In From The Cold

by Cackling Moron

First published 15th of January, 2020

Twilight's prized pupil finds something in space.

Space! It's big. You can find things in it.

Or so is the hope, at least. Nova Flare - Twilight's best pupil, at least right this moment - has been put forward as the first pony Captain of a Hegemony science vessel and so she really is aiming to find something out there in the inky black.

She does, obviously, though what she finds comes as something of a surprise to everyone...

#1

Author's Notes:

It's a future not the future.

It's also the most GROSSLY SELF-INDULGENT THING I think I've done on here, ever, so it's quite likely you won't like it one bit.

But I figured I'd followup something everyone did like with something most won't. Just for variety. You know?

Princess Twilight’s - or Governor Twilight, depending on who you were talking to at the time - office was situated central relative to the habitat, not to mention high. It had a fantastic view. The best view, in fact.

Not that she was paying any attention to it. The novelty had worn off, for one, and for another she was too busy scrolling through reports to look up and look out across the rolling hills, the trees, the artificial lakes and whatever buildings were dotted across the landscape.

She’d seen it all before. And those reports weren’t going to scroll through themselves.

So engrossed was she in this that she initially failed to notice the soft, gentle chiming that tried to get her attention. The chiming remained gentle but increased in volume gradually, the light on her desk blinking more rapidly. Eventually, it worked, and Twilight noticed.

This was a sign that someone was waiting down below.

Sighing to herself and setting the datapad down Twilight pushed the button to admit whoever it was - though she knew who it was - and then waited for them to come up. Some moments later the door to her office chimed and, with another button, Twilight opened it.

And there, much as Twilight had expected, was Nova Flare, unicorn, present prized pupil, looking uncharacteristically tentative.

“You wanted to see me, Princess?” She asked, quite resolutely making sure to stand on the other side of the threshold.

“Nova. Come in. There was something I needed to talk to you about,” Twilight said, smiling pleasantly, sitting up straight.

Nova clip-clopped her way inside and took the chair on the other side of the Princess’s (Governor’s, whichever) desk. It was one of those all-size-all-species jobs the Hegemony had come up with. There was a knack to sitting in them and Nova mostly had it.

“Figured, what with you inviting me here and all,” she said, once she was settled.

While undeniably sharp, Nova’s utter lack of anything approaching an ability to take things seriously had required some getting used to on Twilight’s part. Everyone had their foibles.

“Quite. Recent developments have resulted in the Hegemony commissioning several new science and exploration vessels,” Twilight said, getting straight to the point immediately. No sense in wasting time, after all.

And Nova knew this already. A lot of people knew this already. It was hardly secret.

Twilight continued:

“These vessels are in need of crews and captains and one of them has been earmarked to be crewed and captained by the residents of our habitat.”

“Our turn come up, eh?”

“It has.”

The Hegemony was very meritocratic, but also had curious little rules built into its systems with things like selection of crews and important positions being either cycled through or selected according to some Byzantine algorithm. The rules for this were arcane to say the least, but did a fair job of ensuring that every member species got a fair shake.

Horn glowing and magic tinkling, Twilight sorted through the array of datapads neatly stacked across her desk and selected on in particular, passing it across to Nova who took it in her own magic.

“I have put you forward to be the captain,” Twilight said.

Given that Nova had been nursing the suspicion that she was just going to be told she’d been shortlisted to get on the crew this came as something of a surprise. She’d been all set on working out how to say thank you for such an exciting opportunity, but now she was knocked for six.

She looked over the datapad, but all it showed her was the application the Princess had put in, so all it really did was list Nova’s achievements, grades and so on. And, being Nova, Nova knew all about that already.”

“Uh…” Nova said. “Thank you, first off. Second, uh, isn’t that a little bit nepotistic?”

What with her being the Princess famously prized pupil and all that.

“You are actually, demonstrably graduating top of the class - it isn’t nepotism if you are objectively the best choice,” Twilight said.

“Hmm, yes, it does draw on my extensive experience of captaining…” Nova said, stroking her chin and making the most serious of serious faces. Twilight was unimpressed.

“Nova…” She said in tones of regal sternness. She’d had a lot of time to practise this, and the effect was almost tangible.

“Sorry, sorry. Sorry Princess! I’m flattered, really, just, uh, surprised? If you’d said I was going to be on the crew I could have seen that but, well, I never really had myself down as leadership material,” Nova said, partway hiding behind the datapad.

Twilight kept up the pressure of the unimpressed look a moment longer before letting it soften.

“You have a commanding presence,” she said.

News to Nova.

“I do?”

“Yes. This has been noted by several of your peers,” Twilight said, and Nova’s eyes narrowed.

“Who talked? Was it Blithe? It was Blithe, wasn’t it? Who else? Give me names, I’ll sort them out,” she said.

Twilight didn’t smile per se, but her face was at least soft. She could take a joke as much as the next mare, after all.

“Blithe was among those approached on your suitability. He spoke very highly of you,” she said.

Nova couldn’t really speak to this, as clearly Twilight knew what she was talking about and had clearly put the work in, on top of which Nova was undeniably chuffed that apparently she had friends who thought enough of her to say that she was captain material.

The mere idea kind of put a dopey smile onto her face. She shook it off though, back to business.

“Do I have the next thirty seconds to decide, or…?” She asked.

“You have a week,” said the Princess.

A week was that perfect sweet spot between ‘Nowhere near enough time’ and ‘Kind of enough time’.

“Guess that’s not so bad…” Nova said, rubbing her chin. Twilight looked at her closely.

“You’ve already decided, haven’t you?” She asked.

Nova should have known better than to even imagine Twilight couldn’t see right through her.

“Well, yeah! I mean maybe. Mostly. Pretty much,” Nova said.

She’d have been lying if she said it wasn’t something she’d daydreamed about at great length. Space! They lived in it, sure, but to actually go out into it? Into the bits no-one else had? In a ship? To find cool, new interesting things? And be in charge?

What fool would have said no?

“Safety isn’t guaranteed on these trips, Nova, you do know that, don’t you?” Twilight asked, bringing Nova back to the moment with a bump.

“That they had to build a new ship did kind of tip me off,” she said.

The possibility that they were simply expanding the survey fleet was always there, of course, but they weren’t and Nova knew they weren’t so the reason for needing a fresh crew for a fresh ship were pretty obvious. Replacement.

Accidents happened, after all. Space was unforgiving and a lot of the wonderful things you could discover were also wonderfully lethal at times.

Twilight frowned.

“Nova…” She said again, more warningly this time. Even her patience for flippancy had limits. Nova picked up on this but felt she still had a smidgen of latitude remaining before she really started to push her luck:

“I know it’s dangerous but life is dangerous, isn’t it?”

Twilight looked at her flat for a second before delicately retrieving the datapad from Nova, levitating it back across the desk and setting it down exactly where it had been before. All was neat on Twilight’s desk.

“It can be. Though perhaps not always to the same extent. Continuing your studies here would be safer than accepting this, say. Or taking up an administrative position. For example,” Twilight said.

The latter option filled Nova with actual, physical dread. Twilight was aware of this, and this was why she’d said it. Nova’s eyes widened.

“It’s fine, really. I know it’s dangerous. I’m okay with that!”

“I just want you to be aware of the risks.”

For possibly the first time in the conversation Nova picked up on the subtle, subtextual note of genuine worry woven through what it was that Twilight was saying to her, and whatever flippant thing she’d been gearing up to say kind of just died in her throat.

“I’ll be fine,” she said instead.

There was something lurking beneath all of this, something that both of them were aware of but not entirely sure how to probe or whether it should be probed at all. That would be Twilight’s obvious and obviously veiled, high level of concern for Nova’s wellbeing.

She wanted her pupil to excel and to be able to expand and thrive as much as possible. She also wanted her pupil to stay in one piece. Often these things clashed.

Nova could see this, and she could understand this. She imagined it must have been difficult. Particularly as she wasn’t the Princess’s first, and likely wasn’t going to be the last either.

Things got a little awkward and Nova had to look away. She looked out the window with its view of the habitat. From here she thought she could see her house, but it was a long way off. Something twinkled as the sun caught it. Maybe that was it?

The view did make her think, though...

“So, if we - hypothetically, say - came across a planet that we could live on, would that mean we could, you know, move in?” She asked, turning back to the Princess.

Nova didn’t object to living on the habitat - it was all she’d ever known, after all - she was just never able to fully shake the deep-down, gnawing feeling that it wasn’t quite where they belonged.

Irrational, yes, but still always there, needling, prickling.

Twilight looked distinctly uncomfortable. Given that she was one of the handful on the habitat who had actually ever lived on a planet Nova always figured that she would have been more enthused. For some reason though whenever the subject got brought up it seemed to make the Princess - well, not upset, but liked it touched a raw nerve.

“The Hegemony would be...more likely to look favourably on a colonisation request from us were we to be the ones to discover the planet in question first, yes. I have this on good authority. It’s not official, and it’s not guaranteed, but it’ll help. Or so they tell me.”

“Guess that’s the best we can hope for, huh?”

“It is indeed the best we can hope for.”

Nova swallowed and actually, properly looked Twilight in the eye for possibly the first time since their little meeting had started. This wasn’t something she often did. For one, eye-contact was generally uncomfortable. For two, eye-contact with Twilight was particularly uncomfortable as hers were eyes that had seen things.

Didn’t reach her age and not see things, after all.

“Do you - do you think we might find something?” Nova asked.

And Twilight smiled properly this time. Indulgently. The way she sometimes did when she actually meant it.

“I don’t know, Nova. Space is rather large.”

Something of an understatement there.

Again Nova looked to the window. With perfect timing some ship or other - doing something important no doubt - zipped by in the distance, catching the sunlight.

“I hope we find something…” Nova said quietly, more to herself, mostly without noticing.

Then he resolved stiffened. She took on a confident, assured air. She raised her head high, pumped a hoof and declared in a loud, clear voice:

“We will find something!”

“That’s the spirit, Nova.”

#2

Author's Notes:

There's a lot of sci-fi padding here - and in this story in general. Don't fuss it. it's all bollocks.

Some months and a great many lightyears later, Nova was sitting in the captain’s chair of the illustrious science ship the HSV Observer, lightyears away from civilization, regarding a planet that no living being had ever visited.

Or at least no living being that she knew.

The planet revolved on the big, expensive viewer in front of her in that leisurely fashion planets tended to favour and Nova idly cast an eye over the initial readouts appearing on the minor screen integrated into the arm of the chair. Looking at them, she felt she could have just guessed what they were, really.

“Oh hey, another barren, lifeless hunk of ice and rock that - that’s great.”

She slumped in her seat, profoundly glad that not only had the Hegemony seen fit to install a pony-optimised chairs for her, the captain, but also that is was incredibly comfortable. This took the edge off her disappointment, and the delightful drink she had on-hoof also helped, but she still felt bitter.

“Whoever said space was dull and full of nothing?” She said, slurping. The straw was a riot of curls. Unnecessary, but amusing. It had been a ‘You’re going on a science adventure!’ parting gift and had involved science in its manufacture. We all adore this synergy,

“I am detecting a certain level of sarcasm,” said Xide. She glanced up at him. There were blinking lights she could see studded across his surface, but that didn’t really tell her a whole lot. Apparently they did mean something - a Gorf would likely have known immediately, as would have Princess Twilight - but not to Nova. Not yet at least.

“You have sensors for that?” She asked.

“Yes. It’s called a basic level of awareness,” he said. Nova sunk deeper into the chair somehow.

“Hah,” she said. She slurped her drink some more, this time more aggressively, hoping that perhaps if she did it loudly and angrily enough the universe might hear and oblige her with a planet that wasn’t mind-numbingly uninteresting.

Xide was the Hegemony’s representative on the vessel, an observer. Despite the Hegemony having been the ones to construct the vessel in the first place, technically speaking Xide had no actual authority. He was just there to offer advice and moral encouragement and suggest what the Hegemony might think of as the best possible resolution to whatever issues arose.

What this would work out as in practical terms remained to be seen. Nova trusted the Hegemony would stick to its word given that they had never been anything other than entirely forthright, but she also wondered how it might react if they found something really, really interesting.

Not that that seemed especially likely at that moment...

