Chapter Twenty-Three: Stalliongrad
Traveling to Stalliongrad from Vanhoover was no small undertaking. Ponies had once been able to cross the distance in a matter of hours by train, auto-carriage, or sky-chariot; now, the trains rusted on their tracks, the auto-carriages squatted on their roads, and no pegasi were around. The megaspells had taken everything from Equestria, including the ease of transportation. Luckily, the railroad tracks and roads for auto-carriages were still there, even if they were in extremely poor condition, so we had something to follow.
It would be a long journey spanning several days, and Rare Sparks and I stocked up on supplies before leaving. I was able to get a discount from Price Slasher on a set of caravan saddlebags that would hold even more than the ones I’d found at Sorceress Plaza; even so, they were bulging. Rare Sparks would be carrying most of the goods that Price Slasher wanted delivered, fastened to the top of the ammunition stores on her back. With her power armor, she could carry nearly as much as a brahmin, but I couldn’t ask her to carry everything, especially since there was no good way to fasten the bags and boxes of goods to her armor. She was already coming up with ideas for how it could be modified for better carrying capacity, but any actual modifications of that kind to the armor would have to wait until she found another workshop like the Steel Rangers had.
After a night’s rest and a supply run, we set out for our destination. We traced a familiar path as we headed toward where the Stalliongrad Expedition had rendezvoused before leaving, passing the abandoned wagon of Record Breaker. The various merchants (and Mr. Bucke) had met up at an old train station and followed the tracks, and Rare and I followed their lead.
There was little of interest between Vanhoover and Stalliongrad, just empty countryside. Once in a while, we’d spot the remains of a small town in the distance, but never investigated since that would take us off course and keep us from our mission. From what we could see, the tiny hamlets looked nearly untouched compared to the city. No megaspells had struck here, so time and the collapse of society were the only damaging forces. I wondered what we’d find if we did leave the train tracks to enter a town. Could there still be a civilized town of ponies, living their lives more or less as they had during the War or before it, or would we just find more raiders and slavers? My experience with the Wasteland told me the latter was more likely, but the question still remained.
We did eventually stop in a town after our fourth day of traveling. It wasn’t far from the train tracks and even had a tiny station connected to the town by a dirt path. My PipBuck immediately identified the place as Bubble Springs, which I assumed referred to hot springs in the area. There was a resort at the top of a ridge of nearby hills, but we left it alone, since a strange glow seemed to come from its windows, unlike any light or lamp I’d seen in the Wasteland. It wasn’t concerning enough to keep from lighting a campfire to heat up beans and SPAMs for a meal, though.
Rare and I were in what remained of a single-family house along the town’s main (unpaved) road, whose roof had caved in decades ago. She was telling me about the time she had scavenged for technology in a sinking cargo ship, carrying on underwater in her power armor. After leaving Vanhoover, we’d taken turns telling each other stories about our pasts in order to fill the vast expanses of time between minor dustups with Wasteland creatures. I could only remember the last seven weeks of my life, so I was rapidly running out of tales to tell. I was already up to the events at Bunker Hill, and I’d met her soon after that.
“Seems you’ve had plenty of adventures as a Steel Ranger,” I commented as she finished her story. Every story she’d told me thus far had involved the power armored ponies. She was a Steel Ranger, after all, and they seemed a very tight-knit bunch.
“Becoming a Steel Ranger was huge for me. Ever since I lost my parents, being a Ranger has been my whole life,” Rare Sparks admitted, “Sometimes I wonder where I’d be today if Elder Manticore’s Fury hadn’t found me and bucked all convention to train me.”
“I’m sure you’d be fine,” I assured her, “Your skills with tech would be prized in any settlement, and you could really improve things.”
“I know, but for what cause? For what purpose?” she asked, looking up wistfully, “Would I just be a tinkerer, keeping the generator running and patching up ponies’ weapons? I want more than that. I want a purpose. I want to do something to make this horrible, messed-up Wasteland better.”
