Prologue
There was a swishing noise, clancking noise, a fapping noise, a retching noise and a dull light, and there stood the author, I have a jar of dirt, in all his unholy glory. Except he was a faggot.
"Hello ladies, and welcome to the rewrite of Dead Space: Friendship is Dismembered. Hope you enjoy the story and don't crap your pants. Here we go."
In the 26th century, mankind had long passed the final frontier, establishing it's dominance across the solar system and beyond. Fleeing from it's dying homeworld, humanity had quickly earned its place in the galaxy, establishing settlements into the void of space itself and firmly holding on to the wheels of fate even as Earth became polluted and decayed. Their mindset was firm: they would never keel over, even if their cradle could not contain them anymore.
One of these settlements spun lazily in Saturn's orbit. Titan Station, or more commonly known as the Sprawl, was a monument to human engineering; a gargantuan installation surrounding the remains of the ringed planet's largest moon, powered by massive fusion reactors and built to be self-sustaining for centuries. It is a fortress amongst the stars, unyelding to the unforgiving cold and radiation, and steadfast against the gravitational pull of its host planet. The Sprawl's inhabitants could sleep safe in the knowledge that the metal giant would always protect them from outside harm.
At least, until one of them was disturbed from their sleep by a call in the middle of the night cycle.
Isaac Clarke groaned and covered his eyes from the harsh glow of the holoprojection springing in front of him. Tiredly, he shifted himself in his bed and yawned loudly.
"Isaac are you there? Come iiiiiin, Isaaaac..!"
Isaac smiled at the projection of his fiancé Nicole, who bore an amused expression on her face.
"Oh! I'm so sorry Isaac!" She laughed. "The time difference is... I'll call you back later okay?"
"No, no... It's okay..." He mumbled tiredly. "How are you doing?"
"Good," she said and grinned. "You were right Isaac. The Ishimura is a great ship! I am so lucky to be serving aboard her."
"Enjoy it while it lasts Nicole, they're gonna decommision her next year."
"Isaac..." She smiled lovingly. "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For just... Pushing me to do this. If it weren't for you I never would have made it this far because you made me stick with it."
"Just remember I'm giving you up six months so you can do this..." He added at her flickering screen.
"You know what Isaac... We must b- getting out - range..."
"Nicole..."
"I- Isaac I'll call y- back as soon as - can..."
The man rubbed his head in frustration as the static overtook everything and "CONNECTION LOST" blinked across the screen. He sighed and fell down upon his bed again, rubbing his eyes.
Six months Nicole... I'm going to miss you the entire time.
I have a jar of dirt
presents
Dead Space: Friendship is Dismembered
Two weeks later
It was, like usual, a fine day in the quaint town of Ponyville. Many ponies frolicked around happily under Celestia's benevolent sun, greeting each other with friendly smiles. Most spent their day at the marketplace to shop and catch up with the latest gossip, while others preferred the relaxing mood of a walk in the park.
Despite the good weather, a certain lavender unicorn still chose to remain inside her library. Twilight Sparkle flicked through the pages of a thick book, inhaling the musky, pleasant smell of ink on paper at her favorite spot beside the fireplace. An inkpot stood nearby, in which Twilight periodically dipped her quill using her telekinesis and scribbled down some notes on a piece of parchment. She was preparing a scientific resumé on advanced magical theory to send to her mentor Celestia along with her latest friendship report, as part of her agreement. Her topic was already chosen: she had spent hours rifling through the shelves in search of volumes written on Starswirl the Bearded. It felt only proper in her mind that the work she was sending to the princess should include the best magician in the history of ponykind and the father of modern magical theory.
One book in particular had drawn Twilight's attention: in it, Starswirl had submitted theories of what he would call the Multiverse, where realities could branch off and create different universes governed by their own set of physical laws. The amount of information crammed into its pages was staggering, detailing everything from possible explanations to the phenomena and even a guide to conjuring scrying windows to look into other realities. Sadly, no spells for actually travelling between dimensions seemed to exist, much to Twilight's chagrin. Even if it was possible to achieve this, it would require the magical power almost equivalent to an alicorn to pull it off. Even the scrying spells were far beyond the ability of an ordinary unicorn.
However, Twilight was anything but ordinary.
The mare smiled at the thought of Celestia praising Twilight for her excellent work before awarding her generously as Twilight managed to pull off a scrying spell in front of the stunned unicorn scholars of the Arcaneum magical university, offering her a place into the prestigious learning institute while her friends cheered at her appreciatively-
She chuckled. Better not get ahead of myself here, she thought and closed the book. Even if she surpassed many of her peers in the arts of magic, she still needed practice to flawlessly perform the scrying spell.
Well, let's get to it.
