Dark Harbor was like a city out of time. From what I’d learned, it had never been hit directly by any megaspells, but when the skies closed, the winds shifted and a plume of radioactive dust had left the city uninhabitable for over a century. It had left the buildings and belongings of the ponies who’d lived there untouched, so it was remarkably intact. When the radioactive dust eventually blew out to sea, ponies had moved right back in.
I was looking out at the city from the third floor of a building that was slowly eroding from the action of the sound and surf. It was still just a little radioactive, enough that the locals stayed away but not enough to bother me. From here, I had a good view of the city proper. As the sun rose, it came to quiet life.
“Anything yet?” I asked Destiny. The Exodus Armor was sitting in the corner of the room, propped up so DRACO was pointed at the door. We’d already made sure it actually locked, but better safe than sorry.
“I’m getting local stations and plenty on the military channels,” Destiny said. “We might just be too far from the Raven’s Nest to get through to White Glint.”
“Great. So we’re stuck here with absolutely no idea how to talk to the Dashites.”
“What are Dashites, anyway?” Destiny asked.
“Ponies that abandoned the Enclave to come down to the surface.” I shrugged. “Well, it’s not just that. There are official ways to go to the surface, you know? And almost everypony wants to help out the ponies down here but we don’t really have enough to share.”
“So what, if you leave home without permission you’re kicked out?”
“No, no. It’s not like that,” I protested. “It’s more like, um… If you skip a meal so you can give your foal something to eat, that’s heroic and tragic! If you take your foal’s food away and give it to strangers, you’re a terrible parent. Something like that.”
“You’re quoting somepony else who used that example as part of a better explanation, aren’t you?”
I groaned. “I’m not good at explaining things, Destiny! You know that!”
The ghost laughed. “No matter what they are, we’re not going to find them sitting in this room. I’m going to keep trying to find something scanning the radio. If nothing else, DRACO will let me decode the military channels and listen in on them. In the meantime, you should hit the streets and see if you can hear anything through word of mouth.”
“Figures that after days of travel the first thing you want me to do when we finally get here is fly around.”
“Not exactly,” Destiny said, sounding mischievous. I had a bad feeling about this.
My bad feeling had transformed into very definite itching and tightness. The Ghost Bear skin was comfortable on its own but Destiny had insisted we bind my wings with bandages so I wouldn’t do anything stupid. More bandages covered my right forehoof, hiding the insect-like metal shell of the SIVA-grown limb. Even if the bearskin cloak came off, I’d look like an injured earth pony at a glance.
“Here’s your coffee, hon,” the diner waitress said, putting a steaming cup in front of me. The diner was a little place that had an ancient, run-down quality that made me feel nostalgic even though I’d never been here before. There were maybe a dozen seats at the counter and a few booths off to the side. Everything was in shades of brown, orange, and yellow.
“Thanks,” I said, giving her a few bits. She looked at them and frowned.
“Ain’t you got caps?” she asked.
“I, uh…” I didn’t now how to respond to that.
She sighed and took them. “Just as bad as the soldiers. I’m gonna take them this time but next time go to the moneychanger first!”
“I will,” I promised. She nodded, mollified, and went back to cleaning cracked dishes. I still had some things to learn about the surface, apparently.
The door swung open and two ponies in uniform trotted in. Enclave soldiers. I froze up. Were they here for me? Had the waitress sent some kind of signal to them?
They laughed, ignored me, and walked past my seat to get into a booth. I glanced at them as they passed. They were around my age, and must have been off-duty, because the only weapons they had were beam pistols. I was pretty sure even a normal raider would shrug off a few shots from one of those.
“What can I get you brave gentlestallions?” the waitress asked. She sounded a lot more polite and pleasant than when she was talking to me. They placed their order and waved her away dismissively. I stayed quiet and eavesdropped on what they were saying while sipping my coffee. It tasted like burned mud water.
“I’m telling you,” one of the soldiers said. “It was at least a dozen mirelurks. They must have crawled up on the dock and fought to the death, because there wasn’t any sign of gunfire anywhere!”