At this point up came bounding Blithe Spirit, Nova’s nominal second-in-command. Really, Xide was probably the one who was actually second in command in terms of knowing what should be done on the ship - probably first in command if push came to shove anyway, though this he’d deny. But technically speaking Blithe was next in line.

What Blithe lacked in leadership qualities he made up for in sheer, unalloyed enthusiasm.

“Isn’t this exciting! Another planet logged!” He, sounding as though this was the single best day of his entire life. Sullenly, Nova looked over to him. She didn’t turn her head, she just moved her eyes. Anything else would have required too much effort.

“It’s not that exciting,” she said.

Blithe seemed to find this an honestly surprising answer. He even blinked in shock.

“Oh, it’s not? I think it is. You should have seen some sort of the ice formations around the equatorial regions! I could show you, if you like?”

Nova found herself being menaced with a datapad. She eyed the pad, then looked back to Blithe again.

“No thanks, I’d like to maintain some sense of mystery,” she said.

Nova’s tone and delivery finally managed to penetrate the fug of positivity that Blithe carried with him in much the way a planet carried an atmosphere and he for the first time realised how miserable his Captain appeared to be.

“You look bored,” he said.

This sort of statement of the bloody obvious got under Nova’s skin and she glared, though she didn’t move any more than she had before, and remained slumped.

“I am bored! We haven’t seen anything in weeks! It’s just dead planets! Scratch that, not dead, dead would imply that there had been life! We don’t get that! Not even planets with ruins! I haven’t seen one alien ruin! Just rocks! And ice formations.”

“We found a gas giant ecosystem last week,” Blithe said.

Nova had quite forgotten about this. Remembering it stopped her in her tracks, her mouth open in preparation for continuing to rant. She closed it, composed herself, and then spoke with more composure:

“That’s true. Alright, I’ll admit that was pretty cool. But that was one thing. I don’t know, I was just expecting, you know, a bit more. I was kind of hoping to get something I could lord over Gravy with when I saw him next. “

Gravy being Nova’s rather unfortunate nickname for Gravitational Constant, the second-best student of Princess Twilight and long-time personal friend of hers. At the time, his not being chosen while she got to go on the ship had seemed a coup for her and a bum rap for him. Now? Not so much.

“Isn’t he at the Central Science Institute on Hazaria?” Blithe asked. He was friends with Gravy, too, though not in quite the same way. Certainly, he could not even begin to comprehend Nova’s need to get one over on the poor sod. It just wasn’t how he was put together or how he understood the world.

On hearing this point Nova waved a hoof under Blithe’s nose. He went cross eyed and took a step or two backward.

“He is! And I thought me getting a field assignment would give me the leg up. Made him jealous. But not now. Now he’s having a whale of a time. Getting involved in all sorts. He says they’re even working on trying to pin down and translate an extragalactic signal they found. Extragalactic! Can you imagine? And here I am. Scanning rocks. And gas. And ice.”

“This is important stuff, Captain,” Blithe said, pouting.

The sad look on his face cut Nova to the core, but then Blithe could always do that. Seeing his joie de vivre dampened even one iota was like shivering in the shade when the sun went behind a cloud. Grunting and setting her mug down again Nova wriggled out of her slouch and sat up straight, pushing back her mane.

“No, I know it’s important it’s just - ugh - important things don’t really ever feel important at the time, do they? They just kind of feel like boring, thankless work.”

“That might be the point. Hard work is often required for desirable ends, and success is never guaranteed,” Xide said, reminding both ponies that he was kind of technically still a part of this conversation.

“He’s right,” Blithe said, pointing to the synth with a hoof. Nova grunted, feeling ganged up on.

“Ugh. Again. Why can’t life be easy and fun?” She asked, folding her forelegs across her chest.

“That’s a very good question. I am sure the Hegemony has people on that,” said Xide. She glared him.

“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

“Yes,” he said.

She decided to just let it rest there and sunk into what she hoped came across as sullen silence.

Xide made her uncomfortable. It wasn’t that he was synthetic - that didn’t bother her - it was just the way he floated silently everywhere being completely inscrutable and unreadable, or at least unreadable to her. If anyone hung around doing that it would make her uncomfortable.

And the tentacles, of course. Couldn’t forget those.

Gorf had tentacles, too, and those also made her uncomfortable the few times she’d actually met one, but there weren’t any Gorf on board so it wasn’t an issue right now. Xide was, so his were. They just made her skin crawl beneath her coat. She couldn’t help it.

“How many other planets are left in this system?” She asked.

“Uh…” Blithe said, consulting his datapad, but Xide answered first because he didn’t have to consult anything:

“Six,” he said. Nova sighed and slipped from her seat, flopping forward onto all-fours.

“I’m going to bed. You have the bridge, Blithe. Wake me up if anything happens.”

“But-”

#3

Author's Notes:

Hmm? What's that? No I'm not a scientist in anyway whatsoever.

Why do you ask?

Nova did not get to enjoy her nap for long. It felt as though her head had barely touched the pillow before there came the annoyingly polite but persistent chime of the door telling her that someone wanted to come in. She grunted, and whatever system ran the door took this as acceptance, the door opened and the lights in the room came gently up once more.

“Captain?” Came the voice of Blithe and Nova grunted again, rolling over and kicking off the sheets.

“I’m awake, I’m awake. Ngh? What’s - what’s up?” She asked, squinting around the room a bit before finally pinpointing where it was Blithe was standing and then keeping her squint trained on him.

Or the vague blob she assumed was him. She hadn’t quite blinked her eyes clear yet.

“We think - from some preliminary scans - that the third planet in the system might be a captured rogue planet,” said Blithe. He didn’t sound as excited about this as she might have expected him to sound.

Nova thought about what he’d said a second just to see if she’d missed something, brain still working up to speed and having to fumble around to pin down what half of the terms in that sentence had meant. Once she got it straightened out her eyes widened in mild shock. The pleasant kind. More like mild surprise, really.

“Huh, that’s pretty neat,” she said, tailing off into a yawn.

“Just out of curiosity we also checked present observations of the system against Hegemony records - we estimate that this rogue planet must have only shown up some time in the last hundred years. Give or take a few decades.”

That was unlikely. Not impossible, but pretty unusual. Galactic timing being what it was you most-usually turned up a long, long time after whatever had happened had happened. A hundred years was basically turning up mere seconds after the fact.

Kind of weird that they were only noticing it now but at this point in the galactic tour monotony had perhaps set in, and eyes were perhaps not quite as keen as they had been at the very start.

“Wow, okay, lucky us I guess,” Nova said.

“It’s orbit is completely stable,” Blithe said.

That took her a little longer to work out. Why shouldn’t its orbit be stable? How long did a rogue planet’s orbit take to stabilise? Presumably it would depend, though in her still-waking-up state she couldn’t be sure. Over a hundred years? And how completely was completely? Nova felt she was missing some important contextual clues here.

Then again, Blithe wouldn’t have mentioned it if it wasn’t worth mentioning, would he?

“When you say stable you mean...?”

“We mean it has the sort of orbit you’d expect to see from an object originating in-system. The kind you’d get after having spent billions of years going around the star with no outside influence. Not a few hundred.”

Even more unusual. Not that this was Nova’s field, but she at least knew enough to know this was odd.

“Huh,” she said again.

“That’s not the issue though.”

Nova had expected this. His tone had suggested it. He sounded like he was working towards a bombshell.

“I thought you were building up to something,” she said, finally pushing the covers aside and rolling around so she was sitting with her legs off the bed, eyes still fuzzy.

“It has an ecosystem. A complex ecosystem. A perfectly habitable, complex ecosystem. We’ve seen forests on the surface. Of trees.”

Nova, who had been about to hop to the floor, paused and blinked very slowly.

“Alright, okay, now - I’m still waking up I think so I’m just going to run through some things out loud, stop me if I messed up anything you told me: one of the planets in this system is a rogue planet zipping by that got caught by the star, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Not impossible. And this happened sometime in the last century?”

“Yes.”

“And during that last hundred-years-and-change this planet - which had previously spent however-long just zipping through the lifeless, icy-cold, oftentimes radiation-rich and generally inhospitable blackness of space - has managed to develop life? And not just, you know, slime, but life-life? Trees-life? Could we breathe down there?”

Blithe checked his pad again.

“Uh, looks likely. There could be pathogens or something we’re missing but early analysis suggests that-”

“Are you sure?” Nova cut across.

“We triple checked,” he bristled.

“You are allowed to go up to quadruple, you know. Sorry, sorry, that was grouchy, I’m still waking up. This is insane though, right? Can we agree on that?

“It is...inexplicable.”

Blithe was generally the one willing to believe that if he could see it there was an explanation for it if you sat down and worked it out and, generally, this was a fair position to take. But apparently he had limits.

“Suppose that’s one way of putting it. Come on then, show me this thing,” Nova said, holding out a hoof for his pad. He held it out to her and she hoiked it from his grasp, lifting it over into her hooves and starting to flick through the findings.

This she did - it should be briefly pointed out - not with magic. She could have done, but it would have been an effort. Magic was a universal force as had been observed, and existed everywhere. However, that did not mean it existed everywhere in equal abundance. When surrounded by other ponies it came thick and fast. Out here? Far, far away? Not so much.

So Nova was wearing one of the telekinetic devices that had been developed in cooperation with the Hegemony. It served to cover most of the mundane things a unicorn might do day-to-day, at least as far as manipulating things went. Very handy.

The Hegemony had initially offered to develop the device as an implant, but as a rule ponies were a lot more leery about cutting bits out of themselves to replace them with implants than Gorf were, so mostly it was worn.

Typically this levitation was being referred to as ‘k’ing’ and objects moved in such a way were said to have been k’d, by the kids. This was because it was the future, and such slang was to be expected. Shit was wild.

Apparently. As agonising as it was in practise to hear.

But this was all by-the-by. The future was an odd place and the people in it did odd things.

Nova was busy looking through the pad, flicking the screen with a hoof.

Pretty much everything that he’d said was as he’d said it was. She didn’t have time for anything full or comprehensive but everything she looked at seemed to match up, especially the most important part - the planet had life. Had a full and proper atmosphere that, by all accounts, looked positively comfortable.

Nova stared at the pad hard, willing what she was seeing to make an easy kind of sense. But it refused. She sighed, and passed the pad back.

“We’re going to have to land on it,” she said with a sigh, rubbing residual sleep from her eyes. Blithe looked surprised.

“We are?” He asked.

“Yes! This place is breaking who knows how many rules! Think what it could mean!” Nova said.

“What could it mean?”

“I don’t know! That’s the point! I want to find out!”

#4

And so it was that an away party was organised.

This wasn’t unusual. There had been a few occasions during their expedition so far that had required a quick trip down to the surface of a planet - collect actual, physical samples, investigate something that looked anomalous from orbit, etcetera - but this time it was a touch different.

Primarily because this time Nova was insistent on going down herself, rather than allowing delegation to flow around her like a river of responsible leadership. She was also insisting that Blithe come, because while she trusted in her own abilities she had an equal amount of trust in his presence to act as a balance to her, say, blindspots.

“Typically speaking - you know, just thinking about the guidelines and all - someone from the chain of command is supposed to stay onboard. Just a suggestion,” Xide said, once this became something on which she was refusing to budge.

Now that he mentioned it she could kind of see he had a point. Not enough of a point to make her want to change her mind, however. She thought about it a moment.

“Xide?” She suggested, pointing at him. His lights blinked but, again, this meant nothing to Nova, though his bobbing in the air certainly suggested being taken aback.

“I’m not part of the chain of command, I’m an advisor. Your advisor, specifically. I have explained this,” he said.

“Bah, sure, if you want to keep that up. Fine, uh…”

Nova looked about, tried to remember who came after Blithe in the chain of things and who she could also trust to be in charge of things in her absence. Her eyes - and brain - settled on the obvious choice, Third Choice, a pony who had been chomping at the bit to be given something to oversee ever since the trip had started.

“Alright, Third Choice, you’re up,” Nova said, pointing.

Third Choice, feeling the hoof of fate upon his shoulder, stood up straighter than he ever had in his life.

“It is my DESTINY!” He declared.

“Thought you’d be happy. Alright, chop chop, let’s do it to it.”

In short order equipment was put together, the shuttle stocked with whatever provisions would be required for the people it would be hosting for the next few days, and everyone involved suited up.

