//------------------------------// // Chapter 16 - Here I Go Again // Story: Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny // by MagnetBolt //------------------------------// “How do you feel?” Destiny asked. I cautiously stretched and took a few steps. I’d gotten so used to every joint catching and hitching with pain that the sudden lack of that pressure was a huge weight off my shoulders. “I practically feel drunk,” I said giddily. “Nothing hurts! I don’t even have a headache anymore!” “Good,” Destiny sighed. “I was able to break down a lot of the spurs that were growing into your joints and muscles. There’s not much I can do about larger structures, but with the new power core I can keep things under control indefinitely.” “As long as I’m in the armor,” I said, holding up my bad hoof to look at it. When the armor caught the light in just the right way I could see the almost-invisible seams between the tiny hexagonal scales that made up the larger plates. “How long will the battery last?” “The fusion core the Union gave us will last decades,” Destiny said. “The last one was in bad shape before you started putting a strain on it. This one was almost new, so I was able to bring everything online at once and calibrate the thaumoframe to your magical signature.” “I have no idea what that means.” “Okay, um… you know how the armor resized itself to fit you and go around your wings and everything? The magical fields the armor uses needed to be resized too, but I didn’t have enough power to do it. Now everything is properly fitted.” I nodded. “So before now I was putting a strain on the armor just wearing it?” “A big strain. If you were just another unicorn it would be one thing, but a pegasus has a totally different thaumaturgic resonance.” Destiny paused. “Let me rephrase that. It was forcing my magic to fit you, which was like if you had to constantly keep a muscle flexed.” “No wonder the core drained so quickly,” I said. “I feel pretty good now, though.” My joy was short-lived, because apparently somepony was just lying in wait for me to be up and about. “Ah, good, Chamomile, you’re alive,” Herr Doktor said, slipping out from where she’d been pretending to work on some arcane piece of equipment. “I was wondering if we could discuss your hoof?” “Yeah,” I said. “What do we do to fix it?” She sucked in air through her teeth and looked away. “That… is probably impossible. Fixing small things, getting the metal out of your joints, cleaning your blood, that can be done because it’s merely a flesh wound, you might say. The metal is broken down, a healing potion encourages the body to heal, and things fix themselves.” “And my hoof won’t fix itself,” I said quietly. “I considered a few options while you were unconscious,” Herr Doktor said. She motioned toward her desk. “Para-Medic doesn’t think skin grafts will cover it. Nothing for them to latch onto, you see.” She grabbed a sketchbook and showed me some notes and drawings she’d made. “The main material seems to be silicon carbide of some form, with the flexible components made of carbon fiber. The plates under your skin have a not-insignificant metallic impurity, giving them that, ah, mirrored, chromed appearance. None of it is bio-compatible, which is why you were having an inflammatory response prior to the degloving.” The memory of that pain was enough to make my stomach start to turn. “Can we not talk about that?” “I apologize,” Herr Doktor said, putting her sketchbook back. “To the point, we can’t regrow your leg, but the one you have now is better than any prosthetic we could manufacture.” “Great,” I mumbled. “Consider the alternative,” Herr Doktor offered. “You are up and walking and talking. That is more than many ponies could say. You just need to grow a thick skin, eh? And that should be simple, with the dermal plating you’ve developed.” “I guess I’m not taking off this armor anytime soon anyway.” I took a deep breath. “I think I’m going to go for a walk. I need to clear my--” “Belay that,” White Glint said, the captain stalking into the hold. “I heard that when I was walking in. You’re not going on shore leave. Do you have any idea how much trouble you stirred up?” “Hey, I had to do it!” I protested. “Besides, it’s better for everypony, right?” “It is better for everypony,” White Glint agreed. “Governor Fuse was a monster. That doesn’t mean the military doesn’t want you found and dealt with. Your faces are on wanted posters all over town! The only reason they haven’t come here yet is because I pulled every string I could to have them looking in the wrong spots for a little while.” “So what do we do?” I asked. “What I do is clean this place up ship-shape and make ready to set sail in case things go bad. What you do is more important. I don’t want you here when the military police come looking. You need to be out of town for a few days