ensure they were heading in the right direction.
“Janeway to Voyager,” the captain called again. “Seven, are there any Borg between us and the junction?” Again, there was a brief pause before Seven replied.
“Two drones, repairing a plasma relay, twenty metres ahead. They do not pose a threat.”
Sure enough, through the hazy atmosphere of the sphere, a pair of figures could be seen ahead of them. Two Borg drones stood facing a damaged section of the corridor wall, their lifeless eyes focused on the plasma relay as they soldered its edges, mending them with their mechanical armatures.
“Keep your weapon lowered. They should ignore us,” Tuvok said.
Janeway and Tuvok carefully made their way around the pair of drones, keeping their weapons lowered and giving the Borg soldiers as wide a berth as the narrow corridor allowed. The drones kept their backs to the Away Team, continuing their repairs to the damaged conduit, seemingly unaware of, or uninterested in the officers.
“There’s the junction,” Janeway said, pointing to a room off of the corridor. The octagonal room was small; less than four metres across at its widest point, with Borg alcoves set into four of its eight walls. Fortunately they were all presently empty. The large rectangular power distribution node stood at the center of the room. Several of the green diamond shapes protruding from its sides were singed and cracked and many of the cables extending from its top to the ceiling were severed and hanging loosely at its sides. There was no doubt this was the damaged node Seven had described.
The captain slung the strap on her rifle over her shoulder, while Tuvok opened the small carrying case containing the spatial charges. He passed one of the fist sized explosives to Janeway, while he himself took the other two. They attached the cylindrical charges to the node’s surface with their magnetic locks, spacing them evenly around it and arming each one in turn. The charges’ casings took on a soft red glow once activated and a faint beeping sound could be heard from each of them, indicating the passing of each second between now and detonation.
“Janeway to Chakotay. Charges set. We’re returning to the transport coordinates.”
“Acknowledged,” Chakotay answered. “We’re approaching the central plexus.”
“Understood. Janeway out.”
The captain allowed herself a slight smile. It felt good when a plan came together. She nodded to Tuvok and they started back down the corridor towards the extraction point.
* * *
The four equines turned down the narrow hallway where the shadow had disappeared. The corridor’s walls were lined with evenly spaced slots composed of dark metal, each one with a flickering green disk set at its top. Most of them were empty, but Twilight caught sight of one, near the end of the corridor, which was not.
“Girls, over here,” Twilight called.
The rest of the group hurried over to where Twilight was standing and quickly caught sight of what she was looking at; the strangest creature they’d ever seen was occupying the slot. The being stood on two legs and was almost completely clad in dark grey metallic armour. It had no visible fur or hair. The creature’s forelimbs rested at its sides as it stood in the slot and Twilight couldn’t help but notice how asymmetrical they were. Its left limb had a five digit grasping hand at its end, while it’s right sported some kind of mechanical pincer, like a vice-grip, and was disproportionately longer than the left.
The creature’s head was even stranger. It had no muzzle, just a small protruding nose above its mouth. It’s right eye was closed, while it’s left, assuming it had one, was completely obscured by an oddly shaped metal object on his face; it appeared to be imbedded directly into the skin. In fact as Twilight continued her examination of the creature, she found it difficult to tell where the metal components ended and the creature’s flesh began.
Applejack eyes squinted as she looked over the creature and her face scrunched up into a grimace. “Hansom fellow,” she said sarcastically.
“This is incredible!” Twilight exclaimed.
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “That’s not the word I had in mind.”
Twilight paid no attention to her friends’ jibes; her mind was too busy racing with possibilities and she was almost shaking with excitement. “Think about it. If this whole thing fell from the sky, that would make this creature an extra-equestrial!”
“An alien?” Rainbow said, raising an eyebrow, unable to hide her scepticism. “Like, from outer space?”
Twilight moved closer to the creature and stopped directly in front of it, looking up towards its face. She cleared her throat and put on the biggest smile she could manage before addressing it.
“Hello sir or madam. My name is Twilight Sparkle and, on behalf of Princess Celestia, as her personal student and the bearer of the Element of Magic, I would like to formally welcome you to Equestria.”
The creature remained standing in the slot, eye closed, seemingly unaware of the unicorn’s greetings.
“Ugh, that introduction would put anypony to sleep,” Rainbow Dash groaned. “Here, let me try.” The cyan pegasus flew up into the air, hovering at eye level in front of the strange creature. “Hey, I’m Rainbow Dash, fastest flyer in Equestria and all around awesome pegasus,” she finished, striking a pose midair.
Again the creature remained completely motionless; the almost inaudible sound of its breathing being the only indication it was alive at all.
“Hello?” Rainbow pressed, tapping the creature’s chest with her hoof. “Anypony home?”
“Maybe we should let him sleep,” Fluttershy squeaked. “What if he gets angry? Animals in hibernation don’t like it when they’re woken up before spring.”
“She’s right,” Applejack agreed. “Ain’t very neighbourly to barge into somepony’s home and shake ’em awake.”
Rainbow Dash sighed and returned to the ground. “Yeah, I guess. Maybe he’ll be awake when we come back.” Rainbow, Fluttershy and Applejack turned to leave.
“Wait,” Twilight said, before the others could make it very far. “Before we go I want to check and see if he has magic.”
“Sure that’s a good idea?” Applejack asked.
“Don’t worry, the scan is passive magic. He won’t feel a thing.” A familiar purple aura appeared around the unicorn’s horn as she cast her spell. The creature’s motionless form took on a similar glow, shimmering and sparkling as Twilight’s magic enveloped it.
Suddenly, a loud shrilling sound began ringing from all around them. The group scanned the room nervously, unable to locate its source. The same whirring sound they had heard earlier caused Twilight to refocus her attention on the strange creature. Steam hissed from the edges of the slot in which it stood, and the glowing disk above it flickered even more rapidly. Small lights scattered haphazardly across the creature’s armour began blinking and its eyepiece lit up, glowing a vivid green. The creature’s right eye opened.
It was looking directly at Twilight.
* * *
“There’s the access corridor.”
Commander Chakotay and Lieutenant Paris stood at a crossroad deep inside the sphere’s core. The long hallway ahead of them was twice as wide as the sphere’s other corridors and beyond it was the sphere’s central plexus. A dull orange glow could be seen emanating from the end of the corridor.
Before the officers could make it any deeper inside, the high-pitched shrill of a Borg alarm began sounding throughout the sphere and a yellow force field shimmered into existence across the corridor, blocking their path. The two men shared a worried glance. Lieutenant Paris tested the shield’s solidity with the butt of his rifle, to no avail. The force field had ended any chance of continuing forward.
“Chakotay to Janeway,” The commander called, tapping his communicator. “A force field just went up around the central plexus. We can’t get to the target location.”
“I don’t know how, but they must have detected us,” Paris added.
“We’ll have to abort,” The captain replied over the comm, her tone carrying an odd mixture of both irritation and fear. “Return to the beam out site.”
“Understood. Chakotay out.”
The two men hurried down the narrow passages of the sphere back towards the extraction point. Paris turned a corner and nearly ran into Chakotay, who had stopped dead in his tracks. The lieutenant looked over the commander’s shoulder to see what had given him pause. He couldn’t believe what he saw.
The scene playing out at the end of the corridor was surreal. Four brightly coloured quadrupeds were clustered around a Borg alcove; the drone within was coming online and slowly advancing towards them.
