Part 7
I Am...
Sole Survivor peered around a corner, careful to keep as much of his body out of view as possible. The green tinged lens over his right eye flashed a number of things at him in yellow text, mostly stating that there was no Cyber activity in the immediate vicinity. “There's a camera up and to your right,” the Doctor's unmistakable voice spoke into his ear.
“Got it,” Survivor whispered as he used a hoof mounted device to launch a small dart-like device into the camera, causing it to sputter, spark, and die. He motioned for the rest of his crew to follow as he carefully but quickly made his way down the hall to the next corner. The pegasus leader tapped the earpiece the lens was attached to. “Volume's still a little loud, Doc,” he muttered.
Miles away in his sectioned off area of Old Hoof's lab, the Doctor adjusted his thick rimmed glasses. “I'll look into it when you get back. And it's the Doctor, Survivor. The Doctor. Not Doc, not Professor, just the Doctor.”
Old Hoof chuckled. “He only does that for ponies he likes. He calls me Old Man all the time. You should be flattered; I've never seen him take to anypony so fast.”
The Doctor grew a bit somber. “Yes, with a name like he's got, even I can take a guess at some of his interequine issues. I assume he earned the title?”
“More than once.”
The Doctor remained silent for a moment before a smile suddenly spread across his face, his volatile mood swings striking again. “Doesn't change the fact that it's aggravating.” His train of thought was interrupted by the sight of three Cyberponies on his monitor. After a few tense moments of barking orders, he sighed in relief. The Cyberponies had been dispatched, and there was not a single loss among the soldiers. These Anthraxian ponies definitely knew their way around a battlefield. I'm actually not sure how to feel about that, he thought to himself.
As he turned his attention away from Survivor's monitor to check in on one of the other raiding parties he said, “I don't know how you talked me into this. You got me doing mission control. I never do mission control. I'm usually out there keeping other ponies from being killed—or at least minimizing the fatalities.”
Old Hoof rolled his eyes as he began his counterargument—again. “First of all, we have four teams out there right this moment, one of which is seeking out your signal; you can't be in four places at once, and all four parties are important to the grand scheme of things. Second, you did offer to help in the lab. This is just an alternative method of doing so.”
A crash from elsewhere in the lab shattered the relative quiet and was followed by a mildly embarrassed “Oops, my bad.”
“And third,” Old Hoof continued with a smirk, “I think the two of you are conspiring to drive me mad.”
“We never go out of our way to do that to ponies,” the Doctor commented wryly. “It's just a perk.” He suddenly gave full attention to the screens. “You lot—squad three; that area's likely to be heavily guarded. Time to go into the vents. Squad two, wait where you are until you get that signal from Survivor's group. Survivor! Time to plant the charges.”
Sole Survivor nodded and pointed at his fellow squad-mates. “All right, you guys; time for our little distraction to play out. B.B., you're up.” As the twins Bang and KaBoom began arming and placing their explosive charges, Survivor turned his attention back to the Doctor. “Got any more intel for us, Doc?”
“Just that this is going to attract every Cyberpony in a five mile radius, so once the charges are set you lot'd better get the merry hell on out of there.”
Survivor smirked and rolled his eyes. “Right, no pressure or anything. B.B., how're those bombs coming?”
Bang blew her fire red bangs out of her eyes. “Set and ready go to, boss.”
“Just a button push away,” KaBoom added as he raised his protective goggles with his unicorn magic.
“All right.” Survivor nodded as he turned around back the other way. “Thirty seconds and let it go.”
The explosion that rocked the Cyber base caused raucous laughter to erupt from Sole Survivor; laughter he heard echoed in his headpiece. “Oh I love it when a plan comes together!” the Doctor crowed. “Gentlecolts, the signal is given.”
The next few minutes were a flurry of orders and activity—mostly directed at Sole Survivor's group, as at this point avoidance was the key to survival. The other two groups entered their various labs with only minimum resistance. “Good, good, now load 'em up and bring 'em on...” The Doctor's expression darkened. “What?”
“What's wrong, Doctor?”
The Doctor ripped his glasses off with a jerk and Old Hoof suddenly found himself staring into a pair of steely blue eyes, completely devoid of their usual playful arrogance. “Show me,” the Doctor growled.
“I'm sorry, what...?”
“Don't you give me that!” As the Doctor exploded in rage, the older pony took a step back. “Did you really think I wouldn't notice that those 'supplies' can be used to create the cores of multiple maginuke missiles? Did you really think me that dense? I am so clever and you don't even know, so don't play games with me! Now show me!”
Old Hoof held the Doctor's cold gaze for a moment before looking down. “Fine, when our teams come back.”
