Fallout Equestria: Operation Star Drop

by Meep the Changeling


44.3 - The Calm Before (Part 2)

☢★★ Whirling Gears ★★☢

As I rounded the last corner to the bridge, a place I’d figured out the purple line had been leading me a good two elevators ago, I realized that Jasmine had been a colossal super-nerd. Maybe even a Turbo Nerd. If the ship had told us that Vinyl had been on the bridge, I’d have been able to find it. Because Jasmine had memorized the deck plans.

The real question was if the ship was in fact real, why the buck had Rainbow published accurate deck plans in the technical manual? It’s not like Equestria could have ever afforded to make one of these ships if some nerd worked out how it could be done. Gadgets found on board were one thing. The ship? Yeah. Right.

The bridge doors hissed open for me automatically. Again, just like the show. I took a moment to take in the sights. Few parts of the ship had been restored, just the bits they had shot the show on. The majority of the corridors were burnt, twisted, and warped. The bridge, on the other hoof, let me see what the ship might have looked like when it had been whole.

It was just like the show. A big monitor set in the front wall with a large raised curved section with consoles on both sides along the back wall, and three big chairs in the center of the room for the captain, first mate, and anyone invited to the bridge. All of the consoles were covered in decorative wood paneling, the floor had softer, more plush carpet with some red accents here and there, and all of the chairs had nice soft, plush looking leather covers.

I remembered Jasmine was always morbidly curious if the leather was real or veg-leather when she’d watched the show. Now was a chance to find out. Well, in a moment. There was something much more important to do first.

Vinyl sat in the captain’s chair. The huge high backed seat made her look like a little filly in a space mare’s costume. She sat there limply, staring at the screen, mumbling to herself. I upped the gain on my ears so I could hear her, just in case it was even worse than it looked.

“Not even troubling to cloak themselves…” Vinyl muttered to the floor. “Attention all hooves: As you know, we could outrun the Dorvik vessels. But we must protect the Cedar Creek until she enters the temporal rip, and we must succeed. Let us make sure nopony forgets the name Protector. Midnight, out.”

I flinched. If it was so bad she was slipping into escapism… Well, there was only one thing to do.

I trotted to the first mate’s seat, climbed up into it, and took a seat. Vinyl didn’t even blink. She just kept staring at the floor.

Vinyl sat quietly for a good hooffull of seconds before continuing her recitation of what I was now pretty sure was season three episode fifty-two. “Miss Beepboop?”

I bit my lip, sighed, and decided to play along with her. At least for a moment.

“Shields are holding at forty-three percent, ma’am.” I quoted.

Vinyl’s ears perked slightly. She nodded. “Mister Cloud, come about to course one-four-eight-zero-zero-three.”

I cleared my throat and did my best to put on a Germane accent. Naturally, I failed horribly. “Mana-Torpedos ready.”

Vinyl nodded, which I remembered Captain Midnight did at this point, then cleared her throat. “Dispersal pattern… sierra. Fire.”

The computer beeped three times, the sharp, hostile notes had both of us clamp our hooves over our ears.

“Torpedo launchers obstructed. Torpedo launch is not advised. Manual override required.” The computer reported.

“Oh…” Vinyl and I said very quietly together.

“M— Maybe we shouldn’t reenact the battle of the Spur Nebula,” I said with a half-laugh as the panic began to fade.

“Yeah…” Vinyl agreed, looking a bit less shrunk in on herself.

Sweet Celestia, we almost blew up half the bucking city if the torpedo yields were accurate… But at least imminent danger helped push her out of that dark place a little—

“Wait,” Vinyl said looking up towards the ceiling. “The ship uses voice commands.”

I nodded and flashed her an fillyish grin. “Yeah! Desi downloaded some language files from a translator and—”

“And it responded to what I had to say,” Vinyl added, her ears perking up just a little bit more.

“Y— Yes?” I asked, wincing as a horrible feeling began to overtake me. “You’re not thinking about—”

“Computer!” Vinyl proclaimed as she sat up straight in the seat. “Raise shields and prime engines for activation.”

“Shields raised. Shield charge holding at twelve percent. Emitters banks alpha, gamma, epsilon, require repairs. Error. Cannot comply. Engines inoperable. Repairs required,” The computer reported.

I sank into the chair and let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank Celestia…”

Vinyl sighed and sank back down. “Buck… there goes taking on the Enclave with a starship.”

“While that would have been cool, we would have had to crash through at least fifty meters of solid rock.” I pointed out to my would-be-captain.

“Computer: Are the laser banks charged and capable of burning a hole through the surrounding rock?” Vinyl asked hopefully.

