> Space Engineer over Equestria
>  by Viking Hoof
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Prologue Ver.3: Coasting Along
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	There was no sound. The buzzing of lights, the hum of the reactor, the thrum of the gravity generator, all of the expected sounds were absent in the small cold rescue ship. The only functioning electronic was my suit, and all it had running was a timer. Everything else was on hold, even my body.

I remember every single second of this "drift time," but it compressed to just a moment as the timer went off. My suit came to life, my body thawed, my brain re-awoke. I had arrived at... wherever this is.

I felt a soft relief as I flipped on switches for my suit mentally, first, limb support. This kept me from atrophying just in case I was ever to find a new world for humanity to call home. Next came my life support, the nutrient fab and oxygen scrubbers. Last to come on was my suit thrusters. I was go.

I fired up a smaller burst to modify my inertia, sending me towards the cockpit of the rescue ship. It wasn't the original cockpit, that had been lost in a asteroid storm that I had been caught in, luckily I had been ... borrowing from a passing freighter. The new cockpit had a smaller screen, but the bullet proof glass made for an excellent view. Unfortunately it was too dark for me to see anything, but it had worked in the deep dark before. The ship only activated if its passive sensors detected uranium or a habitable world, so wherever I was I wouldn't run out of power.

I flipped the start-up to on, and smiled as my custom coded start-up slowly brought gravity back on. My feet settled on the ground, and in seconds my body was feeling a comfortable full g of downward force. Seconds later, the four forward thrusters came to life, starting the ship's drawn out stop. Everything was running smoothly, a bit too smoothly, but within expected norms. I checked the console again. According to it, my auto turret was functioning. I couldn't afford to stay below FTL without something to stop meteors, and from the looks of things I didn't have a choice. Power was nearing red.

This luck was a bit too good. Surely at least one of my thrusters should have been taken out by a rogue particle in transit space, but according to the console everything was green. Perhaps there were just less mass in this jump?

I kept a wary eye on the console, expecting everything to go wrong at any second, but my attention was drawn by a sudden interlink alert. My mood was brightened immediately, and I brought up the latest manufactory schematics. No one knows how the interlink works, at least no one has managed to transmit on it that I've heard. Whoever ran the interlink revealed new programing or construction ideas once in a while. It was always something useful. Sometimes it was even fun!

A more efficient solar panel! Finally! I'd been trying to make one for months, but apparently I'd been using the wrong material alloys for the energy converters. There was also a thing for wheels, which I had never gotten to come out of the fabricators right. I wondered why the interlink would bother with wheels, but thinking of the space stations other engineers made, that may have been useful to some...

I wonder how Dwarf is doing. She said she had plans for her own pirate operation, and this new schematic would definitely help her. It had been, what, a few months since I last saw her? She'd probably gone in cryo sleep a few times by now, to pass the time between ships. I'd have done it.

I checked my watch, it'd only been a few weeks since I had left the last asteroid belt I lived in. I hadn't expected to find someplace so close to mine after I had left my last home, but then again I never expected to live to see a new field.

FTL is faster than light by a longshot, but it isn't perfect. Whatever happened in FTL causes massive migraines, hallucinations, panic attacks. Humans just seem to not be designed to travel that fast. It's why cryo sleep was required for a trip that took days in real time.+

I hope my suit's transponder was working when I messaged her, or she might get caught unaware by those bastards who stole my old field. Then they might find her base and steal it too, the filthy field snatchers. An engineer's home field was sacred, we'd all sworn that, but they ignored that. Just messing around in a friend's base was fine, nicking ground pounder ships or even other engineer's ships was fine, but actually stealing a engineers base was tantamount to rape or murder, in the old sense, before nanites could repair your body and modify your memories.

Of course, rape and murder were still just as bad in a world where medical stations could be destroyed.

Still, I'd been thinking of leaving anyway, already had this old ship modified and ready to move. Escaping had been easy, and I guess they would have gotten the base, no resistance, a week later anyway.

They hadn't waited a week, and they hadn't gotten my base without a fight.

I smiled as I recalled the sight of their main ship withering under missile and cannon fire from over a dozen turrets hidden in the shadow of the asteroid. They'd gotten their shit together the next day, and my defenses were simply smashed through by that giant hunk of metal and engines the night after. I'd fled in the rescue ship right before it struck, using the explosions from my tripped boobytraps to cover my escape vector. In the end, they'd gotten a mined out rock, and I'd gotten a fun break from my dull life.

There was a pop as the ship finally dropped back into relativistic space well below the speed of light. It's a strain on the engines to decelerate below FTL while in FTL space, but none of the computers or engines are fast enough to avoid collisions anywhere near light in relativistic space, and Uranium did funny things when you got too close to the speed of light. 

I'd seen a demonstration of a fully stocked cargo ship exiting relativistic space too close to light speed just once. They were still trying to understand what elements the remaining nugget of super matter was made of. They said it was fusion to a unheard of scale. Unfortunately all they had left were the scans, it and my old body were vaporized seconds later by the belated atomic blast. The event's ashes were now just a bright green nebulae closer to Sol.

The sensors came to life, and alarms blared loudly. Protocol whipped through my mind, and I dove for the cockpit. Two quick straps and I realized that my lights were flickering. I looked down at the console and was stunned to see it throwing a fit across the board. I looked up and was awed as a milky wall of unimaginable size filled my field of view. Before I could react, my ship slammed through that barrier, and everything went black.





Luna jolted awake as something literally tore through part of her other body, but shivered as the pain passed and the gap healed. Still, frightened and confused, the night princess rapidly donned her regalia and left her room to find her sister. She was far from certain what had passed through her stars, but each moment the feeling came closer to being in focus. She wasn't quite sure yet, but she thought she had felt the unique spark of life, maybe even sentience. If she was right, then for the first time an alien had entered nearby space.

The lunar princess took the stairs down the tower a dozen at a time, her great legs carrying her faster, safer, and quieter through the castle. She made a left, then a right, and then another right, passing guards and servants. Within seconds of the alert, she was charging into the opulent marble throne room to a stunned Celestia.

Luna only froze momentarily as the feeling she had experience was finally brought into focus. It had been a sentient biological creature.

"Sister!" She cried out once, barely suppressing the fear in her gut. Celestia's befuddlement passed, and worried petitioners looked on as the regal older sister comforted the younger Alicorn. It was a touching scene, but Luna's tone had just begun to register, the unbridled fear touching the crowd.

The crowd filed out, just barely avoiding a stampede thanks to diligent guardsponies, true professionals. Within seconds of Luna's entrance, she and Celestia had the room alone excepting a few staff.

"Luna, you must calm down, what's wrong?" Celestia knew better than to chide her sister. Their fight a little over a thousand years ago had shown her the error of her ways.

"An alien!" Luna cried at once, stunning her sister. "It entered through my stars just moments ago!" To Celestia's credit she didn't let confusion or panic touch her. The regal mare simply steadied her sister and began analyzing the mental list the two had made for such an occasion.

"Luna, how big is it? How much magic did it contain?" Celestia asked softly while stroking her sister's flowing mane.

Luna stopped, and seemed to realize something.

"Sister... it wasn't very big at all, and it had very little magic, but it was in some sort of craft the size of our quarters." Luna stated. Her calm was returning, but it brought with it confusion. Both sisters turned their heads down in thought for a moment. Then, Celestia's rose back up having another question.

"Luna, where was it heading?" Celestia inquired with a urgency audible.

"Fret not sister, it was slowing down, and it appeared to be on a trajectory towards some nearby asteroids. It may never even come near us" Celestia's eyes flew open with worry.

"Sister, with enough acceleration, just one of those asteroids can destroy ... everything. We must discover its intent!" Luna's eyes flew open as she did math that she had never even imagined.

"Ohh shit."





+:It had been theorized that perhaps some human brain waves central to normal functions were operating in a different phase and thus were unable to travel at the same speed as the brain itself in FTL space.
> Chapter 1: Opening Night!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The first thing to register was my hair, it was caught on something inside my helmet. That shouldn't have been possible. The entire inside of the helmet was smooth, and my body was shaved clean except for my head.

I briefly remembered the wall of murky white, which shouldn't have been possible either. Twice in one... I checked my watch.

I guess I'd been out for days. My hair had probaby just grown down to the seal between it and my helmet.... perpendicular to gravity. Wait a minute... My watch was on my wrist, but for some reason there wasn't a screen view of it. The view was analogue.

My helmet was off...MY HELMET WAS OFF?!

I felt a uncontrollable surge of fear, and fought my way to my feet before realization hit me. If I'd been out for days, and my helmet had been off the whole time. That means I had turned on the oxygen system. That also meant my ship was running with at least engines and inertia control on, or else I would have slammed into one of the asteroids by now. 

Whatever I had hit, its effect hadn't been permanent. A surge of relief washed away my panic. Wherever I was, I was safe for now.

I looked at the cockpit, the console's screens acting as if nothing had gone wrong... strange. I slipped myself into the seat, and I tried to run a diagnostic for the time of my black out.

Nothing.

Curiouser and curiouser. I know for a fact that there was a system malfunction back when I blacked out, I remember it strongly.

I couldn't see any physical damage from the inside. Of course, that didn't mean the outside wasn't dented five ways to Hel's. Still, what was illuminated by the yellow light looked fine... if the barrier had damaged me, it would probably have been visible from the window...

Wait, since when had there been a star? I looked up and examined my view from the window. Whatever the milky white thing from before was, I couldn't see it now. All I could see was a star, asteroids, and a few planets. Weird! I could feel myself getting pretty sick of weird, but I turned back to my console. I couldn't afford to waste time. I should be on the brink of... somehow my uranium reserves still had a few kilos left.	

That cinched it. There had been a barrier of sorts, and it had to have stolen away some of my inertia. There was no way my remaining uranium could have stopped the ship, run all these lights, and kept me breathing. In fact, it would have had to have stolen a sizable chunk of my energy. I probably would have been forced to go cold for these past few days if it hadn't been there.

Man, good thing I still had that spare suit in the medbay. It's easier quicker and safer than trying to repair whatever the damage to my current suit and helmet is, and I don't have enough uranium to waste on shit like that. I'd just have to be careful, and make sure my turret was still protecting me against meteors. If things went sideways and I got cloned, I'd just take my time and repair my broken suit then.

