//------------------------------// // 7 - Thunder and Bullets // Story: Fallout Equestria: Operation Star Drop // by Meep the Changeling //------------------------------// I’m not sure how quickly I thought that Wander and I would have caught up to the Tainted, as the poor medic had named the bandits. I'm not sure how long I really expected Wander and I to spend hunting after them. Certainly not for hours. Wander was a very fast pony, and even low on coolant I was still keeping pace. Of course, I’d completely forgotten that the enemy had a robot to pull their wagon. Their cart was able to make pretty good time across the rolling hills. The ancient highway helped, of course. The same road that Magebridge was built on ran all the way to Manehatten, and it had been built with wagons in mind. Wander mentioned during our chase that ever since the Gardens, it had been maintained for the same reason. Potholes had been filled with gravel. Uneven slabs of asphalt had been dug up and laid level. The NCR cared about this road. Sometimes I caught glimpses of the Tainted ahead of us. A little dot on the horizon, or sometimes as a shimmer of light on metal as they crested a hill. They’d started out, perhaps two kilometers away from us. Maybe one and a half. That distance slowly shrank with each second, but never by much. Whatever kind of bot they had pulling their wagon was one strong motherbucker. Also huge. Like, terrifyingly huge. I could see their hoofprints gouged into the softer sections of the road from time to time. Each of them was nearly two and a half of my hooves wide. Normally I enjoyed taking in the scenery while I traveled, but there’d be none of that today. I had to keep my eyes on the road and the ponies we were chasing. If they stopped moving, it meant they had caught up with the ponies they were chasing. The day flew by with only a single notable event. A few hours after our chase had begun, a loud roar came from the road ahead of us. Not the roar of a dragon or other massive creature, but the roar of rocket engines. A hulking gray shape detached itself from the group ahead of us and ascended into the sky on a pillar of fire, leaving behind a column of thick smoke as it flew upwards. Then, once it had flown upwards perhaps five hundred meters, it turned to the northwest. The deafening roar of its rockets changed from a bassy rumble to a higher pitched shriek, and it vanished into the distance like a bullet from a gun. Wander and I only barely managed to avoid tripping over our own hooves as we watched the spectacle unfold. I was able to see Wander slowly shake her head, as if trying to push the incredulity out of her very soul. “I don’t believe it…” Wander murmured quietly. “I don’t know why one of them would leave either… Especially not their robot,” I agreed with a nod. Wander floated Bad Trip towards me for half a second, then returned it to her side as she realized the robot was long gone, and far out of her scope’s range. “That wasn’t the robot. That was— No, no it couldn’t be. There’s no way anypony could have found his power armor,” Wander corrected, her voice oozing perplexion. “You’re right. It had to have been the robot… But, it couldn’t have been! I got a good look through my scope...” I raised an eyebrow. “Whose power armor?” I asked with a small frown. “For that matter, what model of power armor can fly?” “Commander Gale Force,” Wander answered instantly. “The poster-colt for the Equestrian Special Forces. They made him a special suit of power armor for photoshoots, it was like a walking gunship with rockets to let him fly with all that extra weight, and four big rotary cannons. I didn’t think it actually functioned!” “Special Forces?” I asked as I returned my attention to the road ahead. “Oh! Right, those Steel Rangers you mentioned. I didn’t think they would have had any overlap with the Air Guard.” “They didn’t! Commander Gale wasn’t a Ranger. He was part of the Special Forces. Different branch entirely. I uh, I don't know too much about it actually! Either nopony liked to talk about it or it was classified. Or both. They weren’t a friendly bunch.” “Well, let’s hope he won't come back,” I said with a slightly fearful shiver. “I really don’t want to have to fight a pony in flying armor who can just strafe us… Wait, you don’t think that’s why he took off, did you?” Wander shook her head and laughed. “Nah, he’d have looped around already and we would be dead… Let’s count our lucky stars that whoever that was, they bucked off and left us with just the robot to deal with.” Time blurred together after that. There was the road, the distant cart, and Wander. Over the course of the day, right around sunset, we managed to close the distance to the bandits down to a kilometer. We were gaining on them slowly but surely and if we could keep the pace up, we would be on them