//------------------------------// // 36 - ... the Flash Nation attacked. // Story: Fallout Equestria: Operation Star Drop // by Meep the Changeling //------------------------------// Alarms blared. Motors hummed. Heavy doors sealed. I couldn’t see them closing but, there’s no mistaking the sound of several tons of steel hitting several more tons of steel. I stood still, unsure of what to do. Desi was outside, she had my equipment, but my equipment was garbage. If I hadn’t lost Feature, maybe I could be useful against an army of robots. I should probably just hunker down and hide… Three shuffled up to me, one of her leg joints clicking as she moved. “It is recommended that you do so. Stay mobile all the time. Usually Two units will search and destroy. They can go through the door.” I triple blinked. “Um, what?” 130 slammed her hoof against the door panel, opening the workshop up to the hallway with a loud hiss of over-clocked hydraulics. “She means Two’s scrap-bots meticulously search each room, clear them, and move on. There’s no front line. They’ll come in from everywhere. They can breach doors and walls. Stay on the move, keep close to your companion and whatever you do, don’t try to take them on one on one!” 130 looked over her shoulder at Three. “Come on, old timer. I’ll cover your limping plot for ya!” “Thank, 130.” Three replied with a worried little quaver. “Wait!” I cried as the two began to slip through the door. “Shouldn’t we all stay together?” “No,” 130 said firmly. “They prioritize large groups first via sonar. Pair up. It keeps them from forming what we call the “massive horrible collateral damage ball of hate”.” Oh… Well, that sounds like a good reason then. Desi poked her head around the corner, her horn lit to hold her book. “Are we under a pin?” she asked. “You mean ‘attack’,” 130 corrected politely. “And yes. Stick with your friend. Don't worry, it should be over soon!” Right! Desi the super-mage. It was okay that I wasn’t well armed, I had a smol wizard friend. I zipped over to Desi’s side and nodded to the left, the opposite way Three and 130 were headed. “We should go that way, and keep walking. Apparently the enemy will prioritize groups larger than two.” Desi nodded in understanding, put her book away, then quickly lashed my saddlebags and holster onto me with her magic then looked me dead in the eyes. “Shields up.” “Oh, right. I have those!” I laughed nervously as I activated my Gale Shield. The purple shimmer of light as the shield enveloped me reminded me of when I was much younger. Safety blankets and all that. Ironic how something named for someone trying to kill me was one of my best, if flimsy, defenses. Desi trotted off without a word. I followed her, doing my best to remain calm as we walked down the lavender corridor. Each blaring cry of the alarm brought a fresh shiver of fear to my core. I’d just been fixed! I’d only just been fixed, and now this… If only I hadn’t wanted to see my old hull again. I’d still be well armed with lightning and grenades, and Wander would be here with her nifty little blaster. We’d be able to handle some scrap-bots. What did that mean? Obviously that meant robots made from scrap, but… Had 130 meant the robots were built from scratch using junk, or did she mean they were built from the parts of other robots in a horrifying kludge of— The wall just in front of Desi exploded into shrapnel as a hulking metal monstrosity shoulder-checked through the reinforced concrete like it was tissue paper. The world seemed to slow down for a few moments. The monster vaguely resembled a diamond dog, only with chicken-legs, a door stop for a head, one big arm ending in a mini gun with an underslung flamethrower-chainsaw combo, and the other ending in a big three fingered claw. I suddenly missed Speed more than Wander. Time resumed its normal speed. The monster’s minigun started to spin up. "WE'RE NOT WITH THEM! JUST VISITING!" I yelped, my tail standing straight up right on its own. The killbot's response was eloquent and insightful: A hail of bullets. I dove to my left, hoping to dodge under the hail of death coming my way. Desi remained still, probably terrified. I reached out to grab her plot and yanked her down with me. Desi’s horn shone like a bonfire as she grabbed the monster-robot and shoved it back into the wall-hole just before the robot fired. “No thank you.” she said with casual politeness. My jaw dropped. D— Did she buck up Equish or was that a one liner? I reached back and drew my pistol from its holster and twisted to aim at the wall. The robot came back through, because of course it did. I fired three shots. The metal needles poked three small holes in the robot’s barrel. It didn’t even slow down. The robot barreled back through the hole, its flamer hissing then roaring as it unleashed a torrent of flame on the two of us. I screamed, remembering my last encounter with a flamer. I hugged the floor and curled up in a ball, trying to minimize the parts of me which would burn. My shields crackled and popped, the fire wasn't quite enough to overwhelm them, but any second now the robot would switch weapons, and my pistol wouldn’t cut it. And my Gyrojet was in my bag. Great! A loud magical-ish sizzle pierced the roar of the flames around me. The robot bellowed a metallic deathcry. The flames vanished as the robot toppled backwards, crashing into the floor with a thud. Desi dropped a large cylinder of