Epilogue: We Leave Tomorrow At Dawn
Epilogue
We Leave Tomorrow at Dawn
A bump on the road caused the BTR we were riding in to jerk up and down, making me hit my head on the ceiling of the cabin. I glared at the offending metal surface, as if it had caused my turmoil in purpose, before I realised the stupidity of the act.
Rubbing my head, I gave the inside of the APC a panoramic glance. The pilots were busy… piloting, the gunner kept scanning the surrounding environment with its remote-controlled turret while my other companions were all seated as comfortably as they could.
“Soooo yeah. That’s basically it,” Vano summed up.
“Huh. The scientists. Should have seen that one coming,” I commented, shifting my grip on my rifle.
Vano managed to shrug, despite being nearly bent in half to fit in the cramped space of the BTR cabin.
“This is real life, there are no epic quests to save the world,” deadpanned Strider. “We were fairly normal stalkers who made an incredible encounter,” he added, gently stroking Celestia’s mane, “and we got lucky.”
“Well, you got the most important parts, I doubt you would be very interested in a faction’s treasury and administration,” Vano laughed.
“Maybe not,” I admitted, “but I’m curious to know how you managed to become that big in so little time. And I’d like to know what happened to that head.”
“You’ll know soon enough, it shall be a story for another time,” Celestia started. “We’re almost at our destination. Besides, we have a long helicopter ride ahead of us, should you decide to follow. We will have all the time in the world.”
I shifted my grip on my carbine, placing its butt on the floor. “If you have nothing against a passenger, I’m game,” I said.
The alicorn smiled. “Then it’s settled. Runner, you’ll have the honor to be one of the first humans in Equestria!”
I let out a laugh.
Strider smiled, stroking his lover’s mane, before he took a serious expression. “I have to warn you though: all the supplies you need, you’ll have to buy. We do not take freeloaders. You are welcome to join the faction, in which case you would have to obey orders. If that does not sit well with you, you could always ask Hermann and work for him. They are used to deal with stalkers.”
“Seems fair to me,” I replied with a shrug. “I don’t like the idea of sitting on my ass all day. anyway. Guess I could help with… whatever Hermann needs to get done,” I awkwardly concluded.
“Spoken like a true orator,” Vano sarcastically noted.
“Oh har har,” I deadpanned. “As if you could have done-”
“Vragom zametil!” suddenly yelled our gunner, interrupting me.
A split second later, the cabin was drowned into machine gun reports coming from the turret above, completely overpowering the gentle growl of the diesel engine. The ear-shattering roar only lasted a few seconds, before it suddenly stopped, as fast as it had begun.
“What was that?” authoritatively asked Strider.
“Nichego ser'yeznogo, polkovnik,” the gunner dismissed. “Just a few Bandits. Morons started actually shooting at us with light arms fire,” he added with a laugh.
The driver began laughing uncontrollably, causing the BTR to swerve on the road. “Kucha debilov,” he swore, “I mean, really? Against an armored fighting vehicle?”
Vano chuckled. “Cordon is home to more Military personnel and Dawn soldiers than ever right now, and they have the gall to show up in the area? Either they are extremely courageous or completely stupid.
“Bandits are not known to be the brightest of the bunch,” recalled Celestia. “And they’re even more disorganized now that they lost their leaders.”
“What puzzles me is that they still have not got a new leader,” shook Strider, scratching his stubble. “It has been nearly a year that we got rid of Jack and Sultan.”
Vano shrugged once more. “They’re too busy fighting each other for power, I suppose.”
“We’re here!” our driver interrupted.
Vano let out a long sigh. “Oh thank fuck! I can’t bear it anymore! Let me out of here!” he yelled.
With that, the massive, power-armored stalker jerked up, hitting his head on the ceiling. Ignoring it, he crawled towards the exit on the side of the cabin, opened the hatch and forced himself outside, head first, taking a deep breath of fresh air.
“Oh, divine fresh atmosphere, how I’ve missed you!” the bearded man exclaimed, before he tipped over and fell head first onto the ground outside.
Strider let out a snicker and exited the BTR, followed by Celestia who was giggling to herself, while a fit of laughter could be heard coming from the outside. With a chuckle, I followed the others outside.
I was not prepared for what I saw there.
The Cordon had always been renowned to be a relatively peaceful place, its tranquility only disturbed by the occasional Bandit raid or a blissful rookie walking into one of the many gravitational anomalies that surrounded the edge of the area. Even mutants were pretty tame there, with a few pack of dogs and a boar den as the only threats.