sometime around midnight. Wander seemed to be able to to push herself enough to keep going almost at full speed for the night. My systems were stressed, but the air in the grassy foothills cooled after sundown, which helped put the spring back in my step. The odds were good we could catch them. As the moon rose and lit the world with its dim yellow glow, I could only hope that the troopers they were chasing could keep running through the night. ☢★★◯★★☢ Thick black clouds rolled in from the east and covered the sky just after midnight. Wander had a mini-panic at the sound of the first thunderclap. Apparently she’d been in Friendship City when the Enclave attacked it over a decade ago. Being in a thunderstorm brought all those bad memories rushing back to her. At least, it did until the clouds overtook us and unleashed more rain than I had ever seen in my entire life. We sometimes got rain in Lith. It would come down in little spatter droplets and freeze into little flowers of ice the second it hit something. This rain was not at all like the rain in Lith. This rain came down in fat drops that traveled in packs, and they were somehow colder than ice. You weren't just hit by one drop, at least eight of them would hit the same spot as any other given droplet all within milliseconds of each other. When combined with the biting wind that made my scarf and saddlebags flap and flutter like a flag, the rain came at us from the side and made me briefly wonder if we were crossing a shallow river, or if the rain was simply extra bad for a few long moments. I liked the rain. I was running nice and cool thanks to its icy hug. Thunder and lightning continued rumble and flash the entire time the sky continued to unleash its fury upon us. At one point, the storm got so bad I wasn’t sure if we were even on the road anymore, let alone have any sense of where the enemy's wagon was. The world itself seemed to vanish in that storm. All I knew is that we were in the freezing rain. Howling winds and deafening thunder drowned out even the sound of my own hoofsteps and the water running down the road like a river. The flashes of lightning were blinding, whiting everything out before plunging everything into pitch-black darkness as my eyes tried to recover from the flash. I was deaf, and the world was lit by a giant strobe lamp. I didn’t even hear the gunfire until I was close enough to see the muzzle flashes. Bright plumes of orange-white light attached to black-ish silhouettes, their thunder lost to the storm. The first flash was a few meters in front of my nose. The second came from a dozen meters ahead, and five up. For half a second I saw the jagged outline of a wall made from junk. Ponies shouted. Their words had no hope of making it to my ears as anything other than the faintest of cries. My LAERs hummed as I took aim at where the first flash had been and fired. Twin bolts of blue lightning streaked out through the rain, crackling and hissing as the water caused them to spread out and dissipate. The bolts washed over my target like an electric net. I heard a shriek as the first pony shape toppled to the ground. Crap! Why had nopony told me heavy rain turns LAERs into melee tools?! ”Probably because they didn’t know, sweetie. No rain to test it in up north.” I reached back to draw my pistol from its holster and something whistled past my ear. I had no idea where it landed. It vanished into the storm. I saw Wander as her magic lit the darkness in a radiant blue that turned the rain into a cascade of prisms. She hefted Bad Trip and began to fire beams of agonizing death into the cloud of muzzle flashes. Her bolts sizzled through the air, cutting through the storm as if it wasn’t there. Good. At least one of us was still effective. A bolt of lightning split the sky. For a heartbeat I could see our battlefield. We’d almost walked right into the back of the bandit’s wagon. Twelve of the rainbow-vested bastards were holed up in the back of their wagon, using it sides as cover to shoot up at the walltop of what must be Sire’s Hollow. The wall had six ponies standing atop its battlements. I recognized the trench coat silhouettes of two NCR troopers. The rest looked like regular ponies who had some guns, probably the town’s militia. They stood firm atop their scrap metal, concrete, and wood wall, firing down in desperation at the front of the wagon. They were directly above the town’s gates, which were not only open, but stuck open thanks to a thick mound of mud and grime which was being swept through the town’s streets by the rain in the flash flood. The robot. They had to be firing at the robot! My view began to cut out as the lightning flash faded. I aimed towards the back of the wagon and fired. My pistol wasn’t fully charged, but three bright green bolts streaked through the rain. I had no idea if they found