until the heat dies down.” “So, what, you want me to go camping on the bare cloud-tops for a while?” I asked. “That’s no problem.” “I thought about telling you to go cool your hooves, but Captain’s Intuition tells me you’d find some way to get in trouble if you were that bored,” White Glint said. “Here.” She tossed some paper at me. Destiny caught it with telekinesis and hovered it where I could read it. “This is a bill,” I said. “Room, board, and the supplies and expertise of my crew,” White Glint says. “You’re not part of my crew so you owe the going rates.” “We don’t have nearly this much money,” Destiny said. “I know.” White Glint gave us a lopsided smile. “That’s why I’m going to give you a chance to work it off. You wanted to stretch your legs, right?” I nodded slowly. I felt like it was a mistake to admit to anything, but what could I do? The briefing room felt like it had been stripped out of a completely different ship and somehow installed in the Nest. It was modern and clean, and if I’d been thinking properly I’d realize that it was where White Glint met with her clients. White Glint stood at the head of the table, her chair pushed back while she spoke. “The Nest isn’t just a bunch of rebels. We’re troubleshooters, officially. Odd jobs of any size undertaken with negotiable rates. We have a request, and you’re perfect for it.” Emerald looked as wary as I felt. Quattro just seemed bored. She hadn’t even bothered sitting down, just leaning against the wall with her forehooves folded like she’d seen this song and dance already. “You remember Double Nothing?” White Glint asked. I nodded. “He’s the guy who set me up on that dumb job to turn off the nav beacon. Don't tell me this is a request from him...” “I'm sorry to say it is,” White Glint agreed. “He’d probably call himself a collector and broker. He’s got a large collection, and the reason he has so very many rare and hard to move items is that he has ponies that do salvage for him, off the books.” “Which is illegal since the military owns the wrecks here,” Emerald noted. “Illegal and not our concern. What is our concern is that his best scavenger has gone missing, and he’s willing to pay us to find him and bring him back safely.” “That’s all?” Quattro asked. “Why bother asking us?” “Two reasons,” Glint said. “First, the missing pony is Double Dealer, his husband. He doesn’t want to chance hiring anypony that can’t promise they’ll get him back. He knows the Nest always gets the job done.” “What’s the second reason?” I asked. “We know where he was when he went missing. The SPP tower.” “You can’t be serious,” Quattro said. “Ponies can’t get there! The stormwall is impenetrable!” “Double Dealer found a way in,” Glint said. “He’s been there and back once already, according to Double Nothing. This time he’s been gone for a week, and that puts him a few days overdue. Double Nothing can’t just hire anypony because he wants to keep the route secret. Most mercenaries would sell the information to the highest bidder.” “And he doesn’t want that getting out until he’s been able to pick out everything valuable,” I guessed. “Something like that,” White Glint agreed. “As far as I’m concerned this mission is ideal. It gets you out of town, it should have zero enemy action, and we’ll be putting a valuable supplier in our debt.” “We don’t know enough to say there won’t be enemies,” Emerald countered. “The primary mission is search and rescue, not extermination.” White Glint raised an eyebrow. “More to the point, a tank and a vertibuck weren’t enough to stop you. Are you really expecting something worse?” Quattro laughed. “And I was worried no one was going to put a jinx on us!” “It’s just not the same,” Emerald said. “Our Doktor can’t resist tinkering,” Quattro admitted. “What do you think, Cammy?” I rubbed my chin and looked at Emerald. She was flexing her wings and trying to look at herself. Her military-issue armor had been almost completely redesigned. The helmet’s buglike eyes had been swapped out with a visor and a thin antenna like a unicorn’s horn had been stuck right in the middle of her forehead. The rebreather had been changed out for an older model that looked almost like a beak, and the smooth lines of the chest armor were flattened, more like plates stacked on top of one another than a shaped curve. “Does it still work the same?” I asked. “The armor is thicker, but she improved the weight-reduction talisman to compensate,” Emerald said. “It actually feels lighter than before.” “So it’s fine,” I shrugged. “I guess, but the color…” Emerald groaned. “Why did she have to paint it white?” “It’s good camouflage against clouds,” Quattro said. “She probably heard you complaining about how my armor draws too much attention.” “I guess,” Emerald conceded. “But white is so hard to keep clean!” “Good thing you’re not in the military anymore where an officer