//------------------------------//
// 43 - Empty 
// Story: Fallout: Equestria - War Does Change 
// by tom117z 
//------------------------------//


Chapter Forty-Three: Empty



“We were too late…”






And it was further silence greeting us at the hive.

It was dark by the time we had made the journey from Vanhoover all the way back to the Equestrian Hive, and according to my PipBuck’s clock, it was in fact extremely early the next morning. Not that any of us had slept a wink during the trip, the tensions so thick you could cut it with a knife. Goddesses know how Altrix was feeling out front, I hadn’t heard her utter a word since we’d taken off. But she wasn’t delaying, clearly desperate to get back home as quickly as possible. Moon Blossom was abiding by her, pumping her wings almost as fast as Altrix’s could buzz.

It wasn’t fast enough, though. We all knew it, and the reality of the situation continued to dawn on us as the hours had passed us by.

What would we find at the hive?

What were any of us expecting to find?

What was I expecting to find?

I hadn’t been able to get into contact with Insidiis since she was last cut off, and Celestia knows I had tried over and over again. Perhaps she was simply too busy to answer the orb, or maybe…

That doesn’t need considering.

I guess the best I could hope for with all that we knew is that Insidiis and the changeling had successfully evacuated into the stable and sealed it shut, with Kronos and his goons locked outside in the hive.

But what if Site B had also contained the access code for the stable? I mean, I would hope that the changelings had thought to change their password after we’d managed to break in. But what if they hadn’t?

Ugh, this musing wasn’t doing much for that tension around us.

“I believe the hive is coming up below us,” Xena noted as she peered out of the window, squinting in the darkness. “I do not see any sign of activity.”

“Moon Blossom, anything?” I shouted up towards our fliers.

“Fuck all,” she replied. “Not a shout, gunshot or slaver cunt in sight.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Cobalt pointed out. “If the siege is ongoing, they are liable to all be inside the hive by now.”

“If it’s still ongoing,” Xena parroted.

“For Altrix’s sake, I actually hope it is,” I muttered, staring out at our changeling friend as her glowing blue eyes scanned the ground below us.

“Any sign that anypony was here at all?” Cobalt further enquired.

“It’s a bit dark out here,” Moon Blossom said in turn. “Want us to bring this thing down to the ground.”

“W-we need to get in there…” Altrix finally spoke. “Please.”

I nodded. “You heard her. Bring us down a distance away from the crater, just to be safe. Maybe pull the Sky Bandit into one of those outcroppings, I don’t want to be seen if there are Talons still knocking about.”

Moon Blossom nodded, giving her wings a mighty flap to change direction. “Got is, Boss!” 

The two of them pulled us away from the hive’s entrance and started to bring us back down towards the ground. Steadily, they brought the Sky Bandit to a landing onto the cracked wasteland dirt, further dragging the skycarriage towards a small nearby hill and nestling us between a cluster of rocks.

And then, having been brought to a complete halt, we began to gather our things and disembark from the Sky Bandit.

We were all tired and probably ready to hit the hay, Moon Blossom and Altrix especially, but I don’t think any of us were willing to wait any more hours for this. Not here and not now.

In the hindsight of things, we should have taken the opportunity during the flight. But it was what it was, and so we started to hoof it towards the hive’s entrance.

It was only a short trip from the Sky Bandit to the hive, my eyes focused on my Eyes Forward Sparkle the entire time for any sign of movement. I wasn’t really sure if I was searching for green or red bars or both, but I couldn’t help but feel disappointed when nothing came up from my search. As far as my PipBuck’s spell matrix could tell, we were alone here.

A shiver flew down my spine, the implications increasingly worrying.

We arrived at the edge of the crater containing the cave and the entrance to the hive, my PipBuck’s lamp helping illuminate the area alongside both my horn and Cobalt’s. Now that we were close to the ground, certain elements started to become apparent to us. Spots where dirt had been kicked up, specks of blood, bullet casings…

A fight had definitely gone down here extremely recently.

And yet someone had removed the bodies, guns and anything else that might have been left behind.

Making my way down into the crater, I made sure to get a good look at the entire area before we made our way into the cave itself. There were no corpses at all. Not slaver. Not changeling. Whatever had happened here, someone had taken care to remove what had been left in the aftermath.

