//------------------------------//
// 19. [Rainbow Dash] Escort Duty 
// Story: Deep Rock Equestria: Into The Abyss 
// by The Atlantean 
//------------------------------//




Full Mission Roll:
Protect the Drilldozer [1 Refuel], 14 Ebonuts, Haz 1, Glacial Strata
Warning: Parasites, Anomaly: Golden Bugs
Machine Event: Tritilyte Crystal
Encounters: Cargo Crate, Lost Pack, BET-C
Extra Resources: N/A
Mission Special Beer: Backbreaker Stout
Roll System in Final Phase




“Congratulations, Miners,” Mission Control said as the Drop Pod docked to its berth in the Space Rig, “You’ve survived long enough for Management to unlock your personal tabs at the Abyss Bar. Take some time off to relax before your next mission--you’ve earned it.”
“Aww, yeah! Last one to the Bar is a rotten egg!” Rainbow Dash cheered. She almost forgot to set her minigun on its rack in the back of the pod, but Sunset’s insistent cough reminded her. She put her gear away as quickly as she could and sprinted down the boarding ramp, leaping over the stairs and rolling to her feet.
“Wait up, Rainbow!” Rarity called after her. “We’re not all natural athletes here.”
“Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on. Come on!” Rainbow abandoned any sense of duty and work, choosing instead to slide up to the bar with a ridiculous grin on her face. “Lloyd, hit me with an Oily Oaf!”
The flying bartender robot chirped happily and poured four cartoonishly large mugs of beer, each filled to overflowing with dark brown liquid and an absurd amount of foam. He slid one to each of the girls as they approached: Rainbow, Applejack, Sunset, and finally Rarity.
Rainbow snatched hers excitedly. She felt her eyes open wide in anticipation.
“Hold on, Rainbow,” Applejack cautioned. “We gotta toast first.”
“I think I know the one,” Sunset said, holding her mug high above her head. She’d taken hers and moved away from the bar, so she was standing. “For Rock and Stone!” she called.
“Rock and Stone, darling,” Rarity said.
“Rock and roll!” Applejack cheered.
“None can stand before us!” Rainbow yelled. She lifted the mug to her lips and leaned way back, glugging each gulp of beer for several seconds until the mug was completely emptied. She felt some of it roll down her face and drip onto her armor rig’s undersuit. When the last droplets hit her tongue, she slammed the mug back down on the bar counter with a resounding thunk.
Applejack wasn’t too far behind her, but she set her mug down much more carefully. After that was Sunset, who tossed her empty mug and caught it with one hand before sliding it back to Lloyd with a clatter. They all turned to Rarity.
“I’m not one for beer,” she said. Her nose crinkled in slight disgust. “It certainly doesn’t smell too great, either.”
“You’ve had this before, Rarity,” Rainbow chided. “What’d you expect, Cirulian wine?”
“No!” Rarity took another look, closed her eyes, and chugged it all down in one go. Small rivers of beer flowed along her cheeks as she drank from a mug made for someone with a much bigger mouth than hers. When she delicately placed the mug back on the counter, her face told the story. She’d drink it if it helped, but not for fun.
Rainbow snorted down a fit of laughter. “Oh, you should see the look on your face!”
“What, Rainbow Dash?”
“You need another! Lloyd, another round!”
“Oh, you rascal,” Rarity scowled. She accepted the second mug, though.
Rainbow could remember who ordered the third round or who turned on the jukebox in the corner, but her blurry, staggering vision picked up the crew from 17-A sometime during the night. By the time somebody ordered a Glyphid Slammer, her memory was warm and foggy. She picked up the highly decorative mug, drank it dry, and finally collapsed to the floor with her hair in her mouth. Before she completely blacked out, she distinctly heard a distant but familiar voice mumbling something about how her hair tasted like skittles.