The suits were important. They were especially important on those worlds they’d touched down on which were unfriendly to life, and while this particular planet appeared to be very friendly indeed to life the suits remained important.

Nova gave a speech on this very subject to all members of the away party as the shuttle descended, knowing she had a captive audience and that, with all the bumping, most of them would want a distraction anyway, and listening to her was as good as any.

“Now I don’t care how nice it looks or how safe your readings say it is - when you are outside the shuttle these suits stay on, okay? We are taking samples of everything and we are checking everything and only once we are sure beyond an absolute shadow of a doubt that everything is fine is anyone setting a hoof or claw or whatever on this planet without protection. And even then I ain’t so sure about it. This whole place gives me the heebie-jeebies. Got it?”

A chorus of ‘yes’ from all those gathered.

The shuttle lurched. All the technology in the world could only do so much for entry into the atmosphere.

Swallowing, Nova plunged onwards, as much to distract herself from the horrible bouncing as much as to inform those listening:

“Get samples, get samples of everything. You see something new, take a sample. You see something you think you already got a sample of you get another one just to be sure. I want check-ins every fifteen minutes, alright? Just a tap, just show you’re okay and still alive enough to press a button. And no-one goes off alone, alright? No-one goes off in twos even. You’re in groups, stay in groups. I’m not going back one short, okay?”

This was something everyone could get behind.

The shuttle touched down in an area of gently rolling slopes and grass, being as how this was an excellent place to land a shuttle. Off in one direction were trees, in another some large bodies of water and much, much further away, mountains, but they weren’t so worried about those, at least not yet.

Ensuring that the shuttle itself was properly secure and that every group was properly equipped they all then set out, some in vehicles, some on foot (or, rather, hoof, claw, etcetera). Nova’s own group - containing Blithe and Xide, among others - stuck relatively close to the shuttle, mostly for ease of staying in contact with all the others.

They still had a poke around though, sampling grass, some trees, a hedge or two.

Meanwhile, in orbit, the science vessel continued surveying.

The surveying went uneventfully. From up there nothing appeared out of the ordinary. The place looked fine. Like any other nice, comfortable, life-sustaining planet might be expected to look. No outstanding anomalies, nothing in its geography or geology to raise any undue concerns. Some odd mountains in odd places, but nothing unreasonable or without what could be a fairly simple explanation. All in all it was perfectly and completely lovely.

Creepy as anything.

It did not take long for it to be noticed that the whole ecosystem was a bit off.

There were trees and grass and a few other plants (like the hedge), yes, but that was it. There might have been a lot of them, but it was just the same tree or the same type of grass or same bush or same daisy-like flower over and over again across the whole planet. Clones, basically. And none of them seemed to really have any relation to the other, as though they’d been put there rather than developed there. Just a bunch of random clones.

There were gaps, not links. Pieces, not a joined and inter-related system. Whole forests of the same tree. Not linked, not one of those types of tree that spread to form whole groves. Just copies, no competition. Like someone had tried to cover up with quantity the fact that they were missing a few important pieces. Like animals, for one.

They weren’t the only things missing, either.

“There’s no insects,” Blithe said, coming up beside Nova as she glared out across the landscape which was being aggressively pleasant to look at.

Nova was beyond being surprise at this point.

“Of course there aren’t. No animals, no insects. It’s not like that’s flatly impossible or anything,” she said with a sigh.

“Maybe the flora here evolved without insects?” Blithe suggested.

“There are flowers!”

Blithe tried to think of an argument that could be made for the existence of flowers where nothing was around to be attracted to them. There were good ones, of course, as flowers weren’t exclusively there to attract insects or animals. Just mostly. Mainly.

But then again, what Nova was referring to was to the field of daisies they were standing next to. Explicit, obvious, impossible-to-mistake-for-anything-other-than-daisies daisies. Which was kind of hard to argue around.

“...okay, yeah, that’s a little weird. But it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility. There might be an explanation,” Blithe said.

“I’m sure it’s a fantastic one,” Nova said, dripping sarcasm. This went far, far over Blithe’s head because he’d been stood far back when the sarcasm had been handed out, and didn’t really get how it worked. He just smiled and said:

“Well it’d have to be fantastic! By definition, I mean.”

Same word, two ways you could come at it from. Nova looked at Blithe sideways, or at least as best she could in her suit.

“You know what I mean,” she said. “Impossibilities aside this place is so-far turning out to be basically perfect. Atmosphere is about as comfortable as you could make it if you tried on purpose, nothing around that seems to want to kill us, no bacteria or anything lurking around to rot us from the inside-out - place is perfect.”

“That’s good,” Blithe said. Nova pouted inside her helmet.

“It’s weird!”

She brooded angrily on this point for some moments, and Blithe was formulating something so didn’t immediately reply. When he did, he came back with:

“If it turns out that the planet is suitable for colonisation do you think...”

He didn’t finish, perhaps out of fear that fully voicing the question might jinx it. Nova stopped brooding and sighed, kind of wishing she could rub her face. Helmets were a ballache sometimes.

“Right now I’m not thinking anything. Well, that’s a lie, I’m thinking lots of things, but not that. Let’s just focus on right in front of us right now, hmm? No use getting our hopes up this early,” she said.

“Good idea, Captain.”

Work continued, at least until, some time later, Blithe got Nova’s attention again.

“Going to be dark in an hour or two, Captain,” he said. Nova thought about this for a second.

“Get everyone in now,” she said.

Who knew what happened after dark? Maybe that was when all the really bad stuff started.

“Aye aye, Captain,” Blithe said, trotting off to communicate this.

Recalling everyone took perhaps an hour, tops, some groups having gone a far way away, but all seemed pretty happy to be coming back and made good time.

Nova was the last one back into the shuttle, waiting until everyone else had entered before following and bringing up the rear. Seemed the Captain-y thing to do to her, not that she knew for sure one way or the other.

By the time she was in and had sealed the doors behind her most of the crew had already shuffled off down the corridor of the shuttle to the mess or their bunk or for a shower or what have you, but enough were dawdling for Nova to feel it not a complete waste of time to speak up:

“Alright everyone. We’ll be sticking around on the surface another day or two just to be sure, make sure we didn’t miss anything so we don’t have to- wait wait, shh,” Nova said, stopping. Everyone else stopped too and listened.

Nothing. Then, a tapping sound. Tap tap tap. Then nothing again.

Nova swallowed.

“Is something...knocking at the door?” She asked.

No-one answered this, but there was another knock at the door so they didn’t really need to. Nova looked around but all she got from this was learning that everyone was looking at her. This was one of those times when being the captain wasn’t ideal. Ideally you’d want someone else in charge at a moment like this.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t how things had shaken out.

“Ugh, fine, bold leadership. I can do that,” Nova said to herself, hopping down off the chair and marching towards the shuttle door, only flinching a little bit where there was another burst of louder tapping.

“They’re persistent, whoever they are. I’ll give them that. Do we have any weapons on this shuttle?” She asked.

“We have one weapon,” said Blithe, so far the only other member of the crew to have moved a muscle.

The Hegemony was not big on weapons. They had famously big weapons on their famously scary ships and understood the importance of weapons in a general sense, but this remained something of a point of embarrassment for them. Ideally they’d prefer that no-one had weapons at all, but they were aware that this was unlikely to occur anytime soon.

At a nod from Nova one of the crew brought forward the single on-board weapon. It looked functional enough, if a little awkward given it was a generic all-purpose all-species model so had been made as broadly ergonomic as possible - good for hooves, good for tentacles, good for whatever!

Did make it look a little ridiculous on the user-end. The business end was less of a joke, though. If you found yourself looking down that end you’d likely know you’d made a mistake somewhere.

“Better than nothing I suppose. Give it here,” said Nova, gesturing for the weapon to be handed over. It was not, not immediately. The crewmember shifted uneasily.

“Captain?” They asked.

“I’m the Captain, I’ll open the door,” Nova said.

This was not really the right way to do things but it was the way that Nova was going to do things.

“You’re going to open the door?!” Blithe sputtered.

Annoyed at the lack of progress and keen to cover up the thrumming and mounting sense of fear building in her gut Nova growled and swiped the weapon out of the crewmember’s grasp.

“Someone knocks on your door on a planet you thought was uninhabited you open the door!” She said. Blithe gawped at her as though she’d lost her mind.

“Have you never seen a film?!” He asked.

“Oh give me that,” Nova snapped, snatching the weapon from the crewmember and marching up to the door, squaring herself as she did so. Had to project confidence, even as she felt less and less of it the closer to the door she got.

“Captain! I don’t think this is a good idea!” Blithe protested, albeit a safe distance from the doors and from Nova herself.

“Tell me about it. Write me up later,” Nova said through gritted teeth.

The inner door - an affair with a lot more glass (or glass-analogue) in it than the outer door - opened and Nova stepped into the airlock. The inner door then closed behind her, sealing with a hiss.

“Could just be the wind, please just be the wind…” She said to herself, clutching the weapon with one hoof, tapping keys to open the outer door with a field.

A pause while things cycled. The outer door opened.

And standing there, casual as anything, was an alien the likes of which Nova had never seen before and one not wearing any kind of environmental gear, either. Kind of big, kind of lanky, dressed for the sunny weather, standing on two legs and looking back at her with two beady little eyes.

“Knock knock,” said the alien, waving a hand. Nova waved back, without really thinking about it. Her brain had sort of just stopped at the sheer impossibility of the situation. She’d even forgotten to point the weapon at anything other than the floor. She’d forgotten she even had it.

Not that the alien seemed to mind the fact she was holding it in the first place. Assuming it even noticed. The alien nodded and cleared its throat and said:

“Hello and welcome to the planet. If we’re going to get along it’ll be best if we agree to some house rules as early as possible. Never had guests before but structure is important, I think. One, you should never - uh - “

The alien paused midway through extending a thumb to start counting off, only just having actually stopped to look at the crew of the shuttle stood staring at them through the inner door. Only Nova was properly in view, but that seemed enough to have disrupted the thing’s train of thought. It cocked its head.

“Uh,” it said again. “This might sound like an odd question but you wouldn’t happen to be colourful ponies and dragons and stuff in dinky little space suits, would you?”

All Hegemony spacesuits had helmets of the ‘solid material, flat angles, retractable bits and with many redundant cameras’ design, allowing those wearing them complete and unimpeded fields of view without the troublesome risk of cracking one’s helmet on a rock and dying. Did mean that you couldn’t look someone face-to-face while wearing one, but so what?

Also didn’t do much to disguise the shape of a pony’s head, either. Ears and such. And Nova’s case a horn, too. And that’s not getting onto the overall pony shape in general. You couldn’t really hide that.

Nova could only nod dumbly, brain still not quite fully recovered.

The alien looked, for all that Nova could see, surprised to hear this. It blinked and seemed to struggle for what to say next, eventually settling on:

“Wow, holy shit. Never thought we’d see you guys again.”

Author's Notes:

Knock knock.

#5

Author's Notes:

Well I'm having fun, at least.

Can't speak for the rest of you!

Nova was honestly lost for words. None of the inflight captain training material had covered this. Covered all sorts of other first-contact procedure, but nothing for aliens in what appeared to be silk shirts just lazily wandering up to your shuttle, knocking, and then apparently knowing who you were already.

For his part - Nova assumed ‘his’ - the alien appeared utterly unruffled. If anything, he looked more and more delighted with each passing second. He even took a step forward so he could lean on the inside of the outer doorframe, causing Nova to take a few faltering steps backward.

“Hail, spacefarer, you doing alright there? So how was that big magic spaceship of yours? Guess it must have worked, eh? Shame I never got to see it. Ah well. Life, am I right? Full of, uh, things,” he said, arms folded, one hand waving.

This finally snapped Nova out of it, and more than anything she found herself feeling oddly annoyed. There was no gravitas in this! And, more’s the point, where the hell had this guy been ten minutes ago? Where had he come from?

And, perhaps most importantly:

“How do you know any of this?”

“It’s a very long story. Ooh, quick question before we continue: Twilight’s still alive, right?”

“Princess Twilight?”

His face immediately lit up.

“Yes! Her! Kind of a lavender colour? Or purple? Or whatever I’m colourblind I don’t know. Used to be colourblind, heh. Was when I knew her. But that sort of colour, you know? Horn? Wings? Really lovely lady? Maybe a little bit of a workaholic sometimes?”