random robot-parts she’d core-sampled out of the robot to the floor. I shook my head, ears and tail swill twitching with near-panic. “Heh… I uh… I wish I was a unicorn. I don't have anything for hardened targets right now.” Desi nodded in agreement. “Unicorn platform onboard weapons very sufficient! Power generation is... poor.” she paused for a moment frowned, referenced her book, then pointed to the robot’s mini gun. “Salvage spin-cycle gun?” That wasn’t a bad idea! At the very least, the sheer kinetic force of so many bullets hitting so close to one another would probably break the robots internally. The question was, could I fire it? I hesitantly stepped towards the robot. It remained still. I crept towards its minigun and looked it over. While it didn’t have any handles or physical controls, it did look like it could integrate into my battle saddle fairly easily… I followed the ammo belt with my eyes, fearing the robot used internal ammunition reservoirs. It thankfully did not. The ammo was still in its box, which was simply clipped to anchor points on the robot’s upper arm. “Yeah, I can do that,” I agreed, frowning as I started to puzzle through the next part of the problem. “At least, I can if we can figure out how to get it off of the—” Desi sliced the minigun free of the robot’s arm above the mounting bracket with a thin emerald ray of light. The weapon clunked to the floor. I looked up at Desi and pointed to the weapon. “How many more times can you do that?” “Seventeen,” Desi answered flatly. Okay… She’s a 21 inch gun with a really terribly small magazine. Understood. It took Desi and I about a minute to get the minigun hooked into my battle saddle. The weapon was nearly twice as heavy as Feature had been. I could feel it dragging me down on my right side. Putting the two ammo crates on my left saddle-mount had barely helped. It also didn’t help that the weapon was… weird. It was a robot’s weapon, and I was really… not meant to use those. The weapon gave me a third eye. It had a targeting camera in the middle of the barrel assembly. I could see exactly where it was pointing from the moment Desi hooked in the optical cable. But it was more than that. I could feel it, too. It was like having another leg just jammed onto my body. I didn’t like it… But I knew exactly what I was aiming at, even more so than when I used a cannon. So, at least it wasn’t all bad. Desi and I trotted down the halls, slowed by my new weapon. The lights flickered from time to time. Weapon and spell fire echoed through the halls every few moments. Sometimes a muffled ranting villain speech would rise above the sound. Other times the floor would shake. Five minutes into our cautious meandering I began to wonder if we had gotten behind the enemy lines. The way 130 had described their tactics, it seemed like once a section was “clear” they left it alone and— The ceiling above us crumbled. A huge tanky-robot with a Mark I robobrain tank mounted atop the huge square chassis fell through the floor, its four legs all scratching out in a murderous frenzy as it lashed out at us with a dozen buzzsaw tipped mechanical tentacles. I fired by instinct, sending perhaps eight hundred 30-06 rounds ripping down the hallway. The recoil from firing slid me backwards along the floor, slamming my plot into the wall. The shrieking blades stopped. “Enemy down,” Desi reported calmly. Ow! My butt… Okay, shorter bursts it is! Also… Probably should be watching the total ammo use. I had maybe 16,000 rounds left. I nodded and started to get back into position at Desi’s side. A pair of heavily modified Miss Handies dropped from the breach in a flurry of laser fire. My shield took the first hit, and the second, then collapsed at the third. Desi teleported a big chunk out of the one on the left. I squeezed off a short burst which solidly hit the other one, and knocked myself on my plot. The one I’d hit dropped onto the rubble, sparking. Desi snickered and pointed to the minigun. “Weapon exceeds structural capacities.” I gave her the best deadpan stare my Sweetie Eyes could articulate. Words were not needed. Desi frowned suddenly, looked up into the dark hole, spread her wings and flew up into it. A moment later, she lifted me up into the next floor without saying a word and began to trot down the unlit hallway. “Okay, sure, but why?” I asked her with a worried frown. I mean, trotting into a dark hallway during the middle of an enemy attack seemed like a bad idea. Desi made a frustrated sound, her ears twitched a little, then she slowly parsed out a sentence. “Enemies, unlikely, exist, here, still. Would have come… with others? No enemies here. Could be below.” “Huh, that’s good think—” A rocket wooshed out of the darkness, streaked past my head, and exploded some distance down the hall behind me. I braced my hind legs and squeeze off a few bursts into the dark hallway ahead. Desi joined me, flinging crackling green energy bolts down the hall. After a few seconds, something popped with a large electric-blue flash of light. Desi cast a light spell, illuminating the hall with an eerie green light. Our nemesis had literally been three sprite bots welded to a rocket launcher, so as to provide enough thrust to lift it. Clearly Two was the “everything and the kitchen sink” sort of engineer. Furthermore, lighting her horn was a mistake. Down the hall, three doors darkened with the figures of uniquely cruel-looking