//------------------------------// // Chapter 9: The Truth // Story: Fallout: Equestria. We're no Heroes // by otherunicorn //------------------------------// Chapter 9: The Truth "What does this button do?" The truth can be greeted in so many different ways. Take for example the poor, battered, crippled ponies of Stable Four. How would they take finding out their existence was just part of a government social experiment, that their years, no, generations of hardship were all in the name of data collection, that they as ponies were insignificant, and some pony, long dead, or long ghoulified, had signed them to a living hell with a few strokes of a pen? They could throw up their hooves in despair, claim life was so unfair to them, and embark on an epic, self pity party. It was possible they would be so depressed by the whole pointlessness of it all that they would take their own lives. But that wasn't the truth here. The truth was that this stable had produced a group of mares who simply did not give up, no matter what battered them, what crippled them, what mocked them. If anything, the harder they were hit, the harder they fought to survive. The revelation that the robot attacks against them were deliberately planned by other ponies seemed to free them, to enlighten them. It also galvanized them into action. Defense was a word of the past. They, no, we were going to take back this stable. We were going to open it, and we were going to leave. And by "we", I meant all fifty eight of us. The first thing we did was to open the door that the stable had closed and locked on us. It was a little harder this time because the power source had been disconnected elsewhere. Using my magic, the power cable was extracted from the conduits in the walls, and rerouted to our headquarters, putting it under our control. With an armed team ready, we opened the door as soon as we could. We waited for any response, but there was none, so we went through the door to see what the big explosion had done. The first discovery was that it was dark, apart from the light coming through the doorway behind us. We activated our Pipgirls and Saffron's head lamp, and a couple of the stable mares lit their horns. In the resulting confusion of shadow and light, we were able to see the results of the blast. The door opposite the one through which we had come, the one against which the exploding robots had been piled, was bowed outwards, jamming it in place. Hopefully that wasn't the only way through to that part of the stable. Like the walls, ceiling and floor, the surface of this door was charred, any paint that had survived this long being completely burnt away. The doors to the left and right were both closed, their smoke stained surfaces indicating both would have been open at the time of the blast, as some of their paint had survived. As for the robots that had been in here at the time of the explosion, there was not a great deal more than twisted metal, unidentifiable pieces, and charred circuitry. The sentry we had heard had been hammered into the wall hard enough to disable it. Surprisingly it had not been salvaged by the robots themselves. We were not going to make the same mistake, so after I probed its insides to make sure it really was dead, and not just pretending, we dragged it, along with any usable scrap, back into our "headquarters", as the stable mares referred to it. With Saffron and Lee standing guard, I then used my magic to disconnect the controls from the three other doors in the charred room (yes, even the jammed one), and routed the wiring back to our corridor. Now we had a buffer zone. The Stable Four ponies had made their first advance in a long time! Just outside the corridor was now where the mares set up their barricade, and posted their lookouts. Should any robot activity be detected, they would retreat, giving the more heavily armed ponies the chance take up positions in the corridor before the robots could make their way down it. One of the mares was now armed with Lee's combat shotgun, loaded with solid slugs. That, we hoped, would be able to deal with any floaters without us needing to resort to the weapons supposedly destroyed in the explosion, thus allowing the stable computer to still consider the situation more or less balanced. But then again, the shotgun alone might trigger another major attack. It was something we had to risk, because I was not prepared to sacrifice a single mare to the bloody robots. The next major problems were weaponry and mobility. Effective weapons were in short supply, as were mobile fighters. Those who were in control of all of their own legs could be counted on the fingers of Lee's "hands", excluding ourselves, and eight of them were really too young to fight. One of them had managed to get herself near-fatally wounded in the explosions before we arrived, by following her older sister, Ruby into battle. Ruby herself was one of the two older ponies still capable of full mobility. She hadn't reached marehood yet, but she wasn't far off. The other fully mobile pony was Gadget, and she had avoided injury mostly by avoiding fighting. She was currently the only mare with