//------------------------------// // Uplink Thirteen: Escape II [Edited] // Story: Ave Deus Mechanicus: On Equestria // by PleaseDoNotDeleteMe //------------------------------// ~~~ One surprising soft fall on to a stack of books later and Rainbow Dash was up again. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for her companion. Who was now out cold. The cyan athlete had just enough time to hoist the starved stallion onto her back before one of the clockwork constructs landed next to her with a loud clang. It reached for her, on an instinctive level she knew that those claws should never be allowed to touch her. As fast as her body would allow, she arched her spine up, then ducked down. The stallion’s body flew up as her’s went down and the humming talon swiped at the useless air in between. As the gears in the creatures head turned and it got ready to make another move, Dash spun on one hoof sweeping its legs out from under it. The blue flyer couldn’t even gloat, as the other three were now touching down. The prismatic maned mare once again draped the stallion over her back and galloped down away shoving past the hooded figures. By the time she reached the exit the tripped Ruststalker’s body finally hit the ground. ~~~ Once again Rainbow was running through the iron halls at full speed, skidding under legs or tripping as many as she could. Most of the warriors seamed to be busy with other matters, it looked to Rainbow Dash as if they were preparing for battle. Maybe the Canterlot royal guard has shown up to rescue them?... Yea, not likely. Even as she ran she couldn’t help but take in her odd surroundings. Despite the presents of overhead lights, some corridors were lit by nothing but candles. Every once in a while she also came across a sealed door, or a shrine of some kind. It began to occur to her that perhaps these creatures didn’t originally build where ever they were, and just inhabited it. As she was contemplating that line of thought, she made another turn down a rather large hall way with smooth metal floors. Another turn and suddenly she was sliding down a ramp. The ramp had been constructed with those Omnissian servants with magnetic feet, it was definitely not meant for an organic xeno with hooves. The two equines slid underneath some kind of four legged boxy crab thing then came to a stop at the base of the rampart. All around them warrior constructs stood in ready formation and bald servant idiotically continued their menial tasks, oblivious. The chamber was wider than in front, stretching to the horizon at either sides, but ahead was a wall decorated with that strange gear and half metal half bone thing she occasionally saw floating around like parasprites. The whole place stunk of metal, five different flavors of smoke, and spices. The chamber was also full of flying machines of many different types. Some with bat wings, others looked like metal square fish. Curiously they seamed to be in the process of loading the fish with the flying ships, along with strange troops and other contraptions that fell somewhere in between boxy or cylindrical. As odd as the machines were, that was nothing compared to the aliens themselves. All shapes and sizes were represented. Some having thin needle like legs. Others had caterpillar tracks. And some even had hooves, however these seamed to be carrying the two legged ones. Some had faces like the floating parasprite things with those half gear head mane things. They seamed to be the ones in charge of the smaller ones. Much to her horror she saw dozens of the gas mask ninjas, some even wearing robes that made them look like reapers of death, as well as a few that seamed to be wearing bowls on their heads and carried massive forks. For a few seconds they just stared into each others eyes. Than the average sized ones pointed their sticks at her and opened fire. Dodging as much as she could, dashing from cover to cover still hailing around the rag doll of a pony on her back. Then their was a chime and the sound loud mechanical screeching over the speakers. In his sleep, the red stallion began to mumble to himself ones and zeros in a seemingly random order. “01000001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110000 01100101 01110010 01110011 01101111 01101110 01100001 01101100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000010 01111001 01111010 01100001 01101110 01110100 01101001 01110101 01101101 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101” The screech began just as Dash ducked behind a stack of some barrels three high, some of the constructs stopped firing, though Rainbow Dash suspected that whatever they were hiding behind was very dangerous. “01011000 01100101 01101110 01101111 01110011 00100000 01110011 01110000 01100101 01100011 01101001 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110011 00100000 00110001 00110010 00110100 00110100 00110101 00100000 00100110 00100000 00110001 00110010 00110100 00110101 00110111 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100101 01110011 01100011 01100001 01110000 01100101 01100100 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101111 01101101 00100000 01111000 01100101 01101110 01101111 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100010 01110011 01100101 01110010 01110110 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100011 01101011 00100000 00110001 00110010 00101110 00100000 01010000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01100100 01110110 01101001 01110011 01100101 01100100 00111010 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110000 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110101 01101101 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01110101 01101110 01100001 01110010 01101101 01100101 01100100 00100000 01111001 01100101 01110100 00100000 01110000 01101000 01111001 01110011 01101001 01100011 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01100011 01100001 01110000 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00101100 00100000 00100000 01001100 01100101 01110100 01101000 01100001 01101100 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100011 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01001110 01001111 01010100 00100000 01110000 01100101 01110010 01101101 01101001 01110100 01110100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110101 01101110 01110100 01101001 01101100 00100000 01100110 01110101 01110010 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 01101001 01100011 01100101 00101110 00100000 01001000 01101111 01110111 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01101001 01110010 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100011 01100001 01110000 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110111 00100000 01000100 01100101 01101100 01110100 01100001 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101001 01101111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101111 01110011 01100101 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100011 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 00100000 01100111 00101101 01110110 01111001 00110111 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100001 00101101 01110101 00110110 01100001 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110100 01100001 00101100 00100000 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100011 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100011 01110101 01110010 01110010 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110011 01101001 01100100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101001 01101110 00101110 00100000 01010000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110100 01110101 01110010 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110000 01100101 01100011 01101001 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01001101 01100001 01100111 01101111 01110011 00100000 01000010 01101001 01101100 01101111 01100111 01110101 01110011 00100000 01010011 01101000 01100101 01100001 01110010 01101001 01100001 00100000 01100001 01100110 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101110 01110100 01100001 01101001 01101110 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100101 01110011 01110100 01100001 01100010 01101100 01101001 01110011 01101000 01100101 01100100 00101110 00100000 01010100 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101100 00100000 01111110 01000001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01000100 01100101 01110101 01110011 00100000 01001101 01100101 01100011 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101001 01100011 01110101 01110011 01111110” The pony drowned on and on the same two words, Rainbow Dash suspected they must have messed with his lungs at some point, as he continued on without breaking a beat or even breathing. This began when the screeching started, perhaps they had some kind of magic spell tha— Their was a loud clang of metal on metal. Just as both the screaming and the stream of ones and zeros from his lips stopped. Looking up, one of the dome heads stood above her. It was reeling back it’s arm getting ready to stab her with the fork. Rainbow didn’t even want to contemplate what it did when it touched her, so instead she bucked the barrel, toppling them over. Just then a door behind her opened, and a long legged construct on a hover treadmill dragged by a bald servant came out. Dash didn’t even contemplate the strangeness of this place anymore and instead just ran into the elevator, jumping up to slam the door closed button. By the will of Celestia, the aliens only made it to the elevator just as the doors closed. Rainbow Dash let out a long sigh of relief then pressed the top button and smashed the panel so they couldn’t open the door. Ascending the elevator looked like it would take a long time, she had never seen the outside of the structure, however the lift had many buttons and she had just pressed the top one before smashing the panel. Hopefully now she could take a short nap. ~~~