their targets. All I knew was that I needed to get to the front of the cart and help shoot whatever the ponies on the wall were shooting. I turned to my left, picturing what I had seen in my mind’s eye as I ran. A bullet whistled past my other ear, then cut a line along the back of my head. I felt hot the lead scraping a groove out of my armor. Thunder from the lightning above drowned out my scream. A rifle. Great! There was no way the town’s ponies would know I was on their side unless they saw me shooting at the Tainted, and they had at least one rifle! I bit down on my pistol’s trigger as the blinding pain burned along the back of my head. Another three bolts of light streaked through the air and slammed into the wagon. Something flared a bright orange, casting enough light for me to see a shotgun tumble into the water covering the street and vanish. Had I done that, or one of the townsponies? The winds died down slightly, allowing the maelstrom of gunfire to be heard for the first time. Dozens of sharp cracks and booms overlapping one another, like the bubbles in a pot of boiling water pushing their way to the surface. Pushing past the pain I ran further forwards, holding down my pistol's trigger, letting it fire every time its breeder cell generated enough power. Its bolts were bright green. The militia would have to see them. They would realise I was helping and not put a 7.62mm hole through my braincase. Right? The muzzle flashes continued to light up the night. Shadows. That’s all anypony could see. Shadows. They wouldn’t see a zebra shooting from down below. Just some moving shape firing lasers. I wasn’t even remotely safe. This had been a horrible idea! I reached the position I had been running for and tried to stop. The floodwater had other plans for me. My hooves shot right out from under me and I fell into the miniature river the street had become. A bullet slammed into my left flank as I struggled to stand up, knocking me back into the water. Had it pierced my chassis? My head was still throbbing from the earlier hit. I couldn’t tell if that shot did real damage, as my body insisted I pay more attention to head-pain. “Get the bucking thing running again!” Somepony bellowed, their voice flecked with rage. Get what running? Wait, was their robot offline? Awesome! Another lightning bolt blazed to life above us, giving me a snapshot of the battlefield once more. This time, I saw their robot. Oh. He had said Ultra, when he died… This is what he meant. The behemoth was more of a tank than a robot. Huge. Boxy. Three ‘legs’ ending in all-terrain treads. Two ‘arms’ which were little more than gun turrets. A hunched back bearing two missile pods. A tiny ‘head’ which was little more than armor for a targeting sensor. An Ultra-Sentinel! Where the buck had bandits gotten a hold of an Ultra-Sentinel?! I couldn’t take my eyes off the warmachine. It wasn’t painted like any I’d seen in books, or heard anypony mention. It was painted jet-black, with the same rainbow emblem slapped onto the side like a rank-emblem. The rainbow was crude, clearly painted on post-war. There was other text on the sentinel as well. It was new, clean, perfect. Pre-war lettering. This thing had been dug out of a military warehouse someplace. How the buck had bandits, gang members, mercenaries, whoever these were even found a brand-spanking-new mechanized tank!? It looked alien in the rain and the lightning. Like the kind of alien which existed only to kill. I thanked Celestia it sat limply at the front of the wagon, as if it had simply died of exhaustion. Who knew I’d get lucky twice today! Maybe the townspony with the rifle wouldn’t kill me, too. The light from the strike began to fade. I could see a pegasus hunched over the Ultra-Sentinel’s back, halfway inside an open panel. He was trying to fix it! I fired my pistol at his exposed rump. My shot went wide. The world turned black. I began to fire blindly at where I thought he’d been, desperately hoping to stop the robot from being powered back on. I saw a few of Bad Trip’s crackling bolts slice past the wagon. The first I’d seen since looking back at Wander. Either she hadn’t been missing until now, or I’d been too distracted to make sure my sniper knew where I was going in the darkness. I hoped it was the former. I felt a fresh wave of pain as another bullet hit me just above my left eye, making the inside of my head ring like a bell. The bullet didn't pierce my armor, but it hardly mattered as I dropped into the water with a splash and a thud, thoroughly stunned. Seconds passed. Maybe a minute. I had no idea how far the current had swept me. All I knew was that I somehow still had my pistol in my mouth. I stood up, turned towards the muzzle flashes at ground level, and squeezed my gun’s trigger. I’d been down long enough for the weapon to fully charge, and a