might bust you for having an unkept uniform.” Quattro grinned at Emerald’s annoyed grunt at being reminded about that. “We should discuss where we’re going,” Destiny said. “I’ve been looking at the map data and I have some concerns.” “Is it about the rust sea, the razor fields, or the pony who gave it to us?” Quattro asked. “I’m pretty worried about the razor fields,” I said. “Do I want to know why they’re called that?” “I’ve never been stupid enough to fly out there and find out for myself, but you can probably guess,” Quattro said. Destiny brought up the map. It was more like a treasure map than a navigational chart, with a bunch of notes about exactly what the safe path through some areas even looked like. “What worries me is that ponies haven’t found a way through for more than a century and a half, and then this scavenger just happens to get all the way to the tower and back? This storm system seems too stable for something like that to be missed.” “If we get stuck, we’re turning back,” Quattro said. “Is that understood by everypony? We’re trying to save one pony, who might not even be alive. That means we’re not going to risk our lives. I’m not trading either of you for him.” “I second that,” Destiny said. “Speaking as somepony who’s already dead, it’s, as my father would say, a total bummer.” “Understood,” Emerald said. “So the map starts right here, at the wreck of the Sun Titan.” She motioned to the hull around us. It was in good condition, all things considered. “It looks like it used to be a nice boat,” I said. It was big, easily larger than a Raptor, a wooden-hulled airship that had been fitted with iron cladding once, before that had been stripped away as scrap metal. The wood was still there, showing the elaborate paint job that it had sported before the war as a passenger ship. It was also rotten, and stepping too hard would put your hoof right through it, which is probably why nopony had stripped the wood to sell off for scrap. “Cruise liner, then a privateer, then the Skyguard built real warships and it was decommissioned,” Emerald said. She stepped up to the railing along the deck and touched it reverently. “I wish we had the resources to fix up ships like this and bring them back to life.” “We’ll go through the rust sea from here,” Quattro said. “It’s not as dangerous as it sounds. They’re just an area that’s been picked totally clean. All that’s left is what the scavengers couldn’t use. Wooden hulled ships and rusty skeletons too corroded to use for scrap.” “At least the storm isn’t so bad here,” I said. Gentle breezes carried iron-scented dust across the bow of the ship. In some places, thick clouds of it gathered, red and brown banks of fog working their way across the junkyard. “That’s why things got picked over so much,” Quattro agreed. “From what I've heard, this place is pretty pleasant as long as a wild storm doesn’t come off the razor fields.” She took off, flying between floating hulks. Most of the ships were only aloft thanks to banks of clouds pressed up against the hulls, and half of those were starting to slip. There were probably dozens of ships that had fallen through to the ground below despite whatever lingering enchantments they held. Were there ponies down there, living under the fear that a broken ship might crash down on top of them at any moment? I tried not to think about it. The ground might as well have been the bottom of an ocean, and it was probably just as deadly. Instead, I was just going to enjoy flying. It had been way too long since I could just spread my wings and go. The storm was calm enough here I wasn’t worried about being struck by lightning, my joints weren’t screaming at me about the abuse I was putting them through, and nopony was trying to kill me. It felt good. “It makes me wish I’d loaded music into the software,” Destiny said quietly. “Hm?” “Everything happened so quickly at the end,” she said. “I can barely remember much of it, but I remember that feeling, that I’d left so much undone when the alarms sounded and the bombs fell. Even this armor was never really done. It doesn’t have drivers for weapons because it wasn’t supposed to see combat. It doesn’t have music or a proper database because it was just supposed to sit in a lab.” I glanced at my left side and the heavy weapon there. With the extra power from the armor I couldn’t even feel the weight of it. “We got the Junk Jet working, right?” “Herr Doktor was able to write drivers for it because she designed the weapon from scratch,” Destiny said. “I might be able to get a beam rifle working, but your aim is bad enough already and I doubt I could get targeting assistance working.” I huffed. “Hey, my aim isn’t that bad! I was hitting every shot with the Junk Jet!” “Someday we’ll develop the science to explain exactly how you managed that,” Destiny quipped. “Seriously, though, you