By the time he’d finished asking this he’d advanced on Nova and bent forward down to her until he was basically in Nova’s face with her backed up all the way to the inner door. She found this alarming. The gun held (appropriately enough) defensively in front of her. Not that the alien seemed concerned.

“Uh, yeah, she - she’s still alive, why?”

The alien was set to say something very obviously enthusiastic before noticing that his excitement was perhaps threatening to get the better of him. Stepping back and putting a more comfortable distance between the two of them he adjusted his collar and straightened out his trousers and instead said, calmly:

“Just wondering. We were friends, you see.”

“I find that very hard to believe,” Nova said.

The alien pouted, actually pouted.

“Why? I’m not friendly?”

“No, it’s more that she’s thousands of years old and thousands of light years away. And you’re some guy. On some planet,” Nova said.

“Thousands of years? Really?” He asked, stunned, ignoring the other parts. Nova nodded.

A pause. All at once the alien looked very distant.

“Can’t have been - no, no, not that long. S’probably time dilation, that. Has to be. Otherwise that’d mean...nevermind, not important. And yes well, that as maybe. Stranger things have happened, haven’t they?” He said, verging onto the defensive.

“Not that often! Not like this!” Nova said.

He looked set to press his particular point only to decide against it at the last minute and shrug.

“Hmm, suppose. My experiences aren’t universal, I’ll grant you. But she’s alive, yeah?” The alien asked again with a level of eagerness that might have been starting to creep into the nakedly desperate. Nova raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah. She is. Why do you keep asking?”

“I couldn’t, uh, have a word with her, could I? You guys have a space phone or something?”

“Why do you want to talk to Princess Twilight?” Nova asked, aflame with suspicion. The alien just shrugged again, going for casual but doing very little to disguise what was obviously mounting excitement.

“We just - I just miss her, is all. Is that okay by you?”

That flame of suspicion still burned, just with a less intense heat. This whole thing was bizarre. Not to mention improbable. Space was big and a lot could happen in it, sure, but there were limits. Weren’t there?

“Right…”

“Please? I’ll help you out here, if you want. You’re bold and intrepid space explorers, aren’t you? Having a poke around the planet? I can be a local guide, right? Answer any questions you got, anything you need. I’d just really like to talk to her. Or even just see her. Or her just know that I’m…”

He clearly wasn’t sure what he wanted, really, and realised this about halfway through what he was saying.

Nova sighed.

She was probably going to regret this.

“Just because I’m curious I am going to allow this. Once. I’ll contact her, and you can be there. Okay? You follow me. You step out of my sight I shoot you. You touch anything I shoot you. You act too suspicious for too long I shoot you,” she said, giving the gun a waggle.

“Jesus you guys got prickly! What happened to friendship?”

“Strangers are friends you just haven’t met yet, but some strangers are stranger than most.”

Took a second for both of them to really, properly appreciate that she’d just said this.

“...you practise that one?” The alien asked.

“No. Made more sense in my head. Shut up,” Nova said, turning her away, swapping the gun into a field and raising a hoof to her helmet. She didn’t have to do this, but it was a force of habit.

“Crew, I’m coming in with a local. Everyone either hole up and seal your door or put your suit back on.”

Better safe than sorry.

“I’m perfectly clean, you know,” the alien said.

“Yeah. Great. Come on.”

Allowing a moment or two for the crew - who she knew had heard, because she’d broadcast across the shuttle’s address system and most had probably been listening in anyway - to get ready she opened up the inner door and made to step through only to stop and whip around, bringing the gun up.

“I will shoot you.”

The alien held his hands up in front of him.

“Fuck! I get it! I’ll be right behind you.”

She held the gun on him a moment longer - appalling weapon handling, in all honesty, but this was the first time in her life she’d so much as touched a gun - and then continued on in, the alien following behind and grumbling to himself about how Twilight had never threatened him with a firearm.

Blithe (helmet back on) was the first to react, being the closest, and his reaction was about what Nova had expected.

“Captain! What are you doing?!” He squealed, attention flicking from Nova to the alien and unable to pick which it should settle on.

“Taking a punt. Just trust me on this one, I think it’s worth following up on,” Nova said.

“That’s right, I’m a risky venture,” The alien said proudly, tapping a thumb against his chest. Nova didn’t even bother to look.

“Really not doing yourself any favours there,” she said.

“Not meaning to unsettle you or anything Captain but I can’t get any readings off the alien. That doesn’t mean anything, but I just thought you’d like to know,” Xide said, hovering, tentacles wafting. The alien gave the machine a look and if he found anything strange about synths he didn’t show it.

“Just don’t really appreciate being bathed in strange waves,” he said.

Xide’s wafting paused for a second or so, about the closest to actual shock or surprise that Nova had ever seen (or recognised) out of him.

“You’re blocking me?” He asked.

“Yes,” the alien said.

“How?” Xide asked.

A fair question.

“I ‘unno,” he said.

An unhelpful answer. Nova grunted.

“Look, enough. We’re doing a thing. We go do the thing, the thing is done, that’s that. Enough of this wheel-spinning. You, come with me. Everyone else, back up,” she said, marching on, alien in tow.

She marched him right to her own personal cabin (why the shuttle had a personal cabin for the Captain given that the Captain wasn’t really ever supposed to go on these missions was anyone’s guess - the Hegemony was a meritocracy with a hereditary emperor, you figure it out) and once in there got busy setting up the sub-aether communicator built into the desk console.

The alien let out a low whistle.

“Very swish. Everything is so shiny,” he said, shambling over to stand beside Nova, backing off to the side a moment later when she gave him a pointed look. Even with the helmet he could tell that giving space would be the polite thing to do. “What you doing there?” He asked from the side.

He was looking over Nova’s desk, on which the console had unfolded grandly. The main screen was what took up the most space and, at that moment, it wasn’t really showing anything other than some gently twirling progress symbol.

“Waiting for a connection. The Princess is a long way away. Probably the middle of the night where she is too, knowing my luck,” Nova said.

It was. When the connection got through and when it actually got picked up Twilight appeared to have just woken up, mane untidy, crown clearly having been put on in the dark. She squinted and blinked at the bright screen, reading who the communication belonged to.

“Nova? What - what is it? Why are you wearing that? Is something wrong?” She asked once she’d got it, concern quickly mounting. Nova headed this off.

“No, nothing wrong. Well, not really. But, uh, something’s come up,” she said.

“What?”

“We found an alien.”

If they’d been back in Hegemony space or even near to it than communication would have been borderline instantaneous. Given that they were out the sticks though things were a little slower, and there was a gap between response times.

Not a huge gap, but still. Enough of a gap to be galling to those who were used to it not being there at all and doubly galling to those who wanted to hear what the fuss was all about. Like Twilight.

“Alien? What alien?” She asked, fully awake now, and fully serious.

“It’s not any kind I’m familiar with. New one. Seems friendly, if a bit odd. Translator works fine with it but that could mean anything,” Nova said.

The translator was a powerful and versatile piece of technology, after all. Almost conveniently so. So far Nova had never run into anything or anyone it hadn’t been able to work on, after a little moment to adapt. Hell, it even let her communicate with Gorf and half of what they said was in smell.

“So the planet has indigenous life? Intelligent life?” Twilight asked, face and tone utterly unreadable. She could have been thinking anything. What she was probably thinking was why this was something that Nova felt the need to tell her about.

“Uh...kind of? It’s just him,” Nova said. Twilight blinked. Again, could have meant anything.

“What?”

“He is the only sapient life on the planet. Just him. Just this guy.”

This was unusual, assuming it was actually true.

“...are you sure?”

“Very. Unless they’re hiding underground or over the horizon. And even that we’d probably be able to pick up on somehow. Scans showed nothing, landing crews found nothing. We’ve found nothing. It’s just him,” Nova said, very, very slightly annoyed that the Princess would even obliquely suggest she hadn’t checked first.

Twilight allowed the very tiniest hint of a frown to just crease her features.

“That seems unlikely,” she said.

“It is. But he’s here.”

“Here as in ‘present on the planet’ or here as in ‘actually next to you right now’?” Twilight asked.

“Actually next to me right now. Says his name’s - what did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” Came the alien’s voice, offscreen for Twilight, off to the side for Nova. .

“Well what is it?”

“Jack.”

Nova turned back to the screen again.

“Says his name’s Jack. Says you know him?”

Twilight said nothing and did not move, though her eyes did get just that fractionally wider. Had Nova not been hyper-attuned to these little details she probably would have missed it completely.

“Princess?” She prompted and Twilight snapped out of it, shaking her head.

“Sorry Nova I think there has to be something interfering with communications - it sounded like you said, well - could you repeat that, please?”

“About what? The alien’s name?” Nova asked, ignoring an agitated ‘I’m standing right here, come on’ gesture from Jack to her side. On-screen, Twilight nodded and so Nova repeated: “Says his name’s Jack.”

“...c-could you describe the alien please, Nova?”

Nova again turned to the alien - Jack, apparently - and looked him over.

“Kind of lanky. Tall. Weird eyes.”

“Now you’re just being rude,” said Jack. Nova ignored him.

“Wearing clothes. Maybe they’re tasteful to its species, I don’t know. Uh…”

“I’m right here! Can I just talk to her?” Jack protested.

“Fine, fine, whatever,” Nova grumbled, hopping off the seat and stepping aside, presenting it to him grandly. Jack, elated, perched himself on the chair and took a second to get used to the weird, multi-species design so he didn’t have to worry about falling off.

“Hey Twilight, how’s it going? You’re looking good,” he said once settled, beaming ear-to-ear.

Twilight said nothing and just stared back at him, so utterly unmoving that Jack gave the screen a smack on the side, crazing the picture. Technically speaking that should have been impossible, but it had happened anyway.

“Hello? Is this getting through?” He asked, earning himself a jab in the leg from Nova’s horn.

“Don’t hit that!” She hissed.

“Sorry! It’s just - it’s been a while since we spoke is all. Lot to catch up on. So Twilight, how’s it going? Hear you live in space now? That’s cool. I live in space too. Kind of. On a planet though. I like the classics.”

Still nothing. Onscreen Twilight continued to remain utterly and completely still, face frozen in an entirely unreadable expression that could have been anywhere from surprise to horror to elation or perhaps somewhere in all three and more.

“...hello?” Jack ventured, turning to Nova. “This thing is on, right?”

Twilight finally let out the breath she’d been holding and it came out long and shaky.

“I - I - Nova, I’ll back get to you. Get back to you. Soon. Get back to you soon,” she said, then looking off to the side. “C-Cadence? Cadence where are you?!”

Followed by her falling over and out of frame.

The connection then cut and the screen went dark. Jack frowned.

“The fuck?” He grunted, moving to smack it again only to remember he wasn’t meant to and instead looking for buttons he could jab at. The haptic, hyper-intuitive interface went completely over his head. Meanwhile, Nova was honestly astounded by what she’d just seen.

“She disconnected,” she said. Jack rounded on her so suddenly she flinched.

“What did I say?! Why would she leave me again?! Why - calm, calm. Phew, all this excitement, eh? Calm. I’m sure it’ll all become clear,” he said, parting his hands in a gesture of calm, closing his eyes and taking a breath before giving Nova a nervous glance. “She’ll - she’ll come back, right?”

“Looked like she needed a minute so probably won’t try again for a while but - you okay there?”

Jack was gripping the edges of the desk and leaning forward, breathing rather quickly.

“Sorry, heh, feeling a little, ah, whoo! Strange. Which, uh, which way out of this thing again?” He asked.

“Out of the shuttle?” Nova asked. Jack nodded.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Just follow the blue line on the floor,” Nova said, pointing toward the door. Jack stood up and swayed, one hand going for the desk again to steady himself.

“Blue line? Neat. Cool. Just going to get some air.”

And off he went, only briefly staggering into the doorframe on his way out.

Nova looked at the door through which he’d staggered, then back to the screen still showing a glaring, blinking [DISCONNECTED].

“‘Go to space’, they said. ‘Be a Captain’ they said…” she grumbled to herself, closing the console and leaving the cabin.

Outside, she bumped into Blithe.

“The alien left! Really quickly, too. Basically ran out. Even managed to work the doors. Not sure how it knew how to do that…” He said.

