//------------------------------//
// Chapter 24: Ponies' Republic 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: The Light Within 
// by FireOfTheNorth 
//------------------------------//


Chapter Twenty-Four: Ponies’ Republic


Rare Sparks and I encountered no further difficulty getting a visitor pass into the city. After a short wait, we were able to speak with the same pass dispensation officer. He told us that he had to confirm the job was done, but instead of sending somepony out to check, he made a phone call, which apparently was enough to confirm we weren’t lying. I hadn’t noticed any cameras around the hardware store, but apparently some were in existence. The city’s surveillance system was apparently just as impressive as Rio had claimed, which meant we were sure to find out where Mr. Bucke had gone.

We were issued our visitor pass at last, which took the form of a small booklet containing descriptive information about us, as well as plenty of numbers I didn’t understand. Our pass dispensation officer had the labor allocation officer who’d told us about the job at the hardware store stamp into it how many contribution credits we’d earned from that job. He’d then immediately stamped into it a new number after subtracting the cost of the pass. Between Rare and me, we had 44 contribution credits in total, which I still had no idea the value of. After being warned to keep it with us and stay together at all time, we were allowed to depart the Visitor Ministry. From there, it was only a short trot to the western gate of the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad.

“Halt!” a mare in combat armor ordered us as we approached, and trotted up to us as the other guards leveled magical energy weapons at us, “Visitor pass?”

I levitated the pass in front of her, and she flipped through it with her hoof.

“Very well,” the guard-pony said with an approving nod, “You’re free to move about the Western Block. Attempts to enter the Stacks or Primary Square will be punished severely. If you intend to stay the night, I suggest you seek out work at the Ministry of Labor, as temporary housing will not be allotted to you with your current balance of contribution credits.”

“I understand,” I told her, even though it was more piecing things together than literal understanding. What she’d said seemed to boil down to: stay in the Western Block, and you can’t afford a hotel room with what you have.

The guards relaxed as the mare motioned for them to stand down, and paid Rare and I no more heed as we trotted ahead. There was a large gate that could open up to let in wagons, but there was no need to do that for us. A smaller door was set into the gate, and it was wide enough to let Rare Sparks trot through in her armor.

I paused for a moment to take in the sight as we entered the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Buildings stretched off into the distance, the streets free from the rubble and garbage that littered the streets of downtown Vanhoover. Some of the buildings were merely reclaimed, like those in Traders’ Lane, but many of them were fully restored, like the Visitor Ministry. Stalliongrad was a city with strange architecture, something I’d noticed on the way in. Buildings from all different time periods and styles sat next to each other, as if they’d been replaced piecemeal over time. It was much the same here, except that there was another type of building I hadn’t seen anywhere else. It took me a bit to realize that these buildings were new; they’d been built after the War. Nowhere else had I seen genuine reconstruction matching the standards of the time before the megaspells, and it took my breath away. How prosperous and powerful was the PRS if they were rebuilding?

“I know it’s fascinating and all, but we should probably get to work,” Rare said without looking away from the sights.

I nodded my agreement and spared one last long look around us before forcing myself to move forward. I quickly became accustomed to the sights, though they were still a bit odd. My attention was redirected from the unfamiliar architecture to the unfamiliar residents. The ponies of the PRS were as different from the dwellers of other settlements as their city was. They moved about with purpose, in an orderly manner. Every one of them wore a gray Stable jumpsuit, and I wondered just how large the Stable they’d come from had been. Even before I’d left Stable 85, my jumpsuit had been relatively worn, since it had been passed down from pony to pony over the centuries because of the limited supply each Stable had. I tried to see what Stable they’d come from, but there were oddly no numbers on the backs.

“What is it?” Rare asked as I suddenly stopped in the middle of the street.

“I just realized that I have no idea who to talk to about if Mr. Bucke has been seen in Stalliongrad,” I said.

“Don’t worry, we’ve always found somepony in the know before. Hey, can I ask you a question?” Rare asked as she flagged down a pony about to trot past us, “Who’s in charge around here?”