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Rainbow Dash woke the next morning in the medical bay with the biggest pounding headache she’d ever had. Within moments, a robot gave her a large glass of beer, which she drank. It tasted horrible, but the headache was gone in seconds.
“Uuuggghhh.” That was Sunset’s voice. She didn’t sound too great.
Rainbow shook her head clear. Now that she was fully awake, she saw that the glass was labeled “Leaf Lover’s”. That explained the unusually bitter taste and even more unusual effect. She carefully set the glass on the table next to her bed and swung her legs over the side.
“It’s good to see you’re up, Rainbow,” Rarity said from beside her.
Rainbow turned to see her friend fully rigged to journey down to the surface. Rarity’s hair was tied back in a neat ponytail, and her armor looked clean and fresh. She even smelled like a nice bath. In comparison, Rainbow looked and smelled like a drunkard hobo.
“Wash up, Rainbow. You and Sunset are the last to wake. Applejack’s looking over our mission today. We’re on Escort Duty today, and the cave is going to be filled with parasites.”
Rainbow stood, stretched and yawned. “Escort Duty? What’s that? Are we playing babysitter to some two-hundred-million-bit junked robot?”
Rarity made a face. “Yes,” she replied. “That’s exactly what we’re doing. The bad news is that the assignment system ran into a bug last night, so we can’t change our Hazard Level. The good news is that it locked us on Haz 1 today.”
“How often does this happen?”
“Twilight said it happens all the time. Now get ready. You have an hour.” Rarity crinkled her nose again. “Sweet cherry wine, you smell terrible. Get moving.”


---------------------------------


Once Rainbow was ready, she joined Applejack at the hologram console. “Say, AJ, you up for another round before we go?” she asked with a devilish grin.
“Not now, Rainbow. How about if we come back in one piece?”
“It’s a deal!” Rainbow waved to Pinkie Pie in the kitchens. Pinkie waved back with a large knife in her hand, then tossed it around her back and caught it flat on its blade while it spun. No matter the day, Pinkie was always playing with her knives as she cooked.
“Are we ready to go?” Rarity called from the Drop Pod. “We don’t have all day, you know!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m comin’,” Rainbow called back. “Hold your horses.”
The two boarded the Drop Pod, where Rarity and Sunset already sat strapped to their seats. The door closed behind them, and the Pod accelerated to the surface.
“So, where are we headed today?” Sunset asked, her voice strained.
“Glacial Strata,” Rarity grunted through the g-forces. “We’re expected to refuel the Drilldozer once based on the cave length, and keep an eye out for Ebonuts.”
The Drop Pod’s drill clanged to life, and Mission Control’s voice filled the comms: “Alright, Team. Today, we’re after an Ommoran Heartstone. We’re sending you a Drilldozer to home in on it and break its shell. Be warned: the bugs don’t like it any more than they like you!”
“Understood, sir,” Rarity said. As the Pod crashed to the bottom of the cave, she grabbed her shotgun and threw a flare.
Rainbow was the first out, slapping the dice in the corner for luck. She heard the Drop Pod leave for orbit, then the clanging of another drill. Moments later, a large cage fell through a hole in the ceiling and crashed to the icy blue ground.
“That’s the Drilldozer,” Rarity said. “Sunset, look for minerals before we head out. Applejack, Rainbow Dash, let’s open this cage and prepare to activate her.”
Rainbow approached the cage and held down one of the buttons. The sides of the cage sprung out, exposing the Drilldozer to the outside. The machine was massive: the armored treads stood a little shorter than her shoulders, and the main body was half again taller than her head. A small platform on the back allowed access to two large fuel cells, each latched into place with robust clamps. The drill on the front looked similar to the one on the bottom of the Drop Pod, only a little smaller. Most of the machine was diesel engine and AI computer systems.
Looking around at the rock they were about to drill through, Rainbow saw blue all around her with periodic layered gray rock. She ran her hand along a nearby column and felt water run down into her sleeve. It had to have been heated by her body. She shivered.
