Twilight Sparkle peered intently through her telescope, which was trained on the Four Sisters. She noted down the appearance of a dim new object in the south-west quadrant, marking it as a possible new nova.

“What’s up, Twilight?” Spike had come up behind, and was peering into the darkness shrouding the balcony.

“Just doing a quick survey.” She glanced back towards the sound of his voice. “I know I need to get to that paperwork, Spike, but it’s such a clear night. I couldn’t resist.”

“Well, it’s not as big of a problem now. Blueblood just canceled his appointment with you tomorrow, so you won’t need to go over those zoning permits.”

The purple alicorn sighed gratefully. “Thanks, Spike. Maybe he’s finally gotten the message that no matter how many ways he re-words his request, I know he’s really just trying to manipulate the system for an unfair advantage.”

Spike made a noncommittal noise, and moved a bit closer. “Wow, the sky really is clear tonight. So many stars...and we’re really only seeing a small fraction of them?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Twilight said, nodding, “and you know, each one could have planets just like ours around it.”

“Other planets?” Spike’s voice took on a dazed tone. “But...does that mean there could be other ponies out there?”

Twilight smiled. “Not just ponies, there could be creatures like griffons, or manticores, or even something completely different from anything we’ve seen before. Entirely new life!”

Spike gulped audibly. “B...but you don’t think that’s actually real, right? That there’s...things out there?”

“Actually...” Twilight said, looking thoughtful, “I talked to Princess Celestia about that once. She seemed pretty certain there were other beings out there, and even that some of them would be able to travel between the stars!”

“Between them? But they’re so far away!”

“Even farther than you might think,” she said thoughtfully. “I tried to talk to the princess about it, but she never seemed comfortable. It seems a little crazy that it would be possible, I mean, there’s not even air out there! And because we can’t really travel very fast, it would take months, even years to get anywhere. You’d have to carry air and food and water for all that time, too.”

“So...” the young dragon sounded unsure. “So you don’t think it’s likely, then?”

“Well, I suppose anything is possible, in a universe this large.” She looked back to him. “But don’t worry, Spike. With so many challenges to get to that point, I’m sure any people that made it to other stars would be calm, rational, and entirely reasonable. ...And even then, why would they want to come to our silly little planet?”

“Yeah...I guess so.” Spike moved back towards the door. “Well, I guess I’ll head to bed. Do you want me to put some tea on?”

“That would be lovely. Have a good night.”

As the dragon’s footsteps faded, the young princess turned back to her survey. Now, though, she couldn’t stop wondering if, as she looked to the stars, someone else might be looking back.

Captain Olivia Wrayburn looked off into the sea of stars, trying not to think about history, about life, about the things she needed to do, and about the bed she just wanted to fall into. She tried to think back to when she was a child--to look at the sky, the planet, and the works of humanity and simply take in the beauty.

Deimos station rotated slowly in Mars orbit, hanging in the darkness of space like a gem-studded Christmas ornament. The lights from the multitude of windows completed the effect and made the ex-satellite stand out in sharp contrast to the dull red planet behind it.

The station was the center of all trade that had to cross the asteroid belt, a launching point for any expedition to the outer planets, and the last population center before the designated jump-out point at Triton.

There was, on an average day, an almost frantic level of activity surrounding Deimos--ships coming in and out, shuttles to and from the Martian surface, all of it forming a new and dynamic constellation in the sky, which became ever clearer as one drew close. It was for this reason that, as Caledonia approached the eastern docking ring, she drew no more attention than any other ship in port.

Olivia’s reverie was broken by her helmsman as he softly spoke into his headset while the ship’s approach to the docks slowed. “Deimos control, This is TCS-7790, Caledonia, requesting docking on gantry seventy-eight per request by Major Thames.”

Caledonia, like other ships of her class, was technically a light cruiser; however, due to a shortage of materials in the Tau Ceti system, she had been partially converted into a freighter: her troop barracks had been gutted and repurposed as a cargo bay, most of her power output had been redirected to propulsion, and her crew complement was dramatically reduced.

This made her look no less imposing to those who were unaware, and to those who were, two hundred and fifty meters of starship was an awe inspiring sight regardless.

“Stand by, hold position at five-five-zero meters,” the voice on the other end of the radio replied, “Processing your request now.”

“That’s different,” Olivia muttered under her breath, frowning. She turned to her console and cycled through her logs as she waited on confirmation. “Never had them delay us like this before.”

“Captain?” The helmsman asked as he turned from his console.

“I’m not sure, Thames did seem a bit on edge last time we talked... Scan the station, gently. Don’t want to upset them,” she said as she sighed and leaned back in her chair.