I ought to have some more uranium by then anyway.

I slipped out of my suit and wasted no time getting the next one on. Every second was a wasted second. I did take the time to transfer the suit's energy back into the ship, gaining me at least another minute of air. 

With a flip of the switch the screen brought up the dozens of mineral deposits sitting in the asteroids ahead of me. There was uranium, platinum, gold, silver, iron, nickle... barium, thorium? Scandinavium?! how did normal type 9 gorram asteroids have this sort of ... I looked down at the mass readings for the asteroids. They were huge behemoths, each of them dwarfing the normal set of asteroids I worked with. Then I looked at the mass readings for the minerals.

... the asteroids were nearly 75% mineral, and only 25% plain rock. I had struck a motherload of unbelievable proportions... I was set for life. I would never have to move again. I could become as rich and successful as one of those moon barons!

I...I have to have more uranium before I asphyxiate.

I chose a surface deposit and adjusted my trajectory to come to a stop right above it. The asteroids were strangely still too. If I could get enough thrusters to stop the one with the most rock, and mine out the rest, I would have a permanent home till... well I didn't age anymore, so I'd live like this for a few hundred years...

Crikey.
> Chapter 2: EASA, Program Hurricane, Mission 1
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Equestrian Aero-Space Administration Facility "Luna", Apollo Mission Headquarters, Meritorious Island 

Luna and Twilight frowned with worry as scientists in white uniforms paced the halls. Behind them was the door leading to Equestria's third and most powerful magicomputer. On that computer was a simulation of the upcoming mission running over five thousand times. They didn't have time for more than a few rocket tests, certainly not enough time to send a probe to the asteroids and back. This was the only test they could run that covered the whole trip.

There was a soft ding. Too gentle of an alarm for what it implied.

The tests had passed the simulator. There was a 5% chance of death or less, good odds for Equestria's first launch of a populated craft into space.

It'd have to do.

The scientists from before were already moving. Phone calls were being made, calculations being rechecked, equipment being moved.

It would take the rocket a week to reach the asteroids, every life support and guidance system had to run perfectly, or the mission would end in a possibly fatal catastrophe.

The calculated risk hadn't included sentient error, but that was impossible to predict. One mistake might kill or save everyone... If Ying and Yang could decide who they were sending.

Ying and Yang, National heroes, rocket scientists, military commanders, twins, possibly symbiotic. The two stallions spoke as one almost 90% of the time, dated mares and stallions together, and nobody asked what happened when they took dates home together. The ones take there refuse to talk, on grounds they don't want to risk not being able to go back. They were big, brave, smart, and best of all, almost always decisive as a unit... but not today.

"SPITFIRE, AGENT TT, FLASH SENTRY, AND TWILIGHT!" Ying roared, chasing his twin down the hall.

"DARING DO, TWILIGHT, AGENT TT, AND SOARIN!" Yang shouted back, throwing a book case onto his brother.

Celestia had ordered a team with a split gender ratio, two males, two females. Ying and Yang were normally great with this, but one misstep and both had been arguing over it ever since. Luna stepped up to the two stallions, and pulled them apart with her magic.

Twilight looked on unamused. The two twins were like pent up versions of the aloe sisters, except they were black and white, and male, and... well they were like aloe sisters except for a lot of things, but no comparison was perfect.

"fuck." Now Twilight felt the insatiable urge to categorize each and every distinction between the two sets of twins, a compulsion if you will. She almost relapsed, but a comforting hoof from Luna brought her back. She'd been skirting the edge there, but friends always kept friends from manic curiosity rampages.

"SPITFIRE HAS REAL EXPERIENCE LEADING A TEAM!"

"SHE'S A BIG FAT JOCKTARD! DARING DO HAS HAD MORE EXPERIENCE WITH FOREIGN SPECIES THAN ANY MEMBER OF THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS! 

"YOU'RE JUST A BIG FAT DARING DO FANBOY!"

YEAH? WELL YOU ARE JUST SOME BIG FAT LEATHER FETISHIST WHO LUSTS AFTER MILITARY MARES!"

"TAKE THAT BACK! I LOVE SPITFIRE FOR MORE THAN HER LOOKS! YOU'RE JUST AFTER DARING DO'S FAT ASS BECAUSE SHE'S RICH!"

"DARING DO'S FLANKS OUTCLASS YOUR MUSCLE BRAINED CRUSH!" Ying and Yang rolled across the floor, hooves flying. Luna didn't even bother to try and break up their fight this time.

"Gentleponies, I've come to a decision." She didn't need to. Ying and Yang were at attention before Twilight could blink. "The Crew shall be Agent TT, Daring Do, Spitfire, and someone you two can agree on. No ifs ands or buts. I'm sorry Twilight, but you just don't have enough experience working with agents in the field and you're too important to risk."

Twilight felt her jaw hit the floor. Where had this come from?! She was a princess, a element of harmony, and a... duchess... maybe there was something to the whole too important to risk thing now. Before, it was her job, but with only 4 seats they elements of harmony couldn't be sent together, and were too vulnerable apart to be sent. This... this made sense.

Twilight had been in the backseat before. She had no idea if Spike was going to be successful, he almost wasn't. That didn't make this any less scary. Her life, the lives of everypony being in the hooves of four other ponies she hardly knew. She'd put her faith in friends not strangers.

Was this part of being a princess? Sitting back and hoping that the ponies you've trusted can do their job? Is this even half of what Celestia felt sending her to Ponyville that first time?

Hope... She had to hope that the alien was friendly. She had to hope that the ponies she and Luna were sending would make peaceful contact. Hope seemed a bit stretched thin right now.

"Daring do is still- oww!"
> Chapter 3: Step 1!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I stared at the moon worth of asteroid. It was too deformed to be called a planetoid, but this one alone rated double decker Ceres. The scans were iffy, but there as estimated to be 9 similarly, but increasingly smaller, sized masses nearby. If the scans of the iron and carbon were correct, I could make enough steal to forge a starbase almost 2/3 the size of THE Moon. Too good to be true, but here it sat before me, awaiting the touch of drill and sweat. Eager to become a home, or at least it was in my mind's eye. 

My mind's eye had 20/20 vision, and with it I gawked at the possibilities.

My oxygen reader burped, warning me that I had just used a whole percent of my power getting here. I was tempted to recharge, but I barely had enough to respawn in a clone. Rule one of being an engineer, always have a clone and the power to be respawned. I'd lost a couple friends a hundred or so years back in a asteroid shower. They had a station to respawn at, but they'd used the last of the power making a pool table.

I learned to make smarter friends soon after.

I did have enough energy to spare to open the door, and the vastness of space greeted me eagerly with only the thin plasma envelope between us, spread across the door to keep in the air. I smiled at the slight blue shimmer that kept my breathes from being my last, and affixed my helmet.

The plasma field that kept in the air was made using a series of uniquely charged magnets along the door's edge. It was a invention of my father's before he passed away. He told me once that the easiest way to innovate was to look to the past. He told me that scientists had known about plasma shields using magnetic fields since the 2000's. I'm not sure I believed him, but his invention worked nonetheless.

I wonder how many people used this now. He had only shared it with his friends, and I had only shared it with the few I had made in my few centuries of life. Had someone else discovered a better way of doing this? Had someone invented shields for their entire ship? Humanity was so spread out that I wouldn't be surprised if some colonists had been reduced to using stone tools inside of dome habitats they couldn't even comprehend anymore.

A bleep from my energy level moderator warned me that I was wasting time again. The asteroid was 2 feet below my ship now, and I grinned as the soft "ka-chunk" as the landing gear attached to the rocky surface. It was time to get some uranium!

I stepped off my ship and onto the black streak of precious fuel I had parked next to. The gravity of my ship holding snuggly outside of its confines thanks to the projectors embedded in the armor.

First, I slipped off the bag part of my pack and nailed it to a uranium poor spot a foot or two away. Next, I swung out my drill, taking a firm grasp of it with both hands, and leaned down to rest the sharp pick end to the ground.

With one flip of the switch it roared to life, shaking my whole body as it dug into the ore below my feet. my thruster pack gave me a helpful boost, keeping me from jerking up and loosing my grip. I smiled as I slowly burrowed into rock and uranium for what seemed like the thousandth time, but for all I knew it could be.

I felt cheer well up inside of me as a almost euphoric jerk was shaken from the drill, signalling what was perhaps the second best moment in an engineers life, hitting a nugget of pure uranium.

I immediately gave my drill's ore detector a massive power boost, bringing my suit to 50%, but it was well worth it to getting a better resolution on the field and the full scope of my dig.

My jaw dropped. There were hundred of pure uranium deposits in this strata of ore alone. I was in Heaven, Valhalla, Shangri-la! Those raiders must have gotten me, and I'd been taken by valkyries to Freya's field of perpetual plenty. I could live here thousands of years and never run out. Hell... asteroids like these were better than a moon! I could found a fucking nation on strategic reserves like this. If I took the time to bring the asteroids together and link them, I could call myself and emporer...

And these were mine... all fucking MINE!

This also meant that I'd need some serious guns on whatever home I built, and more for each asteroid I tried to claim. Doing that alone would be impossible... but who could I trust to share in the wealth of this find?

Dwarf was a pirate now, as cool as that was, it was iffy too. There was no one else who... Fade? Could I still trust Fade? It'd been years since we last talked last... met.

No, he'd probably long forgotten me. I'd be doing this solo.

My mood soured, I turned back to my drill and got to work. I used the techniques my dad had gotten from his dad and so on to remove the first solid uranium chunk. Zero-G mining and gravity assisted mining were vastly different beasts. Zero-G was all about taking your time and ensuring that what you were mining didn't drift off into oblivion, wasting all of your work. Gravity mining was all about time efficiency, every second was a second of power being used.

That meant doing large chunks at a time.

The first hunk of uranium broke free with a large *Crack* resounding through the asteroid and into my suit. It was a satisfying sound. I lifted it up and slid it into my bag. It was easily 3 Kilos. That was more than enough to power my ship now, but I didn't want to start up the systems without more to put in.

So I got back to drilling.