flurry of green energy bolts tore through the wagon. I heard screams. The number of flashes died down. Several bullets whistled past my ears. I wasn’t sure, but I thought they came from the cart and not the walltop. Light flared into existence, once more illuminating the battlefield. This time, it wasn’t lightning. It was spotlights. The Ultra-Sentinel was operational. A deep robotic voice cut through the thunder, wind, rain, and gunfire as if the deafening noise was merely the excited murmurs of foals. Bright green light leaked from the robot-tanks’ left arm as it spoke. “Thunder Hammer, is, back on-line! All systems: Nominal. Weapons: Hot! Mission: Defend Star Drop HQ from Zebra incursion!” If I had a heart, it would have stopped beating. This mountain of armor, energy weapons, missiles, and hatred, had been specifically programed to kill zebras. “Eeep!” I squeaked. The light oozing from the warmachine like blood was not just any green. That was plasma green. Yay... It was an Ultra-SentinelI. It was bigger than me. Much higher on the robot food chain! I should run. I should run fast! “SHOOT IT!” Somepony shrieked. The four ponies who remained atop the wall began to fire at the Ultra-Sentinel. Their bullets did little more than make little showers of sparks as they skipped off the robot’s inky armor. The Ultra-Sentinel raised an arm towards the parapet. Instinct overtook me and I fired a volley of green laser bolts into the robot’s side. “ALERT! Hostile Magical Energy Weapon detected! Identifying and eliminating priority target,” the Ultra-Sentinel bellowed. Oh, good, it thought my pistol was a threat. That meant it thought I could hurt it! Wait… That means it will really want me dead! The Ultra-Sentinel’s treads kicked up streams of water as it spun to face me, snapping free of the chain harness that bound it to the wagon like it was nothing. The flood lamps shone directly into my eyes, blinding me completely. “Armed Zebra detected on Equestrian soil! Eliminating with maximum prejudice!” Well, this was it… I heard no fewer than eight rockets fire. I could smell their fuel burning as they arced through the air, heading directly for me… Then they shot past my head, deployed a series of cluster-bombs, and blew the absolute shit out of a wheatfield a few dozen meters behind me. The explosion tossed me onto my belly like a filly’s straw doll. I could feel the heat from the flames on my rump through the chill of the rain. The wheatfield, was aflame. In this rain. Celestia’s teats, what corner of Tartarus did they get those bombs from?! Wait... Had there been another Zeebra over— “Alert! Targeting matrix malfunction detected,” Ultra-Sentinel bellowed. “Probability of mission hindrance… Zero percent!” HOLY BUCK, I SURVIVED! ”Bucking leg it!” imaginary dad screamed at me. I didn’t need any further fatherly instructions. I braced myself, aimed at the Ultra-Sentinel’s glowing red eye, and fired a full volley from my pistol. Yeah, I’m not faster than plasma, dad. I’m going to die fighting. ”That’s my girl!” My bolts cut into the armor around the robot’s eye. Green laser bit into the hardened steel and bullet-resistant crystal, damaging the Ultra-Sentinel more than I’d expected but much less than I’d hoped. It retaliated by the way of its left shoulder-canister opening and firing a silver canister my way with a dull thump. “Choke on this, foalkiller!” I turned and jumped out of the way as the canister slammed into the ground where I had been standing, sending up a plume of water as it burst open. A cloud of gray-blue gas hissed from the canister, filling the air with the distinct scent of chlorine, mustard, and… Horseradish? The Ultra-Sentinel stared at me as the gas cloud enveloped my body, and instantly caused my pelt to blister and itch. Oh. Chemical warfare. Cute. Maybe I could blind it with another volley. I fired into its eye again. Something cracked! Fragments of crystal blasted outwards from the eye. Sparks flew… But the red glow remained. “Zebra scum has perversely self-modified! Chemical weapons are ineffective… Requesting tactical advice from HQ,” the Ultra-Sentinel bellowed. Oh good! There wasn’t going to be an answer. I might have enough time to take it down. Maybe if I can breach the plasma container on its arm— “Orders received!” The Ultra-Sentinel thundered. “Activating custom combat protocol: Gale-Zero-Two! Destroy all Zebras!” “WHAT?!” I yelped around the pistol’s grip. Where the hay had it gotten orders from?! How? WHO!? I squeezed my pistol’s trigger, desperately pouring bolt after bolt into its eye, face, neck, chest, anything at all I could hit. A small hatch in the front of the Ultra-Sentinel’s face opened and deployed a small robotic arm with a wiper blade and tiny claw-hand. I couldn’t help but notice it was meant to wipe debris from the robot’s eye, but more importantly, somepony