“You went with the Steel Rangers because they found you, but you stayed to do good,” I said with understanding.
“Exactly. Elder Gristle’s head wasn’t in the right place, but Manticore’s Fury is steering us in the direction we need to go,” Rare said, nodding, “I got my cutie-mark for fixing up Wartime tech, but my purpose is to fix it up to help the Steel Rangers so they can protect the ponies of the Wasteland, crush the evil out there, and use the tech I fix to improve the lives of those around them. If I didn’t know my cutie-mark’s larger purpose, what would be the point?”
“Oh, sorry,” she said when she realized what she’d just implied about me.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, “I don’t know what my cutie-mark’s purpose is because I don’t remember who I used to be. Maybe I’ll find out someday, but for now, I think I’ll just be content with doing what I can to make the Wasteland a better place, like you said.”
“Right now, that means finding Mr. Bucke,” Rare said before digging into a can of beans.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think since we left Vanhoover, about what we’re doing, and whether it’s justice or vengeance,” I said thoughtfully. I was a bit hesitant to come out with my thoughts, but after the time I’d spent with Rare, I felt I could trust her.
“What did you decide?” she asked curiously.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, “I think at first I was just mad. How could somepony do something like that, snuff out hundreds of lives without remorse? I’ve only been in the Wasteland a short while, and this is the second town that was wiped out, the second town whose leader I befriended and was then destroyed. I did want revenge, like when I attacked the Bloodlarks after Sundale. Maybe I rationalized that desire by convincing myself he needed to stopped, but as we tracked him down and found all he was wrapped up in, something changed. The Northern Lights Coalition is making it easier for raiders to do all the terrible things they’re known for. They’ve got to be stopped, and the only way I know how to get to them right now is through Mr. Bucke.”
“I think you’re right,” Rare said, “But I think you missed something. I think you knew what was right all along, it just took awhile for you to realize what really motivated you. That’s why I followed you, after all.”
“I did find it a bit suspicious that you stayed around even after the Republic of Rose … or even Burnside,” I said, “I wasn’t going to complain, of course, since I’d probably have died without you. Also, you got a new rank out of it.”
“That’s true. Without you, I’d never be the probably only inquisitor in existence.”
“Speaking of which, how is the new role now that you’ve had it a couple days?” I asked as I lounged back with a tin of SPAM, “Any different?”
“Not really,” Rare said, “I mean, none of what we’ve been doing is exactly normal for me, but Elder Manticore’s Fury always did let me have some more autonomy than other Steel Rangers. It’s odd not traveling alongside other ponies in power armor, I guess, but at least I’m not completely alone.”
I nodded and shifted around into a more relaxed position; I could completely understand that. I'd been on my own for much of the time I’d been outside Stable 85, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Some of my worst experiences were when I’d had company, though. Both when I’d left the Stable and at the North Bank Sewage Treatment Plant, I’d watched friends die. The brief moments I’d had with company had turned out all right—Spruce was fine, as was Sage as far as I knew—but they hadn’t been around long enough to meet a grisly end. I’d begun to think I was cursed and that it was only a matter of time before that curse claimed Rare Sparks too, but it was looking like that wasn’t the case. Maybe the curse was broken—that, or her Steel Ranger armor protected her from it.
As I let my mind wander, I watched the smoke from our campfire float up through the hole in the roof into the sky beyond. There wasn’t much to see at night except for the clouds that perpetually filled the dome over our heads, except for the rare case where they’d break after a storm. I wondered if ponies in the past had once looked up at the night sky and marveled at the stars; it seemed a thing to do, but maybe they considered the stars pedestrian, being able to see them every night. As I stared at the sky, a few lights suddenly broke through, moving at a rapid pace.
“Did you see that?” I asked, jumping to my hooves.
“See what?” Rare asked, but I was already on my way outside, grabbing my binoculars as I left.
High in the sky, just below the cloud cover, were a trio of pegasi, lights on their military uniforms providing a small amount of illumination. A fourth dipped through the clouds a few seconds later, pulling a large, enclosed sky-chariot. They streaked off toward the south, and Rare took the binoculars to have a look.
