• Published 30th Oct 2013
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Fallout: Equestria - Knights of Day - sirustalcelion



A prequel to Fallout: Equestria. What happened to Celestia's Guards after the megaspell apocalypse?

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Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Survival

“I despise camping. All that ...euugh... nature!”

We just lay there, in the ashes and bones of ponies a hundred and twenty years dead. I wasn’t really sure what to do. I had just been thrown out, literally, of my stable, for following the rules and not fighting, while Bolt Action had been thrown out of the stable for standing up and fighting on my behalf, in the spirit of the rules of the stable.

We weren’t troublemakers. Bolt Action was a model guardsmare, and I had had never gotten more than a raised voice at my passively deviant attitude. My fighting scores aside, we had the best grades of anypony in our year in Stable Seven. The only explanation was that the Overmare-General had something going on, though I had no idea what it could be. Whatever it was, I had sure stepped in it, and worse, I had taken Bolt Action with me. I still wasn’t sure exactly just what went wrong.

Bolt Action sat up first, and looked at me. Or at least, she turned her head in my direction, I couldn’t make out her eyes behind that helmet. “What do we do now, Silver?” Even through the slightly tinny effect the helmet gave her voice, I could tell that she had been crying.

“Why are you asking me? I don’t know what I’m doing! I’m the pony that got both of us stuck out here!” I chastised myself silently. If only we had been able to figure out the Overmare’s real intentions in time! If there had been a little longer for me to look around, maybe I could have used it as leverage to get back in. Turning towards the cave exit, I said, “Actually, scratch that. We’re going to get back in. We have a deal, and signed copies of it. We fulfill our side, and then she’ll have to let us back in.” You know, presuming the Overmare is good for her word.

Better yet, if this Steel Ranger group really was a bunch of power-armored ponies like Stable Seven, then we would come back with an army capable of blowing open the door, and expose General Orders somehow. I wasn’t sure about how to accomplish that part, but I’m sure it would come to me with an army at my back.

Actually, that was a terrible plan. “I like it,” said Bolt Action.

Okay, unless she was entertaining the same revenge fantasy scenario as I was, Bolt Action ought to be disagreeing with me. “You do?”

“Yeah. We have a mission to do, for the good of the Stable. We should at least attempt to actually do it.”

Oh yeah, that. Actually, come to think of it, attacking Stable Seven was a bad plan. But the original mission was a good one. If we played our cards right, we could get back into the stable, without having to blow up any doors. We could just knock politely and get her to do it herself. “Alright, well, if we’re doing it, we’d better get on it. Sitting here isn’t going to help anything. Let’s see what goodies we got from General Orders.”

I took both my and Bolt Action’s saddlebags in my telekinetic grip and unceremoniously dumped their pre-packed contents on a relatively bone-free area of the cave.

We each had been given a weapon with minimal ammunition, true to the terms of our contracts. Bolt Action had a .308 rifle, in moderate condition. It had that funny no-grip design for weapons intended explicitly to work with a power armor gun mount. I, in contrast had a barely working nine millimeter pistol, of a basic earth-pony mouth-held design. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need it. Even if I was striking out on my persuasive talents today, I was sure that I would be able to at least run away from any confrontation we had Outside. We also had some health potions and two weeks’ worth of replicated food and water, and a general magical antidote apiece. Add my amazing arsenal of a whopping three combat spells – a directional shield, a generic water-drying spell, and basic combat levitation – all of which I had never been able to perform in anything remotely resembling combat – and we were pretty well screwed.

I put each item back into the bag, my Pipbuck noting each one separately. The pistol I packed deep in the bag. I really hoped I wouldn’t need it. Naturally, with the extra strength her power armor bestowed on her, Bolt Action carried the greater share of our gear. I copied the inventory data to Bolt Action’s Pipbuck, and got up to leave this cavern and its giant steel gear behind.

My hoof struck a hollow sound on my first step. A wooden sign had fallen on its face and gotten hidden in the sandy dust that covered the floor. I turned it over. “Fuck you, Overmare!” was written on it in large, angry irregular brownish letters.

Well, it was a bit crass, but it was an otherwise accurate statement. I nudged the sign so that it stood up against some rocks. If anypony else came out of the stable, this would be the first thing they saw.