“Chairpony Peach Cream?” the Stalliongrader said questioningly, finding it impossible to ignore a pony in power armor, “She’s the leader of the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad.”

“She’s probably not in the Western Block, though, is she?” Rare asked with a sigh and the Stalliongrader shook her head, “Is there somepony in the area we can talk to about what the city’s cameras have seen?”

“Why would you want to know that?” the mare said suspiciously.

“We’re looking for somepony. Somepony dangerous,” I said, “He’s somewhere in Stalliongrad and we need to track him down. Who can help us?”

“You could ask at the district ministry hall, I guess,” the Stalliongrader said with a shrug, though she was clearly still on edge and forcing herself to appear nonchalant, “It’s just down the street four blocks and north one block.”

“Thank you,” Rare expressed our gratitude, and we trotted off, not looking back to see our direction-giver hurry into a nearby building.


***


The district ministry hall was a restored office building near the center of the Western Block, right where our guide had said it would be. After it had been fixed up, the PRS may have removed all signage and replaced it with new signs proclaiming it to be the “Western Block Ministry Hall,” but my PipBuck still recognized it as “Stapler Bay Office Supplies.” It was strange how it sometimes gave me the old name for places and other times gave me the new name, like Burnside or Traders’ Lane.

Like at the Visitor Ministry, we were unable to accomplish what we’d come for right away. Upon entering the building, we had to wait in line to speak to a pony at a counter. After hearing what we had to say, she gave us a number and told us to take a seat and wait. Then, after some time, our number was called, and we went into a side room to speak to a “placement officer,” where we again explained why we’d come here. The placement officer told us to wait again while she located the appropriate pony to speak to us.

We were still waiting (I in rather uncomfortable office seating) when a chocolate-coated unicorn trotted up to us. His Stable jumpsuit was slightly different than every other one I’d seen thus far. There were shoulder boards on the uniform, bearing insignias similar to the ones on the collars of the other officers we’d spoken to, and the collar had a number on it printed in the font Stable-Tec seemed to prefer: 124. The other ponies in the room (except for another visitor like us) looked at him with respect and deference.

“Doc and Rare Sparks, I presume?” he said as he ran a hoof though his carefully-groomed teal mane, “If you would come with me.”

He didn’t seem like the kind of pony who’d be selected for us to speak to, and I wondered if we’d be surrendering the progress we’d made speaking to the minor officers if we went with him. This could be even better, though, since he was clearly somepony of at least moderate importance. He looked at us expectantly for a few seconds until I rose, and he immediately turned and began trotting away. We followed him through the office building’s halls, Rare Sparks’ armor making a good deal of noise. Mercifully, she’d been able to make some minor adjustments to soften the armor’s steps so that she wouldn’t tear up the restored floors of the building, and we made it to an elevator without mishap. The elevator strained slightly to lift a Steel Ranger but managed to make it to the sixth floor all the same.

“I hope you don’t mind me asking, but who are you?” I asked as we entered a spacious office with plenty of windows.

“Not at all, it’s a perfectly valid question,” the unicorn said with a laugh as he sat behind a desk and motioned for us to make ourselves comfortable, “I am Strict Step, district morale officer for the Western Block. Although I’m technically outranked by the district party officer, everypony around here acknowledges that I’m the true leader of the district. I wouldn’t expect a newcomer to know that, of course.”

“So, we’re supposed to speak to you about our issue?” I asked in disbelief, “Not that I’m complaining about being sent right to the top, but it just doesn’t seem likely.”

“Quite right,” Strict Step said, laughing again, “I’m sure the officers at the Visitor Ministry and downstairs gave you the runaround, and that’s quite common, but I’ve never been one for adhering strictly to the rules when they get in the way of doing my job, especially when I have the power to contradict them. The two of you caught my interest. Besides being a peculiar pair, even for Outsiders, you’ve made the oddest request, one that caused a fair bit of alarm in both citizens and party members. So, you want to know about our surveillance, do you?”

“Is that a problem?” I asked, tensing up, and I exchanged a look with Rare.

