The MIRV-03 was launched in a last-ditch effort to continue Humanity's legacy after its doom. Twilight and Rainbow Dash watch as a shooting star becomes a ball of fire headed for the Everfree.
Aaron Jacobson is a Flight Engineer aboard the MIRV-03, a vessel launched in last-ditch attempt to continue Humanity's legacy after its inevitable doom.
Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash watch from the Library and the sky as a shooting star becomes a burning ball of plasma headed straight for the Everfree Forest.
Will the crew of the starship survive the crash? How will the ponies react to the new species?
Warning: Contains some violence (thus the Teen content rating); and more importantly is my first story (thus the probably trashy quality).
Somewhere far beyond the outer edge of the small solar system named after its single, medium sized star called Sol; beyond its terrestrial planets and asteroid belts, past its many-mooned gas giants, farther even than that tiny, neglected little dwarf planet called pluto, located about 18 billion kilometers from its home planet and separated from it by the roiling bubbles of magnetic tides at the edge of the solar system, floated a single lonely metal starship speeding away at a pace of 65,400 k/h (regulated caringly by both inertia and the careful, sporadic release of RCS fuel).
The ship wasn’t a very small one; indeed it was actually quite large. Its 6 main propulsion thrusters lay dormant as it spun silently, slowly revolving through the cosmos. Its outer body was unpainted, instead left a dull metallic grey. The ship had no wings to speak of, as it was never meant for re-entry. The vessel began abruptly, with thrusters and protective flaps at the back, and continued abruptly, with jagged segments of metal forming a rather ugly, boxy body, until it finally terminated with a control room and a number of protruding antennae and other detection instruments. Long, 2 foot thick deep-blue treated plexiglass windows lined the ship, crisscrossed with steel supports and infused with heavy lead to ward off radiation. On its starboard side, “MIRV-03” was written in large, stark white lettering. (MIRV was a joke on the part of the Terran Union. It did not in fact mean “Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles,” but instead “Manned Intersolar Recoverable Vehicle.”)
It really is a lonely ship.
Flight Engineer Aaron Jacobson half-stood, half-floated at the Sensors and Scanners station in his white uniform and headcushion, reading data from the long and short range radio and muon detectors, ultraviolet radiation spectrometers, and other assorted mission-critical instruments, and copying them all down on a form strapped to a clipboard.
The control room consisted of 4 command stations each with their own displays and other equipment. In order from left to right, first was Navigations, then Sensors and Scanners, then Main Control (thrusters and flight planning), and finally Life Support and Ship System Controls (lights and such). The walls were a dull metallic grey, like the rest of both the interiors and exterior of the ship, but here and there a few thick wires poked out of the walls, only to resubmerge a few feet later. Despite the fact that the room housed most of the mission-critical devices and controls on the ship, it was packed, stretching a mere 20 by 10 feet, most of which was used by electronics and control hubs.
Aaron stood at 6’ 1”, too tall to comfortably fit through most of the metallic hallways and compartments of the ship, but just barely short enough to fit inside the ship in the first place. He had blonde hair and rather boring green eyes, and an obviously waspy complexion that was only made worse by the time he had spent on the ship, away from light. His muscles had atrophied slightly since launch, and his skin was extremely pale, but he had expected worse conditions, considering how long he had been asleep.
31 years? He thought to himself, barely managing to resist the urge to look again at the offending figure glowing somewhere at the bottom right side of the large holo-display in front of him.
I’ve been asleep for 31 years?
He didn’t even know that the cryotubes could sustain themselves for that long, much less keep him otherwise untouched and more importantly, alive. Perhaps the most surprising thing was the fact that he hadn’t been killed by the massive amount of radiation that constantly bombarded the ship. Maybe the Union had been a little more serious about the mission than everyone had thought (lord knows lead is heavy, and heavy spaceships are expensive).