Picking our way through the angry detritus of long-dead ponies, we finally made it to a loosely constructed wooden slat through which light was streaming. I could hear a howling, whistling sound Outside. I gave a last look back at the grey stable door, and then on the equally grey armor of my fellow exile-ee. Fuck You, Overmare. Very accurate.

I muttered a prayer to the Goddess, and pushed open the wooden slats.

Instantly it disappeared. No, it was ripped away from my hoof, torn away by some massive invisible force. Was this wind? It was similar to the wind in the simulator, but this breeze was to that breeze what the massive stable door was to the wooden slat that had clattered to Goddess knows where. I squinted into the wind, only able to see a higher, larger rock ceiling. This whole Outside thing was going to be much harder than I had previously realized.

So far, the Outside wasn’t much different from a stable. Cautious of the force, I slowly poked my head out of the narrow cave entrance. Instantly I was tossed against the side of the opening, probably earning a few bruises. I opened my eyes a little, squinting in the sheer volume of air being blown past me. I couldn’t see anything other than rocks in the darkness.

“What’s taking so long, Silver? You okay?” Bolt Action’s cold steel nudged my flank in concern. The touch was cold enough to make me jump… right out into the wind. I hugged the ground, keeping a low profile against it, but the pressure was strong enough that I felt that if I stood any higher, I would fly off.

“Yow! Watch it!” I tried to shout, but the air force shoved itself down my throat when I opened my mouth, and there was so much noise against my ears that I couldn’t hear myself. She poked her iron-clad head through the gap. I couldn’t shout a warning.

Apparently Bolt Action didn’t need one. The only part of her affected was a little ruffling in the bit of her mane that poked out the crest of the power armor. She calmly walked out, the heavy armor keeping her from being tossed about as lightly as I was. I would have glared at her if I wasn’t too busy squinting. She walked over to where I was holding on for the sake of my dear white pony hide. “Want help?” she offered, her voice barely audible in the wind.

Yes, I could use some help. But then the idea of being saved by Bolt Action twice in one day made me balk, and I shook my head. I could do this myself.

Of course, the easy way out would have been to just go with the force, and find out where the wooden slat wound up. I, however, was curious to see what caused wind this strong. Was there a giant fan at the end of this giant rocky ventilation shaft? I hunkered down and began to crawl, hoof by hoof, through the larger rocks lining the bottom of the cavern.

Ahead of me was a massive bright light. I walked out into it, my eyes hurting with the brightness. The wind rapidly decreased its strength as I moved further and further outside the cavern and into the light. Where was the fan? Did the cavern magically turn this light airy breath to its demonic fury? Perhaps it was natural for caves like this to have strong wind. Outside was weird.

Eventually, my eyes began to adjust to the bright light, and I looked across into the largest room I had ever seen. Was this the great outdoors? It was different than I had expected. For one thing, there was no big blue sky. That was disappointing. Between myself and the sky was a grey barrier of clouds. Maybe it would rain soon?

The stable atrium had nothing on this place. The clouds were so high that I couldn’t touch them, or hit them with a thrown piece of rock, or even with a magically levitated rock. I know, I tried. The second rock went up until I could no longer see it or the blue aura that enveloped it. I looked down, needing a bigger rock that I could see farther away. Distance this vast was mind-boggling.

“Ow!” I yelped. The pebble I had levitated had come back with a vengeance. Okay, no bigger rock. That ceiling distance would have to remain a mystery.

“Huh, I thought we’d see blue by now.” Bolt action idly mused.

I looked around at ground level instead. We appeared to be in some sort of ravine, if I remembered my books correctly. A river ran down the center of the canyon, but it flowed slowly, choked with silt and slime. Some small, hardy looking bushes grew up on any even slightly flat land. Further up, I could see some thick thorny areas.

Another pebble struck my head. “Ow! What?” I turned to Bolt Action.

“I didn’t do anything.” I believed her, but where else would a thrown pebble have come from? Another struck me in the shoulder. Oooh, it stung! But that definitely couldn’t have been Bolt Action.

