Fallout: Equestria - Resistance

by tom117z


6 - The Factory

Chapter Six: The Factory

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”


Well, Fillydelphia. I have nothing but bad memories of that particular city. Last time I was there I was thrown into a slave pit for gladiatorial combat. I watched people fight for the entertainment of slaves and slavers alike, all in the dim hopes of earning freedom and their own lives. I watched those hopes fade as they died one by one until I myself was forced to fight one of my future friends to the death.

I choked her out, and I then saved her life. And then she saved me. That was generally how it went between Xenith and me.

From what I heard, even under new management, the industrial capabilities of Fillydelphia still ran on the power of the downtrodden and oppressed. Only they didn’t call themselves slavers, even if they did the exact same fucking thing Red Eye did when he was alive.

I was almost relieved to find out I wouldn’t be heading into the city itself. Oh, I could see it far in the distance. The glow of industry and the haze of smokestacks rising high into the sky.

But as we sat on a hill overlooking the city, we could also see something much closer, built close enough to receive the full industrial capability of the factories but far enough to be away from the normal pony, and anyone otherwise non-Enclave affiliated.

There, standing on its own a ways below us, was the Hades Tank Factory itself.

And, sitting outside, there were rows upon rows of the death machines all waiting to stomp everything good left in this fucked up wasteland down into the ground.

Dear Celestia, there were so many…

“So, that’s where we gotta go,” Liberty Bell mused to herself, before looking at the rest of us with a huge grin. “Hey, this could be fun!”

“We have very different ideas of fun,” Coffin retorted.

The mare just gave a cute pout. “Hey, I’m just being positive! So, we need our way in.”

Right, that was the next issue on our long list of said issues. Of course, we had the stealth cloaks, but seeing how our stealth missions usually went I wasn’t feeling all that confident that one of us wouldn't bump into the most heavily armed soldier in the entire wasteland somewhere down the line.

It didn’t really help that, beyond the various Hades Tanks that were lined up, there was a fuck ton of other Enclave stuff all waiting to blow up the happy-go-lucky resistance team that wants to try and get in.

Cerberus Tanks. Enclave soldiers. Veritbucks. The lot, really. The entire facility was also completely surrounded by a high fence, and the only way in on land seemed to be a few roads leading to and from some heavily defended gates.

Maybe I could levitate myself over the fence… I’d have to push my magic as far as I could, but maybe…

No, Littlepip, that would be stupid. Maybe Stripe has some of those zebra bat wing talisman things?

Nah, she would have said something by now.

“The only way we’re getting in is through one of those gates,” Coffin noted like he could read my mind or something. Why do ponies always do that? “We’re going to need those cloaks.”

“Waaay ahead of you,” Liberty remarked, levitating out the cloaks and hoofing one to each of us. “I say wait for a convey to head in, we might be able to jump on and trojan horse this bitch.”

Trojan what?

Stripe, meanwhile, retrieved her sniper rifle and started to scan the facility from left to right. This went on for a good few minutes before the zebra mare just gave a grunt and lifted her head away from the scope.

“Only a few power armour units are outside, but more are certainly within the building,” she stated. “Alas, there are plenty of other Enclave soldiers patrolling each minute. Most around the factory, only a seldom squad moves through the field of tanks.”

“Any of those smaller tanks active right now?” Coffin asked.

“Idle. But won’t remain so if we are seen. However, I do spy that each present tank is connected to a fuel line leading all the way into the factory itself.”

“A fuel line, huh…”

“Something we can use?” I asked the others. I guess that would make a big enough boom to take these things out? Though if their armour is supposed to be stable door thick…

“If their connected, a chain reaction might reach the interiors of each tank, destroy them from the inside out,” Liberty Bell noted, answering those doubts of mine. “Issue is, how do we start that reaction?”

“We’ll need a big explosion to kick it all off,” Coffin said, humming to himself. “Well, maybe detonating the factory’s reactor would do the trick? We need to take that out anyway as well as the tanks.”

“That could work if the system runs through the factory itself. Let’s call it in back to Mum.”

“On it,” Coffin confirmed, bringing up his PegWing and tuning it in. “Command, you read?”

A moment of silence, and then an answer.

“Yes, we hear you, Coffin,” Life Bloom’s voice emerged through my earpiece, and I guess through the others’ as well. “Silver Bell and I are getting a little nervous back here, how was the trip?”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle, even if Junction R-7 isn’t exactly top of my vacation spot list,” the unicorn stallion replied. “But we’re overlooking the place now. It’s as sealed up tight as we knew it to be, though it looks like all the tanks are connected to a fuel line. We could use it to blow up the entire production before they see action.”

“...Sounds good to us. We can’t let these things be used.”

“Uh, about that…” Liberty Bell chimed in. “We probably should have called it in earlier, actually. But we ran into one of these things on the way here. Some poor ponies were used as combat tests.”

“Ah, I see…” His voice paused for a moment, and I could imagine him biting his lip. “Well, that’s two confirmed out and about, then. One back here and one being tested. This is bad, we need to make sure the others don’t get out of that factory.”

“We’ll get it done. Don’t worry.”

“Do you have a way in?” Silver Bell’s voice joined the conversation.

“Stealth cloaks and hitchhiking, we’re just waiting on a target now,” Coffin informed them.

“Alright then, proceed,” she ordered.

“And be careful,” Life Bloom amended, just before the line was cut.

And those were the last words anyone said for the next hour.

We just sat on that hill, waiting in a tense silence as we watched the road leading far from the factory. Tense, and definitely increasingly boring. Still, there wasn’t much more to say. Or maybe there was, but I don’t think anyone wanted to miss spotting any incoming Enclave because we were talking about which two hundred-year-old canned food tasted better.

Oh yeah, I was getting hungry as well. I made sure to fix that as well.

It all still tastes like ass, by the way.

And then, finally, distant lights and rumbles indicated the arrival of exactly what we were looking for.

“Convey, coming up to the factory,” Coffin quietly said. “Cloaks on, now!”

I gave my assigned cloak a glance. I’d seen one up close he last time I was in Fillydelphia, though it’d been damaged and unusable, much to Xenith’s disappointment. I’d been a little curious what it’d be like to wear one.

I levitated the garment onto my back and secured the strap around my neck.

And all at once my entire body seemed to shimmer and vanish, as did the others.

Ah, I’m suddenly seeing a flaw in this plan…

“Um, how are we going to see each other?” I asked my invisible cohorts.

“Ngh, just try and stay close,” Coffin answered from nowhere. This was going to be a pain in my flank, wasn’t it? “Down to the road, jump onto the last truck. If you miss, there’s no second chance.”

Pressure, Coffin! Enough with the pressure!

Still, I’d worn StealthBucks before, and this wasn’t that much different. I stumbled my way down the hill and made it to the road, hoping I was waiting right next to the others as the small line of trucks got closer. If I was seeing right, each one seemed to be operated by exclusively earth ponies, each vehicle looking more like refurbished pre-war gear than new Enclave made stuff now that I think about it.

Nice to know they’re still having to cut corners and used some old scavenged parts.

The convey got closer, and definitely would have seen us by now if not for the cloaks. Each one had a large tarp covering something on the trailers they carried. Still, the first one reached us and passed by without an issue. As did the second and third. The fourth was the final one went by and was followed only by another scavenged pre-war vehicle, this time what looked like some kind of armoured car.

Maybe they kept the new and shiny stuff for all the important bits, and used pre-war tech for smaller roles?

Eh, thoughts for later.

The final truck reached me, and I made sure to jump just as it was passing by.

I’m pretty sure I only stuck the landing because of my magic, and dear Celestia’s pointy nipples I never want to do that again! Seriously, when I hit the truck there was a moment where I slipped and swore I was about to fall and go under the wheels of the car behind us. Luckily, I managed to grab onto one of the straps keeping the tarp secure and settled myself on the edges of the flatbed trailer.

I hope the others made the jump.

I guess I would find out, as during my flailing the convoy had crossed through the rest of the road and made it all the way up to gate.

Moment of truth, let’s see if my old luck still holds out…

The convoy pulled up to the gate, and I had to hold on tight to not be dislodged by the breaking action. Peering over to the security, one of the guards was talking to the driver of the first truck while a couple others began to circle the entire line of vehicles. I held my breath, not daring to even breath as they passed me.

Luckily, they barely gave a glance to the trailer I was on before moving on to have a few words with the escort behind us. I can’t really tell if they just saw nothing or didn’t look due to monotony and boredom. I mean, I’d like to think both. But-

Okay, that jolt just then reminded me that I should probably be paying attention. Sheesh, I’d be about as good as those bored guards…

Still, the convoy moved past the gate as I gave a sigh of relief. And then shut my fucking mouth because knowing my stealth track record this I really shouldn’t be taking chances!

Okay, maybe I’m taking it a bit far. But still, I do have a point, don’t I?

Ugh, fuck it. I just needed to see whether the others had made it okay.

The convoy was now well and truly in, and we passed by a couple of outer buildings that had various ponies all milling around doing whatever it is they do. We didn’t spend much time there to look, though, and kept going onto we reached a large open shutter that led into a big garage where a couple more trucks like these were already stored. Only they’d had whatever they were carrying offloaded, maybe our way out if the timing is good?

I guess we’ll find out.

The trucks split off, all pulling into their individual parking spots. The armoured car diverged from us and pulled up outside the entranceway, the soldiers all piling out and approaching the ponies running the trucks as they did the same.

I just stayed perfectly still. Let them do their thing and they’d be none the wiser, right? Stealth mission, Pip. No rushing in, no rushing in…

I waited until some of their numbers had departed, and then slowly edged myself along the flatbed car while feeling into a hoof.

I heard a small squeak as my hoof hit something soft, and- Shit! That’s a flank! That’s a flank!

“S-sorry!” I breathed out, hoping I hadn’t just earned a punch!

“I-it’s okay, just, um…” Oh, it’s Liberty Bell’s flank! I mean, her’s is a nice flank, but… Dear Celestia, I just made the awkwardness between us twenty million percent worse. I’m glad the cloak was hiding my blush…

Silver Bell was going to hang my by my spleen, and then Homage would just look disappointed. Or teasing. Or both. Oh, the horror!

“If you two are finished,” I heard Coffin whisper in amusement. “You here, Stripe?”

“I am.”

“Good, let’s hop off this thing and figure out our next move.”

Yes. Job. Let’s do that… thing before I… Ah, I was so dead!

Anyway, getting down from the trailer…

I hopped onto the floor, hearing a few subdued thuds next to me as the others did the same. I gave a quick glance around, the few Enclave ponies around us still look none the wiser. I felt somepony grab onto me, and I let myself be led out of the garage and around the corner between the armoured car and the wall. Said vehicle was now empty, thankfully, and we had a nice bit of privacy for the moment.

“Alright, we’re in,” Coffin said. “Now we just need a plan of action.”

Right, a plan. Another thing I wasn’t particularly great at. But oh well, here goes!

For starters, we’d talked about that fuel line, so we needed to know if that ran close enough to the reactor to start a chain event if it detonated. What kind of reactor it actually is, the shielding around it, and the explosion size would also be useful information. Yes, the old technician in me was starting to come out. I mean, a reactor is just a really large PipBuck power supply, right?

“We should probably find a terminal,” I whispered to the others. “An important one with important stuff. I can hack it, or Coffin, whatever. Something that can tell us reactor details, stuff on the fuel line, and anything technical we could use.”

“Alright then, that’s your job,” Coffin replied. “I can do hacking, but I’ll leave the schematics and inner workings to the technician.”

“See? Aren’t you glad we brought her along?” Liberty chirped, and I think it was directed at Stripe more than anyone else… “We should go through this garage though. I think a more direct entrance to the big enginey places will have motions sensors and a LOT more security than this grease shed.”

“It’s a start. Alright ponies, and zebra, let’s go,” Coffin finished.

