Exploration, science, alliances, all of this the Federation stood for, now their goal has become much larger. Join Admiral Stone and the crew of the U.S.S. Chestnut as they voyage through a universe that stores some unexpected surprises.
In 2161, the Federation was founded, making contact with several new species, their goal, exploring the stars, meeting new friends, and discovering new things. However, the worlds they've seen are only part of what awaits to be discovered. Admiral Wyatt, commanding officer of an Excalibur class vessel, U.S.S. Chestnut, have been called into battle against the dreadful Na'kuhl, a race bent on altering the timeline for their lost homeworld. Shortly after, though, they are pulled into a world with different physics, less-than-normal violence, and more than Starfleet could have even expected. Join the crew as they voyage further into the unknown, beyond the known universe, and into the more vast, wondrous, and most intriguing points of the theorized multiverse.
{NOTE: This story is set for teen because there is major violent conflict in space, minor on ground, no gore, however. This is my first story that I have made so far, some of the chapters may seem a bit lazy in the way they're made, so I may edit them sometimes, and new chapters will be posted at random, so keep an eye out for any new chapters I post. I hope you enjoy it upon finish. LLAP :)
Star Trek, and other referenced characters are the property of CBS Paramount Corporation, My Little Pony is owned by Hasbro Studios.}
Stardate: 82014.4 Location: Edren System Year: 2410
The galaxy has been in turmoil in the past several years. The war between the Federation and the Klingons has been ceased, the Romulan Republic has been formed, now free from the tyrannical Tal Shiar agents. The Iconian War nearly obliterated the galaxy into trillions of scattered atoms... now the newly formed Alliance, formed by the noble, peaceful United Federation of Planets, the mighty, glorious warrior race of the Klingon Empire, and the survivors of the infamous Hobus supernova which cost them their homeworld, the newly formed Romulan Republic, has been in never-ending, blood-filled conflict with the Temporal Liberation Front. These forces, claiming the Federation to be nothing but cold, careless time-travelling murderers, have been making countless attempts at altering the timeline in negative ways. However, the Federation's Temporal Integrity Commission has been preventing such situations from occurring. Yet the fighting never stops, bloodshed has been in several time periods, universes, and even alternate realities, such as the recently known "Kelvin Timeline".
The Na'kuhl have been attempting to restore their homeworld thanks to the Tholians, a xenophobic, opportunistic spider-like species that has recently defused their home star, and, the Tox Uthat, the device used by the Tholians to complete the task, yet being built by the Federation from the future, has made the Na'kuhl blame Starfleet for the incident.
The Krenim, lead in the TLF by the traitorous scientist Noye, have been trying to eliminate the Alliance for the loss of many-if not one or two worlds in the galaxy, not to mention the world of Tuteria, a world that was lost to the Borg Collective, a race of cybernetic, humanoids that the Tuterians previously attempted to resist, but without the technology needed, they almost fell to the Borg. However, some of them managed to escape and survive and have now become known as the infamous Sphere Builders. These 3 species have been causing several problems for the Alliance to handle, requiring the help of experienced captains and temporal agents to deal with them.
The Temporal Cold War isn't the only trouble thrown in with this mayhem, the Terran Empire, the Federation's Mirror Counterpart, has been altering their timeline with Temporal technology, causing many problems, including the extinction of the Mirror Iconians by the Empire's hands.
And these problems, although constantly fixed, have been getting worse for some time... A faint, garbled distress signal has been intercepted by 5 starships, one of which being the U.S.S. Chestnut, an Excalibur class vessel with enhanced strength to her arsenal, have been called to the field of war once again to face the temporal terrorists.
On Commander T'Vrell's communications console, a low-tone beep chirped on her comms and a red dot flashed on the map on her display console. "Admiral, we're picking up a distress call from a convoy, lead ship is known as the Beowulf. Shall I put it on the viewscreen?" Admiral Wyatt turned in his chair upon hearing the news, he had a groomed style of brown hair on his head, green pupils on his eyes, and mutton chops on his lower face. his uniform was similar to the Sierra uniforms, with the main officer dept. color (varying from red, yellow, blue) being yellow and the usually black outlines between the yellow and gray on the main part of the uniform being a sky blue. he had a brown Tactical Department Combadge on his chest area on his uniform, and his arms had brown security officer armor attached to his uniform.
"Yes, T'Vrell, put them on." He said to his Vulcan comms officer. The viewscreen blinked once before a picture appeared, besides static covering the screen the room looked like it had taken sufficient damage. Fires had been seen on several parts of the room and sparks flew from the wall cracks. A man was seen on the screen and was attempting to press buttons on his console as he spoke.
"To any ships in range, this is the leading convoy ship Beowulf, in command of Commander Jacob Trask. We are a non military convoy under attack by unknown forces. They've just arrived out of nowhere, scanned us without our permission, and have started attacking my ships! We won't last long without assistance! Please, anyone, he-"
The screen cut to complete static, no good signal would do the trick. Admiral Stone then asked his first officer and fellow academy classmate, Elisa Flores. "How long do we have before we lose the chance to save them?" Elisa looked to her console for a moment, then turned and said,
"We're close enough to make it within 25 minutes, that is, if we use our slipstream drive."
"Do it." Wyatt said to her, and after she plotted course for the convoy, she said to him,
"Course set, sir."
"Engage." With the order, the ship went to warp away from their previous location, flying at max warp to their target. They could only hope they'd be there in time.
...................
The warp field ceased as the stretching stars returned to their normal state upon arrival at the convoy's location, the warp nacelles' blue glow receded into the engines as the ship slowed. The entire area was ablaze with orange-yellowish beams that were known to Starfleet as phaser beams, and dark green beams which were recently identified as "chronoplasma" beam weapons. Debris also covered the battlefield, pieces of Na'kuhl starships and freighters were spotted all over the place. several of the freighters went running from the sleek, red vessels that threatened them, while a few Federation frigates stood by, trying to hold the position so the transports could escape.
The Beowulf was spotted by Wyatt's feline-humanoid officer, Mioiil, a Caitian female. The lead ship was still intact, but several large battle scars were visible on her hull, scans identified the damage to be caused by a type of plasma beam. No doubt the Na'kuhl making another most likely failing attempt at altering history. "What's the Beowulf's status? Is she able to go to warp?"
Kapor, the Chestnut's Klingon science officer, answered his question with a bit of worry, "Perhaps, her engines have low power. If we send an engineering team aboard to heal her scars, she may have a chance."
As he was about to reply, Wyatt was cut off by a transmission from a nearby frigate, voiced by an apparently panicking male officer, "Bismarck here, those scummy devils are packing a punch! We ne- AAAAAHGGGHH-" An explosion sounded as the signal cut off, followed by a brilliant explosion in the distance.
A sleek, red frigate type ship appeared out of the blast, facing towards the Chestnut with its weapons charging. "Tadaari raider dead ahead! Firing Quantum torpedoes!" A wave of glowing, gold-colored objects shot straight towards the frigate, the vessel was instantly impacted not too long once they'd been shot from the torpedo bay. When the explosions cleared away, the ship remained where it was before, but with a red shield-like anomaly around the vessel, no weapon could break the shield, and to the right, another ship of the same design appeared nearby, but it looked almost like a specter.
"Hard to starboard, take out that distortion, then finish the ship off!" The crew leaned to the right as the ship turned, now facing the ghost-like form of the frigate they had just struck. The Na'kuhl were clever when they designed their temporal technology, the device they had just used was some kind of distortion module, the ship would activate it and create a false duplicate of itself, while the real ship hosted a shield around itself, making the user invincible as long as its decoy was existent. The distortion was blown away with ease, but taking the chance the raider charged a green, plasma-like weapon towards the Chestnut, the wave around them expanding outward farther and farther.
"Evasive maneuvers, pattern Gamma Six! Lock all weapons and fire!" The Admiral yelled before the cruiser immediately dodged the assault in mere seconds before a blast of plasma energy fired out from the ship. One freighter was unlucky as it was struck and quickly vaporized by the plasma wave. The Chestnut fired a few orange-colored Phaser beams and red-colored Antiproton beams at the target, then striking it with a few more radiant Quantum torpedoes, and finally, sending it to oblivion with a Cluster torpedo, which got a very close distance to the frigate, then broke apart and released mines to finish the job.
The ship turned to port to face a battlefield consisting of several pieces of debris from destroyed vessels, Alliance ships firing beams and bolts at the red ships, while they retaliated with green beams and large blast waves that the Chestnut was nearly ended by. "Let's see if we can pull off the heat from our friends over there, fire torpedoes, full spread." The Chestnut turned towards a nearby Klingon command cruiser, fire burning off of the hull as damage was visible on its right wing. A wave of torpedoes flew towards the red-colored vessel, this one larger than the frigate before, impacting the ship but doing less damage.
"Taking this destroyer out will have to be done with two hands this time." The Daemosh class warship returned fire with a few plasma beams and torpedoes, damaging the front shields of the ship.
"Minor damage, nothing broken. Phasers locked.... firing!" The viewscreen showed the beams hit the port shield of the destroyer, the shield was broken through as the beams made their way onto the hull, scraping away the red paint and leaving a few burning decks left from the blast. A console beeped a few times until Kapor saw what the problem was.
"Plasma wave charging, taking evasive action!" The ship jolted to the right, knocking some of the crew off of their feet as the ship made an almost miraculous dodge away from the blast. It got them, but even though only the edge of the blast hit them, it still hurt the ship like hell.
The crew immediately got back to their feet as they raced to their seats before they could get hit again, "Damage?!" Wyatt ordered upon the crew's readiness.
"Hull is at 55%, engineering teams are reporting! Minor casualties, and engine power as been drained!" Lon answered as sparks shot from his console.
"Admiral!" Elisa said as the crew looked up to see another green wave charge up and aimed right at them. But before it could finish them off the wave faded as the ship was obliterated by a few disruptor blasts and photon torpedoes. The Klingon vessel they'd come to assist took them out before it could get them. The screen then faced the Na'kuhl fleet, this battle would be quicker than previously thought, as there were only eight ships left. The allied fleet quickly engaged the remaining ships, tearing some of the ships apart with ease while some still flew with minor black scars on the hull of each remaining vessel, and magnifying towards some of the ships, some even had a few Na'kuhl bodies floating out in the debris.
The Chestnut had only one ship to deal with, the command vessel, an Acheros battlecruiser, larger than any of the other vessels in the area, the Chestnut alone would be instantly blown from the sky if they faced such a ship, being a typical cruiser variant and the Acheros being a battleship of sorts, she was no match for that kind of fight. "Admiral, I suggest we form up with our friends near the other Na'kuhl, might give us a bigger fist to throw." Wyatt saw the lone cruiser charging its weapons and thought of another option.
"No, not yet, Zarva, do we have our friends at the ready?"
The blue, bald Bolian woman looked to her Commanding Officer and smirked a bit. "Just give the word, I don't think they'll wait all day."
"Call them in!" The Admiral replied as she tapped a button on her console. A beep played only seconds after as a voice spoke from the comms panel.
"We're ready to waste some scrawny beasts!" The voice yelled out as the viewscreen showed four ships arriving onto the field. These ships were piloted by pirates Wyatt and his crew had helped out back at Nimbus III when dealing with a famous Orion criminal named Hassan. The ships consisted of a Breen cruiser, an Orion Warship, a Hirogen frigate, and a vessel that belonged to an undiscovered species. The five ships now surrounded the Na'kuhl ship, giving it no chance of escape.
"Weapons hot and locked, sir." Lon said as he faced the screen, awaiting his cue.
"Fire." Wyatt replied. The five ships all fired several different weapons at the battleship, weapon types varying from Polaron, Disruptor, Tetryon, and Phaser-type weapons, the Na'kuhl ship was taking critical damage almost immediately. The ship managed to save itself ,however, by activating another distortion and charging up another shield.
Sir, our other friends are coming to help out!" Elisa said as she looked to her console and saw four other ships heading their way. They too fired at the distortion and swiftly erased it from sight. The crew then looked back to the Battlecruiser, fire and warp plasma exited through broken parts of the ship as torpedoes broke through its hull.
"Helm, full astern!" The fleet made the same move as the ship started to break apart and finally let loose a large explosion, breaking some parts of the ship off of it. The ship then exploded again, this time a larger size and also very powerful if one were to stray too close. A Scorpion fighter unfortunately failed to avoid the blast and not too long after became the ships last victim.
The blast faded away as the ships came to a stop, acting like sitting ducks around the broken bodies of freighters and temporal ships. "Damage report." Wyatt said to Lon, awaiting his answer.
"Our hull's been fixed up a bit, thanks to our engineering teams, power has been lost on several sections on decks 7 through 9."
"And the casualties?" The Admiral asked worriedly.
"We lost 32 crewmen onboard and.. two freighters were destroyed." Although the loss of life was lower than he expected, he'd lost some good people in this fight, almost 500 people were counted in the total.
"Sir, I'm getting a signal from one of the freighters." T'Vrell said calmly as she saw a signal being picked up in the comm traffic.
"Put it on." Wyatt replied, and a female voice spoke through the console.
"All ships, this is acting convoy commander Hathai Dano, thank you for your timely assistance. I'm sure Mr. Trask had explained the situation a bit before you got here, these ships just came out of nowhere, scanned our cargo loads and just, opened fire. We couldn't figure out why they fired nor could we talk to them, they wouldn't listen to us. Also, Mr. Trask was injured during the assault, I believe that's why his transmission to you was cut off shortly after, but may I ask that one of you could send a medical team down here please? He needs treatment immediately. Thanks again." The transmission then ended with a low tone of static before shutting off in silence.
The four ships that arrived with the Chestnut warped away into the distance while Wyatt gave his thanks to his pirate friends before they did the same. The Admiral looked at the fleet of damaged freighters, now preparing to continue their job of delivering cargo once they had a medical team onboard the leading ship.
"Kapor, beam a medical team onboard the Beowulf, then set a course out of here." Wyatt told him, and he replied by pressing a few buttons and activating a comms panel.
"Medical team, report to Transporter room 3." He said over the intercom as he shut it off and tapped a few buttons on his console.
"Course laid in for Starbase 234, sir." Wyatt smiled a bit before replying to him.
"Punch it." With the word given, Kapor then tapped a button on his console as the ship started to hum in a low, rumbling tone. The ships warp nacelles charged their energy, the energetic noise of antimatter flowing into the engines. Then, in a bright, blue flash, the ship stretched for a moment before flying towards the far out stars in the distance, heading off to their next destination.
.......................
The sight of the big, blue and green planet in front of the window that showed the solar system was such a beautiful sight, starships and shuttlecraft would pass by, the continents glowing with city lights, and of course, the peaceful feeling of seeing the many stars that in the Admirals mind would possibly contain millions of new species to discover and meet. In a large office that held several gold models of starships and several of the Alliances finest diplomats sat Admiral Jorel Quinn, the leading officer of Earth Spacedock. He had a uniform colored mostly in black, with a line of red encased around a few smaller yellow lines on the upper part of his uniform. He wore grey hair and had a set of buckled mutton chops on his face, sporting a grey color as well. Today would be a bit of a break from galactic issues for the Admiral, as he sat in his chair enjoying the view of an amazing sight in the window.
It had been about a year now and the Federation had been through quite a lot; the war with the Klingons took many good lives away, but that was resolved when the Undine, a shapeshifting race of doppelgangers that were difficult to reveal as imposters thanks to their isomorphic injection techniques, nearly eliminated the Federation and the Klingon Empire by using the Jenolan Dyson Sphere gateway to attack the two worlds, it nearly cost them Earth Spacedock as it had taken a heavy amount of damage during the assault, forcing the two to join forces once more. And they nearly lost again when the Iconians, a race of highly advanced beings nearly eradicated them back in the war, until an ancient device known as the "World Heart" was returned to them, allowing them to leave them all in peace and rebuild their broken home. All of that he'd been through with his allies and colleagues and he finally had a bit of time to himself, no combat to deal with, not a single weapon being fired at his home or any of his ships, it was relaxing, to know that the threat was dealt with and that everyone could finally have some time to see the universe.
A beep played from his comms panel, interrupting his peaceful rest. He tapped a button on the panel and answered. "Yes? Is there something wrong?" He said to the waiting officer on the channel.
The officer replied with an apologetic tone. "Yes, my apologies for interrupting your time sir. I've gotten a message from Admiral Stone." The Admiral built a faint smile, it'd been a while since the incident with Noye that he'd gotten to talk to him. To him, he felt like Wyatt, like many of the other cadets, was a part of his family, he'd helped him all the way through his journey into Starfleet Academy, and now it was like he was already on his path of life.
"What's he been doing? Is something wrong?" The officer on the comms replied with a calm tone.
"No, nothing is wrong, the Admiral just got finished dealing with what we've revealed to be Temporal marauders." The Admiral frowned when he heard the word "Temporal". First Noye betraying them all, and now the fabled "Temporal Cold War" was already crawling close to them. "The Na'kuhl again, probably, or Noye must've built his fleet very quickly." He tried to keep his calm demeanor on his face as he asked the officer again.
"Good, at least he's keeping our lives straight on the correct path. Anything else?"
The officer replied back. "Yes, we've gotten a message from a nearby science vessel, they say they've found a humanoid female onboard, possibly a stowaway. She seems to have quite a bit of knowledge in science, but she calls it "magic" for some reason, and she talks in some kind of "Third-person" perspective. They wish to bring her here, do you want them to come here?" This was certainly unsettling, a similar incident happened with frigate fighting with the Borg at Sienae. except it was six of them and they were now Starfleet officers at this point, going through simulations of several missions Admiral Stone went through long ago.
"Yes, call them here, I think she may be related to a similar incident."
The officer answered back. "Yes Admiral, I'll send a message to them shortly."
"Thank you, Lieutenant, Quinn out." With that, Quinn tapped a button on his console, shutting off the communication signal. This day would apparently get less and less restful, as he now had to get ready to meet a new friend.
"I hope this temporal war won't get us by surprise, otherwise, the Alliance is doomed." Quinn sat in his chair as he gazed at the star-filled universe, wondering if his wish would come to fruition, but most of all, what it was that was bringing these unknown people into their realm.
The brilliance of the stars shined in Wyatt's crew quarters as the ship zoomed through space at warp speed. The idea of a ship flying faster than light through space inside a warp bubble rather than boosting the engines at a high-powered speed was amazing, warp drive being quite a smooth ride was wonderful, being on a ship at warp was like going on a 21st Century plane, or a cruise ship in decent weather.
The feeling of comfort was soon halted when a door chime played near his door. He slightly grunted a bit as he got up and answered. "Yes, come." The door opened and revealed Mioiil, she wore a smile on her face as she stepped into the room.
"Sorry if I got you at a bad time, Wyatt. I just got off my shift and I've got a few hours to kill." She said as she walked by and sat on his couch-like seat.
"How's Quinn doing? I sent him a message about that battle with the Na'kuhl earlier." Mioiil looked at him, and gave a slight frown.
"He's.... not taking in the temporal business in so easily. He fears that this Temporal Cold War could be our downfall." Wyatt looked to the floor with a frown as well.
"Possibly, that's if we don't cooperate and understand who the true threat is." Wyatt started to slowly look at his academy classmate and girlfriend as he continued. " And... I'm worried about how the galaxy is going to turn out once this war's over. I'm afraid that something will go wrong. The Alliance, or at least the races within it, nearly fell at the hands of evil itself, and... I'm..."
He didn't speak for a moment until Mioiil finished his sentence. "You're afraid you'll lose someone or something close to you?" Wyatt snapped out of his worried state and looked at her.
"...Yes, that's it exactly." He continued after a moment of silence.
"You know, Mioiil, I've lived a life of seeing many things, good and bad, and I've learned, or at least tried to learn from my mistakes in life. And even though I'm a better person than I was before, I can never in my life, not even for the thing I'd most want in my life, let go of something I care for most dearly.... such as my crew, my friends, they all feel like that, and if another war starts, or if we get involved in another one, then what will hap-"
He was cut off as Mioiil had slowly gotten up from her seat and was now embracing him, tightly as she spoke. "I've been through pain like that, Wyatt, the pain you feel when someone you have with you, the crew you lead and command 24/7, losing them is never an easy nightmare to face, but that's why we're onboard this ship, to face the problem head on and together."
"Per aspera ad astra." "Through hardships to the stars" was what it meant in Latin. It was one phrase that Wyatt had known and cherished so dearly, something that told him that no matter what differences we have, no matter what problems would come our way, together, we would always succeed. Mioiil loosened her hug. "And nothing is ever going to defy that, nothing, and no one ever will." The two looked at each other, eye to eye, they started to bring their mouths closer for a kiss when a communications panel beeped, ruining their private time.
"Well, I guess we'll try that some other time." She and Wyatt chuckled a bit, before he replied.
"Yeah, hopefully no one will do that again."
The computer slowly flipped open to reveal the symbol of the United Federation of Planets, then cutting to his Voth science officer, Nelen Exil, facing the Admiral. "My apologies for interrupting your time, sir."
He said as Wyatt spoke before he continued. "Don't worry, happens constantly." He smiled a bit before returning his attention to the screen.
"Yes, if I may, our sensors have picked up some kind of anomaly nearby. The Anomaly seems to have similar characteristics to a wormhole, but we can't get a good reading to determine what that is. Should we change course to study this phenomenon?"
The Admiral smiled as he heard news of something that he knew would catch his interest. "Yes, set a course for the anomaly, it's been a while since we've done something with nobody shooting us. Also, contact Starbase 234 and tell them we'll be a little late due to our plans."
Nelen could be heard talking to another officer before continuing. "Yes sir, our Slipstream drive is ready on your word."
He looked back at Mioiil, who shrugged a bit before speaking. "I don't have any objections, discovery is one of our goals after all, isn't it?"
"The word is given, Nelen."
"Aye sir." The Voth officer replied before the transmission ended. The Admiral then tapped a few keys on his control panel, viewing several status reports of the ship. He tapped another and then spoke.
"Computer, open a channel to engineering and all science labs." His order was carried out as the screen flashed with Chief Engineer Zarva and Chief Science officer T'Vrell, who were asking what their new orders were to be. "Zarva, I'll need you to make some sensor probes and enhance the ships systems in case we fall into trouble. Who knows who or what we'll run into on the way. And T'Vrell, I need you to get our sensors boosted back up, we're going to be studying something that may make a new record for Starfleet's Science dept."
Zarva gave a confident smirk before giving her reply. "You've got it sir, Those dastardly devils aren't going to halt my crew any more than we already are."
T'Vrell gave a puzzled look before she spoke "If I may ask Captain, what is this record we'll be making?"
Wyatt crossed his arms and smiled a bit before answering. "Well T'Vrell, our sensors have recently found an unusual anomaly near the Argelius sector, it seems to have similar statistics to that of a wormhole, but it seems to lead to an unknown location. I plan to figure out just where this portal leads."
T'Vrell frowned a bit before continuing. "If this portal leads to somewhere that is unknown to us, would it be wise to risk that? The anomaly may lead to somewhere too dangerous for us. We could even get pulled into it once we try to analyze it."
Mioiil then gave a similar frown as the Vulcan on the screen did. "She does have a point, sir. What if the anomaly can kill us if we simply touch the knob?"
Wyatt gave a deep breath before he answered. "I wouldn't be in the Federation if I wasn't one to take such risks. Granted, I may be putting this ship at risk by learning something we don't understand at the moment, but if we don't give it a try now, we may not get another chance. Who knows if it will disappear in a few minutes? What if another ship finds it and tries to erase it from the face of the galaxy, or even end up getting lost themselves? That's one of the things we're going to figure out."
The two women gave the Admiral light nods after they looked down for a few seconds. "Aye, sir." They both replied simultaneously as the viewscreen on the computer shut off. Wyatt and Mioiil then started to walk through the door as he spoke to his friend.
"You know, if we do end up getting killed in this task, you can have a kick at my backside for what happens." He said as he gave a mischievous smirk. Mioiil replied with a similar expression.
"Yeah, I think I'll let God do that for me." She and Wyatt walked into the bridge as his crew looked at him, announcing his entrance as usual as they did. After he sat down, he gave the ships computer another order.
"Computer, enhance the ships scanners, and activate the slipstream drive." He then turned to Lon sitting at the helm controls. "Lon, set a course for these coordinates in the Argelius sector."
He tapped a few buttons on his console, then waited until Lon looked back at him and replied. "Yes sir." A few seconds later he spoke again. "Course laid in."
"Engage." The Admiral answered as the ship slowly turned to port, obviously changing it's path towards their target. Wyatt sat in his chair comfortably as he watched the stars flying by in streaks of light almost vanish as the ship flew through the galaxy while now entering a blue-greenish vortex, going about as fast as warp 20. He closed his eyes as he thought what he might find out about the anomaly when they arrive. "What if it leads to another universe? Would it be different than ours? What will we find if we end up going through the portal?" These were only part of all he could think about as he and his crew flew towards the spark of their curiosity.
.....................
Location: Unknown by Starfleet database
Year: Unknown
The orbiting sun rose brilliantly in the sky as day arose in a technologically primitive town. The town was bustiling with several horse-like beings walking and some of them flying to their destinations as light and life started to bloom in the equine-populated area of Ponyville. The buildings looked like some kind of cute and friendly-looking style of houses, while one of the buildings seemed to be made in the style of what could be called a candy shop. A sign sat near the building, titled "Welcome to Sugarcube Corner" inscribed into the wooden sign. Near the town sat what was obviously a train station, the tracks leading to several different areas. One of these places looked to be larger than the small town hosting the transportation facility, and more of a royal city with mostly white as its main color, the tops of the buildings sporting purple tops and yellow circles dividing the white and purple colors from each other. The city was known to the townsfolk as Canterlot, the leading force of the land that all had come to call Equestria, a forest also sat nearby the town, an area known to be very dangerous for those who venture into it, landing the name of the Everfree forest into its history.
The town, although bustling, didn't sound or look as happy as usual. A few months had passed since the Element Bearers had somehow disappeared to someplace nopony knew yet, no scientist in Equestria could figure out what'd taken the six ponies from their home. Royal expedition teams looked to the farthest points of their homeland, not a sign that they were here was found. On a nearby bench sat two ponies, one bearing a whitish-green mane with a light green coat of fur, also sporting a cutie mark of a lyre. While the other wore a Pinkish, Dark blue mane and a beige-colored coat, and had a cutie mark of three candies in the colors of yellow and blue. The two wore the same sad expression that almost everyone else had.
"So, how's it been having to deal with threats to Equestria lately?" Lyra asked her friend Sweetie Drops, or Bon Bon as she went by, since she revealed her identity to Lyra since the Bugbear attack that she was a special undercover agent.
"Not as easy as dealing with things that I'd be comfortable dealing with. Celestia's diplomats are having a harder time making friends with others than Princess Twilight would." She started to build a slight smile on her face, but frowned again as she continued. "But most of them have fortunately worked out in the end, but besides diplomacy and enemies, her family and her friend's relatives aren't living life any easier. Princess Cadence has been trying to cheer Prince Shining Armor up about her sister, but it almost never works. Celestia herself is worried about what might have happened to her close friend, between you and me, she mentioned to me that Twilight was her star pupil in her school."
Lyra frowned when she heard this. "The whole town's down nowadays, it's like a curse that's been bestowed upon us." She then wondered if Sweetie Drops felt down herself as well. "So what about our friends? You know, Time Turner, Octavia?"