I turned around, only to come face-to-face with what might be the ugliest creature in the Goddess’ creation. It looked like the pictures I had seen of a fly. Four veinous wings produced a low buzz, and its hoof-sized, bloated, bulbous body seemed covered with cancerous growths. Its body grew convex towards me, and then shot forward a little, releasing a small pebble sized something from its insectoid maw, which promptly struck me with the same force as the previous two blows. What the heck was it? I had never seen it in any of my books.

The areas where it had struck me burned and itched and still hurt. I ducked as I saw it cock back and fire again. I rolled over and strained to look at my shoulder. It was bleeding, yes, but worse, there was some sort of pulsing, bulbous needle where it had struck. I watched in horror for a second, and then panicked as it began to move –on its own! – worming its way inside my flesh. I didn’t give it two seconds before I telekinetically wrapped it in blue and threw it away from me. I didn’t want to play host to any larvae of any bug, much less whatever that thing was.

Speaking of which, the insect had cocked again, ready to fire a third larva-needle or whatever into my warm flesh. I prepared to dodge the other way, when Bolt Action jumped in between us. The flying monstrosity fired anyway, but instead of lodging in Bolt Action’s hide, the larva-dart ricocheted off her armor and landed coiled on a heap on the ground. Without a second thought she crushed it under an ironclad hoof. “Hey, ugly! Try a challenge!”

The creature gave a hissing, squeaky purr and began to follow her. This didn’t seem like the kind of insect you could squash just by slapping it. It was larger than my hoof! I needed a weapon. I had a weapon! I began to root through my saddlebags. Why had I buried my gun so deeply? And why did the back of my head hurt?

Finally, I found the pistol. I loaded a magazine and levitated it up to my mouth to start firing. Miss! Miss! Buck, this thing was hard to hit, with its erratic movement. Absolutely nothing like practicing at the range. I fired bullet after bullet in its general direction, as it continued to fire harmlessly at Bolt Action. Eventually, I got lucky and clipped one of the creature’s wings. It dropped like a rock, and it’s helpless bloated body was easily crushed by Bolt Action. “Take that, you overgrown fly!” she said, and then looked up at me. I couldn’t see her expression, but her body stiffened in alarm. “Silver! It’s stuck in your head!”

So that’s what the pain in the back of my head was. Wait a second. “Aah! It’s eating my brain! Get it off, get it off!” I couldn’t remove something I couldn’t see to levitate or reach to pull out! Bolt Action put her hooves to her helmet so that she could, presumably, take it off and use her mouth.

“I can’t take off the helmet! It’s stuck! Stock must have locked it on!” That was possible? But there was a more pressing concern here.

“Doesn’t matter! Use your hooves!” Without hesitation, Bolt Action ran over and put her forehooves on the back of my head. They came down on the back of my skull like a frying pan, the weight of her body forcing me down until my face rubbed in the sandy grit that was the floor of this oversize room. Then they pinched together and pulled. I felt a good three inches of straw-like proboscis pull out of my head, and then the weight lifted. I turned my head around and saw the creature wriggle and writhe, and then before my eyes its shell hardened and its body expanded, becoming another monstrosity. Unfortunately for it, it was also in between Bolt Action’s metal hooves, and it was immediately crushed between them.

I looked down, my wounds bleeding rivers of uncongealed blood down my otherwise white coat. The blood didn’t show any sign of stopping soon. It ought to be coagulating. Well, whatever the larvae secreted that was affecting me, the Pipbuck didn’t read it as poison, so I figured a healing potion would do the job. Maybe half. we only had six between us, so I needed to be conservative with my use of these. Especially if we were to run into any more of those monsters.

Bolt Action kept on looking at me, presumably staring at the wound in the back of my head. It felt actually okay, now that I had had half a healing potion. I mean, I did feel a little lightheaded, but that was probably blood loss. I took out a bottle of clean stable water and took a swig, to replace lost fluids. I touched a hoof to the back of my head, feeling tender new skin formed where the wound had been. Still she kept on staring. The opaque dark glass on the helmet was kind of unnerving. “It can’t be that bad, can it? I mean, it only tried to eat my brain!” I grinned a little, hopefully my attempt at humor would get her to stop staring.

“Poor critter. It could have starved to death doing dangerous stuff like that.” Well, that was better. I forced a soft chuckle, and Bolt Action shook her head.