The other one nodded. “I saw it too. Those things are terrifying. All claws and armor and muscle. I hear they just grab ponies and tear them apart, and they’re bulletproof!”
I grunted in annoyance. He was absolutely right. When the radioactive dust blew out of the city it must have gone into the water because my plan to sneak into the city under cover of darkness had gone really poorly.
I’d never even heard of mirelurks before I had to fight an entire nest of them. They were crabs the size of a pony and as mean as two really mean ponies stacked together. I couldn’t see anything underwater at night, so I’d had to run away and then they chased me right up onto the docks. I killed them all. Every one of them I took down just made the others more angry, and I was standing on a pile of the bucking things by the time they’d stopped trying to tear me apart. The commotion got somepony’s attention, because the Enclave swarmed the place and I just barely got away without being spotted. Destiny and I had found an abandoned building, and the rest was history.
“I bet it was Kasatka,” the first soldier whispered.
“The Dashites?” The second one scoffed. “Don’t be stupid. Next you’re gonna start putting up posters and signs asking them for help like that kid in the slums.”
Posters and signs? That was a good idea! I put that on my mental list of things to try.
“Come on, I wouldn’t do that,” the first soldier groaned. “I’m not stupid. Sarge would have us find that kid and drag him to prison if it wouldn’t be even worse for morale than just letting him go.”
“Exactly. And you’re not a kid, so he’d have you brought up on charges. The best thing we can do is follow orders. Kasatka doesn’t exist. That’s what our orders say.”
“Can I get you anything else?” the waitress asked, surprising me. I’d been listening in on the soldiers and hadn’t even heard her trot up. “Maybe some actual food?”
I was about to refuse, and my stomach growled and stopped me from getting up right away. “Can I get something to go?”
Thankfully the waitress had taken my bits without complaining about it again. I was going to have to find somewhere to swap them out. The locals were using bottlecaps, for some reason. I was sort of kicking myself - I’d just left so much junk behind that ponies here would have paid me for! I’d found literally hundreds of bottlecaps lying around and just ignored them like trash. Which they were, but apparently they were also the local currency. Buck knows why.
I ate while I walked, munching on the food she’d given me. It was some kind of black bread she’d smeared with butter and slices of bubblegum-pink sausage. The sausage was so smooth it was like eating a pillow, and I was embarrassed about how much I was enjoying it.
Finding the slums didn’t take long. Ponies were happy to tell me where they were, even if they said it specifically because they were warning me away from the place. The slums were the part of the city that had suffered worst from weather and time, and had once been some kind of warehouse district. Now the large parking lots were home to shacks made out of old shipping containers and the more intact warehouses had been taken over by the less legitimate businesses of the city.
“Fifty caps buys you an hour, but a hundred gets you the whole night.” The stallion smiled in the kind of way I’d only seen on the covers of trashy romance novels.
“I’m not in the market,” I said, holding up a hoof for him to back off.
“You’re looking for something, sweet stuff,” the stallion retorted. “You don’t look like a tweaker, so either you’re here looking for fun or trouble.”
“Trust me, you don’t want my kind of trouble. I’m looking for Kasatka.”
The stallion balked at that and looked around. “I don’t know who you think I am, but they don’t exist and even if they did I don’t know anything.”
“Come on, I just need--”
“Take it from an expert, alright? Being desperate isn’t a good look. You’ll end up like the stupid kid that puts up those posters everywhere.” He nodded across the street. A crude hoof-drawn poster. The stupid kid in question clearly needed some lessons on reading and writing, because it was mostly stick-figure ponies and crude symbols along with ‘Help’ and ‘Orfin’ in hoofwriting so bad it made mine look good.
“...What does it mean?” I asked, tilting my head and trying to puzzle it out.
The stallion shrugged. “Probably that they’re not getting a cutie mark in art.”
He was right, but it was really rude to say it like that. I shook my head and walked over to the poster like I’d be able to figure something out if I looked at it more closely.