Sweetie Drops turned to her friend and frowned even more. "They seem to be handling it pretty bad, knowing your heroes aren't there to help can surely be draining." Lyra couldn't disagree anymore than her friend could. All of this unhappiness started up ever since that one particular day, the day that the Mane 6 had been swept away by an unidentifiable force that was very much unknown to them all....
~Flashback~
Stardate: 5488.73
3 1/2 months earlier.....
The area of space was filled with high tension. Ships in sizes of frigates, cruisers, and battleships were seen gathering at one point in the star system. These ships were part of a task force that had been given orders to protect the Sienae system. Only a few hours ago did Starfleet get a distress call from the planet warning them of an attack by a race known as the Borg Collective, a race of cybernetic humanoids that voyaged across the galaxy with the intent of assimilating every single species in the universe into their Hive mind without choice. Those who resisted were destroyed, they were becoming more of a race of monsters every day. First, they wanted our technology, then our people, and now they've laid waste to those who fought for their freedom of life. The Federation, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Republic have been losing several worlds to these bio-mechanical demons every month or so, this time Sienae was about to become their next victim. The Alliance wasn't going to stand by like cowards and watch innocent lives be lost this time. The task fleet consisted of many ships, Federation cruisers, Klingon warships, and Romulan warbirds, and even some Borg-enhanced vessels from the Task Force Omega Special Forces. Among these ships was a mere frigate, a Miranda class light cruiser named U.S.S. Omicron, commanded by a decent, yet inexperienced crew.
On the bridge, the commanding officer, Captain William Sykes, sat in the center seat, giving orders to his crew as they prepared to fly into a living nightmare. "Status of the fleet?" The Captain asked his Male Bolian Science officer.
"They've gotten just about enough ships for the job, sir. And as for the Borg, they won't arrive until at little bit before we do. Approximately 8 minutes." This was a bit worrying for Sykes as he heard the report. They wouldn't get to Sienae until two minutes after the Borg would arrive, and since there were several powerful cubes in that fleet heading towards the defenseless world, this battle would prove to shed more blood than assumed.
"...Very well, and our weapons?" The Male Vulcan officer answered his question in the usual Vulcan tone.
"Our weapon systems are fully operational, Captain. We shouldn't have too much trouble dealing with the Borg probes and spheres upon arrival."
This made Will have a more pleased expression on his face. "Excellent, we sho-" He was cut off as the fleet comms channel opened, attracting the attention of the entire crew. A rough, male, English voice spoke through the speakers of the console.
"Attention all ships, this is Commodore Vy'lek of the U.S.S. Florida, we are about to head into the Sienae system where the Borg invasion force is flying straight to as I speak. The armada will be quite difficult to deal with, as there are several cubes as part of this force. Our task force will be split into three groups; the "Low Tide" wave, which will consist of mostly frigates and a few cruisers, the "Strikers", which will be lead by mostly cruisers and escorts, and last, the "High Tide", which will have what else but the battleships, and the Florida, of course. Now, I understand that some of you have been dealing with this threat for quite some time.... and others who haven't had their share of trouble with the Borg, but I will inform you that they are very dangerous with their capabilities and arsenal.... and they won't even give you a second to fix your wings before they break your back for good. So, as always, do your best, fight hard, no matter the cost, and please.... do try to come back alive. Florida out."
The transmission then cut out into silence as the crew continued on their stations. "All ships are ready to depart, sir. Course laid in." Sykes answered in a cocky tone. "Let's give these monsters a fight they'll never forget. Engage!"
With that, the Omicron, along with the other ships in the fleet, flew away into the stars in streaks of blue, red and green light, en route to Sienae before it was too late.
.... ~Sienae~....
The area was filled with a horrific sight of ships. Huge, hideous cubes loomed over the planet, preparing to assimilate any and all life on it as planned. As the Borg fleet moved over the planet, glowing green projectiles known as plasma torpedoes were shot straight at the surface, detecting some planetary elements that would most likely be used as attempts of resistance, they bombarded the surface of Sienae swiftly and without hesitation. To the Borg, it didn't matter if they just murdered millions of innocent lives, to them, death was irrelevant, and these deaths were just a minor waste of would've-been drones.
It wasn't until they had fired only around five to six warheads that the fleet at last arrived to protect the civilians of this system. The Borg detected them and, as expected, changed course over to the task force, preparing to attack. Three groups of ships, one of frigates, another of crusiers, and a third group made up of Battleships flew in several directions, firing many weapons at the Borg fleet. Some vessels crippled, if not destroyed some of the ships with ease, while others took several scrapes and damage as they shot burning beams of energy at the cubes. The Omicron had just laid waste to a sphere by draining their shields and firing a wave of torpedoes at the ship, sending it to oblivion. The frigate then locked a course towards it's next target: a heavily damaged cube. The giant vessel was still operational at a decent amount of strength, despite having it's hull broken into. The Captain then started to give his next order as they approached the cube. "What's the cube's status?" He asked as he eyed the damage on it's hull. One of his Tactical officers answered his question almost as soon as he'd asked.
"The cube has sustained heavy external and internal damage. I'm reading several Plasma leaks in that open area on the hull."
Sykes gave an approving grin as he saw a possible weakness that could rid the Borg of another cube if they hit it right. "And hitting the Plasma with enough power could blow this ship outta the sky! Am I right on that, Ensign K'vaal?"
The officer in question answered in approval of his answer. "Most likely, with the core of the ship nearly exposed, a good shot should do it."
The Captain smiled as he took this advantage. "Fire everything we have until it blows. Don't let anyth-" He was cut off as his helm officer yelled in panic.
"Sir, the cube's got a lock! They're getting a tractor beam on us!" He immediately waved his chance off as he yelled in the same manner.
"Evasive maneuvers! Patter-" Was all he could say before the ship rocked harder than ever as the tractor beam had the mere frigate in it's grasps. The crew stared at the monstrous ship in horror as the ship was hit by a red energy beam, along with a huge explosion mere seconds later.
"DAMAGE REPORT!!!" He yelled as the bridge started to almost black out from the damage and light up again in flames as several consoles exploded one at a time very quickly. His helm officer answered his request with a terror-filled voice.
"Direct hit on decks 7 through 11! One of our nacelles has been broken off by the cutting beam!"
This response made the once cocky Captain filled with worry. To go out so quickly was never something he'd been used to, even after taking the Kobayashi Maru which was meant to experience just that kind of feeling. But this wasn't some false academy simulation, as the ship was starting to break apart around him, some of his other officers started to get back to their stations as the ship shook. One if his Science officers looked at her console, then immediately turned to him to tell him what she'd found. "Captain, there's some kind of anomaly possibly sprouting from the plasma leaks on deck 9! I can't get an exact reading onto what it could be, my best guess is that it's some kind of portal!"
The Captain was very curious at this, although they were in the middle of a life and death situation, he might as well take any chance he had of finding something new out. He tapped a few buttons on an almost broken console, and started to hear the voice of his leading security officer, who sounded like he was in a bit of a situation as well, as weapons fire was heard in the noisy static. "Yes Captain?! I'm in a bit of a tight fix, here!" He yelled as a brief scream sounded at the end of his sentence. The entire ship was obviously being boarded by several drones intent on assimilating his ship and crew.
"Commander, I know this may be a crazy time to say so, but there's an anomaly on deck 9, and I need you to check it out! Deal with the drones if you have to, just-"
He was interrupted by his helm officer yelling in terror. "Sir, Plasma torpedo inbound! They're targeting the bridge!" The Captain attempted to give his last order as he was about to meet death himself.
"All hands, this is the Captain, as of now, I order all hands to ab-" Was the last thing heard by the commander as the bridge exploded in fire as the torpedo impacted the bridge, sucking everyone out and leaving them to suffocate in space.
"Captain?! Bridge, respond!" He responded to nobody but white noise as the communication was cut off by static.
The Commander cursed the Borg as he started to take in the fact that his commanding officer was now dead thanks to whatever that cube out in space hit them with. "Well Commander, I think we should get going now!!!" One if his lower-ranking officers yelled in a panicked, rushed tone of voice, to which he replied in a similar tone.
"Oh we'll get going after we take care of that anomaly! Now move!!!" His entire squad, although a bit disappointed with his order, complied and finished off the remaining drones in the hallway. Not to long after, they rushed their way through the ship, blasting many Borg drones left and right, racing against time as they went to their designated target, where they would find some almost unwelcome visitors....
~Ponyville~
The town was bustling with equines as noon started to kick in, ponies were going to their daily routines as usual, and walking to one of the nearby restaurants, were six ponies and a single dragon discussing what they had been through during the day. "So Rarity, how was your new dress turning out?" Twilight Sparkle said to her fashionista friend as they started to sit down.
"Oh my customers have been going nuts over it, darling. They've been asking me to make more if them as soon as I have time!" She said ecstatically as she reminisced about her customers' comments. Her new dress was a very elegant style, sporting several gems and rare kinds of cloth on it.
"Wow, I figured everypony would like such a nice dress. I think you did wonderful on it, Rarity." Fluttershy kindly said to Rarity as she looked on the menu.
"Ah gotta say, sugarcube, yah seem to really make a nice dress. Ah doubt anypony could top ya!" Applejack said happily as Rarity looked at the menu, smiling at all the positive comments she was getting. Rainbow Dash started up on another topic, despite the fact that she was in love with how Rarity's dress looked.
"So, guys, I hate to change the subject, but how's Flurry Heart doing?" Twilight started to speak as she thought of the baby alicorn.
"She's doing quite well, I've been helping Princess Cadence on trying to teach her to control her magic, and I nearly got hurt when she eventually ended up firing another big blast of magic at me by accident. I managed to avoid it, though." She spoke with a bit of intimidated laughter. She and her friends had remembered how powerful Flurry Heart was with her magical abilities, especially when she broke the Crystal Heart. It was something even Celestia herself was surprised at, apparently not used to seeing alicorn babies unleashing such power.
Pinkie Pie started to laugh a little as she thought of that day when Flurry Heart broke the Crystal Heart. "YEAH! That's a really jumpy situation! I doubt I could've been hit if I was there!" The excited pink pony said as she bounced a bit, jumping out of her seat. Pinkie never seemed to become down when discussing a situation like this, after all, she was the Element of Happiness, so it'd be hard to break her down in this kind of discussion. The waiter started to come by, they stopped talking and sat as the waiter greeted them, asked their order, to which they gave him their choices, and afterwards he walked off to make them.
As they waited, they continued talking on another subject differing from the incident with Flurry Heart. "So, about that incident you had with Starlight Glimmer, Twi, what happened back there?" Twilight was a bit hesitant to explain. She remembered trying to stop the pony in question from altering the timeline and preventing her friendship with her five friends. She basically went a long way, seeing the horrible alternate timelines Starlight had created, each one involving the villains they'd fought before ruling over Equestria in a tyrannical manner. She always hoped she wouldn't have to see such bad things like this ever again.
"Yeah, she tried to prevent us from being friends, she attempted to stop Dash from getting her cutie mark when she did her Sonic Rainboom." She said disappointedly as she started to explain her past problem. They all focused on Twilight as she told her story, all except Spike, who looked around curiously and annoyingly. He could've swore he felt a cold chill fly past his body. He didn't like it one bit. It was the beginning of Summer and yet he felt something awkward clutching on his body. He couldn't tell if something bad was about to happen, or if he just felt uncomfortable. Wondering what it was, he interrupted Twilight's story as he asked her a question.
"Uh, Twilight, are you feeling some kind of chill down your back? I just started noticing it."
The six mares looked at each other suspiciously as he waited for their reply, they then turned back to him as AJ spoke up. "Come to think of it, I have. And it doesn't feel normal, like somethin's circling around us, yet there ain't anypony here but who ah'm seein'." She said as they all started to admit. Pinkie started to act a bit funny as her "Pinkie Sense" kicked in and tried to figure out the source.
"Girls, whatever we're feeling, I can bet you it ain't good. Something's about to hap-" A flash of blue light interrupted her, gaining the seven friends' attention as well. The flash appeared again and again as the wind Spike felt earlier became much stronger with every flash. The flashes finally stopped as a blue-colored portal of some kind appeared in front of the seven friends. The strange anomaly got the attention of all the ponies near the spot where it sat, as well as the friends starting to grab onto the table as a pulling effect reached them and started to pull them towards the portal.
"What is that?! I'm getting pulled in!" Fluttershy screamed as she tried to hang on to the table in front of her.
"It seems to have some kind of pulling effect! I'm gonna try and-" Rarity's cry for help interrupted her sentence as she panicked.
"Twilight, hold on to me! I'm slipping!" She tried to grab her hoof with hers, trying to also hold on for her life, but the fashionista lost her grip as she rushed herself in trying to hold Twilight. "TWILIGHT, HELP ME!!!" She yelled before she was sucked into the portal.
"UGGHGHHH, I can't hold on! AJ, help me-" A bun from a hayburger cut Dash off as she was sucked in. The pegasus ended up knocking Fluttershy from her grasp and they now both fell in, screaming loudly as they went to wherever the portal led to.
"Twilight, I can't hold on!" Twilight used her magic to grab AJ and tried to hold her as she too started to lose her grasp, especially with Spike hanging onto her neck while on her back.. "We need to go help them! We can't just leave them in wherever they were taken to!"
Twilight started to get worried, "We don't know where it leads to! Who knows if it leads to someplace we can never leave from! I don't know if we can take the chance!"
Applejack responded to her answer with a terrified voice. "They're our friends, Twi! We have to take the chance!!!" Twilight thought for a moment as she could barely hold on, if they were to let go, and let the portal take them into a most likely unknown place, they may not ever have a chance of coming back, they may find their friends, but they'd probably never see any of their family or friends again, and worst of all, Equestria would lose their heroes. But seeing that they couldn't defend their home without their three other friends, she needed to take the risk.
"TWILIGHT!!!" Pinkie screamed as she started to let go.
"We... we're going in, girls! I'm not gonna let my friends get hurt or lost in wherever they're at. Now, let's go!!!" With that statement, the four friends loosened their grip and let the portal take them, going through it and into wherever it lead. Once they went through, the portal started to destabilize, and before anyone could do anything, the portal closed. The civilians started to converse wildly, yelling and some running to Canterlot to tell their ruler that her favorite subjects were now missing, no knowledge to give that may bring about an answer to who or what had taken, and unknown to the ponies of Equestria, the heroes were now in a place far beyond their world's own lifestyle and integrity.
The hallway was ablaze with fire burning the walls and floors of the deck, altering the once clean, harmless air with humid, toxic smoke. The recently detected anomaly sat near a now broken window, the air being trapped by a force field, clouded by the sprouting fires was the impending battle out in space. The portal started to flash a few times, fluctuating rapidly as several beings were shot out of the portal one at a time at irregular points in time. By the time the last two were thrown out of the anomaly it flashed rapidly as it became unstable, then collapsed as it disappeared into nothing but memorable history, leaving seven shocked humanoid beings with different skin colors left in the dangerous, broken hallway.
One of the beings, bearing a light purple skin color started to ask her friends what had just happened. "Girls, I know that we seem to be somewhere that we don't know which way leads, but I think we need to get out of here! It seems dangerous!" Twilight told to her friends as they looked down both of the paths to determined which was safe, neither one brought any thought of an easy escape, so they had to examine the spot they were in to determine another exit, but they quickly lost that thought briefly when they turned to see a opening in the wall, revealing what seemed to be nothing but stars and what seemed to be a few spaceships around them.
Fluttershy almost screamed at the terror-inducing sight. "EEEKK!! WHAT IS THAT?! THE WALL IS BROKE!!!" Applejack calmed her down to prevent the chance of being discovered by beings most likely aboard this spaceship as it was obvious it couldn't run on it's own.
"That's strange, you know, if we're in space, and this wall is broken, how come we aren't getting sucked int-" She was cut off as Pinkie Pie touched the opening, causing some kind of energy field to flash a bit from the sensitivity of Pinkie's hand.
"Ooooohhh! I think it's some kind of force field keeping the air in!" She spoke in a thrilled, but unhappy tone of voice as she jumped at the now invisible field in front of her.
Rainbow Dash started up on the task of escaping as she said, "What in Celestia's name is going on?! Where are we, and how do we get outta here?!"
Twilight herself had started to worry of the group's safety as there was no easy way out of the spot they sat in, they'd have to risk getting burned a bit since there was no fire extinguisher to blast the fires with, not to mention the smoke they would have to inhale as they ran. "Girls, I think we'll have to do this the hard way and run through th-"
She stopped at the sound of footsteps closing on them, slow, creeping footsteps that only a slow person or a zombie would make. "What's wro-" Rarity said before Twilight instantly shushed her.
"SHH! You hear that? I think it's over there." The seven of them turned to the direction where Twilight pointed, the footsteps getting louder as they looked carefully through the smoke. They could barely see anything that they could make out as a living being, but after a moment or two the source of the footsteps were revealed, three humanoid beings slowly walked toward them, the group looking in horror at their appearance; they seemed to have robotic implants merged into their bodies, with two of them bearing an eyepiece sporting a red light flashing through the smoke, their bodies missing small pieces of flesh and being replaced with robotic metal. Their eyes looked soulless as the trio of zombie-like beings came closer, their tools in the air and at the ready.
Fluttershy ran behind her six friends as she whimpered in terror at the sight of the cyborgs, the rest of them stood back in a similar fashion, with Dash, AJ, and despite being not too skilled in melee fighting, Twilight in front of the four with their fists and legs at the ready. If they were ponies, they'd have almost no trouble dealing with these monster-like beings, but they were turned into humans, so fighting with their hands and feet were a bit difficult for Twilight, but Dash and Applejack were better fit for such fights due to their strength. The three drones were about to close on them before a flash of yellow-orange light hit one of the drone's backs, the other two being taken out in a similar fashion, one of them emitting sparks from the damage before falling to the ground, lifeless.
The source of the shots were revealed as a squad of about eight humans wearing differently colored uniforms, along with armor shielding them, ran towards their target. Fluttershy started to whimper and Rarity put her hands up as a sign of surrender, the others doing the same as they reached them. One of the officers walked up to Twilight and started to ask her if she was hurt, as did the other officers. Twilight looked on their uniforms and she could see different sets of metal pins on the collar of each of their uniforms, apparently showing their rank. With the man in front of her having the most pins out of the rest, about three in total, it became obvious that he was the leader of this group.
"Are you okay, ma'am? Did anyone get hurt?" Twilight started to feel a bit hesitant and rushed as she was assaulted with an array of questions involving her and her friends.
Seeing all of this fighting was too much, but she tried to gain her composure and answered with, "I'm OK, so is everyone else. But where are we?"
The officer told her the answer she had expected to hear, "You're all onboard a starship, U.S.S. Omicron, and at a very bad time, too. We're in the middle of a battle with a race called the Borg, like those drones you were about to fight a moment ago."
Fluttershy started to panic as she heard the news, being put into a warzone so quickly mad her tremble, she started to beg the soldiers to get her out of this mess. "A-a battle?! B-but I don't wanna die here! We gotta get out of here!!"
Rarity shushed her as she talked with the guards. "She.... isn't very comfortable with this place, and neither am I. Is there a way to get out of this mess?"
The Commander answered with, "There's a few escape pods remaining nearby, the bridge is gone thanks to a Plasma torpedo blowing the crew into atoms, and they told us to leave immediately, but I felt it was right to find out what was here, and now that it's done, we need to get outta here!" He started to order his officers to put out the fires as he gave his next order with, "Everyone, stick together, take out any drones you see, and follow my lead!"
The group complied as they followed the Commander through the hallways, blasting through drones and falling debris as they raced to safety. One drone tried to grab Applejack and pulled it's arm out as two tube-like objects tried to enter her neck, but she smacked the drone in the face hard, grabbed a piece of metal and smashed it into the drone, ending it instantly. She cringed a bit from the move she made on the cyborg and continued onward with the group.
Out in space, several Alliance starships continued their assault on the few remaining Borg vessels, firing wave after wave of Photon and Plasma torpedoes as the cube sat like a sitting duck in the midst of the chaos. One ship, a Phoenix class escort became caught in a green tractor beam as it failed to avoid the Plasma torpedoes hitting the hull thanks to a shield drain. The ship and her crew were finally put out of their misery as the cube sliced the ship in half with it's cutting beam. Another vessel, a Klingon Hegh'ta Bird of Prey almost became it's next victim, before a rapidly speeding wave of cannon fire impacted on the tractor beam, freeing the warship from it's doom. The ship was revealed as a small, yet vicious starship, with similar shape and configuration to the famous Defiant class escort, on the main hull in front of the bridge read the ship's name; "U.S.S. Enceladus", a Valiant class starship with modified weaponry and an excellent crew as remarked by several other Captains in the Alliance.
The ship once again fired another wave of cannon fire, blazing through and laying waste to the remaining Borg vessels, then tearing apart the second to last cube with Quantum torpedoes and additional weapon fire provided by the other allied ships, sending the cube to Kingdom Come. On the bridge of the powerful little ship, Admiral Wyatt gave orders to his fellow officers as the final cube appeared onscreen, the Omicron sitting below it like an injured puppy. "What's the status of the cube?" The Admiral asked his Science officer, Kapor, as they came close to the ship.
"The cube has been disabled some time ago, we'll only have a few minutes before they're ready to fight again." The amount of time they had would be about as long as the Omicron would last. The ship was lost to the damage she'd taken, and the crew was the only thing they could save.
"And the Omicron? How bad is she?" Kapor gave a mournful expression as he gave the answer.
"The Omicron is lost, sir. Her plasma coils have been damaged and are causing radiation leaks, and her warp core is experiencing a coolant leak, so she'll only have about 4 minutes at most."
The situation was grim at this point, there'd be almost no way they could get onboard, find the remaining survivors, and get out in time. The Admiral decided to change the game with another option; "T'Vrell, scan the ship for survivors, find any that you can and get them out! We can't afford more losses than we already have today." T'Vrell complied as she activated the ship's scanners to find the missing group of crew members. The only thing that they could do now was wait until they found something....
The group of fifthteen people were making their way to the nearby hallway where their most likely only chance of survival rested in the ship's hull. The group came to a stop as they felt the Omicron shake rapidly from an unknown force, something must've gone wrong as they heard what was apparent to the soldiers as an explosion of sufficient magnitude rattling the ship like an earthquake.
"....What was that?! That sounded like a huge explosion over there!" Rarity said as she started to lose her cool.
"That must've been from engineering, if so, then the warp core is going through a coolant leak right now. If it goes on, the core will breach, and we'll be screwed for good! We need to run everyone! Don't stop!"
He yelled as he quickened his pace, the others following suite as Dash replied, "You don't say?!" as they ran to the nearest pod.
Upon reaching the door of the pod, the Commander attempted to open the door, but as soon as he entered his authorization code the computer answered with, "UNABLE TO COMPLY, ESCAPE POD LAUNCHERS HAVE BEEN SEVERELY DAMAGED."
This drained the soldier with fear and despair as he tried over and over again, hoping it was only a malfunction, but to no avail. The rest of the group had understood what had happened as the officer returned his sight to them, sighing sorrowfully as he spoke what he thought would be one of his last sentences. "I... I'm sorry everyone, but I think we're done f-"
He was cut off as a miracle sounded through his pocket, hearing the noise, he tapped on his combadge immediately as he waited for words. "Everyone, stay still, we're getting you out of there! Stand by!"
A female voice sounded as the group complied with the command, but Dash was a bit curious as to why they had to be still. "Um, if I can ask, why should we stand still?"
The Commander replied with his answer. "We're being transported by the ship through Quantum Teleportation, just stay calm."
Although she didn't know a thing or two about what he said, she waited as several waves of blue light encompassed the group separately, remaining for a few moments before they vanished into thin air, leaving nothing in it's place.
They appeared again on another room, with beings similar to their rescuers. The Commander gave his thanks on behalf of his team before having his team brought to Sickbay. The seven remaining humanoids walked up to the security officer as Twilight asked him a question. "Excuse me, but although we just went through a bit of trouble back there, and since we'd like to see the end of this fight, can we please see the commander of this ship?"
The security officer pondered the question for a moment, the normal regulation was that unknown or civilian personnel were not permitted on the bridge until cleared, but seeing the group with no weapons of any kind, he was gonna let them slip by. "Only if I have a few guards follow you, it's just regulations."
Twilight wasn't worried about that as to the fact that she had to have guards around her quite a lot. "No, we don't mind." She said as she looked to her friends, nodding as they followed her into and down the hallway, and eventually into an elevator, leading them up to the bridge.
When the elevator stopped the doors opened to their desired location. This room looked more tidy and fixed up compared to the previous ship, if anything a few minor fires being put out by several officers in black and yellow uniforms. The walls were covered with what seemed to be computer panels, the middle of the room had some more in a different fashion, along with a center seat withholding the commanding officer of the ship.
Wyatt heard the turbolift open as he looked to see a few security officers, six females, and one small male being with large ears. "Admiral, these people have asked to see you, the chief permitted them only if we came with them, sir." The Admiral smiled as he turned his attention to the seven visitors.
"I hope we didn't catch you at a bad time." Twilight said to the human Captain with mutton chops on his face.
"Don't worry, it's about to be taken care of. I hope the guards weren't too harsh with you." She nodded as her friends did the same, signifying that they were alright. Wyatt told the officers to head back to their original station as the seven friends stood by his chair that he soon sat back in.
"Are our Quantum warheads ready, Elisa?" He asked his first officer as the looked at the broken cube.
"All six torpedoes are ready when you are." He was about to give the word when they saw a flash from below the cube, it was the Omicron, the back of the ship started to breach with orange fire and debris as the ship unleashed a blast of exploding antimatter, breaking up into many pieces as the ship was finally finished.
"There she goes, sir." They'd have to mourn later as they had a bit of trash to take out.
"Fire everything we have at the open part of the cube, finish it off." As soon as he cued his order, six blue projectiles shot out at the cube, along with cannon fire and several other weapons from both the Enceladus and a few other ships as the cube was broken apart once more. The cube eventually started to break open with green, fiery explosions as the blocky ship started to blow into bits. It let out one last blast of fire as it exploded in a green blaze of light, small pieces of debris flying outward from the blast as the explosion faded out into space, leaving nothing but star-like dust in it's wake.
The crew cheered a bit in their successful victory as they had destroyed the Borg fleet, preventing Sienae from losing too many lives, despite the few losses from the minor bombardment. "Qapla!!!" Kapor yelled as the crew settled down after almost a minute of celebration. The Admiral then continued the ship's operation as he gave one more order.
"Helm, set a course for the nearest starbase, our job is done." He said as Lon tapped in the coordinates onto the panel before the ship shook for a moment and finally went faster than light as the seven visitors noticed the stars passing the ship at rapid speed, stretching out as they flew to their desired location.
Twilight wondered what her friends were going to do when they arrived at this "starbase" the Admiral spoke of, she wondered if they could be stuck in this place forever, forced to build a new life in this dangerous, yet amazing new universe. She walked up to Wyatt as she started to speak. " Um, Admiral, is there anything we can do after we get back to your base?" The Admiral started to speak in a calm tone as he gave her his answer.
"Well, Starfleet Command is probably going to want to ask you questions about how you got here, as I'm most curious of as well, but I think there'll be something to do afterwards." He opened his uniform up a bit as the recent fight had made the room a bit hot. "By the way, my name's Wyatt. You?"
She felt more welcome as Wyatt started to ask for an introduction for her and her friends. "Oh, yes, my name is Twilight, Twilight Sparkle."