“Well, let’s put in a data entry for this monstrosity. I’m thinking Evil Mutant Bug-eyed Flying Harbinger of Doom, myself.”

One very useful feature of Pipbucks was their data collection abilities. A Pipbuck could read an item, and once a pony had assigned it a name, they just had to get connected to a Stable-Tec hub, and the item would be identified for anypony else with a Pipbuck. It wasn’t a feature with much use in a stable, where the only new items likely to be created were kid’s craft projects and the like. But this was a new animal, and that meant I got to put in the data entry for it. I pulled up my Pipboy and held it close to the smooshed corpse of the spiny evil bug. “Bloatsprite,” it read simply. Well, that was disappointing. It also said that the Bloatsprite had an item in its possession, “Bloatsprite meat,”

I looked down at the greenish mess of slime, spines, and larvae. Meat? I hoped I would never be that desperate. I mean, I know ponies are omnivores, or else we wouldn’t be able to eat egg products like pies and cakes. But still. Eeugh.

“Silver…” said Bolt Action’s voice behind me.

I turned around to face her. Goddess, those glassy eye slits were disturbing. But instead of continuing, she just shook her head. Fine, don’t say anything. I hated not being able to see the expression on her face.

“We’d probably better be moving on.” I looked up at the high rock walls to either side. The canyon stretched for several more miles than I could see, but there was a bridge spanning the gap. Covering practically every square hoof of sandy dirt were scraggly, evil looking thorny brambles. There was a sort of path leading up to the bridge rising out of the tangled mess, clinging to the right side. The cliff had strange vertical craters along it, some coinciding with the path, and each corresponding to a matching deep hole in the left side. “Let’s try to get up to the bridge. Maybe we can find other ponies from the vantage point.”
Bolt Action shook her metal covered head. “See all the red marks in the left wall? I don’t want to go any closer to any more red marks today.”

“What red marks?” I asked simply.

“Y’know, on your EFS?”

“My what?”

Bolt Action cocked her head at what I took to be an incredulous angle. “Eyes-Forward Sparkle? Haven’t you been using it? Don’t tell me you forgot about SATS, too!”

To be honest, I had forgotten about SATS again. I had never needed my EFS since basic training, and so I had forgotten about that, too.

Yet another of the many features of a Pipbuck, besides their durability, information networking, and massive storage space is their ability to magically display a number of useful statistics directly into a pony’s brain, as if it were hovering on a screen in front of your eyes. I flicked mine on, and suddenly a wealth of information was made available to me. Well, some information, anyway. A horizontal compass told me that I was headed north-northeast, and there were a lot of red marks on left, west, wall.

Red marks were bad, if I remembered Pipbuck training. Supposedly the spell matrix of the Pipbuck could do a little divination magic, or something, and tell you whether or not a living creature wanted to kill you. It would then display red for ‘yes’ and blue for ‘no.’ On the other hand, it couldn’t tell you the distance between you and those marks, or their elevation. I didn’t think anypony really understood how that feature worked. My compass had exactly one blue bar, which hugged Bolt Action’s location.

This Pipbuck could be really useful here in the Outside. I wondered if it had any other useful information that it could dig out of its spell matrix. I flipped through a few pages. I noted, to minor embarrassment, that I hadn’t turned off my audio recorder since turning it on halfway through my ‘fight’ with Mobilization. Oops. I cut the recording, and the Pipbuck told me it had been a whole whopping four hours since I had started the audio recording, when this whole fiasco had started. Only four hours? It felt like longer.

The Pipbuck had also been quietly revealing a topographical map of our surroundings. There were three square markers on the map, and two triangular ones, representing the locations of Bolt Action’s and my Pipbucks. One square had a symbol of a Stable-Tec gear, and read “Stable 7,” A marker corresponding roughly with the west side of the bridge was labeled “Renegade Shack” with a chevron over it. The square that corresponded to our current location read “Ghastly Gorge.”

I looked up at the cliffs, the thorny plants, and then back at the bloatsprite corpse. Ghastly was one word for it.