Kronos, I had to guess. Not to hide what had happened, what would be the point? And it wasn’t like he’d taken all evidence of the battle. Just the bodies and weapons.

The weapons were obvious as to why. Why waste a good gun? The bodies, though… He’d have no use for slaver corpses, they were dead and gone. But changeling bodies?

That shiver returned when I recalled why he wanted the changelings in the first place, and why it was he’d take the dead as well as the living.

I chose not to share those thoughts, seeing as Altrix was right there.

“Let’s head inside, we might actually find something,” I said to the others, making my way towards the cave entrance as they followed closely behind.

Walking through the cave almost gave me a flashback of the first time we’d found this place. The silence, albeit for the idle dripping of water. There were more spent shell casing and blood splatters, however, leading all the way through the cave towards the doors to the hive themselves…

They had been blown clean off of their hinges.

“N-no…” Altrix muttered, taking a step forward before freezing in place, staring off in disbelief.

I wanted to say something comforting. Maybe tell a joke to relieve some of the tension? But… I couldn’t. There was nothing I could say that would be of any help.

I really hated feeling this helpless.

And then, moving past the broken doors, we found our first corpse.

It was a pony, dressed in barding that clearly signified him as one of the slavers in Red Eye’s employ. He’d been shot several times in the head, more shell casings and quickly constructed barricades sitting around the entrance hall. It looked like the changeling had tried to hold them there but, judging by the state of the place, it hadn’t held up very long.

I had to wonder how many weapons the drones even had which weren’t simple 10mm pistols. It couldn’t have been that many, especially compared to Kronos’ forces.

And yet, pushing past the entrance hall into the depths of the hive, more pony and griffon bodies started to make themselves known. They weren’t exactly piles of them, but there were definitely more and more the further in we got. Shot, stabbed, burnt from magic… a few even had bite marks. Those fangs Altrix had certainly weren’t for show.

I heard Moon Blossom hum, trotting over to a wall that had one griffon strewn up in green mucus with a bullet hole in his jugular. She gave the corpse a good look over, looking oddly like she was examining a pre-war piece of fine art.

“Welp, changelings put up a fight.”

“Of course they did. This is their home,” Xena pointed out.

“They certainly had the home-field advantage,” Cobalt further noted. “And I doubt any of these goons had ever fought a changeling before.”

“But what changeling had ever fought a slaver before?” Moon proceeded to say.

And she wasn’t without a point…

Still, I could get what the others were saying. The changeling had had the time to get to know the layout of the hive. I could also see stable security shapeshifting into slavers to sow chaos in their ranks. We could only imagine how violent things had gotten in these halls just a few hours ago…

“Still no changeling bodies, though,” Moon Blossom mused.

“M-maybe they got away?” Altrix said hopefully. “Or they were all taken alive?”

“Maybe…” Kronos did want them for their experiments, so I guess it was possible. But… I couldn’t see a lot of these slavers showing that much restraint on the defenders. Not when there was a perfectly good hive of non-combatants they could take anyway. “Let’s just keep searching, yeah?”

I got no argument, so we just pressed onwards.

We bypassed the bodies and remnants of the battle, retracing our steps towards the hive’s atrium and the stable we’d find in the deepest area of the place. Eerily, we still had yet to come across any sign of life. Whether that life be changeling or otherwise, nothing moved in these halls. It was increasingly like the entire population had just vanished.

We had to reach the stable. If there were answers to be found, of course it would be there.

Pressing on, we soon reached the end of the long passageways of the hive and arrived at the entrance to the core of the structure. Like many others, the doors to the atrium were already open with smashed fortifications strewn all over the place. Moving through them, we found the gigantic space to be in complete disarray.

I could scarcely believe the devastation, and I had to blink several times just to be sure that I wasn’t seeing things. Whole floors had collapsed with their rubbles piling up at the bottom of the deep pit. It looked like the place had been ravaged by a series of explosions, collapsing much of it and leaving what was left looking extremely unstable.

“So… how are we getting down?” Moon Blossom asked. “Looks like the stairs are out.”

“Changelings don’t need stairs,” Altrix reminded us.

“Yeah, but if more than the turkeys got down there, there must be a way.”