Even the military had stopped shooting stalkers on sight a few months ago when they found out that selling them surplus gear and extort money from them would be more profitable than just shooting at them.
The place was usually peaceful and empty, save for what us stalkers had nicknamed the ‘Rookie Village’. Even then, there never was more than a few dozen people on site. The record was of about fifty people, and that dated from back when the way to the North and to Pripyat was closed, a couple years ago. The Cordon was a much more popular place for rookies coming in and veterans getting out of the Zone by then. It was a hub of sorts.
As I stared at the massive gathering down the hill, I could only think that the record had been pulverized. Hundreds of stalkers were walking about, some patrolling the area, some entering or exiting the two mobile bunkers that were sitting in the middle of the fray, others attending to the many vehicles which were neatly parked in rows and columns organized by vehicle types. There were several BTR’s, not counting the one I had just disembarked from, several BMP’s, even two motherfucking tanks, with their armament and all. Many MI-24’s were aligned on the East edge of the rally, along with several MI-26’s, the massive cargo helicopters dwarfing the not so little gunships.
Nearly all the ground vehicles were painted in a digital woodland camo pattern and bore the insignia of the Dawn faction: a shield depicting a blazing sun peaking over a hill. Their helicopters however, while bearing the same logo, had their bellies painted sky blue and the rest of their hull was olive-colored.
Only four vehicles stood out: one BTR and one MI-24, both of which bore the olive colors of the Ukrainian military, and two bright white MI-26’s with the words ‘Utair’ painted blue on their sides.
I opened my mouth. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah, that’s about right,” laughed Vano, walking down the hill, followed by Strider and Celestia.
The alicorn turned around. “Get some rest, stalker. We leave tomorrow at dawn,” she advised.
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By the way, Utair is a Eastern European civilian company exploiting both fixed and rotary wing aircraft.
cool but you could have just combined this and the last chapter as one
Great story!
Might wanna mark it as complete though XD
I look forward to the sequel
This story is marked incomplete, are you going to add the sequel to this story, or a completely new one?
This story is marked incomplete, are you going to add the sequel to this story, or a completely new one?
Wait, never mind. I thought it was incomplete when I opened it. Apologies.
I can't really guess on what comes next in Equestria, honestly, probably same old first contact scenario. Might be war like Celestia suggested, but we don't know anything definitive.
I AM GOING TO REJOICE THE FUCKING SHIT OUT OF THIS VERY DAY. SO MUCH SO THAT I WILL COME TO BE KNOWN AS PINKIE PIE.
DUN DUN DUN.. BA DA BA BUM TSH
Love this story, can't wait for next one. as for the first contact, if it is with equestria i have no doubts it will be peaceful for reasons of celestia
Hell to the yes. ONWARDS TO THE SEQUEL!
I absolutely love your writing and eagerly wait for Luna's reaction to Celly being a hardened badass general.
10/10 made my day.
Sequel PLZ!
Keep being Awesome!
You maxe my day. And the romance that you put here was funny and shockong especially VanoxSnag they left me with my jaw open. Well im waiting for the sequel is gonna be awesome!
3976736
To your credit,
3976411 it was. I'm not used to finish stories.
3979490 :)
Hooray! Onwards to Equestria.
I expect some good shit happening in the future.
this is a great story so damn good that I went and replayed all of the stalker games.is it wrong that I loved playing as scar in clearsky?
3979601
Oh hi you.
Your story needs an OC tag.
3980842
No OCs there except for the character in the prologue.
3980858
You mean that nearly everyone you name from the STALKER games is actually a canonical game character?
3980884
Yeah. Look at the links at the bottom of nearly each chapter.
3980884
Oh, and Rookie is an OC, too. But his presence is insignificant, story-wise.
3980890 3980911
Oh. You still have room for two more character tags. What you have right now gives a false impression that Celestia is the main character and the only character; it gives a false impression of your story. Since pretty much everyone else is either a named minor canonical background character or an OC, you don't have to prioritize your character tags. It will also attract more readers if you broaden your character tags. OC is popular, and you technically have them. Other is typically used for either bit part ponies or background ponies, but there's no reason why it couldn't cover canonical characters from other works of fiction.
3980957
Guess I'l do that then.
Dammit man, making me wait for the reunion.
