November 5th, 2552

1824 hours

Crew Chief Warrant-Officer Megan Irene Andres

D77H-TCI Pelican Dropship callsign “Heart”, Earth, South Africa

“Alright, we got two KIA and zero wounded.” Megan returned to the cockpit and sat down, strapping herself back in to her seat.

“Thanks buttercup.” The pilot sarcastically joked and repeated the information the other Pelicans in the squadron.

“Hey, is Spade back yet?” Megan looked up, tightening the straps around her chest. The rest of the squadron was in a tight arrowhead formation as they climbed through the atmosphere, Heart leading the way. The copilot looked down to her console and flicked a switch. The display in front of her lit up in a green hue.

“Yeah, I got them on radar. They’re regrouping…” as she spoke his voice faded. The last bit of that sentence she didn’t finish and stared blankly at the screen. “Dammit, we got bogeys inbound. I’m counting two large blips following Spade.”

“Fuck!” The pilot yelled out and began calling a warning to the rest of the fleet. “Phantoms on our six!”

The Pelican slowed down its climb, hesitant on what to do. But with a sudden jump of speed the ship continued flying up towards the Houston, leading the pack. Megan brought her hand up to her neck and twiddled her dogtags between her fingers. Sitting with the pilots she had a front row seat at the spectacle before them, although she couldn’t see anything except for the sky.

“We’re entering the stratosphere. Come on Shamrock, we’ll get you home.” The pilot tried to reassure in his headset.

“What’s going on back there?” Megan asked.

“Nothing serious, it’s just a graze. Why don’t you guys cover out asses?” The pilot barked again oblivious to her question.

“What’s going on back there?” She repeated.

“Come on Shamrock. Just play follow the leader.” The pilot spoke again ignoring her questions. The copilot craned her neck around to get a glance of the annoyed crew chief and turned back around.

“How are you guys holding up back there?” The copilot asked into her headset. A brief pause later she turned to tell her what she learned, “One bogey down, one remaining. Shamrock’s been hit though.”

“They aren’t talking. I think their communications are shot,” the pilot agreed, his voice weak. The copilot back turned around during the frenzy and spoke to the crew chief indirectly. “So newbie, how’d your first day with Royal go?”

“You know I’m a Warrant Officer, right?” Megan hissed. The copilot simply laughed to herself and returned to the console.

“Entering the upper mesosphere. Shamrock, can you hear us?” The pilot spoke over the shortwave communications. Heart slowed down briefly to get a view alongside Shamrock. A small trail of smoke emitted from one of the wings, but it was nothing to be concerned about. The pilot waved through the canopy at Shamrock, but there was no immediate reply. The copilot took brief control and rocked the ship’s wings to try to get a response. A few seconds later, Shamrock returned the gesture.

“Yeah, they rocked theirs back. That Pelican has seen better days,” The pilot relayed to the rest of the squadron.

“Thank god,” The copilot sighed, flying Heart back into the lead of the formation. Megan was pulled back into her seat at the sudden jump of speed.

“Good lord…” The pilot murmured, his gaze fixated out in front. Megan forced her head forward to see over the pilots’ seats and outside the windscreen, and was in disbelief at what she saw. The Houston was coming into focus, a barely visible outline in the black sea of outer space. Several miles off its bow however, five Covenant warships appeared out of subspace making a head on advance towards the frigate. The Stalwart-Class Light Frigate that was the Houston was never made for a full on engagement. It could probably hold its own against a Covenant light frigate but not a full on warship, let alone five of them.

Make that four. One of the enemy ships opened up a brief volley, the plasma rounds bouncing off the Houston’s primitive shields, overcharged and disabled them altogether. The Houston’s nose began to slow with a soft white light and its MAC cannon fired, delivered a devastating hit to the front of its attacker. Violent gaseous explosions rocked the Covenant cruiser, following up with a much larger shockwave. A sizeable chunk broke off and fell towards Earth, the rest of the crippled ship listing and following. Royal turned a sharp right to avoid getting near the path of the debris as they began their fall to Earth.

