Headaches seem like they’re a fixture in my life. I’d been shocked unconscious, passed out from a severe head wound, had terrible aches through my body from infection, and it always sucked no matter what. The worst part was that even Med-X didn’t do much to help with a migraine but it sure gave me one when I was coming down from it.
“I can’t believe I took a drink from a stranger,” I groaned. My mouth tasted faintly like vomit, and even if my head was pounding, I wasn’t dizzy, so they must have used the good knockout drugs instead of the cheap kind.
“It wasn’t very smart of you,” agreed somepony.
If they wanted me dead, I’d be dead, so I took my time sitting up and looking around. I needed to figure out how much trouble I was in before I started making plans. I was in some kind of abandoned building. It probably wasn’t far from where I’d found my own hidey-hole. It had obviously been abandoned until very recently.
There were three ponies with bags over their heads hoofcuffed and on their knees along one wall. Whatever trouble I was in, they were in it way deeper, because I wasn’t getting the black bag and restraint treatment.
“You woke up more quickly than I expected,” said the voice again. I looked up. A red and black pegasus was perched on top of a bookcase, lounging placidly. Her coat was a deep red somewhere between wine and crimson, and her black mane was streaked with brighter, almost neon red. She didn’t seem to think I was much of a threat, but it was hard to read her expression because she was wearing a metal mask that covered her eyes.
“I heard about you on the radio,” I said. “You went to the orphanage after I was there, didn’t you?”
“Among other places,” she confirmed. “I wanted to find out about you. We would have eventually gotten around to the foal’s request, but we had other priorities. Bigger irons in the fire. Still, now everypony is talking about Kasatka and how they stormed an orphanage and killed the pony in charge before turning the foals loose.”
“Killing her was sort of an accident--”
“Yes, it was,” the red and black pegasus agreed. “It makes me curious about what you’re doing. You’re going around asking for Kasatka, making ponies think you’re with us, and you’re not even a Dashite!”
“I’m here because--”
“Stop,” the pegasus said. She waved a hoof languidly. “Actions speak louder than words. If you’re looking for Kasatka, you’re either trying to sell us out or you want to hurt the Enclave. I want to see which it is.”
She motioned to the three ponies with bags over their heads.
“One of those three ponies is an Enclave collaborator,” she said. “If you want to prove you seek Kasatka for the right reasons, kill them.”
“You want me to murder somepony?” I balked at that, shooting up to my hooves.
“Yes,” the pegasus said, not even trying to pretend it was something else. At least she was honest about that. “Consider it a test. Take your time. Talk to them. I want to see what you do. But let’s be very clear about this -- before I leave here, there will be at least one dead pony in this room. Do you understand?”
I narrowed my gaze. I was pretty sure that was a threat on my life. Maybe I could get out of this if I thought it through.
“White Glint was the one who told me to seek you out. She wanted me to ask you--”
“We will talk, after you choose,” the pegasus said.
Apparently, she wasn’t going to let me try and find a third path. Not if I wanted to get on their good side. I walked over to the three restrained ponies and looked at them. I was going to have to start somewhere, so I picked the one in the middle.
“What’s your story, lady?” I asked the mare.
“How dare you!” the mare snarled through the cloth bag. “Cowards! You dragged me out of my home in the middle of the night!”
“Are you an Enclave collaborator?” I asked. I had no idea how to interrogate somepony.
“What the buck kind of question is that?!” she demanded. “What are you, an idiot?!”
“Just answer the question!” I snapped, starting to get annoyed. I was beginning to feel like killing her just on the principle of the thing. If she really was dealing with the Enclave I felt sorry for them.
“The answer is none of your damn business!” she snapped back.
I restrained myself from smacking her. It was way too tempting. I looked at the stallion next to her. He was even more filthy than the average pony in the wasteland and was wearing the kind of patchy, spiky barding that just screamed ‘raider’.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re a masseuse?”
“Not exactly,” he said, laughing a little. “Name’s Catsclaw. You can probably tell what I do for a living. I don’t know what this is about, but I won’t blame you for whatever you do. It’s a risk that comes with being a murdering scumbag.”
Dang. He actually seemed like an okay pony compared to the mare kneeling next to him.
“Ever worked with the Enclave?” I asked.
“I don’t know if you heard the news, honey, but the Enclave isn’t a fan of raiders. They’ve got a vested interest in stomping out every group they find, big or small.”
