Fallout: Equestria - To Bellenast

by Sir Mediocre

2. Sore Eyes

A low, guttural rasp echoed around the dark tunnel, and I froze in place. Bare hooves clacked unevenly on the concrete ahead of me, and an equine form emerged from behind the transport railcar that blocked one side of the tunnel.

“I believe… I made an egregious error about those sensor readings…”

I readied my gun and mumbled, “Definitely not a friggin’ wild animal.”

The rotting, growling pony let out a keening shriek and ran toward me. In the confines of a concrete tube, the report from my gun was a thunderclap, muted substantially by my helmet. The blinding bolt of plasma struck the ghoul with a flash and spray of flaming tissue.

The corpse flopped to the ground, headless and burning at the neck. I walked up to the thoroughly dead pony, easily three times my mass, and jumped over the burning body. Water sloshed in the many canteens on the rack across my croupiere.

“That was probably one of the power plant crew,” muttered Carbide.

I glanced for a moment back at the ragged husk and trotted on along the tunnel. “Well, now it’s a friggin’ dead monster.”

My steel boot thudded and clanked on the ground, and the curved claws on them scraped on the cracked concrete. The rail tunnel was remarkably dry and clear of debris, but for the occasional crushed pebble.

“You, ah… you said you made that gun?”

“I had help… and it’s a work-in-progress.”

“Well, it’s impressive, nonetheless. You might have been fine without the armor, after all.”

“Well, I’m glad to have it—hang on, does this have a radiation detector?”

“Yes, of course. It’ll click and buzz if there’s—”

“I know how they work. I’m asking because that was a ghoul, Carbide. I want to know if I’m about to walk into a poisoned hole in the ground with no friggin’ way out.”

“Oh! Ah, no. The leak was confined to the reactor sector. This track doesn’t pass next to any of the contaminated sectors.”

The invisible, intangible stallion—or machine, or magical construct, or whatever he was—spoke softly from the speakers inside my helmet, and I shivered. I could hear myself only because the same speakers played my voice back to me, isolated from everything beyond my visor.

“That, ah… ghoul probably came from the secondary power plant maintenance crew. There was a shielding breach. Everyone had to evacuate, but the ponies inside the shield room… died, or that happened to them. I was left in charge of monitoring the automated maintenance systems. That was… well, at the time, we didn’t know that would happen, we just knew exposure was deadly.”

I snorted and muttered, “Who possibly could have predicted that? Wait—” I glanced back at the distant flatcar and dead ghoul again. “—you’re saying you had, what, a power plant that was radioactive? You used balefire for power? That’s friggin’ insane!”

He scoffed in my ear, and the sound inside my helmet made me shudder.

“Insane? No, it was the only sane thing to do. Carbon Spanner took a terrible weapon and made it a power source.” He sighed, and I gritted my teeth. “Yes, it was dangerous, extraordinarily dangerous… but we made it work. That breach wasn’t the first setback, far from it! The crews were going to come back after the maintenance fleet decontaminated the furnace and adjacent chambers, and find the fault in the shield projectors, but… well, they never did… I lost all contact with—”

I swallowed, licking my lips inside the close, constricting helmet. “Lost contact with… whom?”

“I… I’m sorry, I’m—you—Crystal, you’re the first pony I’ve been able to talk to in… in a very long time. I didn’t mean to ramble.”

“Um… okay.”

I came to a curve in the tunnel, and the expanse ahead was marginally brighter. A miniscule shaft of sunlight coming through a pony-sized hole in the curved tunnel roof revealed a scattering of concrete and loose rock that had fallen on the rails. Cracks ran across the ceiling, and smaller chips had fallen all along the tunnel. “How far is that elevator?” I said, squinting up at the rocks jammed in the hole.

“About three kilometers now. I really don’t think you could fit through that… or climb up there in the first place.”

“Yeah, dumb idea,” I muttered. I trotted onward, moving slightly farther with each heavy step of the suit of power armor than I would at my usual gait; the armor resisted my every motion ever so slightly for the tiniest fraction of a second, then caught up and moved itself. Being unable to feel the ground properly under my hooves gave me a sensation of gliding, bouncing over the ancient concrete. Every step was slightly longer than it should have been.

“There are stairs near this elevator, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Great, because if your elevator is anything like this ceiling, I’m not setting a single hoof on it.”

“You… are a smart young mare.”

The next hole in the tunnel ceiling was larger, and a hill of fine sediment and gravel had trickled into the underground over the decades.

I climbed slowly up the incline, laying broken chunks of concrete down under my boots for each step. Despite that precaution, I miss-stepped and nearly slipped on the tenuous slope several times before I reached the top.