+ + +

The thorny bushes hadn’t given us much trouble, after I asked Bolt Action to walk in front. It didn’t matter if there were thorns as long as my foreleg, no evil plant thing was going to be capable of punching through magically reinforced, self-repairing steel. With the extra four inches of height granted by the armor, Bolt Action was even slightly larger than me, meaning she left a comfortable, pony-sized hole through which I had no trouble walking.

Rising out of the brambles, though, we were much closer to the red bars on the EFS. Even this close, I couldn’t see all the way inside the curious cave formations on the west cliffs. I edged into one of the Cliffside depressions, looking directly into one of the caves. There was a red bar in it, but I couldn’t see what the red bar could be. Peering inside the cave, I turned on my Pipbuck light (another useful feature) and shone it down the cavern.

I only caught a glimpse of speeding red flesh before I jumped back out of the range of the crater I had been standing in, and not a moment too soon!

A head larger than me, followed by a boxcar-sized body lunged out with devastating swiftness, not stopping until its blunt nose struck the rock wall right where I had been standing a moment before. A yellow beady eye took note of my position, and the creature recoiled back into the cave as quickly as it had come. “What was that?” I shouted, nerves on end.

“I dunno! SATS says it’s something called a ‘Quarry Eel,’ but it doesn’t give me anything else.”

Oh yeah, SATS. I was pretty bad at this remembering business. “Okay, I’m going to see if that thing pops out again. Pull me back if it does.” I again stuck my head out into the crater, ignoring whatever Bolt Action had just started to say, and as soon as I saw that rushing corridor of red death, I flexed my temple and entered SATS.

Well, brilliant. Now I could see my demise coming in much more detail. SATS could speed up my perception and thinking speed so much that time seemed to slow nearly to a standstill, but my muscles remained just as slow as they ever were. Worse, in the temporal distortion of SATS, I noted that the ‘Quarry Eel’ was adjusting its aim so that if I dodged again like I did before, I would be Eel Chow. Its mouth opened, revealing long, backwards-pointing teeth above and below. I began to jump, in painfully slow motion, forward, away from my companion and away from the eel’s corrected aim.

Purple muscles in its throat flexed and revealed a second set of jaws within its armor plated mouth, ready to grab me and pull me inside its maw. Then SATS’s spell ran out of power, restoring time to normal speed while the spell recharged. The whole beast sped up to a blur, impacting the rock where I would have been if I had made the same dodge as before. I tumbled into the pulverized crater that had once been a path.

“Silver, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” cried Bolt Action, “I can’t grip or pull things with this helmet on!” She jumped to me, letting loose a shot from the .308 into the quarry eel’s tunnel, and I covered my head instinctively as its massive head impacted right next to us. She fired again before the creature could retract into its cave, but the bullet just ricocheted off its thick hide. “My rifle can’t damage it, either.”

My mind recoiled against a creature this impossible. “How do those things get enough food to stay alive?” I wondered aloud. The anatomy of a quarry eel was probably fascinating, presuming anypony had managed to get one in a position to actually study it.

“I don’t care, as long as the diet remains solidly ‘not us.’ Equestria to Silver, let’s pay attention to our imminent doom here!”

“Right, giant toothy things shoot out of the holes in the west cliffs and impact with the east cliff, which we have to travel because it’s the only path up to that bridge. I’m guessing these things have been around here a while because they’ve hit the rock enough times to leave marks. Either that or the rocks are just weak.” I hoped this plan would work. It was simple, maybe too simple, but I didn’t have a better one. “There’s nothing for it, we have to charge ahead and jump across whenever we start to cross one of the craters. Hopefully these things aren’t paying close attention, and we can get a little more time before the first strike.”

As I said that last sentence, yellow globes and evil jutting jaws began to poke out of the west cliff face. “Actually, scratch that last bit, the gunshot probably woke them up. We’d better start running!” I took off, traveling up the narrow path. Looking ahead, I could see a half dozen collapsed sections of path, where quarry eel impacts had destroyed it.

Bolt Action, in slightly better condition than me and wearing speed-enhancing power armor pulled ahead.
That bothered me slightly, but then I realized it could work to my advantage, if I could start my jump when the eel retracted, then I would have slightly more time to make my jump. It was a little selfish of me, I know, but I wasn’t the athlete in magic armor.