“A long way round, perhaps back the way we came?” Xena suggested.

“I’d rather not waste the time,” I decided. “Moon, Altrix, you guys can get yourselves down. Cobalt, think you can teleport us?”

“I mean… it would take up my strength. It’s a distance, and there are three of us.”

“We could take one of you?” Altrix suggested.

Moon Blossom shrugged. “Sure. Between the two of us, it’d be a piece of cake. We’re only going down anyway.”

“I will go,” Xena volunteered.

Cobalt nodded. “Alright. Scrap, you ready?”

After all that had happened, being magically displaced would be easy to take.

Pop.

Ugh, never mind. That was still really weird and now my head was spinning around in a full three-sixty…

Shaking off the nausea, I looked up to see Altrix and Moon Blossom descending with Xena supported between their hooves. They gently set her down onto the ground, landing themselves a moment after.

Now we were down here, we could really appreciate the size of the rubble pile that had fallen. At least half of the atrium must have been caught up in whatever brought those sections down, but whatever did it certainly left a mark on the invaders. Slaver corpses were strewn in and around the rubble, a lot of them missing body parts or only being singular body parts. A foreleg here, half a head there…

I turned my head towards a smaller pile of rubble nearby, and my heart sank.

There, amidst piles of stone, was a black shape I’d at first through to be part of the organic chitin that was part of the hive’s general structure. But when I looked closer, I realised what it actually was.

A changeling leg, just about jutting out from beneath the pile.

“I found a body,” I informed the others, Altrix gasping in horror as we gathered around it.

“A lot of changelings must have been caught up in whatever brought this place down,” Cobalt noted sadly.

If the slavers had taken the bodies, then they must have missed this one due to the rubble. How many more were here, just hidden by the scattered stone and chitin?

“Can we free them?” Altrix asked pleadingly. “T-they shouldn’t be trapped like that.”

I… guess we could. Between me and Cobalt, lifting the body out wouldn’t be hard. And honestly, as much as I wondered if there was a point to this, I didn’t have the heart to deny my friend.

I lit my horn, taking hold of the rubble. Cobalt followed my lead, and together we started to lift. As more of the rubble vanished, more of the changelings became visible. Pieces of a stable jumpsuit, the security vest, and finally…

Altrix screamed.

Oh Celestia, no…

The last of the rubble cast aside, the body amazingly intact, we brought Matercula gently out of the pile and onto the ground as Altrix rushed towards her still mother and collapsed at her side in a heap of desperate sobs. We all just stared at the sight, Altrix’s heartbreak echoing around the chamber as we all stood helplessly by them.

Having never been close to my own parents, I couldn’t really relate to how she was feeling. But Matercula had seemed like a good mare in the brief time I’d known her, and my failure really started to hit home. Because I hadn’t been fast enough, my friend had just lost her mother…

Xena sat down next to Altrix, gently taking the distraught changeling into her hooves and hugged her. My marefriend rocked her gently, whispering into her ear sympathetically. I suppose Xena could understand more than any of us.

I sighed, moving up to the body and briefly regarding the pair. Altrix had buried her face in Xena’s neck, her sobs now subdued in her fur as her entire body shook horribly. I shook too, barely able to separate the guilt and anger I was feeling. Those fuckers had hurt my friend. Killed innocent changelings. Where does this shit end!?

Fuck them. Fuck Kronos. Fuck Red Eye, the Goddess, and the WHOLE LOT OF THEM!

“Fuck!” My shout echoed louder than the crying, everyone but Altrix turning their eyes up at me. But I didn’t care, I was too tired to care. Tired of slavers and quests and… everything, really.

Dammit.

I looked down at Matercula’s body, finally spying something attached to her still secured security helmet. Gently, I unstrapped the helmet and lifted it from Matercula’s head, laying her gently back onto the ground as I examined it.

There, slotted into a boxy compartment on the side of the helmet, was a holotape recorder.

“What is it?” Cobalt grimly asked.

“I’m not sure,” I replied, taking the holotape from the helmet and holding it in my magic.

I dropped the helmet, giving one last glance at Altrix before I pulled up my PipBuck and plugged the recording in.

“Altrix.”

