//------------------------------// // 28 - Infiltration // Story: Fallout: Equestria - War Does Change // by tom117z //------------------------------// Chapter Twenty-Eight: Infiltration “I don't know. I'm making this up as I go.” The charred sign for Buckingham could be seen by the road even from our position on a nearby hill, the sign being quite vast with large lettering that just screamed ‘this is our home and we are proud of it’. Or at least they would have been when everypony was still alive. Still, the presence of the sign showed us just how close we now were to the town, and some smoke on the horizon supported that fact. On the downside, however, that smoke did confirm one important fact to us. Kronos had gotten the factory up and running. “Let’s keep moving,” I said to the others, before glancing at Xena. “It’s got to be close by now, let’s get to a nearby hill and have Stripe look at it through her scope.” There were quite a few hills around the local area, intermittent with old farmland that had probably existed there since before the original war broke out. Still, now it was just the same old cracked wasteland dirt and old rusting tractors that sat around us. Nothing of use to anypony these days. We made our way past the hulk of a large industrial vehicle, a harvester of some kind, and made our way up the next hill. There were a few crumbled brick walls on top, maybe the remains of some kind of building once upon a time, but whatever it had been was now unrecognisable. Next to the building was a single burnt up tree trunk, and on reaching the top we all dispersed and hid either behind it or the remnants of the bricks walls. In the far-off distance, I could once again see Mount Canterhorn and the pink haze that was once Canterlot sitting both ominously and silently against it. Here we were pretty much out of the desolate north of Equestria and back into the more populated part of the Equestrian Wasteland, and I imagined Buckingham was where Red Eye sent supplies, equipment and slavers before they shipped further up. Speaking of Buckingham… There the town was, just on the other side of the hill down the road a ways. An array of ancient buildings and roads weaving in and out through the settlement, and in the centre of it all was a large factory with two gigantic smokestacks billowing out a blackened mess into our already fucked up sky. On the bright side, I’m sure it was making an Enclave pegasus or two choke on it. “What do you see?” I asked Xena. The zebra brought out her sniper rifle and laid down low against the hillside. She put her eye to the scope and peered off into the town. She visibly began to scan over the entire thing, pausing a few moments to study particular areas before moving on. The rest of us just waited patiently and out of sight as she did her work, barely even daring to breathe. “If there were any doubts as to the slaver presence, worry not,” she said, not looking away from her scope. “I can see a multitude of slavers in and around the town. Ponies for the most part, but more than a few griffons. Though I have yet to see any in power armour.” “No power armour is good,” Moon Blossom said. “Kronos must be keeping the big guns around himself.” “Or there are some here, and they’re in the factory,” Cobalt noted. “Stripe, what else do you see?” Stripe hummed, focusing on something. “The streets around the factory are barricaded at all entrances, at least as far as I can see. Each barricade has a gate that is guarded by four pony slavers and a griffon talon. It… yes, it appears that other pony slavers are passing in and out without much scrutiny from their fellows.” “In and out, huh…?” I hummed, an idea forming inside my head. A terrible idea, probably. But it was still an idea! “We could use that.” “Ohhh, I think I know where this is going,” Moon Blossom said with a grin. “Stealth mission,” Cobalt remarked. “Bingo!” I confirmed. “Altrix, you can change into a slaver using your changeling magic. Stripe can’t really go in at all, so she can provide overwatch. The rest of us need to go steal some outfits from the bastards and blend right in.” “Assuming they don’t know what we look like,” Cobalt pointed out. “The higher-ups maybe, but I doubt every small guy knows our faces,” I replied. Or at least, I hoped that was the case or this would go wrong very quickly. “If nothing else, we can try and hide our faces from view, yeah?” Cobalt hummed. “Alright, that could work. And then we get in and find something or someone who can tell us where Kronos is based at.” “Exactly.” Yeah, this could work. Though, we still had to actually get the outfits… “I can see a group of around five ponies at a building on the edge of the town,” Xena noticed helpfully. “Near the road, it looks like an old shop of some kind.” I followed her gaze, squinting in some vague attempt to make up for my lack of a scope as I tried to see what she was talking about. And there, around where she described, I could just about make out some slavers dicking around doing something or other. Not much discipline among slavers, no surprise there. “Alright, let’s go pay them a visit. We take them out and get their uniforms, try not to get too much blood on them though. We don’t want to raise suspicions.” “Well, what are we waiting for?” Moon Blossom asked eagerly. “Let’s go break some necks!” “Are you prepared, Altrix?” Xena asked, looking back at the changeling. She bit her lip nervously, looking between us. She then swallowed, giving us a slow nod before being consumed by green flames. When it was done, the spitting image of your run-of-the-mill nameless slaver jackass appeared. An unassuming brown mare with a dirtied blonde mane and sharp brown eyes. “Alright, that’ll work,” I complimented the changeling, who gave me a sheepish smile in turn. “Now let’s get down there before-” “Oh,” Xena