I leaned against the wall, my right hoof resting on the edge of the poster. I was thinking about tearing it down to take with me to try and decode later. It took me a second to realize my hoof was stuck.
“...What?” I tried to pull away from it. “Oh stars damn it, the glue was still wet!”
I grunted and yanked, some of the bandages tearing away and staying where they’d stuck to the wall. Better than leaving my hoof behind.
“...The glue is still wet,” I repeated. “He must still be right around here!”
Wonderglue dried very quickly. Even with how much he’d slathered on, it couldn’t have been put up more than a few minutes ago! I walked around the corner, spotted another fresh poster, and picked up the pace. A pony stepped out with a knife and tried threatening me, so I shoved him aside and ignored him.
I spotted the foal. He was carefully spreading one of his posters up on the wall.
“Hey, kid!” I called out.
The mugger I’d been ignoring stabbed me.
It wasn’t like, a magic knife or a machete or even particularly sharp. I would have continued to ignore him, but he managed to slice through the bandages around my barrel. On instinct, I flicked a wing out and smacked him away, tearing the bandages the rest of the way off. He hit the brick wall hard enough to knock him out and fell in a heap.
“Oops,” I muttered, quickly hiding my wings again.
The foal putting up the poster was staring at me with wide eyes. He bolted.
“Dang it-- get back here, I just want to talk!” I ran after him, cursing my bad luck. So much for my clever disguise. I was faster than him, but he was able to slip through spaces I couldn’t. If I took to the air to go over the crowd, everypony would see me and somepony would be bright enough to mention me to the Enclave.
I saw the kid scramble into an old half-collapsed warehouse through a hole in the wall half-hidden by almost-dead scrabbly grass.
It was way too small for me to squeeze through after him, which I found out after a solid minute of trying and looking like an idiot. I was going to have to figure out another way in. The boarded-up door nearby seemed like a good option. I shoved old tires and rotten boards out of the way and kicked the door hard enough to pop the lock out of the doorframe.
The hinges squealed when I forced my way into the dusty space, the only light coming from filthy windows set high off the ground.
“I just want to talk, okay?” I called out, squinting into the gloom. There were crates everywhere, making the space feel cramped and maze-like. I took a few careful steps, not wanting to scare the foal.
“You’re a pegasus,” the kid said. I couldn’t tell where his voice was coming from. “And you talk the same as all the soldiers in town!”
That was just wrong. I didn’t have an accent. The colt did.
“I’m not a soldier,” I said. “I promise.”
“I know that. The soldiers all wear uniforms and they hate getting their hooves dirty.” I looked at my hooves. I hadn’t noticed that I was basically coated in mud up to my fetlocks. “And you were trying to hide. That means… you must be with Kasatka!”
He looked around the corner at me, eyes wide.
“That’s--” I hesitated.
“I get it, you can’t tell me because anypony could be listening,” the colt said. He glanced at the shadows and the high windows overhead. “I’ve been trying to find you for, like, ever! You’ve got to help me! I can’t pay much, but it’s a matter of life and death!”
I frowned and bit back an instant correction. He looked like he’d been skipping meals, and patches of his coat were stuck down with drips of glue. Even compared to most of the ponies in town, he was ragged and filthy. If the foal was really in some kind of trouble, I couldn’t just shut him down. The smart thing would be to let him think I was with Kasatka and find out what he needed help with. Then, once he was safe and I’d gained his trust, he’d just tell me everything on his own.
“Okay,” I said, holding up a hoof. “What’s your name?”
“Rusty.”
“And what’s so bad that you’re putting up posters all over town?” I asked. “You know how dangerous that is, right? The soldiers can see them too.”
“I had to get your attention somehow! When the featherbrains came to town, they started an orphanage and rounded up all the foals that didn’t have parents.” He kicked one of the crates. “It’s stupid! We were doing fine without them! All the ponies they took aren’t allowed to leave and the pony in charge is evil! She hurt us all the time, so I ran away to look for help. I promised my friends I’d find somepony. You have to help, Miss!”