“Are those horses?” Paris wondered aloud.
Paris watched as the quartet backed away from the alcove, chattering to each other and the drone in an expressive manner, almost as if they were trying to speak to it. A faint chirp from his communicator confirmed his suspicions; its built-in translator had identified the sounds as a language and it was beginning to decipher it. Though he could not yet make out what the equines were saying, it was clear the drone was not listening to them.
The drone had backed the purple equine, who was still pleading with it to no avail, into a corner and stood towering over her. The Borg soldier suddenly reached out with its hand, grabbing the equine by its throat and hoisting it up into the air; the mechanical pincers of the drone’s other arm clamped onto one of the quadruped’s flailing limbs. A red beam of light emanated from the drone’s eyepiece and it began tracing across the equine’s face.
The other quadrupeds began shouting loudly and one spun around and kicked the drone with its hind legs. The drone shrugged off the impact, completely ignoring the others, its attention focused on the small creature in its grasp.
“We’ll have to find another way around,” Paris muttered. He ripped his eyes away from the spectacle and turned to Chakotay, just in time to see the commander raising his hand phaser and pointing it at the Borg drone. “Chakotay, what are you doing!?”
Chakotay’s gaze remained fixed on the offending drone as he carefully aimed his weapon. “The captain said we’re here to save these people, remember?”
He fired.
* * *
Applejack looked around in a daze, unsure of exactly what had just happened. The strange biped had grabbed Twilight, and the farm pony had bucked him almost reflexively, an action she was sorely regretting. The mechanical soldier had barely reacted to her kick. It had felt like she was bucking a solid metal post and her hind legs were aching something fierce. But as she had turned back around there had been a bright flash, and the next thing she knew, the creature had released its grip on the unicorn and was tumbling backwards onto the metal floor, where it remained, motionless.
“Are you alright?”
The voice drew Applejack’s attention down one of the adjoining corridors. Not twenty strides away were two more bipeds, slowly approaching.
“Stay back!” Rainbow Dash shouted, taking up position between Twilight and the newcomers. She maintained an aggressive posture, keeping her body low to the ground and her wing spread out to their fullest extent, trying to make herself look as imposing as possible. This seemed to startle the newcomers and they halted their advance. Their eyes seemed oddly focused on her wings and their expressions betrayed looks of surprise more than fear.
“Take it easy,” one said, holding his forelimbs out in what looked like a placating gesture. “We’re not your enemies.”
“I said, back off!” Rainbow repeated taking an aggressive step forward. They were not going to get anywhere near her friends as long as she had something to say about it.
The other creature turned to address the first. “Commander, we don’t have time for this.”
“Listen,” the ‘commander’ continued speaking, waving his companion off. “I don’t know why the Borg have taken an interest in you, but now that they have, they won’t let you go. There could be thousands of drones in here, just like that one,” he pointed to the fallen soldier, “and they won’t stop until they have you. I want to help you but you’re going to have to trust me.”
Applejack, who had been watching the exchange in silence, placed a hoof on her friend’s shoulder. “Ease up there, RD.”
“You can’t be serious!” Rainbow shouted, finally breaking her stare with the tall creatures and looking Applejack in the eye. “You saw what they did to Twilight-.”
“They don’t look anything like that!” Applejack shouted cutting her friend off.
It was true, while they were all bipeds; the newcomers looked vastly different from the fallen soldier. They wore no armour, just simple black and red clothing. Their bodies were devoid of the strange metallic components that were embedded all over the drone’s form. They even had short, stylised manes atop their heads. But what truly set them apart were their eyes.
Unlike the drone’s cold, lifeless eyes, the eyes of the newcomers were vivid and expressive. Applejack had always been able to tell a lot about ponies by reading their eyes. Whether it was because she held the Element of Honesty or simply due to her own honest nature, she could always tell if somepony was being truthful. As she locked eyes with the one that had spoken to them, it was if she could see right through him, and she saw the truth in his words.
Applejack looked back to Rainbow Dash. “Ah know when somepony’s lying. He ain’t.”
Rainbow Dash let out a frustrated sigh but finally relented, furling her wings back to her sides and stepping back, allowing the newcomers to come closer. She kept her eyes fixed on the commander, who slowly approached Twilight and knelt down beside her.
Applejack’s pulse quickened when she realized she had lost sight of Fluttershy. She spun around searching franticly, until she caught sight of a quivering pink and yellow ball in an adjacent slot. The frightened pegasus had retreated into the alcove and was curled up on the floor, covering her eyes with her fore hooves.
“Come on sugar cube, we’re gettin’ out of here,” Applejack said. Fluttershy remained silent, paralyzed by fear. Applejack shed her saddlebags and in one swift motion managed to haul the quivering pegasus onto her back. Fluttershy’s forelegs wrapped themselves tightly around Applejack’s neck and she buried her face in the farm pony’s mane, her eyes still clenched shut. Relived her timid friend was alright, Applejack turned back to Twilight.
The commander was still kneeling beside Twilight. “Let me see your neck,” he said, looking over the area where the drone had grabbed her. Rainbow Dash stood next to him, trying to bore a hole through him with her hardened glare. Her whole body twitched as she fought the urge to clobber the newcomer, but remained ready to jump him if he so much as laid a finger on her friend.
Twilight had barely even acknowledged the newcomers; she was still staring at the fallen drone in shock. “I didn’t mean to upset him,” she whispered, making no move to resist the tall creature’s examination. Her expression morphed into a frown. “He wouldn’t listen to me!”
“You can’t reason with the Borg. They-.”
“Bridge to Away Teams,” a faint voice called, cutting short his response. “The Borg are trying to use our comm link to triangulate Voyager’s position in orbit. We’re re-modulating, but you’ve got to hurry!”
“Orbit?” Twilight said, as if she was coming out of a trance. Her eyes widened when she realized just who it was she was talking with. “You’re aliens too!?”
The second creature, who had been standing watch, turned back and glared at his kneeling companion. Twilight got the distinct impression he did not like where her line of questioning was going. The first opened his mouth to speak, but whatever his response was, it was drowned out by a sudden deafening roar.
The sound seemed to come from all around them, reverberating and echoing down the corridors. As the roar morphed into something intelligible, Twilight realized it was the sound of countless voices all speaking in unison. There was no doubt in her mind they were speaking to her.
“We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”
Twilight supressed a shudder; the Borg’s message shook her to her core. Their voice was indifferent; it carried no anger or malicious intent. The message was not to be taken as a threat or an ultimatum, but simply a fact. And it terrified her.
“Commander! We have to go now!” the standing creature shouted in alarm. Everypony present turned towards him and immediately caught sight of what had him panicked. At the end of the dim corridor, the silhouettes of more bipedal creatures could be seen through the gloom, rapidly closing the gap between them; the red beams of light from their eyepieces’ flickering across the walls as they were carried through the structure’s the hazy atmosphere.
“Come on, we’re getting out of here.” The commander said, rising to his feet and beckoning them down the opposite direction. He was followed in short order by the second. “And whatever you do, don’t let them touch you!”
Applejack, looked to Rainbow and Twilight. They all knew their best, and presently only course of action was to follow the newcomers and hope they were true to their word. The alternative was to face the approaching soldiers alone, and that was not an attractive prospect. The four ponies fell in behind the two fleeing ‘aliens.’