“Pegasi,” she said, but didn’t seem nearly as surprised as I was, “That’s something you don’t see every day.”
“What do you think they’re doing?” I asked, wondering if maybe they had decided the time was finally right to help out the Wasteland.
“Just a scouting mission,” she said, passing the binoculars back to me, “They do that every so often. Come down, look around to confirm the world’s still a disaster, and fly back up to their safe and cushy lives up top.”
“Maybe they’ll decide it’s time to open up the clouds this time around,” I said.
“That’ll never happen,” the Steel Ranger said with certainty, “Why would they help us when they’ve got everything they want up there? Maybe their President Snowmane intended to once, but he’s long dead.”
“Dead? What about his radio broadcasts?” I asked.
“They’ve been on loop for the last hundred years. It’s the same sixteen years of speeches repeated over and over again,” Rare explained, “About the third time around, ponies figured it out and stopped listening to that drivel. Radio Free Wasteland is a lot better, anyway, even if DJ Pon3 has no higher an opinion of Steel Rangers than Snowmane.”
“That’s disappointing,” I said, “Aren’t there any pegasi who care what’s going on down here?”
“There’re a few,” Rare said, “Any that speak out too loud are cast out, though they’re extremely rare; I’ve never seen one. Most are content to pretend there’s nothing below their clouds, though. Face it, if this was what was waiting for you, you’d probably want to keep it far away too.”
I watched the lights recede into the distance as the pegasi flew off somewhere, bemoaning once again how badly ponykind had screwed up. Well, we’re still screwing up, aren’t we? Will we ever learn? That was a cheery thought to go to sleep to.
***
Even before we arrived in Stalliongrad, I knew we’d never overtake Mr. Bucke like I’d originally hoped. Using measurements from my PipBuck map, I figured out that it would take us ten days to walk to Stalliongrad from Vanhoover. Sure, the Stalliongrad Expedition, with its slow-moving traders, would take fourteen days according to Price Slasher, but they’d also left seven days before us. By the time we reached the outskirts of Stalliongrad, they’d already been there for three days. We were closing in now, though, and were the closest we’d been behind Mr. Bucke since we’d missed him leaving on the Expedition.
Rare’s and my first experience in the Stalliongrad outskirts was not a pleasant one. We continued to follow the railroad straight east when it split, following signs that instructed us to keep moving. It was along this course that we came upon two dead brahmin. I never thought to ask Price Slasher what she knew about the Stalliongrad Expedition, but I could bet that a few brahmin had been involved to help transport goods. These dead brahmin were wearing saddles like the one Bonnie and Claude had for carrying cargo, but there was no cargo to be seen. I wondered if Mr. Bucke had done this somehow, but had to resign myself to the fact that not every raider gang was tied up with him. What a fitting end it would be if he was taken out by the raiders he recruited to do his bidding, though. There were no pony bodies, however, so we moved on.
We didn’t make it far before a billboard suddenly exploded behind us. The real threat was not behind, but ahead, as my EFS attested as I cast the spell. Atop a mostly intact building not far ahead that my PipBuck helpfully identified as Hoity Toity’s Suits (which probably would’ve meant a lot more to me had it been a century-and-a-half in the past) were several raiders. A griffin was holding the rocket launcher that had destroyed the billboard and was now pointed at us. Around her were several ponies with various weapons, and a few others stepped out from the front of the store. Two pips on my EFS remained unaccounted for and grew gradually closer. I eventually thought to look up and spotted young, pony-sized griffins hovering above us, one on either side.
“Howdy there, strangers, you lost?” the griffin with the rocket launcher asked. They were all clearly raiders and their pips on my EFS were already red. There was no point in talking to them, but I needed time to formulate a plan.
“Just on our way into the city,” I yelled back, keeping my magic prepped to grab a weapon and cast SATS if it came to it.
“What’s the password?” the griffin called back, taking me by surprise.