did do really well with it, and Herr Doktor helped me tie it into the suit’s vector trap system. I can deposit just about anything we’ve got in storage directly into the Junk Jet.” “Do we have anything useful in storage?” I asked. “If it was useful I wouldn’t want to use it as ammunition,” Destiny joked. “Don’t worry. I nabbed a few things. Empty glass bottles, a few cans of Cram--” “Cram?” I asked, my ears perking up. “I love that stuff!” “These cans are two centuries old, Chamomile.” “So?” “...There's no accounting for taste, I guess” Destiny sighed. “Focus, everypony!” Quattro shouted back. “We’re almost at the edge of the rust sea!” The dark clouds of haze and dirt parted, and huge shapes loomed in the calm winds. It took me a second to recognize them, because I’d been looking at rusted hulks and hulls stripped to the bone for so long that seeing relatively intact ships was a shock. “Those are Raptors,” I said. “They’re practically brand-new! Why are they just sitting here?” “I heard about these. Look at the livery,” Emerald said. Destiny zoomed in on the paint jobs. “These ships were part of the Cloudsdale defense force.” Each of them was painted in faded blue, with details picked out in tarnished brass. I could see the name emblazoned on the nearest one as we flew closer. The Soarin. “I’m picking up some radiation,” Destiny warned. “They were there when the bombs went off,” Emerald said. “You can still see the scars.” Lightning flashed. Black ash and blistered paint scored one side of the Soarin’s hull, like it had been parked right next to a gigantic furnace. “The ships were highly irradiated in the barrage. According to the official reports, when the weather factory was hit, it released a huge plume of radioactive material, and that all got sucked into the engines of the ships. Almost nopony survived, and the thunderstorms they used for lift just kept circulating the dust and irradiating everything around them.” “It’s been this long and they’re still dangerously radioactive,” Quattro said. “Too dangerous to salvage, too precious to scuttle, so they were left here in the hopes they’d eventually cool down enough. Rumors say they had to leave the bodies in place because it was too dangerous to send in retrieval teams.” “We’ll get to find out if it’s true,” Destiny said. “The map has us going through some of the ships. It looks like Double Dealer used them like a bridge to cut through something called a razor storm.” “If I remember correctly, that would be a storm cell that’s picked up a lot of debris. Sharp debris.” Quattro folded her hooves. “Like a tornado of broken glass. Not something you want to get caught in.” “The radiation is going to be a problem,” Emerald said. “I’ve got some RadAway and Rad-X. Do you have enough?” “It’s not a concern,” Destiny said. “Not for you, you’re a ghost,” I said. “I don’t want radiation sickness. I just started feeling okay!” “It’s not much of a problem for you either,” Destiny said. “You’ve got a layer of heavy metals under your skin. It’s why you’ve been so laser-resistant lately. They’ll also block a significant fraction of the ionizing radiation.” “How much is significant?” “If the readings stay around this level? I wouldn’t suggest you spend the night, but a quick trip should be relatively harmless.” “I’m almost jealous,” Quattro said. We flew closer to the Soarin. As we passed near the captured thunderstorms supporting the hull, warnings popped up across my vision. I didn’t know enough about the numbers to know how bad things really were, but I wasn’t so dull that I didn’t get the idea. Scavengers left these ships alone for a reason -- even a quick look probably took years off a pony’s life. Swooping into the huge deployment hangar was like coming in out of the storm. The warnings tapered off but didn’t go all the way to zero. It was almost exactly the same layout as the hangar of the Shiranui, but blessedly without a tank lying in wait to ambush us. “That’s better,” Emerald sighed in relief. “I can’t believe how bad this place is.” I nodded and looked around. A tingle washed through me as Destiny cast a light spell, piercing the gloom around us with crimson light that didn’t quite reach the corners of the huge space. “We need to reach the other end of the ship,” Destiny said. “We’ll be hopping from one ship to another. It looks like they form a chain through the worst of the storm.” “Did he move the ships himself?” I asked. “I don’t think so. They must have naturally drifted together. It’s something that happens with ships. They randomly get a little closer to each other, then because they’re shielding the space between them from the wind or waves, the force outside nudges them closer and closer until they’re touching.” “Neat. So they’re not gonna come apart on their own?” “Hard to say. If the chain is broken further along the line, that could be why