Paris shot a glance at Chakotay as they ran. “The captain isn’t going to like this,” he said.
Chakotay kept looking forward. “You leave that to me.”
* * *
Captain Janeway and Lieutenant Tuvok raced across the long catwalk towards the beam out site, the loud clanging of their boots against the metal floor almost drowning out the screeching alarms within the Borg vessel. They had not encountered any drones since the alarms had been activated, which was something Janeway was silently thankful for, as she was certain they now considered the Away Team a threat.
The duo stopped upon reaching the beam out site at the center of the long metal bridge. Janeway paused a moment to catch her breath, while Tuvok kept watch for any approaching threats. The Vulcan flipped open his tricoder and checked the status of the charges they had set. The small device indicated the charges had not yet been discovered and were still counting down to detonation.
Janeway sighed impatiently and was starting to raise a hand to her communicator, when she and Tuvok caught sight of movement at the opposite end of the catwalk. Both officers held their weapons high, aiming down the narrow walkway at the approaching figures. Janeway recognized Commander Chakotay and Lieutenant Paris running towards them, but her grip on her phaser rifle tightened when she saw they were not alone.
The captain’s eyes widened once she realized the officers were not being chased by Borg drones, but instead were being followed closely by four small quadrupeds. They almost looked like small horses. Growing up on her grandfather’s farm in Indiana meant Janeway was well acquainted with horses, but these creatures, standing less than a meter tall, brightly coloured and with disproportionately large heads and eyes, were unlike any equine she had ever seen.
The Starfleet officers slowed to a stop once they reached the extraction point. The two men’s uniforms were drenched in sweat and they leaned against the railings of the metal catwalk desperately trying to catch their breaths. The four legged creatures following them stopped as well, not looking to be in much better shape. Their manes were dishevelled, their coats were dripping with sweat and they were all panting heavily. Two of them promptly collapsed upon reaching them while a behatted third remained standing carrying the fourth on its back.
“Gentlemen, what is this?” Janeway snapped, gesturing at the quadrupeds, making no attempt to mask her irritation. Things seemed to be going from bad to worse and the last thing they needed were more complications.
Lieutenant Paris met the captain’s gaze, still leaning against the metal railing. “You can tell the Doc,” the helmsman wheezed, his sentence punctuated by gasps for breath, “we’ve isolated… the locals,” he finished, wiping his forehead.
Tuvok’s solemn expression never faltered as his gaze shifted between the newly arrived officers and their four legged companions.
“Commander, this is a direct violation of Starfleet protocol-.”
“You can lecture us about the Prime Directive once we’re back aboard Voyager,” Chakotay interrupted, cutting the Vulcan off.
Janeway frowned at her first officer. She strongly disagreed with his decision to reveal themselves to the planet’s indigenous life forms, but she granted now was not the time to argue about it. “Away Team to Voyager,” the captain called, tapping her communicator. “Eight to beam up.”
“Eight?” Ensign Kim’s confused reply sounded from their combadges.
“Energize,” the captain confirmed.
On Voyager’s bridge, Harry Kim was seated in the central command chair. He signalled Lieutenant Torres at the operations station to begin the transport. When he received no response, he turned back to face her.
“B’Elanna?”
Torres growled as she slammed her fists on the console. “The Borg are generating some kind of electromagnetic field around their ship. It’s interfering with the transporter.” She looked up from the console. “As long as they’re in there I can’t get a lock on them.”
“Harry, what’s the hold up?” Janeway’s voice called over the bridge speakers.
“Captain, the Borg are scattering the transporter beam,” the ensign reported. “You’ll need to be outside of the sphere before we can get a lock.”
Applejack struggled to remain standing; the mad dash through the narrow corridors and Fluttershy’s weight on her back was starting to wear on her greater earth pony stamina. She watched the tall creatures as they talked back and fourth, barely able to keep up with what they were saying. Most of it made little sense to her, but it didn’t take a clever pony to realize things were not going their way.
The farm pony looked back down to where Twilight and Rainbow Dash were slowly rising. Their breathing was more regular than it had been moments prior and they seemed to be listening to the tall creatures’ exchange as well.
“Twilight,” Applejack called in a shaky voice, grabbing the unicorn’s attention. “Can’t you just teleport us out of here?”
“I don’t know where we are!” the unicorn responded, sounding exhausted and exasperated. “If I teleported now we could end up inside a wall or worse!”
“Tuvok, deactivate the charges,” Janeway ordered, only half aware of the equines’ chattering. With precious few minutes left on the charges countdown timer, it was imperative that the explosives be disabled in order to buy them enough time to find a way out of the sphere.
The Vulcan security chief nodded and flipped open his tricorder once more, quickly tapping a short series of buttons. The device responded with a negative chirp. Tuvok looked back towards the captain.
“The EM interference is blocking the tricorder’s remote transmitter. I cannot disarm the charges.”
“We’ve got less than five minutes before those charges detonate,” The captain exclaimed in a frustrated tone.
“I thought both charges had to go off to destroy the sphere,” Paris stated, pulling away from the catwalk’s railing.
Janeway shot him a look. “We don’t want to be anywhere near here when every power conduit on this ship overloads.” The captain’s gaze swept across each member of the Away Team, hoping they would have some insight into their current dilemma. All she received in turn were worried looks from her first officer and helmsman, and a stone face from her chief of security. Janeway shook her head. “We need options, people.”
Commander Chakotay’s face lit up and he looked down at the four equines. “How did you get in?”
Twilight cringed when she realized the tall alien was addressing them. The creature’s height definitely made it seem intimidating, but despite the urgency in its voice, there was an air of sincerity about it as well. She shared a look with Applejack and Rainbow Dash, before looking back up towards the towering alien.
“There was a hole in the side of the dome. B-but we’re lost!” Twilight stammered. “I have no idea which way it-.”
“That way,” Rainbow Dash interrupted, still panting and pointing a hoof at a distant section of the wall. Everypony present gave her questioning looks, but she persisted. “I’m positive,” she reassured. The pegasus may have been exhausted, but she still had an impeccable sense of direction.
Lieutenant Tuvok raised his tricorder once more, slowly waving it in the direction the blue equine had pointed to. “Confirmed.” he reported, upon receiving a reading from the small device. “There is a large breach in the hull approximately two hundred meters in that direction.”
“Alright,” Janeway began. “Tuvok, Paris, take point. Commander, watch our backs.” She then looked down at the small quadrupeds. “The rest of you, stay close, keep up and we might make it out alive.”
Twilight was shaken by the alien captain’s command, but she and the other ponies quickly fell in behind ‘Tuvok’ and ‘Paris’, who had already started back down the metal walkway in the direction Rainbow had indicated. Adversity was well known to the unicorn and her friends, but the way their leader had made light of a life and death situation so casually, made Twilight suspect the aliens were all too familiar with them.
“Bridge to Away Team,” Seven of Nine’s voice emanated from the officer’s combadges and filled the air around the group. “Five drones are approaching from a junction to your left, ten meters ahead.”
Not a moment later, two Borg drones rounded a corner down the hall and began a brisk mechanical march towards them. Tuvok and Paris shared a brief glance, nodding to one another, before raising their weapons and targeting the advancing drones. An orange energy bolt shot from Paris’s rifle while a solid orange beam arced from the tip of Tuvok’s hand phaser. Both projectiles met their marks, striking through the drones’ armour in a violent display of sparks.