deathbots, each screeching their wordless electronic warcry. A flood of laser bolts and bullets ripped through the air around me, several rounds hit my left barrel and knocked me over, pain flooding my mind too much to pay attention to the world around me. No! No! I have to move. If I lay here I’m dead! I pushed past the pain and opened my eyes. Desi was still standing, but bleeding badly. Her horn pulsed with emerald light as she cast Mana Torpedo. The scintillating ball of energy struck the floor between the three robots and exploded. My Sweetie Eyes refused to render the explosion. All I saw was a sphere of nothing replace something, then burst with a flash of plasma that I could see. Plasma which washed over Desi, scorching the peach fur off her muzzle and making her shriek in pain. Plasma which also reduced the three robots to puddles of molten metal. I picked myself up and crawled over to Desi. She appeared to be badly hurt. Blood stained her gray jumpsuit almost everywhere. Her face was burnt very badly, I could see the flesh bubbling. It even looked weird minty-green. That wasn’t good. A pony’s skin matched their fur color under normal circumstances. The color change implied the burn was very, very bad. Though I thought it was supposed to turn yellow… Then again, I wasn’t a medic. But Desi didn’t need a medic. Just some rads. “D— Do you need me to open up my core?” I asked the poor with a hesitant stammer. As much as she needed the rads, cutting open my barrel would really, really hurt. But… Desi needed medical attention. So, I had to. Right? Desi shook her head. Her horn glowed as she placed dozens of tiny shield spells over her wounds, using them as bandages. “Hull breaches sealed. Effect repairs after engagement.” I pierced my lips and flicked my tail back and forth. “Will those hold for a long time?” Desi nodded once. I bit my lip heastently and rotated my foreleg to make sure I wasn’t too badly damaged. I could still move with 80% of my full range of motion. Good enough. “Are you sure?” I asked to be clear. “How many more spells can you cast after that?” Desi pulled her book out of her jumpsuit’s integrated bag and flipped through it quickly. “Will robots let me eat?” she asked hopefully. I shook my head. Her ears drooped. “Three.” “Use one to cut a weapon off a robot for yourself, then,” I said, nodding to the still intact missile launcher the welded sprite bots had wielded. Desi shook her head and sat down. I could see her intact facial muscles twitching. If she still had skin on her muzzle, she’d probably have been reflexively wincing. Poor thing! Desi scooped her hoof held computer out of her bag and started tapping at it. I decided to turn away to keep an eye on the halls and cover her. Desi wasn't stupid. She had to be doing something important. But what? My eyes darted left and right, checking each and every shadow for signs of the mechanical horde I could hear all around us. Dessi hissed something. At first I thought it was a pained noise, then I realized it was her weird terminal-speak through an accent of “My face and tongue are burnt”. A true modem beep-hissed back through her handheld. Desi responded to it, and a brief conversation of hisses and beeps ensued. Something moved down the hall to my left, and I turned and fired instantly. A hundred rounds shrieked down the hall, my weapon’s muzzle flash lighting up the hall like a spotlight… giving me a perfect view of Rainbow’s body as I literally splattered her across the floor. My eyes widened in horror, I froze up completely. I’d just killed her! Oh no, nononono, Celestia no! Something else moved down the hallway. I couldn't react. “Well… Good thing you regenerate,” A Twilight’s voice said loud enough for me to hear. “We’re friendly!” Okay. Dash had been with 343. Okay. “NO!” I snapped. “Not good! I’ve heard her regenerate before. It’s horrible!” 343 slowly moved back around the corner. “Um, how? She’s a med-spell ghoul. Doesn’t she, like, just rapid-cell growth back to full health?” I had no idea why, perhaps it was the horror at what I’d just done to my friend, but the first thing out of my mouth was, “You not knowing the hell she’s going to go through because of me puts a huge hole in your claim of being the actual Twilight!” “I never saw her die, and she didn’t exactly talk about it at parties,” 343 said calmly as she trotted into the light more. She was damaged. I could see a few bullet holes in her fur, and severed polymer muscles beneath them, though she didn't seem hindered at all by her injuries. More practically for us, she was wearing a battle saddle with twin laser rifles mounted to each flank. Good. At least there’s that. Desi picked the worst time to call home and I just shot Dash, but at least there’s laser support fire. I sighed and nodded down the hall. “Just go. I’ll send her after you when she’s back.” 343 blinked and cocked her head to one side. “What? Why would we split up?” “Um… 130 said they target groups?” I said with a frown. 343 facehooved immediately. “Was she with Three?” “Um, yes. Why?” 343 snorted and flicked her tail with an amused grin on her face. “They’re a couple. 