Then again, maybe they hadn’t... It had come as a bit of a shock to Aaron to find that 2 of the 8 members of his team had not been in their tubes when he had awoken. Not that he had noticed, of course, he was far too busy vomiting and coughing from the effects of cryosleep. But when he had towelled off and returned to the crew cabin after a short meal of sloshy protein goop and lemonade, he had found 6 tubes filled with their respective, pale crewmembers, and 2 empty ones with red lights above them. Apparently, one had burst during the 5th year of the voyage due to a pressure spike caused by an unplanned collision with a small asteroid. The cryogel had leaked out, leaving behind only the frozen water crystals, which continued to be cooled by the tube itself. The girl had awoken, trapped in a prison of ice, pounding and screaming for help from her sleeping crewmates as she slowly froze and died of hypothermia. The ship had detected her failing vital signs and ejected her after death. The second tube had functioned perfectly, but unfortunately its occupant had died from radiation poisoning some time in the 22nd year, and had been ejected after the ship failed to detect a heartbeat for a solid week.
This discovery had unnerved the FE somewhat, and he had quickly evacuated the crew cabin and its two ghost tubes to check up on the instruments he had been awoken for.
Aaron eyed the hallway leading to the ship’s armory, more simply because of the association with the dark thoughts than anything else.
He knew the purpose of the mission well, and had trained for years beforehand. He had memorized the project goals by heart, and firmly believed in the goodness of the expedition. He recited them to himself as he moved over to Navigations, then to Main Control, calculating and enacting the changes needed to be made to the ship’s route.
“Due to explosive population growth and continually raising threats of nuclear war from smaller factions, the Terran Union has decided to take upon itself the last possible step it can reasonably take. The state of the world is one of near ruin, with global economies crashing on a daily basis and food production becoming far outpaced by overpopulation. The total current population is estimated at 27 billion, and the Earth cannot sustain this number. Nuclear war is no longer a possibility but an inevitability, and the nations of Earth simply do not have the resources necessary to fund extra-planetary colonization. Thus, the Exodus project aims to spread humanity to whatever habitable world it can find, without the burdens of colonization or terraforming. A secondary nature of the project is to continue the legacy of the Human race long after its extinction, through the discovery of the vessels by intelligent life. Participants are not expected to ever return to Earth, and are unlikely to survive the trip without injuries. However, this cost is negligible compared to the small chance that the Human race may continue to exist somewhere else in the universe. Thus, the Exodus project strives to continue the legacy of the human race in an economically viable way.”
The weapons served more to demonstrate Humanity’s technology than to actually do harm, but it still comforted and scared the Flight Engineer that they were onboard. What if someone went crazy after being woken up?
Aaron sighed and detached himself from the command station as he turned away from the display. The problem he had been awoken for had been a simple redirection course meant to avoid a large asteroid the sensors had picked up. Satisfied by the new plot, he floated back to the crew cabins, stripped, donned his thermal suit, and stepped inside his cryotube. The glass door closed itself when he was completely inside, sliding silently out from the roof of the tube and latching itself shut with a hiss. With a shuddering breath and one last look at the crewmates surrounding him (and more importantly those who weren’t) through the glass, he activated the tube, leaned back, and prepared himself for a long sleep.
Outside, the spacecraft activated its portside RCS thrusters and evaded the slowly oncoming threat. Days later, however, the thrusters on the opposite side hadn’t fired. Nor had they fired years later. In fact, a single, softly pulsing light in the corner of the navigation monitor dedicated to Main Controls continued with its inquiry many years after its operator had left it.
>>Authenticate thruster reactivation at requested interval? Y/N
Aaron felt light-headed. He tried to comprehend what was going on, but found that he couldn’t. He tried to open his eyes, only to find them glued shut. He tried to stand up, only to find that he couldn’t move. Confused, he began to ask where he was before he felt something press itself onto his chest
>>Initializing revival procedure.
--ZAP!--
Aaron arched his back, his eyes shooting open as he let out a scream.