....Present....
Lyra sighed as she and her best friend snapped out of their thoughts and back to reality as Sweetie Drops started to speak up. "Yeah, what was that portal doing in the middle of the restaurant though? WHERE was it coming from, and what caused it to appear?" Lyra shook her head a bit as she gave her answer.
"Nobody's been able to figure that out. We've even had our best scientists see what it could've been... only for them to say it must've been quick since there was nothing they could do to bring it back into existence. I think we'll have to find another way on keeping our home safe."
Bon Bon sighed as she slowly got up from the bench, asking Lyra something they hadn't done for a bit. "I think I know what might cheer us up, why don't we go see Vinyl and Octavia for a bit? Maybe we can talk with them on this." Lyra nodded as she got up and walked beside Sweetie Drops as they went to their friends' place, hoping to find some comfort at talking to some friends about things other than that horrible incident. Hopefully they could get a bit of happiness into the hearts of their friends today.
The stars were vast and brilliant out in space, hundreds of billions of them were spread around the visible galaxy, many different lifeforms and mysteries awaited to be found by travelers across the galaxy. Some of these close-by stars soared and stretched around the invisible warp bubble, which surrounded a large, sleek starship. The ship was large with many lit up windows on the vessel, a curved neck held the saucer of the ship, also bearing an opening in between the edges big enough to allow shuttles through. The main hull seemed to be built in with the neck as the pylons showed no signs of separation there, since the curved triangular area on the bottom of the saucer was rather the main separation area for the Chevron saucer to split from. The aft end of the hull contained what appeared to be a small, detachable escort ship that could aid it's mother ship in a large conflict.
Along with different markings sporting purple and pink for their color, the top of the saucer read two lines of text, showing the ship's name and registry: "U.S.S. Equestria, NCC-2011-F". The bridge of the ship wore several blue lights from it's exterior, on the inside were several types of consoles, two each on the left and right, and one in the front, apparently the ship's helm control console. In each of the chairs in front of the consoles sat a humanoid being in each seat, each sporting a different color. In the center of the room sat a purple-colored, humanoid being in her command chair, adoring the sight of space as her ship warped to it's set course. Life had changed since Twilight Sparkle and her friends had been through such a once terrifying incident, the captain of their savior ship had contacted his own commanding officer and discussed the incident, offering them a place in Starfleet for the time being. Since they thought there'd be no way to return to their former home, they felt they could start a new life in a new species so the idea of serving in the Federation was about the best option for now.
Each of her friends were able to find a specific department to serve in as officers onboard the large ship. Pinkie Pie had managed to find a part in the Science group since she knew a bit about others and their emotions, some thought she'd fit in Engineering better, though. Rarity would've fallen in the same category, but she found out quite a bit about gems and emeralds for an interest, landing her in the Science dept. as well. Fluttershy was considered excellent in the Medical section of Starfleet Academy, getting her a place in the Medical dept. on the ship. Rainbow Dash made an excellent record in the shooting range for testing weapons skills, along with starship and shuttle flight skills, making her the senior Tactical officer and the ship's pilot. Spike made the same spot as her, despite being an infant dragon back in his world, he proved to be quite vicious for a being of his age, permitting him a place on the ship in that department. Applejack had been excellent for her physical skills, giving her a place in the Engineering dept. and as the Chief Engineering officer on the ship. Twilight herself knew many things about her "magic" skills and several things in Science, landing her in the said dept. All the while they had made quite a record very quickly, being an Admiral just like her so-called mentor and savior, Twilight felt more at home than ever in this universe. Being able to visit new worlds, meeting new friends, and enemies, and most of all, discovering things out in the farthest points of the Galaxy and beyond. The gang's personalities had changed too, becoming a bit more brave towards the rest of the universe, as well as Fluttershy being less shy around other people. Twilight felt a bit of conversation should be in the room rather than pure silence as she started to speak.
"So, how was that training simulation, Dash? Did you win that bet?" She smirked sarcastically as her rainbow-haired friend replied.
"Oh yeah, he wouldn't wanna try to take another flight down in that canyon. I actually almost did get hurt when I flew too close to that collapsing mountain." She had placed a bet with a competitive security officer who doubted her piloting skills a while ago, taking the match to a once desolate, icy planet that was breaking up because of a gravitational issue. She nearly got herself killed when she came too close to a piece of a falling mountain as it fell down into the core of the planet, fortunately she managed to notice in time and avoid the giant piece of granite as her companion pilot in his own shuttle flew straight up into the sky at full impulse on his engines, bearing a small scrape from a hit back there as they returned to the ship and warped away before the planet exploded.
"You know sugarcube, I understand how you're good a flying a ship like that, but try not to get yourself hurt, or even killed. Places like that aren't amusement parks, you know." She frowned a bit after her friends chuckled a bit about the test of mettle her friend had went through.
"Yeah! You shouldn't try and push yourself to that limit, Dashie! You coulda gotten hurt!" Pinkie said as she continued laughing a bit before she continued on her station.
"I know you like to fly a lot Dash, but I don't want to see you get hurt like that. Don't go so far in a place like that next time, please." Fluttershy commented as she looked at her friend worriedly.
"I don't believe your friend Soarin' would like to see you hurt in a situation like that, don't push yourself like that." Rarity said in a disappointed tone as her supporting friends laughed a little, as Dash frowned angrily a bit at the mention of her considered "boyfriend".
They stopped laughing as they started to talk about another issue, the last thing they last did before their current course was to take care of an infected Romulan colony because of a deadly outbreak of the "Traveler's Death", a disease that threatened the Romulan people of the 23rd century. Fortunately Fluttershy had managed to get a cargo load of a cure they needed to treat the infected, saving the colony from deathly despair. She heard her console beep with a message from the once infected colony. "Oh, I just got word that the colony is currently being treated and should be back to work within 2 days."
Applejack started to ask how many there were left to treat as she spoke up. "How many are still infected, sugarcube? Are they alright?"
She spoke in a bit of a sad tone as she said, "From what I've heard, about a few million people are still hurt. They should make it through, though." She then gave a bit of a smile as her hope had set in.
Twilight started to ask her caring friend how many medical supplies they had left from this incident, since they may have another job similar to this. "Do we still have a sufficient amount of medicine for our next rescue, Fluttershy?"
She calmly started to breathe as she was about to speak, but as soon as she did she lost her chance of saying her answer when her console beeped several times before she acknowledged it. She spoke in a thrilled voice as she gave the news.
"Twilight, Wyatt says he and his crew have found some kind of portal, they say they're on their way to study it and they'd like us to come along!"
Twilight smiled at another good chance to uncover something she and her friends hadn't seen before, but she then thought about the part when she heard the word "Portal", is this another case of the incident from a few months ago? From when they first came here? They'd have to wait as they had to change course towards their destination. She smiled a bit before speaking.
"Dash, set a course for the anomaly, tell Wyatt we'll be there shortly." Dash entered the coordinates as the ship slowly turned towards their target. She then started to ask Fluttershy more about this discovery. "Fluttershy, did he say anything else about this portal?"
She gave a curious look as her friend answered in a still happy tone. "He did say this portal has a similar form and statistics like the one that Commander we met back on the Omicron described from the data records, but other than that, nothing else to follow off of."
She frowned as she faced the viewscreen. If this was indeed another gateway that could lead them back home to their close friends and family, she knew she couldn't just say farewell to the Admiral as soon as they would arrive, why not say hello to their friends? Unfortunately that thought was eliminated from her idea as she recalled Starfleet's very well known and strict "Prime Directive", Equestria was not anywhere near warp technology, so they would have to stop by alone and not mention them to their allies, they'd be in a lot of trouble with Starfleet if they tried such an idea, hell, she might even lose her ship because of such a case. Then again, they themselves were apart of this would-be-called "primitive" species, so how much would it matter?
They would apparently have to wait on that as they proceeded on course to their target, curiosity luring them like a mouse looking for cheese as their ship streaked across the stars at warp speed....
~Argelius Sector, Portal Location~
The stretching stars in the speeding sight of space slowed to small dots as the small cruiser exited out of warp, slowing down as it sat near the anomaly they'd come to learn about. The Chestnut slowly turned and flew straight towards the portal before slowing down and coming to a full stop after a few seconds. On the bridge, the Admiral sat straight up in his chair as he examined the blue, whirling bowl of energy as it appeared onscreen. He then stopped his visual study and looked to his Science officer as he asked her, "T'Vrell, how stable is the anomaly?" The female Vulcan answered in a non-emotional tone.
"The anomaly is quite stable, our scans shouldn't affect it's current state." He grinned as he gave his next order.
"Begin our scans, once we're done, send the data to Starfleet HQ and the Equestria. They may have some knowledge about this." T'Vrell replied with a few taps on the console as it beeped, giving a signal to wait until the job was done. Outside the ship, a blue glow emanated from the ship's deflector dish as the ship began it's scans of the anomaly, flashing a little more as it gained the most required data, as well as changed it's targeting on specific parts and areas on and inside the portal. The glow vanished as the ship gained the last of the anomaly's information was acquired.
T'Vrell's console showed several panels with the collected data as she viewed it to the Admiral. "Confirmed sir, the anomaly is a portal of some kind, but I can't determine any kind of path leading to anywhere in our galaxy, not to mention that I can't determine the path of the portal. I believe that the only way that we can determine the destination of this portal is t-"
She was cut off as she heard Zarva's console beep repeatedly. She looked to it and turned to Wyatt as she said, "Sir, Admiral Twilight is arriving now sir, shall we send the data to her?"
He looked to the viewscreen and gave a nod as his answer, the large, modified Yorktown class ship was in visual range not to long after T'Vrell gave her notice. "Data is being sent now, they should receive it within a minute, sir."
On board the Equestria, Twilight and her friends started to carefully examine the portal on the viewscreen. Twilight gave a faint gasp as she noticed the similarities in the anomaly's form, it had the same, yet slightly more stable spin on the surface of it's exterior, the same blue color the original had, and even the same flickers of light the former one would give, yet they flashed at a slower pace, possibly because of it's larger size. The sight before her brought a few gasps from Dash, Pinkie, Rarity, and Fluttershy as they analyzed the familiar object nearby their ship.
"It's... it's the portal, the same one that brought us here, into this world, yet it's bigger. But if it's here, then does that mean it leads back home?"
She was near being lost in thought as she was interrupted by a beep coming from Pinkie Pie's console, who answered it and spoke cheerfully to Twilight. "Hey Twilight, it looks like Wyatt sent us some data about that portal! Maybe we can learn something from it!" Twilight smiled before she nodded for her pink friend to put the data on the viewscreen. The information came up and the seven of them started to study the data, shrugging and tilting their heads at certain parts of the information on the screen. Rarity started to find this study quite strange from their first encounter, giving a puzzled look as she spoke.
"Intriguing, the first time we came across this portal, it was able to pull us into it with full force, yet this one is only pulling objects that are very close to it in. It seems like the anomaly is big enough for both of our ships to enter it."
Twilight started to look back at the anomaly on the screen, in her opinion, the portal could lead them all back to Equestria, reuniting with Princess Celestia and introducing her and their friends to Wyatt and his crew, but the scans from the Chestnut didn't show any sign of a specific location, so they could wind up near a black hole, a supernova, or a distant part of the universe with no chance of return. She then decided to get her own results as well, since the Equestria was a science ship, they might get a better reading, but only God knew what would be revealed afterwards.
"Rarity, just to be sure if this is all we can get, could you scan the portal? I think we may be able to get a better reading with our Science tech."
She raised an eyebrow before she started to perform her scans, they waited with their eyes fixed on Rarity as she waited for the computer to finish up with it's task. The console finally beeped twice before she answered it, taking a look at it before she smiled and turned towards Twilight. "Well, from what I can get out of it, the portal leads somewhere safe, but the distortions from inside the anomaly are preventing us from getting an exact reading." "It's a good thing I added a few multi-dimensional scanners to our deflector dish back before we left Starbase Sierra, seems like it was worth it." She thought as she continued to speak. "Maybe if we send a probe into the anomaly, then we may get better results."
Twilight thought this was a good idea, but there was a possibility that this portal could only take one object before it would close for good, so she had to try and play it safe. "Okay, let's send one probe through, but keep a good scan on the portal, set our deflector dish up so we can try to keep it open if it starts to close." Rarity nodded before tapping a few more buttons and turning back to her, "The dish is set, probe should launch any second."
The bottom of the screen flashed for a split second before a small object shot out from the torpedo bay, entering the anomaly in a mere second as it went almost as fast as a bullet. The probe's entry made the portal fluctuate a little, but it remained open as the Equestria began to gain additional data. The data appeared on Rarity's console after about two minutes, looking at it and facing Twilight as she started to speak. "The probe seems to be picking up three celestial objects in the surrounding region, it must be in some kind of solar system. I can't get a good reading, but it seems to be relatively safe for us to pass through."
Twilight studied her words as she planned her next move, a planetoid with two other bodies around the world the probe was near, a new world, to be sure, but either way, she started to get comfortable in her chair as she started to speak to Rainbow Dash. "Dash, hail the Chestnut, I think we our next mystery is on the other side of that portal." Dash tapped a button after hearing her order, putting Wyatt's face on the screen after a few seconds. He gave a curious and listening look as he awaited her plan.
"What's on the probe's data, Twi? You got a plan we can try?" The Admiral said as he heard his light purple friend clear her throat as she spoke.
"Admiral, our probe has found itself in some kind of solar system, it seems to consist of a single planet, and two other celestial objects in orbit. I think it may be another world we can find and study, but even though both our ships could safely pass through, I won't go in without your order." She noticed his hand touch his chin as he thought about her suggestion, rubbing it for a minute as he came to a decision.
"Alright, you've got it Twi, both of our ships will go in to see where this planet is, but if there's a species that hasn't come up with a transportation technology either in the form of or similar to Warp Drive, we cannot beam down so early. Our crew's ready when you are." She started to look at the presented data, thinking on her decision for the moment, before breathing in and out as she spoke her words.
"Alright, set a course in, you wanna take the lead?" Wyatt smiled a bit before he replied.
Maybe not, I think the royalty should be getting the first spot. After you." Although she had no romantic involvement with Wyatt, especially since he was in it with his feline bridge officer, she blushed a bit as he gave his respect towards her. Despite her and her friends being in another realm, she was expecting to be treated like a normal person, but others still gave them the same generosity like the others back in Equestria. It kinda made her feel a little more at home a little.
She then looked over to Dash and told her, "Well Dash, let's head through the portal and get our sights on the other side." Dash nodded and tapped some buttons on her control panel, then waited a few seconds as the ship started to move forward and towards the portal, the Chestnut following suite after them. As they entered the portal, the viewscreen flashed with a blue circle-shaped shockwave as the ship shook roughly, but briefly before they were able to see what seemed to be the inside of the vortex, a whirl of blue energy sped past the ship as they flew through, the floor slightly rocking the crew as they waited for their mystery to be uncovered....
~Canterlot~
The stars of the night sparkled the dark, purple sky as the moon shone brilliantly over Equestria, brightening the facing walls of the royal city of Canterlot. There were many ponies seen closing up their businesses for until tomorrow as they needed their usual rest required for the next morning, a few groups of Celestia's royal guards were heading back to the castle for the guards of the night to perform their shift, flying by their wings and carriages as they soon made it back to the castle gates.
Outside the doors of the castle, one of Luna's bat guards, Midnight Blossom, waited for all of the carriages to arrive before her group's departure, one of the carriages, was carrying one guard she had her eyes on for quite some time. Cloud Skipper exited the vehicle before walking to the doors, but as he stepped near Midnight Blossom stopped him with a seductive look on her face, his eyes becoming more focused on her. "You be careful out there, traveling out on patrol at night can be hazardous." He said to her before she smirked in a cocky manner.
"Come on Cloud, I've been out in this environment for all of my time in serving Luna, do you think I can't deal with a simple task of keeping an eye out on the townspeople?" She spoke in a tone he expected from her being asked a question like that, before he nodded and continued on inside, Midnight's group hopping into the carriages and taking off shortly after. In the castle, the Princess of the Night, Luna, sat on her throne with a saddened, worried expression on her face. Without the Element Bearers to protect Equestria in it's time of need, she was having to send more of her guards out than usual, keeping an eye out in the world as they prayed for the day the Mane 6 would return, and hopefully, not too late.
At the other end of the throne room, a guard came in to ask his Princess of what she needed, she gave a slight smile as she saw a friendly face. "Your highness, our guards have departed out on their patrol, is there anything else you need?" She kept her composure as steady as she could while she spoke.
"No, thank you, leave us to privacy unless you acquire information in need of our attention." He kneeled in respect and turned to the door to leave his Princess alone with her two remaining guards who were to keep her safe, shutting the door carefully so no one in their sleep above would be disturbed. She wore a calm, hopeful expression for the outside world to see, but in her heart, she hid her fear, the fear of a certain danger coming to her home to cause harm and destruction, and the Elements of Harmony wouldn't be there to save their friends. A horrific thought that plagued her mind and her sister's constantly, one she couldn't bear to think about much longer. "I just hope they return sometime soon, I don't think any of us can take this."
In a large bedroom, two ponies, an alicorn mare and a unicorn stallion, laid together in their bed asleep. The unicorn, bearing a white coat and a mane and tail in dark blue with a streak or two of turquoise as his colors, while his wife wore a pink coat with a mane and tail of a blend of yellow, pink, and purple as her style, slept as comfortable as usual, but the mare shook a little in her rest before she lifted up in a loud gasp, waking up from a terrible nightmare as she breathed in and out heavily. The male equine woke up from his love's shivering and turned to look to his wife. "Cadence, are you OK?" Shining Armor looked to the mare in question's horror-filled eyes. She covered her eyes as she spoke in a shaky tone.
"Shining, I... I just had another nightmare, it's nothing." She looked to her husband as she calmed down a bit, his face with a worried expression.
"I know, I think you're not the only one, I was just going through something bad in my mind." He said in a tired, sad tone as they looked out the window. Like Luna and Celestia, they had been having several terrible nightmares ever since the incident from four months ago, from ones where Equestria was under tyranny from their enemies to their home being laid to nothing but a wasteland, all because of what had happened to their friends and their sister Twilight, they could only ward off the nightmares with whatever strength they had while they slept.
They suddenly heard a crying sound from another nearby bedroom, a young baby alicorn who lived in their home as well. Cadence breathed in a little as the crying was just her child being disturbed from some noise. "I'll be right back, I think Flurry Heart needs a little comfort." Shining nodded as his wife trotted over to the door to reach the room, reaching Flurry Heart shortly after and leaving him alone in thought for a moment.
"Twiley, your big brother and our parents are worried about you. Please, I need to know where you are, something, anywhere, I need to know you're at least all right, and most of all... to come back." He frowned as he waited for Cadence to return, eventually she came back into the room and lay back down with him, wearing the same unhappy expression on her face. "So, no news about Twilight's location?" Shining shook his head as he got comfortable in his spot.
"No, our teams have looked to even the most dangerous places, Zecora and her escorts have looked all over the Everfree forest, so far, nothing. I've recently sent one group to ask one of Rainbow Dash's friends to help out with this."
Cadence raised an eyebrow upon hearing this. "A friend? What's his name?" Shining shook his head again before he answered.
"I can't say her name around the public, as to the fact that she is used to working alone, but her name's Daring Do, or by her disguised ego, A.K. Yearling. She shouldn't want to turn down a chance to find her "biggest fan", if you know what I mean." Cadence grinned about this plan of his, to send one of Dash's heroes out to help find her and her friends in a random part of the world, what a situation to build up with.
"I hope you're not getting anyone hurt with this plan of yours, Shining. You know we don't want to lose more than we already have." He looked down before his wife kissed him on his muzzle before looking into his eyes. "And try not to panic too much about Twilight, I think she's okay, no matter what nightmares try and change that." Her words built a smile on his face before he spoke.
"Thanks, Cadence. Let's see if Celestia has any plans about finding them in the morning." He said before he laid down with his wife. "Love you Cadence." To which she replied,
"Love you too, Hon." before they closed their eyes and shortly after fell asleep, keeping their confidence up through the night and their dreams until the morning would arise so they could discuss their next move with Celestia at dawn......
The large, blue, swirling vortex sped fast by the two starships as they constantly shot forward to the other side of the anomaly, blue lines of energy ejecting out of the nacelles of both ships as they continued onward. The force of the anomaly was slightly shaking the ships as they moved, not enough to knock the crew off their feet, but enough to make operations onboard a little more difficult. On the Chestnut's bridge, the crew was checking and tapping their consoles to compensate the power loss from the engines, and also hanging on to them as they couldn't get their jobs done with themselves losing balance while flying through. Admiral Wyatt was fortunate enough to have one of those seat enhancements that acted like a seat belt, holding him steady as he tried to communicate with his fellow officers with the rumbling.
"Status?" He spoke to his engineer and current helm officer. Lon held on tight as he replied.
"We've had to take power from our shields to keep our nacelles working, our hull is being shaken up pretty bad, no casualties, but I'm getting minor injury reports from multiple decks." The ship apparently was taking more than expected, going through this anomaly was like riding a ancient roller-coaster, and the ship wasn't exactly going to go through such stress.
"Let's just keep her swimming Lon, don't break her back." Lon nodded before continuing to compensate a decent amount of power to the engines to keep them from malfunctioning.
Wyatt started to wonder if Twilight was going through such an issue at the moment, feeling worried, he turned to Kapor and said, Kapor, hail Twilight, I want to see if her ship's holding up." He nodded and tapped a few buttons before the screen changed to a blurry, static image that cleared out after a few seconds and revealed Twilight in her seat, wearing similar belts as the Admiral was. "Twilight, how's the ride? Is your ship being kept together?"
She nodded before saying, "No more than you're going through Wyatt, the anomaly seems to be pulling us forward quite fast, but we're holding up and well so far, you?" He moved to the right a little as his ship was hit by a blast of pressure, before sitting back straight up and answering.
"Our warp drive's having to be fixed by taking power from several decks, our crew has reported several injuries, but nothing more than that." Twilight nodded before she heard Pinkie Pie speaking in a loud tone.
"My console says we're getting near the end of the portal! I think we oughta hang on!" Mioiil turned to Wyatt and gave her own answer as Twilight's crew hung on tight.
"Sir, my scanners are picking up the end of the anomaly dead ahead." The Admrial tapped a button on the right arm of his chair console before speaking.
"All decks, brace for impact." He warned to the crew before turning off the ship-wide speaker and holding on steadily to his seat. the viewscreen showed the anomaly starting to flash several times and then fluctuating as they neared the end of the ride. The ship shook several times, but a lot more rougher than previously felt, making some of the bridge lights flicker and knocking some of the crew off of their feet as they waited for the ship to exit the vortex. the ship started to shake and, from the exterior, almost turn a little as the portal flashed one last time in a blinding shockwave as the two starships finally exited the portal, the bridge went almost completely dark as the viewscreen cut to static and the lights shut off as the power was drained due to the amount of energy being put into the engines to slow the ship down. After a few moments, the ship stopped shaking from the now gone stress and the emergency lights turned on when Elisa tapped one of the buttons on her console, the viewscreen was switched from static and back to normal visuals.
On the screen, there were two objects being surrounded by stars all over the surrounding area, one was an Earth-like planet with a few small clouds, and one very large cloud that upon closer examination resembled a horse with a horn and a mane in the colors of green, pink, and turquoise above most of the visible surface, quite a beautiful planet, the Admiral wondered what it looked like on the surface. "Must be peaceful down there." Wyatt thought as he observed the sight of the planet. Looking towards the other object, it was obviously a sun far out in the distance of the system, but looking closely, something didn't seem right with the way the bodies orbited each other. Curious, Wyatt looked over to Nelen Exil and asked, "Nelen, scan the star system, see what we can find out about this place here."
"Yes Admiral, scanning now." He answered before he tapped a few buttons on his console and waited for the results.
On the Equestria, the crew on the bridge viewed the wondrous sight on the screen, some of the officers found the sight astounding, with a beautiful sight like this, some of them were planning to make some notes on trying to come here someday, the main crew however, stared at the sight with their mouths agape, Twilight's eyes glimmered a bit from the realization she just had; they had just arrived at the one place they had been trying to find for those four months of being in Starfleet, they had returned home, to Equestria, the one place where her whole family was most likely worried about their fate, about what happened to them when they were pulled into that portal. She started to lose her breath as she spoke. "We.... We're home. We found our home!" Twilight said in excitement as she looked to her friends, who smiled happily and looked like they were about to lose it like herself, but knowing the other officers they kept their composure. One of the other officers raised an eyebrow as he looked to Twilight.
"Home? If I may ask, Captain, I didn't hear much about your discussions, but is this your home?" The Lieutenant asked kindly before another Rarity chimed in.
"Oh, yes, that planet below is where we came from, specifically a land on this world known as Equestria, quite an amazing place if you ask me." She answered as the Lieutenant looked to the planet onscreen.
"Yes, beautiful indeed. I think I'd like to take a chance on shore leave here sometime."
Everyone on the bridge admired the sight of Equis in the brilliance of the nearby sun as they kept performing their stations. On the Chestnut, Nelen turned to his console as he heard a beeping sound signaling the completion of the scans, reading the data and turning to Wyatt before saying, "Sir, the planet seems to contain enormous amounts of varying lifeforms, along with an atmosphere similar to Earth's own. There are also several cities on the surface, but no space structures of any kind nearby, there are also several energy readings coming from the cities, but they don't match up to the power levels of the cities below. There's also something strange about the gravitational standards of this system, the sun and moon seem to orbit the planet, rather than the other way around!" He said with an astounded expression as he noticed his crewmates looking at him with a puzzled look, as well as waiting for the Admiral's reply.
"That's incredible, a star system where the sun and moon orbit the planet, very intriguing." He said as he noticed the stars moving past the planet very slowly overtime. In his universe, there'd never been a solar system where the planet would be the center of the area, this is exactly what he'd been looking for; a new world with new species to see and know about. He built a smile as he thought about what Twilight thought of this place, to which he immediately realized something he hadn't checked into for quite a while, something that Twilight had told him a long while ago when they first met. "Lon, hail the Equestria, I think Twilight might know something about this place." Lon nodded and tapped a button on his console, then a few seconds later the screen switched to Twilight and her friends in front of the screen, having smiles on each of their faces as they started to talk.
Twilight was the first to speak. "So, how's the view of our home look so far?" She said as Wyatt noticed his crew having surprised expressions on their faces, apparently they'd not come to think of the idea.
"Very much, the planet looks quite wonderful, and I think we should discuss a few things before we head down to the planet to explore." He said as he awaited Twilight's response.
She gave an approving smile as she said, "Got it, by the way, I had some of our engineers build a special device onboard this ship, before we beam down, I'd like to try it out, you wouldn't mind that, would you?"
"No, I wouldn't, now, since you know this planet, making contact with your friends shouldn't violate the Prime Directive, primitive or not. Also, just in case we get attacked, I think it would be safe to bring Phasers, but ONLY at stun setting, any objections?"
He noticed Twilight giving a pondering look before she nodded and replied, "No problem on that, we'll contact you when we're ready."