“It could be, if you don’t understand what you’re asking about,” Strict Step said as he leaned forward on the desk and put his hooves together, “In any similar circumstance, there would be reason to have you detained or thrown out of the city, but you seem single-mindedly focused on one goal. Who is this Mr. Bucke you’re searching for?”

“He’s been going around Vanhoover recruiting raiders and slavers to his ‘Northern Light Coalition,’” I explained, “He’s also tried to recruit settlements, and the ones that refused were attacked by an army of raiders or destroyed by a megaspell.”

“A megaspell? Really?” Strict Step said, that catching his interest.

“Also, he’s recruited the Black Skulls, one of the largest mercenary forces in Vanhoover,” Rare added, “It looks almost as if he’s building an army, maybe even to try to wipe out the remaining settlements and take over the city. Now that he’s in Stalliongrad, he might try the same thing here.”

“I see,” Strict Step said as he leaned back in his chair, “Well, I don’t see any need to call for emergency measures. He is not a threat to the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad.”

“But what about the other settlements?” Rare objected to the stallion’s disregard, “If they don’t fall to him, then they’ll join him, and you could find all of Stalliongrad pressing in on you.”

“Even if all the raiders and settlements of Stalliongrad joined against us, they would not break through our wall or have a prayer of conquering us,” Strict Step said confidently, “Every settlement in the city knows that, even Railyard, who stubbornly continues to fight us in a conflict they’ll inevitably lose.”

“You can’t just sit here and do nothing,” I said.

“I think you’ll find that we can,” Strict Step said, “But, we’ve gone down this path for too long. It is not that I am unfeeling toward your cause, but the Ponies’ Republic cannot become directly involved.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means that if you intend to stop Mr. Bucke, you will have to do it on your own. Our government will not take any steps it does not feel are in its best interest, and I would not recommend that supporting this cause would be,” the district morale officer replied, “I would like to help, but not in any official capacity.”

“So, where does that leave us with finding out if you’ve seen Mr. Bucke in Stalliongrad?” Rare asked.

“I can’t help you with that,” Strict Step said plainly, “You understand that we cannot disclose the information our surveillance officers gather to an outsider, and we cannot expend the labor to search for your Mr. Bucke unless it is an emergency. You seem to be in a rush, otherwise I would suggest an accelerated path to citizenship or even party membership before asking again, which I’d help with, of course. Even in a state as successful as our own, there will always be need for the contribution of doctors.”

“Oh, I’m not actually a doctor,” I said, wondering how he could have mistaken me for one with the pieces of armor I was wearing overtop of the doctor’s coat, along with my many weapons, “Actually, truth be told, I’m much better with terminals than I am with a syringe.”

“Really,” Strict Step said, wheels turning behind his eyes, “How good are you?”

“I’m pretty good,” I said, trying to appear modest, but realizing that that wasn’t what was going to be best here, “Rare is the occasion I haven’t been able to hack a terminal.”

“Very interesting. I may be able to help you out after all,” Strict said as he picked up the telephone on his desk and raised it to his ear, “Get me the Minister of Morale.”


***


“Everything has its price,” Strict Step had told me, though with the caveat that it was something Wastelanders like me would say. Apparently, the saying didn’t translate well to a society where ponies “turned in” their contribution credits for goods instead of buying things with caps. I wasn’t able to pick up much from his half of the conversation with the PRS’s Minister of Morale, but he explained on the way to Primary Square.

I was separated from Rare Sparks again, though this time it was voluntary. Because of my terminal hacking skills (which I hoped were sufficient enough to warrant this special treatment), I would be given an exception and allowed into Primary Square. Rare would be staying behind in the Western Block (with our visitor pass) until I returned from my task (hopefully with new information on Mr. Bucke). We parted at the gate to Primary Square, and I passed through with Strict Step and two armed guards.