suddenly said, looking up from her scope with a look of deep concern. “That may be a problem, I fear.” “What is? What is it?” She just nodded in the direction of the factory’s smokestacks, and I went back to squinting as it tried to- Oh. Well… that’s a thing. There, circling the smokestacks and seemingly glaring down warningly at all the slavers below, was an alicorn. The Goddess was here. “Just remember that Unity, the hive mind of the alicorns, means that when something happens to one of them then the others will all know about it as well,” Cobalt reiterated as we ducked between buildings towards the slavers we needed the uniforms from. “And they learn really fast. Anything we do to one the others will be able to see coming.” “If there is more than one,” Moon Blossom pointed out. “Let’s hope not,” the unicorn muttered. “But even one alicorn is a tough cookie. Our intel suggests that each colouration has a differing talent. The blues can go invisible, greens specialise in shield spells while the purples can teleport vast distances in a second. Remember what I said about Twilight Sparkle teleporting across Equestria?” “I guess they must also be Twilight fans,” I quipped my friend. “Hmm,” Cobalt just grumbled in turn. “Well, more than that… They likely won’t respond to negotiation or intimidation. We don’t really know what’s left of the ponies they used to be, but the Goddess dominates their will completely.” “Maybe we should just avoid her…” Altrix muttered. That would probably be for the best. I couldn’t even see what colour we’d be dealing with from our position on the hill, and really didn’t feel like finding out up close. “What will these guys have in the factory anyway?” Moon Blossom then asked. “In case things go as they usually do.” “Robronco had a lot of contracts with the Ministry of Wartime Technology, and Ministry Mare Applejack often focused on weapons for their armies,” Cobalt explained. “So probably new guns that they’ve made for themselves. And plenty of ammo.” “You say words, but all I hear is ‘loot’.” Cobalt rolled his eyes, but otherwise ignored the pegasus’ remark as we passed through an alleyway and to the other end, making it to the back of the shop where the group of ponies were hopefully still having their prolonged smoke break. The alleyway split off in four directions between four separate buildings, each leading out into one of the old streets by the edge of town. One of the alleys had an old dumpster sitting idly by, looking like it had something nesting in it at some time or another. But right now, everything was quiet and, more importantly, there was a back door into the building we needed. “Moon Blossom, head up top and see if there’s a way in through the roof,” I told the pegasus, and she gave a nod before zooming off upwards. I then turned my attention to the door and, surprisingly, found that it wasn’t even locked. Gently, I used my magic to quietly inch the door open into an old backroom storage area. Walking in and closing it behind us, I saw that the shelves were all long picked over. Only empty boxes of both metal and wood remained, along with the occasional empty tin can. It was also quite dark back here, but there was a bit of light spilling in through the cracks in another doorway heading inwards. I could also hear several laughing voices coming from that direction. Moving quietly forwards, I inched the next door open to get a look into the main room. Behind the old counter, I could see two of the slavers engaged into a hoof-wrestling competition while two more of them were watching and cheering them on. The fifth and final pony, however, was nowhere to be seen. “Come on, kick his ass!” one of the spectators jeered. “Come on, don’t be such a weakling!” “Shut. Up,” one of the wrestlers growled as he made small progress and equally had a few setbacks against his opponent. Then there was a loud thud from upstairs, and all four of the ponies paused in their tracks to look upwards. “Oi, he hasn’t fallen on his face up there, has he?” one of them asked. “How long does it take to have a leak?” “One of you go and check on him, yeah?” the second wrestler demanded, returning to glare at their opponent. “I’m not moving until I’ve taught this prick a lesson.” “Yeah? You’re on!” the other retorted, and both returned to their match. One of the slavers turned away from the match and began to head towards a nearby staircase, and I slowly pulled my rifle in case things went wrong. What we really needed to do here was lure one of them into the back and silently take them out. After that… Or Moon Blossom could just make the slaver who’d been ascending the staircase shriek in surprise as she lunged onto them and slammed them back down to the ground floor again. “Death from above!” Sigh… I bust the door open with my magic as the other slavers all turned towards Moon Blossom while drawing their weapons. I entered S.A.T.S. and target each of the remaining three’s heads, before releasing the spell. One. Two. The third ducked just in time to avoid my fire, even while the other two had their brains turned to paste. The slaver did a roll, raising their own assault rifle to unleash hell before it was gripped in an alien blue aura, much to the pony’s surprise. The rifle was then torn away, and the butt of the weapon delivered into the slavers’ face, crumpling them before Cobalt finished it by turning the weapon and firing a single bullet. And that was that. The whole fight had only lasted a few seconds, but all five slavers were dead. Or at least I assumed they were… “What happened to the one upstairs?” I asked Moon Blossom. “He came down with an acute case of ‘knife to the brain’,” she explained. “Whew, I hope nopony heard all the fun.” “We’re at the edge of town, so hopefully it went unheard,” Cobalt noted, though quickly adopted a small