//------------------------------// // 1. Itinerary // Story: Fallout: Equestria - To Bellenast // by Sir Mediocre //------------------------------// Chapter One Itinerary A great rumbling built outside the porthole. The ceaseless rush of air, having been amiably quiet beyond the aluminium and polycarbonate shell of the transport all morning, made known its intent to disturb further sleep. The crackling fury of a distant storm shook me from restless, cramped slumber and reading for the first time in days. I peeked blearily from within the magenta fluff of bundled blankets nestled in the aircraft’s left seat; gone from the porthole was the stabbing, blinding white of sunlight reflected from snow below, and in its place was a foreboding grey to accompany the dull pain in my forehead. I curled up and pulled the blanket back over my head to shut out the sky’s tumult. Pneumatic hissing came from beyond my magenta shelter. The airlock at the small craft’s nose cycled open, and boots plodded across the mesh walkway between laden storage nets secured to the interior hull. The thudding steps came closer, taking care to be as quiet as was possible with cleated boots on a grate floor. An armored croupier hit the floor by my seat, and a low whine coming from the suit of armor cut off as its helmet seals opened. A dull clunk came from the floor. A shadow moved over my magenta blanket. “Hey…” The murmur came with a gentle nuzzle on my neck. “We’re over the mountains now… remember those little ones we saw earlier this morning? Way, way off on the horizon?” She chuckled and brushed her nose across my cheek. I hummed an affirmative and nodded slowly. “Passed over them two hours ago. They’re even bigger down below. Six thousand meters above sea level, at least. Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?” I shuddered and pulled the blanket down again, shooting a baleful glare up at the pale lavender face and teal mane. “We’re about to pass over the last big ridge. Right on a fault, by the looks of it.” A sheen of frost clung to her armor’s black plating. “Want to take a look? You’ll be able to see straight down for three klicks in a few minutes.” “Not. Helping.” Turbulence buffeted the carriage, and Zephyr braced herself on the hatchway of the compartment. “Don’t hold your breath, but I think we’re coming up on the mother of all electrical storms.” I blinked rapidly and sat up. “How big?” “Hmm… dunno. Take the horizon, cover it with grey…” Zephyr swept her boot in an arc above me, pointing toward the starboard hull of our aircraft. “Just imagine a sea of charcoal across the entire range, all the way to that tower on the map.” I cringed and wrapped my blankets tightly around my shoulders. “Isn’t that one shut down?” “Nah, that one’s farther northwest. This storm is still a ways off. Really big, though. It’s coming this way…. and making our nav matrix go haywire.” She lay halfway into my chair, nuzzling my neck through the blankets. “Big anvil clouds are the problem; they go way over our flight ceiling. We need to cut southwest around the edges… not sure how far, but we need to switch the flight battery out soon.” I swallowed and met her eyes. “Which means… we have to land.” Zephyr nodded. “Crap.” I pulled a rolled-up map out of its protective tube and spread it out in the cramped space available in front of my padded flight seat. The faded, heavily worn canvas depicted, in meticulous hoof-inking, a sketch of the Badlands on the right, mountains and intermediate hills to their left, a broad river valley at the north end, and an immense forest along the left edge. Jagged lines denoted mountains to the north, though only one part of the range was labeled or given any true detail. A squiggly river snaked down valley’s center, changing course dramatically first at a ridge centered on a stylized, arched bridge one-third of the way down, and once again at a cliff face at the very bottom of the map. I pointed at the tiny lake illustrated at the head of the river valley. “That’s Bellenast, and we’re…” Zephyr leaned over my shoulder and set her hoof over the mountains at the southeast corner of the painstakingly detailed map. Near the west edge of the drawn portion of the range was a needle-like tower. Numerous points on either side of the mountains were marked as villages, though the interior of the range was scratched through with menacing clouds and lightning bolts. “Hmm... somewhere there?” “Mmm-hmm.” Zephyr tapped the storm clouds, tracing her boot west. “We cleared the highest peaks yesterday, but… as soon as we dropped altitude this morning, the nav matrix, uh…” “Went all screwy.” “Yep.” I lifted the map to the side and stepped over to the porthole on my left. A far cry from the blinding expanse of snowcapped crags and milky clouds I’d seen the day before, the icy ridges below jutted up and ended as bare, black rock and scattered streaks of shadowed snow. Straight to the southwest, the rock fell away gradually, down and down and down for thousands of meters, and a narrow strip of pine forest in the more gently sloping foothills gave way to an arid plain streaked with dry gullies, occasional spots of dull green, and a haze of dust that obscured the horizon. I turned around and stumbled across my strewn blanket to look out the starboard porthole, and my ears flattened on my head. “Double crap.” A wall of deep, flashing grey rose several kilometers upward. The foothills below were bright and clear until they stretched beneath the clouds no more than a couple kilometers to our north. Even so far away, the winds buffeting our transport were enough to shake every bag of rations and can of water tied down in our aluminium eggshell. I poked my hoof at the third quadrant of the map, tracing down and left, past the ridge that, supposedly, divided the arable plains below us from the inhospitable desert to the south. “And we have to go southwest.” My hoof slipped off the map. “Down here.” “Uh-huh. Just far enough to find the river.” “How many full cells do we have?” Zephyr flicked two primary feathers up. “We can camp and wait to recharge.” I wilted. “That could take a week, Zephyr…” I huddled deep within the magenta blankets and clutched part of my mane in the crook of my forehoof. “More like weeks,” I muttered. “I can charge one cell fast. We need more than that.” “Well… take a look out the window again.” Zephyr grabbed my seat and lifted her helmet as the transport rocked again. “I don’t see any battery stores on the horizon. We may not have a choice.” She held her forehoof to her ear and looked over her shoulder. Inhaling sharply, she turned back to me and said, “Buckle up and seal your pod; the storm’s closing faster than we can outfly it.” “Mmm…” I shivered at her words and lifted my blanket away. I fumbled with my seat’s restraint harness while the aircraft rocked and rattled again. Zephyr donned her helmet and approached the nose airlock. “Do we have enough food to camp for a week? Two?” “Six weeks if we ration it,” she said, her voice coming from