“Something very strange is going on here, Blithe. I think like we’ve arrived late to something that happened,” Nova said, walking and talking, Blithe following.

“Like what?” He asked.

“I don’t know. But that guy says he knows the Princess? Then he talks to her and she freaks out? That’s not normal. I’ve never seen that.”

That caught Blithe off-guard.

“She what?”

“She got all frozen up and then fell over. I’m not even kidding!”

“The Princess?”

This just didn’t sound believable.

“I know!” Nova said.

The two of them took a moment to try and comprehend this.

“So what do we do now, Captain?”

“Now? Well, the Princess said she’d get back to me so I’m waiting on that. In the meantime we still have to give this place a proper look, don’t we? How can we not? And I should probably keep talking to that guy.”

“The alien?”

“Yeah. He’s got to know something, right? Only guy on the planet. Has to have something going. This place has more questions than answers as it is, so my hooves are tied I’d say.”

“I don’t know, Captain…”

“Hey, look, if nothing else it’s something interesting. Could we have a conversation with your gas giant ecosystem? No, no we could not. Whereas I can ask this guy questions and he might even answer them. That’s something. So I’m going to go do that.”

“Do you want the gun?”

Nova had left it behind in her cabin, and would have forgotten it completely if Blithe hadn’t mentioned it.

“...no. No I think I’ll be alright,” she said. In all honesty she hadn’t liked having it around.

“Is it - is that safe?” Blithe asked.

For a chap so brimming with the love of life he was showing an alarmingly wide nervous streak. Nova put it down to the circumstances being just so wildly out of the ordinary. Even by their space-trawling standards.

“What is safe, really? Is he dangerous, you mean? I don’t think so. Seems more lonely than anything. But, uh, maybe just keep an eye on me, eh? Maybe send up a drone or just one of the external sensors. Just to, uh, just so you know. Yeah?” Nova said.

Blithe gave a small salute. Unnecessary, but undeniably adorable.

“Can do, Captain.”

With that settled Nova girded her loins and set herself to the task at hand. The alien - Jack - had said he was going to get some air, so he hopefully hadn’t gone far. She’d just pop out, have a look round and if he was there, have a chat. If not, no harm done, wait for the Princess to get back to her.

Sounded like a plan.

“Alright,” Nova said to herself, following the blue line. “Alright alright alright…”

#6

Author's Notes:

Exposition!

HURGH!

/vomits all over your shoes

Jack had, indeed, not gone far.

He was sat in one of the chairs around a table that was itself sat incongruously on the grass outside the shuttle. None of this furniture had been there before. Indeed, how it could exist at all was unclear. But there it was, and there was Jack sitting on it, staring out over the hills at nothing much at all.

Also, shouldn’t it have been dark by now? Maybe Blithe had had the numbers a little off.

Probably not important.

“What the…” Nova mumbled before shaking her head and abjectly refusing to be distracted by nonsense like randomly-appearing, low-quality garden furniture. It’d take more than that to rattle her! She moved on over to join him.

The closest spare chair had - in sharp contrast to all those Nova had experience of - plainly been designed with only those of Jack’s shape and dimensions in mind. Sitting in it wasn’t impossible for her, just trickier than she might have liked. Balancing against the table helped.

“Hope I didn’t scare her off…” Jack said.

“You really knew the Princess? From before? Way before?” Nova asked, without preamble.

He spared her a glance. A brief one.

“I did indeed. Heh, what gave me away? That she freaked out?”

“Kind of. I’ve never seen her be like that before. Ever,” Nova said. Jack sighed, more happily than anything else.

“She has her moments. We all do.”

Jack kept staring off at the horizon and Nova was quiet a moment, chewing on her lip, thinking of how best to proceed.

“How old are you?” She asked.

Jack thought about this, scratching his head.

“I don’t know, pick a number. How old is Twilight? Pick that number and add or subtract some years. Space is weird. Time is weird. It doesn’t matter anyway. Does it?”

“It kind of does,” Nova said.

He thought about this, nodded, shrugged.

“Suppose. Can’t really help you, I’m afraid. Wasn’t really in a position to keep count. And to have years you kind of need to have a sun, and I didn’t have a sun for quite a while.”

Nova squinted at Jack, then squinted at the sun that was very obviously there where it belonged (in the sky, still, somehow, despite how it should have set by now) and then squinted at Jack some more. She got no answers from doing this.

“What?” She asked.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“You can’t just drop lines like that and expect me to say ‘Oh okay sure fine’! Sun’s are important! What do you mean you didn’t have a sun! It’s there!”

“Keep your hair on, geeze. You not learn about this? Guess you wouldn’t. Ancient history, right? There was a sun, used to be a sun. Used to orbit the planet. A - a very nice lady used to keep it going round. But it was all magic bollocks. Everyone left. The sun died, she died, everything died. So it goes. Well, except me. I just stuck around.”

“You survived the sun going out?”

“Well I’m here, aren’t I? And why else do you think Twilight and you lot left? For kicks?”

He had a point, and it did ring a bell. Something she had partway forgotten from a lesson a long time ago back when she’d been only little, something on how and why they’d ended up on a habitat and in the Hegemony. At the time she hadn’t paid a huge amount of attention and, since then, hadn’t seen a whole lot of reason to go back over it.

“So you...were on a planet with no sun?” She asked.

“Yes.”

“For years?”

“Yes.”

“Hundreds or maybe thousands of years?”

Jack sighed.

“Yes. Look, I’m not going to lie and say that it was a great time. Things were pretty miserable. Extremely miserable, in fact! Anytime I wasn’t asleep I rather wished I was. Or dead, you know, sometimes. Not that that could happen, really. Could have steered into something stellar and lethal, I suppose, but by the time I could do that I had other plans. Dwelling on how bad things were wasn’t going to fix them, you know? Wasn’t going to change the hand I’d been dealt. So just had to push forward! There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn, you know.”

In no way was this what Nova had been asking for.

“Uh, okay,” she said.

“It’s a thing I heard one time. Long time ago! Anyway. Doesn’t matter now. The point is I’m still here. Been here a while. Felt bad before but now I feel much better. Hah! Ahaha! Ahahahaha!”

He clapped and gave some momentary jazz-hands. Nova, stony silent, stared him down the way someone with an eye-less helmet can only truly manage. Beneath this, Jack wilted, sinking into his seat and picking at the tabletop.

“Sorry, out of practise with conversations,” he said, quietly.

“Kind of picking up on that,” Nova said.

A wind blew, and all that clone grass rippled.

“Here’s kind of a basic question but what did you eat?” Nova asked, just to keep things moving.

“I don’t eat,” Jack said, sullently, shrugging.

“Right, sure, of course not ask a stupid question.”

Jack shrugged some more, practically melting into his chair at this point.

“Sorry.”

Nova sighed.

“What’s up?” She asked, not totally enthused with playing agony aunt to an alien.

“Nothing, just - y-you don’t think Twilight’s mad at me, do you?” Jack asked.

“What? No. I mean, I don’t think so. How could she be?” Nova asked in turn, kind of baffled that he’d even think this - they’d barely spoken!

“I don’t know. I kind of used to like making her mad at me. A little mad, you know. Just for fun. Long time ago, mind. Kind of seems stupid now. Oh man. Can we - can we talk about something else? Ask me something else. Please.”

He just looked so bloody forlorn all of a sudden that Nova couldn’t really help herself.

“Uh, sure, alright. So if you were on a planet with a sun going around it, and that sun went out, then how…”

She glanced up to the sun again, making sure that Jack saw her do this.

“I moved the planet. From there, to here,” he said, holding his hands out as though holding a ball and then moving his hands from one side to the other. A good demonstration, all things considered.

A particular type of question was begging to be asked, though.

“Did you say ‘moved the planet’?” Nova asked.

Jack rubbed his face.

“I really should just lay it all out shouldn’t I? Or would you like to make a list of questions? Yes I moved the planet. I can move the planet. That’s how I got it here. And just so you don’t ask me this question later when you work it out yes this is the planet that you guys left in the first place. Talk about coincidences, eh? What a strange universe we live in.”

Nova stared at him for a second, waiting for another burst of laughter or a punchline or something, but nothing. She wished she could rub her own face but the helmet got in the way.

“I think I’ve hit my limit on strange stuff. That one didn’t even really register, I just felt it wash over me. This is the planet we came from, the planet Princess Twilight and Princess Cadence and a few others used to live on. Hmm. Nope, nope. Not sinking in at all sorry. Just won’t work,” she said.

She’d had a long day.

“Weird, right? But then I’ve had a lot of weird. Maybe it’s like time travel in Star Trek. You know? Once you’ve dipped your toe you start attracting more and more. Christ how do I even remember that?”

Nova had no idea what he was talking about and, at that exact moment, didn’t have enough care left to fritter it away on things like that. She had other issues.

“Just out of curiosity how did you learn you could move planets?” She asked.

“Same way anyone learns they can move planets,” Jack said.

“Oh yeah yeah, right. Course,” Nova said with laboured cheerfulness. Jack looked askance.

“I kind of get the impression you don’t believe me.”

“I don’t. But I also can’t deny that you’re here somewhere that doesn’t make much sense, sitting on a chair that wasn’t here before. That, and I do know this was a rogue planet anyway, annoyingly. I’m keeping an open mind. Or trying to.”

“How is any of this unbelievable? Don’t you guys still have magic?” Jack asked.

“We do, but there’s magic and then there this! And stop showing off that you know things!”

“Hehe, sorry. But I do! And hmm. Meh. Maybe you have a point.”

Jack went thoughtfully quiet a moment before swivelling about so he was actually, properly facing Nova head-on for the first time in the whole conversation, stretching his hands out and laying them flat on the table. He let out a breath.

“Right. So. I was meditating - well, not really, I was just sitting and staring into space. Actual space, like, with the stars. I used to do a lot of that, back when I was in the dark. Didn’t have a whole lot else I could do. And I was staring and I just sort of became more...aware...of myself. It’s hard to explain. I started noticing things that I couldn’t see. They were there, I knew what they were and what they were doing, but I wasn’t sure how I knew. Over time though I did start to know how I knew. If you follow?”

Nova did not follow.

“Um, not really.”

Jack frowned and clenched and unclenched his hands, as though hoping words might, like butterflies, settle. They did not.

“Ah, it’s like, hmm…”

He thought about how best to explain it. It wasn’t anything he’d ever had to explain to anyone before.

“Have you ever heard a noise without knowing what it was? And your brain kind of gropes around for what the best fit might be and so you imagine it as a bunch of different things until you actually get a bit more information and your brain realises and recognises it and suddenly the noise makes sense?”

“I guess?”

“It was like that,” Jack said, smiling in satisfaction at having apparently got his point across.

Probably about as good as it was going to get.

“...okay,” Nova said.

“I have a feeling that you may not be able to fully grasp what it is I’m trying to explain to you. That’s alright. The point is, basically, I discovered that I was aware of something I hadn’t been before and that, now being aware of it, I could actually affect it. Manipulate it. Thought it was magic at first - that surprised me, let me tell you! - but the more it went the more I figured it must be something else. I don’t know. Just a thing I can do now. I moved some rocks around.”

“Wow,” Nova said, dead flat.

“I know, right? Later on a spaceship showed up, just passing through, blah blah. Whatever it used to get around I could feel that too, put two and two together, experimented, learnt I could move the planet, learnt I could do other stuff, whatever. I’ve had a lot of practise now.”

Nova couldn’t help but feel he might have skipped a few key phases here, but that wasn’t what she really latched onto.

“You felt - you felt the ship’s drive or something? The hyperspace drive of the ship?”

Jack seemed to be getting more animated now, and considerably less downbeat then he had been mere moments prior. Guy was all over the place.

“Hyperdrive? Honestly? Do people really call it that? Delightful! How delightful! And maybe, I guess. I don’t know. I just now it was a thing that was there and I can kind of feel when stuff is happening with it and make stuff happen with it myself. I’m rather a fan!”

This was all demonstrably insane.

“So, to confirm and just so we’re completely clear, you can move this whole planet?” Nova asked. He nodded.

“Yep yep. I can move the planet. Can also move smaller stuff to make other stuff. Like, much smaller. The tiniest bits of stuff, put it onto other stuff, make new stuff. What I tried to do around here. With relative levels of success. I don’t know. Don’t worry about it.”