The drones fell to the ground, their mechanical armatures twitching reflexively even after their bodies had stopped moving. Almost as soon as they had hit the ground, three more drones rounded the same corner, casually stepping over the disabled Borg, paying no attention to their fallen comrades. The two Starfleet officers readied their weapons again, firing at the second wave of soldiers. But as the orange energy bolts collided with the Borg drones, a green shell of energy appeared around their torsos, absorbing the incoming phaser fire. The mechanical soldiers continued their march, unimpeded, forcing the officers back.
“They’ve adapted,” Tuvok observed.
The ponies watched as the aliens fought a losing battle against the advancing soldiers. Their magical weapons now appeared to be completely ineffective and they were rapidly losing ground to the approaching drones. Twilight looked on as one of the drones swung its large mechanical arm like a club, striking at the alien captain, who barely managed to deflect the blow by thrusting her weapon forward with both arms. Twilight could not just stand by and watch; she had to do something.
Offensive spell casting was an art generally frowned upon in the peace loving nation of Equestria. While it was something she had studied, at Princess Celestia’s insistence, while attending the school for gifted unicorns, Twilight had never used it in combat. She and her friends had been in some tough spots before, but the unicorn had somehow always managed to get through them without using those particular skills. Twilight looked from her panting friends to the approaching soldiers as they marched forward, unmoved by her words and unhindered by the aliens’ weapons, and knew there was no other alternative.
The lavender unicorn’s horn took on a purple aura and the air around the mare began to crackle as if it carried a static charge. Her irises disappeared as her eyes began to glow a solid white. Charging complete, Twilight let loose her spell towards the approaching drones.
The deafening bang and blinding flash made Janeway and the other officers flinch as three purple bolts of energy arced from behind them and struck the drones square in their chests. In an instant it was over. One moment the Starfleet officers were fleeing the approaching Borg, and the next, the drones were tumbling backwards, dark blast marks burned across their now singed and sparking body armour.
Ponies and humans alike stared in awe as Twilight’s horn lost its glow and her eyes returned to normal. She slouched, knees shaking and panting heavily, trying her best to remain standing.
“Twilight, are… you… alright?” Applejack asked, still panting.
“Just… a little tired…” The unicorn managed between laboured breaths, returning her friend’s concerned look with a half-lidded expression.
“Bridge to Away Team,” Seven called again. “Six more drones are approaching from behind. Distance thirty metres.”
Chakotay’s body tensed and he looked behind them when he heard the clanging of the pursuing drones’ armoured feet beating against the metallic floor.
“We have to keep moving,” the commander insisted, ending any thought of resting for even a moment longer.
The group pressed on, running through the dim and hazy corridors. The officers’ combadges crackled to life again and Seven addressed them once more.
“More drones, approaching from multiple vectors.”
Two mechanical soldiers appeared at the end of the hallway and marched towards them, their large metallic bodies blocking the narrow corridor and any chance of continuing forward. Twilight readied her magic once more and fired another purple wave of energy at the drones. This time; however, they didn’t react. The same green shield that had stopped the aliens’ weapons shimmered into existence, absorbing the purple energy, and vanished a moment later.
“It can’t be…” Twilight muttered. The drones had just shrugged off one of the most powerful spells she could muster; continuing forward completely unfazed. She stood there gawking in disbelief, until she felt a hand on her back, shaking her back to reality.
“Come on,” Janeway said, with a grim expression, tapping the unicorn on her withers and indicating a corridor to their left. “We’ll have to go around.” The captain was still unsure what bothered her most: the fact that the alien equine held that kind of offensive power, or that the Borg had adapted to it so quickly.
Applejack joints burned as she galloped along behind the rest of the group; the ordeal was testing the limits of her endurance. She turned her head back to check on Fluttershy, when she suddenly felt herself collide with something solid, knocking her on her behind and nearly sending the yellow pegasus sliding off her back. Fluttershy’s grip tightened around her neck as she fought to remain on Applejack’s back and she buried her face deeper into the farm pony’s neck. Applejack tried to shake off the pain and dizziness that accompanied the blow and her head spun around attempting to locate what had stopped her. It did not take her long to spot it.
The was now a semi-transparent wall of yellowish light in front of Applejack, spread across the entire width of the corridor, cutting Applejack, Fluttershy and the alien commander off from the rest of the group.
“Seven,” Janeway called, tapping her communicator. “The Borg have erected a force field. Can you disable it remotely?” There was a momentary delay before Seven responded.
“Yes,” Seven said, her voice uncoloured by the tension of the moment, “but it will take several minutes to bypass the Borg encryption algorithms.”
“We don’t have several minutes,” Paris growled, checking his tricorder. The device registered less than three minutes remaining on the spatial charges’ countdown timer.
Chakotay pulled out his own tricorder and studied the readouts closely. “There’s another hull breach seventy five metres from here. We can make it, but we have to leave now.”
“No way!” Rainbow Dash shouted, her eyes locking with Applejack’s. “We’re not leaving you alone with those things!”
“We don’t have time to argue,” Chakotay countered, his voice carrying an authoritative tone. The drones they had left behind would be catching up with them any second. They had to get moving, and fast.
“Don’t worry RD, Ah’ll take care of ‘Shy.” Applejack said, giving her friend the most reassuring look she could manage. “We’ll all meet up outside.” She wiped the sweat off her brow with a quick sweeping motion of her foreleg, adjusted her Stetson, and looked up to the tall alien commander. “Let’s go.”
Rainbow Dash watched the trio set off running down the narrow hallway, back the way they came, and turned down a second corridor, disappearing from sight. She felt Twilight using her magic to tug at her mane, as she and the others resumed their course for the exit. Rainbow followed suit, glancing back, in the hopes of catching one last glimpse of her friends. She was instead rewarded only with the sight of more mechanical soldiers marching down the corridor after them. The drones passed through the same yellowish shield that had caused the group so much trouble, effortlessly. The cyan pegasus gulped audibly and increased her pace, closing the distance between her and the others.
“This is starting to look familiar,” Twilight called from behind Tom Paris. The unicorn recognized the damaged sections of the corridor’s walls as the ones they had passed on their way in. The air was starting to seem less heavy and she could feel the cool breeze coming from the end of the corridor. “We’re almost there!”
Sure enough, as they turned the next corner they could see sunlight shining in through the large hole at the end of the hall, where the corridor ended prematurely. The jagged edges at its end stood as a testament to the force that had torn it apart. Tuvok was the first to exit, jumping down to the marshy earth, followed closely by Paris, Twilight and Rainbow Dash.
Captain Janeway was the last to leave. She looked back down the corridor and saw that, despite their best efforts to stay ahead of them, at least a dozen Borg drones were closing from behind. The drones stared blankly past her as they marched mechanically towards the hull breach.
Janeway jumped out of the Borg vessel and hit the ground running, sprinting over the uneven terrain to catch up with the rest of the group. “Mr. Kim, we’re clear!”
Ensign Kim walked across Voyager’s bridge looking back at the operations station once more. He could see Lieutenant Torres still struggling to operate the transporters.
“I still can’t isolate their patterns!” the frustrated Klingon engineer shouted.
Kim hurried up around towards the back of the bridge, joining the lieutenant at operations. “Then let’s do a wide beam and just transport everything to the cargo bay,” he suggested, as he began working the console beside her.