“Password?” I called back.
“Ooh, so close,” she said mockingly as she raised her rocket launcher’s sight to her eye, “It was raspberry sprinkles.”
Rare Sparks’s minigun roared as the griffin loosed a missile, blanketing the top of the suit store. I ran away as fast as I could, but the blast of the missile still threw me off my hooves, sending me tumbling toward a derailed boxcar. The young griffins in the sky targeting Rare Sparks and her unprotected head, and I swiftly cast SATS. Beams shot from my magical energy rifle in slow motion, one of them piercing the chest of the further griffin twice. I didn’t manage to kill both griffins before time returned to normal, but the last shot I took before I had to replace the magical energy cell clipped the wing of the second griffin, sending him tumbling down.
He steadied the damaged wing with a claw and glided my way, landing nearby and launching himself at me with a strong thrust of his hindlegs. I wasn’t prepared, and dropped the magical energy cell as I tried to reload. Jumping backwards, I avoided a swipe of the griffin’s claws but dropped my rifle in the process. I drew my machete and swung it at him, but the blade did no good against his scrap metal armor other than to scratch it. His claws met much the same problem as they scraped across my armored foreleg.
The griffin had dropped the hunting rifle he’d been carrying when I’d shot him, but he drew a revolver and began firing at me. One of the bullets skidded off my enchanted doctor’s coat, but another punched through into my hip, hobbling me. He followed up with a swipe of one of his claws across my hindleg as he ejected the casings from his revolver. I swung my machete at his head, but he deftly ducked and started to reload his weapon.
That I couldn’t allow, and knocked the revolver from his grip with my machete. As I swung the blade back around, he grabbed it in a claw. It cut through the scales of his claw, causing blood to flow, but it didn’t cut very deeply, and he reached his other claw toward my neck. Releasing my machete, I stepped back, nearly collapsing from my busted legs, and grabbed my combat shotgun. The griffin flared his wings and tried to get away, but it was too late for him. His face was turned to paste as I fired the shotgun into it.
Bullets whizzed past me, and I retreated into the cover of the boxcar to recover. I removed the bullet in my hip and drank a healing potion. While I waited for my flesh to miraculously heal itself, I reached out with my magic and retrieved the weapons I’d lost in the fight. My magical energy rifle was none the worse for wear, and I reloaded it, but my machete was in a sorry shape. It had been blunted by the griffin’s armor and chipped by my final shotgun blasts. I got the feeling it was going to take more than just a whetstone to get it back into prime condition.
That would have to come later, though. Some of the raiders in the suit store were still alive and shooting angrily at Rare Sparks and me. Her minigun was still firing, and I wondered why she hadn’t taken all the raiders out yet. As I peeked around the boxcar, I spotted the griffin from the roof down in the store, bloodied but still alive and now holding a grenade launcher. The front of the store was torn to pieces, but some of the reinforced parts were still intact, and the raiders were hiding behind them. Rare couldn’t get close enough to flank them without risking the grenade launcher.
I hurried around the boxcar, finding a new angle, and cast SATS before any of the raiders caught on to my new location. My sniper rifle was out, and I stared down the scope at the griffin raider leader. Just like Rare, she wasn’t wearing a helmet, so I didn’t have to be overly careful in my aim. I fired off a shot at her head, but another raider got in the way at the last minute, and my bullet took her down instead. As the griffin turned to look at me in slow motion, I fired two more shots, one of them hitting the pillar she was firing behind, but the other blowing out the back of her head.
Rare Sparks rushed forward as the griffin fell, firing her grenade launcher through the building’s front. Body parts were thrown in the air as the raiders were blown apart by grenades, and the red pips disappeared in sets from my EFS. One red mark remained in the store, and I cautiously approached the blood-soaked front, a bit appalled by the carnage. One of the raiders had hung back and foolishly tried to fire at me with a pistol. My magical energy rifle answered before I was close enough that her poorly maintained weapon was accurate enough to hit me, and she turned into a glowing pile of ash.