In exchange for questioning of the surveillance officers, I was to hack the maneframes of Stalliongrad’s Ministry of Morale. At first, Strict Step’s explanation confused me, until I grasped the difference between the PRS’s Morale Ministry and the Wartime Ministry of Morale. When the residents of Stable 124 emerged into the Wasteland, one of the first buildings they took control of was the old MoM hub, and now it was the head office for their Morale Ministry, of which Strict Step was an officer. Stalliongrad’s Ministry of Morale had isolated their maneframes from each other, and the PRS had only been able to hack some of them over the years, such as the one controlling the surveillance system.

The Western Block had been impressive, but Primary Square was even more so. During the War, this part of the city had been the heart of Vanhoover, and fully restored skyscrapers were prevalent. In the distance, I even thought I saw the skeletons of new towers rising up. In the midst of these skyscrapers was one more nondescript tower with “MORALE MINISTRY” above the door. Clearly, they’d just removed the “OF” and swapped the words of the original sign. I was closely escorted through the building and down to the basement.

The maneframes loomed large, towers covered in blinking lights arranged in neat rows. I felt a chill as fans ventilated the room. There were three maneframes that the ponies of the PRS had not yet hacked, and I got to work under the watchful eyes of Strict Step and his guards. True to the MoM’s paranoia, the maneframes were securely locked down, and it took time to break into them, but soon I had two unlocked.

The third proved to be even trickier than the first two, and I wondered what secrets it could possibly hold to warrant such security. At last, I managed to crack it and breathed a sigh of relief as I bypassed its login and was taken to a menu screen. That relief instantly turned to horror, however, as the screen flashed, and a new message was displayed.

!!--WARNING--!!--UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED--!!--WARNING--!!
Locating access point… Maneframe Vault
Isolating access point and deploying neurotoxin… 

The door we’d entered from locked and sealed itself, and the ventilation system began to hiss, a faint fog emerging from the vents.

“What did you do?” Strict Step asked as he pushed me aside to look at the screen.

I fumbled in my saddlebags and retrieved the gas mask I’d acquired at Vanhoover’s Ministry of Morale Hub, pulling it over my face. Pushing Strict Step out of the way, I desperately began typing. My gas mask might save me, but it couldn’t hold out forever, and neither could the other three ponies in the room with me. There had to be some way to disable this secondary security system I’d tripped, and I had to find it fast.

“Ach!” Strict Step said as he cast a spell to preserve the air around his and his comrades’ heads and sparks arced off his horn, “The gas has a magic-interference agent in it too. You’d better hurry up.”

I worked as hard as I could, combing the spell matrix looking for a backdoor. There had to be one somewhere; there had to be! Finally, I located the way in, but didn’t rush into it. I’d been tripped up by one hidden security system today, and my caution paid off. If I’d hacked into the system in that way, I would’ve triggered a building-wide defense system. After disabling that, I returned to my main goal and turned off the neurotoxin. The vents kicked into overdrive to remove the poisonous gas from the room. I carefully picked my way through the rest of the spell matrix, disabling the many traps in the system, while the room cleared out, and then unsealed the doors.

“What was all that?” Strict Step asked as he approached me, and I removed my gas mask.

“This maneframe has all kinds of hidden security like I’ve never seen before,” I told him, “I should have gotten it all now, but whatever is stored here has got to be pretty amazing.”

“Well, I’d hope so,” Strict Step said, looking at the vents in an untrustworthy manner, “Let’s have a look.”

This maneframe was primarily used for storage, and the menu took me to directory after directory filled with files. When I tried to open one, however, all I got was a screen of random gibberish. I tried again with several files stored in several different locations on the maneframe, but the result was always the same. It didn’t make any sense. I dove back into the spell matrix and confirmed that everything was in working order. Nothing was corrupted, but the files were all completely unreadable. Eventually, I found the reason. Buried within the system was the option to run a decryption utility on the files, but it required a key that there was no way around.

“So, that’s it?” Strict Step said with disappointment, “You didn’t need any other passwords to get in; can’t you just do what you did before?”

“No, I can’t,” I said, “It uses the decryption key to decrypt the files. It can’t do anything without it.”

“Could you just try different keys to see if they work?” he asked.

