//------------------------------// // -101- // Story: Coarse Diamonds // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// “What where the chemicals that you just used on that thing?” Hovering nearer to the griffon Frost Wind was now talking about the still somewhat standing macabre sight of Hazard Spider standing there. That thing had been a nightmare and it had almost destroyed the griffon’s walker by the time it did that strange glowing thing and got faster before it went up violently. “Yeah, note all the frozen people in here, I’m sure you can’t miss them. It’s a substance that acts like liquid nitrogen only different, we pulled quite a few vials of the stuff from several of the machines that were used to capture everyone here. I’m beginning to think the Humans outsourced Foggre technology, it’d make sense with all the drawbacks I’ve been seeing in those machines we took care of at any rate.” Grunted out an aggravated Gilda, she wanted to keep her walker as there were several interesting parts in it. Her feathers were a bit ruffled, she was slightly singed and her she might have been bleeding a bit from a few pieces of shrapnel she didn’t know or couldn’t feel as having hit her. If there were a few small bits of metal in her, then it wasn’t an immediate concern as she’s had worse happen to her before this. “Anyway the stuff is dangerous, but it can freeze someone alive for being thawed out later, IE you for one. Gilda Gottfrieda, master mechanic of the Shining Jewel crew and a friend of the Boss Lady here.” “Yes and apparently a Pegasus will always survive the freezing process, griffons and those like them have a have a high survival rate while everyone else has at least half a chance at life again. We’re still thawing people out, so that’s the best estimate I can give from what’s happened so far. I’m quickly studying this to see what I can do to help the rest of the frozen. I’m Flesh Tender and that is Frost Wind.” Flesh tilted his head to Frost, then when introducing himself to Gilda he held a hoof to his chest. “Would you mind if I checked you over for injuries while we have some time? That fight looked like it roughed you up something fierce. Your friend there is also pretty banged up, so I have to ask if I can look at her too.” “Go ahead and give me and the boss lady a scan doc, you’re not the first unicorn to have a go at my unhealthy obsession with caffeine. So… who’s in charge now?” It was quiet for a few minutes and Gilda looked around, there was a disturbing amount of eyes pointed in her direction. She carefully laid the sleeping Rarity down ignoring the mares’ wet eyes and raised her claws in a defensive manner. “No… wait, let me rephrase that. Hell no! I’m just not leadership material… also where is Ember?” “I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news and I’m a little dizzy from the blood loss, but your friend Ember is…” Rubis had the holes in her flesh patched up by Mr. Tender, but the doctor was going to need more food badly and soon at that. At least she didn’t have any broken bones from trying to brace Ember’s rifle against all those material cannon rounds. “Ember she was… well you see that groove in the floor and there’s the remains of the beam cannon that shot her over there. Maybe you could tell me what it is since you are a mechanic, anyway I do not believe she could have survived that.” “That… actually looks like a nice piece of tech. Far too good for Human make and definitely not a Foggre design, this is more my speed.” Ignoring the protests of several people and their need for leadership, Gilda took off to start investigating the possibility of a new shiny toy for her to tinker with. Flapping her wings and coming in for a landing she checked the larger cannon that had been at the back of the Hazard Spider and whistled loudly. “Okay this is unusual… there is no way the Humans technological level could possibly be this high unless they’ve been either holding back or they paid a lot of money to develop this thing. It’s a quasi-radiation beam cannon, gives off a lot of heat and raw energy that can melt almost anything alive. Judging by the fact that nobody else in this room is dead, it doesn’t leave a hot zone after firing which is kind of amazing if it is Human made since they have a history of really bad dirty tech. It can possibly fire more in cold conditions, explains what happened to Gravenstein. Chances that this thing actually killed Ember? Well the raw force alone is what I’d have to calculate.” “Um… excuse moi, but nothing could have possibly survive what left a groove in the floor like that!” Rubis clutched at her head as she staggered over to Gilda, she was dizzy and hungry again. Doctor Tender fixed the holes in her, but the necessary energy to fix the injuries had to come from more than magic and he couldn’t replace the lost blood. Coming up alongside Rubis was doctor Flesh Tender who had finished scanning Rarity and termed her to have a broken leg, several levels of bruising, internal bloods clots of the less than lethal variety and severe exhaustion. Rarity’s condition was stable. He started scanning Gilda and saw that her blood could be a replacement for coffee, which was totally utterly absurd and he wondered how the griffon could even be alive or even how she was still going. Otherwise Gilda was bearing a few chunks of metal shrapnel in her that would have to be removed sooner rather than later, there was also some light bruising and her one of her wings was singed horribly at the tips. A