“Ha! Look at that baby burn!” The pilot screamed in joy.

“The Houston’s still in for it…” Megan groaned, falling back once more into her seat.

“I know,” The pilot deadpanned. “The Covenant is going hammer-and-anvil on them. I say we bug out to the Sympathy.”

Megan continued to watch the spectacle before her. The Houston was motionless, probably reloading for another attack. Off to the right, the Sympathy was heavily engaged guarding the Houston’s flank. The vessel, a Marathon-Class Heavy Battlecruiser, is more than capable of holding its own against any given ship in the Covenant Navy. But it couldn’t keep at it for long, especially when the advantage of numbers was turned against it. Three Covenant Destroyers idly charged up their plasma torpedoes ready to strike as one. The Sympathy opened fire with one of its MAC cannons, obliterating one of the ships. It continued its onslaught and retaliated against another by launching dozens of missiles, effectively rendering their target crippled beyond repair. The third Destroyer however was left untouched and opened fire with a steady spray of torpedoes. The shieldless hull of the Sympathy was no match.

“FUCKING DAMMIT!” The pilot screamed in anger, pounding his fists into his console. The Sympathy’s hull buckled as one torpedo made a clean hole straight through it. The hull twisted at the change in pressure and began to resemble a large awkward corkscrew. Small explosions blew apart bits of armor off into space as the enemy Destroyer came in for the death blow. Even in the obvious state of disrepair, the Sympathy’s remaining MAC cannon visibly charged ready to fire; the vacuum of space slowly crunching the Battlecruiser into a smaller and smaller piece of twisted ball of metal. Then, with a defiant last stand, the MAC cannon discharged. The high-velocity round ripped the enemy vessel to shreds, but the Sympathy sacrificed itself in the process. The entire ship crumpled in upon itself from the enormous recoil, halving its initial size as enormous levels of decompression continued to condense the lump of floating scrap.

“Yeah, we are too.” The pilot kept up a conversation with the rest of the squadron, head hung low into his lap. “Thrusters are giving it their all though,” he added while adjusting a few of the instruments.

“Damn it all.”

Above them, the Houston was still motionless. Aside from the blinking of random lights, there was no evidence the ship was alive and it appeared to not be making any sort of an avoidance maneuver. The vessel hadn’t yawed to direct an attack at any of the Covenant, so whatever it was they were doing it wasn’t going to be an attack. The Houston sat like a sitting duck  as the Covenant got into position, beginning their steady crawl to get all four ships full broadside against the frigate.

“We’re in the Troposphere,” The pilot added sound to the stillness of the cockpit.

“Are they doing what I think they’re going to do?” The copilot asked.

“Yeah, it’s stupid, but desperate times call for desperate measures,” he answered. “Put on your diapers boys, this is going to be close.”

Megan took the hint and sat back down in her seat, tightening the harness as much as she could without constricting her limbs of blood.

“What are they going to do?” she asked, her words floating endlessly in the air.

“The Houston’s going to attempt a low-altitude emergency slipspace jump,” The copilot stirred uneasily. “Funny, I thought it was banned to do so between the Earth and the Moon.”

“With the cargo we’re carrying it doesn’t matter,” the pilot added in. Something got his attention and he slowed the Pelican once more, almost to a halt. Shamrock became visible once more off the wing, the billowing trail of smoke had ceased.

“They’re doing fine,” the pilot reassured and sped back up to retake the lead. “Wait, what? Shamrock! Kick your tail into high gear! Dammit Shamrock! Put your ass in overdrive now!”

“There’s the friend I know and love,” the copilot joked.

The pilot continued his rant. “Shamrock, jettison your tank! You’re not going to make it! Fuck it, I’ll shoot that thing off them!”

A momentary blur of white flooded the cockpit. The squadron was no more than ten seconds away from the Houston, and if they could get into the slipspace bubble that would engulf the frigate they’d be taken along for the ride. But the Covenant was now on either side of the vessel, and they opened fire with a volley of Plasma Torpedoes. Small crackles of white lightning slowly arched around the Houston as the ship was readying for the jump. Within seconds they’d be in another star system.