“After two incorrect attempts, the maneframe will wipe itself, and I can’t bypass that,” I said, “Also, there’s no way you’ll be able to guess the key; it’s a sequence of 128 characters. Sorry, but unless you find someplace where it was recorded, these files are going to remain encrypted.”

“Maybe something was found when we were first moving in,” one of the guards spoke up.

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it,” Strict Step said pessimistically, “Well, at least you got the other maneframes unlocked, and we didn’t die in a cloud of poisonous gas. I’d say you earned the right to hear if Mr. Bucke was seen around or not. Let’s head on upstairs and see what the surveillance officers had to say.”


***


Before we’d gone down to the basement, I’d described Mr. Bucke in detail to a morale officer, who’d taken that information to the Morale Ministry’s surveillance officers, who I wasn’t allowed to meet. Really, it was probably that they didn’t want me seeing their surveillance setup, since they knew I was good with computers (the whole reason I was even allowed in the building). When we returned to the ground floor, the same morale officer had the results of her questioning. Mr. Bucke had been seen recently around the settlement of Railyard. Strict Step hadn’t seemed surprised, and I’d remembered him talking about the settlement as one of the PRS’s enemies.

Nevertheless, that was where Rare Sparks and I were headed to get answers on Mr. Bucke. Railyard was located to the south of the PRS, along a stretch of train tracks that had split off from the main line through the city. According to Strict Step, it had been built in an old train yard filled with freight cars and dead locomotives. To get there, we exited through Traders’ Lane and followed the wall before turning south.

We were trotting through a particularly ruined section of the city just south of the PRS’s wall when a bullet whizzed past my head. I immediately cast SATS and used the spell to locate the nearby raider preparing to fire another shot with her rifle. The spell was reaching its end by the time I drew my magical energy rifle, but I still managed to get off a shot that struck true and turned her to ash.

Scattered fire from rifles and pistols came from a building with only one wall standing, and I dove for cover among the shattered buildings. Rare fired a few grenades, but the red pips remained on my EFS, only a few taken out by the explosions at this distance. Suddenly, machine gun fire came from past the raiders, and the tics disappeared from my EFS one-by-one. Other tics took their place, these flashing between red and green, undecided.

“Show yourselves or we’ll assume you’re raiders!” a mare yelled across the distance.

There wasn’t much else to do without making them fully hostile for sure, so Rare and I trotted out from behind our respective rubble heaps. The ponies facing us were a ragtag band wearing raider armor, but they didn’t look like raiders. For one thing, they were far too clean, and their weapons were in better repair.

“A Steel Ranger!” the leader, a unicorn, said as she holstered the pistol she’d been levitating and engaged the firing bit for her battle saddle, which held a powerful-looking rifle.

“Easy!” Rare Sparks said, looking ready to bolt, “I’m not from the Stalliongrad contingent; I’m from Vanhoover!”

“She’s with me!” I added, though I didn’t know how much good it would do, since they didn’t know who I was either. It seemed to relax them a little, anyway.

“Gully, don’t you see who this is?” the leader’s earth pony lieutenant asked, “That’s the Wasteland Doctor.”

“Well, I’ll be,” she said in surprise as she let her firing bit fall, “That explains it. What it doesn’t explain is what you’re doin’ in Red Square.”

“Red Square?” I asked, before checking my PipBuck to see that it had indeed labeled the area as such.

“Riiight, you’re from Vanhoover,” Gully said with an understanding nod, “Red Square is what we call this bombed-out section of blocks where the PRS and us have fought countless battles. Red on account of all the blood, you see.”

I looked around, and maybe there were more bloodstains than usual on the rubble, but I’d tuned that out a long time ago. The Wasteland was covered in bloodstains stretching back well over a century, and it was just part of the scenery now, as gruesome as that seemed.

“So, you’re from Railyard, then,” I put the pieces together, “If you don’t mind me asking, why are you dressed like raiders?”