“Around here? You - you made this?” Nova asked, looking around and trying to spot what it was he was actually referring to before realising he might well have been referring to everything.

“Not the planet, that was here before like I said, but all this stuff?” He nodded to the trees in the distance, the grass all around them, gave the table a tap. “Yeah. Table’s easy, dead stuff is easy. Living stuff? Took a while, still not there yet. Place was just…”

He trailed off, seemingly not quite able to find the word.

“Place was too empty.”

Nova would have asked more questions but her brain seemed to have completely shut down by this point, this was just too ridiculous. She flopped onto her haunches and stared into space, trying to make sense out of any of it.

Alien? Not so bad, aliens existed. But this alien knew Princess Twilight personally and could also, you know, move planets and create life. And tables and chairs too, apparently. Just for the added bonus. That was somewhat harder to swallow.

Planet? Planets also fairly common, as far as common things go in space. Habitable planets? Considerably rarer, but still something you did some across. Apparently though this one in particular was the one her whole race came from. That was kind of a stretch.

Too much, just too much.

Did she believe any of it? A single word?

Given hyperspace’s relationship with superluminal travel, mass-reduction and all sorts of other strange, borderline, quasi-magical effects, being able to just fiddle about with it at will could allow someone or something to do, well, a whole heap of things, really.

It wasn’t impossible, and strange hyperspace-related phenomena had been encountered and did do some weird stuff, it was just unlikely and improbable to the point of being basically impossible that this guy could do it on a whim. Which wasn’t quite the same thing, but still.

But the way Princess Twilight had reacted…

“Heads up, here comes your boy,” Jack said, nodding back towards the shuttle. Nova turned and, indeed, Blithe was coming on over.

“Blithe?” Nova asked.

“There’s a message for you, Captain,” Blithe said, doing a brief double-take at the table but not commenting on it.

“Alright, I’ll come in and take it,” Nova said.

Blithe handed her a datapad. She took it.

“Or I could just look at it on this datapad. Thanks, Blithe,” she said. He gave a smart little nod and then headed back to the shuttle as quickly as politeness allowed.

“Space-news?” Jack asked, pointing to the datapad. Nova looked at him over the top of it.

“You can’t see it but I’m looking at you in mild disgust,” she said.

“No, I can feel that. So what’s up?”

She actually looked at the message for the first time, now.

“Message from Princess Twilight. Sounds a lot more composed. ‘Relating to our recent conversation’ etcetera ‘developments’ mmhmm, ‘immediate departure’ - wait, what?”

Nova read the pad again. And again.

“She’s coming here?!” She sputtered.

“She’s coming here!” Jack cheered, leaping to his feet, arms in the air, chair knocked over.

He then ran away.

#7

Author's Notes:

Kind of really the whole bit everything else was just the protective wrapping for, honestly.

This whole story was just a delivery vector for me to do this.

Jack did come back pretty quickly and pretty sheepishly, too, arriving in time to meet the various groups as they decanted from the shuttle in the morning to get started again.

“Sorry,” he’d said, shuffling up to Nova. “I, uh, panicked. Heh, excited! So, uh, ho-how long you reckon she’ll take to, ah, get here? Roughly?”

Nova explained - patiently - that there would be multiple variables involved but at the outside they were looking at two weeks or more, probably more. Jack was plainly deeply disappointed that the answer wasn’t just ‘She’s here already’ but he put a brave face on it.

“Ah. Right. Space big, yes. I’ve heard this, yes,” he said.

In the meantime his offer to act as local guide still stood, and Nova did indeed make use of it, if only to keep an eye on him.

Not that it turned out to be a whole lot of use. The place not having developed in the conventional way there wasn’t a whole lot to actually look at. He basically just talked them through what he’d done and where he’d done it, and most of what he’d done hadn’t been done with a whole lot of thought behind it beyond this weirdly repeated need he had to ‘keep the place tidy’.

After a while Nova felt it was honestly bordering on the obsessional. It wasn’t even that tidy!

Still, all of it was sufficient to finally convince Nova that it was safe to remove helmets while outside the shuttle, much to the relief of all concerned. If Jack had seemed pleasantly surprised on seeing pony-shaped, spacesuit wearing visitors he was practically beside himself when he saw actual ponies.

“Oh my God you’re as adorable as I remember!” He’d said.

“Please don’t say that,” Nova had replied, through gritted teeth.

“Hey, this is my planet I’ll say what I like. Oh! The horn! I forgot about those! And that bug-pony-thing is colourful!”

And he would point to Crewman Spiracle who, on noticing that the alien was pointing at him, pointed to himself in confusion. Nova had to wave him back to work.

“They’re called Changelings and what are you even talking about? They’ve always looked like that!”

“Really? Wow I missed a lot. Nothing then, just changes is all. Ah, I miss Eggs, she was nice.”

“...what?”

There was a lot of that sort of rambling, context-free nonsense from Jack, even as he continued to help them out with pointers on how the planet worked. Or didn’t work, as it was. It really was the work of one man. A man who could do things like just make trees out of whatever, yes, but only one type of tree and only over and over.

So close, but no cigar. Impressive, but needed work.

In the end it did not take as long for Twilight to arrive on the planet as it had for Nova and her crew to get there, because Twilight came direct, didn’t stop to see the sights and also apparently had really pushed the limits of what the ship she came in could do. Once in-system they sent a message through that they were making their final approach, and then it was just counting the hours.

“Twilight’s coming! She’s coming on a spaceship! Oh this is amazing!” Jack giggled, hopping from foot to foot, eyes on the sky. Nova scowled at him.

“Would you stand still for just two seconds?”

“Sorry, I’m excited!” He said, continuing to hop.

“You know I’m starting to see how you managed to get the Princess mad.”

“Haven’t lost it, great!”

Fairly soon after the ship came into actual view, burning down towards them. Jack actually squealed.

“I’m going to hide behind this bush. Shh!” He said, pointing to a bush that just-so happened to be there. Nova goggled at him.

“Seriously?”

“It’ll be funny! Shh, shh! Don’t tell her anything!”

And off he went, practically skipping.

“Conduit for one of the underpinning forces of the galaxy and he’s hiding behind a bush…” Nova said, shaking her head and returning her attention to the rapidly-approaching spaceship, growing larger and glowing more brightly with every passing second.

The ship landed shortly thereafter. It was eye-wateringly fancy looking, definitely one of the Hegemony’s higher-end pieces, likely fully automated and AI-driven, likely Twilight was the only flesh-and-blood thing aboard.

A ramp unfurled, and out strode Princess Twilight. There was bowing from those few crewmembers present and watching (when they should have been working) and she smiled and nodded greetings and exchanged words with all as was required, making her way in this fashion to Nova, who was stood on her Todd, no-one else really wanting to have much part in this.

“Hello Nova,” Twilight said.

“Hello Princess Twilight,” Nova said, giving her own little bow. She hated doing it and she knew Twilight didn’t really care, but these things were apparently important. Tradition. Whatever.

“Where is he?” Twilight then asked, looking around, not doing a very good job of hiding her nervousness. Again, this was very strange for Nova to see.

“He’s - “ Nova looked around and over to Jack’s hiding spot, then whispering to Twilight. “He’s planning on jumping out at you. He seemed pretty insistent I not spoil the surprise but, uh, it’s kind of too weird for me not to. Sorry.”

Twilight looked over at the hedge just in time to see Jack peeping over the top. Their eyes met and, a split-second later, Jack vaulted up to full height, arms over his head.

“Surprise!” He cheered, getting thoroughly sandbagged. His arms dropped. “Aww, she told you I was going to do it, didn’t she? Boo! Spoilsport! No sense of fun.”

“I...he…” Twilight gawped.

Nova - feeling this wasn’t really something she should be getting in the middle of - quietly but quickly sidled out of the way, just as Jack circled around from behind his hiding spot and hustled on over.

“Hello, Twilight! Long time no see, eh? How’ve you been?” He asked, coming to a half in front of her, hands on his hips.

Twilight stared at him, mouth hanging open again, like it had when she’d seen him on the screen. This left a void in the conversation where a reply should have been, so, swallowing and with brave face fixed firmly, Jack continued:

“Ooh, you got bigger. Looked bigger on that screen but you can never really tell, can you? You’re all tall now! Well, tallish. Kinda Celestia-shaped, actually. Is that an Alicorn thing or what? Heh, Alicorn - look at me! Still remembering the lingo! It’s all coming back to me,” he said.

Twilight just kept staring, not moving a muscle. Jack became concerned and waved a hand in front of her face.

“Twilight? You alright there? Are you freezing up on me? It’s that screen all over again”

Letting out a sob Twilight took everyone present - Jack included - by surprise, lunging forward at speed and colliding with Jack and wrapping legs and wings around him before proceeding to bawl into his shoulder, standing on her hind legs.

So stunned was Jack he was just left standing with his arms sticking out past the wailing pony for a second or so before he snapped into gear and put those arms actually, properly around her. In response Twilight clung tighter and cried louder, though no more clearly.

“Hey whoa slow down a little there,” Jack said, softly as anything, hoiking her up off the ground and holding her better supported, cradling her and sinking to his knees still holding her. It came easily to him, and he did it without thinking.

And given that she was probably about the same size as him he did it without apparent effort, either, but only Nova noticed this, and even then only distantly.

Twilight continued being incoherent, though quieter, whatever she was saying fully muffled and then just tailing off into total silence, broken only by further, increasingly sporadic sobs.

Eventually though she pulled away from him and the very, very damp patch she’d managed to cry into his shirt. Curled in his arms she found Jack smiling down at her, and found that she couldn’t look him in the face.

“I left you behind,” she croaked, eyes red.

Not much use in denying this, Jack felt.

“Well, yeah. But you had to. You didn’t have a choice. I heard.”

“I could have found a way!”

“Eh, maybe. I mean, if anyone could have it would have been you, Twilight, but I really don’t think there was anything you could have done. And trust me, I’ve had the time to think about this. I wasn’t there, but I heard. You were against the clock. If you could have, you would have. You didn’t, so you couldn’t, that’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”

“B-but I thought you were dead! All t-these years! I - I just left you! I thought I’d left you to die! For so long - for so long I thought - oh Jack!”

More burying her face into him, more sobbing, about as loud as it had been at the start, much to Jack’s obvious distress.

“Hey, hey, hey. It’s fine. I’m okay, aren’t I? Look at me, hale and hearty,” he said, giving her back a rub.

For the first time Twilight actually seemed to look at him properly. The sobs tapered off - but didn’t disappear completely - and she pulled back to get a better view. She blinked, sniffled, all at once confused.

“You’re small again,” she said. Jack pouted and flicked her on the nose, drawing out a small sneeze and what might have been a giggle had she not been still crying and her body not rejected the giggle outright.

“Hey, not small, alright? Averagely sized. And correctly sized,” he said.

“How?”

Jack visibly hesitated.

“There is...let’s get to that later. It’s convoluted. I mean really fucking stupid convoluted. Let’s just take it slow, alright? Let’s have a look around first. Hope you like what I’ve done. I kept the place tidy, just like I told Celestia I would ”

“You...you…” Twilight managed before again burying her face into him - the crook of his neck this time - and just melting into more crying. Not body-wracking sobs, thankfully, but still.

Nova, who had never personally seen Twilight so much as raise her voice in anger and who herself hadn’t even ever considered the possibility of the Princess doing anything close to crying, could only gawp.

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay…” Jack said, continuing to rub Twilight’s back, a very distant look in his eye.

It became pretty obvious that he was clinging to her just as much as she was clinging to him.

With some very demonstrative gestures Nova got all those gawking to move on and actually get busy with something, leaving it just Jack, Twilight and her. Nova excused herself because she was the Captain and so she was allowed.

Still kept a respectful distance, though.

“Nova - Nova said that you told her this was…” Twilight said, and though she couldn’t quite bring herself to finish Jack didn’t really need her to.

“Yeah, yeah it is. But don’t think about it. We’ll get onto that. Just hugs for now.”

“Okay,” Twilight said, nursing a small but powerfully genuine smile as she, eyes reddened, just relaxed into the hug, which went on.

And on.

Eventually Twilight’s eyes opened again and met Nova’s. Nova mouthed ‘Is he asleep?’ and Twilight, checking only briefly, shook her head before giving Jack’s face a small nudge with her muzzle.