“Wait, we made it! We’re within range of the slipspace bubble! We made it!”

The pelican made a midflight slide as it drifted ever closer to the frigate. The instruments inside Heart slowly began to glow as small streaks of lightning jumped through the Pelican.

“God dammit Shamrock speed the fuck up! You’ll be caught outside the slipspace bubble! GOD FUCKING DAMMIT SHAMROCK!!”

“Brace!” The copilot screamed.

\x\x\x\x\

Megan smashed her head against the back of her seat, effectively bringing her back into consciousness. Her vision blurred, her ears rang, her sidearm free of its holster. Megan groggily shook herself out of shock and saw her standard issue Magnum floating in front of her, the barrel non-reassuringly pointing her way. She reached out for it, but only batted the weapon across the cockpit. It silently drifted into the front windshield with a soft clang. Megan got up to try to grab it again, but her harness held her in place. With trembling hands, she undid its restraints and lazily drifted towards the weapon.

All electronics were shot. That’s the only reason the artificial gravity wasn’t on. The Pelican itself wasn’t even functioning, almost as if every fuse decided to blow at once. Actually, that was the most probable outcome from the surge of electricity emitted from subspace. If they were within the Houston, which Heart most certainly was not, its thick hull would have protected against the anomaly. Megan tried to remember back to her training, but she could only remember so much:

1: Make sure you have your weapon on you at all times.

2: Make sure your harness is secure and your tray is in the full upright position during landing/takeoff.

3: Leave the pilots alone and let them do their thing.

4: If it’s hostile, you shoot it.

Wait! the pilots! Megan flung herself around to the pilots, still beings clinging to the seats.

“Dammit! Wake up! Please!” Megan’s cries were heard by no one. She checked their pulses, and the copilot was barely clinging to life. She was unconscious, but alive. Megan leaned in to check the other pilot’s heartbeat, and as she was undoing the harness she was met a grizzly sight. The pilot’s entire ribcage was sunken into his chest. The steering column must have stabbed the poor soul right in the gullet.

That’s why you buckle up… Megan couldn’t help to have the thought cross her mind. The copilot was still knocked out, and short of opening up all airways there was nothing that could be done about her in zero gravity. She was a crew chief, not a doctor. Megan could operate the Pelican all by herself if necessary, but the ship would have to be working first. After moving the corpse to her old seat, Megan sat down in the pilot’s chair and started flipping through the instruments. Nothing responded. Heart was a floating chunk of scrap in the middle of space.

Megan looked out the cockpit windows and scanned the green and blue orb that was a planet before her.

“No… it’s not possible! We… we… we were within range! We should have gone into the jump with the Houston!” Then, where was the Covenant?

The four Covenant warships, the remains of the Sympathy, the full scale war that raged above the Earth’s atmosphere were all absent from the scene. This couldn’t be Earth and it couldn’t be any of the colonies either. She didn’t know how long she was knocked out for, but there’s at least a dozen UNSC orbital defense stations surrounding any given colony.  They should be clearly visible from her position. Megan looked around for something, and underneath her seat she found her prize.

Emergency Field Utility Kit for Temporary Survival sat idly on her lap. The Emergency Kit, or “Fuck-This” as the marines cleverly pronounced them, held the basics for rudimentary survival. Assuming you can hunt and find fresh water in the wild, you could live in any hospitable biome indefinitely. Otherwise it only had enough rations for three men to last a week. And there was no water or wild game in the cramped cockpit of a disabled Pelican floating through the vacuum of space.

Among food and water, the contents of the footlocker sized container held a tent, three emergency blankets, a rough map of the Milky Way, an interspecies communications device, a hunting knife, an emergency locator beacon, two short-wave walkie-talkies, Boxes of bandages and bags of spare blood in case things took a turn for the worse, duct tape, matches, a compass, an empty notebook with a pen, and of course an SMG with a few spare magazines. It wouldn’t be the UNSC if they didn’t put a gun in everything. Megan took out the locator beacon and turned it on, throwing everything else back into the kit save one of the radios. Thinking fast, she picked it up and turned it on to Royal’s channel only to receive static.