had zip-tied a red permanent marker to the wiper blade. The absurdity of the marker’s presence almost got me to stop desperately firing into the robot’s face. Almost, but not quite. The Ultra-Sentinel raised the marker and proceed to draw a pair of angry eyebrows and frowny-face on itself. Now that did make me stop shooting. “Wuh?” I asked of reality itself. “Setting aggression levels to one-twenty…” The Ultra-Sentinel murmured. “Executing murderboner-dot-exe…” Oh buck the hay no! Then the Ultra-Sentinel screamed. An angry scream. A stallion’s scream. No words, only rage. The Ultra-Sentinel screamed and charged. Full speed, zero to eighty kilometers per hour in half a second. Sparks shot form the Ultra-Sentinel’s treads as the sheer acceleration lit its axle grease on fire! Twelve tons of screaming, angry, death robot rushed at me, weapon arms raised to smash me into so much metallic confetti. I screeched in terror and dove out of the way just as the Ultra-Sentinel slammed its grenade launcher arm into the street where I had stood. The asphalt crumpled downwards, water rushed in to fill the hole. The Ultra-Sentinel turned, still screaming, but now able to scream words at me while flailing its arms and putting holes into the street. “SMASH ZEBRA! SMASH ZEBRA! AH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Terror managed to completely shutdown my conscious thought process. It swung its arms. I dodged. I dodged again and again. I felt the wind whooshing past me with each and every one of its flailing strikes. My eye-laser discharged, striking armor and doing nothing at all to it. I felt my ears get ripped off twice. The Ultra-Sentinel’s strikes were getting closer and closer. Any second now, I would— Pain. The world exploded around me, and the explosion was pain. I felt like I’d been hit by an auto-wagon. The pain snapped me out of my terrified trance. I knew where I was. On my back, three meters from where I had been a second ago. My left side was on fire. My eyes flew open wide. My left side was actually on fire! I rolled over, drowning the flames in the street-river. The Ultra-Sentinel’s arm came down where I had been laying, punching a crater into the street again. “EQUESTRIA WILL NEVER FALL TO ZEBRICAN INVASION!” The Ultra-Sentinel shrieked. I flinched, and shot a single laser bolt into the Ultra-Sentinel’s chest, burning a small hole into its armor. I don’t know what I did to earn a miracle and keep hold of my pistol during that hit, but it would have been nice if I got another and that shot had been more effective than flicking a pebble at it. WHY DIDN'T I ASK HER HIGHNESS FOR A PLASMA CANNON?! The Ultra-Sentinel raised its left arm one last time, cackling like a mad-pony. My entire left side was numb. My systems were screaming a dozen error messages at me. Something important broke. I couldn’t dodge this strike. I couldn’t kill it. Wander couldn’t kill it. The townsponies couldn’t kill it. This is where we all died. ”LAERs still work at this range, Gears,” Dad reminded me. ”You have one shot. Shoot for—” “The eye!” I exclaimed in realization. I twisted, aimed my battle saddle squarely at the glowing red eye, and fired. The glowing red eye I’d cracked open with my pistol. The glowing red eye which was a direct path into the robot’s delicate arcane circuits. A single bolt of artificial lightning blasted from my right side. It hit the Ultra-Sentinel squarely in its glowering red eye and sank deep into its mechanical depths. The Ultra-Sentinel shrieked. Not in pain, not in rage, but in total electro-mechanical failure. My lightning bolt cracked around its internals, resulting in pop after pop as circuits overloaded and detonated inside of its armored chassis. The glow faded from its eye as a plume of noxious blue smoke billowed out of its smoldering socket. The Ultra-Sentinel froze in place, its arm still raised to smash me to bits, but with every last part that would allow it to bring that arm down burnt to a crisp. Now... How bucked was I? I turned my attention to the status reports screaming at me inside my head. My auxiliary hydraulic pump was toast. That’s fine, I can live without it. I just can't lift anything too heavy or for too long until mom replaced it. Every feedback surge prevention diode in my left side had popped. Not a big deal. I just had to make sure I didn’t have a power surge, or I’d fry myself. Or at least, my left side. Also I’d be feeling a constant dull ache for… Well, until those were replaced. Great. Still, non-fatal! Ah, there’s the major damage. The armor along my barrel’s left side was completely compromised. If I got shot there, even by something low caliber, it could be lethal. I’d have to get some regular armor ASAP! Now, why was my coolant indicator screaming into my mind about being low? Oh. The fire burnt off enough of my flesh for