//------------------------------// // -89- // Story: Coarse Diamonds // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// “At least we know the tundra zone isn’t entirely an inhospitable hellhole. The devastated nature will take a while to come back from this, but at least some trees and animals are surviving.” Gilda was referencing the life signs they had passed several miles back, some of the native life had figured out hibernation at least. “I’m kind of surprised the native life on this planet could even adapt to something like this… well what little that hasn’t yet died in the iced over part of the planet anyway.” “Aside from that, we’re almost at the blizzard creation zone; can we stop here so I can send out a scout to scope things out?” Greta spoke up sounding a bit concerned. “I’m pretty sure that once we go in, we’re going to be under near constant attack.” “So are we going to have Ember fly on out there?” Of the two, Gilda kind of preferred Ember for the job over Greta, the dragon was a sight damn more indestructible and could handle it if something went wrong. “Why do we need her to scout around? We already know there are a large number of machines ahead of us.” Gilda checked the sensors and there was barely any life in that direction, but there was a massive amount of heat and motion out there like when they made their way into the destroyed town of Gravenstein. In other words that was the only warning they really needed as to the dangers ahead of them. It still kind of bothered her that the buildings had been burnt out husks. The cryogenic wolves and snow sharks didn’t have weapons that produced that kind of damage, at least not from what they had experienced escaping the town. “A flyover is not what I had in mind; I wanted to test out my new toy!” The happy and giddy tone Greta spoke in had Gilda slightly worried. “Rarity… is Greta currently gushing over a blue and silver wolf shaped machine in the lower torso?” It was just a suspicion Gilda had about Greta’s sudden request to send out a scout. “No, but I can honestly say you’re correct in where your assumptions are heading.” What Rarity was currently looking at was still the same general shape, only it was much easier on the eyes than the jagged wolf design. “Hey, I had a lot of spare parts, why wouldn’t I take this opportunity to make myself a cuddly pet?” There was a strange definition to the word cuddly as far as Greta was calling it; at least what was sitting there ready to be activated looked safer than the robot wolves. Safer might not have been exactly the right term for the thing, especially knowing Greta and Gilda’s predilection for improving things. The robotic wolves had been angular blue and white colored machines with small jagged spikes sticking out of them in various places. An example would be their ears were notably more like forward pointing horns that they could gore someone with. Most of the small bladed extensions were on the sides of the legs which they could use to slash at someone by running by them without the need to use their claws. Their small tails weren’t used in combat, they were raised into the air to act as sensors and they communicated with the other robotic wolves using them. Even without the tails the wolves would still be capable of acting alone and that was rather efficient coding for their design, the lone wolf protocols were an interesting bit of programming. From what Greta managed to discover beyond what was surmised already, they were programmed entirely to capture intelligent biological entities alive. If that wasn’t going to work then they had to immobilize their target with injuries before freezing them. Chances of an injured target being defrosted safely was a lot iffier, the survival rate went down thirty eight percent and even without injury it was pretty bad already. The wolves had no long range capability, but they really didn’t need it when they had whatever generated the snow storms to cover their approach so they could get up close and personal. The chemical sprayers in their sharp metal fanged mouths weren’t powerful enough to account for the sudden snow storm Rarity’s group encountered when they came under attack at Gravenstein. The range on their ice breath was two feet at most and that was effective enough considering how fast they could move. That was not what Greta pulled out; instead it was more streamlined and less blocky. It looked exquisitely crafted from the various parts of the wolves they had lying around on the Centaur-pede in the previous scuffle. It was red, its ears were close together and pointed upwards instead of forward, its facial structure did not spike out into a volatile looking toothy maw, and its body was also quite lithe and smoother. Among the really major noticeable differences, it had a larger tail and it was red instead of blue. It sat there with Purple glowing eyes when it was activated and its segmented tail wagging back and forth, it opened its mouth and yipped revealing a laser cannon where its cryogenic gas sprayer should have been. “Let me guess, you made the time?” Saffron spoke blandly as she turned to Greta. “Better yet, how did you manage to even reprogram it to do what you want exactly? Here I thought that us ponies were the only ones who got away with stuff like this.” “Yes, I did make time. Do you seriously think that you’re the only one that can do insane things around here? I mean nobody brought up the fact that Rarity made a parka for Applejack on the spot in the small amount of time we were at the farm.” After saying that, Greta rubbed at her fox shaped machine’s cheeks and cooed at it. “Who is my cute little vixen, you are! I’m a technical engineer, so reprogramming it wasn’t exactly