relatively healthy griffon if you ignore all that. “I wouldn’t be so sure, depending on the distance the energy had to travel and what was in the way of the beam at the time it made impact. Instead of dead, we’d have pretty much alive. Anyone volunteering to go check that hole?” Seeing a mouth open, Gilda immediately slapped her talons over the offending beak and smiled, Rubis didn’t like being silenced and narrowed her eyes at a cheekily smirking Gilda. “No, then I volunteer to go check out the final fate of one of my friends. I at least have the stomach for it. If you ate a few Xouj like I did, then your stomach would be as strong too if you could keep something like that down in the name of survival. Someone watch after my Boss Lady while I’m at it!” Gilda was off and flying for the gaping hole at the back of the frozen storage room leaving Rubis to contemplate what she just said. Her satchel of chemicals and sprayer shifting with each flap of her wings and her plasma rifle clear for all to see on her back, she looked every bit as dangerous as she appeared. The truth was she wasn’t very well practiced with guns and the chemical sprayer was at least familiar to her. The sprayer was effective in taking down Hazard spider at least, but as far as combat goes she certainly specialized in piloting and driving vehicle as outside of them she was a lot more vulnerable and new that logically and intrinsically. “She actually ate something like that?” It was kind of horrific, but Rubis could actually kind of see it as happening. Gilda seemed like equal parts grumpy and crazy enough to do it. How did she even manage to steal that walker in the first place and why of all things did she call Rarity her Boss Lady? Well she couldn’t worry about that now, she wanted to live and the best way to do that was to stick to the plan of getting out of this facility alive. Flesh Tender was the first to really react and went galloping after the griffon, if the griffon was right then he’d be needed to stabilize the body for movement and quickly. Frost Wind followed Tender shortly after asking several of his people to go search for food and to use what little scavenged ammunition they had gotten from nearby bodies. He expressly told them to not go too far and to watch their backs, he also asked that someone watch out for the people still thawing and weren’t killed immediately by the stray material cannon rounds that shattered their frozen bodies. He also shouted two names to watch the entrance to the room. “Wait, I am having reservations about looking for what may be nothing but ash or a cooked corpse!” Even if Rubis logically knew dragons could survive swimming in lava and even enjoyed drinking molten rock every once in a while, she still didn’t think Ember could have survived that beam that tore a hole through the room. Even with her protests Gilda flew down the hole and three hundred feet later in the darkened tunnel dug out by the beam she ran across a sight that was horrifying. The Puffle wasn’t scary it was just sniffing around the body on the floor, that being of Ember’s shredded form and the damage was turning even for Gilda’s admittedly strong stomach. It was hard to see a predator in this state. The EVA suit no longer existed and there was not a scrap of it left on the dragon’s shredded form. “Wow, that’s a way to go.” Here Gilda had thought a beam comprised of mostly heat wouldn’t do much to Ember, obviously she was wrong. She watched as Flesh Tender walked forward and lit his horn. “She’s… surprisingly not dead... barely alive though. Her scales aren’t exactly the same as skin so the best I can do for is put her in stasis. I won’t be able to carry her if I do that, the stasis spell will wipe me out for a while and even then it won’t protect her if anything hits her while she’s in stasis, the fact that she’s even alive in this state is a miracle. She has broken bones, you can even see some of them physically sticking out of the shredded muscle.” Flesh Tender wasn’t selling Ember’s actual injuries correctly, it looked like somebody took sand paper and steel wool to her whole body. The dragon’s arms and legs and torso were the most badly damaged, but her face was mostly untouched as she likely put her arms up to protect it. Her scales couldn’t protect her from the raw force of all that energy slamming into her, at least the heat didn’t seem to do any extra damage aside from making sure she didn’t bleed out. “If we are to save her we need a medical bed, like yesterday! She’ll live about three minutes without the stasis spell, do we even make the effort to save her life? My magic could keep other people who might need it more alive and I don’t want to waste it on what looks like a lost cause, I need a decision and I need one quick.” “It’s a good thing I’ve already thrown up.” Frost Wind grimaced at the grizzly sight of the dragon. Fluffy didn’t touch the body was just stared blanking at the dragon’s chest that barely rose, it gave a squeak and then blew a raspberry. The tone of her noises sounded rather flat, Puffles couldn’t exactly do sad very well and this was as close as it got to it. It just stared at the unmoving form, her wounds had stopped hurting so much, because her fur dampened enough with her blood to bandage them over. “Thankfully we stocked the Centaur-pede with every kind of essential including a medical bed, but we’d have to get her to it.” Even knowing how tough dragons were this was a surprise to Gilda, most people wouldn’t even be alive in this state. “How