I sighed and ran a hoof across my face. “Hon… The engines are broken, and I don't think mom could talk them into working. The ship did crash because of navigation failure you know.”

“Secondary weapon banks are fully charged. Estimated tunneling time, twenty-seven minutes for safe passage.” The computer reported.

Vinyl’s cheerful expression evaporated instantly, replaced with a dead, hollow-eyed look that stared into my soul. “Gears, I get it. But here’s the thing. I just had three shots of vodka. Like, good pre-war grade vodka. No idea where they got it. I’m kinda drunk, my wife has differently unofficially divorced me because she thinks I knew the bombs were coming and left her to die, and there’s no bucking way I’ll ever convince her otherwise. So like… shut the buck up and let me fantasize about being a cool space captain in this junker, okay?”

I bit my lip, hissed, and nodded slowly. “Okay… So… You go ahead and do that then, Captain.”

Vinyl blinked once, winced, and recoiled. “Also, for the record, cool with you being a robot. Really am. It's kinda hot. But seriously, Gears. Don’t do that lip bite thing when you don’t have lips. That is horrifying.”

I flicked my ears back and rubbed my head. “Ah… Noted. Um… Was there any food in the bar?” I frowned and looked up. “I could ask the computer, I guess. Computer? Is there any food aboard?”

“Also why do I have command privileges?” Vinyl added a split second later.

“Yeah!” I sat bolt upright and snapped my gaze to Vinyl. “Why do you have command privileges?”

“Replicators are functioning in emergency mode. All files are fully accessible. Command privileges issued on emergency status to the current occupant of the command chair,” The computer informed.

Vinyl’s ears perked up at the announcement. “Wait… all files? Computer, what can be replicated?”

“Good question,” I added.

“Replicable objects include but are not limited to: Food items, medical equipment, medication, armor, weapons, munitions, field equipment, survival tools, shelter, and personal items.” The computer reported.

I felt my core pulse slightly more rapidly at the idea of getting my hooves on something like Desi’s gun, but in canon form. Yeeeeessss, gimminao!

“H— How much can we make?” I asked while rubbing my hooves together.

“Current matter reserves permit three-point-two-one tons of replication,” The computer answered.

“Awesome,” Vinyl nodded triumphantly. “Computer: Make my mare a sandwich!”

A quiet hum and faint glow to my left caught my attention. I turned my head just in time to see a small cubby in the wall which I’d mistaken for a desk produce a simple sandwich from thin air. Thin air to my mundane senses that is.

I could see, feel, and taste the magic on display within the device. The same flavor of chaos I’d seen in Los Pegasus blossomed within the device, not once but thousands upon thousands of times. Not a single blooming blossom bigger than the nib of a quill. A mass of controlled chaos.

It was… beautiful. This felt finished. Understood. But it was otherwise the same.

The focused chaos came to an end, and I half expected to see a cubic meter of amalgamated sandwich ingredients sitting in the cubby. Instead, there was what looked to be a simple wheat bread ham sandwich, with lettuce, tomato, some kind of cheese, and olive on a toothpick holding the sandwich together, and it sat on a plate.

“Huh,” Vinyl and I said in unison.

I trotted towards the conjured sandwich, giving it a critical eye to check for any magical flaws. Just in case. “So… I’m guessing StableTec didn’t actually develop Los Pegasus’s replicators.”

Vinyl frowned for a moment then groaned. “Right. Right, they have crude ones.”

I paused and played the spell back in my mind. Once, twice, three times. “No… Not crude ones,” I said as I smiled in realization. “They only have one module! That huge machine they use, that’s a giant version of the many, many, many modules that have to be in this thing. Oh man, you know what that means? There’s so much further enchanting can be taken! Imagine what we could do with the miniaturization needed to fit a pipbuck into a single glasses lens!”

“Not very much if you don’t eat that sandwich so you can cool down properly and help save the world,” Dad whispered in the back of my mind.

Point very much taken…

I scooped up the sandwich and wolfed it down as fast as I could. I could feel my repair talisman start converting the material… it wouldn’t be enough. “Computer, another sandwich!” I ordered.

☢★★◯★★☢

Three sandwiches later I was my proper self, once again clad in nice fluffy striped fur. My chassis creaked slightly as I moved. I’d gotten just a bit hot and everything had moved as metal expanded. Now everything was shrinking back into the proper place. That always itched so bad.

Vinyl still didn’t want to talk about what happened with Octavia in detail, and I wasn’t about to press her… But she was looking more despondent and depressed with each passing moment. The problem was I wasn’t sure what to do, other than to provide a distraction.