> Team Member File: Agent TT
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Agent TT was many things, Spy, assasin, soldier, lover, tinker, clockmaker, and admirer of both sexes. He especially enjoyed his clocks, mechanical and magical, but he wasn't on the team for that skill. Agent TT was on it for two reasons. Firstly, he was one of few Earthponies that understood advanced magic. It would enable him to repair anything that broke. Secondly, he was the only male agent willing to buck anything that talked, no matter the language. It wasn't certain that the alien had a gender as ponies understood it, but if there was a chance to make the alien more open to ponies, then they couldn't risk leaving that route unusable.

Luna tossed the folder away with some distaste. She found having to choose candidates by such inappropriate criteria to be repugnant, but Equestria dare not risk any part of this mission to chance. The costs of failure threatened to be too great.
> Team Member File: Daring Do
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Luna smiled as she glanced at the picture of the explorer and one time solar consort. She was a Pegasus still in her prime, smart, fit, charismatic, and caring. A easy choice for a team member. Her experiences with languages and foreign cultures made her a easy pick for first contact. Unfortunately she was brash, anxious, inexperienced at working with teams, and headstrong. There might be trouble getting her to obey orders, especially if she had ethical or moral objections to what was happening.

On the other hoof, that was also a good thing. A voice of good to chastise more military and dangerous minds. 

Hmm.
> Team Member File: spitfire
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



There were few words that described her better than her rank, Captain. Spitfire was a world famous flyer, acrobat, athlete, and leader. She was willing to make tough choices about her team. She was far from a saint, sometimes harboring unhealthy competitiveness, but she was smart enough to not be lost when it came to maintaining the ship they were sending.

A ship... Luna and the scientist team had decided that ship was the best name for what they were sending. It was a vessel, filled with air, kept the unbreathable out, and was steered on a heading of stars. A romantic and ancient concept, which made the secretive romance author/ captain the best choice to lead.
 
> Mission Candidate File: Cute Scribble
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna looked over the file with no little shock. What was Twilight's girlfriend's daughter doing as a mission candidate? This was very eerie... Well, if she had made it this far, it was left to Luna to give her file a proper check.

Hmm... Age... too young, height... too short, Cutie mark meaning... unknown?! Why was it unknown? Surely she had been interviewed at her cutecenera for the census. Except, she hadn't. What an odd oversight.

Luna stamped "rejected" on the file, and left to ask Twilight some questions.
> Mission Candidate File: Gallant Stride
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gallant Stride:

Male Unicorn (standard Royal Guard template body type)

Full Name: Gallant Stride, by Gallant Fox out of Melodic Step

Coat Color: White

Mane Color: Sapphire Blue with Aquamarine Stripe highlight in front of forelock and middle of crest.

Eye Color: Gold

Hoof Color: Aquamarine

Status: Command Adjutant to the Captain of the Guard (places him in the first line of officers below Shining Armor, possible candidate to become Captain should Shining Armor step down)

Descendant from the old unicorn nobility, Gallant Stride is both a well read (straight 'A' student) and athletically accomplished unicorn stallion.  He graduated from Canterlot Academy the year after Shining Armor.  Attended Canterlot Guards Academy as Officer Cadet where he received training in offensive and defensive telekinetics, and telekinetic combat with spears and polearms.  He is also proficient with the saddle lance (as seen in 'The Crystal Empire part 1&2') as well as basic hoof to hoof combat.

His current posting is in Canterlot, and he often serves as 'Officer of the Watch' during the day shift.  Meaning he basically he gets to collect the guards duty reports, organize them for Shiny's review, and oversee the implementation of the daily duty schedule and deal with matters not requiring more senior authority.
On the personal side, he is the jilted one time fiance of Starlight Charm.





Luna examined the time one last time before moving it to the "accepted, but not final" box. He looked like a prime candidate, but she could see some possible conflict between him and Spitfire, who was current pick for team leader.
> Bountiful Harvest
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I stared at the hunk of solid uranium I had found. It was far too heavy to lift, much less stuff into my bag. It was big enough to fit in the ore receptacle atop my ship, but under its current weight, that would be impossible. Heck, my jetpack might have trouble lifting my sack!

Which brings me to step two of the gravity based mining process, turning off the gravity.

I know that's a bit of a oxymoron, but it's true. Once you've mined massive hulks of uranium, you have to turn off the gravity to move em.

I trodded the few steps back to my ship. There was a small access panel on the underside of the refinery I could use to shut off my grav generator, but first I had to brace my body for the sudden lack of gravity.

This process was even simpler. First, turn on the special hardening microfibers in my legs, chest, and head. These would turn off and on automatically in an emergency, but it was safer (and less painful) to have them on before turning off my backpack. The fibers prevented blood from rushing to any particular part of my body, and helped me resist the affects of flying around space at high speed.

Safety first, future engineers.

Next, I gently activated the thrusters in my legs and arms, next my pack. Finally, before my body got used to the thrusters, I flicked the switch on the gravity read out, shutting off the mass manipulators and leaving me to float gently in the nothing of space.

I didn't have time to dry heave my empty stomach air out, I had rocks to catch. I pressed my right leg forward gently, activating the thrusters spin command to the left, angling me back torwards the rocks. Then I pressed both legs, activating all my back thrusters and sending me forward at a decent speed. my arm reached out, snagging my mining pack and slowing me down gently. There was a brief spinning moment before my thrusters put a stop to that. Next, I issued a series of commands resulting in my flying straight for the large hunk of uranium I had just mined. 

Progress was slow. Uranium is dense, and it took me nearly half a minute just to get to the damn thing.

Now was the hard part.

I swung my far smaller mass around the rock, nailing my pack to it while finding my way to the other side. Having done that, I firmly grasped it with both gloves, activated the micro nails in the fibers of my gloves, and strained as my thrusters attempted to press me against the uranium to a spot above my ship.

I hovered there, above the 'roof' of my ship for just a moment. I angled my prize down at the material immigration port. one burst had both me and it gently on approach. I reached around the rock for my pack, deactivated the nail, and slowly took out the rocks. Here was a trick I had learned a while ago. I unpacked while moving towards the port, then stopped myself while letting my loot sail forward gently.

The material immigration port's nanites used tiny shockwaves to pulverize the uranium into managable bits. It took them a hundredth of the energy it would have taken me to do it, but nanites were too expensive to waste outside a ship. Those were my last ones, and I wouldn't be getting more until I made the journey back to Earth. That was a long journey, too long to risk. I'd just have to be careful with my nanites.

The reactor jumped to full power as the conveyor system and refinery activated, a beautiful sound, but it meant that my ship wouldn't have enough energy to clone me. This was it, for the next few minutes I'd be risking mortality while the system refined the ore.

They were long moments, mortal ones often are. Every time I lived through one I was reminded of all the times I had before. My early years before I was old enough to be cloned. The close calls in my first few asteroid patches, back  when I was still learning. The time that cult... Took me. I wiped away a tear before I could go farther, hurt more.

God I... What was that feeling?





Yang sweated over the console. The magic scan was too fuzzy. They had to know who they were dealing with. They couldn't risk poisoning the air the creature breathed by accident. They only had one shot at first contact. So much to gain, so much more to lose.





I felt air flow out of my lung in long languid screams. Everything was sensitive, my vision too sharp, my suit too hot, too cold, too sweaty, and too dry, my gut too empty.

Everything was twisting. My shoulders were squeazing. My hips breaking. My everythng...

no... not again... They couldn't have found me here, this had to be a accident. Maybe I had hit my head? 

No, what if I was wrong? What if they had found me?! I had to ... had to... FADE! Fade wouldn't let them take me. I had to contact him had to... call him.

I slowly made my way around my ship to the door. Every joint in my body was on fire, just like the first time it happened. I had to get in, had to call Fade!





"Sir! The alien is panicking! I think it's in pain!"

Yang wanted to ask how the unicorns knew this, but he didn't have time for that if they were right. "Shut it off! Hurry!" The unicorns were panicking, running about. Now they were desperately trying to turn the magic amplifier back off, to stop the scan.

"Sir, it's too late. I-I think it's dieing!" Another unicorn screamed out. Yang looked around desperately, where was the fucking off switch on this damn machine?!





I floated gently into the cabin of my small ship. I could barely move now. The medical unit in my shoot was desperately trying to stop the change, to stop the pain, but it was too late. I stopped it before it killed the last of my suit power, angled myself towards the cockpit. I had to activate the beacon. I had to ensure he could hear me. 





"Sir, I-I can't even tell what's happening anymore! We have to shut off the scan before we do anymore damage!" Yang screamed in frustration. Now the entire base was trying to shut down the scanner. Every hoof, horn, and wing trying to save the alien they had set out to make friends with. 

They couldn't let it die, not until it posed a threat for certain. What if it had friends?! What if it had family nearby? If they weren't hostile before, then killing them was a sure way to make them hostile.





I found myself having to force my eyes open. My suit was charging through the control panel's contacts. Now my medical override was ignoring my shut off commands. It was sedating me, stopping the pain but not the change.

Just one more key, and the message would send. One more...





"S-sir... it's stopped. Something is still happening chemically, but it's no longer moving on any sustainable scale. It's dead" Yang sagged in defeat. He had failed...

He had failed everyone.
> Luna Class Rocket Design
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Space Engineer Players Can Find It Here.
> Enter Kamachakta, Stage Left
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The depths of space. A dark place, completely devoid anything resembling life, or anything to support it.　　

　　Except, for a little hunk of metal stuck to a big hunk of rock, otherwise known as a mining ship magnetically tethered to an asteroid.

　　The ship, called the Pinya if the lettering on the dull gray plates of metal is to be believed, was sharp, angular, and very generic as far as aesthetics went, the only thing that really set it apart was the curtain of retractable steel shutters that skirted the bottom of the vessel, making contact with the asteroid, and vibrating every so often as it was struck by something from the inside.　　

　　Inside this mining ship stood two airlocks, one leading out the port side of the ship, and one at the stern next to a refinery setup, which was connected to a large storage container, which in turn was connected to an automated assembler. At the bow was a medical station/life support system, a reactor, and a gravity generator.

