Trowel tossed restlessly on his mattress. It was lumpy, and he hadn't had a proper night's sleep in two days because of it. The bumping and rocking of his carriage wasn't helping either. He ground his teeth at the thought of suffering through an entire week of living in this squalor. Finally, he sat up and furiously stomped his hooves into his pillow before throwing it and his blanket against the wall.
There was a knock from the driver at the front of the carriage. Trowel banged his horn on the roof of the carriage as he stood. Muttering under his breath and idly rubbing his horn, he climbed up and poked his head through the curtain. "You're interrupting my sleep. This has better be important," he said.
The driver, an old and wrinkled earth pony pointed ahead of their convoy. After two days in the rolling dunes of the wastes, they had at last found what they were looking for; tall, angular and jagged structures broke through the horizon. It was like the stalk of a carrot ripe for picking. Trowel breathed a sigh of relief. He won't go home empty-handed and soon he'll be back in his own bed.
Even more than that, the whole reason for taking this arduous journey was because of what he'd heard from the last trader caravan that came by the plantation: There's a city by the coast, the merchant pony told him while buying up every last potato and cabbage from the harvest. They're hungry and not just for food but machines. Big machines from the old empire lost in the industrial ruins were worth as much as a shipment of crops twice their weight. With all his wagons loaded up from this scrapyard, Trowel would command the attention of Precinct 173.
Trowel snatched the reins away from the driver and repeatedly snapped them at the lead ponies pulling his carriage. "Pick up the pace!" he shouted.
Starry Night was flying above industrial ruins that she and the other ponies from Mum's Diner had set up camp in.
They had all risen with the sun and were making their way through the ruined complex. Based on the previous night's reconnaissance, and with Starry's areal view, she knew just where to lead them: there was a workshop on the north side of the ruins. When Jade had heard about the heavy machines inside, she immediately decided that they would focus all their efforts there; weigh the carts down with a couple of those and go home--they were worth more than their weight in water and could be loaded up in a single day's work.
Starry watched over her team as they wound their way through the ruins. It was a familiar duty, though one she hadn't practiced for several years before joining Jade and the others from the diner. It was all second nature to Starry; it was her special talent after all. Her cutie mark was a constellation in the shape of a compass rose. "I'm good at finding things," she told people. That was the easiest way she could describe it, and nobody ever asked for more detail.
In Precinct 173, she had earned promotion to an officer due to her knack for leading her team to where they needed to be. Together they had recovered a wealth of scrap materials from the city ruins around her home.
That was another lifetime. Starry shook her head to clear away a stray thought while she scanned around the ruins — a routine part of her job as the eye in the sky.
There was a railroad that ran through the ruins. It stretched beyond both the north and south horizons. The barren sands stretched out for miles in all directions, but something in the northeast caught Starry's attention; a cloud of dust kicked up by a convoy of wagons was moving in their direction.
Starry spilled air from under her wings and circled lower, waving to catch Jade's attention. She set down away from the team and waited as Jade ran over to meet her.
"We have company," Starry said. "Northeast. Too far out to get a good count, but it looked like at least five wagons, so I'd guess three or four dozen."
Jade frowned. "We'd be outnumbered if they decide to pick a fight. Do you think they saw you?"
Starry shrugged. Certainly, she had been flying low enough to be in their field of view. "Probably. What should we do?"
Jade glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the machine shop and then toward their camp at the southern side of the ruins. "This is further out than we've been before, and I never met a scavenger team that big, so they probably don't know who we are. That can work in our favor as much as against us. Let's assume they saw you and know someone is here. What's the worst way this can play out?"
"If we do nothing?" Starry thought for a moment. The entire team in one place was a giant glowing sign that pointed directly at the best loot. "They find where we're working and take it for themselves." Why spend time looking around for yourself when you can let someone else do the recon for you? "We should pull back and find lighter scrap close to camp until we can establish contact and negotiate salvage rights."
"You're used to thinking like you have other teams you can call for backup. If they're as big as you say, there won't be rights to negotiate for." Jade shook her head. "No way are we giving up those machines. One good haul from here and we can keep the diner stocked for months." She paced slowly as she considered her options and weighed the risks. Time was short, so she settled on a plan quickly. "Gather the kids and send them to the east side. Tell them to pick up whatever they can carry and make a lot of noise doing it. You and Anchor meet me at the northeast corner. We'll have a chat with our new neighbors and buy time to get one or two machines loaded up."
"Yes ma'am." Starry nodded to Jade and the two parted ways.
Jade made her way across the cracked and rubble-strewn pavement to the edge of the ruins. She had expected something like this to happen; traders made their living by spreading tips about what was in demand after all. But with Starry's maps and insight, she'd thought they'd have more time. She looked out across the barren earth at the swirling dust cloud kicked up by dozens of sets of hooves on their rapid approach. Jade had thought Starry's estimate impossible until she saw it with her own eyes.