We rushed ahead, as some of the surrounding quarry eel heads halfheartedly lunged in our general direction, although they were too far away to get us. I hoped. A pair of lazy bloatsprites entered into my EFS, before a quarry eel head lunged out and swallowed them. Great, these beasts ate creatures like that for breakfast. That really didn’t help our chances.

Presently, we met the first section of collapsed path. Bolt Action nimbly leapt across, without hesitating. I started to skid to a halt as the train-sized eel smashed into its crater, missing her, but noting me. Its muscles flexed, and it began to pull away, and I ran full tilt and jumped.

I made it! Hah! It worked! My plan worked! I could have danced, if the head hadn’t hit its mark a second time. Bolt Action had waited for me to cross before moving on, but we began to race forward again, and this time I made sure to keep just enough distance between us that I wouldn’t have to stop and start again. We dodged another two the same way, each time our actions getting a little smoother, like Stable-Tec craftsmanship.

Wait a minute, this was too easy. I looked ahead, past Bolt Action and saw that the next two gaps were close together, with just enough space between them for one pony. And that meant – “Wait, Bolt Action, stop!”

It’s a good thing Bolt Action was a better listener than me, because she simply froze as soon as I called out to her, metal hindquarters skidding to a halt along the ground as not one, but two quarry eels lunged out, the first one like normal, and the second one poised to get somepony like me who had been smart enough to evade the other heads. They retracted, and we both jumped ahead one space, the two heads snapping after me so closely that I had to turn a quarter to the left to avoid meeting the same fate as those bloatsprites.

I jumped again before they could broadside me again, landing on my dock again. It still hurt from jumping down that staircase all those hours ago. I winced from the pain. Healing potions didn’t care about bruises. “You alright?” asked Bolt Action.

I nodded. “You?”

She turned around and began running ahead again. I leapt to my hooves and ran after her. I didn’t want to be late in the jump timing! She jumped across the final gap, and I prepared to do the same, when the resident quarry eel jumped leapt out and actually struck her. Bolt Action let out a soft little grunt and was pulled back into the cave along with the creature, and I almost missed my jump in shock. Almost.

Safely across, half my brain told me that the smart thing to do would be to just leave her. I didn’t have a weapon I could use on it, and besides, my aim sucked. She was probably dead already. Her memory would be remembered.

As that half of my brain went on rationalizing, the useful part searched frantically for a solution. “No, nonono, think-think-think,” I said aloud to nopony in particular. I ran a hoof through my mane, looking for a solution to my unable-to-hurt-a-quarry-eel problem. Well, my little peashooter was worthless, but was I a unicorn or what? A unicorn is never disarmed when he still has magic! I ran through my mental catalogue of spells. Evaporation? Weak shield? Lightning strike? That last one would be cool, if I was capable of actually doing it, but I didn’t have any aptitude with electricity spells. I glanced up at the collapsed area of path, and knew what I needed to do.

Oh, this was a terrible idea. I jumped back into the crater area and instantly triggered SATS. Now in slow motion, I could see the greedy beast again lunging, a still-alive Bolt Action using its incisors as grips to keep it from swallowing her with its second set of jaws. “Quarry Eel Watch Out Extra Fast” read its unique Pipbuck entry. Somepony presumably had run into this thing before. Yellow beady eyes fixed on my succulent non-armored pony hide, while I focused my magic and levitated out a few choice stones from the cliff face above me. The mountainside rumbled slowly, and as the narrow jaws closed over me, the cliff broke apart, leaving massive falling rocks which should be able to hurt the eel.

My plan also hadn’t left me a way out, which was a problem. More problematic was that the eel head was retracting back without showing any signs of being hit. I began to try to work out a way to cut our way out from inside, assuming we weren’t going to be chewed or pummeled in a gullet or something, but the mouth lurched and dropped, suddenly stopping again. The muscles relaxed, though the toothy grip the inner jaws had on Bolt Action’s hindlegs didn’t lessen. “Goddess-dammit, Silver, what did you do?”

I made no answer as I magically pried the teeth out of Bolt Action’s armor. They didn’t appear to have any poison, so that was good, although at least two of them had drawn blood. We then both pushed open the roof of its mouth, and climbed out onto the path. Its slack body hung out from cliff side to cliff side like a clothes drying line, large blocks of sandstone sitting in its cranium and eye sockets. Whew, that was lucky. If it had landed in a different spot, that boulder could easily have crushed us both, and only maimed the ‘Quarry Eel Watch Out Extra Fast.’