>>Revival procedure complete.
He sagged against the wall once more before opening his eyes again. The cryotube door opened with a woosh as it was flooded with new air. Aaron groggily pulled himself out of the tube, placing his hand on the side to steady himself as he wretched into the gravitationless air.
A few minutes later, he had recovered enough to shakily pull himself into a uniform and take a look at the situation. Four more tubes had been emptied, all from radiation.
How long have I been out?
The FE scrambled out of the cabin and into the bridge, flipping on and reading the time on the Life Support display.
9999:59:59
Terrified, he checked Main Control. 9999:59:59. He had been in that tube for probably over ten thousand years. His muscles had shriveled, and he was now so pale he could barely recognize himself in the his reflection from one of the windows.
The Sensors and Scanners display had been softly blinking on and off, meaning it was the reason why he had been awoken in the first place. He floated over to it and strapped himself in, distracting himself from the loss of life back at the crew cabin as well as his own deterioration (which was pretty hard to do, seeing as it was the best he could manage to keep himself from vomiting due to the massive radiation exposure he had undergone over the centuries).
A large warning took up the center of the screen. It showed the long range active radar scanner’s output pane, filled with a large circular blob that was moving slowly toward the ship. A planet? thought Aaron, turning toward the starboard windows. Outside, just as the radar suggested, a planet floated, seemingly motionless among the stars. It couldn’t have been more than 400 thousand kilometers away. It was difficult to make out details, but it looked blue and appeared to have an atmosphere, a single discernible moon, and looked like it was orbiting a rather young star.
Is that Earth? Aaron thought as he confusedly checked the sensor history, watching as the planet slowly entered the ship’s viewing range, then finally hit the point at which the ship recognized it as a threat. After running a couple more scans, it did appear that the planet had an atmosphere, and an oxygen-nitrogen based one at that. Not only this, but judging from the light diffraction, most of the surface was composed of salt water!
Excitedly, Aaron noted that the planet was not infact earth, and had a completely different geological appearance from his home planet. Then realization kicked in. The ship wouldn’t have only woken him if it had recognized that the planet was hospitable, which it obviously had not yet confirmed somehow. The fact that he was the only one awake could only mean one thing...
After quickly detaching and pushing himself towards the Navigation station, Aaron fastened himself in yet again and hastily checked the screen, where his fears were confirmed: they were on a collision course. He checked the projected path of the ship towards the planet, and saw the single most terrifying arc he had ever seen in his now many thousand-year lifetime. The ship was not even going to be dragged into the planet by its gravitational pull; it was headed straight for it. And what made it worse was the statistic that appeared beside the graph.
>>Estimated Time until Impact: 1:03:19:42
They had one day. Aaron switched to the Main Control station, not bothering to strap himself in this time.
Sh*t. Without even running any calculations he knew that it wasn’t enough. But he had to try anyway. Floating back back over to Navigations, he ran the figures. As he had known, there wasn’t enough fuel to slow their current trajectory and escape orbit. The best he could hope for was to slow their descent, but even then he couldn’t do much due to the fact that the more fuel he burned, the more unpredictable their descent would be.
Cursing, he plotted the safest course he could without jeopardizing the stability of their descent. He angled the thrusters to land them on land because he knew that a water landing couldn’t succeed without recovery teams alerted beforehand, especially at the speeds they were traveling at. After figuring the best graph he could, Aaron finally took a look at his work.
They were going to punch into the dirt at a solid 1400 k/h horizontal, 350 k/h vertical. This figure was good; it meant that they were going to crash at less than a 45 degree angle, and provided enough stopping space they could theoretically slow their descent after initial impact to a livable point. Needless to say, however, they were extremely unlikely to survive the crash.
Aaron put his face in his hands before going back again to the Main Control station and plugging the course in. Before he clicked “submit,” however, he noticed something... A small notification at the bottom right of the display.