I felt gentle movement lead me away again, Liberty I think, and something gently make contact with my cloak behind me. We were staying close enough together so not to lose one another while going into the factory, and we moved into said factory back through the garage and up through an open doorway leading inside.

I’ve got to say, every time we got near a pony I felt my heart rate spike to the cloud cover. How did those old zebra infiltrators do this as a job? My insides have already been twisted and mangled as it is, with my alicorny-ness and all, a heart problem was all I needed!

Still, we carefully began making our way through the metallic Enclave hallways. It reminded me of being back on that raptor I’d boarded alongside Ditzy and Calamity back at Friendship City. Arched metal hallways that were cold to see and touch, a grated floor beneath our hooves that threatened to give us away if we moved too fast. Blue lighting dominated the doors between us and subsequent corridors, a circular locking mechanism turning and allowing the inner machinery to slide them open for passers-by, with us following them through before they closed again.

I wonder if the base in Junction R-7 was like this before it went bang.

Still, my PegWing’s Eyes Forward Sparkle was leading us in what I hoped was the right direction. Good to see that still worked to its sheer mystical proportions. Not that it told us exactly where we were, and I dared not take the time to check the local map on the device. We just had to follow the objective marker and hope that it led us to where we wanted to go.

“You hear about Granite’s squad?” one Enclave soldier asked another as they rounded a corner and almost walked right into us. Fortunately, we were able to hug the wall and let them pass on by before that happened. “They’re gonna get themselves killed the way they’re acting.”

“Let them, there’s no room for-” The rest of the second’s sentence faded away as they vanished from view, leaving us free to move forward again.

We only went a short distance before we stopped at another closed door, waiting a good two minutes with bated breath before a pony in a full Enclave hazmat suit, that being pure white with an orange helmet that looked like a fishbowl, opened the door and unknowingly allowed us to slip through as they went in the opposite direction.

We’d appeared into some random room bathed in a gentle blue glow coming from lights and some Enclave computer equipment around the room. The room was also adorned with few tables that had scattered parts on top of them like spark plugs, magical phase capacitors from energy weaponry and other components spread around and being examined by more suited up science ponies.

“I still don’t understand why the main weapon on Hades-097 malfunctioned,” I heard one of the ponies say as we slowly moved through the room. Ah, and the door at the other end was marked with an ‘engineering’ label!

As we gently made for it, one of the others continued the conversation. “It must be the conversion matrix.”

“Can’t be, I’ve checked all of this equipment. It’s all in perfect condition.”

“Then they must have assembled the device incorrectly.”

“They swear over and over they had it right. Gr, sometimes I think it’s like these things break just to dick with us.”

“Well, we’d better get 097 up and running soon as we can. They’re going to want to rest of them deployed soon, and the last thing we need is the brass wondering if the entire line has a defect.”

“General Death Scythe has faith in them, she’s already had ten moved to her fortress.” WHAT!? “And you know as well as I do that she runs Equestria now. The council wouldn’t do anything against her wishes.”

“Point. The field test worked wonders, they wouldn’t have dished one out to each major ground city if they thought otherwise.” DOUBLE WHAT!? “Let’s get the last one hundred eighty working before we shove it to the resistance, eh?”

I heard Coffin say a subdued ‘fuck’ under his breath, and one of the ponies ask if any of the others had said something as we got an opportunity to exit through the targeted door and get out of there.

There was a storeroom down along the next corridor, and we all got pulled into it and into some privacy. Enough for Coffin to rip off his cloak and regard us with a horrified look.

“Life Bloom, Silver Bell, we have a problem,” he said over the comm as the rest of us cloaked for the time being. “Approximately twenty Hades Tanks are in deployment. Repeat, twenty Hades Tanks in deployment.”

“Twenty!? How? When!?” Life Bloom’s panicked voice returned.

“What happened?” Silver Bell then asked more calmly, if sternly.

“Seems we were too late. After the test we witnessed, Death Scythe had ten shipped to her little clubhouse and one to each major city ground side, just like the one back home.”

“Damn it,” Silver Bell swore. “And the rest?”

“Still here. We’re searching for an engineering terminal for Sparkplug to take a look at, see if our current plan to take the place out will work.”

“Keep on it. We can worry about the other tanks later, ensure the rest do not escape.”

Worry later? Weren’t these things effectively a doomsday prophecy?

Liberty Bell saw my look. “I know, one in each city is a problem. And ten at the fortress… As if it wasn’t already another death trap. But hey, if we take out this place that’s still a hundred and eighty less, right? I’m sure we can figure out a plan for the final twenty or so…”

“Yeah, sure…” I hope someone who is good at plans has something in mind. Or that they have a spare balefire bomb around.

“We are close to engineering,” Stripe pointed out. “Remain cloaked, stay focused. We are close to our task.”

She had a point. “Right, she’s right. I can still figure out a way to blow this place sky high. If it helps anyone in the short or long run, then it’s worth it.”

“That’s the spirit!” Liberty Bell agreed. “Even one less is a life saved, right? We can do this!”

Coffin nodded. “It’s what the Stable Dweller would do.”

I looked at him, keeping my stare level for a few moments. Then I gave him a smile. Yeah, this is what I would do. Forget how daunting all this future stuff is, Pip. Because there’s only one thing you can do.

“Let’s go.”

We left the storeroom behind, slinging our cloaks back on and sneaking our way down the corridor. Luckily, there didn’t seem to be many other Enclave ponies around this area. Not to press my luck or anything, but it seemed like a relatively clear shot to wherever this engineering terminal was. I kept an eye on my E.F.S. though, and there definitely were some others around somewhere, even if we couldn’t see them.

We eventually came across and intersection that split off in three different ways. One direction didn’t have a sign saying what we would find if we went down it, that one was to our left. To our right was a doorway which was marked with ‘engineering’. But ahead of us was a short corridor that led to a small staircase leading up to yet another doorway, this one marked as ‘Station Theta.”

“So…” I quietly said. “Forwards or right?”

“Don’t you know? You’re the tech gal’ ain’t ya?” Coffin breathed back at me.

“Well… the marker on my Eyes Forward Sparkle is saying ahead.” Even though it was an engineering terminal we wanted. But it’s never led me astray before…

Though that was my PipBuck 3000, and this is a weird Enclave spin-off that could be… Nope, not doubting it now!

“Forward it is then.”

I led the way, I think… Still couldn’t see the others. Still, I slowly made my way up the stairs and hit the control panel with my magic, opening the doorway.

“Huh?”

FUCK.

A pegasus in a black unarmored Enclave uniform saw the door opened and looked right at us. I almost bolted then and there, before reminding myself that we still had the cloaks on. The pegasus just looked confused, before walking towards the doorway.

I budged to the side, hoping the others were doing the same as the pony hit the control panel with a wing and watched as the door closed.

“Stupid thing, must be another surge,” he muttered to himself. “Ah, I’d better get maintenance to have a look.”

He didn’t get the chance, giving a small grunt and going rigid before falling as something hard hit him on the back of the head. That looked like it hurt, too.

Liberty Bell removed her cloak, a small pipe held in her magic that she’d hit him with. She dropped the pipe as the rest of us revealed ourselves, immediately moving to drag the pony into an empty crate nearby. It was… slightly scary how efficient she was being all of a sudden?

“...What?” she said defensively as she finished removing the unconscious pony, blushing at my bewildered stare. “It’s not the first time I’ve had to hit a pony.”

Right. I wonder if all ponies she didn’t like got hit really hard with metal pipes? And why was the thought of that cute little pony being a badass turning me on!?

Focus, Pip!

Looking around the room to distract myself from Liberty Bell, I saw we were in some kind of control station or… something. There was a table with a terminal on it, and several other monitors around the room with some diagnostic crap I didn’t care much for. There were also a couple crates, some empty and others not, with some assorted junk around them such as the metal pipe used by- Right, I was trying not to think about that whole... thing.

There was also a window overlooking a large interior space that was filled with dozens of Enclave ponies working all kinds of stations. At the end of the room, looking to the left of our station, was a giant pane of what I think was glass separating the room from a large reactor that gave off a bright blue glow as it sparked dangerously. Apparently, the Enclave weren’t big on safety standards for their main reactors.

“Look at that thing…” Coffin said with a whistle. “They have to be pumping that thing for all its worth.”

“Maybe they’ve been pumping it into overdrive to get all these tanks done for some quota or another,” I muttered, trying to get a better look from out vantage. “I mean, I’m for of a Pip- PegWing technician, but if the power source sparked like that I’d be worried.”

“Pretty sure Death Scythe cares more about the tanks than the ponies making them,” Liberty Bell noted darkly, before she walked forwards and tapped on the window. “Must be blacked out on the other side, or we’d have been spotted by now for sure.”

Ah. We should have left the cloaks on, in the hindsight of it all…

Well, we still found our terminal. I guess the pony in the box had been monitoring the reactor from up here. I hopped into the terminal, finding it unlocked and at the route menu. There were a variety of options, from the pony’s own personal logs to emails. There was also a schematic of the reactor, I opened that one and examined the image that built onto the screen.

“Alright…” I began, making sure I was interpreting things right. “Seems there are regulators for the fuel line right here in engineering, the flow can also be turned off from here at the pump station. The main tanks aren’t here, though. They’re probably outside somewhere.

“But fuel passes through here?” Coffin asked.

“Seems it’s used here in the factory for some of the tech as well as the tanks,” I answered. “Best guess, anyway. But yeah, the line runs near enough to the reactor to be caught in an overload. Looking at that thing… it’d probably take half if not all of the building with it. Especially if it’s been worked to the limit already. Much more energy to be released in the explosion.”

“Big bang then?”

I smiled, holding out my hooves as far apart as they could go just for that added demonstration. “Really big.”

“So, how do begin those chain of events. Can we do it from here?” Stripe asked.

Ah… That’s… an issue. “No. We can’t.” And if I was looking at this correctly… “I’d need access to the main control terminal to cause a malfunction big enough to make it blow up, redirecting some of the power lines in on themselves should do it. But that’s in there…”

In the big room with the entire population of the Enclave inside it.

“Ah,” Coffin replied simply. “Any way we can get into the reactor itself and just throw a grenade?”

“One, have you seen it? You’d be turned into fried pony in seconds,” Liberty Bell scolded him. “Two, pretty sure a grenade would set it off instantly. I want to see Mom again.”

“Alright! Point taken!” he conceded, before turning to me. “One of us needs to get in there and do a bit of digging through that central terminal.”

“Even with the cloaks, that terminal has a lot of traffic it seems. Someone would be bound to notice tampering,” Stripe noted. “And those stations controlling the fuel flow would need to be disabled also. If the supply is cut, then the tanks outside will not share the factory’s fate.”

“We need a way in there,” Liberty Bell mused. “Maybe a distraction.”

“Hold that thought,” I said to the others as I got a little bit curious and opened up the guy’s emails. Looking at the subject lines, it was mostly shift details and reports on maintenance. But there was a recent one that seemed encrypted… Odd, seeing as the schematic was just readily available on this thing.

“What have you got there?” Coffin asked, looking over my shoulder.

“I’m not sure,” I honestly replied. For all I knew, this could be his smutty fanfiction about Rainbow Dash.

...Okay, there is seriously something wrong with my brain. Still.

“I know you know your way around a terminal, but…” Coffin said as he seemed quite eagre to take my place at the computer all of a sudden. “I got this one.”

Well, whatever. I just watched as he cracked his hooves and got to work, accessing the route processes and attempting to sneak his way into the encrypted file. He… really seemed to be enjoying himself as well. I suppose, in a way, I was getting a look at the colt who broke into my own record biography upon a time.

...That sounds really creepy when I think of it like that.

Still, he cheered in success as the terminal beeped, and he stepped aside to let me back on.

“Thanks,” I said to the stallion, before moving in to look at the now visible email. “What the…”

Vigil.