Torres looked up from the console, a smile beginning to creep across her face as she considered the ensign’s suggestion. “Good thinking, Starfleet,” she said, as she started putting their plan into action. Why hadn’t she thought of that?
“Captain,” Kim began, tapping his communicator again. “We’re going to use the cargo bay transporters. You’re going to have to stand still and close together while we establish a lock.”
“We can’t stand still, Harry!” Paris shouted as he fired a few shots from his phaser rifle back towards the approaching drones. It did little to slow them down; the orange energy bolts flashed green as they were harmlessly absorbed by the Borg drone’s personal shields. “They’re almost on top of us!”
The group raced across the marshy clearing. While Twilight suspected most ponies could easily outpace the bipeds on flat, open terrain, the uneven ground and the downed trees and debris, meant here, ponies were at a disadvantage to the taller creatures and their longer limbs.
Distracted by her wandering thoughts, Twilight found herself stumbling over an exposed root and landing face first in
the mud. Before she realized what was happening, she felt an arm sliding under her barrel; the alien captain was hauling her back on to her hooves and in an instant they were running once again.
Twilight looked back at their pursuers. Despite never moving faster than a brisk march, they were getting closer, seemingly unhindered by the terrain. She knew they wouldn’t be able to keep ahead of the drones for long, especially once they reached the forest, where the dense foliage would slow them down even more. The disembodied voices coming from the pins on the aliens’ clothing had said they needed to stand still. The gears in Twilight’s mind started turning as she came up with a plan.
“Wait,” Twilight shouted, spinning around to face the approaching soldiers and planting her hooves firmly in the mud. “Let me try something.” Before anyone had a chance to object, the lavender unicorn’s horn took on a purple glow and a large pink bubble formed around the five of them.
The Starfleet officers stopped dead in their tracks, staring in awe at the large shimmering dome that now surrounded them. The Borg drones also slowed their advance. One of them approached the edge of the bubble, testing its solidity with his large mechanical arm, while the others continued their march, circling the pink dome and spacing themselves evenly around it.
Captain Janeway managed to tear her wide eyes away from the spectacle long enough to address her security chief. “Tuvok?” she asked, hoping for some kind of explanation. She watched as the Vulcan withdrew his tricorder once again and began scanning the strange phenomenon.
“It’s registering as an energy field,” Tuvok stated, reading the instrument’s display. “However, the tricorder cannot identify it.”
Twilight strained to maintain the shield around the group, hoping she could keep her concentration long enough for the aliens to do whatever it was they needed to. She watched for several long moments as the soldier prodded the edge of the shield with his arm, causing ripples to form and travel outwards across the surface of the dome. The impacts themselves were not strong and Twilight imagined the soldier could bring a lot more force to bear against the shield. It was almost as if he was testing it…
Without so much as a warning, the drone’s mechanical arm began to penetrate the pink bubble and he pushed his way inside, his body glowing the same green color as before while he passed through Twilight’s shield. The other drones immediately began moving towards the assembled officers and ponies, passing through the shield just as easily as the first one had.
“That’s impossible!” Twilight gasped in disbelief. She dispelled the shield and quickly recast it with a smaller profile, back in front of the approaching drones. They marched through her new shield as if it was not even there. Twilight dispelled the shield again and backed towards the rest of the group. There was nothing else she could do.
“Now, Harry!” Janeway shouted, adjusting her grip on the rifle, ready to use it as a club. They were out of time and if they were not transported immediately, they would have to engage the Borg in hand to hand combat: a contest in which they would be vastly outmatched.
“Initiating transport,” Kim’s voice sounded over the comm.
The drone that had first breached the shield was heading directly for Twilight. Out of desperation she fired another purple wave of magic at the approaching soldier, but it proved to be just as ineffective as before. As the drone was reaching for her, a loud battle cry sounded across the clearing and a blue blur shot through the air, impacting the drone’s head and toppling him over. Rainbow Dash landed next to Twilight.
“Thanks, Rainbow,” Twilight said, giving her friend a confident nod. The expression on her face fell suddenly, when she felt two objects puncture the skin on her neck. The fallen drone’s arm was reaching out towards her and two small tubules had extended from its fingers, imbedding themselves in the unicorn’s hide. Twilight could feel something being injected into her neck, like the poisonous venom from the fangs of a snake, as it began to flow through her bloodstream.
Rainbow Dash looked on in horror and made for her friend, but found she could not move; her entire body was tingling and the world around her was fading away, being replaced by a shimmering blue light, before disappearing completely.
* * *
She continued to drift along with the energy coursing through the conduits of the strange object she had encountered. They travelled the length of the object, reaching its every corner and making thousands of connections within, before circling around and returning to the object’s ever humming and pulsating core. So much power was contained within the object’s heart, and it was perpetually generating more. How could something so completely devoid of magic, save the stars themselves, generate this much energy?
As she travelled through the object, she became more and more aware of the life within. She could sense it faintly; there was life connected directly to the conduits in small amounts, spread throughout the object. She passed one, examining and probing it closely. It almost felt like a living mind, but it was far too small. The synapses were there, but their functions were indecipherable. She realized it had connections reaching far beyond those to the conduits. It was connected to something… else. It was not alive, it was something artificial… and yet she swore she could sense intelligence in it. Yes, there was a rudimentary intelligence there, but no consciousness. How could that be?
She made an attempt to control the life, inhabiting it as she would a living host. For the first time in what felt like forever, she could feel the almost euphoric connection that only life could give. She could also feel a connection to the intelligence and she reached out, trying to make use of it. But long before she could reach it, her host’s life-force was extinguished and the connection was severed.
The small amount of life was simply not enough to sustain her. The set back was irritating, but inconsequential. She would simply have to find a way to inhabit all of it at once. It would just take time, and time was something she had plenty of.
* * *
An energy surge traveled through the monitor displays along the rear of Voyager’s bridge. Harry Kim flinched as the monitor behind the operations station shorted out, and he and Lieutenant Torres were showered with sparks.
“What was that?!” Kim asked, his voice shaking ever so slightly as he regained his composure.
Next to him, Torres was staring wide-eyed at the terminal in front of them. “I don’t believe this!” she shouted. “We’ve just lost over half the gel packs on deck four! The transporters are shot.”
“Did we get the Away Team?” Kim pressed. If the system had failed mid transport… he didn’t want to think about the implications. The young man watched anxiously as Torres checked their status.
“They’re in Cargo Bay 2.” Both officers let out a sigh of relief.
Ensign Kim turned away from the operations station and began planning his next move. While the captain’s team had been safely returned to the ship, Chakotay was still on the planet’s surface and, with the bio-neural gel packs that controlled the transporter’s processors damaged, there was no way to get him back aboard Voyager.
“Seven, hail Commander Chakotay,” Kim ordered, shooting a look at the former drone.
Unfazed by the commotion on the bridge, Seven of Nine had remained standing at the auxiliary tactical station set behind the command chair. Her fingers worked the console with a cold precision. When she received a negative chirp from the console, her response to the commanding ensign was equally cold.
“Communications are offline.”
Ensign Kim frowned. “Then we’d better get to the cargo bay.”
* * *
The sunlight streaming through the small hole grew brighter as Commander Chakotay and the two mares galloped towards it. None of them dared look back at their pursuers, though the sound of their armour clad feet against the metal floor told them they were not far behind.