>>Authenticate thruster reactivation at requested interval? Y/N
Aaron slammed his fist into the desk with what little muscle mass he had left. He had forgotten to authenticate the final step in the process when he had made corrections, thousands of years ago. Clearing the notice, he inputted the new commands and made sure to authenticate each and every one.
Dejectedly, he scooted away from the display and floated back into the crew cabin. He looked at his final remaining crewmate; trapped within a fortress of ice and sleep. Marco Hernandez, read the plaque above his tube. He was around 5’ 7”, and had lost most if not all of his once-tanned pigment. He was a Mission Specialist as well as Payload Commander; meaning he would be in charge of the mission’s sensors and scientific (as well as any non-scientific) equipment, as well as any mission-specific duties they may have.
Aaron contemplated whether or not to wake him, but decided against it. The man would be depressed by the deaths of his crewmembers, adding the fact that they were rapidly descending into the very habitable planet they had been searching for at unsurvivable speeds, especially considering that the safest place for him right then was inside the tube; it seemed like the best option was to simply leave him there. Not to mention, Aaron didn’t want to have to break it to him that he was the cause behind the whole mess. Besides, it was against mission protocol to wake him up anyway.
Aaron stripped into his thermal suit and climbed back inside his cryotube, hoping beyond hope that he just might survive this catastrophe. As the door slid shut and the clasped into place, he asked himself:
Does death hurt if you’re sleeping when it happens?
Rainbow dash had always liked to look at the stars. Not that she would ever admit it, of course, because stargazing was most definitely for eggheads like Twilight. But somehow, many nights, she had found herself outside; sitting on a cloud and peering at the billions of twinkling gems suspended in the sky. She wondered how Luna kept up with it all. She didn’t know any of the constellations or names of the stars (most of which were just long strings of numbers and letters sometimes followed by a “beta” or “alpha” anyway), but she knew that the knowledge would be wasted; her love for the stars was entirely unscientific. Again, leave that stuff to Twi.
Tonight, once again, she had snuck out and flown silently to a large cloud floating beside her house, taking care to make sure nopony saw her. She laid on her back, her rainbow mane flapping lightly in the breeze.
“Ooh, a shooting star!” She exclaimed after a few minutes of watching the heavens, pointing to the streak of light with a cyan hoof. She watched it as it traveled across the sky, then blinked out as it left the atmosphere.
“Another one!” She giggled, following the next with her eyes as it crossed the sky. But unlike the first, it didn’t extinguish itself as it escaped the atmosphere or was vaporized by the heat of reentry. Instead, this one seemed to grow larger by the second.
Dash sat up, watching as the once-innocent little light turned into a raging ball of fire. She gasped, then screamed as it hurdled high over her cloud, streaking past her and towards the everfree forest where it collided with a resounding Boom, causing the world to shake and spitting up a massive cloud of dust and smoke as it skidded a mile and a half before finally coming to a halt with a loud Crunch. It had left a trail of smoke in the sky, and the giant trench it had carved into the ground was surrounded by broken and burning trees. The object itself was obviously on fire, with smaller explosions riddling its body as pieces flew off into the now smoldering forest.
She looked down, watching the town came to life below her as ponies turned on their lights and shouted to their neighbors. “I have got to see this for myself,” she stated before taking off and zooming towards the crash site.
*****
Twilight had watched the meteor touch down in... Or rather, through the Everfree forest. She had known it was coming through the use of her telescope, but had apparently figured its trajectory incorrectly... It was supposed to vaporize in the air over the sea east of Baltimare, miles away, not touch down at an angle in the Everfree forest!
“Oh well,” she sighed. She had already seen the object change its course and left the Library to watch it. Spike had begged her to let him come along, and she had eventually given in. The baby dragon was currently positioned atop her back as she walked towards the planned impact site.