Wyatt smiled and finished the discussion with, "Got it, Chestnut out." before the viewscreen cut back to the view of Equis as his crew looked at him, awaiting their orders. He then looked back to them and began. "Alright, now this planet is-besides primitive, a place with an apparently peaceful society, so we won't be going in with many weapons, but for safety measures, or if we get attacked, I'd recommend bringing a Phaser at stun setting, I don't want anyone to get hurt, and NO ONE will fire unless I say so or if anyone is physically attacked. If the planet has a military, we'll comply in as friendly a manner as possible. Understood?" The crew nodded and Wyatt smiled before finishing with, "Very well, get your things and meet me at Transporter room 2. Dismissed."
The crew went through the turbolifts as they went off to prepare for the mission, while Wyatt himself went into his ready room to get himself set up. He opened his personal weapons locker and looked through, in the slot lay a Phaser sniper rifle, a 23rd Century Type 2 Phaser pistol, and his well-known blue bladed Nanopulse Bat'leth. He picked up the Type 2 and slid it into one of his belt sockets, shutting the locker with the tap of a button as he took a look at himself in the mirror. His uniform looked spiffy enough for diplomacy, so seeing himself ready, he walked out the door, getting himself fixed up as he went to the Transporter room.
On the Equestria, Twilight had just come out of her ready room with a more spiffy uniform to put on when she noticed Rarity tapping a few buttons on her console. She thought she'd be getting prepped for their reunion with their old friends rather than check on the ship through a console. Curious, she walked over to her and spoke in a confused manner. "Um, Rarity, may I ask what you're checking up on?"
She turned to Twilight as she answered with, "Oh yes, about this! You see, when we were thinking of a possible way of returning home, I felt that I should make a device that could turn us into our old forms, so along with a few engineers, Spike and I built this device to perform such a task, however, since it changes our DNA structures to our desired forms, it costs a lot of the ship's power when in use. But since we've arrived back home because of the portal we went through, I think this would be a perfect chance to try it out!"
Feeling excited, Rarity tapped another button before seven holes formed in front of Twilight's command chair, each of them had their cutie marks on the individual tubes along with windows that, although a bit blurry, were able to show them from the outside. The six of Rarity's friends stood in awe as the device's doors opened, allowing the seven officers inside. Rarity then turned to her friends and spoke. "I hope these don't seem a bit awkward for any of you, but that's as best as I could do. You want to give it a try, girls?"
None of them had any objections, except Fluttershy, who gave a worried look to the fashionista and said, "Um, they don't hurt at any c-chance, do they?"
Rarity smiled before she answered. "Don't worry darling, I tested them myself before I had them installed on the ship. If they hurt anyone, they wouldn't be here." Fluttershy nodded before they all stepped in, getting into a comfortable position before the doors shut in front of them, making the view of them all a bit blurry as usual. With the tap of a button the device activated, the insides of the tubes started to flash white as they performed their work, the beings' forms inside started to change in shape as the process continued. After about almost a minute the devices stopped flashing and cooled off from the high power cost that was used. When the doors opened, all seven stepped out of the tubes, but in the forms of equine beings and a single dragon, bearing the same look as they had back in Equestria before they arrived. They took a moment to examine their familiar bodies and test their magic before Twilight spoke up.
"This is amazing Rarity, I love it! What about you, girls?" The others gave smiles and nods with Fluttershy squealing in a thrilled tone, signaling their approval.
Rainbow Dash chimed in with her verbal approval as well. "Awesome Rarity, I think you should make one for everybody, or should I say everypony?"
Rarity happily shrugged as she finished with, "Well, if anyone wants one, I'll be happy to do so!"
Twilight thought that Wyatt should be informed about their change of appearance before beaming down, since he was not told about such an extraordinary device being put on this ship. She trotted over to her console, and carefully pressing the buttons with her hooves, she was able to hail Wyatt, who at first looked at her with a happy expression, but looked surprised when he noticed her in her pony form. Before he could ask, she gave her answer to his question. "Eh, sorry if we didn't tell you Wyatt, but Rarity seems to have built a device that can change us into our original forms, I hope I didn't startle you."
The Admiral smiled as he noticed Rarity giving him a proud expression on his screen, to which he responded with, "Good work Rarity, I think I may want one sometime." Not even a second after hearing it all of her friends looked a her with curious looks, making her give her answer up.
"You got it Wyatt, I'll send my team over and they can get started." He smiled as he looked back to Twilight and spoke.
"Anything else, Twi?" To which she nodded as she replied,
"No, that's all I had to say, sorry if we bothered you." He nodded and ended the transmission, allowing the seven of them to decide on what else they had to get. After looking at her friends again, she asked them, "Alright, anyone else have something to get?" to which they all gave a nod as their answer and Twilight finished with, "Alright, girls, to the transporter room." before they all trotted to the turbolift, and entered before the doors closed behind them and the lift started moving.
Once they reached the transporters, they entered the room while gathering the attention of several officers who hadn't witnessed the new looks of their commanding officers, to which the Operator responded. "If I may ask Captain, how'd you change into that form there?"
She answered his curiosity with, "My friend here has installed a device on the bridge that allows us to transform into these forms, I hope we're not causing a problem."
He smiled and replied. "No, actually, you look quite cute." before she gave a blushing smile and stepped onto the transporter pads along with her friends as they waited for the officer to signal his readiness. She reformed her stern look and gave the word to the chief.
"Energize." With the tap of a few buttons on the console, the seven Equestrians became surrounded in an opening wave of blue light, before the energy faded away within a few seconds, leaving nothing left as the Mane 6 went down to their old home, waiting anxiously to meet their old friends and families once again.....
~Canterlot~
The afternoon heat slowly faded from the senses of everypony as evening neared in Equestria, the sun slowly lowering itself downwards to the ground and permitting nightfall. Months had passed since the incident first happened, no patrols in any army in Equestria were able to find the Element Bearers, not even the bounty hunters that some even went as far to hire were as near as successful in the search. The worrying news was slowly sinking in, the families and friends of the six mares and dragon were taking in the pain most, the fact of never seeing their faces or hearing their voices again was a thought nopony could've ever thought about. The townspeople of Canterlot, especially Twilight's old friends, we're prepping a memorial for the assumption that their friends were gone for good, Mr. and Mrs. Cake were setting up a nearby "for hire" sign on their window, believing that their employee and friend, Pinkie Pie, would never return to help out, the Cutie Mark Crusaders were having a harder time in school after hearing word that their sisters, Rarity, Applejack, and Scootaloo's hero, Rainbow Dash were now only but a memory, but the worst of it was in the Royal castle of Canterlot, Princess Celestia was almost drained of happiness at the news of her former student being reported as lost for good, she lost a few hours of sleep from a few nightmares, Cadence and Shining Armor couldn't sleep for one night without tear-soaked pillows, waking up at night and crying at the loss of their relative, Twilight.
Hope for the idea of getting their heroes back was apparently lost in memory for the ponies of Equestria, everypony tried to keep themselves calm and act like their usual selves, but they had a hard time trying to contain the sadness throughout the day, nopony could walk by without hearing another pony mention something about the Element Bearers at least once a day. Fortunately though, the Royal sisters weren't going to lose hope anytime soon, the Royal guard was still constantly put on hidden patrols on finding the heroes, despite the continuous failures they made. More bounty hunters were also hired for a lot of bits if a successful find or clue was uncovered, especially one that knew one of the six mares very well during her adventures. In the skies of Equestria was a brown-gold Pegasus pony flying high above the clouds, trying to remain hidden from civilian eyes as she neared her destination.
The news that her biggest fan and her friends were possibly gone forever did not settle well in her mind, the peace and harmony in Equestria was nearly broken up thanks to their loss, and they were too important to be a price. She gave a depressed exhale as she neared the castle near Canterlot. "Months and months of searching, and none of us can seem to find a clue." She spoke as she dove down towards the gates of the castle. "As much as I'll have to face the fact that they're gone, I can't give in to that, I know they're still out there, and I'll find them, even if I have to head into the most dangerous places in the world, I'll find them." She finished and gave a depressed exhale as she prepped herself for a landing. As she neared the gates, she noticed a few royal guards on top of a platform on a higher point of the castle, thinking there'd be other ponies in the castle, she took the alternative route and flew upwards towards the platform. Once Daring set her hooves on the platform, a noticing guard trotted over to her and saluted before she did the same, the guard wore an orange-colored coat of fur and a mane and tail of light and dark blue hair, he spoke to her in a calm tone.
"I'm sorry if I'm holding you back a bit, Ms. Do, I assume you're here to see the Royal Sisters?" Flash Sentry asked as Daring replied.
"Yeah, that's right, but I don't think they'll like the news." She answered before giving a frown to the Pegasus guard.
"You're not the only one having trouble, the other guards haven't found anything for miles now, and it doesn't look like we'll find anything soon." Flash added as he shared the same frown like Daring.
"Are the Princesses available at the moment?" She asked him before he answered.
"Yes, there's about ten civilians talking to them, but they shouldn't be much to worry about." He finished before Daring gave a worried look, she knew she couldn't let any of the townspeople know about her true identity, so she looked to the orange stallion and spoke.
"One moment." She said before she quickly changed into her alternative "A. K. Yearling" persona, wearing a purple shawl, a grey cloche, and big red glasses.
"Good move, that way the civilians won't know who you really are." Flash said as he smiled and saluted before finishing with, "I'll keep on guard with the others, let me know what they say when you get back."
Daring nodded and trotted over to the doors, pushing them open as she went inside to give her news. Flash turned his head back to the large plains and sight of the Everfree forest out in the distance, seeing not a thing in the green grass, or in the clouds. He took a deep breath of disappointment and let his eyes become lost in the sight of the plains, besides getting a wave of thoughts through his mind. "About three months and we haven't found a thing or clue with any information on the Princess and the Element Bearers, with Princess Twilight away from her royal duties, Equestria's been breaking down from happiness since that day. If they don't come back soon, I think we'll all be bound for war, and Shining Armor and Princess Cadence have been very depressed lately since that incident, not to mention with the stress of caring for a young child. Something's gotta hap-" he snapped out of his thoughts as he noticed a light appear from nowhere in the plains. He'd known unicorn ponies were capable of teleportation via a skilled amount of magic, but this was a form he'd never seen teleportation take, at least, not exactly like that. Curious of the sudden light, he took out his spyglass and aimed it towards the once existent energy. What he saw was something he and all of Equestria hadn't expected to see for quite a while, it was the Element Bearers and Princess Twilight, and from the view, they looked fine and well, but another sight caught his eye, six beings, each standing on two legs and wearing what looked to be uniforms, were also present with the seven homecoming heroes. To his surprise, the Element Bearers were wearing a few pieces of similar equipment to the aliens, something must've happened during their away time, another race must've found them at the right time and got them out of trouble.
He knew that once he'd mentioned that their heroes were finally home, everyone, especially the guards, would go nuts, so to prevent such panic, he calmly breathed and turned to one of his fellow guards. "Everyone, I need you all to be calm on this, but I think I've found something that'll bring our spirits back up." He said with a confident smile as the guards trotted over to him. He handed one of the guards his spyglass and waited as they examined, he almost wished he told them rather than showed them, however, as the guard went into excitement over the sight he saw.
As if he'd forgotten what Flash told him, he nearly yelled at the top of his lungs as he yelled, "The Element Bearers are back, inform her Highness about this news immediately!!" The surrounding guards grew energetic smiles and raced to the door, Flash giving a disappointed and worried frown as he chased after them.
"WAIT!! Don't rush to her in such a hurry!" He yelled as he flew towards the excited mob of guards.
Down in the throne room, Princess Celestia spoke to her depressed subjects as she tried to keep her spirits up. She faced Minuette, who was one of Twilight's old friends bearing a blue coat of fur and dark blue and grey-white hair and an hourglass cutie mark, saying, "Minuette, I understand the pressure that you're feeling of Twilight's absence, but don't think she's gone forever, I think there's a chance that we will find her and her friends, and I won't rest until they're found and brought back to saf-" She stopped her statement as she heard hoofsteps coming down the staircase, revealing a gold and brown coated pony with a purple coat and grey hat, she knew that somepony had returned with news.
She looked to Minuette and the others as she finished with, "I apologize for halting our talk, but I need a private word with our guest here. Do you mind if I have a moment please?" Minuette and her friends nodded as they trotted not too far from sight, but enough to not hear the discussion. Daring bowed and looked up to the alicorn ruler as she started talking.
"Your highness, forgive me if I've come at a bad time, but I have news for you, and I don't think you'll like to hear it." Celestia and Luna gave worried looks to the heroic adventurer in disguise after her statement. Did she fail to find her pupil and her friends? Or did she succeed but found them in a horrible state, hurt, or even killed?
She calmed herself with a breath and started to ask, "What did you find out, Dari-" She was quickly cut off by a low chatter, which grew louder in seconds, attracting everypony's attention.
"Who's that coming down the st-" A brown coated stallion with a brown mane and tail and an hourglass cutie mark named Doctor Whooves said out of worriedness but had his question answered with a mob of royal guards racing through the stairs, yelling statements that were incomprehensible with all of them being rapidly constant.
One guard flew quickly into the throne room, looking calmer than the rest, and waiting for her to quiet the loud crowd. "Everypony calm down! I'll hear your news, but I can't understand with everyone speaking." Her words quickly shut the mouths of the noisy guards and sent them into uneasy positions as they waited for her to continue. She looked to the orange guard, whom she knew as Flash Sentry. "Flash, can you explain what you found?"
He smiled as he answered with, "Yes, and it's good news as well." She smiled as she focused her ears on him. "I believe I've found the Element Bearers, they've just appeared near an area out in the plains." Celestia nearly stood from her seat at these words, but stopped as he continued with, "But, I've also noticed six other entities with them. I believe these beings may have the answers to some of our questions, your Highness."
Celestia stood with an open mouth at his words, did an alien species get their hands on her former pupil and her friends, and perhaps, gain their servitude? A very curious and dark question that swarmed Celestia's mind, but she couldn't let that lead her, she had heroes to save. She built a confident expression before announcing, "Very well, then I'd like to send a task group out to investigate, along with myself and my sister, but I do not want anyone to use force unless it is necessary. Is that understood?" The guards nodded as Celestia finished with, "Excellent, Flash, you, Princess Cadence and Shining Armor will depart to Twilight's location, don't let the town fall into panic."
Flash gave a salute along with the other guards as he answered. "Yes, your highness." looking to Shining after acknowledging. Cadence seemed to give a hopeful smile, Flash had had several run-ins with Twilight, and maybe he'd been worried sick just as she and her husband were. The other guards followed suite with the rest of Shining and Cadence's group as they made their way to the doors of the throne room, leaving Celestia, her sister, and the civilians waiting to talk to her, or at least were, now that they'd overheard the news and came out with smiles on their faces. Celestia knew that Twilight's family would want to see her, just like everypony else in Equestria, but if she knew civilians right, they'd go crazy over something like that, to the point where somepony would get hurt, she thought that she'd spare these ponies the trouble of an excited crowd.
"Minuette, I don't usually do things like this, but since the town will soon find out of our friends' return and go crazy over this, I think you and your friends should come with me, including your group, Bon Bon."
The group looked towards Bon Bon with a bit of curiosity, making her a little uneasy at first before she spoke. "It's... it's something I need to talk about, something I haven't revealed to anypony else other than my friend Lyra." The group gave a few minor gasps and murmurs before Bon Bon spoke again.
"I believe I can explain this on the way, your highness. Is everyone set and ready?" The group nodded before turning back to Celestia and hearing her words.
"Good, hopefully, we shouldn't encounter too much traffic in the clouds. Let's go." With that said, Celestia went up the stairs to the chariot, the group following suite as they went to reunite with her friends, with hopes that they had not been harmed in anyway possible....
---Equestrian Plains---
The sun was shining brilliantly as it sat in the sky of this "new" world. After months of combat, saving colonies, and peace treaties, not to mention protecting the timeline, they'd finally get a bit of time to do what they'd been waiting to do for a long time, seeing new worlds and meeting new life was apart of their maiden voyage across the stars, and this world had some that they would make good times and friends with, especially with Princess Twilight and her friends alongside them. The world that Wyatt saw was a wondrous sight: cool blue sky, yellow, shining sun, and white, puffy clouds that flew slowly across the sky, just like what Twilight had described to him, it surely would be a place he'd go to visit, not to mention spend shore leave here sometime. While the Admiral was admiring the world he stood on, his away team was doing the same, as well as getting scans of the flora and fauna of Equestria, curious to see what lies on this world. T'vrell spoke up when she got her results. "Fascinating, this world carries several creatures similar to Earth's own, as well as some strange, yet intriguing new ones." They had seen several creatures that looked similar to Earth's own, such as bears, birds, and bunny-rabbits wandering in the grass, while they also encountered new beasts as well, one resembled an ancient Earth monster known as a manticore, apparently unicorns and pegasi weren't the only life forms that were considered myths at Sol and existed here.
Fluttershy spoke up upon T'vrell's mentioning of animals. "Oh, speaking of animals, I used to live in a cottage near Ponyville before we were taken, and I don't know if my animals were being taken care of without me."
Applejack trotted over to her friend and assured her with, "Don't worry sugarcube, I'm sure somepony was able to get there and watch over them while we were away." Her words brought a slight smile back to her face before she continued looking around.
Twilight looked up to the skies of her homeworld once more, feeling estatic to meet her friends and family again before trotting over to Wyatt to talk. "Isn't it a wonderful place? Being in a world where violence and death are just about non-existent?"
The Admiral smiled before replying, "Yes, it's a much better place to be, while Earth and it's people treat each other with kindness and feel equal, this place beats that record." The Admiral looked around before spotting a small, primitive-looking town near their location, as well as a strange castle that looked like it was made out of crystals. He looked to the equine princess as he asked, "I assume that's your castle over there near Ponyville?"
"Yep." She replied before continuing. "It's known as the Castle of Friendship, when I became a princess, that became my new home after my old one was destroyed by Tirek during his attack on Equestria. Hopefully, Starfleet and Equestria will become great allies when we meet with Princess Celestia and Luna, just don't try to get mining rights to my castle."
Wyatt gave a smile as he finished with, "Don't worry about that, if HQ wants to try something like that, they'll have my crew and I to argue with, besides, that place is too good for any drill."
The two chuckled a bit before Wyatt turned to Kapor and asked him, "How's your results going on the plants?"
"They're going quite well sir, these plants, while having similar features to Earth's own, seem to move in a more energetic and faster movement, in an easier way of saying it, they move somewhat like what you'd see in an animated Earth television program."
Wyatt nodded before replying, "Excellent, anything else I should know?" Kapor shook his head before Wyatt began to look to his whole away team and finished with, "Alright, with the scans taken care of, I suggest we follow Princess Twilight and her friends to Canterlot, there we shall fi-" He stopped when he heard a faint noise coming from somewhere, the noise sounded like loud footsteps, as if a stampede were running towards them. When he fell silent, both away teams looked around for the source of the noise, Kapor also raising his phaser pistol until both Wyatt and Twilight turned towards the town and saw the origin of the noise, it was a large mob of creatures running towards them, upon looking closer, they found the mob to be a crowd of ponies. Twilight felt surprised upon seeing this sight, it looked as if the entire town of Ponyville was coming to see them, but she then felt worried about Wyatt's away team, they most likely would scare the crowd once they noticed them. Wyatt looked to her and stepped back as he spoke, "Just so we don't ruin the moment..." noticing some of his away team holding their weapons, he signaled them to lower their arms.
The incoming crowd was closing in at a quick speed, Kapor, while keeping his weapon put away, had braced himself in case he was hit by somepony. As Twilight looked closer, she could see familiar faces coming closer, her parents, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, Mr. and Mrs. Cake and their foals, she built a smile on her muzzle and despite being away from them for a long time, held her tears with all the strength she could muster, she noticed Rarity, AJ, and Dash building excited smiles on their faces, with Rarity holding tears in her eyes. When the crowd came near, they could hear the crowd's excited words, some sounded like they were saying things like, "They're finally back!", "Welcome home!" and "We missed you so much!". The crowd, rather than crashing into them, finally came to a stop as they were greeted by their friends and family, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo jumped on Rarity and Dash as they embraced tightly with the fillies, Apple Bloom, Big Mac, and Granny Smith gathered with Applejack as they gathered in a group hug, Pinkie Pie jumped with excitement when she met up with the Cakes, she looked a little bit sad when she saw the foals looking teary-eyed. Twilight however, noticed four familiar faces trotting towards her, her brother Shining Armor, her sister-in-law Princess Cadence, Starlight Glimmer, and an escorting royal guard she recognized, Flash Sentry, not to mention her parents, whose eyes were streaked with tears. She trotted up to them and hugged them tight like she hadn't seen them in years. Shining Armor then said to her while hugging him, "I thought you'd never come back."
She then replied, now letting her tears flow freely, "Well, now I am." After letting go of her family, she continued, "You won't believe what's happened Shining, I've been through a lot at where I was at."
"I'm sure you have, Twiley." He finished as he wiped away his tears and stood with her long-gone sister. After a lot of celebrating with the heroes, the crowd stopped cheering as Sweetie Belle gave a worried look towards the visitors her sister was with, holding her hoof as the crowd slowly looked to the Admiral's away team with worried looks. Shining Armor's guards instead gave glares at the six humanoids, pulling their spears out and keeping them upright in case these aliens attacked them, Kapor did not holster his weapon like a normal Klingon would, he knew there would be a military group that would be prepared to fight, but they weren't here to start a war. He stood next to his crewmates and kept a calm stance as he waited for the crowd to be calmed down.
Twilight walked near the crew and then looked to the crowd, smiling as she spoke, "Everypony, these are our new friends, they won't hurt any of you. As a matter of fact, they're here to meet you all and introduce themselves to Princess Cel-" Before she could finish her sentence, she heard a noise in the sky that sounded like a chariot. Upon looking up, the crowd saw the being Twilight was mentioning, Princess of the sun, Celestia, and her sister Princess Luna, sitting in the chariot that was now lowering down towards the ground. When she looked closer, she could tell they weren't the only two in the large vehicle, and upon it landing and the side door opening, saw who was with her former teacher, her old friends from Canterlot, and six other friends she knew, Vinyl Scratch, Octavia Melody, Bon Bon, Lyra Heartstrings, Derpy Hooves, and Time Turner, or Dr. Hooves as his more common name, all followed the Royal Sisters out of the chariot and trotted beside the Princesses. Twilight trotted up and hugged Celestia tightly before releasing, looking up to her before speaking. "I was just about to mention you, Princess."
Celestia smiled before she replied. "Well, I believe my sister and I can take it from here, I'm glad you're back though Twilight, where did you end up at?"
Twilight smiled before finishing with, "Well, I believe my friends and I can answer that when we head to town." Celestia nodded before noticing and turning to the Admiral and his away team, standing firm and relaxed as the Admiral stood in front of her before bowing in respect.
"I assume you are Princess Celestia?" Celestia nodded and smiled before he continued his introduction. "It's a pleasure to meet you, your Highness. I'm Admiral Wyatt Stone of the U.S.S. Chestnut, I represent the United Federation of Planets. These are my crewmates, Commanders Mioiil, T'vrell, Lon Leonard Weed, Nelen Exil, and Kapor." The alicorn ruler smiled as they also bowed in respect and listened to her words.
"It's nice to meet you all, I believe you wish to talk about the events that you and Twilight have been through, as well as diplomatic matters?" Celestia said to Wyatt as he replied.
"Yes we do, but I believe my crew would also like to get to know your people, not to mention this would be a rough spot for us to talk. Is there a place we could talk?"
A pony from the crowd, a tan colored earth pony whom the crowd knew as Mayor Mare, spoke up. "Pardon me your highness, but I believe I know a place in town where we could do such a task!"
Celestia smiled as the princess gave a look towards Wyatt, who nodded, and then spoke to her. "Thank you Mayor, we'll help you get underway."
Celestia then looked to the crowd, Wyatt and his team standing firm as she began. "Everypony, Princess Twilight has brought new friends with her during her return, when we arrive at Ponyville, I'd like you to get to know them, as I'm sure they wish to do the same with you." The crowd murmured in delight when Celestia smiled and finished with, "Then it's settled, let us head to Ponyville, everyone."
Everyone cheered and began forming alongside Celestia and began their trot to Ponyville. The Admiral then walked beside Twilight and said to her, "This is where the real fun begins."
Twilight nodded and smiled as she replied, "Yep, something I've been wanting to do for a while." She looked to Flash and spoke to Wyatt. "Excuse me." He nodded before she trotted to the mentioned stallion and spoke to him. "Hey Flash, you got a second?"
"Of course, your Highness, what do you need?"
"I almost thought I'd never get the chance of talking to you, but since I'm back, I'd like to talk to you when the party's on."
Flash smiled before answering, "I'd love to your Highness, when we get there?"
"Yep," Twilight smiled before finishing. "and please, call me Twilight."
"No problem, Twilight." He finished and trotted beside her with the crowd. Today was an excellent day for Equestria, the world would now find out that they weren't the only beings in existence and that a new race was asking to make peace. Something that would benefit all of them, the land of Equestria had more friends to make this day, and hopefully more as time passed on....
~~Meanwhile~~
Year: 2410
Location: Alpha Quadrant, Bajor Sector
Time: 0550 hours (2 hours ago)
The space was tense as several starships warped in and out of the former Cardassian-claimed sector of space, when it came to visiting the famous space station of Terok Nor, it was for attacks or for transporting prisioners for most starship captains. In the hallways of the enormous command base against the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, a tall human captain wearing an Odyssey tactical uniform with a badge that resembled the Earth with a sword behind it and a gold colored sash, walked to one of the many turbolifts that circled around the Promenade of the station. With the doors opening, he stepped inside and spoke to the computer in an arrogant manner. "Ops." the doors shut and the turbolift moved up, eventually stopping and opening up to reveal several similar looking officers, who smacked their fists against their chests and extended their arms out as well as opening their fists, giving what resembled a Nazi salute. As the captain did the same, one set of doors had gained the captain's attention and he walked toward it. The doors opened to reveal a female officer sitting in the center chair of the room. "Reporting as ordered, Admiral!" The captain saluted her as she began.
"So, I heard you have information on our plans... Captain Stone?" She said to the captain as he nodded and gave a cocky grin.
"I have gathered data feed from the cloaked probes we've used, they've found the portal, and they've just entered it." The captain then activated the device, which showed holofootage of two starships, a Federation cruiser refit and a Science star cruiser investigating a large portal, then entering it before the video cut off.
"Excellent, now that you have the configurations, your orders are to go to where they went and find what they're looking for. If it's useful, take control if it and send ships to occupy it."
"Yes ma'am, and what of the Federation scum?" He asked as he gave a smirk.
"Mmmmm... Capture your counterpart and bring him to me, but eliminate the star cruiser if you can, we can't allow the Federation to interfere with our plans." She said before he grinned and replied.
"Yes ma'am. I will not fail you this time." While his facial expression seemed unchanged, his eyes spoke out with annoyance. He had lost too many times to him, the countless losses at DS9 were too much, now he would show him the full power of his crew and ship.
As he turned to leave, the female Admiral stopped him with, "Wait..." hearing this, he turned and pulled a device out from his pocket. He attached it to himself, activated it, and in seconds, his body was surrounded in a field of energy, when the field ceased, he was revealed to have changed to an equine form, with the same marks from previous battles and his knife at his hind leg's side. he wore a mane and tail with dark Yellow, brown, and red as their colors. Upon seeing this, Admiral Leeta smiled mischievously and finished. "Ha! Excellent, now go and perform your duties, Captain."