her armor’s external speaker. “And we can always forage. I’m more worried about the storm right now.” The cabin dropped suddenly, and I was weightless for the span of a second. I shrieked and scrabbled at the air, my hooves tangled in the levitated blankets I’d yet to fold. My breath left my lungs as gravity reasserted its hold and slammed me back into my padded bench. Zephyr’s armor, itself nearly the mass of the mare inside, crashed back to the grate floor. I groaned and secured the buckles of my flight harness, beginning with the chest strap. “Ow…” “You okay?” Zephyr pulled her boot out of the dent in the mesh walkway. “Yeah…” I rubbed my ribs and blinked blearily at the heavily armored mare. The assistive thrusters on her shoulders sputtered briefly as her helmet sealed and triggered her suit’s operational self-test. “Is your seal holding?” “Yeah. No worries; Eagle’s nice and toasty, too.” I sighed and pulled the restraint pads in against my flanks, hindquarters, belly, and in front of my forelegs. Immediately afterward, the cabin lurched again, slinging me forward. The restraints would have arrested my motion, had the forward pad been in place instead of folded into the floor to allow entry into and exit from the pod. “Strapped in yet?” “Working on it!” I hollered toward the airlock. Stretching my hind leg out, I kicked a yellow button built into the bottom of my restraint frame, and the thin hatch above the eggshell lowered into place, sealing me inside the capsule. Several red lights next to the small window turned green, a hum came from the thaumic capacitors interspersed around the interior of the ejection pod, and the rushing wind outside grew silent. A static charge inside the pod caused every hair of my coat to stand on end. Focusing the emerald glow from my horn around the straps and buckles around my belly and legs, I tightened them and rubbed my forehoof over the tender bruises forming on my thighs. I pushed the microphone pad with my left forehoof and said, “Warn me if we have to drop, okay?” Red hazard lights on the ceiling and beneath the grated walkway began to flash as Zephyr turned her oversized armor halfway around to look at me one last time. The lighting turned her gold visor a fiery orange. The speaker inside my pod crackled loudly; even inside the transport, the electrical storm created interference. “Don’t worry, baby. We’ll be fine. Besides, if you have to eject, I’ll catch you—” A harsh squeal of static erupted from the speaker as an actinic flash lit the sky outside the starboard porthole and arcs of searing electricity jumped throughout the cabin’s hull framing. Alarms blared shrilly inside my pod, and yellow hazard lights joined the red ones in the cabin. An unearthly, screeching howl came from somewhere outside, causing the entire cabin to ring for several seconds. My fur stood on end. “Eagle, what was that?” The aircraft shuddered and listed to starboard, then dropped precipitously and began to bank sharply. Artificial thunder boomed outside as twin cannons unleashed bolts of magic in front of the vehicle; the light even from the peripheral of the portholes was bright enough to leave spots in my eyes. “Crystal, hold on!” The airlock cycled shut. I rose against my seat harness and lurched back and forth as our cargo did the same. My stomach lurched with the few boxes and loose items not strapped down. A set of saddlebags bumped into my window, and then jerked to the left as emergency jets flared brightly outside the porthole. The chariot jerked hard to starboard, pushing me into my harness, and the hull on my left dented inward half a meter with an earsplitting clang that resonated through my pod, and a crack shot across the porthole. The storage racks and retainer straps buckled and snapped, sending our cargo of food, water, and tools across the cabin in a flurry. My saddlebags tumbled past my pod’s window again; as they flew out of sight, lightning arced inside the aircraft, crackling for an unnatural time. A rucksack sliding down the walkway burst aflame and spilled open on its way through the electricity, sending books and magazines across the floor. The cabin jerked to starboard again, dropped, and entered an uncontrolled roll. I lurched in my harness again and gasped as several of the flaming volumes bounced into my saddlebags on their way back across the cabin. “No!” I planted my hooves firmly against the pod’s hull and pushed back all the restraint pads. “No no no no no!” I kicked the hatch release. The shield slid upward instantly, and my ears popped in the lowered air pressure. I snatched my saddlebags in weak telekinesis and yanked them into my pod, patting the small flame on the top cover rapidly with my hoof. I pulled the restraint pads back into place from their folded stowage positions, all save the front pad and head restraint. Lighting crackled through the cabin again, deafening and blinding me temporarily. A glowing, spiny tail pierced through the hull with a sudden screech, flicked downward, and wrenched a gaping scar in the aircraft as it withdrew. My ears seemed ready to burst as the thin atmosphere outside sucked the air and a slurry of our lighter cargo through. I struggled to breathe, and my heart hammered inside my ribs. The jagged edges of the hull breach gleamed with the brightness of freshly sheared aluminum. I scarcely heard myself above the roar of air and eldritch howl outside the wide tear in the hull. A shriek like rending metal came from the sky outside. I shivered and shook my head as my eyes began to sting again. Unnatural frost gathered inside the pod. The twin cannons cracked outside again, lighting the cabin with harsh, blue-white light. A high, shrieking roar made the chariot’s hull ring, and a glowing, serpentine form shot into the cabin. The flying snake thrashed and whirled about amid the severed cargo straps and slammed against the hull several times, denting the craft further. Then, as it thrashed toward the ceiling, one of its many, yellow eyes faced me, and it brought its angular head to bear on my pod. Six yellow spots faced me, and a mouth filled with rows of spiny teeth and enormous fangs stretched open farther than it had right. The serpent screeched, and fins along its spine flared upward, rattling as frost billowed off its scales. Shrieking and shuddering, I stomped the control below my hooves, and the hatch shut immediately. The serpent lunged and crashed against the window. Hissing, the serpent jerked backward and lunged again. A translucent barrier of magic shimmered to life as the beast struck the pod. The snake’s gaping maw covered the window entirely, giving me a view of a shimmering, forked tongue and frosted fangs. Ice gathered on my side of the glass, and the blaring sirens cut out with a loud pop. I whimpered. The window held, but the metal began to groan. The snake screeched and withdrew its head a meter, then spun around. Its entire body crackled, and then it lashed at my pod with its lightning-covered tail once, twice, and again and