"Ma'am, something's -- Contact! Incoming missiles bearing zero-one-three mark zero-zero-five, the station just fired on us!" the helmsman yelled in shock as he stared at his console.

“Oh. Shit,” The captain replied flatly as she stood out of her chair, “Shields, now! Back us off!”

The helmsman shook his head and turned back to his console, his fingers danced crossed the controls as the ship lurched backwards as the missile trails arced towards it. A loud buzzing sound echoed through the bridge and his face turned to panic, “Ma’am, localized subspace anomaly, shields will not come up. They’re jamming us!”

The captain snatched her microphone boom down to her face as she stared at the bridge monitors, “Deimos this is Caledonia, we surrender, we surrender, stop firing!”

“Please stand by.”

“So they know then...” She muttered as she threw her headset off. She looked at her weapons officer, “Sound general quarters, blow the camouflage panels and bring up point defenses! Do not return fire on Deimos!”

As it violently threw itself away from the station, the Caledonia was shown to be not quite so defanged as she seemed. Dozens of small panels blew away from the hull, revealing the turrets of a close-in weapons system. These began to target the incoming torpedoes.

“Keep backing us off, full power. Turn the cargo bay away from them, thirty-five fifteen forty rotation. Charge the cutting array, target the Triton beacon.”

The turrets sprang to life on the hull of the ship, and tracers lanced out towards the inbound torpedos, impacting into several, causing a premature detonation that destroyed other adjacent weapons. And still they came--for every torpedo destroyed, another was still inbound.

“No lock on Triton, ma’am.” The helmsman’s voice took on a slight edge of panic. “No lock on anything, they must have done a planned take-down.”

The weapons officer called out, “Another round of launches. Reading higher-yields.”

As the first swarm of torpedoes passed the discarded camo panels, Olivia nodded to the helmsman. “We can’t stay here. Set for blind jump.” She reached for her headset and triggered ship-wide address. “All hands, brace for impact!”

Moments later, the ship was hit; detonations rippled across the armored hull, removing plates and spilling atmosphere into the void.

The captain picked herself up off the deck and stumbled against the helm. The previous occupant of that station was lying on the deck--either dead or unconscious, she couldn’t tell. She glanced back towards the monitors, and saw the second wave of torpedoes incoming.

“So that’s it, the first shots of the next war...shame I won’t be around to see it,” she muttered as her fingers slid across the keys, dialing in commands as the ship continued to list.

"Here’s to hoping we don’t end up like the Minerva,” she she said with a wry grin as her finger pressed down on the execute button. Her entire world turned white, and with an electric pop, it was gone.

As her vision returned, Olivia felt a rush of relief at not being a cinder. Then the ship gave a stomach-turning lurch, quivered with a strange compressional flex, and then began to shake slightly. She looked at the monitors and saw...nothing?

“Ma’am,” Lydia, her weapons officer, sounded unsure, “I’m getting some crazy returns on telemetry...”

The ship gave another lurch as the view to outside cleared up, and Olivia saw...a landscape of dark outlines, with sprinkles of seemingly artificial light here and there. ‘Shit.’

“Ah, ma’am--”

“We’re in atmosphere, way too low, recalibrate and give me an altitude reading.” Olivia turned back to the helm controls and began tapping keys. “Prepping for short-range emergency skip, dead ahead.”

Her actions were cut short as the ship shuddered again, and the main lighting and several non-essential consoles briefly flickered. The resonant tone of the ship changed subtly, and warning warning lights began flashing all across the bridge.

Lydia called out, “We’re at about forty two hundred meters, gravity is is point nine gee, atmosphere is... nitrogen, oxygen, trace gasses, looks like a garden world.”

Olivia absorbed the information while staring at the helm long enough to register that a complete power loss had hit all cutting array systems, watched as the bridge monitors flickered, then grabbed the nearest headset and keyed it to Engineering. “Anatoly, what the hell is going on? We’re about two minutes from being a stain on some colony world and I don’t have main power.”

Her head engineer’s voice responded, “No idea, reactor went unstable when you tried to charge the array. We just dumped our plasma; there is no way we are restarting soon.”

“Well where’s the APU, Tolya? We need power or we’re hosed.”

“We are working on it.” She heard a clunking noise in the background. “Not coming up, like reaction rate is off, fuel may be contaminated.”

She paused a moment, then asked, “Can we land on emergency power?”

“Ah, the books would say no. Is worth try, I will switch us over.”

She dropped the headset and keyed up the manual flight controls, as a few of the warning lights went off. As thrust power became available, she deactivated the stabilizing automatics, and took control.