I… am a little worried, man. I think I overhead something I’m not supposed to, so… I want you to encrypt this email after you’ve read it, okay? I don’t want our superiors finding out, but I feel like I need to tell someone I can trust. And my brother is a good bet, right? Goddesses, please don’t tell on me.

I was just loitering, you know how it is, just got off duty and had a drink or two with the lads… But I found myself where I wasn’t meant to, no idea how I wasn’t spotted. Still, I overheard one of the bosses having a chat with Grim Gallop. You know, one of the Supreme General’s right hoof generals?

Well, you know that mare that’s a prisoner down at the lab, the one we forced to design some of the Hades Tank’s components because we have her sister or something? Well, I heard that, apparently, that sister has been dead for YEARS. Some escape attempt. But that prisoner? She doesn’t know! In fact, it’s classified, so if they know that we know… Oh Celestia, we’re so dead.

But it’s not the bosses that worry me. I’ve heard a rumour that the prisoner once ran with Security, what if she finds out that we have nothing on her and she tries leaving!?

I’m thinking of transferring to Trottingham. You should come with me, before we’re both toast.

Your brother,
Valiant

A friend of The Security Mare? Okay, now I was interested.

“Well, I’ll be…” Coffin muttered.

“I recall broadcasts about Security the same time as DJ Pon-3 reported on the Stable Dweller,” Stripe muttered almost nostalgically, glancing at PipBuck. “I had a... ‘friend’, one who tried his hardest to live up to their ideals. All the way until the end.”

...One of the people she lost, I take it. I suppose that was a reality check, at least most of my friends were still out there, somewhere…

“If this is one of Security’s friends, then we have to save them!” Liberty Bell stressed. “And if they were forced to help build these tanks, she might be able to help us fight them!”

Security’s friends… I had to wonder what she would be like. And I also had to wonder why thinking about a mare I’d never met put such a pressure on my brain, like I was forgetting something by trying to remember…

I’m probably just imagining it.

“I’ll find them,” I told the others. The least I could do for Security, somepony who, if Homage’s gushing was anything to go by, had been some of my equal in wanting to help ponies. “Some of us should probably stay here, though, to keep and eye on things…?”

“I agree,” Coffin said. “Liberty and I can stay. Stripe, go with Sparkplug.”

“As you wish,” the zebra said with a nod.

Alright then. I guess this was a rescue mission now!

With the stealth cloaks back over our backs, Stripe and I backed out of the little control room place and got back into the corridor outside. I had to hope that Liberty Bell and Coffin would be fine where they were, and that nopony would stumble into them. It’d be pretty obvious if that did happen, I just had to hope no alarms went off while we were separated.

“We must find the lab,” Stripe whispered from seemingly thin air. “My PipBuck has already given a marker, what of your PegWing?”

As always, there it was.

“If you are nodding, I cannot see it.”

Oh, right.

I just decided to pretend that never happened, and we started following the general direction given by our Eyes Forward Sparkles until we found a helpful sign along the way.

The marker led us away from the engineering department and back a little the way we came, before we branched off down another corridor entirely. Signs for the labs did start cropping up, and we followed them on while passing through several other areas, giving the place marked to be the central command a wide berth for the time being. I gotta admit, I was a little amazed we’d made it as far as we did. There was never a shortage of Enclave ponies around this place, and more than once Stripe had to physically stop me from walking into some rounding a corner or two.

I’m glad she’s better at this whole stealth thing that I am.

Still, eventually, we came across a much larger doorway that was marked to be the laboratory's entrance. As we’d done so many times before at this point, we sat at the side and simply waited for it to open. And we were there for… what? Ten, twenty minutes? Dear Luna, I hated the waiting part, every second that we stood here the Enclave could walk in on Liberty Bell and Coffin!

Why did Robronco never design their PipBuck line with a time skip spell or something? You know, select a time to wait and then BOOM. You’re there.

Dream on, Littlepip.

The door finally opened with a large hiss, and a pony dressed head to hoof in one of those hazmat suits stepped out. We moved past the scientist and into… what the fuck?

I stared at the giant tube containing the alicorn. And since there was no marker on my E.F.S., I knew that she was dead.

“What is this…?” I whispered to Stripe. This was… horrific. Even to an alicorn, what had the Enclave done to them?

“We know the remaining alicorns all but vanished, but this confirms was we already knew,” she quietly replied. “The Enclave got to them after the Stable Dweller destroyed their Goddess.”

All of them…?

The entire room seemed to be largely circular and had two levels. More of these orange tubes filled with some kind of weird liquid littered the place. They all held something; some held ponies, other held ghouls that looked to have been both feral and normal. One even looked like it was holding a Hellhound.

“The marker leads us through the opposing door,” Stripe muttered, carefully nudging me forwards as another scientist walked past us. “We must not delay.”

“Right…” Still…

I glanced towards and active terminal on the front of the alicorn’s tube. There was something displayed on the screen, and I tried to read it as Stripe urged me on.

Doctor A.

Supplementary research submitted to Site Epsilon as per your request. The genome sequencing shows promise, we are confident our contemporaries working on Project Broken Unity will-

That was all I got to read before I lost sight of the terminal.

Who the ever living celestial ballsack was ‘Doctor A’? Doctor A what? Doctor A Dickface?

That’d be too good to be true.

But Site Epsilon? Project Broken Unity? I mean, I guess the project name was pretty self-explanatory as to where they got it, but… What did they want with the alicorn?

Ugh, more and more Enclave mysterious and bad stuff just keeps popping up! Something to figure out later I guess. I’ll just have to find this ‘Site Epsilon’ and it’s ‘Doctor A Dickface’ and shut it down.

Just one more thing I owe everyone after how badly I screwed it all up.

We got through the next door, and it opened up into a large room that looked like a more Enclave-y stable atrium. Maybe a little more rectangular? And the centre of the room had some stairs going down to a lower part that had a punch of scientists working consoles…

Actually, this was nothing like a stable atrium.

Around the room were more of those orange tubes, though a couple in here were empty. Not enough, though. To the left and right ends of the room were more doors that looked like they led into more smaller labs like the one we’d just passed through. At the opposite end, though was a different room that was marked as ‘Project Hades Research’. That was where the marker was leading us.

Either side of that door were some windows the seemed to have blinds closed on the other side. But Security’s friend was apparently in there, so we needed an in.

We crossed the room, circling the outside and avoiding the cluster of ponies in the middle. Getting around to the doorway we needed, we stopped to look around us.

“There may not be many ponies coming to and from here,” Stripe noted. “We must enter ourselves.”

“Right…” Well, it didn’t seem like any of the scientists were looking our way. “We should probably be quick.”

“Agreed.”

I guess it was decided.

I lit my horn and carefully took hold of the control panel, Stripe quietly counting down almost entirely under her breath. I listened carefully, and when she reached zero is hit the switched and we both slipped inside. The room inside was cluttered, tables were lined out with diagrams and pieces of technology all over the place, with even more blueprints littering the walls. But that wasn’t the bad part...

“What the?”

The voice had come from an Enclave soldier inside the lab, he having turned to it alongside another soldier and a middle-aged grey pegasus with a purple mane who had a lab coat draped over her back.

“Check it out,” the other soldier ordered as we watched from against the wall.

“Roger.”

The soldier moved towards the door, looking out of it and into the following room with his helmeted gaze. We held our breaths, just waiting as he did a sweep and looked down at the control panel I’d hit.

“Negative contact,” he finally said, and I resisted the urge to sigh in relief. “Door must have a glitch.”

“Something else for the prisoner to look at.”

“Get your own monkeys to do it,” the pegasus in the lab coat spat. “You want me to look into the energy reserves for inefficiencies in the design, which there aren’t by the way, and I’m doing it. I don’t have time for minor crap like that.”

“You do as you’re told, remember,” the first soldier warned as he closed the door behind him.

“Get your commander to threaten me with my sister’s life again, then I’ll get on it. But if you don’t want to waste either of our time on a door glitch, let me work!”

The soldier grumbled, but he returned to his companion and just stood there, watching the pegasus as she went over a schematic of the Hades Tank on a nearby table. If we tied to spring the pegasus, and those soldiers raised the alarm...

“Take them out together,” I whispered to Stripe. “You take left, I take right.”

“The signal?”

Even though she couldn’t see it, I grinned. “You’ll know it.”

I slowly made my way over to the guard on the right, making sure to position myself just to the side of him as I waited a good few seconds for Stripe to get into position. I couldn’t look to check if she was, but I had to assume she was ready after a good few moments had passed.

The last time I did what I was about to do, it was one of the worst days of my life. It had been my biggest fuck up, before letting the Enclave come into power massively trumped that.

But it would do the job.

I lit my horn, and the guard could barely let out a shout of surprise as my magic latched around his throat and lifted him off the ground entirely. Before his buddy could even realise what was happening, a zebra mare had her cloak slip away as she wrapped a foreleg around his neck and dropped him to the floor with a loud snap.

The Enclave soldier in my grip flailed his hooves desperately, but slowly his movements died down and went limp. The red bar blinked out, and I dropped the body to the ground.

The pegasus, meanwhile, stood rigid as she looked at the two dead soldiers with wide eyes. When I also dropped my cloak, she looked towards me with surprise.

“You must be Security’s friend,” I said to her, and she just blinked. I guess our entrance was a bit sudden... “Sorry, introductions… I’m-”

“You shouldn’t be here!” she shouted at us, and I shared a glance towards Stripe before I suddenly found a very angry pegasus in my face! “You’re resistance, right? Well, you’re putting somepony I care about a lot in danger! I can’t leave, but you should before the guards find you! Because I will have to call an alarm to clear myself of their deaths!”

“Your sister, right?” I asked sadly. Fuck, now I have to tell her, don’t I?

She blinked again. “Yes… You know?”

“Yeah, there was something about it on a terminal we came across…”

She frowned. “Which terminal? Actually, never mind. It changes nothing, unless you’ve saved her already. If I go with your group, Moon Shadow will be killed by them! She’s the only family I know is still alive, I have to protect her!”

I gave her a sympathetic look. “Moon Shadow was her name?” I can understand wanting to protect somepony you love, if it were Homage…

“Yeah, together we were always the brains of the family. Like me, she’s been-” She paused, and I could just feel all feeling drain from her body. And, despite her already pale grey coat, she went sheet white in a moment. “What do you mean ‘was’?”

I went to answer, but I found my tongue caught in my mouth. GAH! How was I meant to tell her this? But I had to… Come on, Pip. Just… go easy, okay? She’s… dammit.

“She is dead.”

I looked towards Stripe at the same moment as the pegasus when the zebra had said those three words.

“I am sorry, but your sister was killed by the Enclave years ago,” Stripe continued. “Their hold on you is a false one. My condolences, I know what it is like.”

“Moon Shadow…?” the pegasus muttered, her rump hitting the floor as she seemingly lost all balance. “She’s… You’re sure? No mistake?”

“W-we wouldn’t lie. Not about that,” I told her, and she glared at my judgmentally. I tried not to squirm under those suspicious eyes, but that suspicion quickly melted away to despair. “I see… Fuck. Damn them!”

“We need to go. We’re getting ready to blow this factory up,” I informed her. “What’s your name…?”

“Morning Glory.” Why did that tickle the back of my mind again? “You’re really about to destroy this place? How many of you are there?”

“Four,” I answered. “I’m… Sparkplug. That’s Stripe. Back in engineering the rest of our friends are Coffin and Liberty Bell.”

“Taking out the source of the Hades Tanks, that’s daring,” she mused. “Almost reminds me of… How things used to be when Blackjack was around.”

“So you were friends with Security,” Stripe noted.

“More than that, once.” Oh. “We travelled the Hoofington region with our friends, trying to help ponies. Blackjack was… complicated. Things didn’t always go to plan, but… Things were getting better in Hoofington, bit by bit. The Reapers were getting a little less… raidery. The Society was going to do better under Princess Grace, Chapel was becoming a beacon of life in that hellhole… Things changed when the Enclave attacked my home, Thunderhead.”