that hard. I just needed to remove a tiny amount of programming and build the laser cannon into her mouth after I got all of her to look how I wanted her to, it required me to alter some parameters here and there and boom!” The robotic fox made another yipping noise and playfully pawed at Greta’s left arm with no ill intent meant, it even nuzzled up to her in an adorable manner while seeming to smile at her. Its tail was wagging and it looked ecstatic to be with Greta. “So what can it do for us aside from helping us shoot things with its mouth and scout around for us?” The robot bounded over to Ember and yipped while bouncing playfully and waggling its flowing tail high in the air. Ember slowly reached out to rub its head and it let off a mechanical sounding purring. “How about horribly corrupting the programming of every other robotic wolf we may encounter? I had enough intact robot wolf tails to forge that tail for our little vulpine friend here; you see those metal mutts use their tails to communicate with each other to work together. Without their ability to coordinate against us, they will be easier to deal with. The tail also has another surprise, but it’s not quite finished yet.” With a grin, Greta watched Ember interact with the purple eyed vixen robot that seemed to be happily soaking up the attention like a sponge. “Heck my virus transmitter might even be able to get a few of the wolves to fight for us, but I’m unsure if that’ll be a temporary thing or not. It’s not going to be a perfect thing as they’ll eventually learn to block out her signal and or might eventually recover from being controlled by her, but they will never be able to get their coordination back. I’m going to call her Viral. Come here Viral!” Viral yipped and slinked her way over to Greta and sat down before her, Greta started to punch a few things into her data pad and smile as Viral laid down before her and the fox’s head split in half revealing her inner workings to Greta. Greta plugged her data pad into it and looked to be curiously checking Viral over. “I have to admit, that’s kind of amazing. I’m not exactly big on fancy things like this contraption, but I understand that we have a better chance in this fight we’re walking into?”  It was explained to Applejack not long ago what would happen if they approached or even entered the blizzard staging area. She was ready to see what was causing her farm and so many towns to freeze over and be done with all this. “Well that’s just fine by me if it works like it’s supposed to.” “She will do what we need her to, that’s why I’m asking Gilda to let me send her out as a scout.” Greta wanted to play with Viral and make her go mess with the communications between all the wolves ahead of them before they arrived. Viral would sow confusion before they got there and they’d reap the benefits of it. That was the problem with making your robots openly interconnected to one another, all someone needed was one of the transmitters and enough technical knowhow to cause a whole slew of issues.“We can perform some long distance sabotage before we start moving into the identified center of the area Opal marked for us.” “Yeah, I can actually get behind that… though I’m curious what did you do with the rest of the parts? I checked the box before I climbed the ladder to upper torso and there doesn’t seem to be as many as we had.” It was Gilda’s concern that Greta wasted a lot of resources on making a robotic fox. “The wolves were crawling all over the Centaur-pede’s legs last time, so I gave each individual leg a salvaged shield generator with a special twist to them.” Despite saying that, Greta was not very forthcoming with what the particular twist was. “The main shield will not be overly taxed like it was previously and the wolves will have many problems with swarming us this time.” The two griffons were adaptable to any situation and Viral was Greta’s secret weapon for the upcoming fight. Gilda didn’t need a secret weapon as she was the pilot of her very own personally built cargo loading machine, one that doubled as a moderately large mobile fortress with some new quirks thanks to Greta’s tinkering. - Viral yipped and ran down the ramp out the back of the Centaur-pede and off into the snow ahead of the vehicle under Greta’s guidance. Greta was using the sensors and her data pad to guide the robot, which was more of a Virtual Intelligence than a true Artificial Intelligence. Rarity would know the difference and watched as the fox traveled off into the distance sending them back visual images on the screen. Without a word, Ember was already climbing up the ladder to take up a position on top of the lower torso. She was ready for round two and this time she’d make sure that she didn’t get swallowed before the fight started. “I can do my best work from here, but the rest of you should get your weapons and get up top.” It didn’t seem to Greta that they were going to avoid this one, but at least they knew a fight was coming this time. “I’ll be running control of Viral from the lower torso.” “I have to be honest here; I’m not too comfortable with all this stuff we’re getting into.” Applejack had a reason to be pensive, especially given her proximity to Rarity who found trouble no matter what she did. “Don’t worry, none of us are comfortable about any of this either or much of anything else we tend to get into. We’re here and I’m not about to back down now!” Rarity wanted to make that wedding dress for her cousin, the process to eventually doing that required this really excessive detour. Rarity checked her material pistol and closed it up with a click and looked over the charge on her energy pistols.  “I don’t think my life will ever be quiet, but I think I am coming to enjoy the challenges I’ve been coming across. Hopefully Noctus will be much quieter than this escapade and I can do a fashion show without all this crazy stuff.” “Aw, but boss lady, I like the crazy stuff we do together!” No one other that Greta would say that with a cheerful disposition and mean it. She enjoyed Rarity’s presence and being her friend, even if there was a lot of danger involved. She looked at the data pad and stared at something; she put a headset on and tapped at it to make sure it was working. “Methinks we have a target! Some kind of tower structure that’s giving off a strange signal, Viral is piping in the data to us now. Gilda see what you can make of it on our approach… also I think Rarity doesn’t have to worry about our lost little cling on. The Puffle is at the tower and it appears to have its face stuck to it, from what I can see it’s an old acquaintance of ours.” “Like we don’t have enough problems around here without having to avoid killing the little pest, I’m starting forward. You better be ready to disable those wolves Greta.” Gilda set them on moving forward at full speed, once it got moving they weren’t going to slow down much until they were within range of the target and then they’d start taking evasive maneuvers. “Whoever is causing this, you better be prepared to say hello to the Centaur Stampede and Shining Jewel’s premier mechanics The Garage Griffons!” “Centaur Stampede, I thought it was Centaur Centipede…” Muttered a curious Greta under her breath as the snow storm started up at their approach and coordinated Viral to take control of several of the wolves and freeze the cause of the snow storm. They were apparently giant turtle shaped devices with large tube shaped spikes that were shooting snow and ice to generate the snow storm that the wolves hid in; the wolves Viral managed to get converged on them and froze over the spouts with Viral staying well away from the resulting line of explosions. The blockage on one had caused a chain reaction that made all the machines explode. The brewing snow storm sputtered and died, that’s when the battle truly began. “What did you just do Greta?” Rarity asked from her perch next to the front left turret as she watched an entire line of explosions erupted in the distance. “I apparently found and took care of the snow storm generators, not sure if they’re responsible for the blizzards though. It looks like our mechanical wolves are already harrying them and any wolves I didn’t get have started their lone wolf protocols.” Greta started to steer Viral away from the sudden increasing action coming from ahead of them and the wolf units she managed to corrupt followed the vixens lead. Greta had them moving towards the Centaur-pede when she noticed something else going on. “Heads up, we got aerial drones inbound… they’re of human make, it seems we’ve stirred up a hornets’ nest! They only have five in the air, but I’m detecting more incoming and fast with Viral’s help.” Five aerial arrowhead shaped drones half the size of an average one person fighter came zooming towards the Centaur-pede, Gilda raised the left and right claws of the upper torso and fired. They managed to avoid the first shot and the second ripped three apart when the second drone from Gilda’s right went up in a ball of flames and shrapnel. A loud crack rang out and the remaining two crashed when one lost a wing causing it to slam into the other. “Well that seemed easy enough.” Applejack had spoken way too soon as she scouted the incoming fins popping up from the snow, along with hundreds of wolves chasing the purple eyed retreating corrupted units. Thirty arrowheads were now in the air and angling towards the quickly approaching Centaur-pede. “I guess I spoke to soon… are all of us safe up here?” “You should be, the shields will cover you and… oh nice! Greta’s modifications to the shields will really help out with the wolves. Let her deal with them for the moment, you need to focus on taking out those aerial drones. They are too fast for me to shoot them all down and the beam cannons in the arms up here are slow and meant for heavier targets. I’m switching the turrets to anti-air coverage.” Gilda whipped out the right arm as each arrowhead dove and started firing two rapid streams of spheres into the shields; the arm sent their formation spiraling out of control when she hit the lead unit. “Update, I think I recognize the style of these drones, don’t hit the lead unit. The rest of the formation will scatter unpredictably if you do which will make them more problematic to deal with; otherwise they’re standard human military strafing assault drone models which thankfully lack shields. I have some suspicions about where they came from; considering all the other machines out here don’t look military in the slightest… incoming shark, get ready to brace for impact!” The centaur machine’s shields flared above Rarity as the drones shot at them from overhead and circled around to perform another series of strafes. Looking around she started shoot at the backs of the five drones that passed overhead with her two energy pistols firing multiple shots rapidly and only one went down, they were tough to get a bead on as they swerved and tilted slightly to avoid her shots. Ember had taken to the air a while ago and swooped down from above to slice the remaining drones in half with her blazing bayonet and quickly evaded another formation of speedy little arrowheads that suddenly started targeting her. She rolled and avoided the shots that were aimed for her wings; her wings were easier to damage than the rest of her body and she whipped her tail around to send the drone behind her spiraling into the ground. “Ember, are