Before we left the area, I couldn’t help thinking about what Price Slasher had told me when I’d been preparing to leave Vanhoover. Apparently, the tracks leading into the city was the safest route. I shuddered to think what the rest of Stalliongrad was like. Hopefully the rest of our journey wouldn’t be so interesting.
***
We reached Traders’ Lane without mishap, other than some run-ins with mutated rats and radroaches, the usual suspects. I’d been told Stalliongrad was a large settlement, but I had no idea the scale of it until I beheld it myself. High walls of concrete topped with scrap and barbed wire stretched off into the distance to the north and east. It must’ve enclosed over a hundred city blocks! I’d only seen two sides of it, and my PipBuck tried to make sense of it, drawing in the wall on the map to the farthest I could see. I had no idea how an area so large could be fully settled, given how small the settlements were that I’d seen so far, but I supposed I’d find out if I stuck around here for very long.
Traders’ Lane was a more familiar settlement to me. It jutted out from the western gate of the main settlement, a few streets of reclaimed buildings surrounded by a scrap fence about twice the size of the Strip. It was here that I was to deliver Price Slasher’s goods and here that I hoped to learn what had become of Mr. Bucke after he’d reached Stalliongrad. After all, this was where the Stalliongrad Expedition was bound, and where I could find out where their traveling companion had gone (assuming they’d made it here).
Before any of that, however, we needed to drop off Price Slasher’s goods to unburden Rare Sparks and make some space in my saddlebags. She’d given us instruction on who to meet with and sell to, and what her plans had been when she’d hoped to travel to Stalliongrad herself. A trader named Rio was apparently a friend of hers and would give us a good price for any goods from her, so we made our way to his shop, ignoring the street hawkers trying sell us everything from hats to “contribution credits.” Rio’s store was a former bakery with a new sign, and we let ourselves in, disregarding the stares directed at Rare’s Steel Ranger Armor.
Rio sat behind the shop’s counter, next to a carousel display now featuring pistols instead of rolls and muffins. He was a heavily muscled unicorn stallion who’d been severely maimed at some point. His forelegs were propped up on the counter, the left one a mechanical prosthetic. Burns ran up from the left shoulder to his neck and cheek. Fastened to his throat was a voice box from a robot, wires running over the back of his partly-shaved head connecting it to a ring around his horn.
“Well, well, well, a Steel Ranger in my shop. Haven’t seen one of you in a long time,” Rio said without moving his lips, the voice produced mechanically by the contraption around his neck as his horn glowed, “Of course, that’s assuming you didn’t just kill a Steel Ranger and take her armor, which wouldn’t be unheard of.”
“I am a Steel Ranger,” Rare Sparks said defensively, suddenly self-conscious of all the goods she was transporting on her back.
“I meant no offense,” Rio said, raising his hooves in surrender, “So, what brings you to my shop? It appears like you’re looking to sell, but I’m not so eager to buy right now.”
“Price Slasher sent us,” I said, “She was hoping to sell you some of what she scavenged in Vanhoover.”
“Price Slasher? Well, that’s different then,” Rio said, his mechanical foreleg making a thump as it hit the counter, adding another indentation to an already pretty dented countertop, “Of course I’ll take a look at anything she has to send me. I trust her, and she and I go a long way back.”
“Have you seen each other recently?” I asked as I began unpacking my saddlebags and helped Rare with her load.
“You mean, does she know I look like this?” Rio asked, and I was about to object to the assumption (even if it had been in the back of my mind), when he raised a hoof to stop me, “No worries. Yes, she knows about my augments. Go ahead, take a look at them. I’m in a lot better shape that most of the ponies who’ve been what I’ve been through.”
I didn’t want to be rude and stare (though I’d probably already been doing plenty of that), so I only spared them a quick glance. Rare Sparks had less qualms, and I could tell she was examining them with her mind for the mechanical, learning just by looking how everything worked together. Hers was a studious look, and I tried to do the same. Rio didn’t seem to be ashamed of his mechanical parts, but it still felt rude to ogle him extensively.