“Hello? Is anyone there? This is Warrant-Officer Megan Andres of UNSC Lambda Platoon, callsign Heart. My Pelican is unresponsive and floating above an unidentified planet. Can anyone hear me? How copy?”

“I repeat, my name is Megan Andres and we are floating through the dead of space. I don’t know where we are, reporting one KIA…”

*bang*  *bang  *bang*

“…and I can’t access the rear of the Pelican. I’m locked inside the cockpit. We have a six man squad trapped in there too. Come in, anybody. How Copy?”

“Repeat, I don’t know where I am. Is anyone out there? Anyone? I repeat, my name is Megan Andres…”

*static*

\x\x\x\x\

Megan had stashed the emergency kit back under the seat. For the past hour, she had spent trying to get the Pelican’s electronics back online. With oxygen delivery systems turned off, the engines would have to get air in down at the planet’s surface. That is, if the atmosphere had any significant amount of oxygen to begin with. And the ship’s emergency supply was running low too.

Heart groaned in agony, throwing Megan against the console.

Righting herself up, she looked out the window to see the planet gradually getting closer. The gravity field was sucking Heart in, and if the systems didn’t come back online anytime soon the ship would have no chance of survival.  Megan pulled herself back into the seat and threw on the harness.

“Dammit, work!” She furiously punched the console and it beeped to life.

“Just like in the cartoons…” she grumbled while going through the pre-flight checks. Albeit the Pelican was technically flying right now, better make sure everything was functioning properly before turning on the engines. Flaps were working and so was the rudder. Landing gear is offline, but the problem it proposed was going to likely be dealt with anyway. All other electronics would need to be recalibrated before they could work, but Heart just broke into the atmosphere and there’d be no time for that. The Pelican continued its plummet, the altimeter spinning madly in every direction. Megan struggled to get that piece to work, and when it finally did she had a sense of direction. In her frantic fuss of toying with every switch and dial, most of the sensors spurred to life.

Good news: The ground below was more or less flat, so an emergency landing should be easier to pull off.

Bad news: The engines wouldn’t turn on. The most Megan could do was glide, but the Pelican currently had the aerodynamic qualities of a brick. Probably because she was flying it upside down.

Worse news: She was already at thirty thousand feet and rapidly falling. And if the engines didn’t come online soon, there’d be no way to turn and pull out of the free fall.

Peering through the canopy, the ground below opened up into large, rolling hills and flat plains as the Pelican burst through the cloud layer. Up ahead a forest was approaching, and a bunch of trees is not somewhere you want to do a crash landing. Megan pushed down hard on the yoke, trying to keep the craft more or less in a stable upside down glide while she furiously tried to get the engines to respond. After a minute, enough air finally got the fan blades to spin. The friction of atmospheric reentry was enough to get the fuel to combust, and one by one the thrusters came back to life. Megan squealed in joy and pulled up. But since she was upside down, the Pelican nosed over. A boggy marsh flooded her field of view.

Realizing her mistake, she rolled over and pulled up, jettisoning everything nonessential to lighten to load. The craft sluggishly pitched high, dropping its missile pods, external tanks, and the vehicles it was carrying. Heart pulled up out of the steep dive mere feet above the lake when a large explosion rocked the ship. The Pelican shuddered and a wingtip touched the water.

The craft nosed into the water and cartwheeled along its surface. The sudden g-forces knocked the inexperienced pilot out as the Pelican continued to skip across the water like a fan blade. The craft hit the shoreline and ricocheted into the air. For a brief second, it actually looked like it was flying as it soared above the treetops. That moment quickly passed as it nosed back over the canopy, entangling itself deep into the mesh framework of the thickened trees. Heart snagged itself on several vines and thick branches, suspending the damaged ship thirty feet above the forested ground.