you sure it’s safe to be flying with all these drones around?” Rarity continued to pick and choose her targets. She fired when she saw an opportunity; apparently the drones weren’t good at dodging cross fire as she managed to drop three in quick succession as they avoided Rover’s shots. Rarity had to duck as a spiraling drone slammed into the back of the lower torso after one of the turrets blew off one of its wings and exploded. “She can take care of herself; she’s the only aerial support we have at the moment.” Suddenly the entire Centaur-pede shook knocking Greta out of her seat, she quickly got back into it. “Is everyone okay? Gilda, what happened?” “Holy… you said this thing was made to load cargo right?” Saffron stopped to witness what Gilda was up to, she looked towards the front and saw a large flailing Abominable Jaws being held up by the two claws. Two crossing beams erupted out of its back when Gilda fired point blank into it. “Yep, but it’s also a mobile fortress!” The Centaur-pede hadn’t stopped moving forward when Gilda had grabbed the first shark. Seeing the next one was coming, she actually did stop the forward motion and reared back holding the damaged shark high above the Centaur-pede’s body. Without a snow storm to hide them, Gilda could actually deal with them. “Wait for it… now!” As the second mechanical shark erupted from the snow it met with its demise by having the tail end of the first one shoved straight down its throat, Gilda quickly turned the Centaur-pede and maneuvered it around the two large crumpled sparking robots and managed to get out of range before they exploded violently. She reared back the left arm as if she were going to throw a punch and then rammed the claws home gutting the third one coming at them and gained leverage with the other arm to lift it out of the snow ready to throw it forward. “These guys are heavy bastards!” Gilda managed to get the shark into a position above the Centaur-pede where she could throw it at something; this was much easier because she could actually see the targets for one. “How are we doing so far Greta?” Viral and the corrupted wolf units suddenly spun around and combined their efforts to attack the wolves running around on their lone wolf protocols. Without any ability to coordinate the robotic wolves were having a problem stopping Greta’s fox from wrecking them with the corrupted wolves, said corrupted robots performed orchestrated movements to rip each incoming wolf to shreds in a combined effort. The fox was being kept back and out of the fight, sometimes opening its mouth and firing a blast of energy at a moment of opportunity. “We’re doing okay so far, we’ve got at least fifteen wolves on our side working together. However they have more reinforcement’s incoming and we have nothing to reinforce us out here aside from wolves with open communications that I can exploit.” Greta started taking stock of the bogeys they were dealing with; the Centaur-pede had an angry swarm of red dots surrounding it with more incoming, wolves, aerial drones and two more giant robot sharks. The shields were holding up very well, provided a shark didn’t get the chance to ram them. “Shields are holding and we have about thirty drone on us with ninety more inbound, the wolves are having problems dealing with my remote controlled menace. The wolves are not going to be able to focus on us for a while, but their numbers are increasing by the second. The sensors are already showing one hundred and twenty wolves and rising. Same thing for the drones and they’re faster, the number of sharks seem limited, they aren’t going to be a big issue.  I’m currently having Viral deal with the forty wolves ahead of us. The drones are the ones really making a dent in us here.” “Can you move our units closer towards us and lure the enemy in? I have a present for them; the return to sender kind.” The large white and silver shark was wiggling thrashing in the grip of the Centaur-pede and Gilda had her eyes set on the numerous wolves popping out of the snow in increasing numbers. “Roger that, I see what you want me to… Gilda quickly close the mouth it’s trying to spit out wolves!” In response to Greta’s words the left arm of the Centaur-pede fired a blast and the insides of the shark exploded sending smoke out its mouth. The insides were probably husked out and the arm didn’t take much damage thanks to the shields. “Okay, that worked. Our captured wolves are taking a lot of damage, but if I’m right we can get some more from the ones inbound. They are still communicating with each other and all they need to do is get close to Viral for me to get them. I’ll have her ready to intercept when we need her to.” Rover was firing at the air and trying to shoot the pesky fast moving things, his pistol was holstered and he was using one of the energy rifles for the added punch. It was a little different from the pistol, but he was alright with using it. He was amazed that Rarity and Saffron could gun down so many drones, much less Applejack who seemed to be picking her shots carefully. He was learning quickly by example and narrowed his eyes; he took carefully aim and fired a rapid stream of energy ripping an entire formation of drones apart. His tail wagged with excitement, he was helping and even being an effective member of the pack. Flying overhead Ember rolled, then braked with her wings and dug her claws into the drone that had been chasing her and fired a molten rock into the four other drones holding formation with it, the shots that had hit her wings seriously hurt. She was beginning to really miss her ramshackle armor, the air was positively swarming with these drones and she was having problems dealing with them all. She