Double Dealer didn’t come back. He could be trapped on the other side somewhere waiting for things to align again.” “If he’s smart, he won’t be on any of these ships,” Quattro said, looking around. “He’d go through Rad-X like it was water.” The Shiranui had been spotless, that kind of parade cleanliness that nothing could maintain without constant spit and polish. This ship was different. It was like an ancient tomb. Rust and loose debris from outside had blown in through the open hangar doors and covered everything in red dust, piles of it building up in the corners. It let up a little as we got further in, but the ship had been here so long that it had gotten everywhere. Black scorch marks and stains from broken pipes plastered the bulkheads. “We’re not the first ones in here,” Destiny said. She adjusted her light and pointed it at the wall. “Graffiti?” Emerald guessed, tilting her head. “Look at the shape,” Quattro said. “Two letter ‘D’s facing each other. Double Dealer?” “Why did they tag the wall?” I asked. “Probably to remind himself about this,” Quattro said. She pulled a box out of a vent just under the tag. She opened it to reveal a stash of Rad-X and Radaway. “This is the good pre-war stuff. He must have left it here in case he was running low.” “Take it with us,” Emerald said. “We might need it.” “Double Dealer might need it too,” Quattro agreed, shoving it in her pack. “If they did get stuck around here, they might not have enough to get back safely on their own.” “Speaking of that, I’m detecting a radiation spike the more we move down this corridor,” Destiny said. Emerald spread her wings a little. “And I can feel the wind. We must be getting near the first crossover point.” I went first, and at the next junction I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. The Soarin didn’t even have emergency power, so the light leaking in from the outside was like a beacon. I could feel the wind now too, and when I turned the corner to follow the source of the light, I almost walked right out into thin air. “I guess these ships got hit harder than I thought,” I said breathlessly. The hallway just stopped, torn apart by massive heat and force. Pipes and wires jutted out into the open air, creaking in the wind that blew past. I could see the hull of another ship close enough to almost reach out and touch it. “We need to go over to the next ship,” Destiny said. She highlighted something in my display, enhancing the edges to make it pop despite the haze in the air. “There’s an open hatch here.” It was maybe a dozen paces away, groaning when the wind caught the door and wiggled it on rusty hinges. “That’s close enough I could practically jump it,” I said. “I don’t see why anypony would think this is--” The wind picked up to a fever pitch, and tornado-force gusts tore through the space between the two ships. I jerked back, but not before the very edge of the wind whipped across me, metal splinters and glass shards bouncing off the armor like they were angry they couldn’t get inside and flay me alive. “Okay never mind! I can see why this is still a hazard!” I backed up a few more steps and waited for the storm to die down. “It would have to be this bad for scavengers to avoid the place,” Quattro said, watching from the end of the corridor. “I hope he didn’t get caught up in something like that or we won’t even find a body to bring back.” “The wind is dying down,” Destiny said. “I think it’s cyclical. If we time it correctly, we should be able to get to the other side.” “And if we don’t time it right?” I asked. “I strongly suggest not finding out.” “Got it. Fate worse than death.” “I’ll take it first,” Quattro said. “I’m the fastest. I’ll get to the hatch, make sure it’s not going to slam shut and that we can actually get inside, then wave you across.” I nodded. Quattro watched the wind slide through another cycle of razor-edge hail and calm to get the timing right, then flitted across to the hatch. She hovered outside it for a few seconds, checking out the other side, then ducked inside ahead of the next wave. “Do you want to go next?” Emerald asked. I watched the wave of death slash through the open air and decided to be polite. “Please, you go ahead,” I said. Emerald chuckled and waited for Quattro to signal her before taking off and dashing across to the next ship, leaving me mostly alone. “The storms from the SPP tower must be tied in one big knot,” Destiny mused while we waited for it to clear up again. “This debris could have been orbiting around for decades, shearing off little bits of broken-down ships as it goes. I wonder how it avoids eroding the edges down to something less deadly…” I swallowed, nervous and ready to take off. I wasn’t a fast flyer. What if I needed a few extra seconds to get through the hatch? It looked small from here. Too small. The wind died down and I didn’t wait