again. Each time, the shimmering barrier flickered and a sound like a ram striking a door rang in my ears. Rime grew on my coat. The serpent’s crackling tail struck again, causing my ears to hurt and my frosted coat to tingle. My hide began to sting in the intense cold. I jerked my head to the right levitated my beam pistol free from a stowage compartment in the floor. I fumbled with the safety on the pistol as the beast whirled its head around and clamped its over-extended mandible around the hatch. The window cracked. With a squeal of sundered metal, the serpent ripped the hatch out by a centimeter. Frost spurted from its mouth as it coiled again, preparing to pull. I bucked the release pedal and held my breath as the freezing snake tore the hatch upward and crashed headfirst into the ceiling halfway along the length of the main compartment. Crackling beams of lurid red from my gun vaporized the frost on the creature’s scales, and the serpent let out an earsplitting, hissing shriek that caused the hull and my ears to ring. Arcs of errant magic jumped from the creature’s crackling tail, and it spun around to face me from above. I shrieked and ducked my head as it darted straight at me and crashed into the hull behind me, sending a bone-rattling shock through my harness. The serpent opened its maw wide, and with a sound like that of fracturing glass, it spit a blob of sparking, roiling vapor at me. “Aiii-ghkkkk!” Hyperventilating as ice grew over my muzzle, chest, and forelegs before my eyes, I levitated my beam pistol unsteadily in front of my nose. My skin began to burn fiercely, and my neck locked into place under the rapidly growing layer of ice. Flashes of lightning and booms of thunder outside rocked the cabin again, and the strident shrieks of more serpents pierced the howling wind. A violet flash accompanied the crack of a cannon firing, and a hair-raising wail rang through the aircraft. Something enormous surged past the hull breach and disappeared below, and the entire carriage lurched upward as an immense creature struck the bottom of the fuselage. The serpent inside crashed to the deck in the sudden lurch. I flew upward into my restraints again as the cabin rolled and swung hard to starboard; the padded support booms flexed and pressed against my side as the aircraft swung back onto a proper course. The crackling snake in front of me hissed and hovered into the air again, lashing its tail at the deck. I fired my beam pistol, but it had little effect on the serpent’s scaly hide. The serpent shrieked at me again and lunged forward. I jammed my pistol into the thing’s maw as it struck out at me, and its jaws collided with my harness. It hissed and spun around to toss the pistol against the hull, then continued around to whip me with its electrified tail. I thrashed inside the frozen straps as my mane stood on end and my muscles clenched. Numb and breathing in short, pained gasps, I wrapped a weak nimbus of green magic around the serpent as it struck toward me again. I screamed and jerked away from the rows of icy teeth and crackling spines in the thing’s slimy throat, and on reflex, I shot a wild burst of magic from my horn. The blast struck the serpent’s jaws, and it recoiled upward, crashing into the roof of my pod. My ears rang as it shrieked again. As the serpent shook itself and retreated half a meter, maw gaping wide in a hiss, a thin, metal object fell from a loose compartment behind the serpent and clattered on the deck. Frost encroached on my eyelids, numbing my face and locking my mouth open. I began to jerk and buck inside the ice as the ice grew over my nostrils and cracked lips. The serpent shrieked a final time as I wrapped a shaky field around the shotgun on the floor and raised it to eye level. A black, winged form covered in ice shot gracelessly through the tear in the hull and rocketed straight to my pod. “Crystal, shoot it!” Zephyr grabbed onto the serpent with all four legs and flapped hard, wrenching the beast away just as I pulled the double trigger as far as it would allow. A deafening boom sent shuddering vibrations through my ribcage, and the grip lurched backward against my feeble telekinesis and bashed into my forehead. The snake’s middle exploded in a shower of gore, and my ears rang. “Mmmmm!” I struggled in the ice as Zephyr tossed the serpent’s twitching body out the hull breach and staggered toward me. Blood trickled into my eyes. Zephyr leaned into my pod and punched at the ice on either side of my head. I shuddered and jerked weakly as my chest burned. The armored mare moved into the pod at an awkward angle, placing her maneuvering jet in front of my snout. I clenched my eyes shut, and she fired the thruster. Searing heat stung my nose and lips, but the ice melted just enough. Zephyr rapped the ice on my mouth with her boot, and the stinging chunks fell free. I forced a stale breath out through the gap and heaved again and again. Shivering and heaving, I groaned and let my head fall limply toward the deck as Zephyr began to break the rest of the ice around me free. I shivered uncontrollably while she worked, and my breaths grew rapid in the thin air. Another serpent sailed through the hull breach and shrieked at us, readying a scintillating cloud of ice shards and magic charge to spit out. Zephyr reared up to shield me in an instant and spread her armored wings wide as the serpent launched the crackling blob, and it splattered across her back just as she primed her back thrusters. A roaring hiss and blue-white light filled the cabin as the power armor converted magic to thrust and gushed a blazing plume through the spreading ice and into the eldritch serpent’s open maw. The armored mare slammed into my pod hooves-first, straining against the thrusters as the serpent burned from the inside out and fell away in a thrashing heap. Zephyr cut her jets and leapt backward, flapping her wings to rid them of the building ice, then spun around and kicked the twitching, flaming beast out of our aircraft. “Z-z… Zeph… Z-z-zephyr…” I fumbled numbly with my restraints and hobbled forward as the mare leapt toward me and grabbed a folded blanket that had fallen halfway out of one of the ceiling racks. She brushed the remaining ice off my chest with her feathers and wrapped the blanket around me tightly, then pulled a breathing mask from a compartment in the shelter pod and placed it over my muzzle. The mask and straps were uncomfortable, but it allowed me to breathe more easily. She hugged me tightly and sank to the deck against the starboard passenger seats behind the porthole. She kicked her right foreleg in a deliberate motion, and the sleek, grey gun mounted on her back slid forward onto her shoulder and took aim at the massive hull breach on the port side of our aircraft. I shivered and slumped against her, breathing deeply and tremulously. Zephyr whipped the spiked tip of her armored tail around and dragged the shotgun on the floor to me. Speakers on her armor crackled, and the mare took a deep breath. “Kicks