At the sound of Matercula’s voice calling her name, Altrix’s tear-filled eyes slowly looked up at me and my PipBuck.

“Things are bad, sweetie. I’m glad you’re not here, I’m sure your friends are keeping your sa-” Matercula grunted as a spattering of gunfire emerged nearby, the mare swearing loudly before galloping hooves indicated her moving. That was followed by a few moments of silence before she could speak again.

“Those bad people you warned us about, they arrived. It’s not your fault, and we’re holding them off as best we can. You’d be proud of your mother, I would hope. We’re making the bastards pay for it. I’d almost say we’d have a chance, if it wasn’t for those monsters with the wings and horns.”

“Alicorns,” Cobalt noted. “They brought alicorns.”

It really was the worst-case scenario for the changelings.

“I hope the Princess has contacted you or, at least, will soon. We’re pulling everyone back to the stable, but we’re going to be the last ones in. If they get past us…”

“Matercula, the charges are set!” another changeling shouted.

“Good! Get clear and then detonate!” she responded. “We, uh, stole some of their explosives and have rigged them to blow. It will hopefully delay their advance through the atrium. At least for the grounded ones. We-”

She was interrupted again by some sudden shouting and a spray of gunfire. We could hear changeling shouting in pain amidst the clear spray of an assault rifle, Matercula apparently returning before giving a shout of pain, before a clatter indicated her fall to the ground.

I was quickly regretting playing the recording of what was clearly Matercula’s death. But Altrix was focused entirely on it, and I dared not turn it off.

“Well well,” a scratchy voice said with a cackle. “Seems we have another prisoner. Bag it up like the rest, only patch that gunshot if it looks like it’ll die before getting back to base.”

“Altrix… I love you.”

“Eh? What you say?”

Matercula growled. “I’m not your fucking test subject, beast!”

“Hey, what are you- Stop her!”

The recording ended with the sound of a deafening explosion, before cutting out entirely.

Altrix just stared at my PipBuck blankly. Her tears had stopped, but I felt nothing but dread and the sheer emptiness in those usually bright orbs.

“She was very brave,” Xena whispered gently to her.

“…I know.”

“How much longer do we have to stay in this dump, anyway?”

Wait, none of us said that!

We all shot around, looking towards the entrance to the passage leading to the stable. Five red bars had popped up onto my E.F.S. while I’d been distracted, and I’d completely missed it!

“Until we get the rest of what Kronos wants us to get,” another voice said as the door opened and three ponies alongside two griffons walked in. “You just gotta- What the!?”

I entered S.A.T.S. without a moment of hesitation.

One bolt of changeling magic from Venomous fittingly took first blood as it ripped through one griffon and sent him screaming to the floor as the acid burnt away at his flesh, exposing muscle and bone within seconds. My pistol also came out, held alongside Venomous in my magical grasp, with two bullets fired at a second slaver. Both made their targets, one being absorbed by the pony’s barding while another hit a weakness in the armour and bit into his hide. He didn’t fall, but his shout of pain made certain that I’d done some damage.

CRACK.

A third had half his skull peeled away by a .308 round, the other three scrambling for cover as they wildly fired panicked shots at us. They were wide and barely came close before they had a Moon Blossom to worry about.

The pegasus swooped down at them, picking up the slaver I’d injured and taking him for a ride somewhere up in the atrium. I doubted I’d see him again.

“Fall back!” the remaining griffon shouted, levelling a hunting rifle at Cobalt as he grabbed Altrix and pulled the reluctant changeling away from her mother and towards cover.

The bullet, fortunately, pinged off of Cobalt’s shoulder plate.

But they were not going to even try to hurt any more of my friends!

I let my rage come to the surface in the form and the biggest shout I could muster, rushing the griffon with both my weapons firing without a fuck given towards their ammo. I’ll just take theirs!

The griffon didn’t stand a chance as both magic and bullet-riddled his body, bypassing his combat armour and reducing him to rapidly disintegrating paste. My PipBuck clicked as I stood above the remaining goo pile, my gaze turning towards the single remaining pony. I couldn’t see my own face, but that was probably for the best. Something about me caused the slaver to whimper in fear.

Good.