“What happened, exactly?” I asked.

“The Stable Dweller had recently killed the Goddess, saved Blackjack from Unity.” I did? “After that, we headed up to Thunderhead to find my family. The Enclave attacked us, one of their one, soon after because of our open relations with the surface, and further spurred on by a fanatic terrorist called Lighthooves.”

“As far as I understand it, Thunderhead was eventually defeated,” Stripe said.

“Not at first. Admiral Storm Chaser turned against Neighvarro along with several of her ships. With her help, and Blackjack stopping Lighthooves, we drove them back. But Thunderhead was forced to land on the surface because of the damage; Shadowbolt Tower was also destroyed and Blackjack and Boo were lost in the Hoofintgton Core. I never saw her again.”

I remember what Life Bloom and Silver Bell had told me about the core, and Security’s fate. “What about your other friends?”

“Rampage, P-21 and Scotch Tape,” she recalled sadly. “We already lost Lacunae when the Goddess died. Kinda. I have no idea what happened to Rampage, only that the Enclave ship she’d commanded in Storm Chaser’s fleet was destroyed. P-21 took Scotch Tape and fled to the old Zebra Empire when the Enclave won. I stayed with Storm Chaser and my family, but the Enclave came back. Our remaining ships were destroyed, our soldiers killed, and most of my family also perished. All of them now, I suppose.”

“I’m sorry.” Listening to her… It was just another reminder of my screw up. And what I had lost as well. “We’re trying to stop the Enclave. To do better.”

“Do better…” she muttered with a hint of nostalgia. “That’s what she always said. Talk around this place says that your resistance tries to follow the Stable Dweller’s example, right?”

Uh… “I guess…”

“I met her once, you know. She and Blackjack were so alike, and we certainly had fun with her and Homage…” Wait, WHAT!? I don’t… Oh…

Those memory orbs, the days I’d wiped out so the Goddess wouldn’t be able to get our plan against her from my head. I had no idea I’d met Blackjack and her friends. And… and… we’d... THAT’S WHAT’S IN MEMORY ORB EIGHT!?

“Are you alright?” Alright!? I guess she spotted me blushing up a storm, but… Holy shit! We’d… I…

“FINE! Just fine! J-just… dandy and… stuff… Um, so… what were the Enclave having you do…?” Please change the subject! Please change the subject!

She gave me an odd look, but thank Celestia she took the change and rolled with it!

Morning Glory sighed. “Not to toot my metaphorical horn, but I was always something of a… prodigy of science. The Enclave wanted me to design things for them. One of the more recent projects was some of the systems aboard the Hades Tanks. If it wasn’t for me…”

“You were forced and threatened,” I tried to comfort her. “And now you can help bust them up!”

She gave us a small, only slightly genuine smile. “I suppose I can. Do better, right?”

She lifted the lab coat from her back and cast it aside. Her coat was unkempt, she’d clearly seen better days. I also spotted the familiar symbol of a Dashite on her flank, where her cutie mark used to be. She the walked over to the dead soldiers, lifting the helmet from one of their heads and looking it over.

“I can’t walk around as I am. You two need to get back under your cloaks, I’ll follow on in full armour.”

I frowned. “But we’ll be invisible, how would you follow us?”

“Enclave helmets have in-build HUDS. Not as advanced or useful as an Eyes Forward Sparkle you get from PibBuck’s, PegWings or power armour helmets, only really using the vitals tracker and map function from those, but I might be able to sync it with your own devices anyway. That way I’d always be able to see you on the HUD.”

“I thought that thing doesn’t have an Eyes Forward Sparkle.”

“As I said, a prodigy,” she replied as she got to work on the helmet.

It was surprisingly quick work. She opened up a panel on the side of the helmet and briefly borrowed Stripe’s leg so she could use the PipBuck on it. I just watched with curiosity as she worked, following on with what she was doing.

Oh, that was pretty good!

If I was following, she was tapping into some underlying PipBuck code that had been stripped out of the watered-down HUD the helmets used. She was tying that system directly into the PipBuck’s compass. If I had to put two and two together, I’m guessing it makes objective markers follow the two of us. Pretty genius, and I say that as a PipBuck technician. I’ll have to remember that one.

After she was done with Stripe, she did the same with my PegWing. I had to talk tech with her when this was over!

Finally, we were set. Morning Glory lifted herself into a set of Enclave combat armour that covered pretty much all of her. And then we left the station, me and Stripe back in our stealth cloaks and moving back the way we came as Morning Glory carefully followed on from a comfortable distance. We didn’t even need to follow the signs or our map markers on the way back, I think we’d gotten the gist of the route down when we were walking in the opposite direction. Our slow crawl through the base certainly gave us the time.

But our plan seemed to work, at least I didn’t hear any alarms as we went. Unless there was a silent one, buuuut I’m not going to even think about that.

We made it out of the science labs and back to engineering, following the same corridors along until we made our way back to the station where we’d left Coffin and LIberty Bell. I crawled up to and waited by the door, looking behind me as Morning Glory cautiously trotted up behind us and hit the door controls.

“Whoa!” Coffin in shouted in alarm and- No no! Don’t raise that gun! Bad!

“Stop!” I shouted as I threw off the stealth cloak as quickly as I could. And thank Celestia, Coffin just stared at me in bewilderment instead of pulling that trigger! “Oh, good. Phew.”

“Perhaps we should have knocked,” Stripe joked… was that a joke? She’s capable of that?

Morning Glory took off her helmet, glaring at Coffin since he still hadn’t put down his gun. “Please don’t do that. If you knew just how many ponies I’ve had point guns in my face, and what happened to them…”

“I like her,” Liberty Bell quipped. “Come on, Coffin. Relax! So… gonna introduce us, Sparkplug?”

“Oh, right!” I suppose it’d help ease the random tension in the air. “Morning Glory, Liberty Bell and Coffin. Coffin and Liberty Bell, Morning Glory! See! Friends!”

Coffin relented with a sigh, putting down his gun. “Sorry, the armour put me on edge.”

“You’re one to talk,” Morning Glory noted, gesturing towards his helmet. “An old X-01 model from before all of this, Thunderhead used them extensively, albeit with Tesla modifications. All inferior to the modern X-02 the Enclave use as their go-to power armour, of course.”

“It’s decorative,” Coffin retorted.

“I guessed from the paint job.”

“I wish he had the stinger tail,” Liberty Bell added wistfully. “That’d be pretty cool.”

“Yes. And these new combat armour models are lacking in that department as well,” Glory noted, glancing at her noticeably un-barbed tail.”

“Not that the meet and greet isn't great, but we do have a base to destroy,” Coffin proceeded to point out. “Now that Ms Glory here is free, we still need to get to that terminal and start the chain reaction.”

“I assume you have a way out for us when you do start the detonation?” Morning Glory enquired.

“Steampunk is handling that. We have a small supply of older model vertibucks. Now, we just need somepony with good technical knowledge to kick the whole thing off…”

I didn’t even need to look at them to know that they were looking at me. Everypony always looks at me!

“Alright, stay here,” I said to the others as I grabbed the cloak. “When I start the thing, we can hopefully sneak out while they panic and do whatever.”

“Wait, I should also go,” Coffin decided. “You can do your thing and rearrange the power conduits to cause the overload, but we still need to make sure they can’t turn off or redirect the fuel pipes. I can still hack a terminal, or encrypt them.”

Locking them out of their own controls, huh? I like it.

“What about that distraction we talked about?” Liberty Bell asked.

Morning Glory hummed, glancing towards the control terminal in the room. “Let me see what I can do from here. I might be able to cause a few minor problems in the system to keep them busy and away from the main terminal.

“And should you be spotted anyway?” Stripe asked us.

“Well, then I suppose ya’ll should all come rescue us,” Coffin remarked. “Come on, Sparkplug. Let’s get this done.”

Alright… Get in, sabotage, get out while the place is exploding all around us and the Enclave are panicking. Easy…

Who am I kidding? It’s never that easy.

Back under the cloak I went, this time with Coffin following on. Luckily, it wasn’t so far to sneak to this time, seeing as the door to the main part of engineering was literally down the hallway. The easy part was waiting, as we’d done Luna knows how many times now, for somepony to open the damned door for us to sneak in. But like always, it happened. Some engineer leaving for a piss break or something.

Point is, it got us inside.

“There’s a slight variation in the coolant pressure valves,” I heard an engineer report, and I stole a glance at the blacked out window where Morning Glory was working on that terminal. “Nothing serious, it might be a computer glitch. But I want somepony on it, now.”

Almost as soon as he finished the sentence, all eyes turned upwards when the lights started flickering severely. It lasted only a few moments, but it was enough.

“For fuck's sake, now the lights? Please, somepony clean up the fucking mess would you?”

“On it, Boss!”

Well, they were suddenly a lot more active around everywhere that wasn’t the main console. Nice one, Glory. I wonder if she spent the last however many years getting to know this place’s computers, just in case…

I was no longer sure where Coffin was, but I had to assume he was over by the terminals controlling the fuel lines. As long as he could keep the Enclave from redirecting the flow out of the factory we were good.

And with the central terminal free, I was able to slink right up to it. Alright, Pip. Time to work the magic! Or technology… I mean, it has magic parts…

You know what? Fuck the turn of phrase, just do it!

I opened up the terminal, and it was quite relieving to see it already logged on. And there was a multitude of options for me to select, and I scrolled through them until I found something to do with the flow of the power generated by the unstable reactor. Clicking the options brought up all kinds of statistics and graphs onto the green screen that I barely gave so much as a glance at before moving on. I’m sure all the data could tell me something, but I didn’t exactly have the time to read the manual!

Fortunately, there was a big shiny highlighted button that said ‘Redirect Power Flow’.

Hitting it, another host of options appeared. The Enclave really liked their statistics! But in principle, it wasn’t really so different from redirecting the power flow in a PipBuck’s own internal power source. Just big and... potentially world ending. Let’s not think about how big this bang is going to be, and…

There we go, that’s a few of the power lines redirected back onto the reactor itself!

A message box popped up when I tried to confirm the command, trying to give me a warning about how what I asked of it could seriously compromise the reactor’s stability. But I mean, that was kinda the point, so I just closed the box and hit ‘confirm’ anyway.

The command came through, and there was a moment of calm. I closed up the terminal and looked around to make sure that I hadn’t been seen. The Enclave still looked busy fixing up Morning Glory’s distraction, and I had to hope that Coffin had-

There was a crash and a crackle of electricity, and then I was on the ground.

The world wasn’t quite where it was supposed to be… Probably because I assume I ended up on my back. Owch. Ugh, I could also hear a faint… Wait, an increasingly un-faint sound of surprised shouting as my hearing returned. That had been really loud.

With a groan I went to pick myself up off the ground, rubbing my face with a hoof as I-

Wait.

My hoof. Is it me, or did it look a tiny bit more visible than it should have done?

Oh…

The shouting had died down, and as I looked around I could see a lot of very bewildered looking ponies staring at me, every single one of them a red bar. An alarm was blaring in my ears, and a glance at the reactor showed that it was going absolutely haywire to the point where the protective glass was cracking and several of the computer consoles, including the main terminal I’d been standing at, had exploded.

Oh, and that was my stealth cloak on the floor just… laying there. Not on me.

“Heh…” I mean… what else could I say at this moment? “Hi there.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the first pony draw an energy pistol, and so S.A.T.S. was engaged.


Fuck! Fuck! FUCK! I mentally cursed. S.A.T.S. ran out nine bodies ago and while I still got bullets but they have TEN more guns on me! Fucking hell and I didn’t grab the cloak! Didn’t get the chance too, and even if I did, all this hazing of bullets and energy kept me cornered. FUCK!

“Nineteen of you can’t handle a single mare?!” I shouted from behind what little cover I had. Fuck Fuck FUCK! I looked around, there had to be something to give me an edge. Luck don’t fail me now...