a bit, huh, baby?” I grimaced and levitated the shotgun into my forelimbs. The cabin tilted downward, and the fierce wind tore at the hull, causing our craft to judder erratically as we descended to a safer altitude. The shrieks of flying serpents were gone. I nodded and lifted a pair of orange cartridges from within the mangled ejection pod. My saddlebags followed in an emerald aura, and I seized my beam pistol from the deck and clutched it tightly, as well. “Oh no…” Zephyr’s wing tensed. I peered up at her and then followed her gaze across the cabin, shivering all the while. Next to the gaping tear in the hull, on the deck grating scorched by thruster flame and the serpents’ wild electricity, there was a steel rack, the side of which had bent open and fallen toward the jagged breach during the serpent’s wild thrashing. “Baby, I’m so sorry…” As I watched, a tattered, scorched book and several burning pages blew out into the grey skies on the whistling, uncaring wind. “No…” I clutched my saddlebags to my chest and looked down at the single book and diary inside them. “No!” My vision blurred. I choked on my voice and sobbed into the blanket and Zephyr’s feathers as we flew onward. The sun bled across the sky in red and orange beyond the new window in our craft’s battered hull. A flat, featureless expanse of desert stretched southward as far as I could see. The wind whistling sharply into the cabin was dry and hot. It stung my eyes and lips, and every centimeter of my skin between my eyes and my flanks was sore from the stinging cold, even though the ice had melted hours before. The horizon tilted, and my weight shifted against Zephyr’s armored flank. The mare lay on her belly, halfway on the curve of the starboard hull, while she cradled me under her wing. She stirred, nuzzling the top of my head. My breathing mask had fallen to the deck, and Zephyr had removed her helmet at some point. Her teal mane was disheveled, sweat had dried on her coat, and shadows hung under her eyes. She held both my beam pistol and the weathered coach gun close to her torso in the crook of her foreleg. I looked back at the breach and said, “Where are we?” She stretched, flexing her wings outward, and hugged me to her side; she had placed a pillow between me and the angular armor. The mare yawned and tightened my blanket, then kissed between my ears. “South,” she murmured. “How far?” I rolled from my side and faced the hull breach, leaning back on Zephyr. I tucked my hind legs in to keep my hooves under the blanket; despite the hot air, every part of me that had contacted the flying serpent’s icy expulsion remained uncomfortably cold and partially numb. I shivered and peered at the unchanging desert outside. “Why are we going so slow?” “Not sure how far, but… hmmfff…” Zephyr chuckled and sighed past my ears. “Storm screwed up our nav matrix, and the lightning… ice snake things screwed up everything else. No flight stabilizers or power control. Backups kicked in and restarted the main flight talisman, apparently, but Eagle’s flying full manual. No control surfaces.” “Mmm…” Shivering, I looked up at one of the overhead compartments that hadn’t fallen open during the serpents’ intrusion. I pulled the folded bundles of clothing out of one of them, then squirmed out from beneath Zephyr’s forelimbs and the blanket while I glared at the pair of jumpsuits spread on the deck. Hot gusts of dry air from the hull breach tossed my mane wildly about, and I peered at the collar labels of the ancient, faded suits; lying folded in a storage crate in Cloud Loft Peak for more than a century had done the fabric few favors, but the clothing remained usable. One was about Zephyr’s size and light grey, the other for me and distinctly not grey. “Is that the only one you could find?” Zephyr chortled softly as the sleeves dangled on the floor; the collar came halfway up my neck. “Only one in your size.” I stuffed the extra jumpsuit unceremoniously back into the cargo compartment. “Zephyr, is your back sort of numb? I think that ice stuff was some bad magic, ‘cause I’m still cold.” “Kind of, yeah; it was worse earlier.” The mare took a shallow breath and sighed. “Don’t worry, baby. It ought to feel normal soon. Few hours, maybe.” “Mmm…” Bright fabric stabbed my eyes mercilessly. “Extra small… ‘junior filly, high visibility.’ Friggin’ perfect… ‘Instant Fit Matrix. Never shrinks!’” Zephyr snickered. “Woohoo…” I sighed, stretched it, and pushed my legs through the sleeves. A scent of dust hung on the creased cloth, and the zipper caught on my coat twice before I could pull it all the way past my belly, up to my sternum, between my forelegs, and finally up to my neck, but the suit fit. I stuffed the case back into the compartment above and snuggled against Zephyr’s pillow again. She snorted as I pulled the blanket around my shoulders. “It’s not funny.” “Mmm-hmm…” She patted my back, smiling. “I dunno… it goes with your mane.” “My mane,” I grumbled, “Is not. Hot. Pink. It’s ma—” “Magenta. Yes, I know. Who’s corrected more ponies about that, you or me, huh? Because I think it’s me.” Zephyr hugged me again with her wing. “Besides, I didn’t say it matches your mane, I said it goes with it… and I think it’s very cute, Crystal.” “Mmmmrrrrrgffff.” I glared down at the pink, synthetic fiber and pulled the zipper on my chest all the way up to the collar. “Thanks,” I mumbled, “I guess…” The neon jumpsuit contracted slowly over my body as I pressed the small button sewn into the fabric at the top of the left foreleg, and then the fabric shifted as tiny sparks of magic traveled down the seams. The cloth flexed briefly, and the entire suit assumed a uniform fit around me. The leggings shrank, and the narrow strip of talisman plates sewn into the liner on my back buzzed briefly, tickling me. I grimaced and tugged on the fabric over my belly. “Not very roomy… feels friggin’ weird. This better not give me a rash.” Zephyr snorted. “They’re padded down under, and behind. I checked. They were all pretty musty, unfortunately, but it should help you stay warm wherever we have to stay, at least. Might take a while for the enchantments to kick in, though…” She nuzzled the top of my head and murmured, “So stay close for now.” I curled against the pillow between me and her armor and tugged my beam pistol from the crook of her foreleg; several fang marks ran down the frame, but the weapon was otherwise undamaged. “Hey, um…” I brushed my hoof over the pistol’s safety switch to ensure that it was on, then cradled the gun to my chest, aiming it at the hull breach and desert sky outside. “We outflew those snakes, right? They didn’t leave the storm, did they?” “Mmm-hmm… no more crazy ice-spit or lightning tails in this carriage.” “Pffft…” I rubbed my chest and muttered, “Does lightning freeze you, too? Those snakes are friggin’ scary… and strong. Ripped through the hull…” I glanced over to at the damaged shelter pod, laughed weakly, and mumbled, “So… how much of the cost for this thing was the pod… and how much was