the skill to produce their powered cladding. Not only did she have the assembly skills, she also had several spells that allowed her to interface the cladding to the ponies' brains. I must admit I wasn't overly impressed with her mechanical skills though. These exoskeletons were poorly designed junk. I had not ascertained if that was because she simply couldn't do any better, or she couldn't do any better with what she had. If we were going to travel on the surface, the stiff legged shuffle of the crippled was simply not good enough. I had an idea. I was going to see how good her spells were. "Gadget, a favor, if I may," I said as I limped up to her, making no effort to compensate for my rigid artificial foreleg. The sea green pony raised an eyebrow. "What can I do for you, Sir?" she asked, flicking her brown mop of a mane from her jade eyes. "For a start, you can call me Anne!" I replied. "As is fairly obvious, I have no control over my mechanical foreleg, and I damn well should have. There is a fault somewhere in the connection between my brain and wiring that connects to the lower part of my leg. Of course, it doesn't help that the lower leg is missing, but I think you get my point." "And you want me to see if I can either repair the damaged connection, or at the least, use my magic to bypass it?" she asked. "Yup, that's pretty much spot on," I agreed. Okay, she was quick on the uptake. "Hop up on the bench," she instructed pointing to a low and uncluttered bench to one side of her. I did so. Once I had settled on it, failed leg uppermost, Gadget bent forward, her horn lighting. That gave me a reasonable view of her cutie mark - a sparkly gear - magic and mechanics. That made sense. After running her horn up and down my leg and neck, Gadget stopped. "Your leg is well shielded in there, love. Can you pop the prosthetic off for me please." She had a point. It was magically infused power armor after all. I removed it as requested, and she returned to scanning my leg with her horn. "You have a spell on this already, connecting the prosthetic to the wiring in your leg," she observed. "I put that there, but as I said, it doesn't help because there is some sort of wiring fault higher up the leg," I explained. "There is no wiring fault," Gadget responded. "The control spells in your internal interface have locked off the joint because the feedback system has been severed. The joint is missing, so it locked out everything that would activate the actuators to prevent further damage. I'll weave a new spell that connects the prosthetic directly to your brain, but I need you to remove your spell first." Okay, that sounded like a valid analysis. I removed the spell from the power armor leg, as she requested, also returning the hoof sole shape to flat, instead of curved. She had me put the armor back on. Again her horn lit, as she bent forward, passing it from the armor, up my body, neck and to my head, then back down the same route to the armor again. "Try now," she instructed. I did, and the mechanical hoof moved. Well, I'll be! "Wow," I said, as I climbed off Gadget's bench. After pacing around for a minute, I thanked her. There was absolutely no doubt about her magic skills. She could interface the brain to the mechanical with no problems at all. "What happens if I take the leg off again?" I asked. "You and it are bonded now. It does not matter if you leave it off, or travel far from it, you will remain bonded. It will however only respond to your will when you are wearing it. If either you or it are destroyed, the bond is lost," she assured me. "Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that!" I exclaimed. "I have a cutie mark to live up to." I didn't tell Gadget that it wasn't my cutie mark to which I was referring. Okay, the next problem was improving these junk exoskeletons. "Can you make the cladding any better?" I asked. "We will have a long way to travel, and frankly, these things are simply not good enough." Gadget tilted her head and looked at me through half closed eyes, with one of those "tell me something I don't know" expressions. "Get me something better than two hundred year old upholstery fabric and old stable barding from which to make the suits, and something better than blown up robots, coffee machines and bed frames to make the mechanical parts from, and I will see what I can do. A team of capable ponies to build the things would be mighty handy too." "Fair enough, but we will have to do better with what we have until we can get those supplies," I stated. I stared at the piles of parts arranged around us. It may be possible to float some of the ponies using the levitation units from the floaty robots, if there were any left functional after Lee was done making her gauss rifles. She was building at least one more with the parts salvaged after our recent victory, going by the clutter on the bench she was working at. We also had a few of the spherical wheels used on the sentry bots. They could be used to assemble some sort of carts to carry around the immobile. Hmm. Maybe wheels could be added to the semi-mobile as well. The wheels contained a spark driven motor within, so