Using just my magic I levitated the gun around the corner and fired blindly. “Agh! Fuck!” Sweet! I hit somepony!

No, bad Pip! Still stuck and outnumbered! I tried to take a peak around the corner, just to see their positions before ducking back, a plasma bolt streaming just past me. Too close! I groaned before taking aim at where that bolt flew from and firing another shot blindly. Luck, hold out just a little longer.

“Hey there,” a voice said from the bullet fire... Coffin? “Bye.”

The voice was followed by the sudden onslaught of gunfire loud and cluttered. And then, silence. Peeking out, Coffin, Liberty Bell, Stripe and Morning Glory were all there.

“Don’t you just hate it when your folks come home early and find you’ve thrown a party?” Coffin joked with a grin.

“Thanks,” I said with a sigh of relief, trotting over to pick up the stealth cloak. There… were more holes inside it than there should have been. That’s not great. “That was nearly bad for me.” Yeah, no shit. That was nearly as bad as my first run in with raiders… only well equipped and trained… so nothing like my first run in with raiders.

“So, where to next?” Liberty asked.

“Easy, get the hay out of here. Grab their weapons, if we run out of bullets there will be plenty of batteries laying around,” Coffin said, picking up an Enclave assault rifle.

I followed suit, storing it in my PegWing, finally didn’t almost say PipBuck, before raising the revolver. “If we are blasting the hell out of here, We need to hurry. Those gunshots will attract more here quickly.” Cause sweet Luna fuck me to the moon and back.

“It would be helpful if one of us did not damage their stealth cloak.” Thanks for rubbing that in, Stripe!

“Either way this place is crawling, we will have to make sure any bullet and battery we come across we grab,” Liberty noted.

“If we head to Maintenance we might find a way to their armory... and maybe find a way to turn their turrets against them. Who knows?” Coffin added. “Let’s go.”

With the lot of us marching off, we were careful in sneaking through the halls, given that each turn could be guarded. I wonder if the others ignoring their stealth cloaks was to just make me feel better about losing my? I hate pity parties.

Still, I couldn’t help but reminisce about the old times, even if they felt like just yesterday for me. Here we were, a ragtag bunch of ponies, and zebra, trying to bring down an overwhelming force and sneaking through their base. Nope, totally no similarities to what Velvet, Calamity, Steelhooves, and Xenith used to do.

We came across some more patrols, gunning them down quick and taking what loot was of use. Thankfully, one of them had a few healing potions that we swiped. After that the patrols came along more often, in groups of two or five. Thankfully, the more we killed the more ammo and the occasional healing potions we got. For armed guards that took over the wasteland you’d think they would be, I dunno, faster on the trigger or something?

Don’t talk up fate, you not-smart pony.

“How much further?”

“The maintenance wings, if this building follows Enclave standards, should be in the basement,” Coffin said, opening up another flight of stairs to the lower levels. We entered, and immediately saw three Enclave engineers who were working away at the generators.

“Fuck that last power surge really screwed them over,” one of them commented. “What the hell is happening up there?”

“I know, bad enough this place is like a Megaspell ticking down on us,” the other commented. “And those alarms… you think the soldiers boys are having trouble?”

“No way. They can deal with any dirt pony that think they can take on the Enclave.”

“Don’t be so certain,” Morning Glory said before shooting one in the back of the head, the others quickly taking care of the other two as they tried to go for their pistols. “Well, that was therapeutic.”

“What will happen without them to maintain these generators?” Stripe asked as the others got to looting.

“Well, things will break quicker to put it simply,” Morning Glory replied. “We DON’T want to be here much longer.”

“Then let’s be quick,” Coffin said, finding a terminal and hacking into it. “Wow, she’s not kidding. Things are heating up fast around here. Ah, here’s the armory, two floors above. Check their bodies for a maintenance keycard, that will get us in without trouble.”

It wasn’t hard to find. “Got it. Let’s move, we are on a timer now.” I said, making sure the revolver was fully loaded before heading towards the armory.

Heading up, we took out four more groups of patrols and made it to the armory. The key card worked without problem. Opening it up, we were met with a lot of conventional and energy weapons, batteries and bullets. “Sweet. Oh hell yes!” Coffin said, picking up a energy weapon that… looked like a toy. “I can't believe they have this here.”

“That thing? It looks like something you would give to foals to play with,” I voiced as I went around, collecting ammo and miscellaneous scrap.

“Heh, wait until we cross power armor or a robot,” he said, storing it in his PegWing. “Whatever you can’t hold on your person Sparkplug and I will keep in out Pegwing. No use in letting good weapons go to waste here.”

We grabbed everything, and once it was all stored away we headed out. However, the moment we stepped out into the corridor we were immediately met with yet another patrol. Only this one… this one had ponies wearing big shiny suits of power armor. Three, to be exact.

I’m going to say that Coffin jinxed us.

“Enough running, you terrorist scum!” one of the pegasi shouted. “Put the weapons down and come out peacefully!”

I quickly glanced around, looking for ways out and counting the number of guards. “Is it too late to say we took a wrong turn?” I said with a nervous chuckle.

Coffin chuckled. “A bit,” he said, pulling out a rather larger plasma rifle. “Well guys, let’s give them hell!”

Welp, I wasn’t so sure my revolver was as suited for these guys. But maybe... “Sorry boys, we are on a tight schedule.”

From the pocket thingy of my PegWing I selected the large portable gun that was Little Gilda. I like to think that their eyes widened a little under those helmets when they saw-

HOLY FUCK!

One of the Enclave was completely blown to bits, power armor be damned! Unfortunately, Little Glilda flew just as fast from my magic as I landed with a thump onto my ass.

Damn, Butcher. You were a tough bitch, weren’t you?

But with the AA gun out of commission for the moment, the Enclave let their energy beams fly! We had had space to move back and get cover behind some walls, and they only had so many shots before reloading, and while it’s short, it is enough time to fight back!

When the stream of magic stopped, the others all returned fire on the the Enclave as I dragged Little Gilda back to my position. I’ll have to figure out just how much magic I’ll need to keep that thing in my grip.

Guess I’ll switch to that assault rifle I picked up for now.

Some minutes passed before we downed the last of them, taking a breather before looking what they had and running out of the hallway. “How much longer until this place either blows or loses power completely?” Liberty Bell asked.

“Not long enough!” Morning Glory said worriedly as we ran into a longer hallway. I skidded to a halt at a window, looking outside at the rows and rows of Hades Tanks lined the large, fenced off area outside. I still couldn’t get over how many there were. Good thing they were about to blow to kingdom come.

“So you did say you have a way out, right?” Glory asked critically.

“Steampunk will be waiting for our signal,” Coffin responded. “Once we get beyond the perimeter, anyway.”

“The question remains, how do we get through the field of tanks?” Stripe asked the question on all our minds.

“Hmm… Why not hijack one?” Liberty offered with that amazing bright smile. “We probably make up at least half the needed crew to operate one, so long as we get it’s weapons working they should be more than strong enough to clear a path.”

“Only flaw, the crew,” the pegasus mare denied with a shake of her head, slightly disappointed. “Half won’t do. We’d need a full complement of nine.”

And they looked so fun to blow stuff up in, too.

“Well, we might need the help of some others. I mean, there has to be somepony in this place that we can get to work with us in exchange for, well, getting them the hell out of this place?” Liberty then suggested.

“Working with the Enclave?” Coffin asked in notable distast.

“Not everypony in here can be that bad?” she suggested hopefully. “Right?”

“All but me are military personnel in some respect. Even the scientists have served or are serving. If we tried forty years ago, then maybe. But things are a little more hardcore and vetted in the ranks nowadays,” Morning Glory again shot her down. I hated the look of a kicked puppy in Liberty’s eyes...

“Well then, where are we going to find others who not only know how to pilot these monsters, but want to be rebels, in less than a hour?!” I yelled.

“Heh, well if the Lightbringer did crazier things. We’ll figure something out,” Coffin decided. Oh, and there he goes again! I can’t say anything less it draw suspicion but I swear he keeps me on way too high a pedestal.

We bolted across the building. This was the residential area. Every room had beds, lockers, and spare weapons and ammo. We grabbed what we could and continued on. This area seemed empty.

“Ah crap,” Liberty said.

“Come on... There has got to be somepony,” I said, doing another sweep of the room.

“No, not that.” Liberty said, blushing. “I’m gonna… use the bathroom.”

Coffin about fell over. “Are you serious?”

“Hey, it’s not the best timing but I’ve been holding it since we got Sparkplug out of that mess, any longer and I’m gonna piss on the floor…”

“Fine… We’ll take a quick break to keep our guns stocked and so Liberty can… use the bathroom, then we’re out of here.”

We bunked out in one of the common rooms, beds lines the walls and center of the room and two adjacent bathrooms were connected. Stripe watched the front door while Coffin and I reloaded the guns.

Celestia’s flaming tits… how are we going to do this… I’ve been in some pretty bad situations, but if we don’t get a crew to drive those tanks we won’t stop them, at worst just delay them. “Wish they were here…” I thought out loud, thinking of my old friends.

“Who?” Coffin asked.

Oh shit! “Erm, just some old friends I had… We got seperated a long time ago. We went through alot together, and somehow we always came out, relatively in one piece. I hope they’re okay.” I said. Oh, that was too close.

“If they’re like you then I’m sure there fine. Honestly though, in this line of work… you might get used to losing friends. Since I’ve been here I’ve made and lost more friends than what should be possible. Every time another dies I wonder why I’m always the survivor. What deity above cares more for the life of one pony over others?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” I said, now feeling guilty. I lived, while hundreds of thousands died, and there is no way to bring them back. “I wish I could.”

“Well, at least I’ve learned one thing from always surviving these battles.”

“And that is?” I asked, finishing cleaning the revolver.

“Heh. When I’m left alone, all others around me gone and dead, I sift through the rubble, and learn both sides of the story,” he said, kicking the floor locker by the bed we were on. “Let’s see.”

He started sifting through it. He pulled out a pacifier, old and worn.

“I’m guessing father, with a foal long since grown up,” he mused, taking something else out. It was a worn Celestia filly’s doll. “Daughter, judging from the age she’s been grown up for a while. And for all we know, we just killed somepony’s father, brother, husband. Out of all of them we’ve killed so far, who was the one who’s daughter had these things they kept as momentos?”

Well, that got depressing. And he just held a smile on his face while mine looked of dread.

“Why do you want to learn that?” I said, guilt creeping up on me. How many have I killed by now? How many will I have killed before this is over?

Even oppressive assholes have ponies who love them. I wonder what might have been different had I not fucked up all those years ago...

“So that daughter, wife, grandfoal, whichever of whoever can find me when this is all over, and kill me. I’ll smile as they put a bullet in my head, or a knife in my neck, or poison in my booze. I know what I’ll have coming one day, and I’ll pay for it. I’ll pay for it smiling, knowing this was deserved, and justified.”

I was silent, not meeting his gaze.

“No army is wholly evil, each has families, lives. It’s why they say soldiers don’t think, we do orders without question. It’s why I’m no soldier, I’m a rebel. We call the Enclave the enemy, they call us the enemy. In the end, all you have to do is cut off the snake’s head for the rest to die. But this world is cruel, we have to work up from the tail to kill it’s head. No one in the resistance wants to think about whose father they just killed or who will be crying over that Enclave soldier’s grave. They keep focused on revenge freedom for the Equestrian Wasteland from Death Scythe and her closest cohorts. I hope I’m there to kill her personally, so all the families I’ve torn apart and broke won’t have been in vain at the end of this.”

“Well… Maybe you’re right. Maybe the Lightbringer would agree, you’ve, er… certainly got her brooding. I mean, probably.”

He chuckled. “You’re probably right. The curse of giving a shit, I guess. Of wanting to be a good pony. Maybe that’s the difference between us and them, we actually care and feel the guilt. Keeps us straight and narrow, if not entirely sane.”