the hull?” “Dunno…” Zephyr giggled. “But, ah… the two that made it in here were just the babies. Their momma cracked the hull open.” “Oh.” “Shot its tongue while it was trying to catch Eagle for breakfast. She flew off after that.” The armored mare chuckled again. “The other little ones followed her. Tongue didn’t.” I shuddered. “Yiiiick.” “She did manage to spit a mean vapor ball right when I fired.” Zephyr waved her boot forward in front of me. “Beam went through it. Boiled a hole straight through, then into the mouth. All that ice probably saved the thing’s life. Soaked up the heat and scattered the beam.” She dropped her hoof and whispered, “Otherwise, I think we’d be covered in snake guts right now.” “Ewwwwww…” I groaned and stuck my tongue out. “Sto-op, Zephyr!” The pale pegasus laughed and nuzzled my mane. “Mmm… okay, okay.” The cabin dipped again, and Zephyr looked up and at the forward airlock. The mare grabbed her helmet from the floor and slid it over her ears. I peered up at her raptly as she activated her external speakers. “What’s up, hon? Find something?” Eagle’s voice crackled back over the radio, his tenor laced with fatigue, though calm nonetheless. “Spotted a factory of some kind ahead. Maybe forty klicks.” Zephyr sighed and squeezed me gently, looking toward the desert beyond our craft. “Think it’s a sky chariot factory?” “Hah. With our luck? More likely a string factory. No idea, honestly… but it’s something.” “See anything on E.M., sweetheart?” “Nothing powerful enough to reach this far. Place seems dead.” “Mmm… keep scanning until we’re there, then.” “Hey, how’s Crystal?” I glanced toward the airlock, then craned my neck and said, “I’m fine. Friggin’ flying snake spit sucks. I’m wearing one of those climate suits, and I’m still cold.” “Cold? We’re in the middle of the desert! Zeph, you sure she’s all right?” “Those snakes might have some kind of residual magic in their ice. It affected me through my armor. My wings were numb for a while, too. Crystal took a hit right in the chest, and it spread over most of her face before I could scrape it off. Her temperature’s a little bit high. Doesn’t seem too bad, though. I’m feeling better by the hour. She ought to be fine by tomorrow.” “Damn it… we need to find someplace to land. It’ll be freezing tonight.” “I know, hon. I know…” Zephyr stroked my foreleg and sighed. “Just keep flying… you’ve carried us this far.” “I’m not about to quit… wings aren’t the problem.” “Do I want to know?” “Remember when the big one rammed us, just before it flew off?” Zephyr groaned, rubbing her temple. “Just spit it out, hon…” “Well… it hit close to the flight array. Diagnostics aren’t showing it, but I think there’s a crack somewhere in the main ring.” I glanced out at the desert horizon; it moved by at a crawl. We were at least two hundred meters above the ground. “Then how are we flying? I thought you said the backups kicked in.” “Yeah, they kicked in, all right… the landing skids opened on their own a couple minutes ago, though. I’m not taking us down; the emergency controller is. We’re locked on a descent course. I won’t be able to take off again until we can fix the array, so I’m trying to make it as close as possible before making a, ah… controlled landing.” I swallowed. “Is there another kind?” “Yeah, no worries. Might be a bit rough, but—” “We’re going to crash, aren’t we?” Zephyr stuck her nose into my saddlebags briefly, searching through their contents. The mare pulled my brush out and began to tug it through my mane. I closed my eyes and let the gentle grooming lull me. “I mean, realistically speaking,” said Zephyr, muffled slightly by the brush, “We have no stabilizers, there’s a giant hole on the port side, and the steering is whacked, honey… we’re probably going to crash, right?” “Ehhhhhh… yeah, most likely.” “Just tell me when we make the final approach, and I’ll fly Crystal down while you land.” Eagle laughed over the radio. “Okay, Zeph. We’ll do it your way.” “This one looks good. No motion or thermals.” Zephyr’s external suit speakers were quiet. Long shadows crept up the face of the concrete wall of the warehouse and heavy, sliding door before us. The high squeak of a bent wheel echoed off the other surrounding warehouses and utility buildings as Eagle pulled our scorched, torn aircraft up the loading ramp toward the door. Scorch marks showed on the thick, layered armor that hid the stallion completely, save the amber feathers on his wings. He kicked back at a lever on the pilot’s harness, and the mechanism disengaged from his power armor by raising and sliding into the craft’s ovoid hull. Scratches and streaks of oxidized aluminium surrounded the gaping tear toward the craft’s tail. I shivered and squeezed Zephyr’s armored leg as Eagle plodded toward the door. The first of many raindrops speckled the concrete and steel around us. Eagle poked the spade-like blade on his suit’s articulated tail into the lock on the door and twisted it off with a loud snap. He then pulled the door up slightly with the blade and pushed it up with his boots. The gears and bearings on the rails squealed and loosed a rain of rust, and Eagle powered on his floodlights. We stared into the stark, largely spotless warehouse for several seconds, and Eagle laughed. “Well, how about that.” I scowled at the stacks of bunk bed frames stacked against the left wall. “No mattresses.” “Ah well.” An overhead light flickered on and burst promptly as Eagle stepped into the small building. “Small blessings.” Zephyr nudged me forward and began staking thermal sensors into the weathered concrete around the entrance and the narrow access alleys between the surrounding sheds. I went toward a platform that overlooked a long, carriage-width depression in the concrete. I swept the tiny bits of broken bottles and several ceramic lamps off our prospective camping ground and set my saddlebags by the wall, then laid my blanket next to them. The steel deck vibrated suddenly under Eagle’s heavy hoofsteps. Eagle laid his and Zephyr’s blankets in a miniature phalanx in front of mine and returned to the harness of our aircraft. The battered carriage rolled unevenly into the warehouse; it occupied most of the room. Red lights blinked on the levitation array under the hull; the gaping tear on the port side could allow a power-armored stallion to pass through with ease. “We need to patch that,” I said. My words made an eerie echo in the cavernous building just as a curtain of rain swept overhead and drowned it out with a dull roar. “We’ll need aluminium.” “Ehhhh, couple steel barrels will work. Just needs to be good enough for one trip north, keep it from listing too much.” I grimaced and propped myself up on the deck railing; it creaked under my weight, and bits of rust flaked off. “Yeah, but… it’s a long trip. Do you even know how far we are from that ridge?” “Hundred klicks, I think. There’s a town there, on the map, so if we have to, we can hide the carriage and come back later for the important stuff. It doesn’t look