130 is probably trying to make sure Three gets disabled. We’ll be fine.” It took me a moment to process all of that. “Excuse me, what? That uh… Non sequitur? Does not compute. Help!” Couple. Trying to get her disabled. What? Oh, no! I can feel a system freeze coming on! “Oh! Uh, yeah that sounds bad with no context. It’s very hard to kill any of us. If Three is disabled, and one of her eight memory crystals is still intact, or the fragments of those eight can produce one full working copy, she can then be transferred into a new body. A thing 130 has been desperately trying to get Three to do for years now,” 343 clarified. Her eyes suddenly widened. “Look out!” She fired four shots down the hallway behind me before I had time to spin around to help. Our rear was being assaulted by what appeared to be a taxidermied grizzly bear covered in armor made from old license plates with random robotic parts protruding through the seams. 343’s third volley brought it down. It had backup. Just behind the robo-bear was some sort of cyber-gorilla. I braced myself as best I could and hosed it down with bullets. My shots dug into its hide, it screached a mechanical death-rattle, and released a swarm of miniature rockets as it collapsed. The ceiling above me and wall to my left exploded with a dozen fireballs as the tiny missiles punched head sized holes through everything they hit. None of which was 343, Desi, or I. “Huh,” 343 remarked. “Thanks, Faust.” I looked over myself one last time to make sure I wasn’t hurt. “Well, this was highly implause—” A bullet punched a hole through my head. Again. Just one side this time, I could feel it rattling around in there. I turned to my right and filled the appropriate doorway for it to have come from with as many bullets as I could before the pain started to radiate out from the hole, distracting me too much to keep focusing on firing. 343 added a few laser vollyes into the hole herself. No further shots came out of it. “Are you okay?” the Twilight-lookalike asked as she peered into my massive gaping head wound. “Wait, that’s empty space? Why?” “That’s where my brain would go,” I said as I stepped aside to get a bit away from the mare in my personal space so I could see the hallway better. “If I had one.” “Oh, right. Robobrain with a spirit. I forgot for a moment,” 343 said with an apologetic smile. Something moved out of the corner of my eye. I spun on my rear hooves and scanned the hallway top to bottom. For a moment, I thought I’d jumped at a shadow. Then I saw it. I saw it, and I wished I could vomit. All of Rainbow’s blood was oozing back towards her body, carrying tiny fragments of fur, skin, bone and muscle with it. The larger chunks of her body twitched and slithered along the ground like undead worms. Sometimes they touched, squirmed around each other, wove into a single bigger piece, and continued their gory journey towards the largest intact piece… her head and left shoulder. I winced and offered a silent apology, thankful that she was going to apparently be unconscious this ti— Dash’s eyes snapped open, she screamed silently, probably because her lungs were still oozing across the floor like huge amoeba. I felt my face go pale. 343 noticed my expression and turned to look. Her face went pale. Thank the fates Desi was too busy screeching at her computer to look… One of Dash’s lungs squirmed into her splayed open ribcage. I heard a loud wet squelch. Dash's silent scream was suddenly very very loud. 343’s cheek began to turn green. “Oh, no, nononononono!” she said faster and faster. Then she threw up. The robot, threw up. She threw up a mixture of what looked like actual food. W— What? Because I really, really, really didn’t want to see exactly how the severed leg hopping its way towards Dash would rejoin her uh, core mass, I decided to look at the vomit. Oh. It’s mostly Sparkle Cola and coolant. That makes sen— The leg connected with a loud scrape of bone on bone and a wet squish. I wished I could throw up again. Dash’s screams drowned out the alarms and most of the weapons fire. It sounded like somepony was slowly cutting her apart, surgically unraveling her one nerve fiber at a time. I turned away. I couldn’t look. A few moments after I turned my back, a hoof tapped me on the shoulder. I winced, gulped, then slowly turned around. Dash had tapped my shoulder. She didn’t look angry, just very, very serious. And also in extreme pain. “Please don’t do that again,” Dash said with a long pained hissing breath as some of her left flank’s muscles climbed up her hind leg and knitted themselves back into place. “D— Don’t worry. N— Never want to see that again,” I stammered, my ear flatness set to maximum. Dash nodded once, staggered three steps down the hallway, met up with a flap of her skin which may or may not have had most of her cutie mark on it, and pressed it into place with a wingtip, and a muffled shriek. 343 stared at Dash with something beyond horror. “I— I— D— Dash…” she stammered. “W— Why didn’t you tell me that... That ‘s how you… why?!” Dash gave her a sidelong glance, then sighed. “Okay… So, I half believe you. Let’s pretend you’re really Twilight for a moment,” she took a deep breath then looked her dead in the eyes. “At the start of the war, you’d have dropped everything to help me and we would have lost the war. At the end, you hated me. During the middle, we fought too much for me to trust you. That’s partially my fault. So yeah.” 343 ran over to Dash and hugged her tightly. “I’m so sorry! I’ll start as soon as the attack’s over. We’ll have a cure as soon as possible!” Dash snorted and gently pushed her away. “I don’t want a cure. Fix the regeneration to not hurt. I really don’t mind the rest of it… Well, a painkiller and a restoration of my flight would be ideal.” 