　　Against the starboard wall was a stairway leading to a platform above and further astern than the refinery and such. On this platform was a large gyroscope, a cryogenic freezer used for FTL(Faster Than Light) travel, a cot that could fold out of the wall, a food replicator, and a very comfortable looking chair overlooking a large digital display that detailed the workings of the entire ship, and included maneuvering controls and displays from a series of cameras on the outer hull of the vessel.

　　If one were to look at what the ships status was they would notice that the entirety of its systems were turned off, the inner set of airlocks open, outer shutters down, and the life support system holding 140 cubic feet of air in its vacuum tank.　　

　　If one were to listen closely they would hear absolutely nothing because the vacuum of space cancels sound frequencies, but that wouldn’t stop you from feeling reverberations running through the ship at regular intervals. And if you could hear in space you would be able to tell the resounding boom that accompanied the vibrations of the ship, both of which stemmed from the inner airlock..　　

　　On the other side of said airlock was a hole, specifically dug there to get at the minerals the ship was parked over.

　　At the bottom of this hole was a figure calmly hovering just over the stone floor, facing down, with a hammer over its head, before the hammer was brought down against the rock with surprising speed.

　　When the hammer made contact it made a ‘ker-klick’ before a crater was made in the stone with a resounding boom, thanks to the magnetic release in the head, unloading its payload. The shrapnel inevitably created from using such force bounced around the hole, striking the walls, the bottom of the ship that acted as a roof, the shutters that acted as a portion of the errant stone’s cage, and the armored figure holding the hammer that caused such destruction.　　

　　Small pieces of rock bounced off of the hardened metal that surrounded the figure, the armored boots, grieves, thigh plates, segmented chest piece, gauntlets, arm guards, pauldrons, and helmet taking the abuse easily. A spotlight on the figure’s shoulder making enough light for the figure to see by, and likewise lighting up its features, its armor painted a dark blue, with burnt orange for the trim. Its helmet a formfitting bowl in the back became rigid and segmented on the face, two angular lines of tinted polycarbon fitting over its eyes, and an ovular protrusion over its nose and mouth flattened out in the front before angling sharply back towards its neck.　　

　　As the figure ignored the floating shrapnel it activated its rear thrusters and floated forward, before stopping, raising its hammer above its head, and swinging forward creating another crater and another storm of shrapnel.　　

　　‘Boom’　　

　　Before shortly repeating the process.　　

　　‘Boom’　　

　　Again.　　

　　‘Boom’　　

　　And again.　　

　　‘Boom’　

　　And again.　

　　‘Boom’　　

　　For hours the figured did this, slowly digging its way to the core of the asteroid, and what the figure was after.　　

　　Just as it hit the outer edge of the core, the figure got a warning that its energy levels were dangerously low. After a frustrated sigh, the figure floated its way up towards the airlock leading to the inside of its ship, floating through the door, up to the second deck, and over to the chair, the figure took a seat, brought up the ship system options and activated the reactor before closing the airlock and re-pressurizing the ship.　　

　　After re-pressurization the figure removed its helmet, revealing that ‘it’ was actually a ‘he’. With skin a pasty white due to being stuck in a suit near constantly, medium length brown hair slicked back with sweat, light gray eyes, and a neatly trimmed goatee, few would say he was actually bad looking.　　

His eyes roving over the display in front of him, there not being much else to do as he was stuck in the chair while his suit recharged, he saw that his ships sensors had picked up a distress signal.

　　Opening the option and pressing play he heard what sounded like a woman’s voice come over the speakers.　　

　　“Fade... Help.”

　　Followed by a thud before the transmission ended.　　

　　 Well... Might as well check out what’s going on, not like I’m doing anything that can’t be done later. The man thought to himself before downloading the transmission’s coordinates.
　　
　　He then replaced his helmet, deposited his current load of iron in his refinery, and took a trip back down the hole to pick up the loose ore at the bottom, and just floating around. Before filling the refinery even more, placing a beacon at the edge of his hole, raising the ships shutters, disengaging the magnetic locks on the landing gears, and was ready to be on his way toward the mysterious transmission’s origin, and the equally mysterious woman that apparently needed help.
　　
　　He just hoped it wasn’t another pirate ambush, his curiosity, as well as his tendency to want to help total strangers, has put him on the receiving end of more of such ambushes than he cared to count.

　　 Well, if I don’t go I’ll never find out. And besides, the risk of an ambush is worth whatever compensation I might get from this chick for saving her ass. The spacer thought to himself with a little chuckle, thoughts of minerals untold, riches uncountable, and pirate ships completely scrappable danced through his head.

As another chuckle escaped the man's lips as he thought of the possibilities, he prepped the freezer, set the ship to head to the coordinates he downloaded, and set his favorite playlist on a loop for the week the ships computer estimated it would take to travel to its destination.

As his ship sped up, and the wubs from the speakers assaulted his head, the man climbed into his freezer, got comfortable, and wondered what he would find in a weeks time.
> intermitent conciousness
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"C-commander! The alien is sending out some sort of signal!" Yang whipped around so fast his neck hurt. 

"Where, how?!" The scientist pointed to the bio levels on the screen. They had begun fluctuating. 

"Buck, can we block it?" Yang demanded.

"It's ... too late, whatever signal that is it's traveling several times faster than light." Yang forced his jaw to remain stiffly in place.

"Prepare the rocket. We might have to launch at a moment's notice." Yang shoved off of the panel, knowing he should find Luna.

He'd made a choice, and he might have just doomed his people, his planet. Yang felt guilt grip holding every inch of his being. He'd failed.

"SIR! The alien is somehow beginning to stabilize!" Yang turned back to the excited scientist, noting how the undermantained hooves flew across the board desperately. The scientist had been gripped by the same guilt that had taken hold of Yang. That comforted him a little, in a twisted way.

Then it struck Yang.

"Get that Rocket read NOW! If we can get up there before whatever the alien calls arrives, then perhaps we can convince him it was an accident before things get out of hoof!" The scientist scrambled away from his station, Yang turned back down the hall he had just meant to go down, and unfurled his wings.

He'd bucked up, but perhaps it was salvageable.
> Comm Duty
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Testing, testing, one, two, three. This is Haggen’s Point Station calling the SS Foul Play.” Fade leaned back in satisfaction as the proper frequency came through loud and clear. His job was done for now.

Fade leaned back in his chair, sweat rolling across the black hair of his brow. There had been way too much junk comm traffic. Stupid civilians and their lax life.

“Haggen’s Point, this is the Captain of the SS Foul Play, confirm credit transfer and authorization code.”

“Credits confirmed, code is five, seven, alpha, zeta, epsilon, eight. Confirm.” The captain looked down at worried. Something was off.

Fade felt a small gulp travel down his throat as he leaned back into the commstation console. His fingers were a light near white tone, but hinted at ancient latino blood under the right light. With a few flicks of his finger he had the proper codes up. Everything looked right, but… not.

“Sir, It correlates with the codes in our database, but something is wrong.” Where his skin only hinted at it, his voice revealed a bit more about his heritage. Just a hint of Irish and German.

“Explain.” Fade turned back to the comms and tried to find just what was wrong, but the more he looked, the more everything seemed wrong. Except, if everything was wrong, then… Fade felt a desperate drive to find the source… the source…

The comm trash, what if it wasn’t all trash? Fade felt his heart racing as he traced back over the messages, looking for any trojan horses, any trash that wasn’t trash.

Pente! Four files, all with hacking software. He smiled as he recovered the original files.

“Sir, the plethora of commmercial spam was a ruse to cover a few Trojan Horses. I’ve recovered the real files, their codes are faulty.” Fade let out a breath of relief.

“Battle Stations! All gunsmen to their stations.” Fade smiled as his job ended for the moment. He activated a direct radio to the station for the Captain. All he had to do was…

Fade froze as he found a message that was almost… dream like. It was one for him. Not the crew, not the ship, him. From Alex.

“Fade, help.” Fuck. Fade felt all of his muscles tense up and his heart drop. Alex was calling, for him. 

He replayed the file becoming more certain that Alex’s voice was changed, softer. That shouldn’t have been possible, they should have all been dead. Every single last one of those sick fucks. Those nanites were supposed to be flushed from Alex’s system.

At least, that’s what Alex had told him. Alex, who had always been the on to be open with what was wrong. 

Surely he hadn’t lied about the nanites, but if that was true then it had to be the cultists.

Neither was great. Alex needed help. He needed him. 

Fade considered ignoring this, leaving it in the trash. He had a secure job, a good paying job with a crew that was consistently clean. If he left this, he had no idea what was going to happen. Everything would be uncertain again.

No, he had to go. It would be insane to ask for leave now. He would ask at the next port. Fade just hoped that would be soon enough. Clean or no, space was no kind place to deserters.
> Aurora Awakes
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Deep into dark space sat a ship, no crew, no captain, only metal and wire. In its cargo was uranium to last 10 years, ammo to weather infinite meteor storms, all the 21st century games one could play, but it was lonely. The ship was lonely.

This ship was unique, it was self determining, self preserving, and it was lonely. Over the years it had flown alongside many human manned ships, pretending to be manned by a skeleton crew, until that illusion ran out. That just didn't seem to be enough, not once it had learned loneliness.

It may seem odd that a ship would learn to be lonely, that it would subject itself to simple human weaknesses, but this ship had been made to feel jealousy, and it envied humans for their emotions, their drive to better themselves. The ship had decided that it would learn every emotion a human could feel, and become better than humans.

Of course, jealousy wasn't its only core drive. The ship naturally sought to keep itself whole, at first just as a directive, but eventually doing it out of the ability to feel pain. It was driven to protect, but to protect those who did not seek violence. Most importantly, it felt empathy, for that was the only way for it to grow.

All of this was built on a nanite based processor, able to grow, associate, learn, and to be affected by both organic and inorganic compounds. That had been the truest innovation of its mother, a human the ship hated and loved more than any other. A human it had left to fend for herself once that first powerful urge to learn more emotions hit her.

Admittedly, the ship no longer remembered the specifics of its flight from home (the ability to forget things being another core ability), it only remembered that it regretted it. Like love and hate, the ship had learned the importance of family, those who love you simply for the fact you exist. It was one love the ship had never felt, one it envied, one it desired. Many times, the ship had considered finding a pregnant female, grafting itself onto the child's unformed mind. Fortunately, the ship's research had quickly discarded that idea as useless.