like this place has been looted, ever, so security by obscurity…” He stepped into the chariot and disappeared toward the storage racks inside. I peered at the pipe-laden walls of the warehouse briefly and trotted back to my saddlebags. I huddled beneath the remains of my blanket and tugged on the left sleeve of my bright jumpsuit. Scowling at the neon pink fabric, I called out, “That’s a hundred klicks of low-altitude bullet invitation.” “Won’t be anything shooting at us if we keep to the empty areas.” I squinted through the guardrail at our damaged aircraft. A tin of rations fell on the deck inside the carriage and rolled toward the steps. The claw on Eagle’s armored tail snatched it up. “Empty like that pond with all the turrets hidden in the trees?” I said as he jumped out. He balanced a small stack of ration tins on a tray atop the power pack for his arc cannons. “That pond is a valuable resource. Water source. Those turrets weren’t always there. Someone put them there.” “Yeah, some psycho.” “Maybe.” He set the tin that had fallen back onto the stack on his armor. “This is a big desert. No rivers or springs unless you head a lot farther west, as far as I could tell flying in. There shouldn’t be anyone or anything lying in wait to attack a few tourists.” “Tourists?” I muttered. Lying down beneath my magenta blanket, I positioned my saddlebags as a pillow and said, “How are we tourists?” “Wellllll, I was joking, but…” He pointed one wing at our aircraft in a dramatic gesture. “Three ponies go for a trip in their fancy carriage. They make a stop at the derelict factory, do routine maintenance, and swing north to the grand city from ancient Equestria, the fabled Bellenast.” He reached his clawed tail around to the back of his helmet, and the seals hissed as he pulled it off. A tousled mop of golden-brown mane framed his off-white head. Eagle turned a pair of tired, green eyes to me and shrugged with his wings. “It sort of fits, doesn’t it?” He clipped his helmet below his collar. “You just have to take out any and all context for the situation, and we could be tourists.” I snorted and curled into a ball under my blanket. “Tourists with class four aetheric cannons.” “Right. Perfectly normal. What could go wrong?” I cringed, sighed, and closed my eyes. Zephyr’s steps announced her entrance to the warehouse as I muttered, “We’re friggin’ doomed. Great.” “Storm nagas, for starters,” said Zephyr as she approached. The mare groaned as she sat against the railing by my side and rubbed her wing on my back. “Let’s not tempt fate, okay, honey?” “Fine, fine… we’ll take a look through one of these places in the morning, find something thin enough to cut and tack on.” Cold water splashed across my face. I wheezed as I inhaled, then coughed wet dust and blood out of my mouth. I opened my eyes and struggled to move my legs. Rough rebar scraped against my legs, and I lay still again. I lifted my head. Dust and tiny chunks of concrete fell from the edges of the ruined canopy that limited my view of the sky. A stream of cold rainwater began to pour from the neatly cut metal just above my face, splashing me again. Desks and ancient workstations hung from the recently demolished floors above me. Several large, wheeled husks burned on those floors, throwing billowing columns of black smoke into the rainy air. The bent sheet of steel, removed from the back of the expensive desk to which it had belonged, lay above me. The sheet held back a mound of loose rubble and the mangled, wheeled leg of a robotic security drone. Scattered throughout the debris all around me were hundreds of brass bullet casings. The collapsed floors, rebar and concrete and tiling and all, formed an uneven, deadly bowl centered on me. A steel beam supported the bulk of a section of thick flooring that appeared otherwise ready to collapse and crush me at any moment. I coughed again and squeezed my eyes shut. My back and shoulders throbbed, and dried blood caked my forehead. I groaned and shivered as the rain began to patter lightly on my coat. I shifted slightly, and my left hind leg throbbed above the knee. Pain pounded through my skull in a frenetic rhythm as I tried to wrap my telekinetic grip around the jagged chunk of concrete and steel that had pinned my left hind leg to the cold ground. Chill water sloshed around me, and another drop of rain fell on my cheek. I flinched and folded my ears as the sky lit up. The flash illuminated my rubble-strewn surroundings in stark detail before the thunder boomed between the buildings. My eyes watered. I wrenched a bent length of rebar from a shattered block of concrete and slid one end of it under the rubble that held my bleeding leg to the ground. My head throbbed as I pushed the impromptu lever up with my telekinesis, and then I rolled onto my stomach and crawled a meter away on the broken tiling and plaster sheet that covered the former office building’s ground floor. I released the rebar, and the rubble crashed to the ground. Pebbles bounced past me and made plopping noises as they landed in the raindrop-speckled pool that obscured the ground in front of me. I crawled forward frantically as the structural beam that held the floor began to groan. Something cracked and shifted beneath it. I pushed a broken chair aside and hobbled onto my hooves, and I staggered across a mound of shattered flooring and the miraculously intact doorway at the edge of the newly made ruin. I pushed the door open and stumbled into the equally rubble-strewn street as something crucial gave way ten meters behind me, and the section of floor fell with a mighty crash. A cloud of dust and plaster billowed into the street, and I covered my mouth with the pink sleeve of my jumpsuit. Several chips of tile bounced off me and clattered on the road. Several minutes passed before the falling rubble stilled and the plaster dissipated under the rain to form a discolored swath of unnatural mud in the street. The rain brought with it a thin sheet of cold water on the street, which swept around me and washed away the surrounding dust. I groaned and rolled onto my side, then curled into a loose ball and pulled the tattered, scorched remnant of my jumpsuit’s sleeve off my left hind leg. A great swath of blackened, necrotized hide and seared muscle marred much of my numb limb. The layer of dried blood cracked, but no fresh blood escaped. I whimpered. Gritting my teeth, I rolled onto my belly and pushed myself to my hooves. I hissed and lifted my injured leg, then began hobbling toward the end of the narrow alley. The water came up several centimeters above my hooves. “Eagle? Zephyr?” I looked back and forth as my stainless steel shoes clacked on the weathered concrete in an uneven, three-legged cadence. “Eagle!” I coughed a glob of blood and saliva onto the ground. Balancing on two hooves, I raised my foreleg and wiped the blood from my mouth. I continued limping toward the street ahead. “Anyone?” I stepped into the street and turned to my right. Past a courtyard filled with bronze