His gun was levelled at me, shaking in his aura and not firing. Whether he would have built up the courage to try, I would never know. Another crack from Xena’s sniper rifle dropped the slaver to the ground, the red bars blinking out.

With the silence returned, Altrix emerged from her hiding place and returned to her mother’s side. Once again she sat by her mother’s side, leaning into her chest and sobbing her heart out.

That decides it. I don’t give a fuck if I failed the changelings here. I won’t do so again.

If they were alive, I would save them.

If they were dead, Kronos was going to join them.

“Moon Blossom!” I called out for the pegasus.

There was a thump as something fleshy impacted behind one of the large rubble piles, a red bar having ever so briefly reappeared before blinking out for good.

“Well, I guess earth ponies really can’t fly,” the pegasus in question said as she reappeared above us. “I wouldn’t go back there, it’s a bit… sticky.”

“Moon, could you stay with Altrix? Keep an eye out for her?”

She looked over towards the changeling, her satisfied smirk falling away to a sombre frown. She then looked back at me, simply giving me a nod before dropping to the ground and trotting over to a spot nearby to her. She then sat down, her posture bolt upright and guardingly over Altrix.

Now, we had to press on.

“Come on guys. Let’s check Stable 84.”

We passed by the slavers’ corpses, moving through the tunnel towards the stable door. Yet more battle signs lay around the area that likely led up to the entrance itself.

“It looked like that group was the clean-up team,” Cobalt noted as we went. “After whatever valuables were left behind.”

“If so, then I don’t expect to find much left here,” Xena agreed regretfully.

I let out a low sigh. “I know.”

Sure enough, stepping out before the great cog door of the stable, it was wide open. Oddly enough, here the signs of battle seemed to stop entirely. That, and there was a pungent smell dominated the area. The entrance of the stable, as we stepped inside, was seen to be entirely free of battle. No blood, bullet casings or anything else were to be found.

It was the same elsewhere in the stable, too. Moving quickly through the corridors, everything appeared to be pretty much intact. A few makeshift barricades had been constructed and then moved aside, but even that seemed to have been done almost… casually.

And that smell remained wherever we went.

Moving into the stable’s atrium, my gaze moved up to the oval window that was the Overmare’s office. That was where Insidiis had been when she’d contacted us via the communication orb. What would we find there now, though?

There was only one way to find out.

We moved through he atrium and into the door leading up to the office. Moving through it and up the corresponding staircase, we swiftly trotted up them and into the room.

Empty. Like everywhere else.

Except…

My eyes were drawn to the small little orb left abandoned on the office’s floor. Picking it up carefully, I brought out its twin from my saddlebag and held them out comparatively. Gritting my teeth, I placed them gently down onto a nearby shelf and moved over to the horseshoe-shaped desk.

There was an entry open on the terminal.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Cobalt asked. “Play it. Insidiis might have left us something.”

He didn’t need to tell me twice.

“Alright, here we go…” Insidiis’ voice emerged from the computer. “In case you hear this, Scrap Heap, Altrix… I am recording these events in the case that I fail to protect my charges. Hopefully, any information gleamed can be of help to you. But, for now…”

There was a cough, and then I heard the Princess’ horn light up as she took hold of something.

“Scrap Heap! Ponies! Altrix! Do you hear me!?” Insidiis’ voice suddenly bellowed, and I knew for certain just when this was recorded. “Answer me at once!”

“Right! Right! Here!” I heard my own echo quickly respond after a moment’s hesitation.

“Princess, what’s wrong?” Altrix whimpered fearfully.

“We are under attack! I cannot dally, there is fierce fighting in the hive, and I must join them. We are pulling my changelings back into the stable while security holds them in the upper levels, and then we’re sealing ourselves in!”

“Mother…”

Oh, Altrix…

“Who is it? What’s happening down there?”

“It’s- “Gas…?”

There was a clatter on the recording, likely the moment she dropped the orb.

“Guard! What is happening! What is…” The Princess suddenly and violently coughed. “What is that foul substance!?”

“Princess, it’s… They’re pumping some kind of gas into the stable!”

“No… We need to… Need to…”

Another thump of something hitting the ground, and then silence…

I looked at the recording’s timeline. Everything was silent, the recording running for many more hours before coming to its own end. All but for one section, a short while after the Princess had fallen silent. Fast forwarding to that section, the first thing I heard was the sound of movement.