3980287 :3 Hey
i can't wait to see what the ponies will think of the new and improved Princess Celestia
Well enjoyable story and now I'm officially pumped for the sequelI can't wait for this and its good to see that in some way or form the zone has been getting relatively better.
Arggggh it cannot end like this after binge reading all day long!! D:
Also I doubt the sex tag is necessary lol
3994723
Sun ray/sunbeam, something like that.
Hey, when she is back to Equestria , she can dublicate ammo like it's nothing, create fuel for all the FV like levitation.
3994723 Ah, thank you! Tried to google it but...nadda. lol
4002817
4004028
DA-YUM.
You make valid points, but hey.
To be fair, I had written this when I didn't know jackshit about guns other than they're cool and that exotic things are cooler and therefore more powerful.
Then I learned the AKS-74u is actually a really rare weapon only the Spetsnaz and a few special units use. Then I learned that shooting a pistol is hard as fuck. And then I learned other things.
I do think I got Vano's handling of the PKM right, though. I'm talking about operating the charging handle and shit, not the firing part. That's where the rule of cool comes in.
Also, info dumps are... tedious to the reader. And the LR-300 in the stalker games is THE entry NATO weapon, go figure.
The details, along with many inconsistencies make me want to rewrite the story, but I'm working on getting the sequel out first.
4057731
not magic, artifacts.
*snort snort*
4052037 do like i did. Write a single sentence continuing the story and put a link in the chapter. See, it doesn't break the rules!
4060769
Someone got the reference
4060788
totally fair, if you ask me. But to be frank, in the stalker series the protagonist's body count has nothing to envy even to 80's action movies.
4061801
So? It's a work of fiction. The author has absolute control over what goes on in his story, canon or not.
4061801
Are you fucking kidding me. There are literally only men in the Zone. It's either that or mutants. I know what I'd chose.
Awesome!!
I honestly didn't believe I'd ever find Celestia of all ponies in a situation like this!!
Vrag zamechen is the correct version.
4062270 AFAIK there are bars with chicks in Stalker books, just outside of the zone. And hey, Han Solo is always an option.
4066377 The Sarcasm is strong with this one.
Holy mother of God. I expected this story to be utter shit, I was wrong, oh so vary wrong.
4067568
With 3k views, almost 500 likes for less than 30 dislikes? Nah. With such ratings I guess it's got to be acceptable at least
I just started reading this, and currently I am at chapter 6.
I never finished this game, even though I loved it, Just kind of forgot about it, and got frustrated, Why the hell I decided to play at hard difficulty I don't know. But thanks to this story, I found my old saves, reinstalled the game, And now I am supposed to be studying for my physics test, Thank you far taking my time...
Still thank you for reminding me about this awesome game.
4068393
Yes, there is static electricity, but it works by physically separating the charges, not pushing a stream of free electrons using an external power source. Totally different principles at work.
Imagine that you want to turn a big water wheel, and don't have a river handy. You do have a pump, some pipes, and plenty of water. So you hook up the pipe to a tub below the water wheel, to the pump, up to the top of the water wheel. You turn it on and... nothing happens? Wait! You left a cap on one end of the pipe - you forgot to close the circuit. So you take off the cap to provide a complete path all the way around, and you're getting mechanical assistance from an external power source.
Now imagine that you decide to hook up the discharge end of the pump directly to the basin, instead of the top of the water wheel. Now you're pumping water from the basin... straight back to the basin. Worse, since you aren't fighting gravity anymore, you wind up pumping more water, faster, and wasting more energy. To correct this problem, you pick up a bucket and haul water by hand for a minute or two.
The analogy is not quite perfect, but is hopefully easier to wrap your head around. Whether you are lifting buckets or rubbing things together, you get no more extra energy than you put in.
Also, from what I can gather, the reason TV sometimes shows doctors rubbing defibrillator pads together is because they are spreading conductive gel across them - not generating static electricity.
Science!
We are S.T.A.L.K.E.R.s: Scavengers Trespassers Adventurers Loners Killers Explorers Robbers. Quite the resumé.
Just want to point out, "Prequel" only denotes a story that was released after, but takes place before, another work. So unless Operation Homecoming was written before this, then "predecessor" would work better in this case.
4093358
blah.
Good point. Changed.
Bien, "Voir Paris et Mourir" revisité à la sauce Zone? Depuis le temps que je voulais lire ton travail.
Let's get started!