I levitated my stepping stones and pushed them into place, and carefully surmounted the crest of the hill, a meter below the tunnel ceiling. I stared up at the tiny patch of blue sky and sighed. My left hind leg continued to sting from the stifle up, but below it, I felt no pain, only pressure when I put weight on that hoof—no itching, no suit rubbing on my fur, no warmth, no cold.

“I still don’t think trying to climb would be a good idea.”

“Yeah, okay, I friggin’ get it!”

I jumped out of the sunlight and slid down the other side of the underground hill, but a slide turned into a stumble as my boots caught on something in the dirt, and I yelped and kicked off to gallop down instead of falling. I jarred my forelegs when I hit the concrete again and slipped on the loose gravel.

All four hooves sliding sent me sideways, I crashed, and the armor over my legs and shoulder scraped along the concrete, bringing me to a neck-wrenching stop. My heart pounded, and I groaned and tucked my legs in to right myself.

“Are you all right?”

“Friggin’ fine, robot.” I glared back up at the trail of impressions my armor had left in the dirt, and the length of rebar that stuck out from halfway up the mound. My horn flared as I yanked the bent rebar out of the soil, producing a screech as the rusted metal tore free of the concrete. I slammed the bar on the ground to rid it of concrete dust and the few errant chunks that clung to it.

“I, ah… I can see why you’d assume I’m a machine, but—”

“But what?”

“Well, I—are you really okay? Your heartrate is—”

“What about my friggin’ heartrate?” I snorted and stuck the rebar under my canteen rack. “I just climbed up a friggin’ hill. Is that friggin’ weird to you, robot?”

“Well, the suit is doing most of the work, but it was already worryingly high, even accounting for the stimulants—”

“Look, can you just stop talking?”

“I—I beg your pardon?”

“You’re a robot—or a computer or—or something!” My voice cracked, and I struggled to breathe more slowly. “Whatever! Can’t you—I don’t know, change your voice? Could you—could you sound like a mare, instead?”

“A—what? No, I can’t. I am not a computer, nor am I a robot, and no, I cannot change my voice. Why would I be able to—”

“Then could you please stop talking?”

“All right, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you somehow, but my voice is the one freedom I have left, so forgive me if I’m a bit reluctant to give that up! Now, what did—”

“Please!” I leapt onto the pavement next to the rails. “I really, really can’t stand a stallion talking right in my ear right now, okay? You haven’t—it’s not you. I’m not mad at you. You didn’t do anything.” I stomped my rear hoof, scratching the concrete with the claws on my boot. “Just… it’s like you’re in this friggin’ suit with me, and… it’s freaking me out, okay?! It’s really freaking me out!” I took a deep breath and walked on, tears in my eyes. “Could you please not talk for a little while?”

He was silent for several long seconds.

“At least…” I swallowed and lashed my tail, striking the wall with a lizard-like metal tail that sent dust flying and left a narrow gouge. My heart still racing, I muttered, “At least until we’re out of this stupid tunnel? Please… I just—I can’t friggin’ take it right now…”

When he spoke again, it was barely a murmur. “Crystal, I’m sorry. I’ll just… keep quiet.”

The faint crackling in my earpiece halted. “Thank you… I just… I really need some space. Just for a bit.”

I passed no fewer than ten motionless, four-wheeled sentry bots before I reached the stairwell; each machine had been shot straight through the center of their thick frontal armor. Along the stretch behind the robots, hundreds, perhaps thousands of small casings littered the floor, clinging and clattering off my boots, and a hundred meters past the final machine, there was a single crushed brass casing half the length of my foreleg, dull brown with patina.

I levitated the shell in front of my lights and turned it about.

“Odd,” murmured Carbide. “Very odd… sorry, I—”

“It’s okay, Carbide…” I peered at the nigh-illegible markings on the bottom of the shell. “What’s odd?”

“I don’t recognize that casing, or the stamping… and I have an exceptionally good memory.”

I tossed the crushed shell over my head, winced as it struck one of the rails, and I entered the stairwell. I took a long, deep breath and began to climb the shallow steps. “Sooo… what makes that weird?”

“Well, it wasn’t made by any Equestrian company I know of.”

“Then there’s one you don’t know of. Duh.”

He chuckled. “The simplest answer is sometimes the correct one, I suppose… and it has been a rather long time since my knowledge was current. Clearly, someone went exploring here… after I last was awake to see it… they encountered the sentries, dispatched them—with great precision, I might add—and then they retreated.”

“Wonder why someone would do that.” I climbed four shallow flights of stairs in a squared spiral, all cracked and dusty concrete lit by my armor’s floodlights, and groaned as I stopped at the highest landing. Sunlight peeked through gaps at the edges of the steel panel that spanned the short hall. Wind whistled just beyond it.

“That shouldn’t be there…”

“Well, it is.”