“Jack, you can let go now,” she said, softly.

“I don’t want to,” he said, readjusting his arms for better and more secure grip.

“Okay. But don’t you want to show me around?” Twilight asked, again softly.

Jack paused and thought about this.

“...you have a point. Alright.”

And he then released her and she got - only slightly wobbly-ly - back onto her hooves, sniffling and dabbing at her eyes. Jack handed her a handkerchief, which he had obviously, and she graciously took it.

“Better?” he asked once she’d blown and dabbed and was more settled.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, handing it back, making sure to have it folded. Jack took it without a trace of concern and tossed it over his shoulder and behind his back, though it didn’t actually seem to land anywhere.

“Great! Then we shall start in this direction!” Jack said before turning and sprinting off at full-tilt. “Don’t wait up, space captain!”

Twilight - who had rather been enjoying the quiet, low-key, unlikely reunion - was suddenly and forcefully reminded of what Jack could be like and was left standing there gormlessly as he ran away. She then snapped out of it.

“Jack, wait!”

He did not wait, and she had to fly after him to keep up.

“Where are we going?” She asked, gliding beside him, flapping occasionally. Jack kept on running, arms pumping, looking as though he’d never been happier.

“Not far!” He said, before somehow speeding up.

Before too long, bodies of water that had been distant became less distant.

He arrived utterly and entirely not out of breath, like he hadn’t been running at all. He stood by the waterside, hands on hips, proud as anything and once Twilight caught up and landed he opened his arms to take in the scenery.

“Lakes! Lakes are cool. I remember lakes. You like my lakes?”

“They’re - you made these?” Twilight asked, looking around.

Nova (in some of her communications prior to Twilight’s arrival) had mentioned something like this but Twilight had just imagined that what it had meant was that Jack had spent some of the intervening years digging a big hole or something, which Twilight could have seen him doing.

Not this.

Jack beamed.

“I made everything!”

Jack went off on a tangent here. Something about how water was pretty easy because water was - speaking broadly - quite common in space and how he’d been lucky enough to snag a comet one time and had been able to use that as a thing to copy off of, and from there he went into another tangent about the difficulties of getting a tree to work because the only examples he could find were buried deep underground and dead. It was about this point that Twilight finally felt the need to interject and cut him off.

“Jack? Jack!”

“-and they just kept dying on me! So- hmm? Ah, sorry, carrying on wasn’t I?

“How? How did you do any of this?”

“Ah, boring technical details. You can ask your girl about those. The little you, the space captain. Uh, Nova, that’s the name, yes. Slipped my mind a second there. She’ll fill you in. It’s not that interesting. She does kind of remind me of you, you know. She doesn’t really have a lot of patience for me, either! Heh. Nice girl.”

“She’s very capable and I’m very proud of her. She’s already told me a little, though with some deliberate gaps, I think. I have some of my own questions,” Twilight said.

“Figured you would.”

“How...are you...here…? When - when we left the sun was - was dying, or going to start dying. And now you’re here around this one? And this is - this is home?”

“Fair question, I guess. Told your girl already. I moved the planet from where it was to here. Seemed as good a place as any.”

Twilight blinked at him. She, like Nova, was expecting the punchline.

“You moved the planet?”

“Ugh, yes. Your girl not mention that part? Guess she figured you might not believe her. Why does everyone sound so surprised? Was hardly going to stay in the dark forever, was I? Oh man was it dark!”

Jack shivered briefly and again got that distant look.

“I never used to mind the dark…”

Before Twilight could press on that Jack snapped back into all-smiles and looked down at her.

“Oh yeah! There was something else I wanted to show you. Didn’t tell any of the others ‘cos I figured they wouldn’t get it. You’ll probably get it. Hopefully, heh. You can tell me if it’s weird or not,” he said.

An ominous way to introduce anything.

“Um, okay,” Twilight said, warily.

“It’s a ways away though, so, uh, hang on. Come here and hold still,” he said, gesturing for her to come in, which she did, and once she was within arm’s reached he grabbed her and pulled her in closer. Twilight went ‘eep’ and then looked up at him, eyebrow quirked.

“Did you just want to hug me again?” She asked.

“No. Well, yes, yes. But it wasn’t intended, honest. Did you not want another?” Jack asked, honestly having not actually considered what he was doing beyond whatever it was he’d had planned.

Twilight smiled to herself and dug into his side.

“It’s nice.”

“Heh, bonus then, But hold on.”

She did, wondering why, and then there followed a split-second of absolute brightness and the blood-freezing, gut-wrenching feeling of being sat on a chair that suddenly tips over backwards and then all that stopped and they were standing somewhere else. The water was gone.

“Yeah, you’re not the only one who can teleport now! Hah! How’d you like that?” Jack said, unwinding his arms from around Twilight who could only stare in shock.

“I - how did you do that?” She asked.

Jack frowned.

“Can’t really explain it, if I’m being honest. Just something. But still. Nice, right?”

“Kind of felt like you were showing off.”

“I was! Did need to be somewhere else though. And here we are!”

He spread his arms again and Twilight looked around. Looked like a lot of rolling, grassy hills stretching down to flatter, more level ground to her. Pleasant, but hardly something you’d go out of your way to show someone, surely?

“What are you showing me?” She asked.

“This. Or those. See those mountains?” Jack said, pointing over behind her. Twilight turned, looked.

“Yes?”

There were indeed two very prominent mountains, not that far away from one another. They stuck out because they weren’t part of a range and didn’t really fit into the otherwise rather flat and rolling plain they sat in the middle of. As though someone had just shoved them there.

There was a reason for this.

“So before we got moving I managed to snag the teeny-tiny sun and the teeny-tiny moon and pull them down. They were, uh, unconventional. Not that I’m an expert. The moon made sense but the sun really didn’t. Still, I got them both down. A lot of them I used for raw materials - didn’t think they’d mind, really - but most of the rest I used to make into those mountains. See? That’s Celestia on the left, that’s Luna on the right. That’s what I called them, too. The mountains, I mean. Original, eh?”

Twilight was speechless. Jack wasn’t sure what to make of her silence.

“You, uh, don’t think they’d mind, do you?”

Twilight continued being speechless, which Jack took as a bad sign.

“Urgh, it was weird, wasn’t it? Knew it was weird. Probably weird I talk to them sometimes, too. Forget I said that. Forget I even showed you! Goddamnit, idiot…” He muttered to himself, grimacing.

“Jack…”

He didn’t need to hear any more confirmation, he could see it now.

“It’s weird, I know. Had been planning on maybe seeing if I could work something out for the others I remembered but I didn’t know what. Glad I didn’t, now, too weird,” he said.

“I - I don’t think they’d mind,” Twilight said. Jack blinked, looked down at her but she was still just staring at the mountains.

“No?” Jack asked.

Twilight swallowed, shook her head.

“No.”

“Oh. Good then,” Jack said.

Awkward silence here. Jack licked his lips.

“B-but listen to me! Carrying on! All about me, eh? What about you! I hear you’re a big-dick cool guy now! Running some sort of, uh, space colony? For all the ponies and dragons and stuff? Part of some Federation or something?” He asked, forcing as much cheerful enthusiasm into what he said as he could manage.

“The Hegemony,” Twilight corrected and Jack snapped his fingers.

“That’s the one! Real sci-fi shit! That’s got to be good, right?”

The reality of being a Hegemony Governor and also a Princess (among several other important personages on the habitat, though those were more involved in local matters than overarching governance) had long-ago become a grinding, monotonous chore and so all of the shine had come off. Most days Twilight didn’t even really notice what it was she was doing anymore.

“It’s...it’s okay. Just life. Problems come, problems are solved. It’s comfortable. It’s nice.”

“That does sound nice.”

Again, awkward silence. Jack was filled with total and complete terror at having made a mistake somewhere and this terror immediately curdled into crippling, paralysing indecision about what he should do next. Thus the silence continued.

Twilight was the one to break it:

“Jack?”

“Hmm?”

“What was it like? Here?” She asked.

“You mean what was it like all on my own, don’t you?”

“...yes.”

Jack swallowed. The both of them were just staring at the mountains now.

“It was…quiet. Dark. Cold,” he said.

“What did you do? Before all this, I mean,” Twilight asked.

“Ah, back before I figured out how to do anything? The early days. Oh I just, you know, wandered around the place a bit whenever I was awake. Well, kind of a big bit, really,” Jack said, waving about a hand to indicate ‘around the place’.

“When you say the place you mean…?”

“The planet? I guess? All over.”

“Did - was there ever anyone else?”

A forlorn hope, but Twilight felt she had to ask.

“Here? Heh, no. The sun went out. Not a really a whole lot to work with for most people,” Jack said.

“So you really were just...alone...for all this time?”

He shrugged.

“Little bit. Certainly didn’t get any visitors. Mean, why would anyone visit a dead planet? I wouldn’t. Suppose that counts as alone.”

Kind of the definition of alone, really.

For Twilight it took a moment for this to sink in for her.

“When you - when you never woke up and we had to leave I always thought you’d - you’d just died. I’m sorry! But now you’re saying you woke up? All alone? That’s worse! That’s worse than you dying! That’s so much worse! I’m so sorry, Jack!”

She was looking at him again, now, and her eyes were brimming with yet more tears. Seeing this felt to Jack oddly like how being stabbed at had felt, all that time ago. He wasn’t a fan. So now was clearly the time for a joke.

“Kind of sounds like you wish I’d died there, Twilight,” he said

“I - I - “ Twilight foundered.

Not the time for a joke. Jack had never been very good at that, he remembered, and that had been back before he’d spent however long with only himself for company. Very quickly he knelt down and put his arms about her neck and, sniffling, Twilight leant into him.

“Hey, shh, sorry, just messing. Sorry. I’ve been on my own for a while - heh - kind of rusty. You go a bit funny when you’ve only got yourself to talk to,” he said. He just felt Twilight nod. He gave her hair a stroke. He’d forgotten how soft it was.

“Course, the ironic thing is, way back when - you know, back when I was home, home home, so a looooong time ago now, hah! - I used to sometimes fantasise about being the only one on the whole planet. A little alone time, yeah? I thought it would be great. Turns out, eh, not so great,” Jack said, still stroking, apparently not understanding when to shut up.

Twilight was willing to help him out, however.

“Jack,” she said. “Shh.”

“Oh, right, sorry.”

The silence that followed this time was not awkward. At some point Twilight sat on her rump the better to hug back, and this position held for some time. Without an audience, neither really felt much need to hurry it along.

When it eventually broke both were a little bleary-eyed and smiling dopily.

Jack cupped her face with both hands and couldn’t help but smile wider.

“It’s you. It’s really you!” He said.

An outlandish and thoroughly ill-fitting thing to say right then, and so something that got a giggle out of Twilight and therefore something that had immense value.

“It’s me alright,” she said.

Jack did not let go of her face or stop looking her in the eye, smiling.

Started out fairly pleasant, but rapidly become a bit unnerving.

“Jack. You’re staring,” Twilight said in the gently-nudging manner she felt was required.

He finally seemed to realise this and blinked, releasing his hold on her face and pushing up to standing.

“Sorry, just hard to believe you’re really here. That anyone’s here. I just…”

Jack winced once, then again. Then he doubled over and collapsed to his hands and knees.

“Jack! Are you alright?” Twilight asked, standing up herself and moving in. Jack held a hand up to forestall her.

“Hang on, hang on. Oh no, oh no…”

“Jack, are you-” Twilight said, getting that far before Jack lunged, practically flinging himself at her hooves, wrapping himself about her legs and immediately starting to bawl:

“Are you real? Tell me you’re real! Tell me I’m not dreaming this again! I’m not? I’m not?! Oh God I missed you! I missed you so much! I missed everyone but especially you! It’s been so quiet! It was so dark! I was so lonely! I was lonely for so long that I stopped noticing! T-then those others arrived and I remembered! I talked to someone who wasn’t me! Oh God it all came back! What’s happened to me?! What did I do wrong?! I was never meant to live this long! I was here all on my own for so long! And you weren’t here and so many times I dreamed you came back and f-fixed me and made everything the way it was but it was always only a dream and it never came true! Oh God!”