She let out a humorless laugh as the controls grew heavy in her hands, the feedback from the control surfaces interacting with the atmosphere was something she hadn’t felt in years, “Lydia, take Calvino down to medical, if we don’t die in the next five minutes I’d like him to not-die with the rest of us.”

“Captain, are you sure you’ll be alright alone up here?” the weapons officer replied.

“No worse alone than with somebody I’d venture to guess. Besides, I’ve always wanted to try lithobraking. Now go, if we make it through this I’d like to not make a habit of piloting the ship; I’m just not that good at it,” she ended with a humorless laugh.

“Aye Ma’am,” the officer replied as she hefted the smaller form of the helmsman onto her shoulder and carried him across the platform towards the hatch, even as the deck pitched and shuddered.

Olivia keyed up her headset again as she heard the hatch clang shut behind her, “All hands, prepare for emergency landing. I repeat, all hands, prepare for emergency landing.”

And still the ship fell. A flick of a switch toggled the external lights on and the ground was illuminated below; far closer than she’d have liked.

“Captain this is Anatoly, I have idea, is going to end badly but less badly than exploding; use reaction control system as landing thruster. I have modified system, will burn out assembly very quickly but should keep us from dying.”

“Thank you, Tolya. Here goes nothing.”

Twilight sighed, and started to put away her notes. Other than the nova and a tiny twinkling she suspected would soon reveal itself to be a comet, the sky hadn’t noticeably changed since her previous survey. She knew there were plenty of other astronomers watching the skies and keeping track, but it always made her uncomfortable to put off her own surveys, which she’s had to do quite often lately.

She stretched, arching her back and extending her wings, working slightly stiffened muscles. Levitating her notebook, she turned around to shelve it. She noted that she’d need to have Spike move a few volumes to the archives soon, as she was almost out of shelf space. As she slid the book home, she felt the strangest sensation tickling her magical senses, as if the world had been given a slight twist.

As she glanced around trying to determine the source of the strange feeling, the floor of the tower she stood in shook, as a coughing boom rolled over the Keep, rattling the windows--even breaking a few from the sound of it.

What in the...that was louder than one of Rainbow Dash’s Sonic Rainbooms!

She hurried back to the balcony and scanned the sky, looking for a source. She was just about to hop over the railing to hover and get a better view, when she saw a glowing...cloud? expand from a point in the sky to her right. It glowed softly, then began to pulse and weave chaotically, much like the lights of the aurora visible in the Crystal Empire. It radiated with green, red, and orange, sweeping and twisting like some hideous sea creature. She’d never seen aurora so dynamic, and yet so constricted in space. The cloud of light expanded, and then she saw a small dark region puff out it, almost directly towards the Keep.

Staring at what she thought she had seen, Twilight could just barely make out a dim form moving her way, and quickly descending. Some sort of meteorite? She was excited by the prospect, but also terrified of the damage it could do to the Keep and the surrounding area. She began to gather her energy to try to shield as much as she could from any blasts, but then, a bright blue light began to emit from the dim form, and...its path began to change.

It’s...flying? A vehicle of some sort?

As she watched, its descent curve became less of a plummet, and more of a controlled glide. It passed overhead still several thousand feet above. The main body of the object was still basically invisible, but from the outline, the blocked stars, and the reflections of the blue fire coursing from the end, she got a sense of enormity. A loud clang echoed from one of the courtyards, but she barely noticed, as the strange flying object descended to the west, heading for Froggy Bottom Bog.

Twilight kept her eyes on it, pushing herself off of the balcony, and hovering upwards to watch it descend. It was just about to fall out of her sight when she saw the blue light flicker, and with a stuttering boom, go out. A far distant series of crunching and crashing noises could be heard, then...nothing.

She paused a moment to see if anything further would happen, then descended to the courtyard at the base of her tower. Racing through still-ruined corridors and hopping the gap of a broken bridge, she saw her guard captain looking a bit disheveled, but already gathering some of her charges. She trotted up to her, and called out, “Kite!”

Kite Shield looked up from a notebook she was levitating, and smiled, “Auntie, er, Princess! I guess it woke you too?”

She gave her a sardonic look. “You think I was asleep? I saw the whole thing. I need to get out there.”

The young unicorn nodded sharply. “Of course! I’m already trying to figure out a detail, I expected you would want to examine such a large meteorite.”

Twilight shook her head, eliciting a confused look. “That was no meteorite, Kite. The second half of its descent was all wrong, it was flying, and seemed to be providing its own motive power. I’m sure it was some sort of vehicle, though made by whom I have no idea.”

Her niece stared at her for a moment, then looked back to her notes. “Uhh, well. I’ll need to send more guards, then. Better break out the javelins...” She wandered towards the barracks, still muttering.