“Right, yes, well, there is another exit, but it’s another few kilometers down the line.”

“Yeah, screw that.” I reared up to plant my hooves on the panel and push. The steel gave an earsplitting scrape against the concrete, but barely moved. A cloud of rust and dust flaked off in the harsh glare of my flood lights.

It barely moved, but it did move.

“Feels like a friggin’ boulder on the other side…” I shoved again, producing another screech, but the plate merely flexed under the pressure and rebounded. Growling, I pushed off with a hair-raising sound and fell back to my hooves, leaving six bright, shallow scratches in the steel. “Yikes…” I peered at the dark claws on my boots. “What are these, tool steel? Titanium, tungsten?”

“Noctium—just a trade name, really; it’s an alloy of titanium, yes.”

“Great.” I twisted about to see the claws on my rear hooves; three each, as with my front. I spun around, kicked off, and bucked the steel, sending a shock up my legs and a deafening clang down the stairwell. I growled and tugged my boots free, shook each leg, and inspected the six rents in the plate. One hole let in light, and the other five showed smooth stone in shadow.

“Awesome! Only five millimeters and not even hardened.” I trotted back to the ramp.

“Ah… what are you doing?”

“Kicking that friggin’ hurt.” I stepped behind the wall of the first landing, held my gun around the corner—pinched my ears telekinetically—and loosed three thundering bolts of plasma at the barricade. “So I’m making this easier!”

“Oh.”

Then I fired a few more times and peeked around the corner while the overheating warning on my gun buzzed harshly. I ejected the six smoking spark cells and waved the gun through the air. The right half of the steel plate glowed incandescent yellow white, sagging and falling away from the wall.

I started toward the plate and poked at the glowing parts with my length of rebar, then simply began to bend the heated steel toward me. My heart began to hammer, and while I stood near the radiating, pliable steel, the tight suit around me began to chill itself in reaction to the extreme heat. “Hey, would you look at that? A big stupid friggin’ rock.”

The sun shone beyond the opening, and although the stone wasn’t so large as to completely block the passageway, it was held fast by a brace of crudely-welded-together steel tubing, rusted brown all over and bolted to the concrete. I couldn’t fit through the gap in my suit.

“Someone,” I said between deep breaths, wrenching at one of the tubes attached at only one end to the rest of the barricade, “Really did not want—anything coming out of here!”

“The sentries, I imagine. I’d wager their identification systems were deactivated.”

“You think?” I tore the tubing noisily free of its weakened welds with a bright, emerald green flare from my horn, jammed it under the boulder, set my armored shoulder against it and shoved. My clawed boots dug into the ground, I wrapped the entire boulder with my magic, and with a deep crunching, the rock shifted and tilted away from the door.

I jumped through the still-glowing, sagging plate, chased after the rock, and levered it forward again at the peak of its tumble, and finally shoved it clear of the exit with a bright wash of emerald green.

“Well! I’m glad to see the stimulants are working!”

I stood heaving for breath in the collapsed and rusted corrugated steel remains of what once might have been a warehouse on a solid foundation block seemingly in the middle of a desert. Clouds sat on the north horizon, far beyond the sand and flats.

I trotted around the stairwell access, kicking aside rusted segments of shelving lying piled on the foundation. To my left, at the south of the platform, there was a hill of reddish soil covered with scraggly grass and prickly bushes, waving in the wind.

“And for all the effort someone put into that barricade,” said Carbide, “You wouldn’t even need it to stop those sentries… they aren’t smart. Believe me, I’ve seen their matrix programming.”

I turned to the north, where a set of rails peeked out from the red dirt every now and again; the soil had blown over and covered most of the tracks.

“Why not? What makes them stupid?”

“Well—it isn’t so much that they’re stupid, just simple. You, ah… you had the right tools and the knowledge to break a hole in that metal plate. Rather, you tried—you had an idea, you acted on that idea, you observed the results, and you determined your next course of action based on those results.”

“That’s… just the scientific method. Basically.”

“Yes, exactly! Astute of you. Those sentries lack the capacity to consider those actions. It simply isn’t in their programming. In fact, it isn’t right to call them smart or stupid at all, because they don’t think in the first place, or act—they merely react, follow pre-programmed orders, perform specific actions if certain conditions are met. For example, to pursue a target, they just follow the most efficient path to their destination, based on a rough analysis of the terrain—things like surface grade and obstacles in their path.”

“But if they can’t see a path, then they can’t follow it. You could surround one with flimsy plaster walls, box it in, and it would treat it the same as solid stone, completely impassable. It couldn’t tell the difference between them, it couldn’t determine that it could simply roll through the wall. Remarkably robust machines, but limited. A child could outsmart one.”