Ohhh boy, don’t even go there.

“Well, whoever kills that bitch first, I’ll gladly shaker their hoof in victory. If you kill her first, then congrats, but either way, I know what I’ll do right after.”

“And I’m afraid to ask, but that is?”

“Bury her. She was still somespony’s daughter. Maybe a sister. She may have been a monster, but in the end, we’re all demons when we spill each other's blood.”

I sighed. “You do that. But sitting here, planning her death is not going to mean much if we don't get someone to drive one of those tanks soon…”

“Well, worst case scenario, and this place blows. I hope you are there to dig yourself up from the rubble alongside me. Would be nice to not be the only survivor for once.”

“Gee, what a bundle of hope you are,” I snipped before pacing around.

“Just talking from experience. I always found it funny my name is Coffin but I seem to be extremely hard to kill.” Coffin finished reloading his weapons and Liberty finished up in the bathroom.

“Alright, done!” she said brightly. “What’d I miss?”

Me and Coffin glanced at each other, Stripe and Glory just biting their lips from the sidelines.

Welp, moving on!

We then headed on to next floor below, once again nearing the bottom of the base. Here we spotted some guards blocking a door.

“Wonder what they are hiding?” Coffin pondered aloud.

“Wanna find out?” I asked, noting one of the weapons they were holding. It looked like some sort of weirdly designed assault rifle with revolving barrels… I want.

He nodded. “Might as well.”

I snuck over, trying to seem inconspicuous as I took cover behind a trash can near the door. I couldn’t see them, but judging from the lack of shots fired yet, I think-

Bang! Tink.

Son of a whorse! They began firing. Damn it, if they want to use their guns… let’s take them away then. With a strained grunt, I lit my horn and forcefully pried the assault rifle out of the soldier's battle saddle before turning it around and firing back on them. Damn this thing has some kick!

There was a crack of a sniper as Stripe hit the other guy, simultaneous to some bolts of magic from Glory’s weapons. He dropped to the ground, lifeless.

“Wow, Sparky! You’ve got some telekinesis on you!” Liberty complimented

“I-it’s nothing special.” I said with a blush. “I mean, it’s not like I carried an entire roof or anything.”

Leaving that be for a moment, I ripped the rifle from the battle saddle and compared it to the one I was using already.

Yeah, I was taking the cooler one.

I dropped the old assault rifle for the new multi-barrelled one. Inventorying, the new rifle fit right in with that shotgun of mine. It looked rather snug alongside my revolver and Little Gilda… wherever it is they all were inside my PegWing.

Loadout all sorted, I looked away from my PegWing and moved on with the others. There was another set of stairs ahead, the passageway leading down to the ground where there was another dock kinda like the one we’d entered through. A small armored car sat in the corner, sans its wheels unfortunately.

And, on stepping out of the large open door, we found ourselves back outside the the field of Hades Tanks. Alarms were blaring all across the base, some panicked pony shouting down a microphone and dishing out order across the field. It looked like some of the Enclave were beginning to evacuate, others were running back inside the building.

“I bet they’re getting the base commanders out while downplaying the severity of it all to the lower-downs,” Coffin mused dryly.

“They don’t believe in captains being the last to leave their sinking ships,” Glory agreed. “Another thing I miss about my Enclave. Storm Chaser would have a fit.”

“You lot lost?” We all spun around instantly, tensing up upon seeing a pegasus stallion in full Enclave power armor, albeit sans the helmet. A cigarette was held in his left wing’s feather tips as he took a smoke. The said missing helmet was held under the right.

There were three other pegasi with him, all in power armor as well, those these guys had their helmets on.

“Not a wise plan to announce your presence,” Stripe stated, rising onto her hind legs and raising her rifle. “You are Enclave, and yet you do no appear to be readying for battle.”

“What’s the game here?” Coffin demanded to know, his assault rifle also raised up high in his magic.

I also made sure to draw my weapon as Morning Glory charged her energy rifles. Liberty, though… She just looked inquisitive.

“Hold on, guys,” she said softly. “Maybe they’re not here to fight us?”

“We rightly should,” the pony stated. "I’m Sergeant Granite of EC Company... Enclave Control Company. We're responsible for perimeter defense, ‘usually’ that is. Lately we’ve been undergoing training for Hades Tank operations.”

“Convenient!” Liberty piped up. “We really need a pilot!”

She looked back and gave us all an ‘I told you so’ face. Well, I guess weirder things have happened…

“Yeah, that’s probably not going to happen, Ma’am,” he replied simply, taking a puff of his cigarette as his squad just seemed to lounge idly nearby.

“You’re kidding, right?” I deadpanned. What was with these guys? “So… you’re not going to shoot us… But you’re not going to help either?”

“Pretty much.”

“I’ll add laziness to the list of things wrong with Death Scythe’s Enclave,” Glory muttered.

“Not laziness, Ma’am,” Granite rebuked. “We just don’t give a fuck. Used to, maybe. Hell, we all signed up filled with the promises of the Enclave’s righteousness and glory. Maybe we believed it, too.”

“What changed?” Liberty asked.

The Sergeant just shrugged. “Not rightly sure. Maybe the Enclave wasn’t quite as heroic as we were told. Doesn’t bother most, patriotism and all that. But I sure as heck don’t really subscribe to the General’s crap. Down here it’s just assholes shooting assholes, nothing much else to it.”

“We’re fighting so we’re not systematically enslaved and butchered,” Coffin retorted.

“If you say so. Who am I to judge?”

“Look, you said you can drive one of these tanks, right?” Morning Glory asked, pushing forward to the front of our group. “Well, I helped build them. I’m fairly certain we can get the thing going and all live if you help us.”

He frowned, studying Glory. “You’re that scientist, aren’t you? The one they kept cooped up inside?”

“Not anymore,” she shot back. “Look, the Enclave wasn’t always completely bad. We had a lot of good people back in the day. Pegasi who died to stop ponies like Death Scythe from turning the Enclave into a completely fascist regime! My father, my sisters… The idiots in Neighvarro led our people down the drain, killed all Enclave civilians and soldiers who tried to stop them. But the pegasi can be better again, to do better. And that starts by toppling what Death Scythe has built and showing our people a better way!

He snorted. “A better way?”

“My city, Thunderhead, traded with the Wasteland before Neighvarro had us destroyed. We wanted to trade with the ponies below, to open up the Enclave and assist our earth pony and unicorn brothers and sisters. That’s what we should have been. And maybe what we can be again.”

He frowned. “You… actually love the Enclave, don’t you?”

“I love what we were,” she reiterated. “What we should have been, before the ponies in charge messed it all up.”

He hummed, puffing out a long tuft of smoke. “Truth be told, we could have been in a better posting if we wanted. We were put on the perimeter because it’s a slow day’s work, not much to do. We were only being trained in the operation of these things in the case of outside infiltration.”

Well, that might have just bitten them in the ass.

“Alright, I need to talk it other with the guys,” he said, turning to confer with the other soldiers.

“We might also add the base is going to explode very soon,” Liberty added quickly. “Just in case you weren’t aware…”

With the Enclave pegasi talking among themselves off to the side, Coffin turned to give Morning Glory a studious look.

“Love the Enclave?” he questioned. “The same ponies who attacked the enslaved everything down here?”

“As I said, it wasn’t always like that,” she responded. “At least… not everywhere. Our leadership in Neighvarro was always on the heavy hooved side. But the rest of us just wanted to live our lives. I spent my early years trying to extend an olive branch to all of you down here. But then Neighvarro went on the offensive, solidifying its grip on the other cities and destroying Thunderhead entirely.”

“Hard to believe Death Scythe got away with so much…” Liberty muttered sadly.

“Up there… well, they use all kinds of propaganda and fear mongering to keep ponies on team Enclave,” she mused, glancing up at the cloud cover. Even in the cities down here to some extent. Information control, keeping the real truth of their brutality from most of the populace. The cloud cover isn’t just to keep us from looking up, but to keep the pegasi from looking down.”

If only I could have found a way into the Single Pegasus Project. What would have history turned out like if the pegasi saw what Neighvarro were actually like? If support had been with Enclave factions like Thunderhead, rather than under the hoof of the leadership…

“Alright, we’ve made a choice,” Granite announced as he returned. “Your mentioning of the base exploding helped matter some, I will admit. It explains where the high ups are going in such a hurry.”

“I knew it…” Coffin muttered.

“So you’ll help us?” Liberty asked with sparkling eyes.

“We don’t have much choice but to,” he pointed out. “And maybe we’ll give you ponies a shot. See if you’re claims of fighting for freedom are legit.”

Fair enough!

“Follow us,” the Sergeant stated, motioning for his soldiers to make a move towards a nearby Hades Tank.

The nine of us moved quickly towards the vehicle, thankfully meeting no other less sympathetic Enclave soldiers on the way.

Seriously, with all the talk of vetting out ponies like Granite in the military, we probably just ran into the only friendly pony wearing X-02 power armor in all of Equestria!

At least that luck’s still holding. It’s about the only thing that’s gotten me this far.

The Hades Tank was tethered up to the fuel line, squatting in what almost looked like a crouched position with a large movable set of stairs placed alongside the thing to get into it. The stairs led up to an open hatch on the side of the main body, probably leading to wherever inside the machine the Enclave could control it from.

“Get those fuel pumps detached, or we aren’t leaving this place at all,” Granite ordered his ponies, who all wordlessly began to move around the Hades Tank and moved into a nearby shed. Even as the rest of us reached the stairs and regarded the tank, I could hear a whir of machinery as the connections to the fuel line began to retract.

“Ladies first,” Coffin offered coyly, looking at Stripe, Liberty Bell, Morning Glory and myself.

I think we all eye rolled at once as we obliged him. Not because we wanted to, but because we really didn’t have time to worry about it.

We moved up the staircase, Granite choosing to forgo them altogether and ascend under the power of his own wings. But as we reached the top, I cam to a quick halt alongside the others as a pony in an officer’s uniform exited the tank! He glanced up instantly from a clipboard he held in his wing, his eyes widening.

“What-” was all he could say, his mistake being that he was already reaching for his holstered magical energy pistol.

But all the rest of us did was watch as a metal tail struck forward from above the Enclave Officer, a barbed tip striking into his spine before lifting the pony up and throwing him to the ground below.

We all looked up at Granite, who was shaking the blood from his tail.

“To be fair,” he started. “That guy was always a prick.”

Well, that was slightly terrifying, but moving on!

With Morning Glory saying something more on the weaponised scorpion tail, we moved up again and made it through the doorway. We arrived into a short metal corridor, a door to the right being marked as an engineering bay while the door to our left seemed to lead into a control room.

The other all turned to the left, but I neglected to join them for a moment, instead I looked back out of the entrance hatch and towards the ground below us. The rest of the renegade Enclave squad was done with the fuel connection and were now flying up towards the hatch themselves. With that in mind, I pulled my head back inside and moved into the cockpit of the Colossus.

...Celestia, I have never seen so many buttons that I all wanted to press out of sheer curiosity. SO many of them were red! How could I not!?

No. Resisting. Press buttons later…

“Well, I’m already lost,” Liberty Bell commented. “This’ll be fun!”

“You’re in the pride of the Enclave’s war machine,” Granite stated, sounding rather proud of himself actually. “One big fuck you to anypony in our way.”

“I have no idea how the Council was able to afford all of this,” Morning Glory deadpanned. “You do not have this much advancement and rapid construction without economical drawbacks.”

“We let the big wigs deal with that,” the Sergeant responded. “That’s one headache I don’t want to have.”

I wonder what the Enclave could have accomplished if they didn’t spend everything on new weapons. Would Equestria even still be a wasteland by now?

“Anyway, guess I’m driving,” the Sergeant joked, walking towards a seat at the centre of the front console and removing his helmet. “Alright, let’s see if i remember…”

“Remember? I thought you could use this thing!” Coffin protested.