Twilight smiled slightly at how much Kite looked like Shining Armor when she fretted, then turned and made her way back to the tower, to try to decide what to pack. When she arrived, she noticed bright lights on in the living area, and flew up to that level.

“Hey Twilight.” Spike didn’t even look up from where he was blearily packing her saddlebags.

“Spike! I guess the noise woke you?”

“Yeah...” he shuffled over to the bookshelves and picked out a couple of volumes. “...I saw the tail end of the...whatever that was, and then you went flying off. Figured you’d want to take off soon to get to the edge of the Bog at sunrise.”

She gave the young dragon a chagrined smile, “Thanks, Number-One Apprentice.”

He yawned a vague affirmation.

Raising an eyebrow, she asked, “So, any thoughts on what it was?”

His eyes widened a bit and he stared at her for a moment, then looked thoughtful. “Well...it obviously wasn’t natural, ‘cuz it didn’t fall right. But if it’s a vehicle of some sort...” He gave her a skeptical look. “Who has that kind of technology? The Griffon Empire?”

“Hmm...we know they have projects, some of them secret.” She paused to think. “I don’t recall hearing of anything of this magnitude.”

“Hunh.” Spike glanced at her bags, then wandered back to the shelves, and searched for a moment before pulling out another book.

Twilight saw the cover as he found a place for it. “The Diplomat’s Spellchest?”

“Hey, your griffon is still pretty rusty, if it _is_ the griffons. And after a crash like that, who knows what sort of mood they’re in?”

Olivia felt fear--no, terror. Was it taking too long? How long should it take? What if something went wrong? The doctor had said it was as routine as these things got, but... Centuries of objections from religious fanatics had held back the science. If not for all of that, she could believe this would be old-hat by now. Repairs would be made in-utero. Not like this. They said it wasn’t painful, but how could they know? How could changing someone at the genetic level not be painful? What if she remembers this? What if this is her first memory, this trauma? What if-

The door opened, cutting her inner monologue off, and the doctor walked in, carrying Andrea in his arms.

She let out a sigh, as a wave of relief washed over her. The doctor carefully returned her baby, and she looked down at a peacefully sleeping face.

“She’ll be out for a few more minutes,” the doctor said, “then the nanosedatives will disengage, and she’ll probably wake up hungry.”

Olivia looked up at him, “and everything...?”

He looked a little surprised. “Oh, everything went fine. As I said, a routine genemod wash.” His expression changed to one of sympathy. “Your daughter will live a long and healthy life, now.”

She smiled at him, and then down at little Andrea. She lowered her head to kiss her daughter on the forehead, and breathed in her scent, of ozone and a bit of industrial lubricant...

...What?

Olivia exhaled in a rush, and raised her head up from her chest. Her safety harness still held her tight to the manual pilot’s seat, but she felt vaguely lucky that her neck hadn’t snapped in the final, lurching moments of the...’landing’.

The deck seemed tilted at a slight angle, which meant even the gravity plating had lost power. That meant they were totally dead in the water, running off of the raw output of the emergency RTG.

She glanced up to the bridge monitors and saw...nothing. She toggled a few switches on the console in front of her, and a small forward cluster of monitors flipped back online, showing trees, vines, and mud. Some sort of wetland? I guess ‘dead in the water’ is pretty appropriate.

Unlatching her harness, she carefully stood, stretching, and wincing at some soon-to-be bruises. She glanced back to the outside view, then went to the main telemetry console and ran a hand crank for a moment, to charge its emergency batteries.

With the push of its Init button, the console sprang to life, instruments calibrating and numbers settling. The results were not entirely favorable as they scrolled across the display.

Core Status

Life Support - Online - 78%

Propulsion - Unknown/Offline

Outer hull integrity - 76% --deck 3, frames 123-170 severe damage--

Inner hull integrity - 96%

Structural integrity - 88% --ventral bracing moderate damage--

Weapons Status

Shields - OK - Offline

Close-in Weapon System Status - 37/40 OK - Offline

Main Railguns - 2/3 OK - Offline

Missile Batteries - 4/4 OK - Offline

Fire Control - OK - Offline

Power Status

Main Reactor - Offline

Auxiliary Reactor - Offline

Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator - Online

Emergency Capacitors - 1%↑

Well, we can breathe, that’s a plus. She glanced at the outside telemetry, and saw safe atmosphere at a reasonable pressure. With a few keystrokes, she opened the life support system to the outside air, and shut down the scrubbers, saving a few precious watts towards recharging the capacitors.

She keyed up her headset and found it still functional, and dialed into shipwide, “all hands, this is the captain, anybody who’s up and around, tend to the wounded. Dubrovsky, Harris, meet me on deck five, we’re going to have a look outside.”