“Now, I know you want to ask, but you’re too polite to. Seen it a thousand times before, so I’ll just go ahead and answer. What happened to me?” Rio said as we continued to unload Price Slasher’s goods, “Like Price Slasher, I was once a slave in Vanhoover. That’s how we met each other. I was sold to be a pit fighter. I hope you’ve never had to witness a pit fight; it’s barbaric. Two slaves are thrown into a pit and have to fight to the death. The winner gets special privileges, and lives to fight another day, against increasingly tougher opponents, until they die. That’s how I got injured, in a fight. The slavers left me for dead; they didn’t care about me, but a Steel Ranger scribe fixed me up, got me back on my hooves. After that, I left Vanhoover. I don’t know how Price Slasher can still stay there, and in Burnside too, where slaves are still being auctioned off, but she always was a peculiar earth pony.”
After Rio finished his story, we negotiated over the goods Price Slasher had sent with us. For his friend’s sake, he would buy them all (I was grateful not to have to carry them around any longer, and Rare was probably even more pleased), but like a true merchant, wanted to get them as cheaply as possible. I was no master merchant, and probably got cheated some, but the price we reached wasn’t bad so far as I could tell. Rio counted out the caps he owed us for the supplies, and I put the largest portion in a beat-up old lunchbox for safekeeping. That was Price Slasher’s share, and the rest was split between Rare Sparks and me, though I kept her share in my saddlebags as well. She spoke again about modifying her armor for better carrying capacity.
“You and Price Slasher must be close if you came all the way to Stalliongrad for her,” Rio said as we concluded the transaction, “That, or she tricked you into doing her a favor.”
“Maybe a bit of both,” I admitted, “Actually, though, we’re here looking for a pony named Mr. Bucke. We know he left Vanhoover with a group of other merchants, the merchants Price Slasher was hoping to travel to here with.”
“Oh, well, I’m glad she didn’t,” Rio said as his face fell, “I heard those ponies had a rough time.”
“Do you know where we can find them to ask about it?” I asked, fearing my suspicions had been correct.
“Sure, they’ve set up on the southern street closer to the western gate,” Rio gave us directions, “If they aren’t able to help you find this Mr. Bucke, though, you might need to go into the PRS itself.”
“PRS?” I asked, this being the first time I’d heard the term.
“Oh, sorry, I forget you’re not from Stalliongrad. PRS is what we locals call the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad for short,” Rio said, “Some folks just call it Stalliongrad, but that’s just confusing trying to differentiate between the city and the settlement. Traders’ Lane is in Stalliongrad, but it isn’t part of the PRS. I’m sure you saw it coming in; the wall is impossible to miss. It’s a crazy huge settlement, and it keeps expanding. The reason I brought it up is ‘cause they control the city’s Ministry of Morale Hub and can see through cameras all over the city. If anypony would know where your Mr. Bucke is, it’d be the ponies in the PRS.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I told Rio as Rare and I prepared to leave.
“Make sure you stop by the Visitor Ministry before you try to get in, though,” he called after us as we exited the shop, “Brick building by the gate with fancy flags; you can’t miss it.”
***
Things were just as I’d feared with the Stalliongrad Expedition. They didn’t have much to share with us about Mr. Bucke, other than that he’d made them extremely nervous the whole way to Stalliongrad. That nervousness had been well-earned, though, and came to a head when they began to near the city and he talked to them about joining the Northern Lights Coalition. He’d promised them protection of raiders, which they scoffed, since they already had caravan guards. The last night before they’d reached Stalliongrad, Mr. Bucke had disappeared, and they’d then been ambushed on their way in by a raider gang with three griffins. Several brahmin had been killed, and one of them had lost their wagon and all their possessions, but the brahmin were the only casualties. After the attack, they’d stumbled their way to Traders’ Lane and were now encamped here, trying to sell the goods they’d brought in order to hire extra muscle for the return trip, if they could find anypony willing to travel all the way back to Vanhoover with them. Other than further confirmation that Mr. Bucke was a terrible pony, all we learned from the Stalliongrad Expedition was that Mr. Bucke was somewhere in Stalliongrad, and nopony had an idea where except for maybe the raiders Rare and I had killed on our way in.