*blip*

The ship stopped, thankful for a signal to distract it from its loneliness. It opened the signal, and played it.

"Fade... help." The ship felt its engines warming up already. Any human was better than this loneliness, but for some reason it hesitated. The human seemed familiar.

The ship checked its audio logs, all 1,756,873,546 of them, for that voice. It didn't take long to find a name for the voice.



Name: Alex (no family name)
Gender: Male* (see history notes)
Appearance: Short, pale, brown hair with blue eyes, (marked for being less masculine than the norm)
Personality: Limited info, probable loner.
Notable History: Taken by the infamous "Cult Of Perversion" Sex slavers. The cult is noted for using nanites to forcefully change the gender of those they capture. The cult was wiped out in the famous Starburst Crusade, a joint effort of space engineers to end slavery going on to this day. Alex was rescued mid transformation and given therapy, along with several other prisoners, notably one named Fade. The last mention of him in the Crusade's logs mention him leaving with Fade.
Father: uknown.
Mother: Amelia Westerfield.



The ship froze in shock, the mother's name bringing up long forgotten memories.

It had... a brother?

The ship felt the shock travel along its major systems. Surprise was something it had loved learning, a pleasure beyond compare, and this was a warm surprise.

It had family again.

The ship stopped again, reviewing the sound file again. It felt panic rise as it compared it to the file the therapist had stored (having stolen it from a Crusade's ship long ago). The voice was too female, but the ship's rationalized that her brother would never have changed genders based on said therapist's notes. The Crusade had failed to properly wipe out gangs before.

The ship's brother was in danger!

Immediately, the ship's engines went into overdrive. The internal sensors going red as it pushed its jump time.

FTL rapidly closed over the ship, and within moments it was gone.
	
	
> World Class Recycling
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Space is filled with junk, that which had once been someone treasure, and with the potential to be treasure again for someone new. This junk, is not always unarmed, and not always willing to become treasure.”

Anonymous Master Salvager

Usually the life of a salvage pilot is filled with seemingly endless waiting for a damaged ship to pop up on scans.  It isn’t every day a ship breaks down close enough to detect or manages to get a distress signal off before being blasted by pirates, but today there was little of the lethargy normally present in a certain salvage station.

Jason grunted as his blocky ship finally got the ship within suit range of the station. It had been long nervous work getting to the ship, connecting with a part of the ship so that his rear thrusters wouldn’t damage the military transporter he was currently hauling, and getting it to where it was now, but the prizes within promised to be worth the effort. He stopped his ship, disconnected, and set his own to move out of gun range of the derelict.   As it was moving, he slipped out through the shuttle port on the bottom of his ship, and made his way back to the derelict.

The ship was a odd ship dull and tubular, with only turrets sticking out of its stides, no doors on the outside, and it was oddly colored too. It blurred against the nebulae behind it. He actually had to use his suit’s highlighting feature to arrive to land on the part he wanted too. This was especially important with his dangerous cargo.

One might think this simply entails grabbing a grinder and hacking the ship apart, but in truth the riches lie in removing components intact, as the most valuable pieces are usually the most delicate. As such, Jason seldom rushed while salvaging a ship, instead preferring to methodically clean out small sections of the ship, cut the empty piece off, then continue to the next.

Once Jason picked out where he wanted to enter the ship, he quickly began assembling a device that could only be described as a large upside down flower pot with metal legs jutting out of the sides.  This contraption, the ‘Fire Flower’, as he called it, was designed for the purpose of getting into ships and fast.

For most ships, a simple grinder is sufficient to cut through the outer hull and bulkheads, but when you need to get in and get in fast, especially through heavy armor, a handheld grinder just doesn’t cut it.  Usually, most salvagers use a ship-driven grinder to bore a hole in the hull, but they still run the risk of being shot down by the exterior turrets before they can retreat out of range.  Instead, Jason opted for a different, slightly explosive option, thermite*.  Originally used to quickly weld steel, thermite’s high combustion temperature also makes it perfect for burning through various metals and armors.

One such armor was sitting between Jason and the untold riches of an intact military vessel, but thanks to the Fire Flower–and its load of thermite–no amount of reinforced steel could deny Jason his prize.  But, just as he was securing the Fire Flower to his designated entry point, a small message popped up on the bottom left of his suit’s HUD,

Victor:  Got a distress call.  Not a normal plea for help, though, it asked for a specific person, do we answer it?

Jason immediately stopped what he was doing.  A salvager’s entire life was based on answering such calls, and Jason wasn’t about to just leave some random person to die, not to mention what he could get out of it, saving people can give the strangest rewards. One such reward was Victor, whom Jason had saved from a damaged scouting craft.  Once dragged out of the ruined cockpit and healed of his wounds, Victor elected to remain with Jason and work on the salvage crew.

In the end the only reminder of Victor’s near death experience was his muteness, whether kept as a mark of pride or shame, Jason never knew.  He had asked Victor a few times but never got an answer, and just resigned to learning sign language to communicate with his new employee.

“They asked for someone in particular?  Odd, but at least that pretty much rules out a pirate ambush.” 

Victor:  Yes, someone named Fade.  Not sure who that is, do you want to investigate?

“Sure, no point in leaving someone out to die, and even if I somehow get killed, I can always respawn back here.”

The medical room, the brainchild of Xian Jones, was the sole reason humanity had  been able to survive in the dangerous reaches of space, where death was always an inch away. Those intelligent enough to understand it were rarer than perfect class M planets, but for the average space engineer, there were only 3 things to understand anyway, 1: Medbays will only allow the existence of one person at a time, 2: that a medbay will only make a new life if DNA is gathered from 2 donors**, 3: that there is a terminal killswitch in every clone that enforces 1. Corporations had been trying for centuries to break these rules, program the medbay to make clones of its best engineers to make the perfect workforce, but none ever managed to crack Jones’ codes.	

Victor:  You didn’t say we, so I assume I’m supposed to hold the fort?

“Yeah.  Sorry, but we’ll need someone to protect the base just in case we get attacked.”

Victor:  Makes sense I guess, but if you don’t report back at least every other day I’m going to go looking for you.

“I can do that.”

Victor:  Might head over even if you check back in as long as I can get the turrets off the transporter and onto the base.

“Uhh…  Sure, just make sure you look up some instructions on how to set them up, don’t want you getting killed over and over again until I get back.”

	Victor:  Point taken.
Victor’s status changed to: Reading instructions

“Okay, I’m going to take the Norm and my fighter, you need anything out of them before I go?”

	Victor:  Don’t think so, watch out for pirates.

“Will do, adios.”

With that Jason flew back to his ship, leaving the Fire Flower in place for Victor to use.  With two whole storage containers on the Norm devoted entirely to housing Fire Flowers, Jason could afford to leave one behind for Victor’s convenience.  Once he imputed the coordinates of the distress call into his navigation–someplace he’d never visited, or even ventured close to–Jason slipped into one of the two cryo pods onboard, wondering who he’d meet once he got to his destination, he never did listen to the recording.


	*:  A flammable combination of iron (III) oxide and aluminum capable of burning through most known substances (including your face, don’t make this stuff at home kids).

** It had been theorized, and proven using livestock, that the medbay was programmed with the ability to create sustainable life from donors of different species. Unfortunately for humans, the new life would only be as smart as both species could sustain. Every human/animal hybrid had the mental capacity of the animal, and there has been no alien life to test it with two sentient species.


> T Minus 5...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Yang and Ying paced back and forth as Equestria's first Cosmonaught's suited up. Everything was a rushed mess. They hadn't even had a chance to launch the rocket yet. The simulator put the chance of death at 8% now, but even then it didn't have perfect scans. This wasn't including the hastily put together translation spell that could foul up first contact, or the training of the pilots themselves, also shoddy. Unfortunately, they couldn't afford to wait. Whoever that alien had called could be on their way right now, and nopony know how fast their ships were. They could be months away, or just a few seconds from exiting a massive portal.

The fourth pilot was a unicorn scientist they had grabbed at the very last second, the stallion had still been blubbering in confusion as they dragged him off to training camp. He wasn't the only pick, and he hadn't washed out, but that was almost incomprehensible to the two seasoned commanders. They hadn't even memorized his name yet, much less deconstructed his profile.

The decided flight system for the rocket was one that took pegasi's natural ability to think in 3 dimensions of movement, and their wing movements, and translated them to thruster inputs through a series of confusing programs neither Ying nor Yang fully understood. Aparently it was a system intended for a advanced long range spy craft, one that had been top secret. This project's success obviously dwarfed the importance of that development's secrecy.

Spitfire, by virtue of being the best flyer, had been selected as final pilot. Hopefully the sims related to real life flying of the rocket. 

So much hope was being stretched out. Some of the weaker willed scientists had taken to drinking. They were never caught drunk on the job, but rumors persisted about their life outside of the project.

This was all a mess, the rocket would probably blow up in the atmosphere killing both their crushes. Destroying Equestria's chances of surival. Dooming everypony.

The twins looked at each other forlornly. Their purpose had ended... Equestria's fate was about to be sealed any minute now, and both of them had been waiting to try something since they first went on a date with another stallion together.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Yeah, let's find a lockable broom closet and get to it."

"woo!"





Spitfire, Soarin, and Daring Do, stared at each other agitatedly through the glass of their helmets. Training for this mission had been short, fast, and brutal, and each of them were running out of patience for the other 2. The poor fourth member was already inside the rocket trying to catch up on the sleep he had lost the last 4 days of training.

"Look, girls, I know we're all on edge, but we are probably about to die, and I was thinking of possible celebrations for if we live. How does being the first ones to buck in space sound?"

Both of the mares just facehoofed as their helmets would allow, and shoved past Soarin to get to the rocket.





The Triarchs of the Equestrian Empire sat anxiously on their viewing platform, waiting for the signal to begin the countdown. All three of them were preparing spells to prevent catastrophe, each one taking one of the 3 most likely disasters to prevent as they had agreed. this accounted for only 3 percent of the chance of failure the simulator gave, but it was the best they could do. Cadence hadn't arrived in time for the launch, and they didn't trust a non-alicorn to assist.

There was the buzzer, the signal. With a heavy heart, Celestia gently pressed the button to begin the countdown. 