for Quattro to wave to me. “Watch out!” Destiny yelled in my ear. My helmet display flashed a danger signal and pointed to my left. A huge slab of metal sliced through the air towards me. I hadn’t seen or heard it coming. It was big enough that it had blocked up the wind behind it like a dam. I squeaked and flapped harder and I felt Destiny’s telekinesis shoving my flank forward. I just barely cleared it, the rusty metal flashing past my tail while I lost control and crashed through the hatch and into the next ship, slamming into the wall hard enough to rattle my teeth. “Ow,” I groaned. “You almost died!” Emerald chided. “You were supposed to wait for the signal!” “How is something that big floating around?” I asked. “It must be a piece of cloudship hull,” Quattro said. “Just enough talismans and enchantments still working to keep it in the air.” “Cool,” I said, even though it definitely wasn’t cool. “Come on, up and at ‘em,” Quattro said, pulling me up to my hooves. “We’ve still got a while to go.” “Another Double-D mark over here,” Emerald said. “We’re going the right way.” She shoved some fallen debris aside to reveal a small crate with a few bottles of water. “Another stash, too.” “I bet he found this path piece by piece,” Quattro said. “Probably used these stashes to extend his range.” “I just hope we can get through,” Emerald muttered. She walked down the corridor to where a fallen support beam cut the hallway in half. There was just enough room for us to squeeze under the bent and twisted metal. “This ship took a lot more damage before it was towed out here.” “We’ll figure it out,” Quattro said. “I wonder how many salvage crews and independent scavengers died in places like this because they lingered too long… even if you know the right path it’s tempting to go the other way just for a quick look, pop open a few doors, rummage through the drawers…” “Good thing we’re not here for treasure hunting,” Emerald said. “Which way?” “Through the galley,” Destiny said. “This way.” Destiny kept her scan of the map in the corner of my vision. It wasn’t particularly well-drawn. Nothing was to scale, a few turns weren’t mentioned, and we had to backtrack once and go around a place where recent damage from slamming into another floating ship had made a corridor impassible. I took the next hop across the gap between ships much more carefully, looking both ways and waiting for the signal before flying across. “It’s easier when you don’t crash,” Quattro joked. I rolled my eyes and waited for Destiny to cast another light spell. “The walls…” Emerald whispered. I turned the light to the corridor wall. Shapes had been painted all over it, arranged in circles and seven-sided shapes and bizarre spirals and loops. They looked almost like letters, but from some alien language. It almost hurt to look at them. “I don’t recognize these symbols,” Destiny said. “Zebra, maybe?” “Why would there be zebra glyphs inside a wrecked Equestrian ship?” I asked. “Something tells me we don’t want to find out.” Destiny sounded afraid in a way that a dead pony shouldn’t be able to be afraid. Movement. Right in the corner of my eye, something in the shadows. By the time I turned it was gone. “Did anypony else see that?” I asked. “I saw something,” Quattro confirmed. “I couldn’t make out what it was.” “Let’s just take it slow,” I said. “Everypony stay close.” We crept down the blighted corridor. The symbols on the walls glistened when they caught the light and I did my very best not to think about what they might have been painted with. “Double Dealer?” I called out. “We’re here to rescue you!” “Is it a good idea to shout like that?” Quattro asked. “If I was stuck in this place for a week I’d be ready to shoot anything that jumped out at me,” I muttered. “I wanna give him some warning.” We got to the next junction and I looked both ways. One end was blocked off by debris, but there was a dark shape at the end of the other leg. “Is that him?” I asked. It was hard to make out detail in the dim light. Destiny focused the light on the pony at the end of the passageway. “If that’s Double Dealer, there’s something really wrong with him,” Emerald whispered. The pony was thin, worn ragged like a threadbare suit washed over and over again until the material was so thin you could see through it. His feathers were falling out, and there was just something pale and unhealthy about him. If he hadn’t been unsteady enough on his hooves to weave a little from side to side just standing there, I wouldn’t have thought he was even alive. He turned slowly at the touch of the light, shadows falling across hollow cheeks. Dry lips curled back in a snarl and exposed broken teeth. The eyes were just empty pits along with a third hole in its forehead, like somepony had already shot him once, all of them glowing with green light from somewhere deep inside his