Wasting no time, Bolt Action kicked out the largest of its teeth, depositing them in her saddlebags, while I checked my Pipbuck’s map again. The bridge was only a hundred yards or so in front of us, but the marker for “Renegade’s Shack” was right on top of us. I lined up the chevron marker on my EFS and walked straight ahead, peering closely at the large rocks that were right where the shack should be. I looked up, and then down. The only thing remotely unusual was a solitary blue feather lodged under a stone. It looked ancient and sun-bleached, only hints of its former cerulean brilliance showed. Next to it was scratched a few letters into the hard rocks. I peered closer. “Turn on your radio, idiot,” they read.

I opened my Pipbuck’s passive radio scanner. It had decoded three channels right now, “DJ,” “Enclave,” and “Stable Seven Outcasts Use This One.” Well, that was straightforward. I rolled my eyes and clicked it on. A stallion’s voice emerged from my pipbuck.

“—peats. This message is intended for ponies who have been exiled from Stable Seven like we were. Up on the path near the railway bridge is a small cave. We’ve tagged the location on your Pipbuck. More will be explained inside, but to reveal the cave, stand next to the feather-rock and say the name of your Goddess. Watch out for quarry eels along the path, especially the last one. We recommend following the river along the bottom, and then climbing the rock face, it’s easier and safer. Message repeats. This…”

I rolled my eyes again and facehoofed, wishing I had turned this on sooner. Somepony was being very helpful, and I hadn’t been paying attention enough to listen. At least the password was simple enough. “Faust.” I said, and what had appeared to be solid rock wavered and then disappeared, revealing a steel blast door, which opened. A small room, about the size of my living quarters in Stable Seven, lay beyond.

Bolt Action and I wandered in. The door slammed shut and florescent lights flickered to life above us. The room was a mess. It had once been jammed full of preserved food, weapons, ammunition, and even some power armor pieces, but all that remained was a number of empty packages, some locked ammunition crates, and some miscellaneous gun pieces. There were two worn sets of blue and yellow stable seven barding hung up near a wall mounted cot, and finally a Stable-tec terminal flickered to life on top of a cluttered table.

At least nothing tried to kill us.

“About time we got a break today,” observed Bolt Action, “but what about the bridge? I thought you wanted to go up there.”

I shrugged. “We can go up there in the morning. This is probably the best place to spend the night anyway.” She nodded.

I made a beeline for the terminal, while Bolt Action settled in. Good old Stable-Tec engineering, built to last. The monitor came to life, logging in automatically. Well, that was nice. A number of entries came up, with a pony’s initials and then a date. There was one pre-war entry, a few wartime entries, and then two relatively recent ones. I downloaded them all to my Pipbuck, and began playing the most recent one first. It was probably left by whoever was being so helpful.

“This is Gol-uh, GH,” began a mare’s voice. “It’s been a long time since we found this place after being exiled from Stable Seven. We have discovered that we weren’t the first and, we expect, we won’t be the last. Hopefully we can provide some helpful tips to anypony who has been unfortunate enough to earn OG-O’s ire. We’ve refurnished this shack with some extra food, guns, and ammunition, feel free to take some, but remember that you aren’t the only ponies who might need this help. Take only what you need, and if you can, come back and replenish the supplies once you’ve gotten back on your hooves…”

I looked around at the old cans and shredded cardboard boxes of Apple Bombs. So much for GH’s hospitality. Somepony must have been here between GH and us, and didn’t share her helpful attitude. The message continued on, “…there are a few general tips that you should be aware of, first, as a little spritebot once told us, make some friends. The wasteland is hard enough without having to do it alone. Second, keep bottle caps. They’re like ration cards out here, except you can exchange them for whatever you want. Third, keep your guns in working order. Nopony manufactures new things any more, so you won’t be able to get new ones. And watch out for raiders and the local irradiated wildlife, especially killerflies. Avoid radiation and taint.