much time can you give her in stasis doc?” “About thirty minutes, if I do it right now. Chances are even if we do save her life she’ll might be stuck in a trauma coma. The fact that she is even still breathing is a miracle in itself, much less that she survive that beam that evaporated Pegasus Ponies on contact!” Flesh Tender had many other patients to attend to, using most of his magic on this one would limit his ability to help the other thawing people in the frozen storage room. “As a doctor I must say that it was highly improbable for her to have survived the initial hit just to die of her injuries later like this.” “Merde, what is wrong with you? We’ll do it and that means right now Mr. Tender, she helped all of us survive long enough to keep going! It is the least we can do for Lady Rarity and her friends, we have to try.” If there was a chance to save a life, Rubis was willing to take it as Ember took on a lot for them and they wouldn’t have survived the odds otherwise. “Frost Wind can you go get something to carry Ember with s’il vous plait? We will be moving her to this… what did you call it?” Frost Wind threw a salute and quickly took off to get something to drag Ember out of this hole dug out by that powerful beam weapon. Flesh Tender closed his eyes and began concentrating on a spell, his horn started glowing brightly as he prepared to cast it. “The Centaur-pede, it’s our mobile fortress and base of operations here. All I need to do is fly up to it when we reach it and bring it down to the floor so we can load Ember into one of the medical beds. We can’t exactly endanger it and will have to make sure it doesn’t take too much damage.” The beam digging out a hole here gave her an idea, but they didn’t exactly have the power for it, so Gilda discarded the idea as soon as she came up with it. “It lost its shields and most of our spare limbs coming down here. It’s going to take forever to fix all that damage down here on the ground, I want our fortress to survive long enough to get it back into space for repairs. We might even be able to use it to dig a tunnel to the surface, but I need a lot of stuff to make the modifications to it.” - “Damn it…” Greta muttered out of Viral’s mouth. “What’s wrong sugar cube?” Applejack was alert and looking away from talking with Trap Bar, she noticed that Rover wasn’t with them anymore. The room hadn’t been invaded, so he must have gone back for Mare-Do-Well. “You know how the facility made the announcement that the countdown has stopped?” Viral looked away from Applejack’s searching eyes. “Yeah, what about it?” There was a sinking feeling in Applejack’s gut, especially when she heard Greta’s tone. “I’ve only delayed the inevitable, I couldn’t stop the countdown directly. I only changed the conditions of what will cause it to continue and when it does we will only have two minutes on the clock.” Viral turned back to the screen and continued talking. “To survive the explosion we’d have to be at least half a mile away from the epicenter. Getting to the surface would be a start.” “What will set off the timer again?” Applejack queried with a bit of trepidation. “Well it wasn’t easy, but I’ve got it so that the facility has to flood beyond a certain point for the countdown to begin again.” That didn’t sound so bad and Greta had sounded like she solved their problems. “That doesn’t so bad… so what’s the catch?” Almost wishing she didn’t have to ask, Applejack shuddered at the robots eyes boring into her own. “There’s a portion of the facility already under forty feet of water from all the melting ice. At most we have two hours to find our way to the surface and get out of the blast range or find a way to slow down the melting snow and ice. We need far more time than that if we want to rescue those people still frozen in the laboratory sector.” Greta made the robotic fox lift a paw and pointed towards the screen, Applejack saw a distorted image of the surface. The entire area was littered with bits of metals and parts of destroyed machines. “There’s not a cloud in the sky thanks to us and it’s a sunny day, never thought weather might be the most dangerous thing in this situation. There are still armed Humans running around the facility, I have no control over much aside from cameras and have a communications lockout on them, I’ve done about all I can do in this situation. All I can do is hope someone else has a plan as my technical prowess is spent here.” “It’s nice that your honest to a fault, but did you really have to tell me all that?” There was despair bleeding into Applejack’s voice. “Wait a minute… I may be a simple farmer with some sharp shooting skills and not a lot going on between my ears, but can’t we get those Pegasi from that frozen storage place to the surface so they can slow down the melting ice and snow?” “All we’re doing right now is buying time so we can get everyone that we can out of here. It really wouldn’t buy us that much more as the temperature outside is rising steadily even if every Pegasus we could get up there were to contribute to a cloud cover and cold weather operations.” The ears on the robot drooped a little, Greta’s voice sounded a bit stressed. “We’d never stop this facilities destruction… maybe… Rover I need you to… Rover?” “I think he went to help Mare-Do-Well. What did you need him for, did you get an idea?” There was a hint of hope in Applejack’s voice. “Rover is a Diamond Dog. His entire species are natural born experts in excavation and or digging by nature.” Explained Greta as