I didn’t want to tell the colt, but rounding up the orphans and putting an adult in charge was probably a good idea.
“I’ll take a look,” I said. “But you stay out of sight until I get back. Deal?”
He nodded quickly, excited beyond words. Now I just needed a really clever plan.
“So you’re a quartermaster?” the old mare asked.
I nodded languidly, looking around. I’d gotten a quick bath with some scavenged soap and seawater, enough to get the dirt off and at least leaving me smelling clean. I hadn’t been able to manage a uniform, not without more caps than I had or a willingness to mug a pony for their trousers, and I wasn’t quite there yet.
“We prefer the term ‘logistics officer’,” I said. It wasn’t quite a correction. The mare seemed pleased. She reminded me of my Dad a little. Her greying hair was tied back in a bun tight enough to deflect a bullet and she wore an itchy-looking tweed jacket.
“I was in the military myself, you know,” she said. “I came out of retirement just for this operation. The sacrifices I’ve made!”
“Hopefully we can get you some extra supplies to make it easier, Miss Shrike,” I said. “I just need to inspect the building and the foals first.”
I almost hadn’t expected the plan to work, but the headmistress had seen wings and a cutie mark and trusted me implicitly. I’d made up a story about being reassigned from Thunderbolt Shoals and she hadn’t questioned anything.
No, it wasn’t just that. The way she had her nose tilted up, the way she walked the shockingly clean halls of the orphanage, Headmistress Shrike was proud of what she’d done.
“This used to be a school,” she said. “That made it quite ideal for our purposes. We converted a few of the classrooms into dormitory rooms for the foals and have the others separated into three groups.”
“By age?” I guessed.
“No, no. all these foals are starting with so little practical education that we’re starting from scratch.” She stopped at a doorway and looked inside. Almost two dozen foals were inside. Most of them were wearing green bandanas, but there were a few blues and reds as well.
One of the fillies wearing a blue bandanna around her neck trotted over to where an earth pony was playing with a toy doll and yanked it out of her hooves. The earth pony stood up and grabbed the unicorn’s hoof, trying to get the doll back.
“Stop that!” Shrike stormed into the room and I saw the look on the foals faces. They were terrified of her. Not the normal amount of fear a foal might have when an angry adult shows up. This was something else. She walked right up to the two ponies who had been fighting over the doll and for a second I thought she was going to set things right.
And then she slapped the earth pony filly hard enough to knock her to the ground.
“How dare you!” Shrike yelled. “You filthy mud ponies do not put hooves on your betters! They have a future! You’re just dead weight! Don’t forget that!”
“I-I’m sorry, Ma’am--” the filly said, her voice breaking.
“You’re demoted to Red,” Shrike said. “No dinner for you tonight.” She pulled off the girl’s green bandana and tossed it aside. Shrike raised her hoof to hit her again. The filly closed her eyes and just waited for it to happen.
I grabbed Shrike’s hoof and twisted it back.
What happened next was not my fault. In my defense I am stupid and I was very angry. Also, Shrike must have had some kind of brittle bone disease because there’s absolutely no reason why it should have shattered everything between her fetlock and shoulder.
“AAAAAAAA!” She screamed.
I let go and she screamed again, her hoof limp and wobbling in a way that suggested that bones, themselves, had just become suggestions as well.
I took a step back in shock at how badly she was hurt. “Oh buck, uh, sorry? But not sorry. Don’t hit kids!”
Shrike screeched in rage and jumped at me, wings beating madly. On instinct, I punched her in the snout to establish dominance. She went flying back through the window. The ancient glass shattered and she fell out of sight.
The foals were totally silent. I slowly trotted over and peeked through, careful not to cut myself on the glass. From the streaks of red left on the pointed shards left in the frame, she hadn’t managed to avoid a few scrapes.
Shrike hadn’t quite made it to the ground. The place had been surrounded by a low stone wall tipped with metal spikes, more for decoration than security. She was very firmly planted on the wall face-up, and I could tell from here that she was not going to be getting back up.
All of the foals were staring out of the windows at the corpse.