“What’s the deal with this place?” she asked. “Couldn’t Management have chosen a warmer place to mine?”
Rarity glared at her. “If you’d done your homework, Rainbow Dash, you’d know exactly what’s going on here, and you’d know that we’ve yet to visit the Magma Core and the Sandblasted Corridors, which are two of the most dangerous biomes on the planet. Twilight mentioned two other biomes R&D is looking at, but those won’t be available to ordinary miners until the assignment software is updated to Version 33 when Management gives the go-ahead. The X-Teams are currently scouting those to see if they’re worth visiting at all.”
“Good for us,” Rainbow growled. “But seriously, what’s the Glacial Strata’s problem?”
“The continental plates of Hoxxes IV rest on a layer of permafrost several miles deep,” Rarity explained, exasperated. “We’re currently a little under five miles beneath sea level, near the middle of the permafrost layer. The highest reaches of the Strata are around five kilometers down, and the lowest go as far as ten. Those are the extremes, however, and most of the Strata is around this depth--eight kilometers.”
“I’m not a genius, but that’s not how plate tectonics work.”
“Twilight threw a fit when she heard about the Strata. It’s apparently in violation of all known physical laws of the universe, yet here it is.” Rarity looked over at Sunset, who jogged to meet them. “Are we ready to go?”
“Sure thing,” Sunset replied as she emptied her pockets into Molly. “Found some gold and a couple Ebonuts, but that’s it.”
Rarity activated the Drilldozer, and its engine roared to life. Everyone climbed aboard, and they rode it through a long tunnel in relative silence as the drill carved through the icy rock.
“Hey, Rarity,” Sunset began, “is that your Camp Everfree geode on your suit?”
“It is,” Rarity answered proudly. “I had Twilight embed it last night. She’d be glad to do the same to yours if you asked.”
Sunset smiled and patted the necklace with her geode. “I think I’m okay for now. I’ll remember that, though.”
Rainbow’s ears pricked at the sound of a distant wu-oooooooh. It sounded a little like a standard DRG transponder like the one on her suit, but it was different somehow. Nobody else seemed to notice it, however, so she kept it to herself.
“Contact!” Mission Control called. “Protect the Drilldozer!”
Tons of bugs immediately crawled out of the walls and floor. Rainbow cleared her thoughts and fired her minigun into the swarm, pausing every few seconds to let it cool down. She remembered the Dreadnought and knew that if one showed up now, she’d need to be able to shoot.
Rarity’s grenade launcher went to work as well, pummeling Glyphids off the walls with cacophonous detonations that rang in Rainbow’s ears. Sunset’s rifle barked, and Applejack’s flamethrower lit up the tunnel. Each bug they killed, however, exploded into another bug.
Freaking parasites, Rainbow thought as she smoothly transitioned between targets like a born gunner. Why couldn’t it have been something cooler? I heard the Haunted Caves are interesting.
“We’re coming up on the next cave!” Sunset announced. “Get ready!”
The Drilldozer’s enormous drill suddenly stopped making noise as the machine broke through cavern walls and turned to go uphill. More bugs showed up from other directions, forcing Rainbow to change targets. The roar of a Praetorian echoed in the darkness as Sunset fired a flare into the ceiling.
The noise sounded louder now. Rainbow was sure it wasn’t a suit transponder.
After a few more minutes, the Drilldozer stopped chugging and lowered itself to the ground.
“The Drilldozer has stopped! Refuel the canisters by using them to mine Oil Shale on the walls, and let's get moving again!” Mission Control said.
Sunset grabbed one of the canisters, and Applejack took the other. Meanwhile, Rarity searched for Nitra and Gold, and Rainbow guarded the machine. They worked quickly, and both canisters were soon refilled and reinstalled.
Before Rarity could restart the Drilldozer, however, Rainbow said, “Wait. You hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Rainbow held up her hand. “There’s something strange nearby.”