I had a few options, none of which I could do because we were pressed for time. If only we had enough time for a hug or a quick cuddle. Sex would probably be inappropriate, but something to show she was loved would be—

Wait a minute!

I trotted over to Vinyl and smiled directly into her face. “Hey guess what?”

“Mmm?” Vinyl sighed, looking up at me.

I planted a kiss on her helmet’s visor. “I’ve got lips again!”

Vinyl smiled for a moment. “Thanks…” she said quietly before a thoughtful look overtook her face. “You know, I lost a lot. But I’ve gained a lot too.”

I nodded. “Yeah. So have I… And I don’t want to lose what I have now.” I nodded towards the bridge doors. “Everypony’s working to get us to the Station. I got to see it. It’s… it’s really something.”

Vinyl hummed and sat back in the chair. “Yeah… I— I probably shouldn’t have done those shots. Gonna be buzzed for a bit.”

“Even drunk, we’ll need numbers,” I pointed out then turned my head to look at the bridge’s huge screen. “Hold on… Computer: Display a view of Star Drop station.”

“Error. Location specified not in the database.” The computer reported.

“Uh, display the space station in orbit of this planet?” I pressed.

The computer beeped once and the screen flickered to life. In an instant, the flat surface was replaced by what looked to be an open hole into space. Everything was three dimensional, with proper depth. Looking into the black void of space felt… well… like looking into the black void of space.

Vinyl’s jaw dropped as she fixed her attention on the colossal station suspended within the black inky void. She looked twice as shocked as I did. It took her a good thirty seconds before she could speak at all.

“There is no way this wasn’t built with replicated stuff. There’s just no way… I can see my old bucking house… What the buck, Rainbow?!” Vinyl sputtered as she stumbled up to her hooves and grabbed at my tattered armor. “Hon, call fast-butt and make her bucking explain!”

I gently pushed Vinyl’s hoof away from the pin so I could touch it myself. “Okay. Hold on. Calm down. I’m doing it.” I said as soothingly as I could.

“No!” Vinyl snapped, moving her hoof back. “I want to hear it too!”

“Alright, but I need to touch the pin to activate it,” I explained.

Vinyl frowned in irritation and moved her hoof back just a little.

I tapped the pin. “Rainbow?”

The reply was immediate. “Gears. How’s Vinyl?”

“I’m kinda shit,” Vinyl answered.

“Oh. Good! You figured out how to use conference mode,” Rainbow noted. “Doctor Swann has the transporter working, and Desi has a plan to maybe crack the shield open enough for us to beam in. She and Swann are working out the technical details to see if it will work. Can you two get back here?”

“Why the buck did you replicate Ponyville on Star Drop?” Vinyl demanded. “Just, why?!”

“She really needs to know… Please, Rainbow, she’s in a bad way right now. She’s taking this kind of personally and hard.”

Rainbow let out a long and lonely sigh. “Vi… It’s because I wanted to go back to how things were. You can understand. Right?”

Vinyl stared at the badge with an empty look in her eyes. “I… I do. But we can’t. We have to move on.”

I blinked at Vinyls’ candor. Maybe drinking really did help some ponies with their problems.

“Yeah. We do.” Rainbow agreed. “But… I mean, since it is there. If we pull this off. You’re welcome to move in.”

I cleared my throat. “I hope that offer includes her current partner.”

“Totally does,” Rainbow laughed. “Anyways, get down here. Loom is off moving some stuff to one of the shuttle bays. Desi thinks she might be able to get us a Star Blaster or two from a supply locker she knows of.”

A grin spread across my face as I remembered the crappy state of everypony’s equipment. “About that… Vinyl and I found out something pretty interesting.”

“Oh?” Rainbow asked.

Vinyl looked up at me, quite lost. “We did?”

“We did,” I reminded her with a little nuzzle to her helmet. “The ship’s replicator system is in an unrestricted state due to the crash and an emergency mode. It said it can make weapons, munitions, armor… And we have about two tons of material we can produce.”

“I— We— what?” Rainbow asked with an audible ladyboner.

“We can just make everypony here a star blaster. Or even cooler, whatever they call heavy weapons! Maybe they even have power armor!” I said excitedly before a crushing realization hit me like a bag of hammers. “Oh… uh, scratch that last one. It would be shaped for the aliens. Not us.”

Rainbow swore under her breath so quietly I couldn’t hear which specific curse she used. “Replicating power armor would have been so awesome… Buck me with a cactus. I’m kind of pissed off we couldn't wear anything it could make now. Would have been extremely useful— Hold on. Desi wants my attention.”