“No. Now.” The Doctor turned to where Derpy had crashed earlier. “Derpy, you're up. Keep everyone alive.”
Derpy practically materialized in the command chair. “You got it.”
Old Hoof cast an incredulous look at the Doctor. “You're leaving my ponies in her care?”
The Doctor's look caused the other pony's blood to run cold. “I am plenty aware of how she acts, but believe me when I tell you I choose my traveling companions with utmost care, and Derpy is one of the best. If I say she can handle this, then she can handle this.” He grabbed a spare earpiece and placed it in his ear. “Now, please do not make me repeat myself.”
Old Hoof sighed. “Fine, then. Come along.”
~DrW~
As he walked out on the catwalk, the Doctor's eyes widened. It's almost beautiful, in a terrible sort of way, he thought as he took in the multitude of ordinance. Aloud he asked, “How did you get all this? This isn't something the last remnants of ponykind can just... scrounge together.”
Old Hoof sighed. “Remnants of a time before the Cybers. This planet hadn't exactly been following the Old Equestrian ideal even before the Cybers invaded. There was a near constant threat of war for something like two generations, though peace did win out in the end. You're standing in the last of the decommissioning silos.”
The Doctor was silent for a moment, taking count of all the missiles. There were... rather a lot of them. “You do realize what unleashing this all means, don't you? You're talking Scorched Earth, here. What about the ponies?”
Old Hoof pointed to the doorway at the end of the catwalk. “We have a rocket prepared for them, that we will launch first. It will get them safely out to deep space, where they will hopefully be found and taken in by one of the other settled planets out there. But we can't just leave the Cybers to expand across the universe. It would be disrespectful to the memories of our friends they've converted.” The old stallion sighed. “All this is our last resort, naturally, but as you yourself noted when you arrived last week, we're just about there.”
The Doctor let his eyes scan the room one more time, an ice-cold lump of sorrow in the pit of his stomach. “I happen to know a thing or two about last resorts, Old Hoof. Even when they succeed, they can be agonizingly difficult to live with.”
Old Hoof smiled humorlessly. “That's why we save them for last, isn't it? We're not stupid, Doctor. We're plenty aware that this is one last, desperate play, and the odds are astronomically stacked against us. But at this point, it's the only thing we've got. It keeps us going.”
“Where there's life there hope, eh?” the Doctor muttered with a wistful little smile.
“Something like that.” Old Hoof nodded. “If you've got a better idea, I would love to hear it.”
The Doctor was silent for once. He really didn't have a better idea, and that infuriated him. He'd arrived far to late to save Anthrax, and he couldn't take the TARDIS back to try and save the planet at the beginning of the invasion, no. He only knew about the invasion because of the sorry state of the world now. Going back and changing that state would be asking for all kinds of paradoxes, to say nothing of the mission he was actually here to complete.
The Doctor's musings were interrupted by Derpy's excited voice in his ear. “Hey Doctor! If you're done being all Doctor-y down there, get back to the lab. Looks like our colts found the source of the teleport stuff.”
~DrW~
“Show me, Derpy!” The Doctor barely kept his impatience in check as he burst through the lab door.
Derpy tapped her hoof against one of the monitors, which showed an image of a group of ponies gathered in front of a large metal door set against the back wall of a cave. “They just found this a minute ago. The signal is coming from the other side of the door.”
“Another cavern,” the Doctor muttered. “Oh well. You got the coordinates, right?”
Derpy smiled and pointed to a string of numbers on the bottom corner of the screen. “Of course.”
“Perfect!” The Doctor studied the coordinates for a moment before barking instructions to the recon team. “Okay you lot. Thank you for your help, but we'll take it from here. Get yourselves back to base; the other teams are already on their way. Pat yourselves on the back. You did a great job.”
The Doctor turned to his companion with a wide smile. “Progress. Finally. Come along, Derpy!” The Doctor charged past Old Hoof, patting him on the shoulder. “We'll be back in an hour. Maybe two.”
“Hey, wait for me!” Derpy called as she leaped out of her chair to follow the quickly disappearing Doctor. In her haste she ran into Old Hoof, knocking the two of them on their flanks. “Sorry, sorry. My bad,” she apologized as she helped the elderly stallion to his hooves. “Nice watch.”
Old Hoof shook his head. “I'm sorry, what?”
Derpy pointed at the fob watch that was now dangling from it's chain, knocked loose by the collision. “Your watch. It's pretty.”
Old Hoof took the watch in one hoof and looked at it curiously, studying the surprisingly intricate concentric circle design etched upon its face. “Yes. I suppose it is...”
“Derpy! You're lagging behind!” the Doctor's voice shouted from down the hall.
“Oh, sorry! Coming, Doctor!” Derpy ran out the door, leaving a pensive Old Hoof staring at his timepiece as if for the first time.