frown. “Hopefully.” I looked at the slavers, they all wore similar sets of black combat armour that all bore the symbol of Red Eye on them. They seemed like they would fit, we just had to take what we could and make it convincing. “The one upstairs had a black cloak on,” Moon Blossom said as she gave me a light thump on the shoulder. “Just in case you don’t fancy taking all that gear off, it’ll cover pretty much everything. Well, that saved some time. “Alright, I’ll go grab that,” I confirmed, it would also mean I could keep my PipBuck, which was a win. “You three need to gear up with their armour and take their weapons too.” Altrix shifted uncomfortably at that, eyeing one of the dropped rifles apprehensively. I sighed, giving the mare a sympathetic look. “I know you don’t like guns, but you don’t have to use it. Just think of it as a prop.” “Um, okay…” she said hesitantly. “A prop. I can do that… I think.” She would, I trusted that she would. And while they all began to get changed, Moon Blossom looking like she was just putting the armour over her leather jacket over taking it off, I made my way over to the broken body at the bottom of the stairs and trotted up them. One of the doors was open at the top, and inside was the body of a stallion with a gushing wound in his skull. Sure enough, he was wearing a cloak around his neck, and I untied it from the corpse and levitated it in front of me. A couple drops of blood had leaked onto the thing, though turning it inside out seemed to hide the majority of it. From there I tied it around my own neck and made sure it covered my body. I trotted into the next room, which looked to be an old bathroom. The mirror in there was cracked in one corner and covered in grime, but I could just about make out my reflection in it. My coat and mane were already both full of muck, and the cloak covered up anything that would give away that I wasn’t one of them. Just for good measure, I practised a mean-looking scowl in the mirror. Hey, anything to help us get past the checkpoint would help. And I certainly looked the part, so it was so far so good. I left the bathroom behind and made my way back down to the others. They were all slipping the armour on, trying to clean it up as best as they could. Moon Blossom had even tucked her wings beneath her own armour, making herself look like an earth pony. Smart, I guess not many pegasi would be in Red Eye’s ranks. And we didn’t want to stand out. “Ugh, this sucks,” Moon Blossom complained, shifting uncomfortably on the spot. “I never realised how much space my wings really needed until now.” “Well, try not to fidget too much. You’re an earth pony now, remember that,” Cobalt told her, fitting a few final parts of his own barding onto his body. “Not that I can say it’s particularly comfortable myself.” “Oh no, you’re wearing armour for once. What are you going to do?” I deadpanned. Seriously, he should consider keeping it after this is all done. After repainting it, of course. He just snorted. “I’ll leave that to the bruisers. This just gets in the way.” “It might also stop a bullet.” “I’ve made do with shield spells so far,” he retorted. “Big heavy armour just isn’t my style.” I’d noticed. Still, all of us seemed to be set up in our disguises. With luck, the slavers around town will think we’re just another group roaming the area. Now we just had to make it through town and then into the factory itself. Okay, easier said than done but we’ll make do. And if something went wrong? Well… I’m sure I could come up with a Plan B. We stepped out of the building’s front entrance and into the street. I spared a glance up towards the hill where Xena was almost certainly watching us. I couldn’t see the zebra, though knowing that she could very much see us I gave a wave in her direction, letting her know that everything was fine. “I’m glad she didn’t mistake us for actual slavers,” Cobalt muttered, seeing my wave. “Nah, she’s got a good eye,” I responded. “If something goes wrong, I feel safer knowing she’s around to give some cover fire.” “Not when we’re in the factory.” I could always trust Cobalt to find a flaw, couldn’t I? Bah, it’ll work out. We’d already done the first step, now we just had to get what we came for and get out before they realised that their friends back in the shop weren’t coming back. “Stick close together. And try to look mean.” We left the front of the shop behind and trotted down the road. We kept in a tight formation, with me leading in the front while the others all take up spots around me. The looking mean part came natural or Moon Blossom, who had a vicious and bloodthirsty smirk on her face. Cobalt just looked typically grumpy. Altrix… well, she was trying. We just had to hope ‘trying’ would be good enough to fool them. We reached the end of the street quickly enough, where the road split into three directions. Directly ahead were more buildings lining the edge of town either side, though mostly to our right. The left led back where we came, while the right was the main road leading directly into Buckingham. Naturally, right was the way to go. We stepped out onto the main road, beginning to steadily walk down its length. Many of the buildings were boarded up or otherwise crumbling into dust, though as we progressed I noticed a few intact structures that had… modifications to them. And as we passed by one of them, I saw a wooden guard post hanging from the side with a griffon sitting in a garden chair with a large rifle by his side. He watched us with a piercing glare as we passed by, but otherwise didn’t seem to react to our presence. Before long, we had left the griffon behind and, glancing over my shoulder, I saw that he had stopped staring at us and was looking back towards the road. I took that as a good sign. I just hoped it wouldn’t be the last. Footnote: Max Level