Upon reaching the corridor’s end, Applejack managed to crouch low enough for Fluttershy to clear the top of the breach as she herself slid through. Chakotay rolled out of his sprint and hit the metal floor, sliding across its smooth surface and through the tear in the hull, before tumbling down the side of the sphere towards the marshy earth below. He landed next to the two ponies, who were already picking themselves up from the fall.
Applejack and Fluttershy began galloping towards the forest’s edge and Chakotay followed quickly in their wake. The commander looked over his shoulder towards the small hole they had just exited and noted the Borg drones following them were not attempting to crawl through the small hole after them. He just hoped whatever interference the Borg were using to block Voyager’s transporters would keep them from using their own as well.
The trio ran towards the edge of the clearing as quickly as the uneven terrain and debris would allow. As the forest loomed closer, Chakotay realized they might actually make it to the tree-line before-
A sudden chirping from the tricorder at his hip caused his heart to sink. The charges’ timer had completed its countdown. The Sphere’s entire power grid was about to explode.
“Get down!” Chakotay shouted, shoving the startled ponies to the ground before hitting the dirt himself.
There was a deafening bang, an intense heat across his back, a sharp pain, and then nothing.
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An additional note: I’d ultimately like to commission a cover image for this story, but I’d like to have more of it written before I look into that seriously. In the meantime, should I keep the combadge image I’m using now, or perhaps find something more fitting?
The combadge: http://d.lanrentuku.com/down/png/1004/Trek_Tech/Combadge_512x512.png is straightforward and leaves no doubt what the story is about, (Star Trek), though it is a bit bland.
Longshot, (who has been quite helpful), has suggested this image: http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x05/falseprofits231.jpg of Voyager by the Barzan wormhole, which is probably more appropriate.
I had also thought of this one: http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/7x11/shattered039.jpg from ‘7x11 Shattered.’
I was hoping to get an image from ‘5x02 Drone’ since it had shots of Voyager, a Borg sphere and an unstable nebula. Unfortunately, the three of them were never shown on screen at the exact same time.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Captain Janeway is best pony
1954167 We just get 403 pages when clicking those links
1954181 Strange, they work fine for me. If you copy and paste the url it should work the same.
they will have to work fast; the Borg cannot get the info in Twilight's mind. i think there's a way to sever the link between a drone and the rest of the Collective, some kind of energy field. I just hope Twilight will be able to fight the mind of the Collective until the Doctor can remove the Nanoprobes.
Mind blow
macalicomm.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Mind-Blown1.jpg
1954353
She'll be fine. The Doctor has "cured" being turned into a drone before.
1957236
Cured perhaps but forever changed.
My piece of advice is sometimes less is more. Sure, it's nice to see and hear what happens between ponies, or what's on an alien ship, or a new place they've discovered, but too much detail can be boring to read.
1960186 That’s certainly something I’ll have to think about. I’ve read several stories recently that have so little description that they almost seem to take place in a void, and it’s possible I’ve overreacted in attempting to avoid a similar fate.
I’m also struggling to balance the information as it would be presented to both the informed and uninformed reader. When I say “the interior of a Borg ship” to a Trek fan, their minds will instantly conjure an image reminiscent of First Contact or Dark Frontier, while the layman might not see anything at all. Such a balance might be impossible but it’s something constantly on my mind as I’m writing.
Another potential problem might be that I’ve been envisioning and planning the story as if it was an episode of Voyager more than a written piece of prose and that is probably hindering it a bit. Perspective and setting changes like the ones in the second chapter were sort of my mind’s eye focusing the camera briefly on the events going on here before jumping back somewhere else. The third chapter, as I have it planned out right now, will be a lot more like the first in that it will be focusing on different places with appreciable gaps in time, (* * *).
Howdy there, John. B_P from WRITE here, responding to your request for a review. To start off, I’ll note that I’ve got some experience with Trek, though not Voyager specifically. With the length of this story, I’ll just be saying things as they occur to me and then summing up a bit at the end, okay? Let’s see what I think (and I apologize in advance).
Prologue
Okay, normally I don’t mention something this small, but because it’s the very first sentence, I’ll just say that I found your use of “somebody” rather than “someone” to be weirdly informal. For all I know, the helmsman actually talks that way on Voyager, but it just didn’t make the tone scream “situation on the bridge” to me, you know?
“conn station” is a good example of something that needs to be explained to the uninitiated. At least in this first instance, I’d suggest just saying “flight control station”.
In fact, all of this first bit needs some explaining. Serious question: was it your intention to drown the reader in jargon? Anyone who isn’t familiar with Star Trek might be turned off by this hook of yours, and even those with a cursory knowledge will probably have some trouble getting past it. Being tossed into the action right at the start like this isn’t a good narrative strategy when you have to throw so much information at the reader with no breaks or proper explanation; action is for after you’ve already got a foundation laid down. Or, at least, your action can’t be so dependent on things that haven’t been given an explanation (like, I have absolutely no idea what a “Jeffries tube” is, and you didn’t really have to mention it in the first place).
”Captain” is a proper noun here, and should be capitalized. This is the only time I noticed you making this mistake so far, though.
You’ve used a word related to “design” three times in two sentences. Bit repetitive.
This next scene was far more interesting than that first one. You really seemed to take your time here, and gave us some nice, developed lore. It works far more nicely.
Is the hull not the exterior? Also, this is the first you’ve mentioned of the sphere having color. I’d imagined—for whatever reason—chrome, so this was a touch jarring to read.
That second segment is a fragment, and I struggle to call it the artsy kind.
”klaxon”. You go on to make this mistake again in future chapters.
I’m noticing areas where you’ve not put commas in spots that they’re required, and it confuses the sentence. This is probably one of the biggest offenders:
Something I’m noticing is that you have a tendency to use any dialogue tag other than “said”. In and of itself, this isn’t that big of an issue (though it can get a touch tedious), but to not just use “said” means that the situation specifically calls for something stronger/more specialized, and the problem I’m having with the way you’ve handled things is that you’ll give us information about how things have been said after we’ve already finished reading the dialogue, and only with the tags. See these examples:
I didn’t think he was shouting until the dialogue said he was, and that came after all the dialogue was over with. There’s not even an exclamation point in there.
You didn’t actually have him stammer, so I didn’t imagine him stammering while I read the dialogue. Seeing the tag forced me to go back and reimagine it.
On a similar note, you seem very reluctant to split your dialogue mid-sentence, and the narrative suffers a bit as a result. Everything sounds kind of rigid, things being said and narrated point by point.
You need to use an em dash for cutoffs, not a hyphen. —, Alt+0151 (or Alt+Shift+- on a Mac). Also, you don’t use other punctuation with them (i.e. omit that period).
In general, I’m also noticing a tendency for the narration to outright tell me things instead of showing them to me, but to be honest, I find myself not minding it as much as I normally might. There are things that I just suppose you wouldn’t be able to work into the narrative organically and just have to say. Although, the point must then be made that this story could have been told with a different style, a focus on events rather than the facts behind them, where the reader is given only the surface information that they need to be aware of and has to make out the rest on their own, if they want to. Too late for that now, though, I guess. All of this isn’t to say, however, that your story is devoid of the normal, avoidable kind of telly-ness, as in areas like this:
You could tell me what their expressions are like, or something else (hell, even just the bit about the silence probably would have been enough), and I would have worked out that they were shocked, without you outright telling me.