Scowling, I said, “So… what makes them see me as a friggin’ target, huh? What makes Eagle and Zephyr targets?”

“Well, you three clearly weren’t the first ponies to come here… someone must have reprogrammed them without identification constraints in place. Anyone with a PipBuck could do that, or even someone with a suit of Ministry power armor; they have spell matrix interfaces.”

“Okay, but why did they attack us?”

“Did you fire first? Without constraints in place, if you damaged one of them… that would fulfil one of those conditions.”

I gritted my teeth. “I really friggin’ hate robots.” I glanced to the east, at the cluster of distant buildings and the half-collapsed dome of the Spannerworks laboratory. “You said they couldn’t go through a wall… then why did that giant one chase me around the block, break through a whole building, and try to kill me? Twice? I shot it in the friggin’ head, and it didn’t die.”

Carbide was silent.

I walked through the piles of rusted debris on the foundation and hopped down to the red dirt of the desert. “Well?”

“That one,” he said slowly, “Isn’t a sentry. He was never so simple—at least in theory… I can’t be certain why he would ever attack anyone, and his mind, his brain per se, isn’t in the dome on top. That isn’t a head, just a sensor platform.”

“You mean it still isn’t dead?”

“Well, I should certainly hope not,” said Carbide. “That was the best power plant we ever made—certainly not the most powerful or efficient, but absolutely the most robust, the most reliable. If it’s still working after so long, then the maintenance systems have been functioning ever since I went into stasis, same as the auxiliary power plant for the entire lab! If I could get the system logs, it could be invaluable for—”

“Carbide!”

“Sorry—yes?”

“Is that thing going to come after me again?”

“You hardly need to worry about that. We’re out-of-sight, out-of-mind; Max has no way to tell where we’ve gone, no reason to look for us.”

“Max?”

“Short for Maximillian.”

I swallowed and took a long breath. I looked once more at the distant buildings, shuddered, and broke into a trot, going north. “You gave it a name,” I muttered. “Of course you gave it a friggin’ name… you said you tracked Eagle’s suit this way, right? North-ish?”

“North by northwest; they left the sensor grid not long before I found you… you should be able to follow these tracks most of the way through the dunes, at least.”

“Peachy. How do I take this helmet off?”

“There’s a latch on the right side of the crinet—the neck covering.”

“I know what a crinet is.”

I drank my third canteen of warm water and passed around the crossties stacked between two pairs of rails driven vertically into the railway bed, and I climbed back up the loose rock to read the north face of a warning, carved and burnt into the age-bleached wood.

“Well,” said Carbide, “They certainly built it to last.”

“Well, that’s really friggin’ old,” I said, catching the last few drops on my tongue.

“Hmm… Crystal, I realize this may sound rather silly, but, ah…”

“Just spit it out.”

“What year is it?”

“Seventeen-forty-one.”

“Ah-ha… and the date?”

“Ninth or… tenth? Eleventh? Twelfth? Spring’s Waking. Something like that. I don’t remember, ‘cause I wasn’t paying attention to my calendar—and because, you know, a giant flying momma snake monster ripped a redundant new hole in my chariot and knocked my calendar out, plus all my books. I hate flying snake monsters, by the way.”

“Nice to know someone kept track of things… and that sounds like a Gelgrin Naga—ah, ‘storm naga’ is their more common name. They’re endemic to the mountains in the region.”

“Gel-grin… what kind of name is that?”

“A rather old one. The Gelgrin Valley is in the mountains northeast of here, if I recall, a few hundred kilometers away.”

I turned from the sign and continued along the tracks, the rails of which had been removed beyond the sign. Only the crossties and wind-worn ballast remained, a road of grey pebbles that blended with the fine red soil.

“So, when did you go to sleep? Or go into stasis, whatever.”

“Oh… just about one hundred and eighty years ago. I’m still trying to process that, if I’m being honest…”

“Wow. You’re really friggin’ old.”

“Ohoho, aha, ahee… you know what? I needed that. Bit of levity… love it… no, really, I needed it.”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Making this undersuit with a zipper.”

“Ah. Right. It was either that or a waste recycler. More complicated, and uncomfortable.”

I shuddered. “Ew.”

“… I take it you—”

“YES! I know how they work—and it’s kind of cool, but also friggin’ disgusting! Eagle’s suit had one. He replaced it with a quick-release cover and I don’t want to friggin’ talk about this right now. Thanks for the zipper, now zip it! End of discussion, please!”

“Sorry! Sorry.”

I rolled my eyes. I started up yet another dry, weedy hill of reddish soil among hundreds, having left the rail-deprived track bed behind an hour before when it had turned northwest. Emptiness clawed at my belly, my legs shook, and whatever adrenaline and shock had done for my endurance, the sun and sweltering air had beaten it down, hour after hour.