a starting point before she continued on to why she needed his presence. “I need him to get started on a tunnel big and strong enough for people to get through to the surface safely, he’d know how to dig one so that we can get started on getting people out of here or at the very least he’d be capable of instructing others how to help dig our way out. He wouldn’t be doing much digging with a broken wrist and a battered body, but we definitely need him alive if you want to move any of the Pegasi to the surface quickly enough for your idea to work.” “You want me to go get him?” Applejack asked, she could still use her weapon as a bludgeon but as far as getting into a fight she was helpless and likely to be blasted by the first human to come across her. “No need, I can contact him from here and it looks like he’s helping Mare-Do-Well with Perja. Now that’s one tough Human, you’d think she would stay down with those kind of injuries.” Whistling lightly Greta turned the robots head to Applejack. “I still need you to go to him and Saffron, I’m going to have Viral stay here and perform a permanent lock on the room. Nobody will need to come back here and we can get to work on getting those people in frozen storage out of there. I can already see several Pegasus Ponies looting vending machines for food and there are a few others gathering whatever they can find in the laboratory sector. You can either go to lend them assistance down there or you can come back to the Centaur-pede… hold on. Holy plucking Tartarus…. Ember… scratch my previous statement you and the others are definitely going down there no choice!” “Why, what happened?” Pausing by the door, Applejack was certainly alert for anything bad coming and picked up the weapon dropped by the dead Human at the door. “Our friend Ember is down and she is severely injured… I haven’t exactly been keeping an eye on what’s been going on in there until now. Rarity looks unconscious, but at least she appears to be healthy.” It kind of upset Greta that she was losing yet another one of her robotic pet creations, but she could always build more and lives were currently on the line and in serious danger. The one that looks like they need a lot of help right now was Ember, who was now missing a lot of spines and scales and her horns were almost worn down to stumps. “I’ve never seen a dragon that horribly injured before. You probably don’t want to see Ember in her current state Applejack, but you’re going to anyway. Find some ammo on the way if you can, but first meet up with Rover and Mare-Do-Well. Turn left and take another left, can’t miss them. I’ll be in contact with you guys provided that Rover or Mare-Do-Well haven’t damaged their helmets too badly.” “Got it, I’m going now!” Once out the door, it slammed shut and Viral turned back to the console to address Trap Bar. “If you can get several transports around here to pick up all those people, that would help out with all the problems we have going on here. I think we’re all running on fumes here, can you give me any indication as to what happened to our ship up in orbit?” “Like I’d let you guys down, I’m already sending them. They’ll be there, just save as many as you feasibly can and get out of there!” Trap Bar stated in a serious no nonsense tone. “Call Sign can you call our guys at Applin Five and check on the Shining Jewel?” A few seconds passed by and Trap Bar nodded, he was listening to someone else talking and then he turned his attention back on Viral. “It’s taken some damage from fighting pirates, but your ship is fine as far as we can tell aside from some hull damage and losing a few turrets. I’ve already got enough information to order a full system blockade and we’ve already after this started on that.” Trap Bar nodded to Viral. “I hope to see you and your Boss Lady alive and well Ms. Gollenfer, I need to finish cleaning up here on Applin Three. I hope we all make it through these rough times, Trap Bar out!” - “Gilda what happened to Ember!” Quite a few people flinch at the sound of Greta’s voice. “Got hit by a hot beam that surprisingly doesn’t leave heat behind and it’s a bit unusual for Human tech as they tend to do things dirty, heat probably did nothing more than completely erase Ember’s EVA suit from existence.” Being the only one to not flinch, Gilda sound rather bored at Greta’s shocked exclamation. “It’s the raw force and pressure of the beam that really hurt her. If you can see me look at the floor that’ll give you an idea how big the beam was.” “And she survived that, really? That looks like it hit her with enough for to rip an elephant clean in half!” Nobody was saying Greta wasn’t right in the estimate the walkers the beam hit were melted into the grooves the beam created. “From what I can see she looks like someone took material cannon and filled it completely with sand and then fire hundreds of rounds at her body until it wore down. I think I’m going to be sick.” “That’s we need to get her back to the Centaur-pede and fast, what do you have direct control of Greta? Ember lost most of her scales and her face is thankfully the least damaged thing about her, her arms took the brunt of that and it’s why she still has eyes in her skull.” Asking for the sake of knowing what they had to work with. “You might want to make it quick with what you can do, because Ember won’t last in stasis forever we don’t have much time.” “Speaking of time, I didn’t exactly stop the countdown permanently.” What Greta said got an instant reaction from Gilda as she was