the cracks in my armor to leak about half a liter of coolant into the water. I was thermal throttling. And inadvertently poisoned nearby crops. Yay... “Ow…” I moaned, dropping to my knees as my mechanical adrenaline equivalents wore off and the pain from my shattered pump and burnt diodes hit me like a hoof upside the head. I could feel my core’s heat deep within my chest. It was a very uncomfortable feeling. One which, in spite of not being truly painful, and having plenty of pain to contend with from other damaged systems, managed to remain planted first and foremost in my mind. I needed alcohol, salt, and water, STAT! Also if somepony could explain what stat meant so I could know what it actually meant and not just when to use it, that would be wonderful. ”Focus, honey.” I looked down, and debated drinking the street-river water. No. Who knew what kind of mud and dirt would get into my coolant lines if I used that… I felt hooves touch me and yelped, dropping my pistol into the river. “Easy! Easy,” Wander said firmly. Oh. Just her. Good. Wander reached down into the water with her magic and fished my pistol out. “Can you stand up?” She asked as she placed the weapon into my holster. I nodded and stood up. Very slowly. I had never thermal throttled before, but I could tell I was going to hate every minute of it. “I—I—I—I ne—” I grit my teeth angrily and pushed more power to my voice synthesizer. “I need alcohol. Now. Coolant low… I’m going to die low!” Wander nodded and pushed me gently towards the town’ gate, ducking under the burnt-out robot’s arm as she guided me along. “How hurt are you?” “Not too bad, besides the coolant,” I answered. My legs felt like they were solid lumps of lead… Celestia, why does moving with low power have to suck this much? I was tempted to override the safety system and beeline for the nearest bar and hope I didn’t cook myself before I got there, but self-preservation overrode impatience and I simply leaned over to let Wander take some of my heavier than normal weight. “Good,” Wander said, her teeth clenching as she did her best to support my left side. “I thought your LAER put a hole in you when it exploded.” I blinked. “Is that what lit on fire?” I asked, then I squeaked in panic and twisted my head to look at my courier's bag. “Is my stuff okay?!” Wander stopped and quickly inspected my bag for me. She nodded and gave me a reassuring smile. “The bottom is a bit scorched, but it looks okay… Your LAER, not so much. It’s half crumpled like a beer can and half melted like a candle… I can help you take it out of your saddle later. Maybe put your pistol in its place.” I nodded slowly and groaned. “Her Majesty is going to kill me…” “If that thing couldn’t, I’m not so sure she can,” Wander said with a grin. “You were awesome back there.” “I feel like I’m going to vomit up a liter of hydraulic fluid,” I retorted. “Well,” a mare’s voice said, its tone filled with worried and sympathetic twinges. “I suppose internal bleeding might cause that sensation.” I turned my head in the direction of the new voice. It was one of the NCR troopers. She had her mask and helmet on, preventing me from seeing what she looked like, other than, well, a soldier. One of the three ponies had a lantern which provided just enough light to see them by. The mare stood in the town’s open gate along with the other trooper and a single older stallion. The other trooper was missing his mask and was a purple unicorn with a dark red mane featuring a silvery stripe. The older stallion was dressed in an old tattered sheriff's uniform, wearing a fisherpony’s hat, and carrying an assault rifle. He had a nice tan coat of fur and a chestnut colored mane. “She’ll be okay,” Wander said to the three ponies. “I gave her a healing potion.” “Ya’ll ain't with those boys, are ya?” The older stallion asked with a grim expression, his left hoof resting on his rifle’s grip. I shook my head. “No… Trailed them here… From Magebridge. To help you,” I said slowly. The mare winced and took a few steps towards me. “Sheriff, even if they were, she stopped their robot. I’d say she’s earned some medical attention.” “We came because she insisted we make sure those guys didn’t get the Water Talisman they were carrying,” Wander said, pointing to the troopers with one hoof. “We learned about that from a medic. I tried to save him but he died. Begged us to help his friends before he passed on. That’s why she had us running all night. “I do mean all night. I’m exhausted. She had her side punched in by psycho-bot there… She needs a stiff drink and some rest. I need sleep. I have caps.” The troopers shared a quick look, then held a muttered conversation with the sheriff. Unfortunately, while the storm was starting to die down, it was more than enough to drown out their voices and prevent me from overhearing anything they had to