They were standing at the edge of the Everfree when it made impact. She had expected it to be going a bit faster, and thus burn up in the atmosphere, but she could definitely say that she had been wrong. She was knocked off her feet when the object hit the ground, flinging Spike off of her as they both covered their ears from the massive Boom that resonated through the air. A couple seconds later, a sickening Crunch came, sounding slightly farther off. Twilight picked herself up and began to run, grabbing spike and her saddlebag from the ground as she went.
A few minutes into the trek, something streaked over their heads, causing them to look up and watch as a blue pegasus flashed by in a blaze of rainbow colors. “Oh man, Twi, do you think she’s gonna do something dangerous?” Asked the reptile, clinging on to his Owner’s shoulders as she dodged trees and branches that had grown along the path. Twilight answered by increasing her speed, running in an all-out sprint as she feared for her friend’s safety.
Soon, smoke filled their nostrils as they neared the burning wreckage of the object; which now appeared to be metallic in nature and... Definitely not a normal meteor. “Oh wow,” spike gasped, staring up at the strange artifact, and Twilight couldn’t blame him. For one, it was obviously pony-made... It was constructed entirely of a metal of some sort, with long blue windows lining the sides. Besides that, it was huge. It was far larger than any single piece of meteor debris could logically have been, considering the fact that most of it should have been incinerated by the heat of entry. For a naturally occurring spacerock to have survived impact with a body so large left, it would have had to have been many hundreds of times larger initially, and would have contained enough kinetic energy to level half of Equestria by the time it hit the ground.
Twilight spotted Dash, standing around 50 feet or so from the raging inferno. “Rainbow!” She called out to her, cupping her hooves to her mouth as she did so. “Get back here!” The cerulean pegasus seemed to hear her, and heeded her words as she backed away from the wreckage. They stood together, staring at it for a few minutes before Twilight turned toward Spike, levitating a quill and some parchment from her saddlebags as she did so.
“Spike?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to take a letter for Celestia.”
The tiny dragon had grabbed the writing utensils and was about to begin scribbling when a chariot flew overhead, accompanied by several squadrons of gold-clad pegasi and a few squads of armored earth-ponies carried in airborne carts pulled by yet more pegasi. Twilight, Rainbow, and Spike all gasped in awe as troops swarmed around the metallic object, and the princesses stepped out of the gold-adorned chariot.
Celestia nodded her head to the two out-of-place ponies and even more out-of-place dragon in the sea of gold-and-black armor-clad guards and soldiers and quickly constructing caution tape. Twilight was about to ask how she had gotten there so quickly when Celestia cut her off, providing an answer to her unasked question.
“Luna spotted the object and told me it would land here,” she stated calmly, her voice soothing the three. “We came to see it because we noticed it had changed its path... It seems like we were not mistaken.”
“What do you mean, princess?” Asked Spike, scratching his head with a single pointed claw.
“It appears that this object is not natural, nor does it seem to be pony-crafted,” she soothed, “and it also appears to have slowed itself down during its fall.”
The three gasped, the implications of the statement settling themselves inside their minds. The strange object wasn’t natural; and it had changed its course to save itself from complete destruction.
This explains why my prediction was off, Twilight noted with a satisfied grin before her pulse quickened as she realized that she was in the middle of one of the single most important events in Equestrian history... First contact! Well, that is, she thought, if any of the aliens she assumed were onboard had survived the crash.
The group’s revelations, though, were cut off as a squad of 5 ponies in full, yellow hazard suits and gas masks approached the still-burning object, hammers, crowbars, and hacksaws in hoof.
Under the princess’ supervision, they banged on the vessel with their hooves until they found a suitably hollow area. Then, they began to cut a hole in the side of the ship, as the guardsponies pushed Twilight, Rainbow, and Spike back away from the scene.
“Be safe, my little ponies, we can’t risk having you here.” Called Celestia over the din, as the three were pushed back away from the wreckage, their view restricted by the guards stationed in front of them.