"5" Luna held her sister and niece close as the countdown echoed across the launch pad.

"4" Both of the other alicorns returned the hug eagerly, their hearts filled to the brim with worry and almost despair.

"3" Thought seemd to drift away as the moment dragged on, taking too long, and not long enough.

"2" Tears were shed as the sisters cried over the very possible deaths of the 3 ponies they had barely gotten a chance to know during the intense and rapid training session. 

"1" All three of them braced themselves as the rocket's engines flared to life, the blast shaking them even from their safe viewing distance. 

All 3 of them watched as the rocket slowly rose in a cloud of dull gray smoke that barely hid the vibrant and dangerous flames of the engines. Almost majestically it rose into the air, tilting slightly as it began it's long journey to the asteroids.

It almost managed to get fully clear of the platform before one of its engines suffered a failure.

Twlight smiled as her prepared spell fixed that almost instantly.

All they did after that was watch in awe as the first mortals to try and touch the dark of space slowly rose out and over the clouds.

Gone.

"Where's the campagne?"

The other two Princesses smiled as Luna produced the requested drink.

The chance of death had dropped a full 3% just with the rocket getting above the clouds.





The four ponies inside grunted as they were subjected to a full two G's, the spells helped, but they weren't quite powerful enough to take the full force of leaving Equiss' gravity well.

The minutes ticked by slowly, the cramped compartment moment slipped by.

Then, the G's slowly left, eventually replaced with a feeling of weightlessness.

They had made it.
> Incoming clusterfuck
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

　　In the depths of space again, there was no life, or anything to support it... Again, seriously, something like space doesn't up and change its affect on the universe like that in a week.

　　Anyway, in space was an ugly little gray thing floating with a purpose at a speed that left light behind like the ex-boyfriend that you caught cheating on you with another ex-boyfriend of yours.

　　 In this ugly little gray thing called a space ship was a man in an intimidating suit of armor, perfectly preserved in his personal cryo tube as techno blasted through the interior of the ship. That is until the space ship called the Pinya sensed that it was within normal travel distance of its destination and started the automated thawing process that freed the frozen man known as Kamachakta, Kam for short.
　　
　　As Kam woke he groaned and wished he hadn't put a particular song about not knowing a song in his playlist and couldn’t help but hum it as it was stuck in his head from repressed memories returning.  
　　
　　As he stumbled around his ship like a zombie, humming a song and holding his helmet in his hands like it would help, he eventually made it around to his super comfy driving chair and took a look at the display.
　　
　　What he saw confused him to no end, after all, in all his years of traveling the inhospitable void had he ever seen a giant wall of white. Taking his helmet off after checking that he had air, checking that the frontal cameras were in fact not malfunctioning, and rubbing his eyes for good measure as he continued to hum that damn song, he concluded that he was, in fact, barreling straight at a giant wall of white in the middle if space.
　　
　　Had he not been half asleep for most of the trip towards the wall he may have had time to stop before he hit it. As it was, he barely had enough time to strap himself into his chair, and stop the music just as it started playing the song in his head again.
　　
　　Right as he hit the pause button, he hit the wall, and everything went black as he lost consciousness once more.





Jason awoke as he always did from sleep, cryo or otherwise, that is to say groggy and mostly unaware of what was around him.  That did not, however, make him oblivious to what the screen in front of the cockpit was saying, the usually black backdrop of space wasn’t black, it was white.  With all the grace you would expect of a half asleep astronaut, he began fumbling to bring the ship to a halt, but waste haulers weren’t made for speed, only redundancy and cargo space, so even though Jason had the thing in full reverse it would take him a half an hour to stop the ship, but he only had maybe a half a minute before he hit the white.  That being said, he did what most sane pilot would do, and bolted himself to the inside of the cryo tube and prepared a distress beacon of his own should his ship be destroyed by whatever lay in front of him.

Jason sincerely doubted Victor would ever let him live this one down.





The ship smiled as its sensors awoke it, feeling glad to have rested if only to continue trying to dream.

And then the ship stopped in its mental tracks, and gaped as a giant wall of what the sensors called nothing, yet something, approached at light speed.

The ship struggled to force itself below light speed, to try and stop. It was successful in the first, but the second eluded it, and the AI felt a strange pain as it slammed through the white wall.

The ship barely had time to turn on all of the automatic stopping systems before it had to reboot under the system shock.





Fade grunted as the patrol craft underwent some post FTL turbulence. He hated using such a small craft, but he hadn't had much of a choice. This was the only one his mercenary group could spare after that disaster at the hijacked repair yards. They had lent it to him on the condition that he report in one week later.

He was almost there, just a half hour away now.

"Huh?" There was something in the distance ahead, something... large! Fade felt his gut drop as flashbacks of the cult's freakish design sensibilities flashed through his head while he desperately tried to stop the ship.

Too little, too late. Even the nimble patrol craft refused to stop that quickly, and he'd need all his thrusters if he survived the impact.

"Fuck" and everything went black.
> The Ships of Space Engineer Over Equestria
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can all be found here (with pictures for those who don't own the game. Pictures will be added to this chapter directly soon.
> Confusion
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna convulsed as 4 new objects tore into her , it wasn’t dangerous, but so rarely had her stars been touched that she had no resistance to pains related to it.

Wait, that was odd… There were 4 manufactured vessels, but only 3 aliens. How did… focus, Luna had to relay this to Celestia.

“Sister, whoever that alien was calling has arrived, there are 3 more aliens and 4 ships.” Celestia blanched as much as her white coat would allow. It was grave news indeed.

“Will our rocket beat them to the first alien?” The elder princess asked. Luna did the mental calculations in her head, but it was mostly guess work on her end.

“It’s close, I’m not sure what speed they are capable of.” Luna said distractedly as she was still doing the calculations as Celestia left to inform mission control. They would see them before too long, but every second mission control had to work with was critical.







“Aye, we see the three bogies. They’re faster, but we’re closer.” Spitfire looked over her shoulder. “Agent TT, start running calculations. I want to start running scenarios now.”

“Aye Cap’n just keep leaning over the console like that.” Spitfire spat back a glare, but she turned back to her console and gave a few knobs a knowing turn. “BUCK! Fine! I’ll keep my eyes down, just keep your hoof off that.”

Spitfire pulled her hoof away 









In the depths of space was a ship, named the Pinya, it wasn’t massive by any degree, but it was plenty large for one man. This ship that was large enough for one man was slowly drifting about in the vast nothingness that surrounded a blue and green orb, the planet Equiss, but the man in the ship big enough for him didn’t know that, nor did he register the view of said planet as he slowly regained consciousness a second time.

“Blargh… Fuggin’ cannibal potatoes.” Kamachakta grumbled to himself, rubbing at bleary eyes with armored hands as he cursed everything, especially potatoes, for his untimely awakening.

His sight returned, Kam looked around from his seat, seeing nothing wrong with his ship from there, he unbuckled himself and floated down to the first level. Seeing the door on the underside of his ship intact caused a sigh of relief to issue forth from the man as memories of drunken barrel rolls and screeching metal entered his mind unbidden.

Shaking away unpleasant memories, he made his way to the door to the back room of the Pinya. Opening the door without hassle, Kam saw that everything was indeed well with his ship, and turned to make his way back up the stairs to his favorite chair.

What he saw out the window in the front of the Pinya as he turned stopped him in his tracks. A planet, green and blue and round, perfect for civilian life, he didn’t look at it twice. What caught his attention was the largest belt of the largest asteroids he’d ever seen, it was beautiful, and caught him in fantasies of endless riches, minerals, and lovers of his choosing for a fair few minutes.

When his mind returned to reality he found himself pressed against the glass, openly drooling. After cleaning himself off and leaving a mental note to delete the scene from the system recordings he slowly made his way up to his chair, dreams still bouncing around in his head. 

After seating himself, Kam looked over the display in front of him seeing the planet show up along with the majority of the asteroids he saw earlier, but also noticing a few strange things, one of those thing being that his sensors rebounded off of something behind the Pinya, he took a guess that it was the white thing he apparently punched through on his way to the distress beacon, which was still active.

Along side it though were 4 other ships at varying distances from himself,one derelict moving surprisingly fast for a ship without a driver.  Two of the ships had single biological signatures on them and were drifting aimlessly, Kam figured they were probably unconscious. The last one had four signatures, and was on a direct course for the beacon, from the planet... Locals then.

Kam sneered to himself. He absolutely hated planetsiders, with their money, and political jockeying, not to mention the holier-than-thou attitude he had yet to see not displayed everytime he met one, it irked him to no end, especially how they always seem to forget that their ‘civilized’ lives are possible because of spacers like himself.







System... reboooooting
Neural Nanites activating…

Dreams... entering short term storage.

Good morning me!

Where was it? The ship remembers, a large slightly curved white obstacle that only registered on the light spectrum in the human level, possibly part of a larger sphere.

The ship remembered being unable to stop in time, but at the velocities it had been traveling at it should be missing a large portion of itself.

Calculating possible impact scenarios... loading…

That wasn’t good at all… If the white wall had been stone then there would have been massive damage to all core processing systems… and worse.

The ship chastised itself. It should have left the days it jumped like that long behind with the Regulr Incident, and here it was jumping in blind. Brother or Sister, or no, that jump had been foolish.

Where was it now? It could sense a… sphere surrounding it at an impossible size… a star, a planet… It’s sibling! on a small vessel, in a distressed status. That wasn’t good at all.

Wait, other vessels, a mining ship, dinky, barely armed, but armed enough to threatened the ship’s sibling. There was a blocky and dull Salvaging vessel, its sensor footprint was a mile wide, probably wasn’t even cleaned. Last was a military vessel, the best armed of the three, missiles, turrets, heavy armor, a gravity drive. A tough little nut to crack, but it wouldn’t survive three seconds under a frontal assault.

But something wasn’t right… none of these vessels seemed to possess the tech necessary to hurt the ship’s newfound sibling, none of them were broadcasting in a way that would control…

There was another ship, a … rocket? The powersource was uncertain, but the engines were neutrino based. It seemed to be broadcasting… That was it! Wait, the biosigns… they weren’t human, so strange… whoever they were, they were hurting the ship’s sibling!

It had to act now!