“Like a Lost Pack or a Cargo Crate? We’ve run into those before, Rainbow, and we can search for them later.”
“Kind of, but it sounds bigger and deeper.”
Sunset sat on the main body of the Drilldozer and hammered a bit of plating back into place. “We’ll keep an eye out for it, then.”
Rarity restarted the Drilldozer, and they continued tunneling through the caves. Eventually, they cracked through another cave wall, and the beeping became even louder. Rainbow saw Applejack’s head turn to look for the source, and Sunset’s flares didn’t help.
This new cave was massive. In the center of a large open space surrounded by half-arch crystal spikes was a huge ball of hardened rock. The ceiling was nearly fifty meters high with endless stalactites dripping unfrozen water onto them. It extended a hundred meters beyond the main structure with a few bridge-like structures arching the length of the cavern.
The Drilldozer stopped in front of the ball of rock, and Mission Control said, “There it is: the Ommoran Heartstone! Activate the Drilldozer once you’re ready to extract it.”
Wu-oooooooh. Wu-oooooooh.
Rainbow tip-toed around the cave, leaving the relative safety of the group to find out what was making that noise. She turned a corner, tossed a flare, and stepped back in surprise as the sound echoed again loud enough to hurt her eardrums.
It was a robot. Not just any robot, but one that looked like it had been made by DRG. It had the shape of a large armored M.U.L.E. with a twin-barrel turret on top. Her flare light glinted off its battered lime-green plates, and it was clear that the robot had lights of its own.
She activated her rig mic. “Uh, guys, I think I found it.”
A minute later, the others were gathered next to her. Sunset squinted at the robot. Applejack shrugged. Rarity, however, frowned.
“Greg told me about these last night while all of you were passed out drunk. It’s a BET-C,” she whispered harshly. “One of DRG’s earlier attempts to tame the planet. Right now, it’s infected with Xynarch Charge-Suckers, but if we can dislodge them, we can repair it, and it’ll fight for us until we leave.”
“What happens when we leave?” Sunset asked.
“It will eventually be re-corrupted by more Charge-Suckers and go dormant again.”
“How do we dislodge them?”
“We shoot them. We must be quick, though. Shooting them will wake her. Once we do, she will attack us with her twin cannons and bomb launchers.”
Rainbow clicked her minigun.
“No,” Rarity warned. “We must ambush her.”
“Look, Rarity, the longer we wait, the more likely a swarm is gonna come down on top of us,” Rainbow said. “Let’s just get it done with and move on.”
Rarity sighed. “Fine. We’ll do it your way. But be quick!”
Rainbow aimed as best she could and opened fire on the robot. Just as Rarity said, it immediately woke and turned its guns to face her. She dropped her minigun and rolled just as it fired, feeling shards of ice patter against her leg. Her hand found her revolver, and she fired as soon as it was pointed at the robot.
Rarity’s grenade launcher fired again, and one of the Charge-Suckers blew off with a screeching wail. Its discharge sent sparks all around, but the second one still clung to BET-C’s hull. BET-C hunkered down and peppered the surrounding area with explosives--and judging from Sunset’s cries, hit her.
The robot kept moving to keep them from hitting the second Charge-Sucker. Applejack’s flamethrower seemed to hurt it, but she couldn’t get close enough to kill it without receiving a welcome shot from the cannons. Rarity’s shotgun was similarly short-ranged, and her grenade launcher clicked. It was out of ammo.
“Swarm detected,” Mission Control reported. “Defend the Drilldozer with your lives!”
“Go!” Rainbow yelled. She waved Rarity back to the Heartstone and Drilldozer. “I’ll handle BET-C!”
Rarity bolted around the corner with Applejack at her heels. Rainbow scanned the area around the robot and saw Sunset’s armor rig flat on the ground nearby. She’d been knocked out by her rig to keep her alive.