“CB and I are leaving with the Rangers for the Crystal Commonwealth, and likely won’t be back. The new password we put on the door should make it inaccessible to anyone who isn’t from Stable Seven, and the radio message won’t activate without an exile’s Pipbuck signal. Good luck, fellow exile.”

Make friends? Bottle caps are ration cards? Gun maintenance? I appreciated the gesture, but GH wasn’t providing a whole lot of useful tips.

“Silver, could you take a look at my helmet?” Bolt Action’s tinny voice echoed in the small bunker. “I think Stock did something with it. I couldn’t get it off before.” She sat on her haunches and put her hooves on her helmet, pushing at it.

I cantered over to her and peered at the joint where helmet fitted itself over the black mesh beneath. Normally, there were a series of four small clasps above and below that would pop open if a pony turned their head in just the right way, allowing them to unscrew the O-ring collar with ease. The clasps had opened, but the screw wouldn’t budge, not with hooves and not with telekinesis. “Well, it’s not coming off normally, but you knew that. Maybe there’s something wrong with the O-ring? I don’t see anything. I don’t suppose your onboard terminal could run a diagnostic.”

“Already did. It’s reading magical interference.”

According to Smoothbore, ‘magical interference’ was Stable-Tec for ‘unknown.’ That was unhelpful. I ran a few possibilities through my head. The best thing to do was to use a suite of magical identification spells, most of which I didn’t know by heart, find a restoration talisman (which used magic I didn’t know) to reset the armor back to an earlier state, or get a magically enhanced plasma cutter and brute force it. That was the worst idea, because not only did it require technology I didn’t have, but because it would also probably leave Bolt Action with a third degree burn mixed with slag in a perfect line around her neck. I had only one feasible option, but… “I dunno, Bolt Action. I could probably pull together a brute force magic diminishing spell to see what is locking it in place, but that would crash your whole system.” Doing something like that without a Pipbuck repairpony around could leave Bolt Action immobile for hours while her system rebooted itself. I wished that I had paid better attention on support-role day, when Click Clack’s father talked about his spell matrix repair work. Or, just as good, that I had a step by step power armor repair and troubleshooting guide, but I’d never even read one, and ‘standard scouting gear’ didn’t come with any books.

I tried various more physical methods for getting the o-ring to budge. This could take a while. “Silver,” Bolt action called again while I worked. “Silver, you killed something today.”

“Huh. I suppose I did. I hadn’t really thought about it.” The plate underlying the screw really seemed jammed, maybe I could move it and unstick the ring.

“Ha! I knew it! Lever Action owes me ten dessert cards!”

“Knew what?”

“That you could kill an animal. Lever Action wouldn’t let me invite you radroach hunting because she said you’d feel sorry for them and try to broker a peace between us.”

I snorted. “In my defense, it was trying to eat my brain.” I telekinetically grabbed a nearby piece of metal to use as a sort of shim, but to no avail. That thing was stuck on tight, whatever Stock had done. I didn’t even know it was possible to do that to a suit of armor. “I think it must have eaten the unstick-power-armor-joints part of my brain, Bolt Action, I can’t get it.”

“Oh. O-okay. We’d better get some rest, then.” Bolt Actions words were strong but choked, the choking not from the sabotaged O-ring.

I tried to think of something to say, but my namesake failed me yet again. Having the helmet stuck on would be an inconvenience to me or any other unicorn, but for an earth pony, mouths were vital to how they interacted with the world, and the Stable Seven power armor covered the whole front of Bolt Action’s face with a number of rubber hoses and metal plates. It would be like taking away my magic. I shuddered. Since I was incapable of saying anything helpful, I looked out at the door to the large room and its impossibly high ceiling. “Hey. Why don’t you take the co—,” I began, but Bolt Action cut me off.

“I’ll just break it with the armor on. I’ll take the floor.” So much for chivalry, but this at least left me comfortable. I settled on the blanket-less cot, shivering a little. Whoever had built the giant room sure liked it cold at night.

Unlike that helmet, this problem had an easy fix. I floated the two old uniforms over and laid them on top. They smelled a little of mildew, sweat, and dust, but they were warm at least. “Goodnight, Bolt Action.”

She made no reply. Maybe she was already asleep?

Author's Note:

Special thanks to Polyphony for editing this chapter.