And just as soon as he’d started he stopped bawling, knelt back on his haunches, wiped some of the snot from his face.

“Whoo! Sorry about that. Had a moment, heh. Those happen, not sure why. Haven’t had one of those in a long time! Not for a long long time. Won’t happen again, promise - all better now!” He said, grinning wildly.

“Jack, I’m sorry-”

He cut in.

“No no no, you don’t have to be sorry for anything, I’m the sorry one. Normally I’m pretty good, actually. I think I’m just happy to see you. Sorry. I’ll contain myself better.”

“We can talk about it if you-”

He cut in again.

“No, no. No no no no. Not right now, no. No.”

Jack produced another handkerchief out of somewhere uncertain and dabbed at himself, while Twilight, after a moment, settled in and sat down next to him, just resting her head on his shoulder, saying nothing.

“You turn me to fucking jelly, you do. Always did,” Jack said once the handkerchief was gone. Twilight chuckled, briefly, quietly.

“Probably should have mentioned that sooner,” she said.

“Probably, probably,”

The sun was starting to go down. Not near the horizon yet, but heading that way. Given that it had been morning back where they’d left this did seem suggest they’d gone a far distance across the planet.

Jack sighed and put an arm around Twilight.

“I look fine and I tell myself I’m fine and most of the time I act like I’m fine but I think I’m much farther from fine than I’d care to admit. Like a circle. Or a horseshoe that’s a micron off being a circle. Come almost all the way around, almost back to fine, almost but not quite. Maybe. I don’t know. I’m just…”

He trailed off. Then he giggled.

“Heh, horseshoe,” he said. Twilight rolled her eyes.

“Okay look,” Jack said. “I am only going to tell you this, alright? In confidence. Only you. And I’m only telling you because I - because I trust you, okay?”

“Still?” Twilight asked and Jack frowned at her, confused.

“What are you talking about? It hasn’t been that long. Anyway yes, still. Always, always. So I’m just telling you. The others - please don’t tell the others. Please don’t tell anyone. It’s not bad I just...don’t like it.”

“Okay, Jack.”

He sighed, steeling himself,

“This isn’t me,” he said, tapping a finger against his chest. Then looking uncertain. “Well, it is, but it’s not me me. Me - I - the actual Jack, is...kind of everywhere right now.”

“What?”

“You know how I...grew?”

“Yes.”

Her failure to stop that was a sore spot that had lain hidden and dormant for a long, long time. She’d almost forgotten about how hard she’d tried to find a way to help him back then. Almost, but not quite. And now it came back. Her breath hitched.

Jack continued:

“It didn’t stop. It’s stopped now but that’s only because I figured out how to make it stop, and by that time it was…”

He went quiet, and went quiet long enough that Twilight had to prompt him to keep going:

“Was what?”

“‘Too late’ I guess would be the phrase. I kept growing, but I didn’t keep growing in the same way. The same shape. Eventually I couldn’t even get up to walk around anymore because I - well - because I didn’t have legs anymore. Not in the conventional sense. Heh. Kind of made it tricky.”

Twilight couldn’t say anything to this.

“And then I stopped getting up at all because I was just asleep all the time. And I mean all the time, permanently. But occasionally I’d know I was asleep and know what was happening...it was weird. And then...everything else…”

He grimaced, like he’d taken a refreshing gulp of water only to learn - after swallowing - that the glass had actually been full of vinegar.

“Anyway. I’m far, far, far beyond human now is the point. I’m pretty comfortable in saying that. Think I’ve come to terms with it. I’m just something. And I’m - he, Jack, we, me - part of the place now. Grown through the planet. Like roots.”

Jack pointed to the horizon, to a very specific point. He always knew where this place was, no matter where he was in relation to it.

“There’s a big mountain range - that way. Most of me - him’s - under that. Here’s some advice: don’t dig under that range. You wouldn’t like what you find under there. Trust me.”

“Okay, Jack.”

“I sound like I’m not being serious Twilight because I always sound like I’m taking the piss, I know, but I am being deadly serious, please don’t ever look under that mountain. I really don’t want you to see what I ended up as. Please.”

Twilight wasn’t wholly sure where Jack had got the idea that she went poking around under mountains for fun but felt he was probably just being safe. He did, after all, sound like he meant it.

“I won’t,” she said. He groped around for and found her hoof, giving it a squeeze.

“Thank you.”

Finally removing her head from his shoulder Twilight sat up straight again and gave Jack a poke in the side.

“So what’s this - what are you?” She asked.

“This? This body? Thing I - he - made. It’s me again! Ta-dah! But kind of just a copy. Pretty perfect copy but still not the original. He’s - he’s over there somewhere, like I said.”

“What’s....what’s he doing?”

“Right now? Right now he’s asleep. I’m always asleep now. Always and forevermore. But, uh, he - we’re - dreaming, see? Lucid dreaming, like. Sometimes it’s more lucid than others. Those times are pretty great, honestly, get some cool stuff done. Rest of the time, eh, not so much. Vague idea of what’s going on. Just like now. He’s not really doing anything right now. It’s just me now, has been for a while. And the others.”

“Others?”

“Spares. We used to hang out together. I thought it’d be a way of feeling less lonely. Heh, it’s not. Stopped bothering after a while. Poor company. Just one of me these days. Just to keep an eye on things. Walk around. Just doing circuits of the planet, trying to stay ahead of the dark side, if I could. Round and around. One time I said I’d keep count of how many times but, heh, I lost count.”

Jack swallowed, then decided to haul things in a different, more cheerful direction.

“So, uh, your girl mentioned something about this Federation of yours-” he started.

“Hegemony,” Twilight corrected. Seriously how hard was it?

Undaunted - and having promptly forgotten what she’d just corrected - Jack carried on:

“Right, right. Well she said that if you found a planet you could live on that they might, you know, let you move in? Maybe bring some actual plants and stuff with you. Is that - is that true?”

Twilight chewed her lip.

“It’s a possibility,” she said.

Jack’s face split into another grin, a much bigger one than any so far.

“That’s good! That’s good, right? Better than an impossibility, yeah?”

“It wouldn’t be automatic or guaranteed, just reasonably likely. And it wouldn’t be quick either, Jack. There’d be talks probably, feasibility studies, checking the location against existing claims. And even if all that worked there’d still be organising the colonisation. It would take a while.”

“I can wait. Trust me, I can wait.”

“And I would have to leave to get it started and oversee it,” Twilight said.

Obvious, really, but from the thunderstruck look on Jack’s face he plainly hadn’t even considered this until she’d just said it.

“Don’t leave me again!” He wailed, clinging onto her. A second later he realised this was perhaps not a great look and disengaged, shuffling an inch or three away from her. “Oh, sorry, heh, not very manly or mature of me, was it? Ahem, sorry. I quite understand. But you could - could stay for a bit though, right? Just a little bit?” He suggested.

“You could always come back with me?” Twilight counter-suggested.

“Come back?” Jack asked, confused. But then he got it. “Oh, you mean this thing, don’t you? No-can-do I’m afraid. One of these gets too far away from the actual me and they just stop working. Trust me, I tried. I’m basically rooted here. So I’ll just wait. It’s fine. Good at waiting. And besides I’ll have your girl and her crew around, right? Or do they have to go too? Is-is-is-is it j-just going to be me again?”

He’d found her hoof again, both hands this time, squeezing maybe a little tighter than he thought he was, eyes maybe a little wilder than he was aware of.

“Nova will - Nova will probably have to stay a while longer. This place is rather unique, after all, isn’t it? Not many examples of this sort of thing around. That’ll have to be documented. Probably take longer than they initially planned,” Twilight said. Jack blinked at her, working out that this was a not-so-subtle way of suggesting she would perhaps suggest that Nova’s lot linger longer than was strictly necessary.

Jack typically needed these sorts of things spelling out, but this time he got it.

“Oh. Y-yeah. Yeah! Yeah you’re right. Weird anomaly, right? Got be worth a proper look around. Cool, great. Can bother her some more. Until you get back. Yeah?”

“Possibly,” Twilight said, loathe to make promises. It was good enough for Jack.

“Cool, cool. But you don’t have to go right away, right? Not much difference in a day or two, right?”

“A day or two is probably fine, Jack.”

“Great! You got no idea how much grass and how many trees and lakes I am going to show you. You’ll be fucking sick of them after day one but you’ll have to put up with it because seeing me again is just so bloody unlikely,” he said, grinning again, pushing off his knees to his feet and stretching up towards the sky. Twilight also got up again.

“You’ve changed, but in a lot of ways you’ve kind of just become more of how you were. I’m not sure how I feel about that,” she said.

“Well I have a brand to consider, don’t I? And besides, I know you always liked me really,” Jack said, giving her a wink.

“I never pretended I didn’t.”

That took the wind out of Jack’s joshing sails, this sincerity. He fumbled for something flippant and irreverent to say but came up with nothing and had to look away and clear his throat.

“This is going to sound strange - and put it down to my giddiness on seeing you again - but I’m kind of fighting the urge to just smother you in kisses right now. Is that strange?” He asked.

“Little bit.”

“Should probably hold off, right?”

“Might be wise,” Twilight said, fighting the grin threatening to break out. Jack nodded, kicked some dirt.

“Yeah, yeah. Smart. But later, right? At some point?”

“Jack…”

He held his hands up in front of him.

“Right right. Too soon. Too soon after too long. I get it. Come on, Twilight! Stop dawdling! We got a lot of ground to cover! This way!”

And off he went.

And Twilight followed with him.

#8

Author's Notes:

Wrapping up, one imagines very unsatisfactorily for some but such is life.

This happened. Did it happen? Who can say.

But better to have something to read than nothing, that's my position.

It took some time for anything to actually happen.

Twilight did hang around for a few days (more than two, in the event) but did eventually have to leave if there was any hope of any progress being made. Swearing up and down that she would come back no matter what she peeled Jack off of her, had some brief words with Nova to the effect of ‘Keep taking samples, keep an eye on Jack’ and departed at speed.

Jack proceeded to bend Nova’s ear almost daily about his glee at the prospect of having people moving in, going on at length about how delighted he was knowing that, maybe soon, there would be actual, proper plants around and other stuff that he hadn’t been able to manage and also people to talk to and food and so on and so forth.

Generally Nova just went ‘hmm’ and ‘oh’ in all the right places, which worked.

The Hegemony - true to form - took Twilight at her word when she reported what had been found and were - again, true to form - more than happy to let the residents of her habitat transfer to the planet if that’s what they wanted. The planet in question was, after all, fairly far outside the Hegemony’s nominal area of control so they could do what they liked.

A small, impartial group of various other member species was dispatched of course and did submit a report of their own but it was by-and-large supportive, if bewildered by the planet and in particular by Jack.

Things moved ahead.

The process of moving everything and everyone over was enormous and is indeed still ongoing. Little by little. The early and opening stages - and where the process is presently - largely focused on trying to get Jack’s rather amateur faux-ecosystem more towards something resembling something that actually, you know, worked.

Which wasn’t hard, it was just time-consuming. And Jack did help, bless him, as best he could.

For her part - and much to her consternation, given she was seeing history in the making - Nova eventually had to leave continue exploring the galaxy. She was the captain of a science vessel, after all, and so it was technically her job.

Twilight moved permanently on-planet after perhaps a year or two, once sufficient progress had been made that actually living on the surface for any extended period was possible (the water was potable and atmosphere wouldn’t kill you, yes, but Jack’s utter inability to have made anything especially nutritious might get to you after a while) and a fair number of bold early-adopters had set up.

More coming every day, too! The thrill of knowing they have an actual, bonafide planet to settle on and work on and make their own - and which was and had been their own, no less, now returned to them! - wasn’t something any of them had honestly ever expected.

Twilight’s new office isn’t quite as magnificent or shiny or tall as the last one, and the view isn’t quite as grand or sweeping. She’d picked the spot on a hill that overlooked the two mountains.

Not the same hill that Jack and her had been on. This one was further along, closer to a river so that a settlement could be built there. The view remained good though, and the different angle had the unexpected benefit of making it so that, when the sun set, it set right between the peaks.

It later transpired that Jack might have had a hand in that. A cheap trick he would be the first to admit, but also something he would fully admit to rather enjoying seeing however many times.

Other than that the view wasn’t quite as impressive or flashy as it used to be, admittedly.

But she likes it more.