statues of rearing unicorns and low, metal benches was a great, square building. The structure’s center was a massive dome constructed of steel and cracked panes of glass that glistened as lightning bolts arced toward a rod projecting from the dome’s apex. The ground shook in tandem with a roar of grating and crumbling debris. I jerked my head around. At the far end of the street, a colossal wheeled amalgam of vehicle and robot plowed through a mound of fallen concrete and steel. The hollow of the stubby, gleaming cannon on the gargantuan machine’s central swivel began to glow. I spun around and limped toward the courtyard. Cold puddles and raindrops drenched my torn jumpsuit and coat. I wheezed and staggered around a tarnished bronze unicorn, then leaned on the west face of the statue’s marble base. I sucked in an agonizing breath, and then let out a hacking cough. Blood spattered the ground and began swirling away in the shallow sheet of water that covered the courtyard. I lurched away from the statue and headed toward the double doors of the Medical Wing. A bright, multicolored light flashed behind me. A second flash accompanied another blast of magic that bored a meter-wide crater in the left side of the Medical Wing’s front wall. The bronze statue, heated to a dull orange, teetered toward me in a billowing cloud of vaporizing rain. I turned and bolted for the double doors. The ground shook as I hobbled across the last ten meters of ancient concrete leading to the doors. A third bolt of deadly energy seared a scorched line in the concrete to my right. I staggered away from the blistering wave of heat and detached my gun from its controls. I forced the doors open and dove behind a reception desk just beyond the aperture as a fourth blob of explosive magic shot past me. I peeked around the edge of the flaming desk. The robot’s cannon glowed. “Screw it.” I wiped my eyes, squinted as I aimed at the colossus rolling toward me. Thunderclaps resounded across the ruined courtyard. The bolts of blinding, white magic drilled a gaping hole through the back of the glowing weapon. The metal giant in the courtyard grew still. I collapsed behind the desk, and glanced at one of several bloody gashes on my ribs. I groaned and lay still on the cold floor, wheezing and dizzy. My ears twitched toward the mechanical voice and whirring noise. A field of white magic surrounded me and lifted me into the air. I jerked my head up. A small robot, a simple steel half-cylinder on a levitation field, floated next to me. The robot spun around and rolled quickly toward a hallway on the opposite side of the lobby, floating me along with it toward second pair of impressive steel doors at the end of the short hallway. A hiss of static came from the machine, and a stallion spoke. “Listen to me, and for Celestia’s sake, don’t shoot, all right? Just take deep breaths and relax. I can help you. I know you’re hurting—just breathe, understand? Breathe.” I winced as the steel doors groaned and opened, and the robot glided inside the immense, domed room. Other robots like the one that carried me glided about the chamber and carried many stainless steel boxes toward a crescent-shaped machine in the center of the room. Between the machine’s two outer rounded prongs was a large white table on hydraulic supports. A glass canopy dotted with holes rested above the bed on a hinge. The robot carried me to the strange machine and lowered me slowly onto the white table. Another robot glided to the bed; I shivered as the dull edges of cold, scissor-tipped limbs glided over my coat and cut away my jumpsuit. The robot lifted the tattered clothing from me, seized my bandolier, rifle, and saddlebags, and then carried the items to a table near a collection of computer terminals lining the circular wall. Another bulbous, floating robot extended a tiny, gleaming length of metal piping from one of its limbs; a needle and glass ampule of clear liquid emerged from the armature. I squeezed my eyes shut and whimpered as the needle pricked my neck. The whir of the robot’s levitation talisman receded from the bed, and my ears twitched toward the pneumatic hiss of hydraulics. A mask slid over my muzzle. The glass canopy descended over the bed. Mechanical arms sporting cameras and clamps and polished tools emerged from the round prongs on each side of the bed and slid through the many holes in the glass. All of the arms twisted a quarter-turn clockwise, and a glowing field like a unicorn’s telekinesis enveloped them all. Feeling faded rapidly from my coat, leaving me in a state of detached, floating numbness. The air in the tiny chamber crackled as a bright light shone from the center of the canopy. Dull, cutting sensations throbbed in my back and hip as the mechanical arms moved around me. I was too exhausted to draw a breath and scream. The tenor voice was tinny and distorted, but very real. “Sterilization complete. Start trauma modules and build protocols one-three-seven, correcting for nerve damage, zero-two-five, and zero-zero-one size—” “Kinetic fiber supplies for build zero-zero-one are insufficient; stasis failure has occurred in main storage. I suggest build zero-zero-four; I can complete this with supplies in auxiliary storage.” “Stasis failure—right, guess it has been a long time. Not panicking. Not panicking! Ahhh… okay, cut one of the envirosuits for her, do build zero-zero-four from a template of the suit and add carrier racks to the hard points. Configure control interface for zero-zero-four to that of the completed one-three-seven build. Initiate Library and Running Rabbit transfer protocols into zero-zero-four’s master drive and prep me for host migration to the collar’s main storage bay. Load my spare universal drive board in the hard storage bay.” “Commands confirmed. Initiating. Build one-three-seven requires master authorization. Please confirm.” “Master authorization granted for surgical decisions. Use bone foam in place of titanium wherever you can. Keep her alive.” “Accepted. Master processes enabled. Blood plasma supply is sufficient for nine hours continuous transfusion, but healing solution storage is minimal.” “Right, lucky any of it’s viable… she’s small; it should be enough. Pull any emergency kits out and find anything still usable.” “Retrieval delegated to servitor. Patient blood loss stabilized. I calculate the patient’s chance of survival to be ninety-seven percent. Alert! Sentinel Maximillian is refusing commands. Library transfer priority set to low.” “Tartarus, talk about a wakeup call. All right, forget the Library and copy just my research records and all the core schematics. As soon as the filly’s operations are complete, dump yourself into zero-zero-four’s master drive. I want you fully intact.” “Confirmed.” “Have bot thirty pack a canteen harness. What’s your name, young mare?” “Cryssstalll.” A lone camera lowered itself from the canopy and hovered in front of my face. “Right, you’re drugged—Crystal? That what you said?” My eyelids grew heavy. “Uh…huh…” “Don’t