looking at where she thought the nearest speaker was. “As for what I have control of, visuals and communications. The Humans can’t very well organize themselves without me knowing about it. “What do you mean Greta?” Lacing her voice with pure ice Gilda needed to know if there were any other complications aside from running into any more walkers or Humans. “How can the countdown not be stopped? I heard it say it was cancelled.” “Well it involves how the lockdown protocols on this facility work, basically a lot of triggers for the countdown were activated and thanks to the lockdown I can’t exactly stop the facility from destroying itself. I had to swap the countdown to an inactive trigger, one that is going to activate anyway at this rate and it was my best choice.” Here Greta could be heard taking a deep breath and sounded like she was about to metaphorically bite the bullet on something. “I couldn’t deactivate any of the active ones and there was a small list of things I could make the countdown activate on that weren’t triggered by the initial activation that started the countdown in the first place, I chose the one labeled environmental hazards. That was even knowing full well that the facility is slowly flooding and now has forty five feet of water at the bottom of it at this moment and rising slowly. The systems actively check to see if the trigger condition is met, thanks to the trigger change the countdown only stalled and will continue if the condition is met.” “Just for the sake of reference for why you chose ‘environmental hazards’ as the thing that causes the countdown to continue, assuming I’m right that if the base gets flooded enough that we’ll only have two minutes to escape once the water reaches a certain point, what was wrong with all the other options you had?” Full out cranky Gilda came out and she wondered why Greta chose that particular setting for, it sounded like a really dumb thing to do and Greta wasn’t an idiot or a complete waste of space. “About that, it was the only option that gave us enough time. Percentage of base personnel alive wasn’t a good idea, what with the Humans running afoul of Puffle related incidents and there are still a few Humans that are fighting those things called Gillamonks that got free and if you want to move Ember you might need to kill a few on the way back to my position. Almost all the Gillamonks are dead and I can confirm that the Humans have actually managed to kill five Puffles, four by accident and one on purpose. There was also computer systems compromised one which would have reactivated the countdown immediately considering what I’ve been doing.” Then Greta giggled dryly and sighed. “The last one is kind of humorous… you know since it involves the systems checking whether the weather generators and all the robots on the surface around the facility entrances were still active. If I chose that one then the self-destruct, again for the sake of clarity, would have returned to our two minute scheduled demise. Before you ask, the modifications I made to Viral makes her different enough to not count as one of the robots anymore. The hindsight on that one is really quite bad.” “Yeah, it’s funny because you destroyed them all as soon as you feasibly could and collapsed all those tunnels of ice and snow over just about every exit out of here. Oh and the one machine still around in your control won’t count in said scenario giving us all the time in the world, just freaking peachy and I’m a lover of pears personally.” Rolling her eyes Gilda could swear the universe conspired against Rarity and anyone that knew here, it was quickly becoming apparent that the Boss Lady had some kind of jinx on her or luck that shifted chaotically if they survived. “I swear Greta, this is one of the worst situations we’ve ever been in. In a good round estimate, how much time have you exactly bought us?” “At most two hours, at least one hour and that’s not enough to thaw out those people unless we can slow down the melting ice and snow. Being an Ever Green Planet, it’s warm all year round and the best we could do is get some Pegasi up on the surface like yesterday to cloud up the sky and have some in the facility to stop the water from flooding it.” This was not a touch and go situation, touch and go couldn’t even begin to scratch the surface of everything that’s going on here and Greta was going to go nuts trying to fix all this. Technical engineers were not supposed to get jobs this horrendously stressful unless they were crewed on military vessels. “If you could get as many Pegasi as you can gathered and for Rover to get back here safely. If that happens he might be able to dig a tunnel to the surface where we can start evacuating people while also getting Ember into a medical bed. The Pegasi will be busy slowing down the flooding and that will give us time thaw as many people as we can out.” “Well, why are we sitting around here talking about it? We must start taking action now, some people will have to stay here and help every newly thawed get on their feet quickly!” By being the one to start ordering other people around, Rubis Poulette was the one that became the de facto leader much to Gilda’s relief. “Others will have to help clear and hold a path to the mobile fortress of Lady Rarity. I will not lie, this will not be easy as we have many blesse people to move. One of whom is almost dead saving all of you and another that was exhausted to her very limit, I hope I need not remind everyone of their incredible courage!”