A red cliff rose on the north horizon, easily eighty kilometers away in the desert haze. The tiniest silhouettes of buildings poked up from the rocky line, and metal glinted in the sun.

As I neared the top of the next hill, leaving deep prints in the firmer soil, I passed by a plant. I spun around unsteadily, staring at the bizarre thing: It was a mass of broad, waxy leaves covered with glossy spines, and taller than I was in my suit of powered armor.

“S’that edible? It’s nice and green…”

“Cactus? Yes, certainly, just mind the spines.”

“Great,” I said, telekinetically tearing off a leg-sized portion of the cactus, “I’m friggin’ starving… and kinda dizzy…”

“Dizzy?”

“Yeah, kind of.” I lit an emerald flame at the tip of my horn and yanked a dry bush out of the ground nearby, roots and all, crushed it into a small pile, and started a serviceable fire. While I plucked the spines off the leaves, a rushing built in my ears, my heart grew louder, and I sat heavily on my rear. “Okay… make that… really dizzy… whoa…”

Then I lost the last half-liter of water I’d drunk, plus bile, and collapsed. Everything Carbide said became lost in the rushing and ringing and sickening tumble down the hill.

I lay in shadow at the bottom of the hill, aching and hot and thirsty. I stared at the dirt and raised my pounding head, and rolled onto my belly. Dirt fell from my face, and I telekinetically swept the rest away. The rancid tang of bile stuck in my mouth, and my throat was dry. A vulture sat perched on a nearby rock shelf, watching me. It raised its wings, as if about to fly away.

I snapped my beam pistol out of my saddlebag holster and vaporized the bird’s head with a beam of orange, then wrapped the carcass with emerald and floated it to my unintended napping spot.

“Oh, sweet Celestia, you’re awake! Crystal? Just—just lie still for a bit, no sudden movements. The stimulants wore off— I’m sorry, I should have warned you about the crash. Just take it easy. Drink some water and breathe for a minute, all right?”

“Okay,” I mumbled, “Can do, Carbide…” I levitated one of the canteens off my harness and grimaced at the sight of a half-crushed aluminium cylinder. A pitiable amount of water sloshed around in the ruined container, and several of the canteens on my left side had fared similarly, having split open under the crushing weight of my armor.

“Oh… great.” I drank the few mouthfuls in the canteen I held, then lifted the others off my harness and laid them out on the ground to count. “Six liters…”

“Listen to me, Crystal? That cactus, the one you were going to eat? Those are filled with water. That’s how they survive in the desert, by retaining water. You don’t need to worry about running out, understand? You walked nearly forty kilometers today. For a filly who hasn’t had anything to eat, and just came out of surgery and—and everything else yesterday, that’s astounding progress!”

“Progress?” I tore another dry bush free from the ground and repeated my attempt to make a campfire, and once again, the throbbing in my head renewed and threatened to send me to the ground. Growling and very nearly sobbing, I collapsed mostly under my own power and waited for the dizziness to pass. “Progress to where, Carbide? What’s friggin’ out here? I haven’t seen anything except those train tracks, and someone took all the friggin’ rails, so clearly the steel was more valuable than all the—all the stupid friggin’ nothing! Nopony would be out here!”

“Well, it looks like there’s a town at the edge of that cliff, just for starters. That’s the Chikilixi Canyon, and the Pekelebu River; that’s fed by an aquifer, and it won’t have gone anywhere. Now, if you can match what you walked today, you’ll reach that canyon by… morning after next, maybe midday! There are even wild grasses, and—and succulents, like that cactus! You aren’t going to starve, or go thirsty. You’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Rrrrnnnngh… friggin’… yelling was dumb… my friggin’ head, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow…” Massaging my neck, I muttered, “The what canyon?”

“The Chikilixi Canyon, and Pekelebu River, which formed the canyon. It was a budding tourist attraction, up until recently—well… recently as of…” He sighed and trailed off into a mutter. “The last time I heard anything about it… two hundred years ago, give or take. Blessed Sun and Moon, that’s throwing me off…”

I dragged several desiccated branches from the sandy creek bed and added it to my burning kindling. “You know they’re dead, right?”

“What? Oh, right… old habits die hard. Yes, I’m well aware—I was there Crystal. Well, I wasn’t in Canterlot, no, of course not, but I heard the reports… before they stopped transmitting, at least… before everything stopped transmitting… Celestia and Luna had been dead for seven years, last time I had an ear out to the world… for a few weeks, I kept thinking I’d be the next one to go, only it just became rather quiet, instead… I suppose the deserts didn’t rate a megaspell.”

“Well… I’m glad you were here to help me.” I squinted at a speck in the darkening sky as it came into view from behind the hilltop. “I guess it’s not your fault the robots attacked us.”