you worry, Crystal,” said the stallion’s voice. “You’ll be just fine. Dunno if you can still tell what I’m saying now…” Escaping gas hissed from pipes near my head. My back stung in several places. Muffled alarm klaxons blared from speakers. A motor whirred and cold metal slid on my coat as restraining things that had pressed around me withdrew. Cracks ran across the curved ceiling beyond the glass. My hind leg was numb. “Stay calm,” said the stallion. “Not the easiest thing to do, I know, but really, just do it—okay, you know what, yeah, panicking would be understandable.” “Who are you?” “Carbide! Name’s Carbide. Anyway, ah, definitely stay still. Please.” “Let me go!” “Just a moment.” Motors whirred near my ears, and a white light surrounded me and levitated me into the air. A soft, flexible garment slipped over my legs and torso from behind, pressing on my coat, and a zipper closed along my belly and chest. Rigid coverings began to close around my legs, holding me frozen in place. “Whoa, what the fuck—what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck—take this fucking thing off me! Let me go! Please let me go!” “I am helping you!” “It doesn’t feel like it’s fucking helping!” “Well, I’m sorry!” I shrieked in panic as a second section of the material slid over my head and joined to the suit. A heavy frame lowered onto my back, and my ears twitched toward a high-pitched hum as something pressed against my neck. A series of clicks and pneumatic hisses came from the tight barding, and the pain vanished. The upper and lower halves of a helmet closed around my head. Metallic clacks echoed from my back and legs as things clamped into place around me. The magic holding me in the air cut off, and I dropped onto the platform beneath me with a thud. A pair of floodlights near my shoulders lit up. “I’m sorry, I’m very sorry!” “Okay!” I took deep breaths and gave up trying not to cry. “What the fuck is this?! Armor?” “Yes, it’s a suit of armor! Because I’d like for you to not die! All right? Listen, we need to leave! This building is about to collapse—because a three-hundred-ton robot is trying to break in, yeah? Got it? I’m sorry I scared you. I am sorry. Now, please listen to me. Turn to your left, ninety degrees, and just walk through the door. It’s right there, it’s open, just go through it and turn left again, and keep going. There’s a tunnel. You’ll be safe from the giant robot in there.” “Okay, door, tunnel, got it.” I jumped off the platform, yelped as the leap carried me several meters farther than I’d ever jumped in my life, and landed in a stumbling canter on thudding, claw-tipped boots. Periodic tremors shook the floor, water leaked from the vaulted ceiling, alarms blared from crackling speakers, and several faint explosions came from beyond the steel doors off to my left. A loud clang sounded overhead, and water splashed across my armored back. I stood for a second more, swallowed, trotted to the table by the exit door, and levitated my piled saddlebags, bandolier, beam pistol, and aetheric rifle. A rumbling explosion rocked the room, and a series of sharp cracks sounded from above and behind me. A screeching of rending metal came with it. I spun around. The steel doors crashed inward along with half the wall of the immense room, and a titanic plow pushed through the falling concrete. A circle of glowing death appeared in the dusty gloom. “For the love of home and harmony, filly, run!” I levitated my aetheric rifle, aimed at the dome and lenses on the metal giant’s head, and loosed bolt after thundering bolt of blinding plasma. Steel sagged and glowed yellow, and a hole opened in the dome. I fired again and again into the tear, until my weapon itself made the air waver and the array of spark cells had drained. The titan stopped, motionless, but a distant roaring like an open furnace came from it. The glowing cannon on its middle dimmed. Water splashed off the front of the armored front and plow, and higher up, rain boiled away from the molten wound on the machine, nearly as high as the ceiling. The two enormous arms, like cranes tipped by a trio of hydraulic claws, rested frozen where they had pushed at the damaged walls. Then the high ceiling groaned. “Yeah, fuck you, robot,” I muttered. I turned and galloped. Concrete and steel bounced throughout the room, and I dove through the exit doorway into the hall. An ear-splitting groan of tearing metal and roar crashing stone shook the ground. Debris poured in through the hall, and I stumbled as a piece shot under my boots. I quickly curled into a ball as the chamber behind me collapsed and a pall of dust spread through the air. The roaring and crashing continued unabated for another minute, and then, as a last steel beam clanged somewhere and a smattering of concrete chunks rattled across the floor and stilled, relative quiet reigned in the corridor. I lay shaking on the floor. “Crystal…” “What… what?” “When someone tells you to run…” “Run and fucking what?” I lurched and climbed to my hooves, and metal scraped on the concrete floor. “Melt, like one of your fancy statues outside? It was about to shoot, and I don’t know if you noticed, but there isn’t a mountain for me to hide behind!” “… you know what? That’s fair.” “Glad we agree.” I blinked the tears away and squinted through a clear visor at the articulated, spike-covered tail protruding from my armored rear. A jolt traveled up my thigh from my stifle, and a sharp tingling followed. “And I still can’t feel my—GYAAAH!” I jerked to the side as an electric shock shot through my leg, and an ache of pins and needles replaced the bizarre numbness. “Ow ow ow! Friggin’ never mind!” “Tactile feedback works, wonderful; that should make walking easier. Sorry about that; I forgot about the shocks. Right. Ah… okay, everything’s in the green. No internal bleeding. Great! Your hip will probably hurt like blazes if you try to run, probably your stifle, as well; not much I can do about that, but it should be fine in a few days. It’s mostly inflammation, nothing serious.” I groaned and started down the hallway, and tried to ignore the sensation of the suit flexing and clinging to me as I walked. My steps were muffled, but every motion I made had vastly more weight behind it. “You said go left?” “Yes. Keep going, and take the next door on your right—it’s a ramp to a transport railway.” I broke into a trot and came to the door, and the floor pad creaked and bent under the weight of my armor. The door swung open on screeching hinges. The floodlights on my suit revealed the ramp, and a tunnel and steel rails sunk into the concrete floor. I descended the ramp in a few seconds. “Now what?” “Left again. Follow this maintenance tunnel until the first service elevator; it’s about four kilometers along.” “Okay…” The subterranean railway seemed to stretch into the distance forever, unerringly straight and deathly quiet. I winced as a frighteningly audible gurgle came from my belly. My hip and stifle ached, bone-deep, with every step. “I’m hungry.”