Marco Hernandez awoke with a ZAP as the defibrillation pads on his chest delivered a massive shock to his cardiovascular system.
>>Revival procedure complete.
It took a second for him to open his eyes, which he instantly regretted. Smoke filled his vision, and he barely made it out of his tube before he began heaving sickeningly as he tried, and failed, to stabilize himself by the railings next to his tube. Instead he doubled over and wretched, half-kneeling on the floor, trying desperately to recover.
The first thing that stood out to him was the gravity. He wasn’t in weightlessness, as he had expected to wake up in. Instead, he was being pulled to the floor at what he estimated to be about two thirds of earth’s gravitational pull. The next thing he noticed was just how opaque the air outside his tube was. It was impossible to make out distinct shapes past the crew cabin, and lights were flashing along the walls, guiding the him towards the exits of the ship.
And then it hit him.
They must have crashed, seeing as the ship recognized that the safest place for him to be was outside (hence the guidance lights). The air was filled with smoke, but Marco still opened his eyes to see if his fellow crewmates were awake. 6 of the 7 other tubes were empty, and the last one showed no signs of opening to let its prisoner out. Assuming that the rest had already made it to safety, and wondering why they hadn’t woken the poor guy next to him, Marco manually initiated the defrosting procedure on his crewmate’s tube before fleeing the crew cabin. He would have stayed and helped the kid to safety, but the smoke was clogging his lungs and he could tell that he wouldn’t survive the 20 minutes it would take for the tube to revive him.
Marco’s eyes hurt. That was an understatement. He would have been fine with the heat surrounding him, or the lack of oxygen as the smoke gummed up his lungs. But the pain in his eyes was unbearable. He screamed as he ran, climbing up sideways hallways and opening his eyes to slits so he could follow the pulsing lights that would lead him to an exit. Turning a corner, he spotted a blurry figure wearing a gas mask and completely covered in a yellow hazmat suit.
“Help me! Get me out of here!” He cried, only to realize that the figure wasn’t human. For one, it was extremely short. It barely reached above his waist, and Marco wasn’t a really tall guy. Second, it was distinctly quadrupedal, standing on four latex-covered legs, its head balanced upon a neck far longer than any human’s. Most importantly, the silhouette didn’t react like he had expected it to. Marco had been trained over many years to know that emergency personnel would save anyone, no matter who or what, in any circumstance, no matter how dangerous, as long as there was a small chance that they could make it out alive. Hell, he was an emergency personnel, he knew he would have.
But the figure looked less concerned or helpful than frightened. It backed off a few feet before nervously looking behind it, where Marco spotted a few more of the creatures. To Marco’s horror, however, he noticed that they were holding... Hacksaws, crowbars, and hammers. Fleeing, he dashed toward the exit, opened it with a grunt, and dived out, hitting the floor 20 feet below and dissipating the impact with a forward roll.
Looking back at the burning wreckage, Marco wished his still-trapped crewmate luck before assessing his surroundings. They appeared to have crashed in a forest, although the trees unlucky enough to be in the obvious path of the ship were either smouldering or completely obliterated; charred and splintered wood littered the landscape. The trees surrounding the crash site farther away were bent away from the ship, making it painfully obvious that the vessel had crashed with a massive amount of speed, causing the trees to become partially uprooted with only the kinetic energy dispersed by the ship’s impact.
Looking around, Marco noticed that still more of the quadrupedal creatures that had been inside the craft were surrounding the place; and more worrying still some of them had spotted him and were alerting the others. Marco began to flee into the forest, sprinting for his life as an army of spear-holding possibly-canids chased him, close on his heels. He didn’t make it far, though, before he was tackled to the ground by a winged variant he hadn’t spotted before. Grunting, he threw the creature off of him and began to get up. It was for naught, though, as he was completely surrounded. He stood up, feeling the extra strain his muscles had to exert due to their atrophie, and turned toward the creatures.