Despite that very rocky beginning, this opening wasn’t bad on the whole. Your mechanical skills are excellent, aside from the lack of a comma here or there and other, smaller, often one-off problems. I will say that, were I not reviewing this story, I don’t think I would have kept reading beyond that first scene, which is a shame.
Chapter 1
Heh, another issue right in the hook. Why’s “black” capitalized?
Your writing, if this chapter’s start is any indication, suffers from Lavender Unicorn Syndrome (LUS), the tendency to reference a character with a form akin to “the [adjective] [physical/occupational descriptor]” (the cyan pegasus, the studious librarian, the purple-haired fashionista) rather than the character’s name or a pronoun. This is somewhat of a similar situation to using words more complex than “said” or “asked” for dialogue tags; you should really only do it if the situation actually calls for it, and not just to “mix things up”. If the narrative is going to be calling attention to the fact that Rarity is a unicorn (such as if she’s using magic, perhaps) then it would probably then be acceptable to refer to her as a unicorn. Not necessarily one of any particular color, mind you, but a unicorn. It’s why this:
is more acceptable (though still not entirely—no real reason to refer to her as “cyan”, though that’s not the end of the world) than this:
where the fact that Pinkie is a pink pony has no bearing on anything, and is just superfluous fluff (if you’re following my logic, then you now realize that this one is the end of the world; say goodbye to your loved ones).
This excessive telly-ness is rearing its head again.
Yes, it was obvious. So much so that pointing it out was beyond redundant.
A mechanics issue I rarely get to raise:
Where you would normally use a hyphen to form a compound adjective, if at least one of the parts of the compound naturally has a space in it, you instead use an en dash. –, Alt+0150 on a PC’s num pad, Alt+- on a Mac.
Caps on “the”?
Again, cutoffs require an em dash and no other punctuation. Or, in this case (since it’s not at the end of the sentence and it’s been your style so far), an en dash framed by spaces. That’s pretty much functionally the same as just an em dash.
Omit that first “it”. Or the “that”. Your choice.
The introduction of this new Trottson character is even more telly than you’ve usually been (I could say that about a lot of this chapter so far, in fact). You’re outright telling me that he “has a certain naivety about him” and it “lets him see and approach situations in a different way”. The narrator isn’t a character in this story—it shouldn’t have thoughts and opinions. And “Adrian” is such a human name...
“immediately”.
“the” shouldn’t be capitalized.
LUS is running rampant throughout this, oftentimes literally (in that you actually say “lavender unicorn” very often). It gets tedious, really.
So far (and I know I’m not that deep into the story yet, but still), your characterizations of the main six seem somewhat flat. They’ve not really done or said anything yet that was at all atypical, except perhaps for that coffee segment at the start. You’ve pretty much kept to the clichés, and while that’s fine for a base, you shouldn’t just leave it at that. Expand a bit—play around with your characters. Perhaps the biggest problem your consistent use of clichés causes is its negative impact on many of your attempts at comedy; you redo or reimagine visual gags (which, by definition, are hard enough to pull off in writing as it is) and situations right out of the show and have the characters laugh at them, but why should I? I’ve seen it all before. And so have they, really.
They’re taking undergrads? Recipe for disaster.
Apostrophe.
“widened”.
No... he replied by replying.
You seem to do this sometimes, just randomly capitalizing a word after a comma. Why?
You seem to have trouble deciding between omniscient and limited for your perspective, and it can come off awkwardly.
The comma and semicolon should switch positions here.
Heavy run-on. You don’t seem to do this too often, though, which is good.
You’ve used both “Zebreica” and “Zebraica”. Pick one and be consistent.
“‘t was” and “‘twas” are the common forms.
Why would there be a hyphen there and not a space?
You have an apostrophe both before the “t” and the “was”... Also, “scheduled” shouldn’t be capitalized, the dialogue having been split.
That would be “my”. “mine” is for if the next word to come begins with a vowel rather than a consonant.
In this Luna scene, all of a sudden, you have thought in italics (at least, that’s what it looks like). I don’t recall you having had any before, and I’m now forced to wonder why. It could help immensely with avoiding telly-ness if you have your characters think pertinent information to the reader.
I’m going to stop pointing out individual errors now. Sorry for all the space that’s taken up so far. Just know that they’re there, and you really need a sharp-eyed editor to come in and point them out to you.
Still noticing comma issues (the lack of them, that is) here and there. You might want to grab yourself an editor/proofreader who knows the ins and outs of them to go through this and explain where they’re needed and why. The issue with your cutoffs using hyphens and periods instead of just em dashes pops up more, too. Many, many times.
This chapter was, if I’m honest, a touch boring. Mechanically, you’re a fairly sound writer—aside from a few recurring issues—but your style is rather flat; there’s little solid description (except when its jarringly concentrated on a single character or place here or there, rather than being spread out), and the narrative is far from what could be called demonstrative. Your characterization also leaves something to be desired, everyone seems so shallow.
Chapter 2
Still improper capitalization here and there, but your comma usage seems to have improved a good deal. It’s not perfect, but it’s notably better. One-off errors here and there as well, but perhaps not as many as before. Still have that hyphen/period instead of em dash issue.
You still tell rather than show too often, especially in regards to why characters do what they do, or what they’re thinking. However, like just about every other issue I brought up in previous chapters—and there’s a good possibility I’m just tuning out story weaknesses more often at this point, but still—you seem to be doing a better job about it in this one. Your descriptions of places and events are more often told from a character’s perspective now, though you still sometimes fall back into having the narrator explain things.
Notably, this chapter wasn’t boring to me. Your action was interesting, and I felt far more invested in it now, with the buildup. And nothing much needed explaining about it, so there was less opportunity for either the narrator to tell me too much or the story to show me too little.
Remarks
Sorry for the weird format of this review. I don’t often handle longer stories, but I notice that they generally tend to get better as they go; I wanted to handle this in a stream of consciousness sort of way so that you’d see me noting what’s better or worse as it happens rather than summing up afterwards with something like “Well, X started off bad, but then got better”. There’s not too much more to say here aside from my overall opinion and closing advice, so allow me to give those now.
I didn’t like this story towards the start. It felt almost inaccessible, and during the Voyager bits I found myself wishing I was reading the MLP bits. While I was reading the MLP bits, things were so flat and slow that I found myself wishing for the relative action of the Voyager bits again. This wasn’t a fun combo. Chapter 3, though, was a big improvement, particularly as it went along. Things were happening—things that the narration had actually led me to care about rather than awkwardly thrusting me into without so much as an introduction. There could still be less telling and more showing. There could still be stronger, more multi-dimensional characterization. But as of the third chapter, I actually found myself liking this, so much so that I’m going to track it in the hopes that this proves to be more than a lucky streak.
My advice to you is to read through what you’ve got so far and really look at your narration and characters. Don’t just have your narrator explain to me what Twilight is thinking; if what’s being explained is important, there should be a way that you can work it into your story more organically than that. Don’t just have everyone interrupt Fluttershy because that’s something that’s been proven to happen with her; come up with your own situations and interactions that prove to me that these characters are who you say they are.
And learn to use em dashes.
Buh-bye, now.
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-- Burraku_Pansa, WRITE's Trainer Admin and Resident Namesmith
2015482 Thank you for writing this. I can appreciate the investment of time the review represents and I truly am grateful.