“Training to. Never actually done it.”

I think I saw Coffin’s eye twitch. “Right. Great! Anything else we need to know.”

“Just sit down and shut up, wastelander,” the Sergeant snapped, turning his head towards the other pegasi as they piled into the cockpit. “Ponies, make sure our systems are good and keep them that way! As for the rest of you, any of you got any technical knowledge? We need five ponies back there and four up here.”

“Since I helped design it, I think I should go,” Morning Glory volunteered, before she then turned to look at Coffin. “And you're good with computers, right?”

“Yeah, but you might want Sparkplug. I think she’s more into technical maintenance.”

She shook her head. “No, I think the Enclave can handle that. I need you to keep an eye on the on-board computer. Somepony needs to make sure it works without malfunction, and… I also need you to help me make sure nopony tried to remotely shut us down when we start moving.”

“Well, then I guess duty is a-calling,” he remarked, following Morning Glory back out of the cockpit and towards the back of the giant tank.

That just left Granite, Stripe, Liberty Bell and myself.

“So, where do we begin in piloting this contraption?” Stripe asked, examining a nearby terminal.

“No piloting. You’d probably trip us up after five inches of travel,” Granite responded, flicking a few switches that made a couple lights do blinking stuff. “As long as the others handle the technicalities backstage, I can keep us moving. What I need you three to do is man the weapons systems and correspond with the engineering sections.”

“Alright…” I said, staring at all those controls with a blank expression. “How do we do any of that?”

“Those two stations control our weapon systems,” he stated, gesturing to a couple of terminals embedded into the consoles either side of him. “The third one over there links up to the back, from there you can stay in contact with the engineering team and coordinate all our efforts.”

“I’ll take that one,” Liberty Bell volunteered. “You two should handle the blowing things up job.”

“Ah, the easiest and most fun of all the jobs,” Granite said wistfully to himself.

I watched Liberty trott over to her terminal and boot it up. I then turned to one of the two remaining computers, moving over to one at random and bringing the screen to life. Green text scrolled past before being replaced with a menu that was marked as being for the balefire egg launchers.

I guess that meant that Stripe would be using the railgun.

There were a few options on the terminal, the most pressing one being the ‘targeting computer’ option. Before that, however, I decided to select an option that brought up a whole bunch of technical statistics for the weapons. I’d need hours to begin to figure out how it all worked, this was a whole other world from what I was used to. Still, I got the general gist of what was going on. The guns didn’t seem to be ready to fire yet, and a note was telling me to contact engineering if I wanted a progress report.

“I am… uncertain as to how I am to proceed,” Stripe said worriedly. “I once had a friend who would be far more proficient at deciphering all this code. BUt I am afraid I am not as technically minded.”

“Don’t worry about all of that,” Granite suggested. “Just focus on the targeting computer. All the interface needs you to do there is aim the guns and shoot.”

“Speaking of…” Liberty Bell started. “I’m getting a message from the others saying that they have the weapons booted up, they’re no about to get the legs moving.”

“Alright then, I guess it’s-” Granite paused suddenly, glancing out of the front window and frowning. “Shit.”

I followed his gaze, looking out at the area surrounding our Hades Tank. And yeah, shit was probably an understatement. I could see several of those smaller but still fucking mean-looking Cerberus Tanks rolling up towards us alongside more than a few soldiers in both combat armor and power armor.

And I think we’d pissed all of them off.

“Hades Tank A-94,” a voice came in over the intercom. “Power down and prepare to be boarded. Comply, or you will be fired upon.”

“So… we’re ignoring that, right?” I asked the others, offering them a strained smile.

“Ugh, I’m regretting this already,” Granite muttered, but then looked up as a large clanging sound echoed around the tank. “But then again, we’re already dead either way. Rolling!”

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to ride inside of a giant as it walked across the surface of Equus? No? Well, neither had I! But seeing as I suddenly found my muzzle smacking into the ground as the whole tank gave a sudden jolt forwards, I certainly found out the hard way!

But hey, I’m just inside one of the worse death machines ever created by ponies forty years in the future after my biggest ever fuck up while running from an exploding reactor through an army of ponies who want to kill me! I’m fine! Just fine!

Maybe I should just get to using that computer and stop thinking about it.

Wishing I had some smarter ponies doing this instead of me, I got back to my hooves and planted myself in front of the targeting computer. I quickly selected the option and watched as the feed of an exterior camera was displayed, readouts of the various launchers coming along with it as I saw through the camera the Enclave begin to scatter and open fire.

As our Hades Tank moved from its dock and out onto the road, several Cerberus Tanks scuttled around us on their little legs and point their guns in our direction. I could hear and feel booms through the metal as their cannons fired, followed by a continuous volley of green magic as their energy gatling weapons span up. This was joined as pegasi started to surround us in the air, unicorns and earth ponies on the ground moving to give their own support as small arms fire also started to pelt us.

“Let us see…” Stripe murmured as she concentrated really hard on her own computer in the corner of my eye. Then, with a shattering boom, the railgun fired and eviscerated a group of earth ponies that were running over to join the fight. “Ah. I see, I think that’s how it works…”

“Just keep doing what you’re doing, Stripe!” Liberty Bell shouted as she was nearly knocked over by a large shudder the tank gave. “Because the others are saying we need to stop taking so much fire! We’re tough, but not invincible!”

A small bang and a shower of sparks behind me was more than enough motivation to believe her!

I fiddle around with the controls, trying to get a feel for them as we kept moving forwards, one of our legs coming down onto an armored car and crushing it beneath us. Some of the controls around the terminal seemed to aim the launchers, and the closest of the big shiny red buttons…

The moment I hit it, several small objects were seen being launched on the monitor from our tank. The barrage smacked into a line of the smaller tanks ahead of us, and in a moment they were all consumed in a wave of green balefire.

“That did it!” Granite proclaimed, pressing down hard onto his controls and increasing our speed. “Keep me covered while I navigate us away from this mess!”

As our speed increased, there were three Cerberus Tanks that had crawled their way on top of a nearby building with some other Enclave soldiers supporting them and firing at us. Another shot with the railgun sent one of the tanks careening from the building and back down to the floor below. I followed that up with another balefire egg barrage, practically blowing the top of the building off!

We kept on moving down down the road and through the lines of inactive Hades Tanks. Now that Stripe and I had gotten to grips with the basics, keeping the Enclave off our backs was becoming increasingly easier. Stripe’s railgun cut through another tank ahead of us, though I tried to be a bit more conservative with the balefire bombs. Still, it was hard not to feel like a fucking dragon or something in this thing! Aside from some superficial damage, nothing the Enclave had thrown at it had barely even dented the armor.

We started pressing on ahead for a gap in the line of tanks, and from there it looked like there was a stretch of open field that led to the outer fence. From there, we just had to make a break for it before the reactor finally detonated.

I had to keep reminding myself that, despite how badass this thing was to use, even it wouldn’t stand up to the equivalent of a full-blown megaspell detonation.

Two vertibucks suddenly flew into view on both my terminal and through the front window, both helicopters coming to a hover be letting red beams loose at us.

I aimed the balefire egg launchers up and towards the two vertibucks. I let the miniature megaspells loose towards. The eggs dotted the sky for a moment, before several hit the vertibucks and consumed them in their signature green mushroom clouds. Those that didn’t directly hit the vertibucks were also detonated by the blasts of the others, and what was left of the vertibucks was scattered from one end of the factory to the other.

Granite kept us moving forward, ignoring the remaining Cerberus Tanks as they fell to the wayside and the insignificant gunfire from the ground infantry, moving us directly forward towards the gap we had seen.

And you know what? We almost made it too.

Just as we were reaching the gap and our bid for freedom, probably the worst thing that we could have ran into… well, it ran into us.

From the gap in the line of inactive tanks came another very much active Hades Tank, its massive legs cracking the concrete road beneath is as it rounded to face us.

At this moment, there was only one thing to say.

“Ah, fuck it.”

If anyone else had anything to say or do, none of them got the chance as I saw the other tank’s launchers aim in our direction and unleash a familiar group of small objects towards us. I was barely able to brace myself as the balefire eggs hit us dead on, the entire tank shuddering violently as a terrible tearing sounded all around us, pieces of the console sparking and erupting into flames. Those alarms were probably bad too…

Looking back at the still intact terminal, the display was having a small panic as it showed that seven of the twelve balefire egg launchers had been ripped from their mounts. And looking at the suddenly frazzled and frantic looks of the others, I’m guessing they weren’t doing so good either.

“Damn, where did Hades Tank A-103 come from!?” Granite shouted. “I think I still have control, everypony else?”

“Uh, yeah, not doing so great,” I responded.

“The railgun has been damaged,” Stripe informed us.

“They’re telling us the same,” Liberty Bell said, speaking of the others in the back. “One more shot will tear it apart. You should switch to the gatling cannons for now.”

“I would not worry for the moment, look,” Stripe then pointed out, gesturing a hoof out of the window towards the other tank.

And now that she mentioned it, those balefire launchers are automatic. Why hadn’t they kept firing and finished us?

“Power down,” the voice through the intercom returned in stereo. “You are damaged and outgunned. Power down.”

Ah, of course. They wanted their Hades Tank. Were they even aware that the base was about to explode?

Then again, if Granite hadn’t known then they probably don’t either. I almost feel sorry for them.

“If we move, they’re going to fire on us again,” Liberty Bell noted in worry. “But we don’t have much time left.”

“Right… how are we playing this?” Granite asked. “Gotta say, our options aren’t great. There wasn’t any training for fighting another Hades Tank either.”

I looked at the others, all of them glancing between one another in search for any bright idea anyone else might have. Getting none from them, I looked away and back towards the other tank. It was in a far better condition than ours and still had all of its weapons. Our armor was probably melted from the balefire barrage, even if it was thick as a stable door, being a stable dweller myself, I knew that stable doors were never meant to take direct hits from megaspells.

Still, given the fact we weren’t dead, there had to still be something left between us and oblivion.

Still, our gatling guns weren’t going to even dent them. Our railgun had only one shot left, though maybe if we hit the front window of the cockpit… Still, it might not be enough to take them all out in there. And even though we still had a few balefire launchers, they had more…

Shitty pissing fuck! I didn’t get frozen for forty years just to die on my first mission for the resistance!

Come on, Littlepip. Think! What would my friends do…

Calamity would want a head-on charge, going out in a blaze of glory.

Velvet Remedy would want us to surrender and try to talk our way out of this.

Steelhooves would support Calamity’s idea and go out fighting. He’d have preferred going out this way…

Xenith would just stand quietly in the corner and look intimidating.

Well, sorry Velvet. You’ve been outvoted!

“Charge them,” I said.

They all looked at me like I was a dump pony. Which… wasn’t a bad deduction, really.

“I said charge them,” I repeated. “Think of it this way, up close they can’t use their balefire eggs.”

“Neither could we,” Granite deadpanned.

“True,” I admitted. “Buuuut, we’d probably stand a better chance up there than here.”

“The reactor could go critical at any moment…” Liberty Bell reluctantly agreed. “Maybe we could topple them with a ram?”

“A ram…” Granite was really a master at looking unamused about things.

“It may be our only option…” Stripe surprisingly also concurred. “I have been a part of many foolish gambits in these long years. May luck continue to favor us.”

“Ahhhh,” Granite moaned, turning back to the controls. “Welp, tell everypony backstage to hold onto their asses.”

He sent us forwards once more.

Through the front window, the other tank was rapidly getting bigger as we approached! Another call came through the intercom ordering us to stop, the launchers on the other tank following us. But I don’t know if the gunner hesitated as we got close or what, but they failed to fire as we practically headbutted the other tank at full speed!