I nodded and stepped over to the last pony in the line. He was another stallion, with the kind of patchy, nondescript clothing that most ponies wore. It was unpleasant enough in the wasteland that most ponies wore something just to keep the dust and rain off their coats.
“W-whatever I did, I’m sorry,” the stallion pled. He sounded terrified. “I’ll do whatever you want! Please let me live!”
“Just calm down,” I said.
“How am I supposed to stay calm? Let me go! I didn’t do anything, I swear!” He shifted, and I saw something catch the light at his side. A beam pistol, practically brand new.
“Where did you get that gun?” I asked.
“What? The pistol? It’s just… it’s just for self-defense!”
“I asked where you got it, not what it was for.”
“I didn’t steal it! It was a fair trade!”
“Are you ready yet?” the pegasus on the other side of the room asked, sounding curious. “What do you think? Have you made up your mind?”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to do this. Maybe if they’d be up on their hooves and able to fight back. Killing the raider was the obvious choice from a moral standpoint, but this wasn’t about morals. This was about figuring out the right answer, and my gut told me there was only one right choice.
I took the pistol from the pony kneeling in front of me and put it against his head.
“Sorry,” I whispered. I pulled the trigger, and he slumped over, bleeding.
“So you picked the farmer selling his goods to an invasion force for weapons?” The pegasus behind me hopped down. “I can see how you’d decide he was the collaborator.”
“So it was him?” I asked.
The mare smiled and produced a slim, long-barreled pistol. She fired twice. The gun barely made a sound, just tiny puffs of air. The mare and raider both fell over.
“Any of them would have been correct,” she said, trotting over. “They were all guilty. I just wanted to see what you’d choose, and how you’d choose to do it. The farmer is part of the supply line letting the Enclave stay here. The mare sold her own child to the very orphanage you shut down because they were willing to pay for unicorn foals. The raider, aside from being a murderer and worse, also sold out his own gang to the Enclave for a bag of bits. None of them deserved to live.”
She put the gun away and offered her hoof to shake.
“My name is Unsung,” she said. “I think we can do great things together.”
I stopped by the place I’d found to get my gear before I went anywhere else with her. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her -- no, it wasn’t just that I didn’t trust her -- but I was pretty sure wherever I was going, I’d want to have Destiny’s brains to go with my brawn. Relying on my own brains hadn’t gone well for me lately.
“This way,” Unsung said. There were steps leading down, right by the side of the road.
“Where does this go?” I asked, following the mare.
“It’s part of the subway system,” Destiny said. Her horn lit up, a cone of light stretching ahead of us to a steel shutter at the end of the stairway. “There wasn’t room for surface trains inside cities. Some places used smaller cablecars and trams, but with the weather in this part of Equestria, it was easier to build underground.”
“It’s also the best place to hide from the Enclave,” Unsung said. She easily lifted the shutter. “Most pegasus ponies have at least some amount of claustrophobia. There aren’t many places in the Enclave where you’re ever really indoors. The closest most military ponies would get is onboard a cloudship, but that’s well-lit, clean, and not six stories underground.”
She took me further down into the earth. She seemed right at home. The place was almost pitch-black aside from the light Destiny was giving us. The long stairs let out onto a platform, with tracks off to both sides. I turned around slowly, looking around.
“And the ponies in the city don’t use these tunnels at all?” I asked.
“Some of them do,” Unsung said. “There are a few little gang hideouts, one or two ponies that cook drugs. But it’s dark and damp and there’s plenty of room aboveground, so it’s not anypony’s first option. None of them go much further than whatever entrance they use.”
“Why?” I asked.
Unsung trotted over to the side of the platform and motioned for me to follow her, then hopped down onto the tracks below.
“It’s like a maze. There are the main line passages like this, but there are also utility tunnels, places blocked by rubble where the ceiling collapsed, flooded sections, and somepony swears they saw radgators.”
“Radgators?”
“Don’t worry about them,” Unsung said dismissively. “I haven’t seen any and I’ve been here for a while. Still, try not to wander off. If you got lost, you might never find your way back.”
She sounded a little like she was teasing, but the maze of twisty tunnels, all alike, made me think she might be telling the literal truth about that. How many ponies had gone into the dark and just vanished?
“Don’t worry,” Destiny whispered while we trotted after Unsung. “I’ve got DRACO recording out position with dead reckoning. If anything happens we can find our way back.”