With only one target now, BET-C marched toward her and launched a bomb. Rainbow ran, followed closely by cannon shots until she had looped around to where the last Charge-Sucker clung to the robot’s hull. She pulled a grenade from her belt, removed the pin and threw it at the creature. Seconds later, it exploded, and the Charge-Sucker’s tentacles went limp. It fell off as BET-C collapsed, and a high-pitched alarm sounded.
Rainbow ignored the defeated robot and deployed a shield around Sunset. She dumped the contents of her revival bottle on her friend, who magically came to life once again.
“Wha… Rainbow?”
“Yeah. We got a swarm coming. Can’t do that without our favorite Scout, can we?” Rainbow reached down and pulled Sunset to her feet.
“But BET-C…”
“I got her. Now get your butt back to the Drilldozer. I’ll get my minigun and meet you there.”
Sunset shook her head, smiled, and grappled to the light of Rarity and Applejack’s flares. Rainbow jogged out of her shield, which timed out and flew back to her belt. She lifted her minigun off the ground and ran around the corner to join the rest of her team.
The others had almost taken the swarm by themselves, and a resupply crashed down next to Rarity’s hasty platform fort. Rainbow tossed a shield around it as she approached, and they all spent the next few minutes working out their ammo. BET-C screeched.
“I’ll go repair BET-C,” Rarity said. “Sunset, Nitra. Applejack, Rainbow, guard the Drilldozer.”
The next time they saw Rarity, the robot was following her and began marching around the Ommoran Heartstone. Without a target, it reverted to sentry mode and searched for something to shoot. Sunset returned not long after with a bag full of Nitra, dumped, and left again to mine some she said she’d missed.
Rarity started the drilling sequence, and the Drilldozer jacked itself up and pressed against the Heartstone’s shell.
“Drilling program running!” Mission Control reported. “The Drilldozer is going to work through the outer shell. Be warned: it’ll try to defend itself. Swarm incoming!”
Rainbow thought the swarm was easy. Once the first shell layer broke, however, she saw several rocks lifting out of the ground and gather above the Drilldozer. She cocked her head in confusion. They then slammed into the machine’s left treads and shattered.
“Permanent damage has been done to the Drilldozer!” Mission Control said. “Remember, if we lose the Dozer, we lose the mission!”
“Shoot the rocks!” Sunset yelled. One of her flares arced into the ceiling, and her rifle barked at the floating rocks.
Rainbow needed no further orders. She aimed her gun high and fired until it overheated, then swapped to her revolver and kept firing. Rarity’s shotgun broke a damaged one with a single shot.
The next layer broke, and they fought yet more Glyphids. That was the easy part. Then came the fourth and final layer of the outer shell. Orange glowing crystals sprouted from the ground and beamed lasers into the Drilldozer.
Applejack sprang into action and used her drills to destroy one while Sunset brought down the weight of her pickaxe on the tip of the other with a power attack. Rarity frantically tried to repair the damaged machine. More crystals sprouted. Rainbow emptied her ammo into a mini-swarm.
Despite the chaos, the Drilldozer cracked the final layer. Having completed its job, it backed away from the Ommoran Heartstone and shut down. Smoke billowed from its vents, and the AI head on top looked tired. Rainbow patted it, and it chirped, but it was clearly spent.
“Would ya look at that?” Applejack breathed.
“It’s beautiful,” Rarity agreed.
“Wow.” Sunset’s jaw dropped.
Rainbow turned to look at the exposed core of the Ommoran Heartstone. It was a large glowing ball of pure energetic crystal about the size of a gunk seed. It responded to her geode’s calls, which meant it could connect to Equestrian magic. It was a magical pearl in a world of hostile creatures and broken machines. It was… beautiful. There was no other way to describe it.
When the Drop Pod came down to pick them up, Rainbow Dash almost regretted handing the Heartstone over to Management. Yes, it brought her one step closer to home, but she felt its call. She just hoped it wouldn’t come to bite her later.