~DrW~
It took a little more time than the Doctor would have liked to get to the coordinates given. The cave was only a couple kilometers away from the resistance base, but there were enough Cyberponies out, looking for “imperfect” ponies to convert, that they had to proceed with extra caution. If the groups were small enough, the Doctor would disable them—though most of the time he and Derpy had to hide instead.
Finally, the pair of explorers squeezed their way into a small crack in the side of a rocky hill, and entered the large room and the metal doors that guarded their quarry. The Doctor studied the lock for a moment and tsked. “Not deadlocked. That's good.” With that he withdrew his sonic screwdriver and, after a brief moment, the lock disengaged with a puff of smoke and the door slid open.
On the other side was the Gallopfreyan telepad; the transport disc was big enough to carry about three ponies and was etched in the ancient Gallopfreayan text, which looked vaguely like an artist's rendition of the inner workings of a clock. The control console to the side looked like a miniature version of a properly maintained TARDIS console. So of course, it was sterile and completely lacking in character.
Oh well. We work with what we have, the Doctor thought as he attached one of his homemade scanning devices to the console. He frowned as a sudden suspicion entered his mind and he placed his teleport stuff glasses on his face, completely ignoring Derpy as she peered at the Gallopfreyan inscriptions on the disc. The Doctor groaned. Of course. A quick inspection of the readouts confirmed what he already knew.
“Well that's just a lovely kick to the head,” the Doctor complained aloud, adjusting his scanner for new readings. “This telepad wasn't built here. It was transported here. I don't like it. Not one bit.”
“Doctor...”
“Not now, Derpy, I'm thinking. The implications here are... well about par for the course now that I think on it. Of course anyone who'd be able to use Gallopfreyan technology would likely know I'd be on the case sooner or later and would therefore want to distract me for a while. But why here? I mean, if I were trying to set a distraction for me, I'd send me somewhere where things were bad, but not unwinnable. Maybe here, certainly, but back when the pony-to-cyberpony ratio was more even.”
“Doctor...”
“Not now, Derpy! So for what reason would I have been led here and now? Master or not, our culprit would have to have some specific reason for sending me here. And this door. It was unmolested. There's no way one Cyberpony could have gotten transported by accident. It was sent on purpose—possibly to shake my resolve, get me to second guess myself. Heh. I can see the Master doing that. So the big question is...”
“Doctor!”
“What!?” The Doctor spun to face his companion, who's eyes were narrowed in thought.
“What are these markings?” she asked, pointing at the transport disk.
The Doctor cocked his head. “It's just basic safety warnings and such, written in my planet's native language. Why?”
Derpy closed one eye and stuck out her tongue. “I dunno. Just looks familiar. Saw something just like this, and not long ago...”
The Doctor sat and patiently waited for it to come to her. He knew from long, hard experience that when Derpy said she saw something, she did. It just sometimes took a minute to dig through her memories to find it.
“Oh, right!” Derpy's expression brightened. “Old Hoof's watch!”
The Doctor started. “His what?”
“His watch. He's got one of those golden pocket watches. I saw it when I bumped into him. It's a pretty watch.”
The Doctor's eyes narrowed to dangerous little slits. “This watch... the markings look like those on the telepad?”
“Uh-huh! All circles and gears and strange squiggles.”
“How did he react... you know, about the watch?”
Finally catching the change in the Doctor's demeanor, Derpy grew serious as she tried to remember anything that seemed odd. “He was kinda... confused, I guess? But I did just run right into him. I think... he was just looking at the watch when I left.”
The Doctor smacked his forehead. “Oh bloody HELL!” And with that, he yanked his device from the console and charged out the room at top speed.
Derpy, briefly stunned by the Doctor's language, took off after him. “Doctor? Doctor! Wait up!”
~DrW~
Old Hoof stared at the watch, dangling on its chain. He'd had it for as long as he could remember... didn't he? Thinking back, he always put it in his pocket every morning, put it away every night, but any time in between? He couldn't recall ever once taking it out of his pocket. He never used it, never showed it to anypony. It was like it wasn't even there. That was not usual behavior. The watch looked like it could be a family heirloom, perhaps. But he had no recollection of his family. Maybe that was why he kept it? But then, why would he never think about it—never show it off? And just looking at it now, he could hear them—the drums. The drums that invaded his dreams at night. The drums that he could sometimes hear in the back of his mind, when all was quiet. Old Hoof held the watch up to to his eye and peered at it, as if just doing so could tell him its secrets. Nothing came to him, of course. There was just one thing for it. Old Hoof tapped the switch on the top of the watch, and it popped open.
It was, as is said, the beginning of the end.