She set aside the book and readied herself. Twilight furrowed her brow in concentration and closed her eyes, focusing her magic into the tip of her horn. Swirling light assembled at the focal point and grew brighter before the mare concentrated the powerful energy, which in her mind looked like it spread out like an ocean before her. Here we go, she thought and metaphorically sank her consiousness into the magical currents.
Twilight gasped in fascination at the scene before her but remained steady, not wavering once in her spellcasting. Dimensional leylines spread out before her like a weave, pulsating steadily with a soft light as they spread out all across the infinitude of the Multiverse. She slowly navigated through the strings, observing with curiosity at the images that presented herself before her. She witnessed strange, hulking quadrupedal beasts walking across blue plains, their snouts flailing now and again as they carried what seemed to be primitive clothing.
"Devor-khanti, Uvor..." She whispered.
The next image showed bizzare insectoid creatures scuttle around a cave, their features somewhat ressembling those of a centipede. They scuttled around their queens, bringing sustenance to them and tending to the eggs.
"Chikitari, Rachni..."
The next scene unsettled Twilight greaty. Fur-covered wolf-like beings waged war against each other, bombarding each other with cannons and rifles while opposing forces engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Overhead massive airships battled for dominance over the skies, cannons firing and soldiers boarding adversaries.
"Verkan Imperi, Vvargr..."
And finally, she saw something incredible: a massive space station in the vastness of space, orbiting a ringed gas giant. Twilight could see bipedal creatures mill around the inside while suited beings floated around the void, repairing a massive panel upon the top of the structure. Several smaller ships drifted by, their engines lightening up the blackness with their bright cyan glows.
"Homo sapiens, Human..." she breathed.
"DID SOMEPONY SAY HUMANS?!!"
The outburst made Twilight scream in surprise and pop out from her semi-consious state at Lyra's sudden appearance and the spell collapsed. Arcane energies flickered around the room violently as sparks flew from Twilight's horn. The massive, slightly crazed grin on Lyra's face turned into a fearful scowl when magic storms swirled around the library, throwing books and from their shelves and sending various furniture flying away.
As all unicorns learn at a young age, magic can be extremely volatile when handled without caution. All spells more complicated than simple telekinesis create a lot of PKE residue which must be safely directed and expelled, much like combustion engines need to get rid of the excess heat when preforming tasks. When engines overheat, they break or sometimes even explode. When the level of PKE residue gets too high, it creates magical storms through the user's horn. Such events are rarely documented fortunately since all unicorn foals are indoctrinated at a young age to control their residue subconsiously, but it can still happen if the caster loses concentration during advanced casting rituals. In that case, magcial storms are completely unpredictable and even potenially highly dangerous, depending on the caster's magical might.
And as was told before, Twilight was anything but ordinary.
The arcane powers rippled through the room and assembled into a vortex, dragging a struggling Twilight across the floor. Lyra, who had grasped hold of the staircase handlebar, sensed the danger her friend was present in. She recovered from the initial panic, grabbed Twilight using her telekinesis and attempted to drag her towards the door, but to no avail: Lyra hardly considered herself a very strong spellcaster and her grasp on the other unicorn shattered. Twilight promply lost her footing and was sucked in by the anomalous maelstrom.
"LYRA!"
The mint-green unicorn reached out a hoof futilely as Twilight was sucked in and the portal closed. The magical storm abruptly died down, and Lyra was sent sprawling on her flank along with various detritus that had been flying around. She groaned in pain and struggled to stand up, noticing the mess in the library; several shelves had fallen over, books were scattered everywhere across the room and a couple of windows had broken, sending shards of glass all over the place. Twilight was nowhere to be seen.
In horror, Lyra clasped a hoof over her mouth and her pupils shrunk to the size of pinpricks at the realisation of what she had done.
"Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no-"
Isaac hurriedly made his way to the shuttle, barely stopping to apologize as he bumped into the various crewmen of the Sprawl's civilian hangar bay. Word of the Ishimura's sudden and unexplainable blackout had made Isaac mad with worry over Nicole's well-being and had immediately volounteered for the repair crew the CEC would send to find the Ishimura. Despite the somewhat cluncky engineering suit weighting him down, he still ran quickly through the crowd towards the Kellion: the small, albeit rather old shuttle had been commissioned for the trip along with a small security detachement. Not that Isaac cared much for details; he had barely skimmed through the mission details or the crew roster.
It turned out three men were already at the shuttle bay. Isaac recognized the tall, african american man from the roster: Zach Hammond, the chief security officer of the local department and leader of the operation. He stood to full attention at Isaac's arrival, who panted lightly after his litte sprint.
"Mister Clarke, I presume?"
"Yeah, that's me," Isaac breathed out. "Sorry. The damn tram was late."