skull. “Sorry for bothering you,” I said. “We’re just passing through.” The pony screeched and charged, limbs flailing like it was barely in control of its body, like trying to run with your legs asleep. I froze. It was just like home. The ponies forced into motion by something outside their bodies. I didn’t see metal scales or claws, but the stumbling horror had that same jerking, unnatural gait. “Light it up!” Emerald ordered, snapping off a laser shot. It burned into the pony’s neck. Another shot from Quattro took off a foreleg. It stumbled, and a flurry of beams blasted it apart, dry flesh bursting into flames. Quattro waited a heartbeat to make sure it wasn’t about to get back up despite being in pieces and on fire, then shrugged. “That wasn’t too hard.” “As far as monsters go it was a little underwhelming,” Destiny agreed. “It’s a ghoul,” Emerald said, kneeling down next to the smoldering remains. “They’re created sometimes when a pony dies of massive radiation poisoning. I heard about them from the reports.” “The reports?” “On surface conditions,” Emerald clarified. “You know ponies get sent down there once in a while to look. Not a detail I ever want to pull. Everything I’ve heard is bad, except for the parts that are worse, like feral undead monsters roaming bombed-out cities.” I heard something shift in the darkness. “You said they’re rare, right?” I asked. Emerald shrugged. “There isn’t usually enough radiation up here to worry about. That’s why we live here in the first place.” Green eyes, all of them shining in triplicate, lit up in the gloom. “They might not be as rare as you think,” I whispered. The ghouls screeched and charged, pale limbs worn down to bone. There had to be dozens of them packing the corridor and screaming wordless hate. We didn’t need to wait for Emerald to tell us to shoot this time. Beams cut through the air along with the heaviest things I had to throw. Sparkle-Cola bottles smashed into the undead while we beat a fighting retreat. “When we get back we’re charging Double Nothing extra for this job!” Quattro shouted. “There wasn’t supposed to be enemy action!” “Don’t let your boss hear us complaining,” I said. “She didn’t seem like she appreciated excuses!” I smiled when a lucky shot sent a desk lamp through a ghoul’s head hard enough to decapitate it entirely, the body taking a few more steps before falling. “Something’s wrong,” Destiny said, her voice wavering. “Yeah, we’re being attacked by ghouls!” I said. “Did you just notice that?” “No, it’s something else. Something… there!” She cast a spell, outlining the figure lurking in the shadows with faerie fire. It was taller than the ghoulish horrors chasing after us, moving with such unnatural grace it seemed to be floating. Whatever it was, it was wearing tattered, once-ornate robes and pieces of armor that seemed to be carved from bones. It lifted up a staff and sent a wave of green light across the undead, and they screeched and redoubled their efforts to kill us. “It’s using necromancy!” Destiny said. “I’m no expert, but I am undead and I can feel that where my bones should be!” Some of the fallen ghouls started putting themselves back together, stumbling back up despite the collection of killing wounds we’d already given them. “Across the gap!” Quattro yelled. “We need to get to the next ship!” The ghouls flinched when they chased us into the next room, a hangar bay whose other end hung open, the cargo door halfway bridging the gap to the next Raptor in the line. Sunlight poured through the open hatch, fighting back the darkness. None of us even bothered looking out for a razor storm. We didn’t have time to worry about that with the grasping hooves of the undead at our heels. The three of us charged and jumped, flying through broken and empty window frames into the next ship. I landed and skidded, turning around to see if they’d keep coming. A few of the ghouls tried to follow, and at that moment the wind picked up and tore them from the sky, razors in the wind shredding them apart and carrying the giblets away. The equine in the ornate robes hung back in the shadows, keeping away from the light. It met my gaze, and I could feel an ancient hate there, the kind of hate that didn’t stop at just one pony or one people but encompassed everything in the universe. Another wave of haze passed between us, and it vanished back into the gloom. The rest of the ghouls hissed and retreated into the shadows they’d come from. “What was that thing?” I asked. “I think it was a zebra,” Destiny said. “But… up here? There shouldn’t be zebras here! It had to have come from the surface somewhere.” “A mystery I hope we never have to solve,” Quattro said. “Let’s keep moving in case this place is infested too.” I nodded and followed her, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was still being watched by something in the dark.