“Ah… no, but I’m sorry about it, anyway… Crystal, do tell me something.”

“What?”

“Are you going to eat that?”

I glanced at the headless vulture carcass, sniffed, and almost reconsidered. “It’s a lot of bird. Food’s food.”

“I… suppose…”

I began to pluck the feathers, and pulled a knife from my saddlebags. “Not to say I’m ungrateful for all the water… and the armor, and the surgery, and… whatever you did to my leg, but I don’t see any snacks in those canteens—and right now, I’m not picky, okay? I’m just tired and really friggin’ hungry.”

“Fair.”

I yanked up another dry bush and a lifted bleached-white stick from farther along the creek, broke them up, and added them to my fire. I tried to ignore the stench of the vulture while I cut it apart with my knife and telekinesis. “So, what… you think that place on the cliff is where I should go?”

“Well, it’s roughly a straight line between Spannerworks, here, and there, so if, ah, Eagle and…”

“Zephyr. Eagle and Zephyr.”

“If Eagle and Zephyr made it that far, and are to come looking for you… then it would be best to continue on the path they are most likely to search—ah, do you… know what you’re doing?”

“I watched Eagle do it a couple times.” I lifted my rebar, jammed it into the ground next to the fire, and slowly bent the top into a hoop; halfway through the effort, my headache redoubled, and I pitched toward the ground and dry-heaved.

“Crystal, please, try to—”

“I’m friggin’ fine!” My legs shook. I tore apart one of my split-open canteens and bent the much more pliable aluminium into the shape of a bowl, then set it in the rebar hoop, making a crude stove.

“I gave you stimulants because you were on the edge of burnout when I found you—now you’re right back at the edge again. If you keep straining yourself, you’ll just crash again, and it will be that much worse!”

“Do you want me to do this with my friggin’ mouth? Huh? Well?! I don’t have a kitchen, okay? Let me worry about my own magic.”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it—just clean the cactus first, eat that. Rest for a few hours, let yourself recover a bit and—”

With a sudden pop and a screech, the speakers cut out.

“Carbide?” I tapped my boot on my armor’s peytral. “Carbide? Hey, what’s up?” I dropped the vulture carcass and snatched my helmet off my packs. I hurriedly put it over my head and flinched as the fluted guard scraped my horn. I sealed the helmet and nearly shouted into the close, pressing muzzle guard. “Carbide?!”

Only my voice and breaths came through the internal speakers.

“Carbide! Please, no, no no no no no, come on, please, no… Carbide!”

I trudged up another hill in the waning light, chewing waxy, slimy cactus leaves and the tough, overcooked meat of a carrion bird. Bulbous, spiny plants surrounded me in abundance, green and yellow and red, and small lizards and rodents sometimes darted across the increasingly rocky ground.

Every hill I crested was one hill closer to the red cliff on the horizon, one hill closer to Eagle and Zephyr.

After four more hills, I stopped at the edge of a rocky bluff, stared out across the dry, alien landscape, and once again built a fire.

I turned the helmet over in my emerald field, inspecting the draconic styling of the armored plating. I held it in front of my chest so that I could see the tiny camera set on my collar reflected in the visor, above the armor’s deep blue, seemingly anodized peytral. It was the only part of the armor with such a finish; every other piece, whether the exoskeletal structure, surrounding plating, or the segments of the thick collar and spine, were bright and bare. The incomplete covering over my ribs and belly made me look unnaturally small inside the suit.

Tapping my boot on the helmet, I said, “First thing I’m doing once I can find a proper workshop is fixing your speakers… or whatever else is wrong. Then you’re going to tell me how you made all this overnight, got it?” I telekinetically depressed the switch on the small control panel on my foreleg, turning on the floodlights, and peered inside the split-apart helmet’s interior. It was a mesh of overlapping hexagonal framing, cloth padding, and thin wires held under insulating ribbons.

“Kinetic suspension sintering for the plates, cutting and press-forming for the framing, maybe? Read about that in Neighvarro, never thought I’d see it in action… it all looks a bit unfinished… still friggin’ impressive.”

I turned off the lights and ate the rest of my badly cooked cactus while I searched for more kindling. A quarter-hour and a pile of dry wood later, I climbed back up the bluff and sat near the freshly stoked fire, using my armor’s bulk to shield it from the building wind.

I set my helmet down, peering again at the reflection of the camera above my collar. “Good night, Carbide… and thanks for saving me.”

Not ten minutes after I’d lain down to try to sleep, that wind became a flapping of wings and a stirring cloud of dust. My campfire nearly blew out, a soothing, golden-yellow light washed over the bluff, and several sets of heavy hoofsteps came up the hill.

“Crystal Dew?”