"It's okay," Hammond raised a hand before escorting the engineer inside the shuttle. "I've read your files and I know the personal stake you have for this assignment. Besides, we are still waiting for someone."
"I thought this was all of us-"
"Hey boys," a female voice called out. Standing outside the shuttle was a petite woman with tan skin and her hair tied in a bun, observing the men. She entered and raised her hand out to Isaac, who shook it gingerly. "I'm Kendra. Kendra Daniels." She then proceeded to offer a hand to Hammond, who merely cocked his head and gave her an iniquisitive gaze.
"Miss Daniels," he repeated slowly. "To be fair I didn't expect another person to join us for this trip." The brunette shrugged casually.
"There was a last-minute fix. I just learned of it this morning." Kendra walked further into the ship and leaned against the nearest wall. "I'll be the programming expert for this trip. CEC figured you could use one in case this was a simple comms error."
Isaac raised an eyebrow but decided to let it drop. It did seem logical, after all. He simply shook Hammond's hand, who smiled at the younger man.
"It'll be a pleasure serving along, mister Clarke."
The engineer released his hand and looked around. "So... Where did we hear from the Ishimura the last time?"
"We're headed for Aegis VII, if that's what you're asking," Kendra called over her shoulder as she worked on activating the shuttle systems.
"Aegis VII?" Isaac asked surprisedly. "That's at the edge of unexplored space..."
Truth be told, Isaac had heard shady rumors of the Aegis system, and none of them were particuarly pleasant. The system had been labeled as restricted by EarthGov for over a century for reasons unknown before mining operations were allowed and a small colony was set up on one of the planets to facilitate planetcrack operations. The rare visitors from Aegis VII remained mostly quiet about the matter, and the few who actually said something about the colony mostly muttered to themselves about "irrational behavior" among some colonists and "the feeling of something watching you from the red sand dunes in the distance." This had led to several ghost stories among the more impressionable people about paranormal happenings on the planet and of revenants from past civilizations haunting the deserts of Aegis VII, or even secret EarthGov experiments conducted far from prying eyes.
Isaac didn't believe these stories anyway, but he still didn't like the feeling of visiting that place.
"Frankly, the higher-ups didn't tell us much," Hammond interjected. "Everything was on a need-to-know basis. All I know is that the Ishimura was in-system for a quick refueling run and to pick up some sort of package from the planet's surface."
"...And you don't think that's strange?"
"I'm not paid to ask questions mister Clarke," Hammond answered sardonically and shrugged. "I'm just following orders. How soon until we can lift off, miss Daniels?"
"Why don't you ask the flyboys over there?" she gestured towards the two remaining officers at the cockpit.
"I just got confirmation from control that were cleared for takeoff boss," the pilot (Chen if Isaac recalled correctly) answered. "Just give the word."
With a quick affirmative order from Hammond, the shuttle lurched slightly as the docking clamps disengaged and the spacecraft slowly exited the hangar, passing the energy field that kept the station's atmosphere sealed but allowed ships to pass through, and made its way from Saturn's orbit. Isaac grabbed a handle as the ship's shockpoint drive activated. The singularity generating core produced a wormhole right in front of the Kellion, and the ship was promply sucked in before the anomalous tear disappeared.
"Everything seems to be working green," Chen said. "We'll shock out in Aegis VII's orbit, ETA seven days."
Isaac removed his helmet (snorting inwardly that he hadn't thought of that earlier) and climbed down the ladder to the engines.
"I'm gonna go check on the drive, be right back."
As Isaac disappeared from view, a pregnant silence weighted down upon the Kellion's bridge. Apart from Hammond clearing his throat, not a sound was made from the rest of the crew as they stared at each other awkwardly.
"So..." Kendra's eyes darted around as she grinned sheepishly. "Anyone up for a game of chess?"
Isaac wiped his brow as he fiddled around absentmindedly with the shockpoint drive's console, checking and rechecking lines of code and general statistics of the Kellion. In truth, Isaac mostly wanted something to do besides worrying about Nicole the whole time. He constantly reassured himself that she would be fine at the least thought of worry, but... Well, a little paranoia was normal in every relationship.
Sighing, Isaac cracked his neck and decided to check the engines compartement for anything of interest. The Kellion was admitedly an old ship, but the engineer had worked on similar shuttle classes before and had always had a somewhat nerdy interest in the inner workings of older ships. Something about the very word "vintage" appealed to him.
*Clang*
Huh, that's new.
Odd shuffling sounds coming from the storage room caught Isaac's attention. Suddenly, there was a crash and a thud, along with something... Talking? Isaac, remaining somewhat suspicious, made his way towards the door and opened it, ready to potentially confront any stowaway.
He wasn't expecting to be met by the sight of a miniature lavender unicorn staring at him in fear behind an overturned pile of storage boxes.