“Uh,” I had to think fast. This was probably not great for them to see. “Okay, everypony away from the window. Um… I didn’t mean to do that. Violence is… well it’s often the answer, but only in self-defense! Yeah. And drink your milk so you don’t have fragile bird bones like she did. Uh… and stay in school. Education is important. But… only if they teach the right things. Everypony’s equal and stuff and… and... “
“We’re free!” one of the ponies with a red kerchief yelled, running out the door.
“That too,” I said. “If you want to go, now’s the time.”
Most of the foals in green and red ran past me and fled, shrieking in joy. Ten or so of the foals stayed, looking unsure.
“But… they said if we went with them, ponies would love us and we’d get food and be taken care of,” said the filly who’d been bullying another pony. “Was that a lie?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I can’t tell the future. They’ll probably want you to fix talismans all day, but you’ll have all the food you can eat and a warm bed.”
“That doesn’t sound bad,” another foal whispered. “I wanna stay.”
“Do what you want. I gotta get out of here before anypony else gets here, so, uh… don’t do drugs!” I ran out the door, feeling like I had at least managed not to embarrass myself in front of foals. They probably all thought I was super cool.
“You all got here fast,” I mumbled. There were close to a dozen kids lounging around the warehouse along with Rusty.
“It’s our home,” Rusty said. “This is where we always hang out. They told me about what you did.”
“Sorry about going a little--”
“It was perfect! Now they’ll know not to mess with us!” Rusty said, excited. “We’re going to have to lie low for a while but we’ve got tons of supplies.”
“Glad I could help,” I said, trying not to think too much about the fact I’d basically murdered somepony as a favor to a child. “So, I was hoping--”
“Oh right, you want to get paid,” Rusty said. “No problem. Rock Smasher, give her a case of the stuff!”
“The stuff?”
An older colt pulled a box out of one of the crates and brought it over to me. I took it from him and looked at the brightly-colored yellow and pink logo.
“Passion energy drink?” I read, not really understanding.
“They made ‘em for the military, to let soldiers stay awake for days at a time,” Rusty said. “Really rare and valuable.”
It wasn’t really the kind of payment that a professional would take, but it was what the foals had, and in their little society something like this was probably worth more than practically any amount of caps. I graciously took it because I didn’t want to offend them and also because I was intensely curious about what they’d taste like.
“Oh hey, that reminds me,” Rusty said. “You moved a bunch of stuff when you came in here. Could you go fix that really fast so none of the grown-up ponies try to get in here and mess with us?”
“Sure,” I said, trotting back outside and putting things back in front of the door to secure it against easy entry. It only took a minute to get it looking the way it did before. Now I just had to ask Rusty what he knew about Kasatka and… and I’d locked myself out of their hideout.
I facehoofed. I’d been outsmarted by a child.
“Look, I know what it takes to brew vodka,” I pled. “I’m not asking for any of the good stuff that was actually made pre-war. I’ll take whatever junk you brew in the distillery out back.”
“You callin’ my distillery junk?” the bartender asked, his expression darkening.
“No, but I did see somepony shoving fruit peels and cardboard boxes into the mash tank.”
“Fine, I’ll take your bloody bits,” the bartender grunted. “But it’s at a quarter rate.”
He put a tiny glass in front of me.
“Ten bits.”
“Ten bits for a sip,” I said in disbelief.
“If you don’t like it, try somewhere else,” he said. “The Enclave is buying everything up and everypony is trying to offload bits onto anypony else who’ll take ‘em. Soldiers don’t know how much anything’s worth, so bits are practically worthless.”
“Just my luck,” I groaned, putting a dozen bits on the counter. “Don’t say I didn’t at least tip you.”
He nodded, and his mood improved a little. It might not have been much of a tip, especially when bits weren’t worth the metal they were stamped on, but I’d shown him some respect. Back home, I could have bought a whole bottle for ten bits. That was before the place where I got an employee discount got filled with monsters and everypony died, naturally.
Captain White Glint had called me the luckiest pony she ever met, but all my good luck got balanced out by bad turns.