\x\x\x\x\

April 12th, 6 PH

1:46 am

Sugar Cube Corner, Ponyville, Equestria

Pinkie Pie was trying to sleep soundly that night. She had just thrown one of her signature birthday parties for a very special friend; Colgate. She just turned twenty three the day before; almost the whole town spent the day partying and was now thoroughly exhausted, evident by the soundless vacancy of the streets below. Even in the middle of the night, Ponyville often had some sort of commotion going on whether it was somepony sneaking across town or a lost cat scampering between buildings. Pinkie Pie was in all likelihood the most hyperactive pony in Equestria, if not the world. For her to sleep was a wild concept in of itself. She’d occasionally powernap for twenty or so minutes like Rainbow Dash had taught her long ago, but this was the first time the mare was in a deep sleep for any extended period of time.

Her calm trance abruptly ended when she suddenly shot upwards off her bed and into the ceiling, falling back down on to the floor with a loud thud.

“Owie! What the hay?” Pinkie rolled across the floor, her flank shuddering violently against the cold hardwood. “Oh no! Twitchy-twitch! Twitchy-twitch! My tail is twitchy-twitching!” She clamored, desperately trying to stand back up. However every attempt failed with a sudden jerk of her tail and caused her to collapse back onto the ground. Scared senseless and on the verge of going in tears, Pinkie Pie reached out and grabbed for anything to use as support. After a second of frantic wailing, her hooves came into contact with the legs of her bed and she pulled herself in clinging for dear life. All the while her flank bounced violently up and down with the chaotic twitching of her tail.

And just like that, it was over.

As soon as the escapade ended, she sat back up on her haunches in full composure as if nothing had ever happened. The pink mare glanced around her room as if the darkened walls would provide an answer. The reply came as a cold chill running down the length of her spine.

“Hmm… first the twitchiest tail twitch ever, and now spinal chills?” Pinkie Pie stood back up. “Twitchy tail means something is about to fall, so whatever it was must be HUGE!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed to the empty room. It suddenly dawned on her that something big was about to or already had fallen and she looked up to her ceiling, careful not to walk underneath the lighting fixture as she made her way to the bedroom window. The dead streets of Ponyville presented itself to her in all its dull and darkened glory.

“But… I… I’ve never had spinal chills like that one before! A full body shudder means there’s going to be a doozy, itchy hoof means something bad is about to happen…” Pinkie Pie lifter her foreleg. “Nope. No itchy hoof.”

Suddenly the entire building shook for a brief second, which was enough to get Pinkie to lose her balance and fall back onto her haunches.

“OH! Spine chills mean earthquakes! No, earthquakes are hoof-itch trembling-legs eye-flutter sneeze.” Pinkie Pie stood back up staring non-itching hoof. The gears slowly grinded in her head, screaming the obvious until its message was finally reached.

“Wait a minute… I didn’t get a hoof-itch trembling-legs eye-flutter sneeze! That wasn’t an earthquake! Then... what was that about?” The mare thrashed around on the floor.

“Augh! This is going to drive me insane! I need to find out!” This being Pinkie Pie, an unusual burst of energy for the pink pony was something not to take lightly. She was only ever this excited before when she went to the Grand Galloping Gala last year and another time decades before that when she was just a filly, throwing her first party. The result of that party got her her cutie mark. In no more than a few seconds, Pinkie Pie was rummaging through the stillness of town looking for evidence to the source of the unusual spine chill. After inspecting several trash cans, a vegetable garden, and a couple mail boxes came up empty, the pink mare admitted defeat. Whatever caused the unknown reaction of her Pinkie Sense was beyond her expertise.

“Maybe Twilight will know!” Pinkie Pie yelled to herself in the middle of town square.

“Hey, Shaddup!” Somepony screamed back.

“Teehee! Sorry!” She yelled her response to the many buildings and began bounding off towards the library.