343’s frown increased to something beyond the realm of possibility for organic lifeforms. “W— What? You can't fly anymore? That’s horrible!” Dash shook her head. “I can fly… Just limited to the speed of sound. You know the thing about ghouls, how we’re an ironic twist of the megaspell that makes us? What’s more ironic than always healing but never getting better? I’m stuck at about half my old self…” 343 increased her hug’s potency, then blinked. “Wait, are you squishy? Or— d— did I just hurt you?” “I’m kinda squishy too, but that’s fine. Actually makes laying on stuff more comfortable. ‘Cides, somepony’s bound to find it kinky… one day.” “H— How can you just walk that off?!” I finally snapped, pointing to the spot where Dash had just been lying as a pile of mincemeat thanks to my sending about three hundred 30-06 rounds through her everything. “Happens like twice a week,” Dash said with a shrug. “No big deal.” I felt a small tug on my rear left flank and yelped. I spun, ready to shoot, but it was just Desi. The little mare held her computer out to me. “Please confirm your existence, and the current threat.” Desi asked with an urgent and serious look in her eyes. “Uh…” I said with the utmost intellect, then cleared my throat and said into her little computer's screen. “Hi. I’m Desi’s friend. We’re stuck underground with an army of murderous robots. Is that what you wanted me to say?” “Confirmed,” Desi said. The modem on the other end of the device screeched something. Desi screeched back and looked happy. “Uh, never mind me,” Dash said, raising an eyebrow. “The buck are you doing, Desi?” Desi frowned and looked up to Dash. “Mana low. Robots unlikely to allow snack break. Asked mom for permission to escalate conflict resolution to level three.” "Firearms use permitted," Desi said, quite distracted as she fidgeted with the underside of her jumpsuit. I dipped my head down to try and see if she had any kind of gun strapped on. I didn't remember her having one when we were flying, and I was pretty sure I’d seen her from below once or twice. Desi's hoof brushed against a small silver belt buckle which looked to belong to a belt threaded into a hidden belt-loop within her jumpsuit. The buckle lit up, glowing emerald green for a moment before the air in front of Desi rippled with green energy ribbons, just like her teleport. The ribbons parted to reveal a long, slender, sleek, chrome colored rifle. A very much non-pony rifle. Dash sputtered, her eyes widened so much I was worried they might rip. 343 gasped and leaned forwards, demanding, "How did you teleport that all the way down here?" "What she said!" I exclaimed in total agreement. "Teleport storage circuit," Desi said like it was obvious while frowning at us, seemingly confused and also shouldering her magically materialized weapon. "A what?" The three of us asked together. Desi shrank in on herself, looking for all the world like a filly who just broke mom's newest gadget. She slowly set her rifle down and retrieved her book. While she paged through it, Dash stared at the weapon, half in shock, half in fear. That gave away more than she thought it did. Whatever this thing was, it had to be an MoA weapon. Probably something she'd had made for minotaurs, given the grip and trigger. 343 simply waited patiently for the little mare to finish. Desi put her book away and red shouldered her rifle. “Item is teleported. Teleport is interrupted halfway through. Teleport stopped. Belt picks up energy of in-progress teleport. Stores it. Belt can release later. Item materializes on demand. Belt can re-store item later if needed, and if teleported. Belt encrypted. Mom-unit unlocked rifle for one hour. Is that enough time?" "That’s awesome, you'll have to show me how that works later!" 343 said with an excited smile before turning to Dash. "Pick your guns up from the hallway so we’re not covering you. We’ll keep moving towards the rendezvous point." Dash nodded slowly and trotted towards where I’d accidentally mulched her with bullets... I turned my attention to Desi. "I thought you were an adult. Why does your mom get to dictate when you can protect yourself?" Desi shyly pawed at the floor. "Mom-unit owns gun. Not me. Doesn't want bad people get them. Addition: Very bad shot." "Yeah, no shit!" Dash snapped. "The pistol totally disintegrates a pony. What’s the rifle version do? Blow up the whole building?" Desi's ears perked in terror she turned her weapon to look at a little led readout on the top and sighed in relief. "Weapon not set to Oberth mode." "W— wait. It... It can do that?" I stammered. "Uhhh, y— you have a point." "Auto-destruct full charge is potent. Bolt-for-bolt less heavy," Desi said... Reassuringly? 