I nodded, feeling a little better about the whole thing. The tunnel itself seemed pretty secure. There was a little water pooled in the lowest spots, but I didn’t see any obvious risk of collapse. I tried to relax and just follow her, and she led me through the curving tunnels until I saw a light at the end of them.
“Here we are,” Unsung said. “Welcome to the Sanctuary Station.”
The ceiling was vaulted overhead, and the station was more like a miniature underground shopping center than just a small outpost like the one we’d entered at. The shops had been emptied out and turned into private rooms, and the main platform reminded me of the operations room back on the Raven’s Nest. A few ponies were gathered around something massive and under a tarp.
“Everypony, I’ve returned with our newest recruit,” Unsung said. She flew up onto the platform, landing on one of the bulky cabinet-sized terminals that was softly playing the loop of patriotic music the Enclave was broadcasting across the city. “This is Chamomile. She’s the one who caused all the trouble at the orphanage.”
“I heard about that when it came in over the radio,” a very small and round pegasus said, trotting up to me and switching one pair of glasses for another with even thicker lenses. “That’s interesting armor. It’s not an Enclave design.”
“No,” Destiny said. “It’s not.”
“Please don’t spook anypony, we’re trying to make friends,” I reminded Destiny.
“Is that integral AI?” the mare asked. “I’m Klein Bottle, by the way.”
“It’s a wandering spirit,” said a soft voice. I didn’t spot the mare until she was almost on top of me. She was the color of dust and moved like a ghost. Her hooves didn’t make a sound when she stepped on the platform. “I can feel the death around her.”
“Don’t scare her, Grey Gloom!” A stallion patted her shoulder, offering me his hoof to shake. “I’m Opening. I try and figure out how to actually make our leader’s plans happen in the real world.”
“For what it’s worth, she’s not wrong,” Destiny said. “I’m sort of haunting this suit of armor.”
“Interesting,” Klein muttered. “I wonder if it’s similar to the soul trap mentioned in some redacted MAS internal memos…”
“No,” Gloom whispered. “She is a revenant here bound by her own willpower and magic.”
Another stallion tapped his hoof on the ground. Opening glanced at him.
“Oh, this is Split Moon. He’d introduce himself, but…” Opening motioned to Split Moon, and the stallion raised his chin, letting me see the scar across his throat. “He doesn’t talk much. It’s painful for him. He’s a master with wingblades, though. Probably the best in the world.”
“There are a few others, but they’re out at the moment,” Unsung said from her perch. “The only one left is our newest recruit. She isn’t a pegasus, but you can trust her.” Unsung motioned to somepony on the other side of the tarp-covered lump. “This is--”
She stepped out, and I blinked. “Four,” I said.
“You two have met?” Unsung asked.
“She helped me out on the road here,” Four confirmed. She smiled at me. “It’s nice to see you again, Chamomile!”
“I didn’t know these are the ponies you came to see,” I sighed. “If I did, it would have saved me a lot of effort…”
“It must be fate,” Four said.
“I agree,” Unsung said. “Two new recruits in such a short time, and Four even brought the means to finally bring our plans to fruition!”
“Is this the thing you were hauling?” I asked, motioning to the tarps.
“Is it okay if I show her?” Four asked. Unsung nodded, and Four grabbed the corner of the tarps with her magic and pulled them free. It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. It was a suit of armor, but the sheer size of it, the thickness of the armor plates, the squared-off shape, all of it made it look more like a tank or a slab of steel. It had to be twice my height, and radiated invincibility.
“Assault Armor,” Destiny said. “Not the same kind that Rain Shadow was using, but the same kind of idea. Packing as much into one unit as possible…”
“It’s called the Grandus Armor,” Four said. “It was designed to enhance a unicorn’s magic.”
“That explains the resonance!” Destiny agreed. “It must have some kind of thaumatic booster, right? This armor is powered by a thaumoframe system that uses thaumomagnetodynamics instead of induction motors for various effects--”
“Sorry, I’m not… I’m not really that technical,” Four blushed. “I didn’t build it. All I know is that it does work. Or it used to work. I was a test subject. It was… using it was difficult. I wouldn’t have done it at all but I didn’t have a choice.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling my stomach drop.
“I didn’t… I still don’t have any memories from before the tests. They said it was a necessary part of the procedure, but I don’t remember anything, and using the Grandus hurt my head so much and…” She sobbed briefly. I gave her a hug on instinct and she leaned into my chest. “There was an accident at the lab! Everything burned down and…” she sobbed again, and I stroked her mane.