“So’s we can get close to the wall undetected,” Gully explained, “If we came dressed in our usual clothes, the PRS snipers’d get us, but they don’t pay no mind to the raiders. Now, I answered your question, I think you should finally answer mine. What are you doing out here?”

“We were looking for you, actually,” I said, “We wanted to ask if a certain pony named Mr. Bucke stopped by recently, maybe talked to you about the Northern Lights Coalition?”

Gully’s face creased into a frown at the mention of the Northern Lights Coalition, but she didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

“I think you’d better speak to our leader, Scattershot, about that,” Gully said, “We should get moving. Stick around talking to you here any longer, and the snipers might get wise.”


***


It wasn’t terribly far to Railyard from Red Square, but we’d spent a good portion of the day in the PRS, and the cloud cover was beginning to darken by the time we arrived at the settlement. As Strict Step had told us, Railyard was built in an old train yard, and the ground was covered by tracks running in parallel. Boxcars still on the tracks with scrap between them served as the town’s wall, and Gully led us in through a car that looked just like all the others, except that the doors would open and it wasn’t filled with mines. The tracks were just as plentiful within the settlement as without, and various types of train cars and locomotives sat on them, turned into homes by the settlement’s residents. At the center of the yard was a depot office, and it was here that we were led.

“Ey, Scattershot!” Gully called as she tapped on the depot door with a hoof, “Got some visitors with questions for you!”

“Come on in!” a mare’s voice called back, and Gully nodded to us before trotting off to change out of her ranger attire.

I opened the door with my magic, turning the scratch-covered handle. The depot had been turned into a cozy home for the town’s leader, the furniture a mix of scavenged pieces and repurposed train car parts. Magical energy rifles and shotguns were propped up in a rack near the door for easy access. What caught my attention most, however, was our hostess.

Standing in the kitchen, her tail swaying back and forth, was a griffin. She was busily grilling a radhog, a creature I’d only recently discovered upon our foray into Stalliongrad. My stomach flipped as I thought of her intentions for the meat. The Stable-dweller’s Survival Guide on my PipBuck had advised me that even ponies could digest meat to an extent and it could be useful if no other food was available, but thankfully it had never come to that for me. Sitting at a nearby table were two teenage griffins playing a card game, one male and one female. Three griffins, likely mother and children, just like the ones we’d met entering the city, except in vastly different circumstances. I realized that I’d encountered situations similar to this all the time, but never realized it before because of my blindness to ponies.

“Why don’t you take a seat?” Scattershot asked as she looked at us, somehow smiling with her beak, “Well, one of you can, at least. I’m afraid I don’t have anything that wouldn’t buckle under the weight of Steel Ranger armor.”

Following the claw pointed over her shoulder, I took a seat at the table with the younger griffins, and Rare Sparks stood nearby. We hadn’t been waiting long when she walked over carrying plates loaded with seared flesh and sat them down in front of the other griffins. The griffin next to me pushed his plate out of the way, almost directly in front of me, and I tried to maintain my composure.

“Now, make some room for our guests,” Scattershot said as she pushed the plate away from me and back in front of him, “We’ve got a full house here, tonight.”

“Aw, c’mon Mom!” the griffin exclaimed as he dropped his cards, “Why you gotta tell her my hand all the time?”

“You’re not the only one she does it to,” his sister said with a frown as she placed her cards to the side and centered her plate in front of her.

“Forgive my fledglings’ manners,” Scattershot said as she sat down at the table across from Rare and me with her own plate of radhog, “This is Gertrude and Gustav, and you likely already know I’m Scattershot, leader of this settlement.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Rare said, before pausing and looking at the teenagers tearing into their meat, “And your family.”

“So, what can I help you with?” Scattershot asked as she stabbed a knife into her own serving.

“We’re looking for a Mr. Bucke. Skinny earth pony; white coat, brown mane; wears an old business suit,” I explained, “We know he’s been in the area recently and wondered if he stopped in to try to persuade you to join the Northern Lights Coalition.”

“I’ve never seen anypony by that description, but we know about the Northern Lights Coalition,” Scattershot said, her eyes narrowing, “What’s your relation to this?”