Rainbow went silent for a moment, when her voice came back it was full of excitement. “Good news! Desi can read lips. Better news, her jumpsuit was made from the replicator. They automatically adjust any worn items to fit the user. Also, she’s looking up the armor patterns available right now. Come on down. It’s time to get loaded for Ursa Major!”

☢★★◯★★☢

The next thirty minutes passed in a blur of activity. Rainbow, Vinyl, and I went through every weapon, armor, and munitions schematic we could find in the ship’s computer. Loom, Mom, and Desi were working on their plan which Rainbow never bothered to mention. We just didn’t have the time. Not if we wanted to find out what we could grab for the mission.

Loom was mostly moving heavy things for Mom and could talk to us while we loaded up. According to her estimates, we could expect at least three hundred soldiers onboard the station at any time. Mostly Tainted, but some Enclave troopers too. More importantly, the minute we got on board the station would recall the forces it had planetside to counter us.

We needed to be heavily armed, and heavily armored. Everypony had to be a walking tank for this. We had one of six set up for that. Getting the rest of us there, even with alien armor, was proving to be a huge pain.

The aliens did have power armor. Lots of power armor. In fact, almost every set of armor they had in their database was powered. Unfortunately for us, instead of being foals in a candy shop with endless options to pick from and an unlimited line of credit, we had hit a wall.

Every single power armor design the aliens used required the wearer to have cybernetic implants. As far as we could tell the implants would connect the wearer’s nervous system to the armor so it would control just like a body part. Raining even harder on our parade was the depressing fact that it took three days to perform the cybernetic implantation, and that also required a doctor. The ship’s computer couldn’t do it.

This left us just a few options. Options which whittled down very quickly as we checked to see just what each of them gave us verses what M.E.W.s and plasma weapons could do.

It turned out while the alien's weapons were insanely powerful, their armor was just barely better than ours. The details of their conflicts were sadly classified, even if you ran back up to the bridge and asked from the Captain’s chair. Rainbow’s personal assessment was that the aliens built armor mostly to protect you from space and environments. That whatever they fought was so powerful that they simply couldn’t protect you from it properly, and therefore ensured if you were hit, you’d die rather than suffer whatever horrible fate awaited you.

A grim thought…

“Well… this is the last file,” Rainbow sighed as she pulled up the very last entity in the armor database. “Let’s see… It’s called the Mark II Hazard Suit.”

Rainbow hit the screen with her nose to open the file. “Computer: Give me an overview of this suit.”

The computer chirped, a sound we’d realized was it letting you know it had to load information or process something. Then, a moment later, it began to speak. Vinyl and I sat around the bridge floor, just half-listening. After all, we’d heard thirty-nine of these in the last half hour…

“The Hazardous Operations Suit was developed aboard the Tenacity during its twenty-eight-year voyage home. Its primary design ethos is the preservation of crewmembers in situations with a limited crew and no chance of reinforcements. The suit is composed of several layers, with a standard uniform as the innermost layer, complete with all features one would expect. The middle layer is composed of kinetic dampening gel combined with energy diffusion grids to diminish physical impact and energy transfer. A built-in environmental control system prevents the suit from cooking the wearer alive. The outermost layer is composed of armorweave fabrics, similar to standard power armor interface suits, but are augmented with a multi-phasic shield generator mesh to provide personal shields, as well as a second more robust energy diffusion system. 

“The Mark II version also includes active scanning technology for environmental navigation, friend/foe identification, and foe tracking. All relevant data is displayed for the user with an included linked Tactical Eye Display (T.E.D.), superior power cells, a field charging system capable of leaching energy from nearly any available source, and an improved Transporter Buffer belt, allowing for the storage of up to eighteen standard size weapons in addition to a dozen standard yield grenades, with a further six cubic meters of storage available for mission-specific gear.

“WARNING! While legendary, and included in all ship replicator databases, the Hazard Suit is not solely responsible for the success of the Tenacity’s Hazard Team. The Hazard Suit does not augment your strength, agility, and speed as power armor does. You are not Lieutenant <Translation Unavailable>. Putting on a Hazard Suit will not put you on his level. Only copious bioengineering and decades of training can hope to do that.”

By the end of the computer's summary, I couldn’t help but grin ear to ear. “I like how they had to tell people that wearing this guy’s signature clothes won't make you a badflank.”

“I’m sorry, but did it say this thing can let you use eighteen guns at once?” Speed said from the doorway.

I looked up in surprise. “There you are! I thought you would be with Lyra.”

She nodded and pointed to the screen which displayed the image of the seemingly ordinary-looking jumpsuit. “I was. I want one of those. Also, the Enclave is trying to break into the ship.”