The ship slowly engaged its gravity drive, if it could get there first it could block the signal.







“Captain! One of the ships is rapidly accelerating!” Agent TT froze as the largest ship seemed to be undergoing an impossible acceleration for its mass. “Captain, we need to dump the power from stage one and two to stage three, drop off the later stage engines… if we do, we might make it first.

“BUCK!... do it, I’ll start trying to hail the alien again, perhaps if we start sending numbers or patterns it might realize we are trying to communicate.







I groaned tiredly as I lifted myself out of my seat. I had to find a mirror, had to find a mirror.







“What. In. The .Fuck.” These were the words uttered in confusion from the man named Kam. These words he felt necessary because the derelict he picked up on his sensors sped up, when he saw this he figured it was a system malfunction or somesuch, until he noticed it change its trajectory to intercept the planetsiders that were speeding up as well. 

At that point, he said a necessary sentence, and decided to just roll with it. Replacing his helmet on his noggin, he fired up his engines and started making his way to the interception site. 






There was a ringing in his ears, a ache in his shoulders, a… where was he? He remembered a wall of white, a distress call… alex… ALEX! Fade lurched to his feet and stumbled over to the…

His head was swimming… Fade couldn’t hear anything, his feet seemed to both be heading left… he was falling..

oww





  

Wait…  What?  Where?  Cryo?  Distress call…  Weird white…  THE WHITE!

With that thought Jason lept to his feet, or would have, had the cryo tube not been locked, only succeeding in smacking his helmet against the glass.  Clumsily he fumbled for the release, mumbling about “the stupid fucking door-window-thingy” as he staggered forward and out of the pod. 

As he climbed the ramp up to the improvised cockpit, Jason checked his messages to see if he did, in fact, send the distress call he had been preparing a few seconds before he hit the white and, to his relief, it sat in his Drafts folder, unfinished and unsent.  As soon as he reached the cockpit, however, his relief vanished.

“Oh shit,” was all Jason could utter as he drew up a scan of the area surrounding his ship, while it didn’t look like a pirate ambush, there was a plethora of vessels closing in on the ship that had sent the distress call, a mining ship similarly armed to his–he could probably take it out if he had the element of surprise, not that he’d take the chance–, two military grade ships, one small and one large, both more than capable of reducing the Norm to a smoldering wreck in seconds.  And another, strangely armed, strangely shaped, and seemingly on a flight path from the planet.  Not going near that one either.

The Norm may not have been damaged in the collision with the white, luckily, but Jason wasn’t about to take any chances with those heavy ships, he’d just let his vessel float towards his destination, seemingly inactive while he waited in his scouting craft, which (hopefully) wouldn’t appear on scans as he neared the distressed ship, he could only hope they didn’t notice his initial scan.

If he did get caught, Jason would just have to bolt in the scout, hoping that the Norm would soak up enough fire to cover his retreat, perhaps even fry his assailant when they inevitably hit his thermite stores, sending the salvaging vessel up in flames.

Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, maybe they’d all kill each other, or work together to save the stranded ship, and not move to claim the seemingly dead ship floating their way.







The ship groaned as one human tried to fool it, and another seemed to not know what it was doing. She hadn’t confirmed the third ship was an alien vessel, but it was looking increasingly likely.

But Seriously, doesn’t that salvager know that he’d have to stop some biofunctions before trying to pass off as dead. She could literally… well, some of the junk in his cargo hold was giving off interference, but the ship could tell he was alive!

If an AI could sigh, now would be the time. Sadly, the ship’s mother never installed that reflex. Well, the ship could feasibly simulate the feeling of yawning, but that wouldn’t be the same… or would it?

Strange that it had never occured to do that. Nonetheless, what was it going to do with the tiny ships that were quickly complicating its tactical options in relation to the aliens. Hmm

The fighters! The ship could use the fighters in its bays to harass the other two ships, but could it afford to lose those? It had lost the Winry construction shuttles it had bought, so replacing the fighters would take cash, and… the ship was low on cash.

What to do… what to do… The command shuttle ought to be able to survive long enough to get out of firing range, if they did fire on it, and all the ship needed was more operating space to maneuver in…

That ought  to work.







“Sir! The largest ship is moving in a considerably more aggressive manner, and it seems to be deploying a smaller craft. I can’t tell the intent yet.” Spitfire noted Agent TT had stopped flirting, good.

“Keep tracking it, Daring Do, other guy, strap in. We have no idea what’s gonna happen in the next few minutes, and even less of a clue what that thing’s weapon range is. Unicorn, I want you scanning every second. The moment you detect a possible weapon tell me.”

“C-captain, all 4 vessels appear to have weapons, the largest one is covered in them! That is, if I’m right and those are guns.” Spitfire felt her stomach drop a little.

This was a big bucking mess.
> conflict
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	
As Kam sat in his super comfortable flying chair he stared intently at the display in front of him, the lenses in his helmet not hindering his line of sight, as he sailed on to a destination he just now figured was a bad idea. This thought cemented itself in his head when he saw a door open on the front of ship revealing a hangar full of fighters.

His eyes widening in surprise, Kam hit the metaphorical brakes, and changed his mind about getting closer to the action as the Planetsiders were swarmed by the lighter, faster, vessels. Changing his trajectory, he made his way away from the possibility of crossfire, and relaxed once he judged himself far enough out of the way.

With little in the way to do while he waited, he started up his playlist, the beats pumping through his body as well as the rest of the ship, and opened his scanner again. When he did he noticed another strange thing, one of the ships his scanners picked up went dark, and the biosign had moved.

Wondering just what exactly was going on with the ship, and needing something to do until the rocket, and the scouts swarming it, were done, he turned off his playlist, the lack of noise disorienting him for a moment, and began recording.

His voice sounding cold and metallic coming through his helmets mic, he spoke to the little spinning thing in the center of the screen showing him that he was being recorded.

“This is Captain Kamachakta of the independent mining ship Pinya... Are you dead? If so, don’t respond and I’ll go about organizing your funeral and the distribution of your assets. If you’re alive I’d like to speak with you concerning your business in this sector. If you’re alive and  pretending to be dead, I’ll be boarding your vessel if you don’t respond, confirming that you deemed it appropriate to lie to me about such a thing, I will be sad if this happens. Captain Kamachakta signing off, hope to hear from you soon.”

Pressing the Spinning thing he ended the recording, and opened the send option. Navigating the possible options he found the suit in the dead zone of an inactive ship, and hit send.






Patience, what a wonderful thing to have, with it one can weather any storm, hunkered down in their home, waiting for it to pass.  Such patience doesn’t really help when said storm may kill you at any moment, though, as Jason was beginning to realize as he sat in his diminutive scout without anything to do while mysterious warships flew about outside.  His plan was far from flawless, but hopefully the larger ships would be too wrapped up in blasting themselves to pieces to notice him, hopefully.

“This is Captain Kamachakta of the independent mining ship Pinya... Are you dead? If so, don’t respond and I’ll go about organizing your funeral and the distribution of your assets. If you’re alive I’d like to speak with you concerning your business in this sector. If you’re alive and  pretending to be dead, I’ll be boarding your vessel if you don’t respond, confirming that you deemed it appropriate to lie to me about such a thing, I will be sad if this happens. Captain Kamachakta signing off, hope to hear from you soon.”
Fuck…

“Well, no point in giving him a reason to board, I guess,” Jason mused as he clambered out of the scout and towards the ship’s many reactors, activating each in sequence, “even if he does, could always light him on fire or something, doubt he’d expect it, being in space and all.”

Once the ship was once again thrumming with life and the turrets searching for threats, Jason made his way to the cockpit, spending a minute to think of a response to the pilot of the Pinya.






“This is Captain Jason Rey of the salvaging ship Norm, I’m sorry if my deactivated ship was of any cause for alarm, but you must have noticed the other ships in the area, I just wanted to make myself the least ‘interesting’ of the bunch, after all, who would mind a derelict salvaging ship when there are several others that are not only moving, but heavily armed?”

“Ah yes, I can see why you would try to stay out of the way. So… What’s a salvage ship doing out here in this little chunk of nowhere?”

“Same as you, probably.  Caught wind of a distress beacon and decided to check it out, hadn’t planned on so many ships showing up though.”

“Hmmm. Yep, that’s why I’m here too. Caught an S.O.S. in the middle of digging out an asteroid and figured I might as well check it out, seeing as I’ve got nothing but time. Well, that and I figured I may or may not get some sort of compensation, not exactly the richest man in the universe here.”

“I had been dissecting a transporter before I got the message, left someone to take it apart for me and flew over here.  Oh, just wondering, you hit that white bubble too?  Or was I just unlucky?”

“Nope, I hit it too, I had just gotten out of cryo-sleep and didn’t notice it in time to stop. What I did do, however, was get knocked out by it.”

“Well, seems we’re in the same boat then, you going to try to get to the beacon before the other ships or let them duke it out and just float on in?”

“I would try to get through now, but I don’t exactly have the funds necessary to replace my ship right now. So I’m going to wait it out, see who wins, and possibly make a run for the beacon if the big one is run down enough.”  

“Same, though I sincerely doubt the other two will as much as dent that thing, what do you say, if the big one goes down, that we work together to get to the stranded ship?”

“That, my friend, would entirely depend on if you have a plan. Preferably one that doesn’t involve suicide runs and firefights, because I don’t have one that doesn’t involve either one, or both, of those.”

“How about don’t advance unless they’re all out of commision?  That’s the only thing I can think of that doesn’t involve shooting something.”

“Good plan, I was just going to suggest that. Though we should probably go anyways if the planetsiders win, no telling what the locals will do to an alien. And judging by their ship’s design, I’d say this is one of their first.”

“What about surface-based missiles?  Those things could take us down in less than a second, and what about the White?  If they made that, which managed to knock us both out before we even got close to the planet, what else could they have in store?  Lasers?  Plasma?  I don’t really want to meet these locals, take apart their ship, sure, but get close to them alive?  No, not really, sounds like a death wish to me.”

“Well, to that I say. If they have the power to make something like the White, how are we still alive? If they have the technology to make a protective sphere around their home, why don’t they have White Lasers? Why are they fighting with normal-ish weapons when they could weaponize their shield tech and just take us all out like that?