Then, Leeta stood as her and Wyatt then performed the traditional salute and said along with all other officers in the room, "Long live the Empire!" The Captain then marched out to the turbolift as the doors shut. Admiral Leeta then smiled to herself and looked out the window in the room.
Soon, we shall unleash our newest weapon we have built from Iconia's ashes, and once the pathetic Alliance and Federation are wiped from history, nothing will stand against the might of the Terran Empire!!!
And for that while in the room of Terok Nor's Ops deck, she laughed as she imagined the weapon and the galaxy's presumed fear caused by it, soon the galaxy would bow to the Imperials, and anyone that defied her Emperor would suffer the pain wrought by the cruelness and hatred of the now restored Terran Empire.....
Quite some time passed as the town was bustling with happiness, ponies filled the streets and talk of past events and personal life and lessons filled the air in Ponyville. It had been about 4 months since Twilight and her friends had been taken from Equestria by an unknown force, and now they had come back, and had also brought some new friends with them. The crew of the Chestnut had a fun time as everyone would call it, drinking some of the Apple family's Cider, hearing stories and jokes from each other, and of course, discussing what others liked. Princess Celestia, Princess Twilight, and Admiral Stone talked throughout the day of tales across the galaxy and the land of Equestria, as well as interesting scientific facts about Wyatt's home universe. Shining Armor and Cadence had also felt much better after seeing Twilight's face again, when she saw Flurry Heart again, she nearly ended the party with her still uncontrolled magic. Nonetheless, everyone was having quite a fun time during the party, when time was nearing evening, it was time for Diplomacy to step in, and despite having partied heavily, and some ponies being tired, they still felt like they wouldn't miss the talks for the world, besides, Twilight felt everyone deserved to know what had happened over the past 4 months. The start of the talks were a bit of "First Contact" type discussions, the Royal Sisters learning the history of the Federation and the other species in Wyatt's home universe and the other way around with him and his crew. It was quite a fun time for everyone, learning something new in the universe, and also revealing secrets that brought both shock and interest into everyone's minds.
It had been hours since they'd arrived, partied for a bit, and the talks had just about finished the discussion involving the Temporal Cold War as everyone was listening, the conference room wasn't just filled with Twilight, Wyatt's away team, and the Royal Sisters, but the entire town apparently grew quite curious of their new visitors, and with Wyatt and Celestia's approval, were allowed to stay and hear the talks in front of them, the room was full of noise as the next part of the talks was finished. "So, these three alien races plan to erase the Federation from the timeline because of actions they believe you've committed?" Celestia had asked the Admiral sitting to her right.
"Yes, a man who formerly served alongside a race known as the Krenim Imperium, Noye, had turned on us when he was looking through several datatapes and messages that were left in the computer after a failed experiment during the Iconian war, and he blames the Alliance for what was lost. Currently, we've had to deal with the Na'kuhl during raids on convoys, who blame us for not saving their homeworld with a device that a man named Kal Dano had used to save the home star in the Lukari system. We had recently dealt with one of their assault fleets before we arrived here." Wyatt sat in his chair as comfortably as he could as he heard murmuring from the crowd near them.
Celestia had given a worried look before finishing with, "That does seem to be a troublesome affair, with us on your side though, the tide of this war might change for the better."
"Indeed, your Highness. We could have a better chance of stopping anymore bloodshed with the Na'kuhl if your people could help out." He said with hope in his voice as he awaited the Princesses' response.
"Well, with diplomats such as Twilight here, there's a good chance of it." She finished with a smile on her face as she looked over to Twilight who was smiling as well.
A unicorn mare with a grey coat of fur and a mane and tail with purple and white spoke up from the crowd. "Speaking of my daughter, how did she get to where you came from?" A question that had peaked everyone's mind, what had Twilight gone through in the past months since her departure? Remembering to tell everypony about the incident, she cleared her throat and sat before beginning her explanation.
"Yes, that, I think it's about time everyone knows what happened to us. You see, after we were pulled into the portal, we came out into what we'd later come to know as the Federation frigate Omicron, and she wasn't in the best of shape, either. The hallway was in flames, but there wasn't too much to prevent us from getting to another part of the ship, it wasn't too easy though, the portal seemed to change our genetic structure into human form, making it harder to get around at first. After getting oriented, we tried to get out of that hallway but we got spotted by a group of Borg drones that were on board the ship, and if it weren't for a squad of Starfleet officers that was apparently ordered to find us, we would've been dead." The crowd gave slight gasps as they listened to her story. "After our rescue, we were then told that we had to evacuate the ship as it was about to be destroyed by a Borg cube near the ship. That's when another ship under Wyatt's command, the U.S.S. Enceladus, had arrived and beamed us off of the ship before it's destruction. After that, we then met Wyatt on the bridge of the ship, and a little later met his superior officer, Admiral Jorel Quinn, who offered us a position at Starfleet Academy after they found out our capabilities, and apparently, after looking through several old Earth data records." She paused for a moment with hesitation before she continued.
"And... since we had thought of the possibility that we would never return back here, we decided to try and build new lives in the Federation, and surprisingly, I was treated almost the same as here, and I felt Wyatt being like a mentor for me in the galaxy, always keeping a lookout for me and my friends, and we had all kept our hopes of finding a way of getting back to Equestria, and a way back was what we soon found. Onboard our ship, our scans had picked up an anomaly near the Argelius Sector, and upon arriving there, the portal had similar features to the one we saw, but it seemed to be much more stable than we remembered. When we launched a probe into it, we found that it lead into a system with the same characteristics as this one, and thus we made way through the portal and came out the other side into here. And thanks to Rarity, Spike and a few officers onboard, we managed to build a device that was able to change us back into our original forms, even with the same abilities."
The crowd made quiet gasps and murmurs as she finished, to the crowd, they were quite stunned about what she had been through, the Princess of Friendship and her friends had been in a world that almost none of them had seen nor been to, and they obviously had some new stuff to show them, the ships they flew, the new friends they had made, a lot was on their minds for the next day, however, the thoughts of the crowd were interrupted when a pony with a purple-pink fur coat and purple and light turquoise mane and tail, whom many had come to know as Starlight Glimmer, had spoke up from the crowd. "Um, Twilight, speaking of this portal, I was wanting to mention something that had happened this morning, when I went to see Trixie at Canterlot. I had been waiting for her there for about an hour before I got worried, and when I went to go check on her at her trailer, I didn't see her anywhere inside."
The crowd had made several surprised gasps as she finished, T'vrell then jumped onto the discussion. "Are you saying that your friend may have possibly been pulled into a similar anomaly earlier today?"
Starlight then responded with, "I think so, but unfortunately, I didn't see exactly what caused her to disappear so suddenly, I tried asking others if they saw her, but nopony told me, and I think that portal you mentioned might have been the cause."
Lon then joined in on the talk. "Do you think we could go with you to the trailer, if you know where it's at, T'vrell and I may be able to help."
Starlight then replied to his question with, "Yes, I remember where it's at, but I think we may need some guards to come with us."
Lon then answered her question about security issues. "Don't worry about that, if someone or something attacks us, our phasers will handle that, don't worry about any harm coming from them, they're locked on stun mode, it'll only knock them out." Starlight nodded after a moment, and the three then departed for the trailer.
Wyatt then popped a thought into his head, "Maybe Admiral Quinn can lend a hand here." He then spoke up about the issue. "Maybe someone I know can help out here, your Highness." He then tapped his combadge, which chirped a little before he spoke again. "Stone to Chestnut."
The voice of Commander Zarva then sounded from his badge. "Yes Sir?" He then continued on speaking.
"Zarva, a friend of Twilights has an issue that I think we can help out on, can you beam down a PADD containing any and all messages sent to me please?"
Zarva then spoke again. "You got it sir, it should be down there any minute."
Wyatt smiled a bit before he finished. "Thanks, Stone out." After tapping on his badge again, this time turning it off, he then turned to Celestia and spoke. "I think if your friend was taken, she might be somewhere in our universe, and if that's the case, I think my friend Admiral Quinn can help us out."
Celestia then answered with, "Thank you, Admiral, and about your visit, if there isn't a way to head back to your realm at the moment, we have plenty of places for you to stay."
Twilight then responded to her. "I think my friends and I can arrange that."
"Thanks Twilight." Wyatt said as he looked to Celestia and spoke. "In our universe, we left a beacon containing data regarding the portal, and we transmitted a signal for a friend of mine, Captain Va'kel Shon of the Enterprise should be able to find it and meet us here."
Celestia smiled as she finished with, "Excellent, perhaps we can make some way of connecting our two realms so that we may visit each others' universes."
"Yes, and meeting the captain and crew of the flagship of Starfleet, in my experience, I've heard it's quite an honor to meet them." He said as they waited for the PADD to be beamed down to their position, hopefully if they were to find any messages sent to Wyatt about the portal incidents, perhaps they could find Starlight's friend and get her back and explain the events that have happened...
~Trixie's Trailer~
It'd been a little over half an hour of walking until Trixie's home was in sight of Starlight, Lon, and T'vrell, and at this point, the sun had gone down past the mountains, bringing nightfall over the quiet land of Equestria. Fortunately for Starlight and the others, they had their lights to use for the search. When they finally reached the trailer, Lon decided to set up positions around the magician's home for scanning. Starlight had just went through how the scanning devices work, so she didn't seem to have any problems using it, especially testing it on the plants they walked by to get the hang of it. Lon then began his plan as he spoke.
"Alright, T'vrell, you get the closer exterior ring near the trailer, Starlight, you get the inside, and I'll get the farther exterior ring." They all nodded and made their way to their positions, Starlight used her magic to teleport herself inside the trailer, and while it was dark, she turned on a light inside of the trailer to see. She checked all of the rooms in the trailer, and as expected, found no sign of her best friend. While she was inside, she scanned the rooms inside, but didn't find anything that could be a clue to Trixie's disappearance. Disappointed, she teleported out of her friend's home and found T'vrell still getting scans of the surrounding area near the trailer.
Curious of what she may have found, she trotted up to her and asked, "I scanned the inside, but I didn't get nothing out of it. Did you find anything?"
After a moment longer of scanning, she spoke. "I believe I have found a clue to your friend's disappearance," Her ears perked up when she heard her. "while the portal is not active, I'm picking up traces of energy that could have been left from the aftermath of the portal, and not only are they almost gone, but they're disappearing faster the more they dissipate."
While she was a little down from the fact that the portal was gone, she was at least happy that they now had something to go off of. "We should go get Lon and report our findings."
The two then made their way up a hill where Lon was stationed at, he had obviously stopped his scans of the area, but he looked like he was seeing something over the hill. When they met up with him, they saw the sight he had his eyes on, it was the moon, a view that looked similar to Earth's sight of it's moon, but it had a bit of a purple tint to it, and a similar shape in the moon's surface, which was known to Equestria as "The Mare in the Moon", faced the darkened surface of it's world. From his eyes, Lon looked astounded at such a sight, and acknowledged their presence when he spoke.
"It's a beautiful sight, isn't it?" He said as Starlight looked up at the moon.
"Yeah, I think you can thank the Princess of the Night for that, she raises the moon every night."
Lon smiled as he stared at the moon for what felt like an eternity. "You know, on our world, our moon circles the planet in orbit, and rather than a being controlling it, the moon can be seen in both day and night, and while it's amazing to see, this is a sight I haven't seen for months, if not a year."
Starlight smiled as the three of them stood to admire the beauty of the moon resting in the night sky, the light of it's surface hitting them every second. While they hadn't found a way to get Trixie back into town, they at least had something they could use to trace her location, and at the same time, they witness a wondrous sight that most space voyagers rarely get to see regularly almost for as long as it shined in the night sky of Equis....
The sun rose over the mountains as morning arrived at Ponyville, ponies eventually crowded the streets and the town was once again bustling like usual. At the Castle of Friendship, Twilight entered the conference room of her home and noticed Wyatt's away team up and about like she was. While Lon and Mioiil had just gotten their uniforms on, and Kapor, Nelen, and T'vrell were studying the evidence involving the portal, Wyatt himself was doing a usual routine of exercise as Twilight readied herself for the day. She had promised her friends and the Royal Sisters that she'd show them the starships that she and the Admiral flew in Starfleet, and there'd be not a minute to spare if she was to show them everything their ships had. The purple alicorn trotted over to Wyatt as he was finishing his exercises and asked him, "Are you coming to the ship, Admiral? I think my friends may want to know some facts about your ship."
Wyatt got up and answered her through his tired breathing. "Yes, I'll be right with you in a moment." He then went to his room to grab his belongings, leaving Twilight to continue getting ready. A knock at her door sounded and Spike went to answer it, and the door opened to reveal Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, and all of their friends they'd invited along. Dash saved Twilight's breath as she answered her now visible expression of curiosity.
"If you're wondering why everyone's here, we were thinking of coming here to transport up to the ship and get the job done quicker."
Derpy then added in, "It's a good thing we're going today too, we all have the day off on our jobs!" After looking to Celestia and Luna, she added, "Well, kind of." Twilight nodded and laughed with everyone before she went back to group everyone together when Wyatt's away team came back from their rooms with all of their equipment gathered together, with Mioiil in the front of the group as she spoke to them.
"The Admiral's almost ready, he just needs to get the last of his things real quick." The group nodded as they waited for a few seconds until Wyatt came into the room. He then asked them,
"Alright, this'll be a bit of a long tour with both ships being on the list, and if anyone has a problem during the trip, ask us, is everyone ready?" The group nodded as they waited for Wyatt to finish, "Alright, Twilight will be the lead for the tour, so I'll get my ship ready while you're all with her." Everyone nodded again and fell silent when Rarity's combadge chimed, she tapped it and answered.
"Yes, darling?" She said before a voice sounded.
Ah, Rarity, I'm on Admiral Wyatt's ship, I just wanted to inform you that the Converter device you asked about is finished and is ready, we tested it too, so if that'll settle any panic.
Rarity smiled and seemed to almost act a bit giddy as she replied, "Excellent darling, just in time for the tour! Wyatt will be aboard shortly."
Understood, I'll be on board the Equestria in a moment, Francisco out.
Rarity then deactivated the combadge as she awaited Wyatt's words. "And I'll be sure to give that a try too." He then tapped his combadge and spoke. "Stone to Chestnut, six to beam up." And with that, the six humans were surrounded by separate fields of energy for a few seconds before they disappeared, leaving nothing left.
Twilight then did the same as she tapped her combadge and said, "Sparkle to Equestria, 16 to beam up." In the span of a dozen seconds, the group was surrounded by similar fields of energy around each pony, the world around them soon faded into energy as they were transported to the ship Twilight commanded, many surprises waiting to be seen by her friends....
~U.S.S. Chestnut~
The room became visible to Wyatt's eyes as he and his away team were now standing on the transporter pads of Transporter room 1. Several officers stood near the operation console, as the six officers greeted them, one of the officers asked the Admiral, "How was the meeting, sir?"
"It went perfectly well, I think we can say the Equestrians are now a part of the Federation." The officers smiled as they returned to their duties. Wyatt then said to the chief, "Twilight and her group will be over here for a tour, when they're ready, beam them over." The officer nodded before returning to his station. Wyatt and his crewmates made their way to the turbolift and entered, the doors closing and the turbolift moving after.
When the doors opened, the crew entered the bridge of the ship and returned to their original stations, Wyatt then turned towards the crew and spoke to Mioiil. "I'll be in my ready room for a moment, I think there's something I need to see." She nodded and continued her task as Wyatt entered his ready room. he noticed a PADD on his desk next to some kind of remote-like device, activating the PADD, it was a not from Rarity saying her pleasures about the Converter through e-mail, to which he tapped a quick reply to her saying "Thanks, I owe you one." and sending it to her before setting the PADD down. He picked up the remote and pressed a button on it, and the wall opened up to reveal a large, cylinder-shaped device in the wall, the door on the cylinder chamber opening as well. Rarity and her team performed admirably on the device, he felt he'd have to repay them sometime for it. Feeling ready to test it, he stepped inside, pressed a button and shut the door and let the machine do its work.
On the bridge, Mioiil began discussing the talk they had about the disappearances on Equestria. "You know, Elisa, it seems Twilight isn't the only one that got taken from the anomalies."
Elisa raised an eyebrow. "Really? Who else had to deal with it?"
Mioiil explained to her. "A friend of Twilights, Starlight Glimmer, said she went to see her friend Trixie at the city of Canterlot, and later found that she was gone, and earlier last night, T'vrell, Lon, and her went to find energy readings on the portal, and sure enough, they found slight readings on it."
Elisa then frowned a bit, then spoke again. "Well, hopefully with our help we can find out where she we-"
They stopped when Wyatt's ready room doors opened to reveal him exiting out of the room, but he looked different. He looked like one of the ponies from Equestria and wore a light yellow fur coat, along with a mane and tail that looked similar in shape to Rainbow Dash's, it's colors being yellow, brown, and blue, seemingly blending in with his normal Starfleet uniform.
He stepped onto the bridge of the ship as the crew looked at his new form, Lon then spoke. "I assume the machine worked, eh?" giving a smirk.
Wyatt smiled and answered. "Yeah, and I think this fits perfectly, what do you think?"
The crew nodded with smiles on their faces, Mioiil then said to him, "With all due respect sir, I must say, you look a bit cute." Hearing that from her made him blush a little and laugh before he continued.
"Alright, with the talks done and the tour underway, we should try and find a way to make a gateway to ou-" He was cut off as he was surrounded by a field of energy, the field then vanished leaving nothing left.
The crew gasped in terror as their captain was now kidnapped by an unknown force, Lon then turned to Kapor and ordered, "Kapor, shields up, Red Alert!" The klaxon went off as the crew reported to their stations and alerted the ship of the captain's disappearance. Elisa tapped the ship-wide comms and spoke.
"Red Alert, Red Alert, this is not a drill, repeat, this is NOT a drill!"
For the next minute those words sounded through the comms onboard the Chestnut, the crew now set into action by the move taken by the enemy. This was apparently an attack, and the Admiral's kidnapping was the start of it. They would have to hurry if they were going to get him back...
~I.S.S. Sacramento~
The hallway was filled with tension as Captain Wyatt and his personal guards made their way to the transporter room, the lights, while usually bright, were quite dim in the halls of the ship, bringing an eerie feeling to most enemies that walked through it. When the doors to Transporter room 3 opened, they revealed the chief alongside two other guards, who had their weapons ready for their target, Admiral Wyatt was on the transporter pad when his counterpart's personal guards kept their weapons aimed at him in case he was to try something.
The Terran captain quietly chuckled in delight, to see his own nemesis trapped by his troops was a victorious feeling. He almost wished it'd lasted forever, but he had someone to deliver him to. He walked up to him and spoke mischievously. "Wow... what a sight I am seeing, how delightful it is to see my old friend in shackles after all this time." He grinned at him as his counterpart looked at him with angry eyes.
"Well, I almost thought I wouldn't see you until your next attack at DS9, I guess problems come earlier than you'd expect." He said as he smirked at his darker self, who frowned at him slightly before continuing.
"You know, you should be feeling lucky for your life, my friend, I rarely take prisoners on missions, but my superior has given me orders to take you to her in order for your forces to fall under our flag. In fact, you'll be one of the first to bear witness to the Empire's latest weapon recently built over the ruins of Iconia, but for now, you might as well be sitting when you are put behind my ships force fields. Trying to escape won't help for you, since our ship has an enhanced cloaking device active, preventing you from leaving the ship." His grin grew more sinister as he faced his counterpart face to face. He grew a frown on his face as he spoke to him.
"You may have me in your grasp, my friend, but you have no idea how skilled the Alliance is, even without me."
The Terran pony smiled as turned away and let the guards take him. They then waited for their captain speak. "Guards, take him to the brig, if he tries to escape, stun him, I want him alive. Is that clear?"
The guards nodded before the captain finished. "Good, now go." With that, the guards saluted and took the Admiral through the doors and to the brig, the captain then smiled with pleasure at the fact that his counterpart was now in their grasp. Without him, the Alliance would fall sooner than expected at the hands of their new weapon...
..................
The doors opened to reveal a set of prison cells along the room, the Admiral's escorts walked to the closest cell to them and tapped a few buttons, then put their prisoner into the cell and activated the force field that now trapped him inside the cell. The guards then turned to the officer monitoring the brig and spoke to him. "This prisoner is to be kept alive until further notice, if he tries to escape, stun him, you're a dead man if he is, is that clear?"
The officer nodded before they took one more look at the Admiral. The guard snickered before speaking. " You may have taken away our good troops and ships during the war, but now you're nothing but a weak little mule." The Admiral frowned at the guard's insult as he walked out the doors and was now left with the officer watching him.
Great, first it's diplomacy, and now the fighting's about to start. The Admiral sat in the brig for a bit as the ship sat in it's hidden orbit over the planet, waiting for the right time to end the lives onboard the two starships and finally win the war that was to last for as long as both sides existed.....
Time passed faster than usual as Twilight and her friends returned onboard the ship, the trip was just about ready to start, and everypony was quite excited about what to learn about the ships of the Federation, such as finding out that all ships Starfleet had ran on antimatter warp cores, the speed of the ship's warp drive, and that older starships such as the 23rd century Constitution class cruisers were put back into service. A fun and amazing trip to start for Twilight's friends, so much was going to be happening for them all, and nothing was going to get in the way, at least, that's what everyone believed.
The transporter chief had beamed them up when they were about to finish the plans for the tour. "Now, with all of these places on the ship, were going to be splitting up on certain parts of the ship since there's a lot of us, so I'd recommend that at least one guide must be with each group is that understood?" The group nodded before she finished. "Great, now I'm going to assign the guides to your designated gr-"
She was interrupted when her combadge chirped, she stopped and said, "Well, I guess it's going to be a change of plans, then." When she tapped her badge, the voice of Elisa sounded from it, but she didn't sound like she was calm. Something must've gone wrong when she heard her words.
"Chestnut to Equestria, do you copy?" The tone in her voice sounded worried as she answered.
"Twilight here, what's wrong?"
"Power up your shields, the Admiral's been kidnapped!" The group was filled with shock and worry upon hearing this.
"What?! Who's taken him? Where'd the signal come from?!"
"We don't know, Twilight, they must be using a cloaking device on their ship, we don't know who's taken him!"
The group grew looks of worry as they heard this alarming news, a mission of peace turned to one of danger, Wyatt was a respected officer in the Federation, and if a enemy race such as the Elachi or the Romulan Tal Shiar gangs had gotten him, who knows what they would be planning to do with him. Despite her worries, she calmed down so she could speak. "If it's a cloaked ship, is there a way that we could track them?"
Lon's voice then spoke up from the badge. "I believe we have one method, but we've pretty much never used it to our advantage."
Twilight waited for the answer as she spoke. "Let's hear it."
"The Chestnut is a refit variant of the typical cruiser variant starships, and each one comes with an enhanced console that can modify a torpedo to track and attack cloaked starships. Unfortunately, we never got a good chance of using it due to the enemies we faced, so it was pretty much just there for the occasion."
Twilight smiled when she heard this, if the enemy was cloaked, then they could cause a bit of damage to the ship, since the ship couldn't have weapons nor shields functional while cloaked, she then answered. "Let's try that, get as many torpedoes as you can to do the trick."
Lon replied with, "Got it, your Highness, I'll rig some of the Radiant torpedoes we got back in the Iconian War so they can find the target at an easier level."
Twilight then finished with, "Got it, we'll do what we can here, keep us posted if anything changes, Sparkle out." The crowd then gave Twilight a more hopeful look to her, while they hadn't expected to be put into a tense situation for a while, they still felt ready to help out. Bon Bon was the first to speak.
"Pardon me, Twilight, but do you think we could help out?" Her words made Twilight almost smile, but the danger they'd be going into was a bit risky to her.
After thinking for a moment, she answered. "As much as I don't want to take the chance, we'll need all the help we can get. See what you can do about those torpedoes, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, you're with us."
Celestia and Luna also joined in with Twilight's group. "We are coming too, Twilight, we won't let anyone threaten our subjects as long as we stand."
Twilight smiled as she finished. "Thank you, Celestia, we'll need you in this too." And with that said, the two groups made their way to their designated positions, if they were going to get Wyatt back, they had to act fast before their target would escape.....
~I.S.S. Sacramento, the Brig~
Almost an hour had passed as the brig remained filled with a dreadful silence, no one but Admiral Stone and his watchful guard remained in the room. Wyatt started to think about what his crew would do. Whether it'd be to contact Starfleet and warn them of him missing or call in a fleet to investigate, or some other way of getting him back, something had to happen, attacking the guard would be suicide, and he had no weapons to defend himself. He remained buried in his thoughts until the brig door opened to reveal a Terran officer, armed with a rifle, a pistol, and a knife.
"Just wonderful, that damned butcher of a captain has finally decided to end me, eh?" He thought upon seeing the officer, who walked up to the guard and spoke in a English accent.
"The captain has requested that I bring the prisoner to the bridge." Being obedient, the guard started to lower the force field, the officer then stood behind him for a moment before smacking him hard on his neck with his elbow, the second guard attempted to fire at him, but was too late as the officer pulled out his phaser pistol and fired, killing the guard instantly.
Wyatt then got to his feet and said, "Well, that was something I didn't expect."
"Well, it seems I've gotten you out now," He introduced himself before continuing. "Commander David Wiggs, at your service sir."
"Thanks Dave, now how do we get out of here?" Wyatt said before David answered.
"More like how do you get out of here. I've been a spy on this ship for the Terran Task Force, they've heard that the Empire has been building a new weapon to be used against the Alliance, now that I've gotten data on it and saved your flank," he pulled out a datachip and an emergency transport device and handed them to Wyatt before finishing. "I'd say my job is done, and you should get going as soon as you can."
Wyatt looked at the chip and then to David, then handed them back before replying. "As crazy as it may be, you won't last long here, we're getting off together."
While David disliked the idea, he was willing to take the chance, thanks to their advantages. "Well, since there's a shuttlebay close by this brig, I say aye on that, lad. Follow me."
The two then made haste for the doors, and then started to act like a guard and a prisoner so that they could get by the security forces around the ship....
.........
The Captain sat in his chair on the bridge as he waited for the word on the bombs, by now he had gotten impatient and had pulled his knife out and held it, sometimes moving it slighty. after a moment he'd put it away and tried to sit comfortably in his chair until his comms officer spoke.
"Sir, deck 6 reports a disturbance, shall we send a squad down?"
Captain Wyatt growled a little at this and answered. "No, my guards and I will handle this. take the conn."
The officer nodded as he got on his hooves and walked to the turbolift alongside his escorts, entered, and let the doors shut as they went to see what was happening.
...........
The brig was filled with silence, the guard that had gotten knocked out earlier had now regained consciousness, yet he still felt weak, he heard the doors of the brig open, and three beings walked in. When the Captain saw the sight in front of him, he was furious. He turned to his guards and ordered them.
"Get all the squads we have and find them immediately! I want him alive!"
The guard then looked to the injured officer on the floor, and asked him, "And what shall we do with him?"
The Captain, gave a growl before answering. "Kill him."
The guard nodded and pointed his rifle at the officer and fired. The other guard tapped a nearby console and set the ship to Red Alert.
...........
In the hallways, the ship started to blare out with klaxons all throughout the halls, alerting the two escaping officers.
"Dammit, they've discovered our position!" Wyatt said as he grew annoyed.