English has never been my strong suit, so I’ll definitely have to pay closer attention to the mechanical errors. I’ve got a bad habit of posting these chapters before they’ve been edited and then making the changes retroactively, so it’s possible that some of these mistakes have been pointed out to me and I simply failed to fix them. The em dashes in particular come to mind.
The prologue does have problems, though I’m still not exactly sure what to do about them because, in a sense, I didn’t write it. Most of what happens in the first and third scene is a retelling/reimagining of the events of an actual Voyager episode, (4x02 - The Gift). Choosing that as a launching point for my story has proven more difficult than I had originally thought. Fleshing out the first scene, which lasted a grand total of one minute and twenty seconds in the episode, (of which less than thirty took place on the bridge), will be hard. It’s also worth pointing out that almost all of the dialogue before Janeway comments on the missing shuttle is taken directly from the episode, so my hands were kind of tied in that respect, (Paris does in fact say ‘somebody’ in the episode).
My initial reaction was to fly through it as quickly as possible since I didn’t want to bore people familiar with the episode with long and detailed explanations, (and because there weren’t any ponies in it); however, I guess I totally lost the uninitiated reader along the way. I was trying to explain the function of the conn station by repeatedly linking it with the helmsman, but it was probably too subtle. I made a point of introducing the Borg as characters but failed to really introduce any of the other characters, hoping their actions alone would speak for them, (though, they weren’t really doing anything).
I did diagnose myself with Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, so I guess it’s good that has been confirmed. I did make a conscious effort to fix that in the second chapter, but I’ll have to tidy up both quite a bit.
I’m still trying to get a handle on the whole show don’t tell thing. There’s a lot of information that I feel has to be presented up front and sometimes I feel you do the reader a disservice by beating around or implying it. That said, people want to read a story, not an essay. Unfortunately, I’ve never written a story before, only essays. So, I’m sure my story comes across like an essay far more often than it should. I have a hard time not justifying or explaining thing. I guess it’s because it’s always been expected.
The first chapter is boring. Obviously, it’s setting up all the pipeline for the second chapter, but that’s no excuse for it not to be enjoyable. Changing the way I approach the characters, description and narration seems difficult, but there has to be way to adjust and vary it enough to make a difference. I’ll have to reflect on that.
Thanks again for taking the time to do this. You’ve given me a lot to think about.
2016758
Not a problem. Not much more to say than that; you pretty much seem to have absorbed my points. I can see now how you set up some obstacles for yourself, taking scenes right from the show as you did.
That's exactly what I thought you were trying to do, and that's exactly why I thought it wasn't working.
Keep up the good work. Thanks
2367678
Thought you were going to add thoughts, not just contest it : /. If I might contest right back…
This isn't a good attitude to go into a piece with. In the author's own words, he tried to make this story as accesible as possible, so it's perfectly fine to go in as a reviewer and point out areas where that accessibility fell short. Whether or not the helmsman is actually formal, and what he actually said, doesn't matter much in this context—not having seen the episode, all I can say is that if I were to watch it right now, not having seen any other episode of Voyager (and thus having no experience with the character), I imagine I would think the writers are killing the action a little by having him be informal at a time like that. Character traits and such are not a valid reason to have someone act in a jarringly unexpected way as the very first thing an uninitiated person sees them doing (and the very first thing they see period, no less).
And as I said in my review, the jargon was excessive without being explained. I came out of that scene with absolutely no idea what a Jeffries tube (among other things) was, so it just wound up seeming superfluous. There was neither the context nor the time to establish it for all that jargon to work.
If I might take from my own review,
LUS is, by definition, the excessive usage of colorful descriptors. I never once said he should remove every single instance of a descriptive pronoun or dialogue tag—I said that he should stick to using them when it's appropriate. Efficiency is very much a goal in fiction, except here, we call it narrative flow. If a reader has to stop every time they finish reading dialogue to go back and read it again how the dialogue tag told them to, or take a moment at each instance of a fancy pronoun to parse it and tie it to a character, then the narrative flow is being excessively interrupted. If you're going to put something in your story, it's not a bad idea to give it a point.
2368848
I'll reiterate that, as a reviewer, I work for the author. If he says that the story should be accessible to the uninitiated, I have to comment on it to be doing my job properly, and that's all there is to it.
I brought jargon up in only two of my paragraphs (really, just two or three sentences) out of my entire review… The descriptors are a different issue entirely, and are very much deserving of emphasis, even if, again, I only mentioned them in one or two paragraphs.
2367678>>2368619
It's always hard to balance the pseudo-science speech/technobabble/jargon between the informed and uninformed reader. Star Trek has a lot of it and people do expect it. I think someone was recently commenting on Metboy's story that it didn’t have enough pseudo-science in it. The TNG era trek series have an almost exponential increase in technobabble as they progress along and Voyager is among the worst. On the one hand you want to have it so it has the right feel, but on the other you don't want to have your reader alt-tab-ing to Memory Alpha every few lines to keep up with what the characters are talking about. I try to link them in the dialogue: like in the prologue, Kim reports tachyons and gravitons, and the characters immediately suggest wormholes and spatial rifts. Provided I make the connection obvious enough should I mention those particles again, hopefully the reader will make the connection without it needing to be spelled out again. I might not have been successful with that in the story, but that has always been my intent.
The jargon at the beginning, while an issue, isn't the big problem with opening, its the complete lack of context. It doesn’t really mater what a Jeffries tube is at that stage of the story, the problem was I failed to establish that it was a 'place' and Seven of Nine was working there before the situation on the bridge developed. The whole opening scene needs to be fleshed out, because there's a lot of context missing for those who have never seen an episode, and I imagine even those who had seen the specific episode wouldn't necessarily be able to recognize the scene in it's current state. The characters could really use a bit of a better introduction too.
So I can't help but feel that this might be a dead story. As is I came across this searching the bowls of the rating filter I am pleasantly surprised and happy by both the subject and length of it. The subject because I am actually not anywhere near to being a Trek fan. It's MLP cross overs that can get me into stories about games or movies or shows and such that I really like to read because it just may open new entertainment forms for me when I check out the other half of the crossover later down the road.
And the length if it because I absolutely love long chapters! Long chapters mostly mean that the author put work into the chapters to make sure that not only is the story there but every thing we as a reader may need in order to get into the story as well.
While I can agree with the review in the comments about the jargon getting a little out of hand, (Never figured out what the J-tubes were, just that it would be bad not to have them.) I feel informed personally into Si-fi stuff to at least get the jist of it.
Of course this all does kinda fall back on my first statement and does raise the question of is this a dead story? The last comment for both this story and of your last blog post at the time of posting this comment are 50 weeks old which does little to give hope of this still being active.
Weather or not it is or isn't I liked what I've read so far either way so mission accomplished on that front.
No one gives voyager credit,
It's my favs
Is this going to continue!! Please answer me!!
6446187 Probably not. I've always wanted to get back into writing this, but the FIM magic kind of ended for me at the end of season 3. At some point, if I can't get going again, I may post a blog detailing how the story would have gone and ended. I had 2 or 3 chapters outlined past this one in various stages of completion kicking around somewhere. Sorry if that's not the answer you were looking for.
6465767 I see. That's disappointing, oh well, I fully understand.
Rather a shame you've gave up on this. Even if you don't care for what happened to the show post-Season 3, I hope you come back to this someday. It showed some interesting promise with mixing up Voyager with a brand new Seven-of-Nine, the Borg, Equestria, and NMM.