343 looked sidelong at Dash. "Is that one of your old toys?" Dash trotted back into my full view, having put on a battle saddle with a pair of plasma pistols mounted to it. "Nope. We only ever got to study the pistols. Come on! Look at it! That's the companion piece to a Star Blaster!" Oh buck! She's right! I'd never seen the real thing, but Pip's description of them matched for this rifle too! Dash bent down to look Desi in her eyes. “Where did you get that?” Dash said, her eyes narrow and voice accusatory. Twwwzzzzzzsh! said the bullet which ripped a hole in my left ear. I dropped to my belly, scooted around as fast as I could, and double checked my target. What could only be described as a raider-inspired Miss Handy quad-wielding hunting rifles loomed at the edge of the hallway. For about three milliseconds. Then everypony fired. Streaks of red laserlight, bright gold muzzle flashes, and a single, crackling, blue bolt of light hit the poor hostile robot like the wrath of Faust herself. The floating steel orb and mechanical tendrils disintegrated, sizzling away to dust as blueish energy crawled over its surface. For a moment, I thought our sheer amount of “nope!” was responsible. Then Desi murmured, “Energy output excessive…” and started to tap away at the little glowing panels on the back of her weapon with a hoof tip. Desi stopped mid tap, squealed happily, and swished her tail, grinning from ear to ear like that was the first time she’d ever hit anything with a gun. 343 tilted her head. “Wait, you said bad shot… Was that your—” “First hit!” Desi eed. Oh… Oh, dear… “Okay, you’re on point,” I said with a very firm nod. Not. Standing. In front. Of. That. “EXPLAIN PLEASE!” Dash snapped, her left eye twitching dangerously. “Where the buck did you get that?!” Desi looked up at Dash and with the sincerity of a foal who has yet to understand that lying is an option, gave her answer. “From mom-unit.” “Where'd she get it?!” Dash pressed, stepping forward. “The armory,” Desi said giving Dash a look like she was stupid. “The armory where?!” Dash sputtered back. “At home.” “Home being where?!” Dash groaned as she ran the flat of the roof down her face. “Please this is important! I need to know which other nation was studying them.” “Studying who?” 343 asked with a suspicious tilt of her head. Desi’s ears perked as she spotted something over Dash’s shoulder. She raised her weapon and fired. I turned in time to see her shot miss a large farming-tractor bot somehow silently moving down the hallway at us. Its front was essentially a big yellow wall covered in robotic arms wielding choppy things covered in clumps of synth fur and oil. “NOOOOOOOOOPE!” I shrieked, sending a fire command to my Battle Saddle. BRRRRRRRRT! Said my minigun. The death-choppy-tractor-bot was undeterred. Its silent advance shattered as it blared what sounded like a train whistle. Desi launched a flurry of bolts into the bot. The blue orbs flew past the nearly-hallway-filling death-wall of a robot. I almost reached over to take the gun from her. Only 343’s battle saddle firing her four rifles in sequence stopped me. Green plasma bolts from Dash’s weapons streaked through the air, leaving behind the scent of ozone and fresh toast. The death bot’s choppy limbs began to disappear one by one as we eroded its front end. Then, suddenly, the thing rumbled, shrieked, shuddered, and stopped. “Talk later, run now?” Desi suggested with a hopeful look in her eyes. “Run and talk!” Dash countered. “Maybe-Twi, keep taking us to the surgical theater. Desi, explain where the flying buck your mom got a hold of an alien-bucking-weapon!” I shook my head. “Wait, wah? You know for sure the Star Blaster is—” “Yes!” Dash hissed while giving me an urgent look. 343’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You had proof of extraterrestrial intelligence and you didn’t tell me?!” Dash took a deep breath and huffed in irritation. “I wasn’t allowed too! Celestia had proof of it long before I did. Standing orders, okay?! We found a crash site decades before you and I were born, Twi. The Star Blasters and their batteries were recovered from the wreck, along with some other stuff. Not sure how the buck they got out of containment, but they did! And I'm really, really, really not sure how she has a type I’ve never seen before!” 343 looked at Desi and offered her a polite smile. “Could you please answer her question? She’ll be stuck angry and overly focused on this one thing all day otherwise.” Desi’s ears drooped back. “Mom-unit would be angry at me…” “Even if telling her keeps you safe, because you won't have a distracted teammate?” 343 pressed. I looked around for more silent-but-nope death bots. There were none. So far. Desi sighed and scuffed the floor with her hoof. I heard her start to page through her book. Then… “Ultimate origin of weapon unknown. Likely purchased a long time ago by crew before abandoning ship. Was located in armory. Issued for away mission by mom-unit, to me, useage clearance heavily restricted. Potential local power-balance disruption if weapon lost / stolen. Also, am bad shot.” Desi summarized. “Purchased?” Dash sputtered, her tail standing on end. “As in, they bought it form a store?” I asked, cocking my head to one side. Desi nodded. “It is probable, yes.” “You’re an alien, aren't you?” Dash asked, giving Desi a suspicious look. Desi shook her head. “We should not exist here. Bad robots… Recall?” She finished cocking her head to one side in confusion. Something clicked in the back of my mind. Desi said she was 22. That was older than any natural born alicorn could be, and she was not green, purple, or blue. She claimed to have been raised by machines. She had to have been, otherwise there was no way she could have learned to speak using modem sounds. That requires a foal’s very young brain to start picking up on and encoding as a language, because there’s no way you could ever learn it as anything but your native language. I gasped. “She’s some kind of pony-clone made by alien robots!” Desi triple blinked. “No?” Dash nodded