"You get the doors opened, I'll cover you!" David said as he threw out several mobile emitters out onto the floor, spawning security holograms. Wyatt moved over to the console and began to access it, but was halted when an Imperial squad arrived and opened fire. "Look out, Admiral!" David shouted before the console was hit by a phaser blast, gaining a minor amount of damage.
Wyatt grew angry as he found that the console had now shut down. "Dangnabit! The console's damaged!" He yelled to David.
"Here, use this!" He tossed a Engineering maintenance kit and Wyatt opened it, using a tool and opening the console, he saw what damage he needed to repair The Terrans were amassing every second, as one fell, another would come. They obviously were sending everything they had.
"Okay, I may be a Tactical officer, but hopefully my skills as an engineer will pay off." He thought as he continued fixing the console.
David was loosing hologram support as they provided cover. He turned to Wyatt and yelled, "We're loosing ground here, hurry up with the repairs!"
"Almost there!" He replied. After he fixed the last power cable, he then activated the console and entered his override command code, and thanks to being on a Terran ship, it worked.
"Son of a bitch." He said to himself before yelling, "Come on!" David formed up on him and they entered through the shuttlebay doors. Wyatt went up to the next console and used to shut the doors. Once they shut, David fired his pistol at the seal on the door to prevent it form opening.
"That'll hold them." He said before they both turned around to see several shuttlecraft placed inside the hangar. Wyatt noticed one of them appearing to be a Caitian Stalker class fighter , seeming like the perfect ship, he opened it's cockpit.
"Let's use this one, I'll fly." He said before they hopped into the ship's seats, closed the cockpit doors, and activated the ship's power.
"Alright, engines are online and ready, the guns will take a moment, though."
They looked towards the shuttlebay doors, and Wyatt said, "The doors can be blown away, when the guns are active, well blast through."
David looked to the aft side of the craft, and saw the doors being blasted open. "Come on, guns...."
"What?" Wyatt asked as he turned around and saw the damaged door. "Uh-oh."
Before the doors were blasted open, a large explosion blew the shuttlebay doors into broken pieces of metal, only seconds later did the shuttles themselves start getting sucked out into space. The fighter flew up just in time to evade the now ripped apart interior doors of the shuttlebay, seeing the people they'd fought a moment ago being sucked into space.
"Now's our chance, HANG ON!!!" At full throttle, the fighter shot out of the shuttlebay and flew downwards to the equator of Equestria. Then, seeing their ships, flew directly towards the Chestnut.
............
The viewscreen showed the fighter above them coming at rapid speed, Elisa then ordered a scan of the fighter. Lon gave his readings, "Two life-signs, one of them's the Admiral!"
"Beam them up, quickly!" She ordered, the fighter was caught in their tractor beam, then the two beings inside vanished from the cockpit.
"I have them, Ma'am!" They looked to the now decloaked-and modified- Odyssey class cruiser that sat above them.
Kapor then alerted the crew, "They're making a run for it!" As he finished, the large cruiser slowly turned away from the planet and sped up, then after reaching a good distance, went to warp before they could get hit again.
"They're gone for the moment, the Admiral says to meet in the briefing room immediately." Nelen said to Elisa as she tapped a button on the command chair.
"Chestnut to Equestria, Admiral Stone has requested a briefing right away."
Celestia spoke over the comm channel. "Understood, we'll be over there in a moment."
Elisa tapped the comms button again, this time shutting it off, and the crew then went away from their stations and went to the turbolift. The doors shut and the lift made it's way to the requested deck. Whatever Wyatt had to say about the Terrans, it couldn't be good news, and they'd have to be ready for whatever they'd send next.....
"So, you're saying that the Terran Empire has built a genocidal superweapon to use against it's enemies?" Celestia asked in shock and anger.
"Yes, that's exactly it, your Highness." David answered her. The data chip from the Sacramento had contained dreadful news that was revealed over the past eight minutes of the briefing; The Terran Empire was the first to find this universe, but they'd come for another reason, the portals that took Twilight and her friends away from their home. They had been planning on making a weapon based on it's abilities to use against the Federation, but they failed to get what they were looking for, yet they laid probes and spying devices in the area in case it would happen again. And when Trixie's disappearance had occurred recently, that was the sign the Imperials were waiting for, they checked again, and apparently found something they believed was useful to them, what it was, however, was unknown because the Empire only got a part of the data they needed before the anomaly they were studying closed on them. Ever since the attack, Equestria was contacted again by Celestia, asking for more guards placed on Wyatt and Twilight's ships in case they were to try and make another go at capturing them, the Wonderbolts even grew worried enough about the news that they joined with the guards arriving on the ship.
Wyatt continued mentioning the weapon in more detail. "The weapon they have built is apparently made from ancient Iconian technology from the Mirror universe. In their realm, they attacked and eliminated the Iconian homeworld, killing the entire population there, and it seems that they'd taken their technology as well and made a planet-killing superweapon out of it. Now, it seems that they want to test it on Equestria, that'd mean the death of all of your subjects, your Highness."
The news Celestia heard brought a look of horror over her and her subjects, Lyra looked as if she was about to smash her hooves on the table at this, but instead she yelled, "How can they live with themselves when they murder millions?!"
"The same thing I keep thinking about, Lyra. Those bastards have been doing it ever since they came into existence. War is an everyday thing for them, they don't hesitate to slice a town's throat open once in a while, and they know you guys could never commit such acts for them." Lon said as he kept his composure. Wyatt let the news sink in for a moment, then explained his mission plans.
"Everyone, we've already gained information on what we've been looking for, the Empire apparently wants whatever is controlling those portals. Not only that, but they've also built a weapon they plan to use against us. So our objectives are clear: find what the Terrans are looking for and prevent them from gaining control over it. The Imperials are always up to no good, so whatever they plan to do is most likely harmful to any and all of us."
Everyone looked around for a moment before Celestia stood up and faced Wyatt. "Admiral, I won't stand by while they harm millions of lives, not just my subjects'. Being allies, I want us all to work together to stop the Empire from committing acts of terror and violence. No one deserves to die for being unaligned with another race, nor should an empire conquer innocent worlds and enslave their people... On behalf of my subjects and all of Equestria," The room stood once she started to finish her speech. "we wish to stand with the Alliance against the Terran Empire."
Wyatt looked at the now standing group of ponies, despite some like Lyra, Bon Bon, and Octavia being civilians, they wanted to help take out this weapon that the Empire had made. He then stood up as well and answered. "We would greatly accept your offering of assistance."
The group gave excited smiles as they heard his approval, Flash also chimed in, "They haven't witnessed the power that Equestria has, but they'll get a run for their mon-"
He was cut off as the comms panel of the table chimed and Wyatt answered it. "Yes?"
A male voice that the crew knew as Captain Va'kel Shon sounded from the panel, "Ah, Admiral, we found the probe you left back in our universe, and we've managed to create a wormhole leading here."
They looked to the now opening windows to see a fleet of Federation, Klingon, and Romulan starships exiting from their wormhole. Wyatt smiled before replying. "Got it, we'll lower our shields so you can bea-" Another signal coming from the bridge sounded, Zarva's voice spoke through the comms.
"Sorry if I'm interrupting sir, but I'm picking up readings near the task force, it seems as if another portal is forming from the first one's energy." This was news to know, this might've been the chance they'd been waiting for.
Keeping his composure, Wyatt then answered with, "Got it, well be up there shortly, Stone out."
Everyone then stood and exited the conference room through the door and straight to the bridge to see what Zarva had found, entering separate turbolifts, they all entered the bridge to see a surprising sight, the same portal they'd first found at Argelius earlier. Spitfire, the Wonderbolt captain, grew shocked upon seeing the blue colored anomaly on the viewscreen, and spoke up. "So that's what you and your friends were taken by, Dash?" Dash nodded as they witnessed it becoming more and more stable as it gained more energy. The wormhole finally ceased as they now saw a stable portal that seemed like it could allow most of the fleet gathered there to enter through it.
Twilight let her curiosity get the better of her as she asked, "I think we should launch a probe so that we can get the location it leads to." Nelen was ahead of her as he tapped a few buttons on his console, then everyone watched as a probe was fired from the ship's torpedo bay. A moment passed before Nelen got the readings.
"Your Highness, the footage isn't clear, but it seems to lead to an area outside a large structure in an unknown region." Nelen stated as Twilight pondered over what to do.
The comms panel on Wyatt's chair beeped and he went to answer it. "Shon to Stone, I hope you don't mind, but I've asked to bring one of your ships along." The viewscreen changed to view the Enterprise and a sister ship next to her, the U.S.S. Sacramento, unlike the Enterprise, she wore the colors of yellow and brown as it's colors. "Since the Terrans have attacked earlier, I'd recommend taking her along in case they send a bigger fist to throw at us."
The Admiral replied happily with, "Got it, and thanks for bringing her, when we transfer, send the Chestnut back home if you can get a wormhole active."
"Copy that, Shon out." With the comms shut off, Wyatt then spoke once more.
"Alright, we're going to be going on another ship this time, so everyone gather your things because we'll be onboard the Sacramento until the mission's taken care of. Understood?" The crew nodded as he finished with, "Excellent, carry on with your orders, everyone." The crew saluted before going to their quarters to gather their things. Wyatt then looked to Twilight's group and asked, "Anything you need to get before we depart?" The group nodded as Wyatt finished with, "Okay, I hope you're sure on that." With everything clear, the Admiral and Twilight's group made their way into the turbolifts, the doors closing behind them as they made their way to the transporter room...
One minute later...
The Sacramento was now boarded and ready to depart through the portal, on the bridge, the crew waited for the Admiral to give the signal to the fleet. Before doing so however, Wyatt hailed all ships coming with them, "Alright everyone, we're going to be heading into a region that, while it will most likely have several dangers awaiting us, will have answers to some of our questions that we've been wanting answers to. Before we depart, I want a roll call of all ships coming with us."
The voice of Twilight sounded from the comms first. "The Equestria is all set and ready for the job, sir!"
"U.S.S. Enterprise'll be standing by your side all the way, Admiral." Shon's voice sounded from the comms.
"R.R.W. Virinat standing by."
"U.S.S. Kirk awaiting orders."
"I.K.S. Korok ready to depart for glory, sir!" Over 20 vessels reported in until the task force was then fully counted for. Upon counting all ships, Admiral Stone then finished the roll-call with, "Excellent, all ships, enter the portal and keep your weapons, shields, and engines at the ready.... and may the Great Bird of the Galaxy watch over us all." With that said, all ships moved forward and one by one entered the portal, the Sacramento and the Equestria entering first as they disappeared into the unknown region of space....
~Unknown Region~
The area was dark and gloomy in the surrounding space, but unlike normal space, there were no stars nearby nor visible in the distant area of space, just black with slight flashes of very dark blue energy beams. Moments passed until a blue flash appeared and morphed into a swirling vortex, and more moments after that, spat one ship after another until the entire task force was in the area. Despite no stars being nearby, a decent amount of light focused on the fleet of starships. On the bridge of the Sacramento, the crew was observing the surrounding space they were in, Tv'rell turned towards the Admiral when her scans were completed. "Sir, I've completed my scan of the surrounding space, and it seems we've entered a bubble of some kind. The bubble is apparently an unknown type of energy shield, and it surrounds us and a large structure that scans reveal being the size of our solar system." The mention of an object that size was even more surprising than when the Jenolan Dyson Sphere was first discovered by the Enterprise-D in the 2360s. T'vrell continued on. "The interior consists of mainly large facilities that I can't analyze from the ship, the center seems to be the power core of the structure."
Wyatt then wondered if they could see it. "Can we see it on the viewscreen?" T'vrell nodded and the image of the structure was placed on the screen. It looked like a large spherical space structure of some kind, and it looked very ancient for it's design. The sphere resembled a Dyson sphere, but a small triangular shape on it's surface seemed to make it more unique. After examining the sphere for almost two minutes, he asked T'vrell again. "Is there an area that we can beam into?"
She then answered with, "There's an area inside the triangular section on it's hull, I believe it to be some kind of archive. The atmosphere inside is breathable according to scans."
With that news, Wyatt turned on the comms and hailed Twilight. "Twilight, you there?"
"Yeah, I'm here, it's...... enormous." Her voice seemed a little unsettled.
"Yeah, it is, so it must have something of importance."
"Is there a place to beam into?"
"Yes, that triangular area on the surface seems to be some kind of archive."
Twilight sounded a little relieved at the news of a place to settle at. "Great, we'll meet you there shortly."
"Got it, same on our part. Stone out." Wyatt then shut off comms and stood up on his hooves as he assigned his away team. "Mioiil, Kapor, Nelen, Zarva, you're with me. Elisa, have security escorts meet us in Transporter room 2, you have the conn."
"Aye sir." Elisa said before taking the center seat. Wyatt and his team then entered the turbolift, the doors shut in front of them as they were being taken to the transporter room. The sphere must've contained something important if it's so large, and everyone would find out what this special thing, whether it'd be a weapon or an answer for them to know, would be known about once they boarded the structure....
The room was large and nearly devoid of light, not to mention the station held a faint bluish tint of gas to the sphere's atmosphere, which also gave the area an eerie tone. The darkness was breached when dozens of bluish energy fields appeared in the room, revealing several humanoids and equines upon disappearing. Once they began to notice their surroundings, some of them started to breath funny or cough slightly before they could continue. Zarva was the first to complain out of the group. "Dammit, T'vrell, I thought this air was breathable!" Before coughing once more and getting the hang of her breathing.
Nelen scanned again, and answered the Bolian engineer's complaint. "I don't think that's just a tainted bit of old air, the faint bluish gas seems to be emanating some kind of particle that, from what I can tell, makes the air breathable for all creatures without the need for and environmental suit, if anything, we'll most likely have only a little trouble getting used to it, but we should be fine." Air that could blend in with any other atmosphere and be tolerable for any species, the makers of this place apparently had something here they needed to find.
"What's next, a temperature control device that makes Tholians walk alongside us without suits?" Mioiil spoke up from her brief air hazard.
"Maybe, who knows what we'll find here." Wyatt answered for her as they started to focus again.
"Alright, with that problem out of the way, where's this archive?" Twilight asked as the away teams activated their lights, and what was revealed were several railings attached to a platform that lead to different areas, from what they looked like, they reminded Wyatt's group of the architecture on ancient Iconia. Looking down the path they were facing, the path lead to a large structure that seemed to be powered off, it resembled an oversized Omega generator by it's shapes, but the bottom cylindrical part of the device was shorter than usual, about tall enough to allow Twilight and her team to see over the top of the cylinder, not to mention that it didn't seem to have a large spherical container for the Omega molecules.
"Maybe that's it, guys. Follow me." The teams then made their way carefully down the path, lighting the way as they could barely see without their lights. When they reached the machine, they noticed three smaller consoles placed around it. Upon closer examination, they resembled a familiar form from a mission involving the Breen assaults on the Deferi.
Seeing this, Wyatt then immediately scanned the consoles. "Lon, see if you can activate these, I think they can help us out." He nodded and proceeded to activate the consoles, which hummed with energy upon being activated. Looking at them once more, Wyatt recognized the key to activating the structure. "I... I know this pattern, from an earlier mission, these consoles seem to be able to emanate a certain tone of noise when activated, if we can activate the tones so that it matches an ascending scale in noise, I think we can activate it. Dash, Nelen, if you would."
The two officers moved to two separate consoles away from Wyatt's, and found the tone they were standing near after testing each of them, Wyatt had the Low tone, Nelen had the Mid tone, and Dash had the High tone. "Alright, low to high, now." With that, he activated the console, generating a low tone sound, as well as the console glowing with white energy.
"Now for the mid tone." Nelen did the same to his console, getting the same effects.
"And now for the high tone!" Dash said in an energetic manner before activating hers. When all three tones played out correctly, an even higher tone played over the rest, changing the colors of the console from white to blue, as well as revealing another one shaped like a ring around the large machine. Then, despite the area still being a bit dark, more lights activate from farther out across the room, and the lower part of the device started do glow brightly.
"What's happening? Derpy asked aloud as the station powered up.
"I think it's some kind of hologram being displayed on that machine!" Dr. Hooves answered as the device nearly revealed the holoprogram.
The screen lit once more to create a holographic projection over the lower part of the device, then revealing in it a humanoid entity with a white dress, as well as seemingly having very small ears, not to mention being bald. Everyone fell silent in the room upon seeing this, especially Wyatt, but on his part, he was speechless when the entity appeared in front of them, he recognized who it was, he had known them ever since his academy days, but he couldn't speak as he was stunned upon seeing them again. The entity stood silent for a short moment before beginning.
"You all are wondering who we are, why we have done this, how it is now that I stand before you all, the image of a being.... from so long ago." The hologram apparently seemed to be recording, as it seemed to be quite old according to the scans. "Life grew and evolved on my planet, before all others on yours, we left our world, explored the cosmos, the other realms alongside ours, and we found none like ourselves. Our civilization thrived for ages, but is the life of one race compared to the vast stretches of cosmic time?
Wyatt started to look down as he was hearing the being's words, the voice of a race believed to have been erased was sounding in his ears. He felt about ready to collapse.
"We knew one day that we would vanish, and that nothing would remain of us. So... we made you, our scientists seeded the primordial oceans of many, many worlds, even as far as other realms alongside ours, where life was it it's infancy, the seed codes directed each of your species' evolutions towards a physical form resembling ours and other creatures similar to some of you, this body, and the ones that you now see before you, are of course shaped as yours are shaped, for you are all the end results."
The crowd quietly gasped in surprise as holograms of other creatures, some resembling the ponies alongside Wyatt's group, as well as others they'd not known yet, appeared near the alien. Even Wyatt looked shocked at this unshared bit of information.
"The seed codes also contained this message which was scattered in fragments on many different worlds, even on this one of many gateway structures that you stand on now, it was our hope that you would all soon come together in fellowship and companionship, to hear this message... and if you can see, and hear me, our hopes have been fulfilled. You are all a monument, not to our greatness, but to our existence. It was our wish that you too would know life, and preserve our memory, there is something of us in each of you, and so, something of you in each other. Please.... remember us..."
The hologram then vanished into thin air, leaving nearly absolute silence in the room. After a moment, Celestia then looked down to face the Admiral, who almost looked like he would tear up. Worried, she tried to speak to him. "Wyatt, are you alright?"
He didn't respond for a moment before he snapped out of his flashbacks, and answered the princess. "Y-Yeah, I'm okay, just... it's just that I know them."
After a moment, she asked him, "Who were they?"
He gathered himself together before answering. "They're... They're an ancient race that we call the Preservers, we first encountered them back in the 24th Century thanks to the efforts of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. We encountered a Preserver archive during a mission to stop the Breen Confederacy from attacking the Deferi homeworld, and we had preserved it up until the Iconian War, when.... when they were exterminated by M'Tara and her flagship."
Twilight's group gasped in shock as he finished, Derpy, while on the verge of tears, tried to speak. "They're.... *sniff* dead?"
"With what we just saw now, I don't know if I can clarify that." Everyone started to calm themselves, the Doctor assisting Derpy while Wyatt turned to the console. "She said this structure was a gateway station, maybe..." He looked to the controls and examined them. "Maybe this place has something to do with those portals." He pressed several buttons on the console, and activated another holoprojection, but this time, it resembled some kind of a map, and a very large one for scale. After examining them, he realized something about the map.
"Guys, each of those spheres, the computer reads those small objects inside them as galaxies, I think this is some kind of multi-universal gateway that we're in." The computer beeped when it had finished processing the data, Wyatt turning to look. "Uh-oh, I think I've found the reason why those portals have been appearing randomly, it seems most of the sphere is made up of generators that apparently create gateways for entering other universes, and two of them are a bit damaged. It looks like I can send some of these maintenance drones to fix it." After tapping the console a few more times, the console glowed in an orange color before a visual shot of several small objects exited from now opened sockets in the hull, and then flew out of the camera's view. "That should fix the problem." Wyatt finished before continuing his examination of the map.
Dash smiled a bit before she started to speak, "Oh man, A.K.'s gonna be ecstatic about this when we get back to the sh-" A loud noise blared out before an orange bolt of energy came fast at the group, no one was hit, but the nearby railing was badly damaged. They looked up to see several Imperial squads firing at them in mere seconds, the entire group was trapped and now pinned down by the Terran phaser fire.
Wyatt then grabbed his newly modified Phaser pistol and ordered, "Return fire! Don't let them reach the archive!" He took a shot at one of the Terran soldiers, then another before taking cover once again. "Stone to Sacramento, we need ground support, now!"
Lon replied to him through his badge. "We're doing the best we can sir, but we're pinned down!"
..................
The area was no longer silent and full of light as starships filled the area, firing blast after blast of torpedoes and beams. The Terrans were relentless against the Alliance ships, tearing apart as many as they could. Fortunately, they'd been ready for an attack like this, but it was still a vicious fight. The Sacramento and the Equestria were already slicing up the merciless warships as they tried to last through. "Status?" Elisa asked T'vrell at her station.
"Our shields are down to 65%, and decks 7 through 13 report minor injuries, our Aquarius escort is taking a beating against the Imperial cruisers."
Elisa then tapped on her comms panel. "Sacramento to Equestria, do you copy?!"
"Yeah, this is Daring, I've taken the conn since our command officer's hurt."
Elisa groaned at the fact of another officer dead. "Well, I'm not sure if you know how to-"
"Don't worry about that, just keep on firing, we'll make it."
"I hope so. Flores out." She turned off the comms and kept giving orders to the crew.
"Lock phasers on the fighter squadrons and their carrier, fire everything we've got!" The screen then showed several different beams and a spread of torpedoes hitting the carrier, the fighters being obliterated by the torpedoes.
"Their front shield's down, grab'em with a tractor beam and hit'em hard!"
The weapons charged but before they could fire, several spreads of torpedoes, beams, and energy bolts were fired at the carrier, sending the ship into oblivion. The viewscreen then showed several warships having a similar look to the Mirror universe Romulan and Klingon warships. The new arrivals then continued onward and kept decimating the Terran starships.
"Well, I guess our friends have brought some "unwelcome visitors"."
...................
Daring Do seemed like she'd make a great captain for any ship by now, seeing the actions performed by Twilight and knowledge from Wyatt's discussion seemed to help bring a leader out of her. She noticed a squadron of Imperial fighters when she gave her next order. "Let's not keep our new friends waiting, hit those Imperial scum with the beam banks, try and split them for each fighter!" The ship fired two sets of dual beam shots, each single beam hitting a fighter, they fired constantly on the squadron before they were decimated. "Good shot, now with those fighters out of the way for the moment, blast the carrier out of the sky."
The ship then fired several more beams and torpedoes at the carriers, the large vessel still stood, but showed massive damage to it's starboard section. "Ha! That'll stop'em! She then noticed the nearby battlecruiser that was attacking the nearby escorts, and said, "Try and tractor them into that battlecruiser, it'll really hurt them bad, take it from weapons if you have to."
The officer nodded and activated the tractor beam, the ship was slowly pulled towards the nearby warship until the two ships finally collided and exploded, pieced of debris flying across the area.
"Good, that'll slow'em down." With the heavy ships taken care of and the arrival of the Mirror KDF and Romulan forces, they now had an advantage over the Terran fleet. Daring could only hope that Wyatt, Twlight, and the others were doing the same down below....
The entire area was now home to a fight as the Archive was blaring with weapons, magic, and arrows from the royal guards. The Terran numbers were quite high, and while the group was managing, they still were getting hurt pretty bad. Wyatt was able to take out a squad on the balcony on the upper level above the machine, he set his phaser to max setting, broke his cover, and took two shots, two of the soldiers were now vaporized as a third went to shoot Wyatt, who took cover behind the railing. His combadge then chirped again before he answered it. "Yeah? We're getting overrun here!"
Lon's voice spoke from his badge. "Sorry sir. Our "friends" have apparently brought some help, Mirror KDF and Romulan forces are on their way to assist, they should be there in a moment."
Wyatt smiled as he heard the mentioning of some help. "Thanks, Stone out!"
As Wyatt continued his defense, Twilight and Flash were knocking some of the guards off with theirs. Magic and arrows were pretty effective since the Terrans' armor wasn't apparently built for their skills, and Flash was apparently an excellent marksman at shooting. They took cover again as they planned their next move. "What's the next move, Twilight?"
She looked through the clear section of the railing, and saw what looked to be a gas tank. Not knowing what was in them, she looked to Wyatt, "Wyatt, what's in those gas tanks?!"
"I think it's supposed to be a plasma flow, and that tank holds a lot of it!" He answered.
"Alright Flash, you get the plasma tank, and I'll use my magic to make the gas expand upon it's explosion." Flash nodded and he waited for her to queue him. "....NOW!" He fired, and the tank exploded upon impact, the gas blew all around the soldiers near it, who suffocated and collapsed from the poisoning. The last one to fall attempted to shoot Twilight as she took a look at the damage.
"Twilight, LOOK OUT!!" He got her down on the ground before either of them were hit, he looked a Twilight, who was breathing heavily.
"Thanks." She said as she blushed for a moment, and Flash did the same for a moment before they got back up and continued their attack.
Dr. Hooves and Derpy were trying to help out too, they, along with Vinyl, Octavia, Lyra, and Bon Bon, had went to the weapons room to make some crazy doodads for weaponry before they left, and Derpy had made one that would be a tasty, and deadly, treat. She pulled out some muffins and took cover with the Doctor as she waited to throw them. The Doctor had apparently gotten the hang of his phaser, taking out several of the incoming troops on the bridge to the Archive, he looked to Derpy and asked, "Are you ready to throw them yet? They're coming up on us fast!"
Derpy answered, "Yeah, just give me the word!" The Doctor then waited for a moment before getting up and shooting more of the soldiers, he nodded to Derpy, who got up as well and threw the muffins at the soldiers, who slowed down to see what they were, only for the muffins to explode on them, blasting them away and down the bottomless pit below.
One of the now few incoming soldiers aimed his phaser at Derpy, but before she was hit, the Doctor got in the way. "Muffin, take cove-AAAAGGHH!!" He was hit on his left foreleg, but was still alive, he fell and Derpy caught him as she hid herself and the Doctor.
"DOC!!" She screamed once she caught him, he grunted as he assured her.
"Agh, I'll be fine, just a bit hurt."
She waved for a medic to help him as she held on to him. On the other side, Vinyl was holding off the troops while Octavia, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle were helping to deploy special turrets that they had built to disrupt comms for the Imperials, Vinyl then took cover once more. "Dang, they just don't stop! I think it's time we gave these a shot." She held out what appeared to be grenades, but they had a color tint matching Vinyl's Mane and Tail, she then handed out what appeared to be ear plugs, enough for the whole group. "Hand these to everyone, and then I can use the grenades!" The three fillies nodded and snuck to each group as they took cover, handed out the plugs, then returned to Vinyl. With the signal given, Vinyl threw the grenades out towards the balcony, a moment later, they exploded with an ear-destroying amount of noise, the Imperial soliders covered their ears and screamed in pain.
"Now's our chance, fire!!!" Everyone then broke cover and assaulted the soldiers, taking them out in ones and twos, before nearly eliminating the entire army of soldiers, leaving about one squad of them left.
"The group cheered briefly as they'd now taken out most of the troublesome scum, but as the final squadron kept their ground, a blade of energy struck one of the royal guards through his heart, killing him instantly. The group backed up as the wielder was revealed to be Wyatt's counterpart, with a Nanopulse bat'leth in his grasp, Wyatt stood upon seeing him and readied himself. "Sir!" Mioiil shouted and tossed a weapon similar to his counterpart's, he grabbed it with his mouth and activated it.