“We’re trying to take him down, stop him,” Rare said, “He’s already destroyed at least one settlement in Vanhoover, and we can’t let him do it again.”

“What do you know about the NLC?” I asked when Rare’s answer seemed to satisfy the griffin, “So far, we’ve really only been able to piece things together from what we’ve seen.”

“About a year ago, a pony came to us offering the chance to join the Northern Lights Coalition—not your Mr. Bucke, another pony named Clear Rivers—but we turned it down,” Scattershot said, “Railyard has stood alone against the PRS for years, and we had no desire to be integrated into a ‘new Equestrian order.’ There’s plenty of settlements, raiders, and slavers who did, though. I don’t know how, but the NLC seems to have an endless supply of microspark generators, water talismans, and advanced weapons. They’ve also got real, healthyseeds! Can you imagine? Being able to grow actual crops instead of the stunted, mutated garbage we have now? It was almost too much to pass up, but it requires submission to ‘Lord Lamplight,’ whoever he is. He’s supposedly the NLC’s leader, but nopony we’ve talked to has ever seen him, except for Clear Rivers. Those radio towers they put up in every town allow you to communicate between fellow settlements, but they also have all those cameras attached to them. In exchange for power, clean water, and healthy crops, you have to let the NLC watch you constantly and have to follow any order they give at any time. That’s not something we were ever going to do, so we refused. Soon after, we found ourselves attacked more often than usual by raiders, extremely well-equipped raiders.”

“Sounds like a familiar story,” I said, thinking back to what had happened with Crate City, “Do you have any idea where the Northern Light’s Coalition is headquartered?”

“Not a clue,” Scattershot said with a shake of her head, “It’s not in Stalliongrad, at least the main one’s not. I’ve heard tell of a base of operations somewhere north of the PRS, but that’s about it. Your best bet might be to just look around for a settlement or raider gang that’s part of the NLC and get some answers from them.”

I sighed. We were back to where we were before, then. Mr. Bucke had vanished without a trace, as he seemed most adept at doing. If the only way to find him was to keep hunting down the NLC, then that's what we’d have to do. We also had gained some new information on the Northern Lights Coalition, and with it, new targets to help in hunting down Mr. Bucke. Lord Lamplight I’d already highly suspected of being involved, but Clear Rivers was new. Could he be another of the code words I’d seen on Mr. Bucke’s terminal at Sunny Side Radio? Only time would reveal the truth. Time, and likely lots of dead raiders.


***


After our conversation with Scattershot about the NLC, she invited us to stay the night. We weren’t short on caps, but it was still a welcome offer, since I had no idea what kind of rented rooms one could get in this settlement (probably train cars.) She even fixed us a meal, thankfully without meat. I had no idea why the ponies of the PRS seemed to despise Railyard so much, but it seemed the feeling was mutual. Red Square wasn’t the only place the blood of both settlements had been spilled; the two towns had a history of conflict stretching back to almost immediately after the ponies of Stable 124 had emerged into the Wasteland, according to Scattershot, who told us of all the great battles and terrible acts of the PRS. I imagined that they probably had similar stories about the Railyard, given how long and bloody this war was, but I kept my mouth shut. No need to offend our hostess, who was incredibly kind and giving toward us.

In the morning, we left Railyard and headed back north. My (according to my PipBuck) mediocre luck may have been a factor in how often I randomly ran into raiders in the Wasteland. Normally, I’d consider that a con, but it could serve a positive cause now. If the only way to find Mr. Bucke was to find NLC raiders, at least we probably wouldn’t have to wait long.

To loop around the PRS, we took a more westerly route than the one we’d taken in the opposite direction. We were passing through an area of housing blocks when I caught a flash of color in the distance. What was bizarre was that no pony could have been in that position without flying, and whatever I’d seen was too bright to be a griffin. A pegasus? Maybe Rare had been wrong about the Grand Pegasus Enclave coming down, or maybe it was another scouting party.

“Hey, I think I just saw a pegasus over-” I began to tell my Steel Ranger companion but stopped short as what I’d only glimpsed before revealed itself.