“We promised her we’d do everything we could to get her memories back,” Unsung said. “We have some leads. The project was funded by the Enclave, and they love paperwork. If nothing else, we should be able to find something. Her name. Family. Enough that she can rebuild whatever life she had before.”
“I promise I’ll do whatever I can to help,” I promised Four.
“We’ll help you, too,” Unsung said. “Caps, ammunition for that fancy gun. Medical supplies. If you lend us a hoof with what we need, we’ll help you with what you need.”
“What I need is a way back upstairs,” I said. “It’s a long story, but I’m basically trying to keep my mom from eating the world.”
“I don’t have a way back up to the clouds for you right now,” Unsung admitted. “But with all the Enclave activity, there might be something that comes up. As long as you’re willing to help us with a few things, we’ll get along splendidly.”
I nodded.
“Good! Klein Bottle, you were going to arrange a salvage mission, yes?”
Klein Bottle nodded and switched her glasses, producing a notepad. “We need certain items to repair the Grandus Armor. Some of the components are burned out. If we’re going to use it, we need some pretty rare stuff. Opening was looking into checking a few things off my list.”
“A Stable was recently discovered outside the city,” Opening said. “The Enclave has only just started salvage operations there. The components we need should be in there. We were already planning an operation, and you’d be perfect for it.”
“Because you want me pulling my weight?” I guessed, looking over at Unsung.
Unsung smiled. “Something like that. Split Moon, you go with her.”
The silent pegasus nodded stoically.
“Do you know what we’re looking for?” I asked him. He shrugged and shook his head.
“I’ll give you a list,” Klein said. “We’ll need some enhanced targeting cards, a biometric scanner, a few different kinds of fuses--”
“Uh…” I hesitated.
“Don’t worry,” Destiny said. “I was a scientist when I was alive. Give me the list and I’ll make sure she doesn’t mess it up and get you a valve control actuator when you need a turbomolecular pump.”
The Stable popped up on DRACO’s map pretty quickly once we started heading north of Dark Harbor. According to Destiny, it was because Stable-tec systems were all deliberately designed to aggressively network together. In theory, it was for ease of use. In practice, it meant anypony with a PipBuck could have found even the best-hidden Stable just by coming within a mile of the entrance.
Stable 83 was definitely well-hidden. We found the Enclave outpost set up just outside an old mine entrance, with a bright white prefab module sitting among the ghost town of old mining shacks and storage buildings like an alien ship had landed.
I crept around the side of one of the weathered buildings and peeked at the mine. There were two guards outside, stationed around some shipping containers. They were alert and aware and there wasn’t much cover between us. They were also only lightly armed. They had uniforms, not power armor, and they only had standard-issue beam rifles. Even if I didn’t have my barding I could have taken a couple shots from one of them and been fine.
I started to step out, and Split Moon grabbed my shoulder and stopped me. I looked back and the silver-colored pegasus shook his head and pointed with his other hoof.
I followed his gesture and saw we were standing right below and to the right of a laser turret they’d set up on top of the old building. If I’d gone out there, it would have been shooting me right in the back. I nodded to Split Moon and he tilted his head, motioning for me to follow him.
He went around the other side of the building and tugged lightly at a bright red cable there. It led from the turret above us to the prefab the Enclave had plopped down. He pointed to the ground and indicated two more of them half-buried by dust and dirt. I followed them with my eyes to where more turrets were lying in wait.
Split Moon flicked his wing, and I saw the glint of steel on the leading edge. The cable next to him quietly fell to the ground, severed. He pulled two thin knives from his barding and tossed them with his mouth, hitting the other cables with incredible accuracy.
“Nice,” I whispered.
He smiled slightly and nodded, then motioned for me to go ahead.
I stepped out into the street. I wasn’t super jazzed about the idea of shooting a couple of soldiers who were just doing their jobs, but also I wanted to look cool in front of the pegasus who was about half knives by weight.
“Hey there, pardner,” I drawled. “This town ain’t big enough for the two of us.”
The two guards looked at each other in confusion.
“But… there’s more than two ponies here,” one of them said.
I launched a brick with the Junk Jet and he fell down in a heap.
“I’m not all that great with math,” I admitted. The other guard put his hooves in the air. A knife sunk into his eye socket, and he fell down on top of the one I’d bludgeoned. Split Moon walked past me and shook his head, smiling and chuckling silently.