"Take care of that squad, he's mine!" He ordered before lunging at his darker self, the energy blades clashing with each other as they fought.
The guards were putting up quite a fight, they'd already set up defensive shields in front of them, making attacks with their main weapons useless. "What do we do now? We can't penetrate their shields without getting hit, and all the magic we have is almost drained!" Shining Armor yelled as they took cover. Bon Bon then looked from the glass in the railing and saw them taking cover behind their shields, she then took her chance and threw a small gas bomb at the soldiers. It exploded and she noticed some of the soldiers falling from the toxic gas, leaving two left.
"That'll give us a chance." She said, grinning as she and the group turned to watch the duel.
Wyatt and his counterpart were at it nonstop, the captain had been throwing several swings at the Admiral, but he had quite some agility, as well as good skill with a sword like the bat'leth, even in his pony form. The blades of both Warriors clashed constantly, With the Admiral scoring a scratch on his counterpart's flank. He grunted and took another swing, but instead hit Wyatt's blade again. Growing frustrated, he lunged onto the Admiral, pushing with all of his strength against his blade. As Wyatt was pushing back, he carefully turned the weapon, making one of the smaller blades cut through his counterpart's right foreleg, the devilish look in Captain Stone's eyes was being turned into a hurt look as he began to grit his teeth. The Admiral then kicked his counterpart off of him and knocked him back further as he sliced the captain's blade in half, as well as cutting his face a little.
As he was knocked down, he got up and slowly trotted over. "You give up yet?" He said with a victorious smirk.
"Nghh, Unfortunately," He pulled out an emergency transport device before finishing. "I have a more important task to attend to." He finished as he disappeared from sight. The Terran soldiers took their chance and shot at the Admiral, who used his bat'leth to deflect the laser fire, before they could take cover, the two soldiers were taken out by incoming KDF and Romulan forces, while a little late to the party, they came as expected.
Wyatt nodded to the warriors and went to check on his group, he saw Doctor Hooves' injury, and rushed over to him and Derpy. "How bad is it, Doc?"
"I'll live, but I may need a little help on walking." He replied as Derpy held him.
Wyatt then waved over a medical officer to treat him while he checked on the others, other than two of his officers as well as a royal guard, no one else was hurt. He tapped his combadge and spoke. "Stone to Sacramento, come in."
"Sacramento here, you alright down there, Admiral?" Lon asked.
"Yeah, Dr. Hooves is injured, but he'll be fine, my "old friend" has escaped back to his ship, he claimed that he had something more important to take care of."
"Got it, on our part, the Terran fleet is retreating, and I believe they've just made bigger plans, sir. As for the sphere, it's safe for now."
"Understood, beam us up and send some teams down here to manage the sphere Archive."
"Aye sir, Sacramento out."
He then tapped his combadge off as he turned to the group. "Everyone, grab your gear, things are about to get worse." The group nodded as they then began to gather their equipment and injured as he waited for his ship to pick them up. If the Empire had something bigger to take care of, then their superweapon must be arriving at Equestria soon.
Near the group, Twilight and Flash trotted over to Bon Bon, Moondancer, and the others, gathering them all together as she spoke. "Bon Bon, Moondancer, I think I'll need you two and your friends to handle my ship for the time being."
While they'd not even been to Starfleet Academy yet, they learned quite a bit during their time on her ship, Bon Bon asked her about her plan. "What's your idea?"
"It's something that we can't risk my ship with, but if this is involving the superweapon, then I think Wyatt and I can explain how this'll work on the ship, and you may not like it....."
The briefing had grabbed almost all of the fleet's attention as they explained the weapon's capabilities, almost an hour had passed since the attack on the sphere as the plans were being made, by now the Imperials would most likely be bringing their weapon in in less than an hour. There was no time for anything else other than the plan, saving Equestria was Priority One at the moment. Kapor was explaining several weak points to the weapon from the chip's now decoded data, hopefully, they'd find a hole in the weapon's configuration.
"Thanks to their stolen Iconian technology, the superweapon's main beam is capable of either striking at several starships with weaker beams or charging every bit of it's energy and focusing it on one target. It's shields are strong enough to withstand our entire fleet both from here and Equestria combined, however, they've configured them to drain at least half of it's power in order to make a shot strong enough to obliterate a planet." The group gasped in worry as they heard the statistics of this devastating weapon of the Terrans', with that power, the Federation home sector and it's allies could fall within months, perhaps weeks, at least, that'd be the case unless they all took action immediately.
The group sat and thought of any valuable measures they could take, until Twilight spoke up. "What's the idea, your Highness?"
She stood silently before she looked to Princess Celestia and Luna with a worried look. "Celestia, this plan of mine will require you, your sister, Cadence, and each of my old friends' assistance, but you may not like it."
Despite the warning, the alicorn asked, "Let's hear it."
She gulped a little before explaining. "The Sacramento, like many Alliance ships, has the ability to conduct a shield drain with it's deflector dish, if we can hold off long enough for the weapon to charge, thus lowering the shield's power, I believe we may be able to strengthen the drain with our magic, and hopefully, break down their wall of defense."
Everyone grew worried upon the end of her plans, Rarity was the first to argue. "Twilight, you may be an alicorn, but you don't have enough magic to make a blast of that strength, you could hurt yourself trying, or even die!" The group grew frowns as they looked at her, then back to Celestia.
The princess hesitated and stood silent for a moment, then responded, "Everyone, I know that we all fight battles, from safe, innocent punching to violent, gruesome, and horrendous genocide, and the latter is what will happen if we don't play the hard way, and if the mission demands the loss of me, my sister, and Cadence's lives in order to save my people," She looked to them, both of them nodding to her before she continued. "then the risk will be worth it."
Twilight smiled, but frowned again as she turned to Wyatt, who frowned slightly. "We all must make sacrifices, even the most devastating ones, but every single soul in this room is fighting for our friends, the Harmony we all share, so much is what we're fighting for right now, and whatever cost it may be, the losses of leaders, our entire fleet even, we must agree that one thing is vital over all of us: the Empire must not use that weapon, and kill billions of innocent lives, until Equestria is safe, all of our lives are expendable until then." He paused for a moment before asking, "Any objections?"
The room looked to each other, and after a full check on everyone, the group nodded. Bon Bon then stood and spoke up, her five friends standing with her. "You're ship and crew won't hold together without someone at the helm, mind if I save your seat for you?" Twilight smiled and nodded to her.
Moondancer then answered to Twilight's near suicidal plan. "Better for us to go out rather than our world before any of us, Twilight, if it'll keep our home safe, I'll be right at your side to the end."
"We're with you all the way too, Twi!" Minuette said aloud as she, Twinkleshine, and Lemon Hearts joined in with her.
"Same on our part, darling." Rarity answered as she and the gang stood together.
"Dangerous or not, we're in this too!" The Cutie Mark Crusaders said together to the group, as crazy as it may have seemed, Applejack didn't object to her little sister's reply, nor did Rarity or Rainbow.
Wyatt's crewmates then looked to him and answered. "No objections, sir."
Wyatt then smiled as he tapped on the comms panel and announced, "All hands, Battle Stations." Tapping it off again, he looked to the large group in front of him before finishing. "Thank you all for your help on this, good luck to us all." Everyone cheered as they then exited the room and raced to the bridge to ready the crew for the assault.
Upon stepping onto the bridge and entering his chair moments later, Wyatt then tapped his comms panel again. "Chestnut to Equestria, do you copy?"
Bon Bon then answered through the comms. "Bon Bon here, the ship's ready to head out sir, I've also saved you the liberty of giving roll call on the fleet, they're all ready to go, just give the word."
While impressed by her actions, he had no time to compliment at the moment. He looked to T'vrell and ordered, "Activate the gateway, once it's open and stable, take us in." She nodded and tapped a button on her console, on the viewscreen a blue flash appeared before morphing into an anomaly big enough to take the whole fleet in at once. Before he gave the word, he tapped his comms again. "Stone to Gate control, call ESD if any trouble arises, other than that, be safe out here. Stone out." He then looked to Elisa to his right. "Engage."
With the Sacramento in the lead, the fleet slowly made their way into the portal, rapid flashes happening with each ship passing through, until all starships had now disappeared into the portal, racing against time to save their newest allies.
"Captain's log, Stardate: 8533.7, we're heading into the jaws of Death itself, the superweapon is most likely nearing the Equestrian homeworld as I make this log entry, and until the weapon is destroyed and the Terran fleet is worn off from our new allies, the storm will pour over us long before the dawn arrives, and we must be ready for it, because if we fail, there'll be no second chances...."
~Equis System, 10 minutes after departure...~
The Terran weapon looked to be the size of a nightmare on the viewscreen of the star cruiser Paris, a large spear-like shape with additional spikes holding the main firing orb looked intimidating coming closer and closer very slowly. Despite being at a far distance, it was scary enough to imagine what this weapon could do to the flourishing planet below them. They couldn't let this weapon get past their line of defense, no matter what the cost. Looking at the weapon, it seemed as if it's two aft arms were carrying some kind of Herald warship, from his eyes, it looked to be a Vonph class battleship held as the command section of the ship. He then asked for a scan. "Ensign, how much power does that thing have?"
The officer performed the scan, but looked back at the captain with a worried look on his face. "It seems to have more power than all of our ships could have, the shields are pretty much impenetrable for the moment, but if I'm reading right, the shield power is decreasing as the orb gets more power to it."
He looked at it again before his tactical officer to his right alerted him. "Sir, Imperial warships coming at us fast!"
Looking back, he saw over a dozen warships coming at the fleet at full speed. He then ordered the officer with, "All ships, hold off the fleet as best as you can, don't let that thing get past us at all costs!"
................
On the dark-lit bridge of the I.S.S. Sacramento, Captain Stone, now having some bandages placed on his injuries, watched as his counterpart's allies kept his forces from getting through, the Alliance ships were taking more of a beating than the Terran warships, it brought a smile to his face over the fact that he'd finally reveal his toy's power. He looked to his tactical officer on his left and asked, "How long until the weapon is charged?"
"The weapon will fire in approximately two and a half minutes, sir." The officer responded, the now overconfident captain turning back to the screen as he smirked.
"How does it feel to be on the losing side for once, old friend?" He said to himself before his helm officer looked to him in worry and spoke.
"Sir, A portal is opening near us, our scans pick up Alliance starships coming out!" He growled in annoyance as he looked to the viewscreen.
A larger armada of ships, the U.S.S. Sacramento and Equestria taking charge, flew fast out of the vortex as they closed in on their target. The Defense group turned and closed in with the attacking fleet as they picked up their presence, leaving the weapon to charge up.
On the bridge of the Sacramento, Wyatt turned to his comms panel and reminded his allies, "Remember, the Sacramento is to be given cover until the shield drain is fired, then focus your fire on the weapon!" He said as Bon Bon replied to him.
"Don't worry about that, we've got that on our minds at the moment!" She said before another voice played through the chatter.
Understood, today, the Empire will know the fury of the Romulan Alliance!" The subcommander said before a wave of Mirror Romulan and Klingon warships decloaked and opened fire on both the weapon and the Imperial fleet, tearing the scouts and destroyers apart with ease while making big scratches on the larger battleships.
The Sacramento kept going forward, the impact of torpedoes and phaser fire was making the ride a bit shaky, but the ship was holding together.
"Twilight, are you all ready?" He asked quickly as he tapped on his panel again.
"Yeah, just get a little closer and we've got it." She answered before Zarva turned to him. "Sir, the weapon will fire in one and a half minutes!"
He looked to the weapon and noticed it's energy orb glowing brighter with each second, he then asked, "How close are we?"
"Just 10 more seconds sir!" She answered before Twilight alerted the Admiral.
"We're ready Wyatt, just give the word." She spoke through the comms as they neared the weapon. A moment passed before Zarva's console beeped. "We're in range, Sir!"
"The word's given, Twilight!" He yelled into the comms panel of the Deflector relay bay.
"Now!" She ordered. Facing their horns down, all eight of them fired as much magic into the relays as they could muster. The deflector dish fired a long, and bigger than usual rainbow colored beam towards the weapon, the shield bubble now visible and fluctuating.
Bon Bon noticed the beam and turned to Dr. Hooves. "Doc, I think another hand can be lent in this, fire our shield drain!" He did so and the viewscreen now showed two energy beams impacting on the forward shield's surface, a moment passed until the front shield flashed once more, showing that it was down. Bon Bon then turned to her panel. "All ships, fire everything you've got at the main cannon, don't let it fire!"
Upon her words, every ship near them fired wave after wave of torpedoes and several barrages of phasers at the orb, the orb flashed with every hit before it made a large, blue colored explosion, the shockwave being so strong to the point of pushing the ships away from it a good distance, the bridge shaking as they were shoved across the sea of space.
"Damage report." Bon Bon asked.
"Minor damage to shields, our hull is a little shaken, but we'll last, no casualties reported, Bon Bon." Lyra answered to her.
On the bridge of the Sacramento, the Admiral was asking for the weapon's status. "How much damage has the weapon taken?"
"Their main gun's down, and it seems that their shield generator has been damaged as well." Wyatt smiled at this, now they had no way of hurting the planet below, but they still couldn't let it escape, they'd be back another day to try it out.
A yellow orb of light formed on the bridge, then flashed away to reveal Princess Twilight and her group near the Admiral's seat. Before he could ask, Celestia answered his question. "Thanks to our friend out there, I had enough magic left to bring us back here."
He smiled as he replied. "I'll be sure to let Bon Bon know your thanks." He said.
Down in engineering, the situation wasn't exactly the same, the deflector, despite the assistance from magic, had caused a power rupture at one of the power coils near the warp core. Lon went over to fix it as he muttered, "Dammit, I figured something would go wrong."
He moved over to the coil as another officer came to assist, asking, "What do you think caused it?"
"That crazy idea of Twilight's did, the coil was overcharged with it as it flowed and now it's dam-" The coil ruptured with energy, striking at the core's plasma coolant. While the cut on the tank wasn't able to kill anyone, that was the least of their concerns compared to what was happening to the core.
"Coolant leak! We have a coolant leak everyone, get out now! Evacuate!" He then tapped on the comms panel near the slowly closing door before yelling, "Bridge, new problem on our hands, we're four minutes from a warp core breach, I can't do anything!" The door closed as he rolled under it, then running for the turbolift.
On the bridge, Wyatt felt worried, but then thought of an idea for the stardrive section. "Zarva, get everyone into the escape pods and the Aquarius and evacuate the ship, We're going to separate the saucer section."
Minuette then asked him, "Mind if we help get people to the Aquarius?" He nodded before they looked to Celestia.
"Good luck." She said as she used her little amount of now recharged magic to teleport them to the Aquarius.
"Everyone, strap yourselves in." He warned as the four princesses sat in the reserve seats and held on to the aft console behind Wyatt and Mioiil.
At the Aquarius, Moondancer, Minuette, and the others were gathering all that they could, shouting for all of them to get inside. "Come on! Get as many as you can, cram the ship up if you have to!!" About two minutes passed before there was no one else in sight. They then went in and strapped themselves into the officer seats as they prepared to separate.
"Don't worry on how I fly this ship everyone, it'll be bumpy either way. Hang on!" The ship slowly detached from the aft section of the Stardrive section of the Sacramento, opening it's pylons up as it went to escort the escape pods, the last of them zooming towards the surface as the Aquarius flew alongside them.
In one of the Jefferies tubes, Lon was climbing out with the rest of the crew, Wyatt's voice then sounded from the intercom. "The core is going to blow Lon, we have a minute left!"
"He flipped a switch several times before the doors shut and he responded. "That's it bridge, we're ready."
"One minute 'til we blow up." Elisa warned.
"Begin separation sequence, full speed ahead once we disconnect." Wyatt ordered.
"The core's going critical."
The saucer slowly disconnected from the large secondary hull, the force fields under the saucer's once connected doors deactivated as the ship slowly boosted away from the hull as energy bolts and plasma from it's now damaged nacelles leaked out.
"Separation successful." Lon said.
"Heading towards the weapon, sir." Said Elisa.
"The core's breaching!" Lon warned as he closed the bridge ceiling windows above.
"Everyone, brace yourselves!" Wyatt alerted.
A small explosion occurred on the top section of the stardrive, before a second one obliterated it, the shockwave blasting the ship forward and almost shaking the crew off their feet.
"Emergency power to engines and weapons!" Wyatt ordered to Kapor.
"Aye, Captain!" He replied.
As the ship sped towards the weapon's bridge, explosions began to appear on the main hull of the weapon, Wyatt then looked to the command section and ordered, "Brace our forward neutronium hull, we're going at ramming speed!" Elisa nodded as they approached the Vonph command section, firing everything they had left.
"I've braced our forward hull with shield power as well, we might make it out alive on this one!" She alerted as they came closer.
"Everyone, hold on to your flanks!!!" Wyatt warned.
Using power from engine batteries, the ship went at full impulse into the command section, thanks to their weapons, the command section split in half upon ramming, but the saucer was damaged in the process, badly.
When the bridge was hit, the back console and a nearby one in the front exploded as the ship shook violently, sending everyone out of their seats and hitting the floor. The ship drifted fast away from the weapon as it emitted a small explosion, then a second larger one was it's end as the weapon flew into many large and small pieces, the bright explosion not ceasing for several minutes as well as several close by ships being destroyed by the larger pieces, leaving a quiet field of darkened space trash and debris in it's wake.....
Darkness and electrical noise filled the bridge as the ship finally came to a silent stop, no movement anywhere to be seen on the bridge. Moments passed until a low smacking noise erupted from the right side of the bridge. Someone slowly showed their head from the ground, Applejack with her sister next to her, having been protected by her shielding sister, groaned a little before whispering to her sister. "....I'm ahright." Applejack looked to the rest of the bridge, slowly, one by one, each of the crew slowly got up from their places, Rarity and Rainbow, both with bruises and slight cuts from the broken parts of the ship, releasing Sweetie and Scootaloo after checking them for injuries. Twilight, upon standing, felt a surge of pain from her right foreleg, she looked to see a cut on her hoof, dripping a small amount of blood. Worried about her fellow Admiral, she looked around the room only to stop upon hearing his groaning near the front left console. Once he stood, he looked battered, the only cut to his form being a small, but not fatal, cut above his eye. He looked to the viewscreen, only to see it's glass screen cracked and still attempting to show the sea of space while flashing with static.
On the outer hull, the once magnificent face of the star cruiser was now wrought with a horrid, scratched, torn off hull, as well as several pieces of the ship drifting around it. The ship's name plate was nearly erased from the hull, with only fragments of her name left on the near-dead hulk of a saucer. Wyatt felt weak as he slowly made his way into the Captain's chair, grunting in pain as he sat his flank on the ruffled cushion. He heard Fluttershy inform him in a weak voice. "W-we... did it, the weapon's gone. The fleet's corresponding attack m-must have taken it out." The turbolift door to their left opened up to reveal Flash Sentry and Lon as they walked up to Wyatt and Twilight, showing injuries on themselves as well.
Twilight gasped as she asked them in worry. "Thank God, are you two OK?"
They both nodded before Lon added, "We managed to hang on to the rails in the Jefferies tube, saving us a few bits of hurt, though Flashy here nearly broke his arm trying to help me, we then raced up to here to see if you guys made it." Flash rolled his eyes at the engineer's jokey nickname.
"Sorry if I tore her pretty face apart back there, Lon." Wyatt apologized to Lon as he turned to him.
"Don't worry about that, me and my boys can fix her up after this is over." He said calmly.
"...Da-Damage?" Wyatt asked Pinkie as he held his aching head.
"Our forward hull's about ready to pop like a balloon, the engines have fortunately made it through, so we can move, but only little, emergency thrusters are still operational if we need them, I don't believe anyone's been killed since we're the only ones onbo-" She said before she was interrupted by her console powering off, before she tried to tap it in her hope of it coming back on, the rest of the lights and working consoles suddenly died out of power. The entire ship then became a drifting corpse in seconds as the ship's power had completely shut off.
Wyatt then held on to his chair as everyone raced to their seats, sitting and activating the ship's safety restraint belts. "Our power systems are failing, everyone hang on tight!"
The ship slowly turned over and fell towards the planet below, a piece of debris from the now broken lifeboat hitting the fragile hull, tearing a hole through it. The ship shook violently as they held on tight, Wyatt then thought of a way to save the ship as he deactivated his restraints, holding on to his chair as he spoke. "I don't think we're dead in the water yet, the power control room is nearby on deck 6, if Lon and I can get there, we might be able to get this ship back on her feet!" He then raced to the turbolift to the right of the ship and made his way out yelling to Lon. "Elisa, take the conn, come on, Lon!"
"I just hope this isn't one trick that gets us all killed!" He replied back with worry.
They raced down the halls upon exiting the turbolift, pieces of the ship falling around them as they made their way to the engine room. From sliding across down the rotating floors to walking on the walls, they took every chance they had around them as they raced to deck 6. They soon reached a hallway where the control room awaited them, a falling piece of metal hit Wyatt on his right hind leg, knocking him over before he grabbed onto the wall of the hallway, Lon joining him a couple of seconds after him. "Uhhh, DUCK!!" He yelled as a larger piece of debris came falling towards them, both of the officers ducking their heads before the debris hit the hall behind them, but also loosening their grip a little.
"Wyatt, I can't hold on much longer!"
"Grab on to me!" He ordered as Lon grabbed onto his chest and held on. Wyatt's hooves grew weaker for several seconds, forcing him to grit his teeth to boost them, but it didn't help much. Screaming, his hooves let go of the edge before a pair of human hands grabbed onto one of them, a familiar English voice booming out a second later.
"I've got you, Admiral, hold on!"
"David, my lad, a bottle of ale on me after this!" He said in relief as he was lifted up. David then warned them.
"The ship's going to crash into the Changeling hive in four and a half minutes, I'll alert the crew, you go fix the engines!"
"Got it!" Wyatt answered as he and Lon continued on towards the door of the control room. David then raced to the nearby turbolift to head to the bridge. The ship turned back upright as they attempted to open the door, until the door failed to operate. "It's damaged, Lon, see if you can fix it!" Lon nodded as he pulled out the nearby repair kit next to him and opened the console and attempted to activate it. Using reserve power nodes, they managed to get the door working, the position of the ship changing as it kept falling. Wyatt then attempted to open the door, this time it opened up, allowing the two inside.
Toxic plasma gas sprouting from a leak nearby could be seen in the room as they entered, they noticed a container of breathing apparatuses and opened it. "Breathers! Here, put one on!" Now able to breathe, they then attempted to access the console. After another moment of work on the console, they then attempted to activate the emergency power systems, Wyatt's pupils shrunk as a message could be seen on the screen.
"UNABLE TO COMPLY, POWER UNABLE TO BE ROUTED DUE TO MODERATE DAMAGE TO POWER REGULATORS."
Both officers stared at the screen with looks of failure for a moment, until Lon looked to his commanding officer. "So that's it then, huh? The last thing we do is come down here to our alternative graves."
Wyatt then gave a look of hope as he then thought of another way. "If it's risks we have to take, it's what I'll do."
He then raced over to the door on the other side of the room leading to the maintenance section. Lon looked at him with horror as he asked, "What the hell are you doing?!"
"I'm going in there to fix my ship!"
"Are you crazy?! Even with that breather on, the radiation inside will hurt you, you'll be dead before you even touch the console!" He warned angrily.
Wyatt breathed heavily as he halted for a moment, before turning to Lon and responding. "I know that, and that's why you need to stay here."
He then punched Lon in his face with his hoof, knocking him out instantly. Placing him in the chair, he then returned to the door to override the door. As it opened, he went in and got down as he began to crawl his way through the shaft leading to the maintenance area. Upon reaching the hatch, he opened it before being greeted by a wave of turquoise gas before he stood up and looked around. A nearby activation console was seen before he noticed the problem, two of the power cables were damaged. Using the maintenance kit Lon had, he sprinted to it and opened the kit up to begin repairs.
On the bridge, Dash held onto her console as she noticed the atmosphere of her home planet coming closer to them, she panicked as she shouted, "If we don't get power back online, we'll burn up in the atmosphere!"
"Come on, Wyatt..." Twilight thought to herself worriedly as she looked to the broken viewscreen.
The ship began to grow a faint orange color before small parts of the damaged hull slowly broke off and flew past the saucer, the saucer then being surrounded in a grey smoke ball as it fell to the planet below.
In the maintenance section, Wyatt had now finished work on one of the cables, one more would bring the ship back to life. He grabbed the required tool, held the cord in place, and began sealing the tear. Moments passed before the cut was finally sealed, he then raced to the console and tapped the buttons on it. A second later the ship shook before Wyatt himself was shot across the room, hitting the open hatch leading back to the control room, after coughing a bit, he slowly began to crawl back into the shaft.
The bridge came back to life with a slight amount of light as the consoles powered back up, Dash then looking over to Twilight and alerting her. "Power's back, thrusters ready!"
"Max power to the thrusters, Dash!" She nodded and tapped the console a couple of times before the ship felt as if it were lifting up.
"Hang on, guys, it's gonna get a little rocky!"
High above the Changeling kingdom, several changelings out on a flight witnessed the descending vessel above them, while at a safe distance, they panicked for the endangered hive, screaming in terror as the ship fell, when it fell past the clouds, they heard a loud metal screech from under the clouds, two seconds later, they heard the sound of engines blasting before the broken, yet hovering saucer rose up from the surface, the minions cheering as the ship took a stationary position above the area.
Rainbow Dash sighed in relief as she looked to her console. "Engines restored, impulse power and life support is coming back."
"It's a miracle, Chrysalis' hive is safe!" Rarity cheered as the group breathed calmly, Twilight sitting back as she took a moment to rest. Unfortunately, the moment didn't last longer than a minute as the comms panel on the chair beeped and the princess answered it.
"Lon to bridge, is everyone alright down there?" He asked before grunting a little.
"Yes, the Changeling hive would've been lost if we hadn't saved the ship. Are you guys alright?" She answered with a tired tone.
Lon hesitated for a moment before replying. "... Not exactly, everyone, you might wanna get down here right away, that son of a... he doesn't look too good."
The signal cut out before Twilight could respond, looking to her friends, she ordered, "Everyone to the Control room, quick."
The group immediately crammed themselves into all of the working turbolifts as they hurried towards deck 6. They were hoping this wasn't going to be a rough scene for them to witness, but as they would soon realize, great miracles often come with a great price, and it was something they weren't going to like knowing about upon reaching the control room.....
The corridor was lit with the brilliance of the emergency lights as Twilight and the crew raced to the engine room, sweat starting to build on their heads. The doors to the control room opened upon standing in front of them, slowing their speed down as they reached their destination. Twilight wiped her forehead with her hoof as she asked, "We're here Lon, what went wro-" She felt as if her breath was sucked right out of her as she saw a familiar face crawling out of the maintenance junction, the others, especially her friends and the Royal Sisters, gasping in horror at the sight before them. Wyatt was grunting and coughing as Twilight went up to the locked door between them, Rarity looked like she was going to rain waterfalls as she whimpered.
"Di-did he.. save us?"
Twilight looked as if she were about to collapse, her mentor for her time in his universe was suffering in agony in front of her eyes, she couldn't bear it as she turned to Lon and ordered. "Lon, open the door, get him out, now."
Lon looked at her with a surprised expression as he answered. "If you don't mind the radiation, I might. I open that door, we'll all get radiation poisoning in minutes!"