Though at first glance, the being could be mistaken for a pony, it was far taller than anypony I’d met in my travels. Its coat was a bright orange, and it glided down toward us on wings covered in feathers of the same color. From its forehead jutted a long, slender unicorn horn. An alicorn.

But … how? This was impossible! Or was it? Once before I’d been forced to question whether alicorns had existed besides the Goddesses, and the answer had been yes. Cadence was an alicorn, but not a Goddess, so surely this creature nearing us was the same. Still, what was an alicorn doing here of all places, and what did it want from us?

I got the answer to the second question as a blinding beam of energy lanced out at us from the tip of its horn, igniting a fire trail as it swung the beam around us. Rare and I both managed to avoid being immolated, but it was a shocking experience. We’d met an alicorn, and it was trying to kill us. So transfixed had I been, that I hadn’t thought to check my EFS. The alicorn was marked as hostile, and there were several other hostile marks moving in around us. My jaw dropped as I spotted several other alicorns approaching, surrounding us.

How were we supposed to fight this? How were we supposed to fight alicorns? Would our weapons even work against them? If anything would, it would be Rare’s minigun and grenade launcher, and I had nothing similar. I reached for the metal pear in my saddlebags. Maybe that would do it. If all else failed, my ripper might be able to tear through their flesh, though it would put me dangerously close to them.

I realized that I’d been sitting here for longer than it should have taken for the alicorns to finish us off. I cautiously rose to my hooves and saw that the orange alicorn that had attacked us was now shaking and pawing at its head, as if trying to dislodge something from its mind. The other alicorns around us had landed but were making no moves to attack, although they were still marked as hostile by EFS. Several of them were staring at the orange alicorn, their eyes half-closed, and one with a coat of deep blue stared at me.

“Why are you here with the armored one?” it inquired imperiously, the voice deep and majestic.

“She’s … my friend,” I said, not knowing how else to reply as I stared into eyes that whirled like galaxies.

“The armored ones do not make friend. That is not their way,” the alicorn said authoritatively, “But I sense something between you. Explain it, and maybe …”

The alicorn’s voice trailed off as his gaze became incredibly distant. I thought, just for a moment, that I could see another face reflected in his eyes, and his form seemed to shimmer. Others in the circle surrounding us turned with concerned expressions and took on the half-lidded gaze of the ones staring at the orange alicorn. I had no idea what was going on, but it was incredibly strange.

Mechanical roars suddenly filled the air from miniguns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, and grenade miniguns. I ducked for cover and pulled by doctor’s coat tightly around me as I saw an alicorn blown to pieces by a rocket. Carnage flew over my head, and I had only EFS to tell me what was going on as I stared at the cracked concrete. The red pips were disappearing, one by one. I heard magic being discharged and mechanically augmented screams, but soon there was silence.

When I looked up, I saw that Rare and I were still surrounded, now by Steel Rangers. Their weapons didn’t leave much in way of remains, so there were no alicorn corpses, only scattered pieces of flesh coating the area. As I looked around, I spotted two dead Steel Rangers, one leaking out of armor that had been magically compressed, another sliced nearly in half. The Rangers at the moment seemed more interested in making sure no more alicorns were around than in Rare and I, so I trotted over to join my friend, who looked incredibly nervous.

“Rare Sparks, long time no see. Still not wearing your helmet, huh?” one of the Steel Rangers asked as he trotted up to us.

“Nice to see you again,” Rare replied tensely.

“Well, I can’t exactly say the feeling is mutual for everypony. Both of you are coming with us,” the Steel Ranger said as their pips on my EFS flipped to hostile.

Not again.

Level Up
New Perk: Quick Draw – The time it takes to draw and fire your weapon is greatly reduced.
New Quest: The Stalliongrad Contingent – You’ve been captured by Steel Rangers … again. Find a way out of this.
Energy Weapons +3 (67)
Science +8 (100) [Max Level Reached]
Sneak +2 (59)
Speech +7 (50)