“Chamomile,” Destiny said in a low voice so it wouldn’t carry. “He just killed a pony who was in the middle of surrendering.”
“I know,” I whispered. “But I mean…”
“Just be careful,” Destiny warned. “White Glint warned us that these Dashites were dangerous. What if they start killing civilians?”
“I’d stop them,” I retorted.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
The first thing I noticed when we went into the mine was the smoke. The air was foul with it, and there was soot on every exposed surface.
“What’s with this place?” I muttered. “How do you burn down a bunch of rocks?”
Split Moon tapped the tip of a wingblade against a metal sign on the wall. I wiped away some of the ashes and soot so I could read it more clearly.
“Remember to wear hard hats and safety laps at all times,” I read aloud. “Monoceros Coal cares about its employees.”
“It’s a coal mine!” Destiny said. “Or was. I know Stable-Tec was buying up every exhausted and unprofitable mine they could. It saved them millions in excavation. They must have left some of the old signage up.”
“I guess it makes sense,” I said, nodding in understanding. “If you’ve got to do a lot of digging, you want to start where ponies have already done most of the work for you. I didn’t think Equestria had any coal mines.”
“No good ones,” Destiny said. “Mostly just brown coal, Lignite. There was a little black coal here and there, but all the really high-quality fuel came from overseas. It put mines like this out of business. They probably stopped mining here before the war started and just never got it started again.”
“Huh,” I muttered. I followed the tracks down, casting a cone of red light ahead of us. Split Moon followed behind me, sticking to the shadows and probably happy for me to get shot if we ended up running into anypony.
Light flooded the tunnels ahead of us. A portable generator was sitting in the middle of the tunnel, powering sets of floodlights pointed at a massive steel door that had been partly rolled aside. The number ‘83’ was still visible through the grime covering the metal.
“Looks like we’re in the right place,” I said.
“It must have still been sealed when the Enclave found it,” Destiny noted. “So where is everypony?”
“You don’t think they would have done anything to the ponies living here, do you?” I asked, suddenly worried.
Split Moon tapped a hoof on the stone floor. When I looked at him, he nodded to the door and tilted his head.
“Only one way to find out,” I said, guessing at his intent. He nodded in agreement. I stepped around the Stable door. The rough stone of the mineshaft was replaced with smooth concrete. On this side, I could see the machinery that had driven the door, lying silent and rusting. Consoles and terminals were set against both walls to the side, and a pathway was set up to lead ponies through a series of arches.
I stopped inside the arches to look.
“Radiation detection and scrubbing,” Destiny said. “But most of the parts have been stripped out already.”
I looked around the room. “It’s not the only thing. The Enclave really worked this place over.” Every panel I could see had been pulled open, and loose wires and empty sockets showed where components had been removed. Even some of the buttons and screens had been taken.
Split Moon tapped my shoulder and pointed at the food. There was a clear trail through the soot leading deeper inside.
“There’s a lot of damage here,” Destiny noted. “This is from smoke. Inside the Stable.”
“A fire underground…” I mumbled. “That’s really bad.”
“Air quality is still okay. You should be fine.”
We walked into the main atrium. It was big, with a lower level below us and surrounded by rooms and corridors. Burned furniture was collapsed in heaps, and scorch marks marred the painted walls.
“Is that a barricade?” I asked, trotting up to a pile of broken boards and bedframes. “Somepony stacked a bunch of beds in this doorway…” I looked down the hallway it was guarding but couldn’t see anything.
“Movement!” Somepony yelled on the far side of the atrium. Floodlights snapped on and I was blinded by a dozen spotlights converging on me at once. “What the-- it’s not one of those monsters?”
“Identify yourself immediately!” a second voice screamed.
Split Moon flashed past me, flying right towards the light. He flicked his hoof, and I saw the blades spark against metal where they landed a moment before they exploded with light and sound. My visor blacked out, protecting my vision.
A beam hit my chest and I took to the air, more shots hitting me before I could make out where they were coming from. There were a dozen Enclave soldiers lined up on the opposite walkway, and Split Moon was working his way through them from one side. Most of them were rubbing their eyes, yelling wordlessly and firing blindly. I was just such a big target that even though they were just firing in my general direction, they’d scored a few hits.
I slammed into a knot of the reeling soldiers, tackling them into the ground and staying on top of them while I spun around and snapped my blade free, slicing through the neck of a fourth soldier.