say. The debate went on for a while. It only ended when the Sheriff stamped a hoof and shouted. “Well neither of them is shooting us now, so I reckon they’re honest folk!” “That’s a good point,” the female trooper admitted. “Nopony would notice if they killed us with the storm going… Alright, looks like we’ll trust you two.” The unicorn trooper slipped a small metal flask out of his coat with his lavender magical aura, and passed it to me. “Here, drink as much as you want,” he said before turning to the mare. “Sarge, she saved our lives and the cargo. You owe her a voucher.” I took the flask from the air, popped it open, tipped my head back, and drained every last drop of whatever was inside. I had no idea. I didn’t even know how strong it was. It could have been water for all I knew. Didn’t matter. Needed coolant. “And we owe you two a room for the night,” the Sheriff said decisively. “I don’t think we would have stopped that robot before it killed half the Celestia damned town…” He turned and glared at the Sergeant. “Next time y’all decide to send something every bandit for a hundred days walk might want, how about you keep a better lid on it?” “Don’t worry. We’ll pay for your deputies funerals too,” the mare said as she began to scribble something on a leather writing pad. She held her pen with a teal aura. It was nice to know she was a unicorn too. Why did the NCR use those masks? It was so… Dequinizing. The mare trotted up to me and set a hoof on my shoulder. Even with my hearing impaired by my systems thermal throttling, I could hear her holding back sobbing. Maybe that’s why her mask was still on. “Thank you for fulfilling one of my squad’s last requests,” she said slowly, as if in pain. I nodded. “I had too… Everyone deserves that much, at the least.” She nodded and tore a page from her notepad and handed it to me. I looked the oiled paper over and recognized it immediately as a pay voucher. “Two hundred isn’t enough. Not with what you did,” she continued. “But… Rewards come out of my squad’s payroll. It’s all I can afford this month… There’s a lot of ponies to bury, and I can’t cut our rations any further.” I frowned and was tempted to hand the voucher back for a moment. Then, I remembered how my main guns had been useless in the rain. No. I needed these caps. “Thank you,” I said with the best smile I could manage. The other trooper winced, apparently my smile wasn’t looking all that good. “Uh, Sarge?” He said with a hiss of empathy driven pain in his voice. “Maaabey we should let the Sheriff put them up in a room now? I don’t know how the buck a mare with the physique of a giddyup buttercup doll survived getting punched by that thing, but it’s pretty clear she needs to go lay the buck down for a while.” I nodded and groaned in agreement. “I second that emotion.” Wander snorted. “Heh, you mean motion.” “I got punched by a tank. I’m allowed to words wrong,” I muttered at the street-river. The mare nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, she needs rest for sure. Sheriff? Let me know what room they’ll be in. I want to make sure she makes it through the night.” The sheriff nodded in agreement and trotted up to Wander and I. “If you two will follow me, I’ll make sure you’re put up in our best inn for as long as you need to get back out on the road.” Wander flashed him a grateful smile. “Sounds great… Can we have room service?” “I can have somepony fetch you something,” the Sheriff said as he began to lead us into town. I looked to my left, hoping to make out some of the town just as my vision began to blur. My systems were starting to shut down, not just throttle… Oh, joy. “Wander,” I murmured. “I’m going to shut down soon…” “Stupid question,” Wander said quickly and loudly. “But before we get to a room, can we get my friend a tall glass of salted vodka? And some water?” The Sheriff turned around with an eyebrow raised and looked right into my very soul. Or at least, that’s how I processed the visual data I was able to see. “Is that some kind of zebra healing potion?” “Yes,” I answered with a feeble smile. “But, it will only work for zebras like me.” “I see… Say no more missy. Fortunately for you, we have enough travelers to sustain a nice little bar right by the gate.” The sheriff veered off to the left, leading the two of us towards a large, blank, flat black void in the dark black void that was flat black and… And all of the overlapping irregularly shaped black voids are really discomforting! Especially not with mom’s voice whispering into my ears... ERROR 31 (0x1F) GEN_FAILURE. A device attached to the system is not functioning. Your Robobrain Mark III Full Body Prosthesis will be shut down to prevent Operator Death. The many separate black voids melted together to form a single uniform black void. This one was comforting. It is now safe to turn off your zebra.