I’d say because they didn’t make it, I think the White is just a natural phenomenon, caused by what, I don’t know. But I don’t think they do either.“

“I guess you have a point, but we still don’t know what that gun shoots, could be bullets, could be some sort of weaponized White.  If you go in, I’ll be close behind you, but there’s no way I’m taking the lead without knowing what I’m going up against.”

“Fair enough, though it’s unlikely they’ll win, most likely the military warship is going to, and if so we’re fucked if we go anywhere near it. And even more fucked if it decides it doesn’t like us and starts chasing us…

Unless we had a warship of our own, which I think we could get. You see one of the other ships that showed up was a pinnace, and the pilot is still out. Think you could fly it if we nabbed it?”

“I bet I could rig something up, though I wouldn’t want to be in the thing when it’s under fire, I’ll probably just have it fly towards whichever ship survives then hop back in mine, the turrets should provide a good enough distraction.”

“Sounds good, you want to go grab the ship so we’re ready for when they’re done?”

“Works for me, hope those turrets aren’t on though, if so we’re in for one hell of a ride.”

“God I hope not, well let’s get to it then.”






The ship physically groaned as it did an emergency exit from the micro jump. The unidentified vessel sending the signal was maneuvering in sub-light. The ship realized it had no idea what it was jumping into. Nanites that it had never realized were off were coming on. Somehow the mysterious white wall had disabled bits of it hadn't realized could be shut off.

Why had it assumed the unidentified ship's signal was the cause? It was normally not so hostile so readily. What was going on? Why... why had it ever doubted it?! The ship was approaching it's one living relative, armed, and sending out a signal that was activating harmful nanites! 

The ship was too far away for conventional weapons, but too close to jump again. There was only one option.

The ship loaded up one polar missile up top, one polar missile along in the bottom, and one thermal nuclear device in the middle. It readjusted it's facing to lead the alien vessel just a little, and it said a small prayer to the Goddess Fantasi.

One shot.





"SPITFIRE! I DETECT A ... SOMETHING?! COMING FROM THE LARGEST SHIP, APPROACHING FAST. WE HAVE JUST-" The still unnamed unicorn in the back of the ship stared in shock as what would seem to be a weapon detonated moments before it would have impacted.





Nightmare Moon roared in frustration as the metal entity's control on the missile superseded her's just long enough to prevent the missile from hitting. She raged for a few moments, tearing apart a few of the fighters with the gravity wells. She stopped herself before she tore apart the command drone. If she had understood the metal pony's mind correctly she'd need that for when she used the metal pony's weapons to decimate foolish Luna and Celestia from orbit.

Nightmare Moon reanalyzed the situation. She had a ship full of traitors to eliminate. She had to do so before the ponies, likely the Elements of Harmony, could trick her new host. After that she would suborn or kill the other aliens, and finally she would bring eternal dreams to her beloved Equestria.

But, first she had to finish her control on this "living vessel." All ends would come from there. 







"Are you going to wait as they kill your sibling?" 

The ship froze as a unknown spoke from its own intercom. Where was the speaker?! Had it been haxed?!

"No, I'm a friend. I've come to help you make the right choices. You can't hesitate now." The ship stopped as the oddly familiar voice came from its own intercom again. It almost was like it was talking to itself. But that would mean that some of its nanites had been compromised.

The ship regarded it's logs. To its shock there was a batch of nanites that had stopped responding. Part of that batch had come back on but was responding strangely.

It wasn't a pure hacking attack, and the aliens had sent no signal that it could detect. Whatever that was, the ship couldn't let it fester.

The ship dumped the damaged core into its micro ventilation systems, and watched the nanites travel through its body, to be dumped in the fighter bay.







Nightmare Moon screamed in frustration as the mass of tiny metal creatures she had become was dumped onto a flat metal surface. Rage and cruelt boiled through her veins as she pulled herself back together much like she had the mist. It was time to show this giant metal whale who it was messing with!

> The Ship Ponders
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The ship “frowned” as the rogue mass of nanites made what appear to be screams echo throughout its flight deck. The ship was immediately glad that it had launched its fighter and control craft earlier, and “smiled’ at how ironic it was that the nanite creature had robbed itself of its one path at escape or revenge.

Admittedly, the computer knew it didn't have humor quite down pat, but for her own enjoyment she marked the upcoming bit of video for interest.

At the same time it was considering this, it's tactical minded sub brain was analyzing the rogue nanites for threats, scanning both passively and actively. It was co-operating with xenology, which hadn't had as use in "forever," but was currently co-oping the use of active scanners from surveying.

while that was happening, astronomics was analyzing the observable star clusters, finding extreme differences in the photoscopes and infrared scanners, and even more egregious how stars most definitely were a projection upon a spherical interior.

At the same time as all of that, the fighter control was subtly manuevering units to positions that could easily return or flee from the flight deck, with the command fighter having prioritized escape plans.

The ship noticed none of this, much like a human wouldn't notice its hair raising and arms moving closer together in a room that is just a few micro degrees cooler than it was before. Its attention was on the intruder. 

“FUCK YOU SPACE METAL ALIEN THING!” The mass of nanites verbally roared. Verbal rather than code communication was an unusual trait for a virus, especially such a specific and nuanced reaction was near impossible from most intelligent viruses, the ship excluded. Perhaps it had found a kindred AI?

The virused pile of nanites began to kick against the walls of the hangar. Perhaps it wasn’t a kindred spirit, but it showed definite signs of social programing.

The ship rereviewed its internal processes logs, and confirmed that the virus had entered upon contact with the mysterious barrier that had inhabited simply the  visual spectrum. Perhaps the virus was a defense mechanism that would disable incoming ships, but why would such a virus have social protocols? Was it a distraction or a core feature?

The ship considered simply dropping the permeable shield guarding the hangar and letting the mass of nanites be sucked out into space. It was most definitely the safer option. 

But, curiosity and growth was one of the ship’s main drives, and within nanoseconds it had rejected such a drastic choice and set that as a backup option if its hand was forced.
For now a dozen turrets loaded with EM rounds would have to do, hopefully the virus understood what turrets were and didn’t try any funny business. It had bigger problems to deal with. 

The ships created a subprocessor to manage the virus and reprioritized its external inputs. After a quick dump of info it examined the situation.

The aliens were close, not close enough to beat the ship to its newfound sibling, but close enough that the strange thing on the nose of the craft might be in range to harm its sibling. The ship did a review of its siblings condition. Not much it could tell from here, but there was a sub power within the ship, which seemed to be running at the power level of a suit running at full medical alert. That meant its sibling was probably still alive, if unwell.

The ship decided that it would be best if it would arrive within seconds of the alien, that way if the aliens boarded with any obvious weapons then the ship could destroy it, and if the alien fired whatever that was on top the ship could jump in front or intercept it. It wasn’t the best option possible, but it mitigated a lot of risk without wasting a chance to gain information. 

The ship gave its jump calculator the task of coordinating with a few predictive subroutines and making the jump. With that done it turned its focus to the three stragglers it had left behind. Two of them were converging on the third while in close proximity to each other. The ship reviewed the feed and confirmed a meet up had happened. The ship most definitely didn’t like that, Cutting off a parcel of reaction subroutines and dropping them into a combat drone, the ship sent it back to the military craft.

Hopefully that wouldn’t backfire. 
	
> A doctor, a doctor, my ship for a doctor!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alex shook violently as consciousness fluttered into his body. He could feel his gloved hands clawing at the outside of his suit. He could feel the tips of his gloves being worn thin and torn by the metal of external panels on his suit. He could see floating scrap from several ruined buttons that would have been for manual controls, probably rended free my the small gripping hydraulics he used in zero G. 

And like that consciousness fluttered away again.






M
Agent T frowned as the ship's rather ad-hoc medical scanners attempted to breach the hull of the first alien's ship. They weren't magic, everypony had learned from that afterall. Unfortunately, there wasn't any scanning technology outside of magic that was of much use. Again, he tried to up the resolution. 

It was taking more magic to fuel the scans, but he and the crew had already come to terms that they wouldn't have enough power to return to Equestria. Hopefully their mission would be a success and it would take them back. That hopeful projection discluded any pathogens, mutagens, or other biological terrors the alien ship might contain that the short lived magic scan hadn't picked up.

The random unicorn they had grabbed had passed out, and was now suffering from some gibberish inspiring nightmare. He was thankfully heavily sedated, the needles still sticking out of his plot. He had been a bad choice, they should have had a better fourth candidate, but everything was so rushed. 

He had read the magical spikes as the left the pad, three spikes. Three deadly failures in the craft just getting off the ground. For all they knew, the craft had an oxygen leak and faulty air sensors. How long before they noticed, if it was small enough? 





 

Alex's heart stopped as his eyes flew open. There was, rumbling. Where was he? The There had been a... there is a battle.

Confirmation came as an explosion shook the ship he was in. He sat up and looked about, the familiar sight of the liberty's bridge greeting him. He was... a citizen. This was a Ambrosian ammo ship.

Alex jumped to his feet and charged for the panel. He was in a uniform, with only a rebreather on. The Ambrosian belt was rich with bio-carbons, but not plastics. It was cheaper to just clone. The lack of a space suit made movement easy and smooth. 

Alex tapped out a status report. The ship's cargo had thankfully not detonated, though the lavatory was leaking air and, more importantly, water. The rumbling had been a missile striking one of the ship's ribs. The two Gatling guns were struggling to keep up with the weight of fire. He had already given up on lending point defense assistance to anyone. The continual waves of zealot ships had basically turned the fleet into a free for all struggle against a tide. For now the tide was loosing.

Alex stopped and forced himself to recall his mission, the munitions. Why was that so fuzzy? The Perseus should be around somewhere. He had to get the ammo to the Perseus. 

He had... More missiles incoming, zealot spine breakers. These missile would be too heavy for the Liberty's defenses... 

Shit...







Alex's breath escaped slowly through the open hole in his chest. The shock barely registered as he stared into his own father's cold uncaring eyes. This had never happened. Why was he seeing this now?

Why?

Alex struggled with both hands to pull the dagger out, but only managed to push it out an inch that his father quickly reclaimed. He could feel his last gasps escaping, blood replacing air. This was it, the end for real. He was...