The radio crackled, and the soft broadcast of very safe, patriotic music gave way to a pony’s voice.
“Good evening, Dark Harbor. This is a special news update. Earlier today, the Dark Harbor Home for Wayward Ponies was attacked by one or more ponies believed to be dangerous and heavily-armed criminals.”
I snorted. I’d made the late edition of the radio news! Destiny was probably still scanning the airwaves, so she was probably listening to this right now.
“Several survivors interviewed at the orphanage gave varying reports about the pony or ponies involved. Authorities believe there are at least two assailants -- an extremely large pegasus pony with a limp--”
Did I have a limp? Now I was going to be self-conscious whenever I was walking around town. I mean, I had a limp for a while when my right forehoof was really aching, but I didn’t still have one now, did I? I was going to have to ask Destiny.
“--and the other is reportedly a red and black pegasus wearing some sort of mask to disguise their identity.”
That was weird. I could understand the foals thinking I was grey, or getting my mane color and coat confused when they were answering questions, but I definitely wasn’t red and black. Maybe they were just making something up to cover for me? That would explain the mask. They’d probably imagined something super cool. But not as cool as the real thing!
“If you or anypony you know has information that might lead to the arrest of these child-endangering criminals, please report it to any member of the Enclave military police force. Remember, we’re all in this together.”
“What bupkiss,” the bartender snorted, once the music started playing again. “They didn’t even mention Kasatka.”
“You heard about them?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
“Sure. They won’t talk about it on the news, but everypony in town knows it was the Dashites. Some foal was trying to get their attention for weeks, and then this happens? One of them must have finally checked it off their to-do list.”
“Any idea how to actually get in touch with them?” I asked.
“Why, you thinking of turning them in?”
“What, and get more bits that I can’t spend?” I lifted up the tiny drink he’d given me and sipped it. It was, well, it was vodka. It wasn’t very high quality, so it was a bit like rubbing alcohol mixed with dirty water.
There were barely two mouthfuls, so it was going to be tough making it last. I didn’t have nearly enough bits to keep spending them like this. I needed to figure out a source of caps if I was going to do much more in the city. “No, I just need some work. There’s got to be some kind of hired muscle or salvage around here…”
“You won’t have much luck with either of those,” the bartender said with a shrug. I gave him another dozen bits for a second drink and to keep him talking. “Nopony needs bodyguards right now with the military crawling all over the place, and even if they did, they come down hard on anypony walking around with weapons.”
“What about the salvage?”
“Only place not picked clean is the bay. You wanna go diving and get eaten by monsters, be my guest. There’s valuable stuff down there, but the Enclave is the only one buying.”
“And they pay in bits,” I muttered.
“Guessing you already found that out the hard way,” the bartender said, when he scooped up my money.
“It seems to be the only way I learn. Thanks anyway. I’ll think of something.”
He nodded and walked down to the other end of the bar to serve somepony else. This was going to be tricky. Maybe if I did enough odd jobs, I’d find something out about Kasatka just by bouncing around from one place to another? I wasn’t going to be able to afford food or fresh water soon, much less fulfill my ultimate fantasy and get a hot bath.
“Looks like somepony took pity on you,” the bartender said. He put a napkin and glass in front of me. “Somepony bought you a drink.”
“Really?” I blinked and thanked the stars for random acts of kindness from strangers. “Who?”
“It was--” he turned to point, but the spot was empty. “Huh. She was there a second ago…”
“Well, if you see her again, thank her for me,” I said. I took a sip. Whatever they’d bought me, it was a heck of a lot nicer than the vodka. It was sweet and citrusy and had an odd flavor I absolutely couldn’t place.
While I was trying not to chug the glass down, I glanced at the napkin. There was something written on it.
A little cutie mark was drawn on it. A lightning bolt striking out of a cloud, all in rough black lines. Below it were two ominous words.
WE KNOW
“Oh. I’m in trouble,” I said. Then the drugs in the cocktail started to kick in and everything went sideways immediately before it went black.