Celestia, while she knew the risks, asked him as well. "Lon, open the door, please."
"Your Highness, forgive my defiance, but are you crazy?! We'll all get ourselves in the med bay if we play that g-" He was interrupted by a grunting voice behind him.
"Lon... d-do as the Princess says, and open the damn door."
He stood and stared at him for a moment before he turned to Elisa and Kapor and ordered, "Open it, now." They nodded as they quickly opened the door and carefully lifted him out of the gassy room before immediately closing the door behind them. The Admiral looked paler than somepony with the flu, he was coughing up a little bit of blood at this point, the radiation was taking it's toll on him, Twilight held evident tears in her eyes as she spoke.
"Y-you crazy stallion, you gave up y-your life to save all of us." She said in a weak voice.
He responded with a faint smirk as he replied. "Y-yeah... captains like m-me can all b-be crazy in some ways."
He tried to let out a chuckle, but was stopped by another cough as Twilight held onto him. Wyatt could see the sadness in Twilight's eyes, while he taught her all he knew about being the leader of a crew and flying a starship, she'd never seen someone so close to her carry out an act such as this, Twilight's friends were looking like their dam was about to breach, Celestia had a sad look on her face while her sister had built tears of her own. The purple alicorn never took her gaze away from Wyatt's damaged body as she asked him. "Why.... why did you do this for us?" Her tears were slowly dripping down her face as he answered.
"I..... I did it because you're all like family to me, and be-better for one life to end than almost two d-dozen others. Would you have do-done the same for your friends if you were in my position?" He asked as he looked into her eyes.
"Y...yes, I think I would have." She said as she started to break down, crying into Wyatt's chest for about half a minute, before she looked up and asking Lon. "Lon, there has to be a way we can save him, I can't stand to see him suffer like this!"
Lon shook his head as he answered sadly. "I'm afraid not, I'm sorry, Twilight."
Celestia then trotted towards Wyatt as she spoke up. "Maybe there is, but we'll have to hurry. Twilight?"
She looked to her before she backed up, Celestia stood over him as her horn lit up in a golden aura, surrounding Wyatt's body as the magic did it's work. When the aura vanished, they looked back to her with worrying curiosity as she answered. "I've managed to recharge enough magic to use a spell on Wyatt, the radiation in him is gone now, as well as a few internal injuries. However, he still must be taken to the medical bay. If we hurry, I believe he might have a chance."
They looked to Kapor and T'Vrell before Lon ordered, "Take him to the nearest working sickbay immediately, do everything you can." They nodded as they helped Wyatt up, Twilight still looking at him before he spoke to her once more.
"Don't worry about m-me, Twilight, I'll- ..... I'll be fine." She nodded a few seconds after he finished, watching him being taken to sickbay where they'd hope he would make it through the mission. Flash trotted up to his princess and wrapped a hoof around her, Twilight smiling as she watched the trio leave out of sight.
Everyone stood in silence for a moment before Dash spoke up. "Um, not trying to be mean, but do you still have enough magic for a-" A loud crash sounded nearby as the room shook, Twilight then became immediately alert from her grief as they looked around.
"What was that?!" She asked worriedly.
"I think that might be some of this girl's bones coming back down!" Lon yelled.
Pieces both large and small were slowly falling down from the sky, smaller ones either bouncing off the hull or punching through. A large chunk of the saucer, which from the looks of it was from the one spot on the saucer that was now an open hole through it, was coming down directly towards the right impulse engine, but before it could hit, a wave of pulse lasers came in after it, tearing the broken piece of metal apart before it was reduced to ash. Three stalker fighters flew by the engine as they took position over the ship to protect it.
In the control room, Twilight heard her combadge beeping until she answered it. "What hit us, bridge?!"
A familiar female voice sounded from the small badge. "Who you callin' "Bridge", your Highness?" The wonderbolt asked sarcastically.
Twilight built a faint smile as she replied. "Spitfire! You came for u-.... How'd you get down here?"
"We had just taken out the majority of the Imperial fleet before we noticed your ship falling, Soarin', Fleetfoot, and I then grabbed some stalkers and came to provide cover for ya!" The pegasus flyer answered with glee in her voice.
"Thanks, we'll need it. We're pretty badly hurt up here." She replied with relief.
Spitfire sounded worried as she asked the Princess of Friendship, "Hey, uh, is Wyatt there?"
Twilight cringed upon hearing her friend's name, but kept herself relaxed as she answered. "He's... he's alive, but he is seriously injured, he won't be able to command the ship for the moment."
"Oh.... well.... please let him know of me and my team's regards." She said with a sad tone in her words.
"You got it. How's my ship, by the way?" She asked Spitfire.
"Bon Bon's got her taken care of, your Highness. Everyone onboard is A-OK." She answered with delight.
Twilight smiled a bit more as she replied. "Good, because I'm going to keep the Admiral's seat warm for him while he's being fixed up. Let's see if we can get this ship-"
"Up and back into the stars above so we can take out the baddies?" Minuette's voice rung from the badge as she finished her friend's sentence.
"Minuette, where are the passengers?" She asked in worry.
"They're all fine, Canterlot was able to keep the civilians safe so we could go look for you. When we found out that you were near the surface, we made our way here." She answered in her usual excited voice.
"Good, can you help us out on this?" The princess asked.
Minuette didn't waste a second before answering. "Mm-hmm! This little piranha of a lifeboat here comes with a tractor beam onboard, we could probably get your ship back into space in less than five minutes, at least that's if you can give additional power to your engines."
"Done, we'll inform you when we arrive on the bridge. Sparkle out." She tapped the badge off before turning to her friends and speaking. "While our home is safe with the weapon's destruction, the last of the Imperial fleet, specifically the I.S.S. Sacramento, is most likely still in orbit above us, if we can either run them off or capture the crew and destroy the ship with the help of our allies, this battle will have been won for us. All we need is a weakness to take out."
Everyone looked to each other before they looked to Twilight again and nodded, Rarity smiling as she looked to Sweetie Belle and asked her, "Sis, I think I'll need your help with powering the shields." Sweetie nodded to her before Rainbow looked to Scootaloo.
"I think I'll need you at one of the tactical stations, Scoots. Can ya lend a hoof?"
Scootaloo jumped in excitement before responding to her idol. "I'd SO love to help out! Let's send those Terran scum packin'!"
Applejack noticed Applebloom holding her hoof as she asked her older sister, "Mind if Ah help with fixing the ship?" Her sister hesitated a little before nodding to her and speaking to her.
"Just don't get hurt when you're helpin' me."
"I believe my sister and I can assist in this as well. We may be able to help power the beams when Applejack and her sister fix them." Celestia said to Twilight before looking to her sister, who nodded in agreement.
Twilight then smiled at her friends before ordering to them, "Everyone, to the bridge! I don't think our fleet can hold much longer." The group cheered before they quickly made their way to the door of the engine room, running with all of the stamina they had as they went to finish the battle for their home so that peace could reign in Equestria once more.....
The sea of space was bathed in darkness, surrounded by the planet's shadow as the battle ensued. The remaining Alliance ships struggled to hold off the ancient, yet advanced force of the I.S.S. Sacramento, while the Iconians were a race from 200 millennia ago, they still had some of the most advanced technology to present day, and after the assault on the Mirror Iconian homeworld, the Terrans must've gained whatever scraps they could find in the now dead empire's graveyard. The power that the Imperial starship had was strong enough for it to hold off three sister ships, fortunately for the Alliance fleet, they'd already brought down the ship's shields to almost a quarter left, at the cost of a few ships at least. Out of all of the remaining ships, the Equestria and the Enterprise were holding off anything and everything that the mutant starship was sending at them. On the bridge of the Equestria, Bon Bon was wiping the sweat from her forehead as she gave her next command. "Fire at their forward shields, hit them with everything we have!"
"You got it! They seem to have lost their port phaser on their saucer section, that should give us a little more support in breaking that beast's back." Lyra replied as she kept her eyes on the console.
Vinyl, stationed at the communications station, was keeping an eye out for any signals coming from their target when she found one. "Guys, they're trying to send out a signal, they're calling for help!" She alerted everyone with her words.
"Any ideas?" Dr. Hooves asked aloud.
"Hmm, maybe this'll do something to them!" She said before pulling out an data chip and inserting it into the console.
"What in the name of Celestia are you doing, Vinyl?!" Octavia asked in shock.
"Silencing the annoyance in front of us is what I'm doing." Vinyl replied with a cocky grin on her muzzle. It took a second before Octavia got what she was getting at. Vinyl nodded to Bon Bon to turn the comms panel on, she could then hear what the Terran communication was broadcasting, but it forced a hoof up to her ear upon hearing the noise, it was one of Vinyl's songs playing from the panel, and obviously seconds later, it began to show its effects.
Octavia gave a confident smile as she looked to her friend. "I guess loud and obnoxious things can save our lives sometimes." Vinyl nodded to her with a smile on her face before continuing her task on firing the ship's beam weapons.
On the bridge of the I.S.S. Sacramento, Captain Wyatt had apparently grown annoyed by the enemy fleet's tactics, disrupting their call for help, eliminating the rest of his fleet, he was done playing the safe way, he looked to his tactical officer on the right as he ordered, "Lieutenant, we can't afford to let them overtake us, I need suggestions!"
The officer replied with, "We do have that one prototype console that we constructed out of salvaged Breen and Iconian technology, maybe we can stop them if we use it."
The Captain then gave a grin as he remembered his other toy. "Ah yes, the Coma array, face us with all of the Alliance ships and fire when ready."
The officer nodded and tapped several buttons on his console before looking to the screen, after a moment, he then pressed on his console once more before the device did its work.
On the Equestria's viewscreen, the large cruiser grew a sky blue colored light from its deflector dish before firing a large, pulsing shockwave that shook all nearby ships within the field, upon impact, the ship shook violently before the viewscreen turned off in an instant, as well as all of the lights and consoles. Bon Bon looked perplexed as she asked in worry. "What just hit us?!"
Lyra looked puzzled with a hint of worry in her voice as she answered. "I don't know, Bon Bon, it looks like they fired some kind of power draining weapon at us! All systems are offline!"
Derpy then flew her way to the nearby door before trying to open it, she groaned when it failed to open. "The doors are stuck too! It's like the ship was just knocked out!"
They then sat in the room as they waited for a rescue to come for them, Bon Bon then looked to another Starfleet officer before asking, "Sir, what about your combadge? Does it still work?" The officer then tapped it before he spoke.
"Equestria to Enterprise, respond!" A second passed before a voice sounded.
"Shon here, the fleets comms are out, we're having to use our combadges until we can get power back, are you alright?"
"Yes sir, it's good to know you're okay, we'll try to get the ship back up and running, good luck." Bon Bon said to the Captain as he finished.
"Got it, same to you. Shon out." The badge turned off before the Doctor spoke up.
"Vinyl, Bonnie, Muffin, do you mind in helping me with fixing the ship's power?" The mares in question nodded to him as they made their way to the nearby power relay in the back of the bridge. They hoped they'd be able to get the starship back on its feet before they were blown out of the sky.
In the atmosphere, Twilight sat in the center seat as she and her friends looked to the now fixed viewscreen that Applejack and Applebloom had just fixed, the princess looked to Pinkie Pie and asked her, "How far are we from the surface, Pinkie?"
"We're almost there, Twilight, a little more and we'll be able to kick those meanies' butts!" She said with excitement.
Twilight then turned to Rarity behind her and asked, "Rarity, if you could turn on the viewscreen please." She nodded as she tapped a few buttons before the screen came back to life with visuals. They didn't see any weapons fire, and from what they could tell, the fleet looked literally dead in space. Something must have gone wrong. Twilight looked to Rarity and asked her, "Rarity, can you tell what's wrong with our fleet?"
Rarity tapped on the console again before she gasped in worry before replying. "The fleet isn't showing any power signals, I think they might have been disabled somehow!"
The group gasped before Lon spoke up. "If I know the galaxy right and if it's a power drain, the only race I'm familiar with is the Breen, perhaps they took some of their technology and integrated it into their ship."
Twilight looked down for a moment before she tapped on her badge as she stared at the viewscreen. "Sacramento to Equestria, respond!"
"Bon Bon here, we're alive, but we're dead in the water, they must've used some sort of power drain on us!" Bon Bon's voice spoke from the combadge.
On the bridge of the ship's counterpart, the Terran captain heard a beeping noise from his lieutenant's console, who checked it and turned to him. "Sir, I'm picking up a few ships ascending from the planet's surface!"
"On viewer." The loyal captain growled to his officer. Upon appearing, Wyatt saw a large, damaged saucer section of an Odyssey class ship, as well as four smaller ships, three fighters and an Aquarius escort. "....Hello again, old friend." He murmured in annoyance.
On the Sacramento, the viewscreen showed the broken ship's counterpart slowly turning towards them. "Twilight, they notice us!" Rainbow Dash yelled out.
"Trying to finish us off now, huh? Magnify." Twilight ordered as the sight on the screen was blinked to show a closer view of the ship that was now facing them. A few seconds passed before they noticed a green glow emanating from the ship's deflector dish, the purple alicorn squinted her eyes for a moment before a small projectile shot from the light that now faded out. "Rarity, scan that device!" She nodded and tapped on her console and waited until the results came up, and they forced a horrified look on her face as she saw them.
"Twilight, it's a container of torpedoes filled with thalaron radiation! If they get a single hit on us, we'll be dead in seconds!!!" The group gasped as they looked again only to see the projectile flash and split into eight other smaller torpedoes, which also gave off a green glow.
Twilight tapped on her comms panel before ordering, "Spitfire, Minuette, take out those torpedoes! Don't let a single one hit the ship, or we're dead!"
"Got it!" The two mares replied before the three fighters and the Aquarius boosted at max speed towards the torpedoes.
Captain Wyatt looked on his screen with a victorious grin as he looked at the ravaged saucer trying to climb out of the atmosphere of the planet. Despite the fighters coming towards them, he knew he'd have them shot down before they could do anything about his weapons. He was finally going to see his lighter side he so despised perish before his hands, at least he thought that before his lieutenant turned to him with worry. "Captain, there's another ship incoming!"
As the torpedoes were making their way to the saucer, a blue flash appeared before forming into a portal, releasing a starship out from it's maw, which then began to fire phaser beams and gold quantum torpedoes at the small projectiles, destroying them almost instantly. The ship sped by the thalaron clouds sprouted from the now destroyed torpedoes before taking arms with the Sacramento.
On the screen, Twilight could see a familiar look on the ships hull, yellow and brown markings on it indicated to her that it was Wyatt's main personal ship, the Chestnut. The old lass came to save his man, a miracle to thank the Federation for later, as she looked to Pinkie with a smile and asked her, "Pinkie, hail them, I think we've got someone to praise for coming at the right time!"
Pinkie did so and tapped on the console before the screen flashed to show Admiral Quinn sitting in his friend's chair, giving a smile as well as he spoke. "Twilight, am I glad to see you still alive! Looks like we arrived at the right time!"
"Yep, you sure did, Admiral. Did our friends get to you in time?" Twilight asked with a curious look.
"Yes, and they also said that the Empire was attacking your homeworld that I just heard about, so I pulled the Chestnut out to lend you all a hand, but don't thank me for all the help here." The Admiral answered as he nodded to someone away from the screen, only for that being to come into view of the screen, she gave an excited smirk as she spoke out.
"It looks like an old "frenemy" of yours has saved your flank this time, Twilight Sparkle!" Trixie teased her rival, who stood on her hooves upon seeing her.
"Trixie! I figured you'd show up at some point! You got pulled into that portal just like Starlight mentioned!" She said with glee to her rival.
Yes, and I also found out that you were also pulled into that same one as well, but now I've made it back, you could say I'm a skilled marksman with those torpedoes that we had. Say, Starlight didn't shed too many tears while I was gone, did she?" Twilight shook her head at her question, building a smile on Trixie's face.
Admiral Quinn then stood near Trixie as he asked with a slight hint of worry in his eyes, "Hey, Twilight, is Wyatt OK?"
She stood silent for a moment before she answered. "Admiral, he's hurt pretty bad, he nearly got killed trying to save us from crashing on the surface. But from what we know, he should make it out of this." The Admiral frowned at the fact of one of his great officers being in a rough situation until he spoke up again.
"I... I see. Let him know that I'm praying for him when this is over."
Twilight nodded to him before she asked him, "So, about our "friend" over there, is there a way of stopping that ship?"
Quinn took a second before answering. "Well, from one of Captain Data's log entries from the Enterprise-E during the battle at the Bassen Rift, he fired a phaser at the Scimitar's thalaron generator before the ship was instantly destroyed by the blast. Maybe if we can get a good shot at wherever the origin point of those torpedoes are, we could get the same result."
Twilight took a moment before looking to Pinkie Pie. "Pinkie, what's the status in their shields?"
"Their shields are still up, but they're very weak, maybe if we had enough ships for a full shield drain,"
"I think we can do just that for you guys." Bon Bon cut in from the comms panel on Twilight's chair. "We just fixed our power and are ready to assist."
"Thanks Bon Bon." She said before looking to the screen again and replying. "Let's do it." The Admiral nodded before the screen cut back to the I.S.S. Sacramento, which was now hovering closer to the group of ships as they noticed the other Alliance ships coming to their aid.
Bon Bon could be heard speaking to the fleet as they neared the front side of the ship. "Ready.... fire!" The fleet, along with the U.S.S. Chestnut, fired several blue colored beams at the front side of the ship, the shield array around the Terran battleship flickering several times before they finally went down.
Admiral Quinn was then heard on the comms saying, "Fire cluster torpedoes, now!" The Chestnut then shot a turquoise projectile that glowed faintly as it flew towards the dish of the I.S.S. Sacramento.
On the ship's bridge, the Captain saw the weapon coming closer as he grew a furious frown on his face. Knowing what they were going for, he yelled at the top of his lungs, "LIEUTENANT, SEPARATE THE SAUCER, NOW!!!" The saucer separated and it's impulse engines glowed red as it tried to escape, but the ship was shot away as the deflector dish was hit, causing the stardrive section to explode in a blinding flash, almost completely disintegrating the ship as a few small pieces of debris flew away from the blast.
The crew cheered as they watched the last Imperial ship burn in fire from the torpedo blast, Twilight sitting back in her chair after everyone began to stop. "Excellent work, everyone! We did it!" The comms panel blasted with cheering from all of the ships in the fleet, Pinkie Pie then jumped out of her seat as she cheered again in excitement. Twilight then built a frown as she saw the saucer of the now destroyed warship, while she would've smiled at seeing the same scar that their ship had being on their target's, she kept her frown as she turned to Rarity. "Rarity, hail them. I think we'd like to have a word with them before they leave." She nodded with a frown as well before she tapped on her console and the screen changed to show the I.S.S. Sacramento's bridge.
Besides the rest of the room being filled with smoke, flames, and of course static, the crew noticed a single stallion, holding his flank and walking a little funny, made his way to the console and put one of the fires out, glaring at the near broken viewscreen as he began. "You mule, you've helped that bastard ruin my plans too many times already."
She growled angrily at the word "mule", quite an offence to make, he was lucky she wasn't going to shed his blood this time. "You better run while you still can, my friend, you should NEVER underestimate the power of an alliance."
He glared at the crew before he responded with hatred in his voice. "An alliance is a force that only the WEAK would join, you are the blind one, Princess!"
Celestia stood and faced him, her expression looking filled with anger as she replied. "No empire alone is strong, when you have friends at your side, you always have more strength, little or not. And you call us fools for choosing that?"
Twilight glared once more before she ordered, "You better leave while you still have a chance, I don't want to have to blow you out of the stars."
He growled one more time before speaking as he aimed for a button on the console. "This isn't over, Princess, next time we meet, your throat will be mine to slice." The screen blinked again before it changed to show the broken ship opening an orange colored rift and flying towards it.
"Twilight, should we let him go?" Dash spoke up as she looked to her.
Twilight smiled as she watched the ship flee into the portal before responding. "Yes, maybe he'll be able to let his superiors know of what happened here."
As the rift closed, Twilight's comms panel beeped before she answered it. "Yes?"
Fluttershy's voice sounded from the panel. "Hi Twilight, I'm happy to inform you that Wyatt is going to be okay, he's still a little hurt, but he should make a full recovery."
Twilight smiled with relief as they all heard her words. She then replied. "Thanks, Fluttershy." She turned to everyone in the room before finishing. "Everyone, let's beam down to the surface, I think it's time that we celebrate." Everyone cheered once more as Twilight then shut off the comms and trotted alongside the other princesses and into the turbolift and heading to the transporter room. Her world was finally safe from harm for the time being, and she felt that after all this time of dealing with diplomats and Imperials, she and her friends were going to need some relaxation before they go back to their work, not only that, but they had now made some new friends to celebrate with, friends that would help make this party a blast when they came home.....
About a week and a half had passed peacefully after the battle with the dreaded Terran Empire, while some of the debris managed to make it down to the planet's surface, most of the space junk was tractored and destroyed by the Alliance ships, not only that, but no casualties were reported being caused by the debris. Along with the Alliance accepting the assistance of Equestria, they had gained another new member of the family as well. Despite being a despised foe, Queen Chrysalis had been convinced into helping out with their now former enemies and their allies. On the crew's part, Wyatt had just about fully recovered from his injuries, having to have several bandages and using a walker was finally paying off, as well as knowing that his counterpart was most likely going to be in the agony booth for quite some time. His ship, the Sacramento, was getting put into spacedock for repairs and a refit, and to add to those treats, Twilight had asked for a bit of shore leave for both her and Wyatt's crews, getting away from the violence of war and getting to know more about their friends. At Cloudsdale, a Wonderbolts performance was gathering most of the city, as well as the crewmen from the Chestnut and the Equestria, all cheering and growing excited over the amazing maneuvers the pegasi performed. Wyatt had just gone through almost a whole glass of Romulan Ale as he spoke to his friends. "If I had wings, it'd be a dream come true to fly alongside them!"
Scootaloo chimed in with him. "I know right?! And seeing Dash up there is one of them!" She grew excited as Dash performed a ring-around near several clouds along with her teammates.
"It's been her dream to be a part of the team, and now I think that battle earned her that place!" Twilight said as she watched along with the rest.
"Mind if I join in, everyone?" Mioiil's voice sounded from behind Wyatt and Twilight, but she looked different, she resembled an equine pony with a red tail and mane on her. Looking at her hooves, Wyatt noticed that she seemed to have claws within them, along with that, her attire was what looked to be an off duty shirt made for ponies.
Wyatt whistled at her as he answered her. "I see you gave that genetic converter a try."
She nodded as she continued. "I felt confused as you are when I noticed claws on my hooves, but I then checked the converter and noticed it apparently mixes a tint of your DNA with the correct settings. So, what do you think?"
Wyatt blushed a bit as he answered. "I think you look magnificent." They kissed for a moment as they pulled away to noticed the group looking at them, except for Twilight and her friends. "What?" He asked with a curious tone.
"S...sorry, I just can't seem to get used to you two there." Luna said as she shook away her weirded out look.
"I think it's quite fine, same on our part of it." She looked to Flash, who was sitting next to her. She and him had taken a few days into their shore leave to go out and talk about each other and their adventures, as a matter of fact, she had asked him to join her crew during then. The stallion blushed as he sat with his princess and watched the air show with her.
The group smiled as Mioiil then spoke up. "About why I didn't get here sooner, I'd gotten a message from Admiral Quinn, he said that he's managed to gather several members of the Alliance to form a universal defense program, but for the moment, they're still getting underway. The Chestnut is also in orbit, so when we're ready to head out, you can give the word." She finished as she smiled.
The group looked to Dr. Hooves as he stood and spoke. "I believe I also have something to tell, earlier today, a man came up to me and asked me about joining this group dedicated to "protecting the timeline", and being worried about it, I accepted the offer due to my capabilities, he also said to privately inform you of this. Wyatt, do you know a group like them?"
Wyatt smiled as he answered. "I think I know someone that has worked with me on that exact task, as a matter of fact, I myself have been asked about that offer, and I plan to join in on the defense, same on Twilight's part."
The group murmured happily as Daring Do, who was in her A.K. Yearling ego, spoke up as well. "Well, this whole thing will be quite an adventure to write about. You don't mind, do ya, Admiral?"
Wyatt smiled as he replied. "No, I don't mind, I think it's about time we all became a part of a great adventure." The group smiled as well and went back to witnessing the squadron of pegasi flying over them, emitting smoke trails and making rolls and epic memories for the audience below them....
~1 week later, 0900 hours, Equestria orbit~
The hallway lights were blooming with light as Twilight walked the halls, nodding and waving to her friends and fellow officers around her. She had had a lot of fun during her time back home, talking with the family and friends she had been dying to meet ever since the taking of her and her six friends, partying, and adding some new touches to her ship's interior and exterior, a new shiny material for the hull included with that. But now, she had her duties to pay attention to, keeping an eye out for the Na'kuhl and dealing with typical attacks on allied territories wasn't too hard of a job to take care of, she stepped into the turbolift, thinking about what her friends had learned on flying and using the ship's abilities, upon the doors opening, she stepped out, but she noticed an unexpected face near her seat, Trixie was standing near her chair, this time in a humanoid form, bearing a similar look to her counterpart in that alternate world full of humans. The magician smiled as she spoke to her now former rival. "I hope you don't mind, but I've decided to lend a hand with you and your friends, and I've also kept your seat safe for you, the chair's yours, Twilight."
The princess nodded as Trixie took her new seat to the right of Twilight, who noticed Flash at her left as she got comfortable in her seat. She looked to Flash and asked him, "So, are you ready to sail the stars in a new ship, Flash?"
"Absolutely, Twilight, being the first royal guard to do such a task is a bit of an honor to me." He said as he smiled at her.
She smiled as well and looked to her comms panel and tapped it, she spoke up. "Equestria to Canterlot, Celestia, can you hear me?"
"Yes, Twilight, I hear you, good luck on your new mission, Princess." She said to her former pupil.
Twilight gave a confused look as she replied. "New mission? What's the change in the plan?"
Wyatt's voice then spoke up. "Ah, about that, Twilight, Starfleet has ordered us to lead a task force to lay stealth probes in other universes. The Alliance has grown worried about enemies of ours who might find out about the Preserver gateway and might try to take advantage of it, so we've been asked to place some probes in each universe in order to keep an eye out for trouble. How's that idea?"
Twilight looked to Flash and then to Trixie before replying. "That's a good move to make, it would keep others safe in those realms instead of having to deal with our problems. We're right behind you, Admiral."
Wyatt was chuckling before he continued. "Actually, I've decided to let you have that honor, your Highness."
Twilight looked to her friends again before she answered. "Thank you, Wyatt. Let's get going."
"Aye, ma'am. Stone out."
Twilight then looked to Rainbow Dash before asking her, "Dash, are our wings ready?"
She snickered before answering. "Ready for a Sonic Rainboom on your word, Twi!"
She then looked to her friends, who all nodded and smiled as she looked to the screen and gave the word. "Engage."
The ships' engines glowed a bright blue, a portal formed in front of the two ships as they neared it, then flashing away into nothing as they ventured through. The two explorers were in for quite an adventure, seeing new worlds in other realms, new species, and of course, going beyond the limit of what any being in the universe would've ever thought of crossing, and perhaps soon, all of them would go into the space where none have been together, but for now, that was only a possibility, and the only thing that held the answer was time......