Before he could get a word out, however, two more of the flying variant had grabbed him by the arms and lifted him off the ground, carrying him toward a large wooden cart carried by more of the winged things.
Marco screamed, struggling for freedom as he was lifted into the air. He had never been afraid of heights, but the sudden view of the ground rushing away from him was enough to make anyone scared. His thrashings caused the creatures holding him to wobble, before one hit him on the head with the butt of its spear.
Defeated, Marco was dumped into the carriage and instantly secured by a number of wingless creatures, who held him down before a smaller version with a single menacing horn on its head but without the gold linings on its coat, approached him with its horn glowing.
Marco struggled against his captors, but realized he couldn’t move as his limbs slowly became numb.
What’s happening to me? What are these things? Where are we? He thought, as he slowly drifted back into the dark abyss of sleep.
*****
Tough Runner had been working on the ship for a solid 12 minutes. Add that to the time it had taken them to reach the crash site and begin cutting away the ridiculously strong metal that made up the outside the of the ship, and the crash site was around 23 minutes old. He had to hurry if they were going to rescue whatever alien technology lay inside. Or... What if there were actually still aliens inside? He pushed the thought out of his mind. He didn’t want to consider it; the prospect of entering an unknown ship was already terrifying enough.
Finally, the metal yielded, and smoke poured out of the rough hole they had just created. Fastening his gas mask, Runner stepped into the burning ship, looking around him as he did so.
The walls were made entirely of metal, with hanging wires snapping with some sort of magical energy. Motioning to his squadmates that all was clear, he began to explore farther into the depths of the ship. Lights pulsed along the sides, shining through the thick smoke.
Celestia, thought Runner, this is creepy as all Tartarus. Anywhere he could see through the smoke was covered in shadow, lit up occasionally by the strange lights. A minute or so into the expedition, however, he heard something.
As if on cue, a massive creature came running through an adjacent hall, standing on two legs with long, menacing forearms clutching its face. The hair on the back of Runner’s neck stood as the creature stopped and turned toward him. It let out a shrill scream that was greatly muffled by Runner’s mask before turning and running away, leaving the terrified pony looking back at his equally scared squad. Raising his crowbar, he continued down the long shafts, finally coming to a stop in a well-lit room whose walls were lined with massive, vertical glass tubes. Most of them were sealed and empty, but one was opened and another contained what appeared to be a block of ice with some indiscernible object inside of it.
Walking toward the filled tube, Runner was taken aback. Another of the aliens he had seen earlier stood inside, completely unmoving within the ice. As the rest of his squad followed him to the tube, they all stared at the thing before them. It was about twice to three times as tall as any normal pony, with sickeningly jagged joints placed around its body. It had no hair to speak of other than a very short mane on the top of its head, and its skin was an unhealthy white. Its eyes were tiny compared to a pony’s, and its nose and mouth laid completely flat on its face, rather that on a protruding snout. Its forearms were long and thin, ending in flat hoofs with five menacing tentacles each.
Deciding that his mission was more important that personal safety, Runner ordered his teammates to pry the thing out of its cell. Before they could touch the glass, however, the ice began to melt. Slowly at first but then increasing in speed, the crystals turned to liquid and drained away into a grate on the floor, until only the creature remained, standing lifelessly inside the tube. A garbled voice announced something Runner couldn’t make out through his gas mask before a large panel descended from the roof of the tube and placed itself over the creature’s chest.
--ZAP!--
The ponies jumped as the creature arched its back as magical energy flowed through it, snapping its eyes open and screaming. The voice came again, the panel raised itself to the roof, and the door to the tube opened up to the outside world.
Motioning for his squadmates to help, Runner grabbed the creature before it could attack them and restrained it against the floor. One of the unicorns in the group, Mint Dreams, put a sleeping spell on the creature as it laid on the floor, coughing. Picking up the now motionless creature, the group fled the vessel, practically diving out of their exit hole before handing the creature to a group of pegasi.