Only one of them was in power armor, and she came at me hard, landing on my back and stabbing down with her bladed tail. She flailed wildly, screaming in rage. One of her furious strikes pierced the spot just behind my wing, sinking in deep. I yelped in pain and tried to throw her off, throwing myself backwards off the atrium balcony and down to the level below.
She tried to pull the bladed tail free, but it was jammed in place. I went backwards, landing on top of her. Not my smartest move. The blade just went in deeper, twisting. I hissed and tried to ignore the pain. She gasped and tried to breathe, but all that came out was a wet rasp. I tore myself free and got up, blood streaming down my side.
There was a big dent in her chest armor. Her ribs were crushed. She looked at me, terrified. She was dying, and she knew it.
I cut her throat and made it fast instead of slow.
Split Moon landed next to me and gave me a questioning look, nodding to my side.
“I’ll be okay,” I said. I could already feel the armor injecting me with healing potions. “Everything taken care of up there?”
He shook his head and motioned for me to follow. We flew back up to the top level and Split Moon led me over to one of the side doors, pointing inside.
A mare in a white coat was lying on the ground with a knife piercing her left cutie mark. She looked up at us in abject terror.
“P-please don’t kill me!” she gasped.
“I won’t,” I promised. “All we’re here for are some supplies. Mostly computer parts. If you point me towards the maneframe, we’ll leave you tied up here for somepony to find.”
“Leave me tied up?” she gasped. “That’s even worse! The monsters will eat me alive!”
“...Monsters?” I asked.
“From the lower levels,” the mare said. “They’re horrible, like ponies, but half-melted and on fire! Beam weapons didn’t work, so we built barricades to secure this area and started work on a weapon that would work on them.” She looked to the side.
“This thing?” I picked up the bodged-together weapon. It looked like it was built on a heavy beam weapon’s frame, and fitted with insulated tanks and foil-covered pipes with thick padding around the grips.
“We call it a Cryolator. It sprays liquid nitrogen. W-we were going to use it to try and slow the monsters down, b-but… and now they’re all… they’re all…” she started hyperventilating.
Split Moon stepped up to her and smacked her. She fell over unconscious.
“Hey!” I yelled. He stopped and held up a hoof, motioning to her. She was still breathing and wasn’t bleeding. He’d only knocked her out. “...You used the back of the blade?”
He nodded.
“Well… okay, then.” I sighed. “What do you think, Destiny?”
“It’s nonstandard equipment,” Destiny said. “We can mount it to the Exodus armor’s integral hardpoints, but I can’t promise much accuracy.”
“We’ll give it a shot,” I said. It only took a minute to switch the Junk Jet out for the Cryolator, and the Junk Jet easily fit into the armor’s vector trap. Once it was mounted, I gave it a test, pulling the trigger for a second. There was an almost-silent hiss of compressed air and a jet of liquid erupted from the nozzle, droplets turning into ice-cold fog instantly on touching air and the main body of it hitting the wall and leaving a crackling wake of frost and cold before it evaporated.
“Looks like it works,” Destiny said. “At full stream it’s going to burn through N2 tanks pretty quickly. Be conservative with it.”
“Got it,” I agreed.
Split Moon tapped my shoulder and pointed to the other side of the workbench. A blinking terminal was set up there, a power cable leading to the same spark battery bank as the floodlights they’d blinded me with.
“Think you can pull a map out of this?” I asked.
“Maybe. This looks like the terminal from the Overmare’s office. They must have brought it in here to crack the encryption.” Destiny’s magic flew over the keys, typing in commands. “I can’t believe how lax Stable-Tec’s security settings are. Just barely enough to keep out a curious foal, but even if you get it wrong, all it does is reboot the terminal and kick you out of debug mode. It might as well just have a ten second timer between tries, it’d be the same effect.”
While she talked, she blasted through security screens and cracked at least two passwords while I was watching. At one point the terminal was just showing a weird maze of boxes and corridors made out of text symbols and she maneuvered a symbol around moving letters.
“One of these days you need to teach me how to do this,” I said.
“Oh sure!” Destiny agreed happily. “I didn’t know you were interested in learning! When we’re not pressed for time I’ll find a terminal and walk you through the basics! It’s actually pretty fun when you know what you’re doing!”
The terminal beeped, and the welcome screen appeared along with a list of files and folders.
“Aaaaand we’re in,” Destiny said. “There’s no map, but it looks like there are some logs from the Overmare about what was going on here.”
“Alright,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s see how much trouble we’ve got waiting for us.”