“BUCK!” Rainbow slammed a hoof into the captain seat’s largest. “We have to move. This has to be good enough. Computer: Replicate a Mark II Hazard Suit for everypony on board. Girls, we need to figure out weapons as fast as possible! I don't know how long this crumpled old hull will keep them out.”

“Oh, it will take a while,” Speed commented with idle boredom. “The shields are holding… I mean… you guys turned them on, right?”

Vinyl facehooved. “Oh, right. Yeah. I did, didn’t I?”

I blushed and pawed the floor. “Um, we were just playing with the ship when we did that.”

Rainbow glared at each of us in turn. “Do not do that.”

Speed shrugged. The replicator hummed, flashed, and spat out a series of jumpsuits. Unlike the simple monochrome blue wireframe design on-screen, these jumpsuits were black with silver trim, silver shoulders, and had a gray combat harness with some large, techy-looking, silver kinda-sorta shoulder pads on them. I could sense magic in those pads. Defensive magic. Must be the shield generators.

They also had belts which looked a lot like Desi’s belt, but a bit bulkier and with small buttons on boxes rather than pouches. My best guess was you tapped the button and the belt stored what you were holding in that “pouch”.

Speed picked up one at random and then frowned. “How do we know which is sized for whom?”

Rainbow blinked, shrugged to herself, then looked up to the ceiling. “Uh, Computer? Which one is for whom?”

“Standard uniform jumpsuit feature thirty-seven: Auto-Size adjustment.” The Computer reported with an odd crackle to the voice. “Error. Shield resonance interfering with tertiary computer functions. Mild speech synthesis errors will ensue.”

Rainbow hummed. “We better do guns quickly then.”

“Good idea,” I agreed. “Let’s find whatever their version of a grenade launcher is and make me one.”

Yes. Soon!

“Better idea,” Speed said with an evil giggle. “Computer! My girls need guns. Lots of guns.”

The computer beeped. “Command received. Select parameter: Enemy boarding vessel. Ground assault. Boarding enemy vessels. Everything is proper fucked.”

Vinyl giggled and covered her mouth with one hoof. “Hehehe! It swears like a foal.”

“Everything is proper bucked?” Rainbow asked hopefully.

“Parameter accepted… Performing neural scan of ship occupants…” A blue beam of light blinked into existence, starting at the ceiling and quickly sweeping down across everypony before vanishing into the floor. “Android detected. Performing data download.”

I felt something poke at my memory files. It was too fast to react to. In the blink of a processor cycle, the ship had everything I ever learned downloaded. Bucking Tartarus… I want that bandwidth! That magical, extract more info from a system at once than that system could output bandwidth. How the buck did it do that?!

“Personality profiles generated,” the computer announced. “Replicating primary and secondary weapons best suited for each crewmember and delivering to their position via the transport grid. Standby…”

“Huh,” I said as I blinked a few times to take that in. “Too bad we didn’t know it could do things like that. Did Lyra tell you that, Speed?”

Speed shook her head. “Nah. I just figured anypony who makes something like the Star Blaster has to have a “oh buck give gun now” command for their stuff-makers.”

I opened my mouth to say that Speed had a good point but stopped as a thousand flavors of chaos magic sparkled before my eyes. They flickered in and out of existence, bringing something glorious into existence just for me.

Three barrels. Each lined with dozens of cooling fins. A sleek, sexy, industrial-looking main body with a rotary system and a belt feed. A small blister on the bottom appeared to be some sort of mana reactor based on the energies I could sense within. Hookups for a battle saddle. A simple, elegant, electronic scope.

But most of all, a name painted in white on the simple, classy, blued steel weapon of my dreams.

M-900 A2 Rotary Grenade Cannon

I picked the weapon up with reverence and hugged it to my barrel. “Dear, how do I load you?” I asked as I stroked the barrels with a hoof.

“The M-900 A2 features an internal replicator. The reactor can create nine thousand and one rounds before a replacement fuel rod is required. The weapon has an internal carousel and automatically cycles between six fuel rods. Grenade type can be selected via data-link while the weapon is in use.” The computer reported.

I started to drool a little. Then a lot.

Vinyl cleared her throat. “Okay, everypony. Let’s give Gears and her new marefriend a few minutes alone.”

Rainbow jumped out of the captain’s chair. “YEP! Computer, delay creating our weapons until we are out of the room…”

I snapped open my battle saddle’s left mount, completely ignoring everything everypony was saying. Even if I died, even if we failed and the world ended in a shower of rocks and magma as an asteroid plunged straight through the plant’s heart, I had a marefriend and a rotary grenade launcher.

Life! Complete!