\x\x\x\x\

Twilight was on the floor of library’s main room scanning through a literal sea of books. Almost every nonfiction tome was pulled off its shelf and littered the floor. Twilight thought it’d be best to do a quick scan of every book and sort them into two piles; ones which could hint towards the strange astronomical phenomenon and others that could not. The pile labeled ‘helpful’ dwarfed is nearby neighbor by several dozen additions. Such books (to name a few) included topics along the lines astronomy, geology, chemistry, aerodynamics, and history.

“Augh!” She screamed, slamming her face into the open tome before her. “There’s nothing! Nothing could explain why those meteors did what they did!” Twilight flopped onto a pile of books.

“Heya Twilight!” Pinkie Pie suddenly filled her vision.

“Augh! Dang it Pinkie Pie! Stop sneaking up on me like that!”

“Hehehe… sorry...” Pinkie Pie blushed and helped Twilight to her hooves.

“Hey, how’d you get in here anyway? The front door was locked.” Twilight asked.

“The balcony door wasn’t!”

“The balcony? How did you… never mind. What do you need?”

“Well…” The pink pony inhaled deeply and began. “Well you see I was sleeping in my bed all cozy and tired and stuff because I was worn out from Colgate’s party when suddenly I had the biggest twitchy-tail twitch ever and I flew into the ceiling and rolled around on the floor so it must have been something big that fell because that was a HUGE twitch and I mean huge and then I got chills going up my spine which is odd because I never had one before but at first I thought it was an earthquake but then I realized it wasn’t and I have no idea what spine chills mean so I was wonderingifyouhadanyidea!” Pinkie Pie took in another deep breath and refilled her lungs. She sat down on her haunches expecting some sort of answer out of the bewildered Twilight.

“Sorry…” Twilight started off. “But I know nothing about how your Pinkie Sense works, so I don’t know what your chills could mean. Although I do have an idea what caused your tail to twitch so… violently.” Twilight trailed off in deep thought. She looked to the pink mare and motioned for her to follow as the two walked back up to the library’s rooftop. Twilight pointed out over the nighttime horizon towards the Whitetail Woods.

“You see that smoke? A meteorite crashed there.” Twilight turned and pointed the other direction, “And two others crashed in the Everfree Forest. Another one probably landed behind Canterlot.”

“Oh… I see! That probably explains it! The bigger the tail twitch, the bigger the thing that must have fallen! Want to go see look for them?”  Pinkie Pie hopped around in place like a dog eager to get off its leash.

“Of course I do! But since two of them flew so close to Canterlot, the ones in the Whitetail Woods and the mountains are probably being probed by the Princesses as we speak.” Twilight lowered he muzzle and looked off towards the Everfree Forest. “There’s a lot of clouds tonight. I saw the two crash in the Everfree Forest, and I’m not sure if anypony else did. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’d probably be better to go into the Everfree Forest and secure those ones before something comes by and ruins them. It’s not every day a space rock lands in Equestria you know!”

“Well then what are we waiting for!?” Pinkie Pie hopped off the roof and fell the thirty or so feet to the ground below. Gasping, Twilight rushed to the side of the railing to see Pinkie eagerly prancing in circles on the ground. Twilight sighed, and with a simple teleportation spell she appeared alongside her friend.

“Well you see Pinkie,” Twilight tried to calm the overly energetic pony. “There’s two of them that crashed there. I do have a general idea of where they crashed, but I need help sanctioning them off. I would love to get the rest of the girls to help but after that party everypony is probably fast asleep. Heck, we should be asleep now too.”

“Well what are we waiting for? You want to get the space rocks safe, right?”

“Yes, of course!”

“Then let’s go wake everypony and get our flanks out there!”

“Believe me Pinkie, I have the urge to. But the Everfree Forest is not the least bit safe. Especially at night…”

“So we’ll go first thing in the morning! I’ll go tell everypony-“

Twilight wrapped a hoof around Pinkie’s snout. “No, we’ll wake them in the morning. Be patient, Pinkie Pie.”

“Okie dokie lokie!”