And then his voice.

“Very nicely done,” Kronos complimented someone. “It has made fulfilling my master’s will so much simpler.”

“BUT OF COURSE. THE GODDESS AND OUR UNITY CONTAINS DETAILED MEMORIES OF THIS STABLE’S CONSTRUCTION. ESPECIALLY IT’S FILTRATION SYSTEM.”

The Goddess. Wonderful.

“Be sure to thank Twilight Sparkle for me.”

Wait, WHAT!?

The Goddess’ tone almost changed into one of spite. “YOU SHOULD THANK THE GREAT AND POWERFUL GODDESS! TWILIGHT SPARKLE IS BUT AN INSIGINIFACT PART OF THE WHOLE!”

“Oh, did I hit a nerve?”

“YOU WILL CEASE TO MENTION THAT REBELLIOUS ANNOYANCE!”

“And yet her memories showed us the location of both this place and Site B. Willing or not, I would say the Ministry Mare has been a great assistance.”

“DO NOT DEFY US, YOU INFERIOR MORTAL!”

Kronos chuckled without any sign of being intimidated. “Save the threats, Goddess. Are your purples moving into position?”

“YES. THE CHANGELINGS SHALL ALL BE MOVED TO THE WAREHOUSE LIVING OR DEAD. WE HOPE YOUR SECURITY IS SUFFICIENT.”

“They will be packed in like animals, surrounded by shields and unarmed, scared and without a royal to guide them. Speaking of, I assume you’ll have that one sent straight to the lab?”

“HER DNA IS KEY TO COMPLETING THE PROJECT WHERE THE MOTHER IS NO LONGER OF USE.”

Mother…?

“Good. Teleport away.”

“DO NOT PRESUME TO COMMAND US. BUT YES, WE SHALL. NOW, THE GODDESS HAS BUSINESS ELSEWHERE. OUR DRONE SHALL FACILITATE COMMUNICATION.”

“If you wish it.”

“WE DO.”

There was silence for a moment, then a new female voice started to talk.

“We are commencing teleportation of the subjects. You maybe begin to pull your minions back.”

“Very well. I will leave a small team behind to pick up anything else of use within these halls.”

“Are you certain that’s wise?” the alicorn asked. “What if the nuisance returns? Your slavers are ill-equipped to deal with the Scavenger.”

“I don’t recall the last alicorn to get in their way doing any better,” he taunted in retort.

“One body is insignificant. We are Unity.”

“Hardly insignificant that you supposedly powerful alicorns let them decimate one of Red Eye’s outposts and escape to Vanhoover in a Sky Bandit. But no matter, I will deal with the stallion when the time is right. One way or another.”

“All changelings but the ones in this room have been relocated for processing,” the alicorn the reported. “We shall return us to Site B.”

“Do so. I am eager to report this victory to Lord Red Eye.”

There was a moment of quiet, and then there was the loud pop of a teleportation spell.

And that was all there was to hear.

But it was enough, and it left me with a certainty of two.

Twilight Sparkle lived, albeit a prisoner of the Goddess. Celestia knows what suffering the former Ministry Mare was suffering inside of Unity. Moreover, all the changelings had been moved back to the facility under Haven for… I didn’t even want to speculate what they’d do. The very thought made my skin crawl. And if they were left to their business.

Red Eye and the Goddess would have their infiltration army.

“What do we do?” Cobalt asked in a quiet monotone. “What… How do we get out of this? The changelings are gone. And Twilight, my idol…”

“It would appear we have encountered our darkest hour,” Xena mused with deep concern. “Countless innocents lie in their grasp. And should they succeed...”

“It’s actually kinda simple,” I declared, turning to face my two friends. “I made a promise that I intend to keep.”

Xena blinked, and then gave me a small smile. “Oh?”

There was only one thing to do. With all these lives at stake, the entire wasteland… I wasn’t the Stable Dweller. I wasn’t Security. I never would be. But I was here, and I could do something. The scavenger that was could go rot in Tartarus, this I had to do.

“We’re going to Haven, to Site B, and we’re going to shut Kronos down for good.”





Footnote: Max Level