smashed the drone she was clinging too and swooped down for the Centaur-pede and landed firing at the swarm slowly ripping their transport's shields apart. “Are you alright Ember?” Rarity turned to the dragon in concern even as her eyes continued to spot targets of opportunity for her to shoot at. The four single barreled turrets were really hitting the drones harder than their small arms fire. In fact they were all shredding their way through the masses before them and it was surprising Rarity how well they were doing thus far. “I’m fine, but give me a minute; I have idea to take care of all the incoming drones.” Ember popped the central hatch and climbed down the ladder to see Greta glance at her before she went back to looking at the screen; she was too busy to take her eyes off the action for too long. “Greta I brought a small case of alcohol down here when we made our drop, where did you put it?” “Third box; from the rear on the left… now don’t distract me I’m down to eight wolves and its more than three to one out there!” Even a genius like her was being taxed by controlling so many things at once; she was even having Viral provide long range support. “Greta how many of these things are there?” Saffron had both her armored hooves raised to the sky and they swept back and forth hitting drones constantly before their strafing runs could do too much damage, that’s when the ninety incoming drones finally showed up. It made for a very target rich environment, but those things were causing a problem. “Unknown, there are even more drone are on the away, please tell me your plan can take care of that many Ember!” Greta was starting to sweat as she manipulated the dwindling number of corrupted wolves into a position where Gilda can lend her assistance.  “The shields are really beginning to flag here and there’s too many of them to deal with.” “Yeah, I can handle the drones, just focus on the wolves. Once I’ve dealt with the drones I’ll try to hit the tower.” Ember was no longer carrying her favorite rifle; instead she had a rocket launcher strapped to her back. She started drinking as she climbed the ladder. She needed some metal melting heat. “We’re almost within firing range of the tower; if it’s controlling all of these defenses it would definitely be a good idea to put that thing out of its misery… like yesterday. That would be very helpful.” Gilda tossed the shark she had been holding onto and a lot of wolves went down in a series of pops as the rolling mass of metal crushed them. “Try to grab as many of the incoming wolves as you can Greta, I’m running out of fish to fry.” “On it…” A flash of white appeared above the Centaur-pede and drones started raining from the air, Greta turned Viral to see what had caused that and saw Ember exhaling violently all over the drones. “Ember is really taking it to those drones.” There was a swarm of wolves clashing and colliding against one another, some had immediately turned around and started attacking their own immediately without warning. Greta certainly came through with her side of the fight. “Almost there… Ember can you get a shot in on that transmitting tower? I need another thirty seconds to be in range and I’ve just cleared my schedule. So I’ll get right on that” Even as she said this Gilda was spinning the upper torso holding onto a shark by its tail and using centripetal force, it was used to remove the last two sharks from the fight. “Come on just a little closer…” Multiple wolves broke through the battle front Greta created and leapt for the legs of the Centaur-pede, only they were violently fried and fell to the ground when arcs of raw energy leapt from the legs and destroyed their electronics in a shower of sparks. After twenty or so fell, it was becoming apparent that the robot wolves didn’t have problem solving skills far beyond their programming and the shields on the Centaur-pede’s legs alone were causing quite a number of casualties. “Zap shield modifications, one of my brighter ideas.” Greta commented lazily with a smug grin on her beak as she controlled her growing army through Viral, her grin fell away when she noticed that the shields were also damaging the legs a fair bit, almost as much as they were the robot wolves trying to jump on them. “Could use some tweaks though.” - The Puffle just sat there staring at the blinking light until something slammed into it and exploded, the entire structure started to collapse around it. It didn’t seem particularly frightened by this even if its tongue was stuck to a cold bit of metal. A stream of fire swept down the metal making it warm, this eventually let the Puffle pull away and wander off aimlessly. - “I hope I don’t regret that later.” Ember fired off another rocket at the support structure, she was sent flipping in the air from the recoil of the launcher. The tower was still transmitting according to Gilda, who was in the process of firing two beams at it. The tower was almost completely down, one more shot and Ember had stopped the transmission. Every aggressive and corrupted robot in the area immediately collapsed as if their strings were cut and the only robot that was still moving was the innocent looking Viral. “Yeah we did it, now I guess we can start poking around to see what we can… oh crap!” Hearing Gilda’s sudden exclamation, Ember watched as the Centaur-pede suddenly dropped into the ground at an impressive speed. There was a large hole where her friends used to be. The dragon didn’t think twice and immediately flew after her hoard. Viral sat there unblinking and the Puffle eventually wandered up to her and started a staring contest. Eventually Viral went to find Greta and the Puffle followed blowing raspberries in an excited manner.