There was a great crash and the sound of grinding metal, a crack appearing in the front window as we collided with the vehicle ahead of us. Everything shook and rumbled as we were all nearly thrown around like rag dolls, only holding on because we were prepared for it. The other tank stumbled backwards from the impact, the pony at the controls clearly struggling to keep it upright as it moved backwards. During the chaos of the ram, they failed to fire back at us once more. And now there was once again a small distance between the two of us.

“Stripe, the window!” I shouted.

She seemed to get the message, jumping back onto her targeting computer and taking aim.

There was an even larger bang as she fired the railgun, a bang I imagined was the sound of the weapon exploding and flying from its mounting on top of the tank. But it did fire, and the shot hit directly into the front window of the other tank’s cockpit. In a moment, the green tinted glass shattered and revealed the still intact ponies within.

Stripe didn’t need any prompting to switch to the gatling cannons, opening fire into the new gap and shredding those inside. The tank seemed to stumble again, but this time there was no pilot ready to correct the movement. The Hades Tank started to list, slowing beginning its angled descend backwards.

And yet, even as it fell, somepony inside was clearly still alive. Their own railgun aimed down as it fell, and a single shot was let loose as the other tank hit the ground and fell silent.

Something exploded.

The entire structure gave an jolt not unlike the ram as something that was probably important gave way! Like the other tank, we also started to tilt to a dangerous angle, Granite working hard to keep us upright.

“What was that!?” the stallion shouted.

“Uh…” Liberty worked her terminal, probably chatting up Glory or something! Wait, not chatting up, that would imply… Mind out of the gutter, Pip, we’re probably about to die! “Right, okay. Glory is saying that last shot dislocated one of our legs. We’ve only got three now.”

“Damn, okay…” Granite muttered. “I can still do this. We can limp on outta here…”

Would we even have time to limp anywhere!?

“Celestia One lock engaged.” What did the intercom voice just say? “High profile target, precise beam incoming from Tenpony Tower.”

“Did they just say Celestia One?” Granite asked. “Damn, they must really want you dead.”

“Do you think it’s me or Morning Glory they’re specifically wanting gone?” Liberty Bell asked.

“Yes,” Stripe deadpanned.

Forget that! Abandon ship!

We all rushed back over to the hatch, Granite ensuring to grab his helmet as we went, moving out into the small corridor as I latched onto the exit with my magic and forced it open! The door to engineering also opened up, Morning Glory’s face appearing with the others all behind her.

And, looking out of the hatch, I remembered that the staircase wasn’t there anymore. Maybe I could float us down with my magic…?

“Here,” Glory said as she took hold of me. Yeah, letting the winged ponies do the work here would probably be better for all of us. “Hang on!”

Morning Glory kicked off from the exit hatch with me holding on for dear life as she lowered us down towards the ground. The other pegasi did the same for Coffin, Liberty Bell and Stripe, putting us all down onto the cracked and charred concrete below the damage tank.

Rubble was strewn everywhere, a giant metal severed leg lying nearby and a toppled Hades Tank sitting not far beyond that.

But there was no time to register that for long, or the ridiculous amount of red bars around us on my E.F.S., it was running time!

We moved as fast as our legs would carry us, heading past the two tanks and through the gap we had been trying to get through in the first place. Still, on hoof it was quite the jog to get to the edge of the fence in the distance. Forget about trying to outrun the actual incoming blast…

“Vertibuck pad!” Coffin shouted, and nearby I spotted a vertibuck that looked like it was about to take off from a nearby trio of pads. It was the only one there, the other two pads empty.

Our last chance.

We sprinted towards it, the renegade Enclave soldiers kicking into the air on Granite’s orders and rushing ahead of us. The ponies trying to board the vertibuck saw them and opened fire, probably having identified them as hostile on their own Eyes Forward Sparkles, with Granite’s squad firing back in return.

Then was a flash, and I spared a small glance at the blinding lance of pure light that streaked through the sky and collided with our abandoned tank. And just like that, in a moment, it was gone.

Celestia One in action.

I pulled assault rifle and entered S.A.T.S. as we arrived at the vertibuck, surveying the situation. Our four unexpected allies were in a brawl with the group of five soldiers who had been here already. Four of them were in combat armor, though who I imagined was the leader of their particular squad was in power armor. Granite himself was driving his barbed tail into the torso of one soldier while simultaneously firing his magical energy weapons at the doomed pony. The the others were engaging the four remaining Enclave soldiers, but one of Granite ponies seemed to be in trouble. The leader of the hostile squad had knocked one of Granite’s pegasi to the ground with his own scorpion tail, knocking the helmet from his head and preparing to finish the pony.

This would be close, but I targeted the attacking pegasus in an attempt to save Granite’s squadmate.

I wasn’t fast enough.

My bullets hit true, but not before a bolt of green magic hit the stricken pegasus in the head and turned the pony into goo, leaving only the now empty power armour behind.

Because I failed. I could almost see a small little filly being turned to ashes by Enclave soldiers before my eyes in Friendship City. I could almost see everything I had fought for being swept aside because I couldn't protect New Appleoosa. A-all the… all those ponies I had indirectly killed because I failed… And now I could add one more.

Fuck… FUCK!

I grit my teeth, giving the biggest fucking shout I could as I charged at the bastard! I unloaded my assault rifle at the soldier, and I don’t give a shit if the bullets pinged off his power armor, I was going to END HIM.

My vision suddenly swam for a moment before I hit the ground, the tail of that power armor having swung around and hit me in the barrel. The barb hadn’t stuck in me, but I had been knocked to the side.

A strange distorted pulse flew through the air, and the pony shouted in pain as the from plating of his armour seemed to distort and crumple.

I glance at where it had come from, seeing Coffin with that weird toy gun he’d snatched from the armoury.

“Pulse pistol,” he explained simply. “Told you it was good.”

Not for the soldier.

I lit my horn up, letting my green magic latch onto the pony’s armor as I lifted the fucker into the air and slammed him back down. He tried to raise his tail, but I wouldn’t allow it! From there, I raised my rifle again and let loose into the collapse section of his armor. Blood oozed from the gaps, and the pony went still.

And there I stood, just panting my breath away. His body was in front of me, bleeding out. But I hadn’t done it in time. I had failed to stop him from taking the life of one of my allies. Sure, that ally had also been Enclave, but he was one of the ponies wanting to do better! BUt I didn’t save him. I failed.

I have to stop failing.

I have to.

I felt something touch my shoulder, and I looked up at the worried eyes of LIberty Bell. It was only then that I realised that the battle was over.

“Are you alright…?” she asked slowly.

“Yeah,” I lied. “So… what now?”

Liberty Bell glanced past the newly created corpses and into the vertibuck. There, Coffin and Granite seemed to be in the middle of ‘convincing’ the pilot to fly us out of here.

That answered that.

I could still feel Liberty Bell’s stare drilling into the back of my skull as we hopped into the vertibuck. I could hear the pilot’s protests, following by his eventual resignation as he continued the takeoff.

All eight of us loaded up, and the vertibuck started to lift up off of the ground.

“Get us away from here,” Coffin demanded to the pilot. “Far from here. Don’t stop until we say.”

“Your buddies killed one of mine,” Granite added. “Don’t piss me off more.”

“OK! OK! I’m moving…” the pilot replied, turning the vertibuck and lifting us up and away from the base.

And so we flew, the vertibuck gaining altitude as it crossed the fence and returned us to the wasteland.

I watched as we gained distance on the factory, finally putting space between us and those lumbering machines. I can’t say I was going to miss it. Even if we had to leave somepony behind…

“Are you sure you’re okay, Sparkplug?” Liberty Bell asked softly. “You look… shaken.”

“I’m fine,” I lied again. “We got out. We’re good.”

“No, you’re not fine.” Why does she have to be a smart pony as well as a cute one? “Is it Granite’s squadmate?”

“Ace Wing,” Granite spoke up, glancing at us. “That was his name.”

And now I had a name to go with the face. I wasn’t sure I could feel any queasier than I was already feeling…

“It wasn’t your fault,” Liberty Bell tried to comfort me. But I knew it was. “Sometimes these things happen. I’ve… lost some ponies too. Ponies who trusted me to get them home.”

“Not as many as me…”

I regretted my word choice. Not only because of her suddenly confused stare at my slip up, but because that wasn’t fair, was it? Ugh, more guilt…

Before either of us could follow up on it, however, it was Stripe who piped up next.

“How much time did we have to spare?”

Morning Glory hummed, glancing out of the vertibuck and back towards the factory. “Hard to say. I could be anywhere between-”

There was a deafening crack as what could almost be described as magical lightning began to crackle across the factory, small explosions dotting the structure as the fuel line started to ignite.

And then death once again reared its head upon the Equestrian Wasteland.

The whole thing ignited. The reactor blew, consuming the factory as secondary explosions rippled along the lines of Hades Tanks, igniting the fuel along the line and inside the tanks themselves, blowing the death machines into pieces.

The explosions combined their strength, and the entire base, and the landscape around it, was consumed in a gigantic mushroom cloud. The deafening explosions sounded all around us as our vertibuck made to get as far from the detonation as possible, and yet I spotted the blue sparks sent away from the explosion heading towards us.

And when it hit, everything went dead.

“Fuck, EMP!” Morning Glory shouted, clinging onto to the nearest railing for dear life.

We all followed suit. Railing, each other, whatever! We all hung on as all control over the craft was lost, sending us hurtling down towards the dirt! I could just feel the forces acting us us, down and down until the ground was only-


Ugh, who put the thing and shoved it into my thingy… Or onto me, or… What?

Fuuuuck. The world hurts. Why, world?

“Pilot’s dead,” I heard some voice or other say. “Could have been worse, I think the rest of us are intact. Hey, how’s Sparkplug?”

“Hang on, I’m giving her a healing potion.”

Such a strange thing, a healing potion. It’s all… watery. And it heals. It’s pretty… Bleh!

It was like all sense returned to me in an instant, the world going from one hazy blur to a perfectly vivid nightmare! The healing potion was removed from my gullet as I sat up, unable to resist a coughing fit. Even with the potion, I still ached really badly. But I was alive, so there was that!

“Thank Celestia you’re alright,” Liberty Bell said, breathing a sigh of relief from her position sat beside me. “You hit your head pretty bad when we hit the ground.”

“Yeah, I feel it…” I muttered, looking around. The hulk of the vertibuck was nearby, the others all gathered around and getting their bearings. The shadow of the mushroom cloud hung over us like a bad omen, and who knew how many Enclave patrols were on their way to investigate what happened to their factory.

But we made it. We were alive.

“It was lucky I was wearing a helmet, or I would have caved my skull in for sure,” Coffin said as he moved next to us, removing the X-01 helmet on his head that very much had a new and very large dent in it. “We all got lucky. The healing potions helped.”

“What happened to the pilot?” I asked.

“As I said, caving in skulls,” he responded.

Ouch.

“Less lucky for us, given the power armor,” Granite stated. “The rest of you though… Yeah, you are lucky bastards. I’m glad for that, given our escape just now was pretty improbable in every conceivable way.”

“Well, get used to it,” I replied with a half-hearted laugh. “I think ponies like us run purely on hopes and dreams.”

“I prefer to think of it as the Magic of Friendship.” I blushed when Liberty gave me a nuzzle on the head that I wasn’t entirely sure was platonic…

Oh dear.

“That’s all well and good…” Granite continued. “But what now?”

Coffin hummed, turning his eyes skyward. “I wouldn’t worry about that…”

The sound of blades caught my ears, and the rest of us also turned to looks upwards as the shaped of a second vertibuck started to come into view. It didn't look like the same model of vertibucks the Enclave were using, but seemed to be an older model of vertibuck. The kind of vertibuck that would have been in service during Operation: Cauterize, and this one was definitely not flown by an Enclave pegasus.

“Need a lift?” Steampunk asked over our earpieces. “Seeing as you totalled your own ride and all.”

I laughed again, though this time it was a little more genuine.


Footnote: Level 4

New Perk: Educated - +3 skill points per level