in satisfaction. “Yes! That explains everything!” “Untrue,” Desi said with an irritated look in her eyes. 343 cleared her throat. “Well, if it’s not, then what are you? I uh, I know we're in a combat zone, but it’s not every day first contact happens.” I gave the area another look for horrible silent murder bots. None. Desi flipped through her book, frowned, shifted her weight from hoof to hoof opened her mouth heastently. “A clone requires an original sample to rep—” A horribly painful, ear-stabbing, alarm cut Desi off. “WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!” A surprisingly non-Twilight voice shrieked. “ENEMY UNITS HAVE BREACHED SURGICAL THEATER OUTER DEFENSE PERIMETER! ALL FORCES ASSIST! REPEAT! ENEMY UNITS HAVE BREACHED SURGICAL THEATER OUTER DEFENSE PERIMETER! ALL FORCES ASSIST!” “Nevermind!” 343 said as she began to sprint down the hallway. “This can absolutely wait!” ☢★★◯★★☢ You’d think running with your friends through crumbling, dimly lit at best, murder-bot filled corridors, stopping only to hose down the aforementioned death-bots with automatic weapons fire, would occupy the entirety of your attention. Under normal circumstances, it probably would. Thing was, was I doing that, or was I doing that while also running alongside an alien space mare? Oh. My. Celestia! She wore a gray jumpsuit and was little! Little. Gray. Mares. FOR BUCK’S SAKE! The ancient conspiracy theorists were right! Wait, if they were right, why wasn’t she abducting ponies to probe them and do weird medical things? How can I think about this while burning through a few hundred rounds to keep that evil-garden-sprinkler from flinging more acid at us? Wait, who built it to look like that? And… why? It didn't use the sprinkler part to spray the acid, so— An acid ball melted another chunk of my armoring away. I ducked back behind the tree I was using for cover. We were so close to the entrance to the medical wing! I could see the door, if we could just get past the sprinkler bot, we could breach the enemy line from the back and reinforce Moon’s guards. Based on the sounds of things, she needed it. I also needed repairs again. I was down a lower left hind leg… Dash had taped the hydro-line shut for me so I could keep my systems up to pressure. I had to sit down to shoot, everything hurt almost like I was on fire, and I could only advance at a limp… But I had no choice. Dash and 343 had been separated from us. I could see them, but there were enemy robots between us and them. They were hunkered down behind some lunch tables made into a make-shift barricade. I could also see into the medical wing. It was very small, with just a waiting room, and then presumably the surgical theater beyond it. Moon’s Hoof Maidens were inside the waiting room, out of ammo, behind a barricade made from destroyed robots, reduced to melee tools and improvised weapons to keep their mistress safe while only barely operational themselves. We had to keep going. We had to advance. If we failed here, the world was doomed. Not only because we’d die in this hole underground and the Enclave would have their way, but because after the last half hour I was entirely certain Two would end the world herself if she couldn’t necomancer herself up her husbando. I liked that term. Husbando. Dash had said it a while ago. I think? Whatever she'd yelled insultingly at the robots had sounded like that. Desi was sitting next to me. Her magic was all drained away. Most of her “bandaid” shields had sputtered out. She was bleeding badly. But she kept fighting. She’d shifted her rifle form her TK to her forelegs just before her magic went dry. She was an even worse shot with them, but she kept firing away when she could. Desi was also down an eye… Not sure how she was even conscious in that state. Must be her alien powers of awareness, or something. She wasn’t immune to damage or able to just completely ignore how bucked up her poor little body was. She didn't show it on her face, but her movements were slow, hesitant, and twitchy. She also had gone from a bad shot to a terrible shot the second the shrapnel had taken out her left eye. She wasn’t shooting much anymore. Mostly, Desi would move under me to prop me up for better minigun shots. That was nice of my (possibly alien) friend. I took a deep breath, poked my head out from behind cover, and fired another long burst to keep the enemy in cover. Or at least. I tried to. Instead after a few moments my gun went click. I was out of ammo… and I’d lost my other weapons crossing the dome-park to this point. “We’re probably going to die,” I remarked with more calm than I imagined I could. Desi nodded. “Correct.” I bit my lip and did my best to ignore the ripping, pulling, crumpling pain in my right shoulder. “So I can go without any regrets… What are you, exactly?” “I am me,” Desi answered with a raised eyebrow. I laughed. “I meant—” A bullet blasted a large chunk out of the tree just above my head. I ducked down a bit more. “I meant, are you a robot like me? From space? What are you?” I repeated. Desi sighed, looked up at me with a sympathetic understanding in her eyes. “I am—” THOOM! The floor shook beneath me as something huge dropped from near the top of the dome and slammed into the floor in front of the surgical theater with enough force to dent the steel paneling, and rip up several large sections of metal. Steam sprayed from the wound in the floor for several