The largest of the three tall, winged and horned ponies that had flown out of the dark approached me. She was deep purple, statuesque and muscular of figure, her mane was a glowing violet cloud not unlike plasma, and she was the absolute largest pony I’d ever seen. I could have walked under her and hardly would have needed duck my head. The pine-needle-green mare next to her was smaller, but still larger than any other pony I’d met in my life, and it was her glowing horn that lit the bluff with gold.

“You’re a hard filly to track down, you know that?” said the purple giant. “We spent nearly ten hours combing the desert to find you, and here you are all on your lonesome, halfway to Cliffside.”

“Duuhhh… hi?” I squinted in the golden light and gawped up at the mare. The green one snatched my helmet off the ground and frowned, looking to the south.

“Really, Blitz?”

The cobalt mare, slightly smaller still than the green one, approached me and lay down directly in front of me.

“Nice to meet you, Crystal Dew,” said the mare, smiling as she gently brushed my mane out of my eyes with her cerulean telekinesis and peered at my left eye. She looked younger than the other two mares, her mane was solid, glossy black and fell clear to the ground, and her eyes were a bright, electric blue. Around the end of her muzzle, her coat was an odd brownish-red, and on her left pectoral was dyed a white stripe and yellow text I couldn’t read.

“Hi, gorgeous,” I mumbled, “What’s your name?”

She leaned slightly back from me, chuckling. She had a faint accent I’d never heard in all my life in Neighvarro and Cloud Loft. “Well, thank you, Crystal Dew… my name is Night Cloud. You seem healthy and unhurt, all things considered… Eagle and Zephyr will be glad to hear that.”

“They’re both okay!?” I leapt up and set my boots on her shoulders, causing her to flinch. “You found them?”

Night Cloud wrapped me with cerulean magic and gently pushed me back, keeping my boots away from herself. She eyed the claws and said, “Careful, please! All that metal is pretty heavy, and… rather sharp.”

“Sorry!”

“It’s all right.” She stood up and peered down at my armor, producing her own blue-white light at the tip of her horn. “Eagle and Zephyr are resting in the clinic in Cliffside; we bumped into them early this morning. They’re in good care, so don’t worry. Ivy? Want to help take this armor off?”

We burst forth from the clouds and soared across a break in the storm. The golden bubble around us vanished, and far away and below there appeared a small, sprawling town at the edge of the towering cliff, sprinkled with yellow lights along its streets.

Night Cloud flared held her wings spread out and entered a glide in unison with the other two mares. Her horn glowed cerulean, and the barest of tingles shot down my horn as a spell struck me. Then, her accented voice came over the wind and thunder, and yet her lips never moved.

-You can sleep if you want; I won’t let you fall.-

I clutched onto her shoulders and pressed my head against her neck, eyeing the ground hundreds of meters below as we descended. I squinted at Ivy, on our left. Her pine needle green, black-streaked mane was tied back in a long, running braid decorated with a small black bow near the top of her neck. Her cutie mark was a brass bullet casing. Of the three huge mares, she alone had a weapon, a sleek battle harness with a short, stubby machine gun on her left, and a thinner gun nearly the length of her body on her right.

-Staring is uncouth, filly.-

I winced as the sound hit me; not at all as relaxing or pleasant as Night Cloud’s alto tones, her voice was admonishing. “Sorry!”

-The name’s Ivaline. Call me Ivy if you want. Focus on me and think what you want to say; the spell will take care of the rest.-

I squinted at her against the wind. -Um… nice to meet you, Ivy.-

-Likewise. Welcome to the Kingdom of Dunn.-

“Doctor Patch? I found our missing patient!” I raised my head and blinked blearily as Night Cloud carried me into a well-lit building. The walls and floor were clean, warm yellow tile and wood paneling.

“About time,” said a raspy-voiced stallion, somewhere down the hallway. “What’ll we need?”

“Bed rest and a warm bowl of carrot soup when she wakes up.” Night Cloud carried me along a short hallway and opened a door on our right. A ceiling light flickered to life as she entered the room. Night Cloud glanced over her shoulder, sniffed, grimaced slightly, and whispered, “And a quick bath before you go to bed, I think.”

“Sounds nice,” I mumbled, “Where’re Eagle and Zephyr?”

“In the next room,” said Night Cloud, “Sleeping.”

The elderly stallion, who turned out to be a ghoul, stopped at the doorway as Night Cloud carried me into a cramped bathroom and carefully unzipped my undersuit. “Ivaline says they came from the old Spannerworks place…”

“Indeed they did,” said Night Cloud. I cringed as she put the smelly suit in the corner. She looked down at my back and hind legs, lips pursed.