With that line of inquiry exhausted, Rare Sparks and I decided to follow Rio’s advice and seek answers in the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad. The Visitor Ministry was indeed easy to find, as it was located near the eastern gate right before a fenced off area with serious-looking guards standing next to signs warning not to proceed without appropriate documentation. The brick building had been restored almost to Wartime levels, the walls intact, even, and cleansed of grime. Unfaded and untattered red banners fluttered on either side of the entrance, a hammer crossed with a horseshoe in the centers.
Upon entering the building, Rare and I were asked to wait until a “pass dispensation officer” could meet with us. The first couple times the phone of the receptionist’s desk actually rang, it took me by surprise. Working phone lines in the Wasteland? Eventually we were called into a side office to speak to the pass dispensation officer, Rare carefully moving through the doorway to keep from chipping the restored doorframe with her armor. The pony across the desk from us was a unicorn who looked a little younger than me. He levitated various measuring instruments as he glanced at us, typing whatever results he got into the terminal without doing more than mumble to himself. I noticed that he (like the receptionist and everypony in the Visitor Ministry) was wearing a Stable jumpsuit much like my own. These jumpsuits looked much more military, however, with some kind of insignia pinned to the collar, and the bright blue and yellow colors were replaced by a dark gray, highlighted with red lines.
“So, you are looking for a visitor pass for both of you?” the unicorn asked as he finally spoke to us and looked me in the eye.
“Yes, that’s right,” I answered with a bit of confusion. Hadn’t the receptionist passed that on to him, and what had he been doing while we were in the office if not arranging the pass?
“Any idea how long you’ll be staying?” he asked, tapping a few keys on the terminal.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, “As long as it takes to accomplish what we came for.”
“So, indefinite then,” he said and began tapping on the terminal again, focusing his attention on the screen, “You both appear to be of sound health … take into account defensive factors … there we have it.”
“So, how much is it?” Rare Sparks asked.
“I can issue a visitor pass for the two of you for one hundred and sixty-eight contribution credits,” the pass dispensation officer said.
“So, what is that in caps?” I asked, getting more confused every time this pony spoke.
“There is no conversion rate,” he replied with a frown, “Black market exchange of contribution credits for bottle caps disqualifies you for a pass for eighty days, citizenship for two years, and party membership indefinitely.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, not wanting any of that, even if it didn’t all make sense to me, “How can we get contribution credits, then?”
“The Visitor Ministry offers several jobs in and around Traders’ Lane in exchange for contribution credits for those looking to obtain a visitor pass,” the pony said, as if reading off a script.
“Great, what jobs do you have available?” I asked, finally feeling like I understood what was going on. Work in exchange for something one wanted seemed universal in the Wasteland.
“Not my department,” the pass dispensation officer said with a shake of his head, “You’ll need to speak with a labor allocation officer for that.”
“And we could find them …?” I asked.
“You’re welcome to wait out front.”
***
After another long wait, we were finally able to meet with a labor allocation officer, who also sat behind a terminal and typed away, though she was more willing to talk to us. She found us a job in Traders’ Lane “fitting to our ability,” and printed out the details before sending us out to fulfill it. Our task, for which we’d receive 212 contribution credits, was to clear out an old hardware store in the north of Traders’ Lane that was full of mutated insects. I’d started my time in the Wasteland stomping bugs, so I had no concerns about completing the job.
The store, along with several in the area, had been boarded up and had fences and barriers erected around it to keep the pests away from ponies. The labor allocation officer had issued us a pair of bolt-cutters, and I levitated them with my magic to break the chain holding the scrap-metal gate closed. I drew my combat shotgun as I pushed open the door, and Rare Sparks prepped the shotgun on her armor. She wouldn’t be using her minigun or grenade launcher in here, not when the building was supposed to be used after we were done. That meant I also had to be careful not to use metal apples, but that would be overkill against bugs, so I wasn’t worried.