long seconds, obscuring the source of the impact. I looked upwards, searching for where the thing had fallen from. A hole had been bored in the dome’s ceiling, directly above the surgical theater. Great… So that’s— “Really?!” Dash’s distant voice called over the din of battle. I blinked and looked down. The steam had cleared. The fallen object was… A walking throne. There was no other way to describe it. A massive throne, made from formerly rusty metal, polished as much as it could be, and mounted on the top of a large six legged robot’s frame (probably some kind of trainyard loading robot) like a driver's torso. An array of energy weapons, auto-cannons, and flamers bristled around the combat-chair, providing a surprisingly good amount of defense for the “thing a first year welding student built”. As awesome and silly as such a thing was, that wasn’t what had gotten Dash’s attention. No, that would be Two. Her old, rusting, battered form sat atop the throne, wrapped in an old purple cape which had definitely been salvaged from a foal’s magician’s play-set, a cheap plastic silver tiara (with a Hayburger logo on it) atop her head, propped up by her single ear and her circuitboard half mask… The very image of wasteland royalty. A visage you’d have to either take seriously, or die at the hooves of the mad mare who wore it. Or at least, that’s how it would be if Two’s left foreleg wasn’t clutching a grimy, 200 year old pillow to her barrel. On which a very, very crudely drawn orange pony-ish-blob had been drawn. I snickered. So that’s how I’d looked when I’d pretend my pillow was a coltfriend… If only someone had told me. … That’s a very lame dying thought. Two’s battle-chair fired a few lasers into the waiting room, missing the four ponies inside. A warning shot? “Fools!” Two bellowed. “Your warriors are scattered. Your defences falter. I have won! But know that I am not without mercy. Surrender, join me before the altar of Flash, and you will not perish today.” “Get Heartbleed, you glorified babbage engine!” Sunder snapped back. I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded like a good insult. 343 and Dash fired at Two’s chair. They didn’t have a good angle on her, their shots hit the seat of her throne, crackled, and sparked off, heating up the metal but not managing to punch through it. Why? Ah, faint blue shimmer. Chair-bot has a shield. Of course it does. Nothing else about this battle had been remotely fair either. The throne hummed, and some of its weapons rotated their way and began returning fire automatically. Wait. Wait. We could see Two. They couldn’t. I was out of ammo… But Desi… She had ammo. She had ammo, and had said something about dangerous levels of energy discharge. “Desi, you need to shoot her!” “Bad shot. Will miss,” Desi said, staring at the floor in what looked to be shame. I shook my head. “No. No you won't.” I grabbed her rifle and rolled onto my left side so I could push myself up and use my stump as a pivot. I closed my eyes and focused all my attention on the camera built into my minigun. “Lay your gun along mine,” I ordered. I heard the clink of metal on metal as Desi moved, layed her weapon along mine, and shuffled up onto my side to reach her weapon’s controls. She understood! Good. “You said that guns can do a lot of damage, right?” “Confirmed.” “We’re dead if this fails anyways, right?” “Probably.” “So… full power. We’ll put one right between her shoulders. Got it?” “Understood,” Desi confirmed with a nod. “Stand by.” I heard her weapon chirp a few times as she adjusted power settings. “Safety interlocks offline… Plasma capacitance, one-hundred-twenty percent normal level. Wave-Motion cycle… Maximum throughput. Weapon likely to explode on use. Ready to fire.” Okay, Gears… You can do this. It’s just like firing a cannon, only not remotely. Locking on target... Target: Creepy Robo-mare. Range: 12.2219 meters. Wind: N/A Compensate for target’s motion... Compensate for drag… Compensate for coriolis effect… Compensate for shell drop… Compensate for Equus’s rotation… Compensate for weapon-sight misalignment of ~12 cm... Target locked! Targeting time, 0.01 milliseconds. “FIRE!” I bellowed. THWEEE-PEW! My left eye whited out entirely. My right eye tracked a crackling, blue-white energy bolt as long as two mares as it blasted away from me. Then my right eye whited out. Then something very much on top of me exploded. The most intense heat of my life baked my side in an instant, and then… ☢★★◯★★☢ I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t feel anything. It was like I was stuck in a void… nothing but me. Nothing but me and some very very faint sound. What was it? “Opening her core now… Oh wow, those rads! Keep out of the beam, she’s a danger even to us.” “What's happening?” I asked, my own voice sounding equally small and distant. “Oh, shit! She’s online. Gears? Hang on, we’re going to fix you up again. We’re exposing your core to heal your little friend. She needs attention first.” “Okay…” “Just hold on… The tissue is responding… She’s regenerating.” Oh yeah… We’d shot at Two. What happened after that? “Did we win?” I asked. “We did. Thanks to you two. As soon as you’re both on your hooves, you can name your reward… On top of my full help with the Enclave situation. Now hold tight. You’re as badly hurt as your little friend, uh, well, you were. She’s healing quickly.” “Good,” I said as the void engulfed me again.