I tried to look, as well, but Night Cloud stuck her wing in the way and turned on the faucet of the walk-in shower. “Let’s clean you up before we worry about that, all right?”

“Seriously?” I stomped my right hind hoof, then my left, producing a clack on the tile, then a metallic clink. “I’m not stupid,” I muttered, “Haven’t been able to feel it right all day.” Night Cloud slowly withdrew her wing, and I twisted to hold my leg in view.

Silver fibers of artificial muscle connected to chrome-plated bones. Curved, white panels of hard plastic covered my stifle and hock, and most of my cannon and hoof. Between my thigh and the plate on my stifle was a white seam of flexible, rubbery material that encircled the top of the joint, and my leg had been shaved bare in a ring around the seam.

A faint scar ran up my hip and disappeared beneath my coat, which had been shaved down to my hide in a strip several centimeters in breadth. More scars marred my hip and spine; I gaped at the sheer number of spots that left my hide clearly visible. I arched my neck and twisted my head as far as I could. A small, sleek plate of black, anodized metal rested on my spine just behind my withers.

I shook and stretched my leg out, back and sideways, watching in morbid fascination. “It’s friggin’ quiet,” I muttered. “No motors, no kinetomotive converters, not enough room for a spell matrix… friggin’ how?!”

“It’s impressive,” said Night Cloud, setting her wing on my withers. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” She shot a cerulean blob of magic at my leg, enveloping my entire limb in a bubble-like field that stuck to the contours of the metal. “Probably not completely waterproof, though.” She then levitated me over to the shower.

“Wha—hey! Daaaaaaaho-ho-hooo, that’s amazing…” I groaned under the spray of hot water and sighed as Night Cloud sat next to the open shower, grabbed a long wood brush from the wall, and began to scrub my back. “Hey!” I snatched the brush from her. “I can do that myself! I’m not a friggin’ foal.”

She smiled and kept calm eye contact with me. “Crystal Dew… I am not trying to belittle you in any way. I know what burnout looks like, and you are right on the edge. Now…” She grasped the brush again, and my head throbbed at the minute force opposing my telekinesis. The hot water on my back and steam rising around me didn’t ease that ache. “Please, let me help. Rest, spare yourself the migraine. The sooner you’re clean and dry, the faster you can eat and go to bed… and I’m sure you’d like to see Eagle and Zephyr. I can move your bed into their room, if you’d like.”

I surrendered the brush to the winged, horned mare four or more times my size and muttered, “Fine…” She produced a large bar of soap on a wood rod and set to work on my neck and back first. “Were, um… were they hurt badly?”

Night Cloud brushed my mane back with her hoof. “It was nothing Doctor Patch and I couldn’t manage. Zephyr will need some more time to recover fully, maybe a week before she can fly… but I’m confident she’ll be up and about by tomorrow morning.”

A brush tugged across my back, and a bell tinkled somewhere beyond the window behind the low bed, and the morning sun lit the yellow-tiled room. A fan spun lazily on the ceiling. I yawned and stretched my forelegs out to sit up, and the brushing stopped.

Zephyr gingerly nuzzled my neck and wrapped her wing around me, and she murmured, “Doctor, um… that big blue mare says I had a concussion, so…” She squeezed me tightly, kissed my cheek, and said, “Maybe don’t toss me through a wall again… at least for another week or two, okay?”

“Didn’t have a ton of options, Zephyr,” I mumbled. A light yellow woven cape concealed most of the white bandages that covered her chest, and yet more bandages covered her left wing. “Are you okay now?”

She giggled, and her voice hitched. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Armor took the worst of it; just had some burns and a few broken ribs… but Eagle carried me out of there in one piece, and the doctors here did the rest…” I hugged her in return, and the pale violet mare began to tremble and cry as she buried her snout in my mane. She muttered croakily, “Don’t ever scare me like that again, understand?”

A set of frantic hoofsteps clacked across the tile behind me, and Eagle hugged me from the other side, nuzzling me next to Zephyr.

“Hey, hey, okay, I get it!” I giggled and turned from Zephyr to hug Eagle around his neck, and then both pegasi surrounded me with their wings and warmth. “I’m happy, too, everypony’s alive! Yay! Happy happy happy! Okay, now let me breathe!”

Eagle gave me one last squeeze and backed away. His eyes were bloodshot, and like Zephyr, bandages crossed his chest and neck.

“I’m so sorry,” he said hoarsely, “Crystal, I thought you were dead…”

I jumped off the bed and reared up to hug him again. “Well, I’m not dead, so stop crying. And just so you know, that giant robot, the one that attacked us? I melted a big hole in its face.”

He burst into hitching, sobbing laughter and wrapped me with warm feathers once again. “Way to go, Crystal… you saved our lives, you know that?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, thumping my hooves on him. “When’s breakfast?”