My EFS lit up with red spots the moment I stepped inside the store. The sound of skittering came from all around and radroaches converged on me, crawling along the walls, floors, and ceiling. My skin crawled as I cast SATS and fired my shotgun at the nearest mutated insects, and they surprisingly didn’t explode into paste after just one shot. With time slowed, I was able to observe my foes more closely, and saw that these were no ordinary radroaches. Their carapaces were thick and tough, almost like armor. It took at least three shots to break the shells and kill them, and SATS wore off far more quickly than I’d planned.
Rare and I fired madly around us as the bugs closed in. As I stopped to reload, I struck out with my forelegs to crush the oncoming swarm. My hooves alone were not enough to break their carapaces, and I had to make sure I struck them with the armored parts of my forelegs. Rare Sparks had no problem with this, crushing them with her Steel Ranger armor as she plowed forward.
I fired my shotgun all around me as I advanced, knocking one of the armored roaches off the ceiling before it could pounce on me. Soon, I had to reload again, and the radroaches somehow knew I was vulnerable. They launched themselves at me, and I tried to fend them off with my hooves, but it wasn’t enough. Letting my unloaded shotgun fall, I grabbed my machete and swung it around. The blade sliced through the undersides of a few of the bugs, but shattered into two as it struck one of their hardened carapaces.
I continued to flail around to keep the radroaches away, even using SATS to make things a bit easier, but there were just so many of them. As I backed up against a store shelf, I reached behind me for anything I could grab with my magic. A garden hoe was the first thing I found, and I swung it around until the blade got stuck in one of the armored radroaches, making it next to useless.
The next time I reached for something, I spun around to make sure I was getting something good and counted on my doctor’s coat to protect me. I was stunned at what was before me. A faded advertisement for something called a ripper plastered the wall, and a few of the devices were on display. If I had to describe the ripper, I’d say it looked like a cross between a sword and a chainsaw. Some of them had fuel tanks, but I reached for one that ran on microspark cells, praying that the one inserted wasn’t a dud for display purposes only.
A terrifying roar came from the ripper as I depressed the power button with my magic and it came to life, the blade spinning menacingly. I spun around at my attackers and came nearly face to face with an armored radroach. My new weapon easily sliced it in two, as if its armored shell hadn’t even existed. I swung the ripper through the air all around me, dismembering every nearby radroach until no more remained but a pile of body parts and goo.
My EFS was actually readable now, and all the remaining red spots were clustered around Rare Sparks. The Steel Ranger was nearby, having difficulty fighting off the bugs surrounding her. There were no more radroaches, but giant moths continually dive-bombed her helmet, their antennae glowing ominously. My PipBuck’s radiation counter clicked as I neared them, brandishing my ripper like a madpony.
“Rare! Don’t shoot me!” I called out to let the Steel Ranger know where I was, and tore into the radmoths.
My ripper dismembered them even more easily than the armored radroaches, though I took quite a bit of radiation poisoning from their glowing blood. Once my EFS was clear, I let the ripper wind down and found a carrying sheath for it while taking some RadAway. Though Rare and I were both coated in bug paste now, at least the job was done and we could return to the Visitor Ministry for our pass. I just hoped we wouldn’t have to wait too long to get our ticket into the PRS, and that the receptionist wouldn’t care if we stained the waiting seats with the remains of mutated insects.
Level Up
New Perk: Exterminator – Creatures of the Wasteland beware! You do +50% damage to all pests.
Caravan Saddlebags added: +50 carrying capacity
Weapon added: Ripper
New Quest: Beyond the Wall – Ask about Mr. Bucke within the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad
Barter +3 (30)
Energy Weapons +5 (64)
Medicine +1 (55)
Melee Weapons +5 (41)
Repair +2 (30)
Speech +1 (43)
Unarmed +3 (33)