they could be power assisted. Add a control spell between them and the pony's brain, courtesy of Gadget, and we'd have a pony capable of moving around on the surface with little trouble. Those sentry robots had proven themselves quite capable of traversing the wasteland terrain. Idea! "How's Lana's cladding progressing," I asked Gadget. "It isn't yet. I still have two others to finish first. These things take time you know." "Can I build something?" I requested. "I don't know. Can a warrior build things?" Gadget replied. "Oh, okay. Just don't use anything of that shelf, that shelf there, or off my bench." "Thank you. I'll be back in a moment." With that said, I trotted over to Lana, and whispered my idea to her. She nodded her enthusiasm, so levitating her rear end, I helped her to walk over to the bench on which I had been lying before. Measurements were taken and parts gathered. Using my reformation magic, I took pieces of metal from one of the destroyed sentry bots and carefully sculpted them around the barrel of Lana's body, and under her chest, making it so the top could be opened to allow the Lana to remove it when she wished. More metal was welded to the lower portions, and crafted into a seat of sorts, on which her paralyzed legs could be rested. Even if she couldn't move them, she could still feel them a little. Some more metal was formed into a pair of outriggers, one on each side of her, and under each I mounted one of the spherical wheels. Below her seat I fitted the spark battery that had been designated for her cladding. A little more work saw them wired up to a control matrix that I would get Gadget to connect to Lana's brain. A pair of flip-out props would allow the two wheeled creation to remain stable when Lana wanted to use her hooves for something other than walking. A few hard points allowed for the future mounting of weapons or whatever. It took me a couple of hours to get it all together, and I got a few amazed looks from both Lee, who was still working on her second gauss gun, this one fitted out with standard pony grips, and Gadget, who was boggled to see a pony she thought to be a warrior sculpting metal with comparative ease. "What a waste of skill," Gadget finally managed. "Huh?" "You shouldn't be a warrior with skills like that! You could be an artist, a technician, a...." I laughed. "I may be a trained warrior, but did you not notice my cutie mark?" "It's under your barding," she responded dryly. Clearly she hadn't been paying much attention to me when I was lying around undressed! She mustn't have been watching when I made the nice clean mattresses either. I tugged my barding up, showing off the crossed spanner (wrench) and screwdriver. "I'm a repair pony!" I declared. "I've been crafting and repairing things since I was a filly-foal." "That would explain it," Gadget admitted. "I shouldn't be surprised though, as you came to the stable with this one. She pointed her hoof at Lee, still busily working on her rifle. "Now, would I be able to get you to connect this control matrix to dear Lana's noggin?" I asked. Lana nodded enthusiastically. Lana had spent the last hour or so racing up and down the long corridor between the headquarters and the new barricade. Though the wheels on her new wheelchair, if I could call it that, made her about three ponies wide, she was still quite nimble. She had to be a lot more careful around the mattresses and narrow gaps of the living area though. Lana even discovered with a little bouncy footwork, she could exceed the top speed of most earth bound ponies. The design was a total success. In fact, it was so successful, Gadget took the cladding she was working on and threw it onto one of the parts shelves, and busied herself freeing more wheels from the destroyed sentries. She was a little annoyed that none of the unicorns, herself included, were able to learn my reformation magic. I wasn't really surprised, though, as it was one aspect of my special ability. I was requested to assist in forming more wheelchairs, once she had gathered the required parts and done what assembly she could. Her apprentice filly joined her in that task. I pondered the design of Lana's wheelchair for a while. Its major downfall was the lack of suitable wheels to mass produce them for all of the crippled the mares. Either we had to work out how to make wheels, or we had improve the pony to wheel ratio. Perhaps we could fashion some carts in which we could carry several ponies, and rig the remains of the sentry bots to pull them. Maybe Lana, and similarly equipped mares could pull them. The wheelchair was power assisted after all. Perhaps it was a problem we needed to solve once we were on the surface again. There were plenty of old carts, particularly of the pegasus variety, littering the wastelands after all, so perhaps we could salvage some of them. It would mean splitting the team up while some went to find suitable carts. And thinking of pegasi, not that I expected she would ever be able to fly, I did wonder if Demi had any pegasus magic, and could manipulate clouds, or if she really was just an earth pony with a wing. "Robots!" I heard a yell come down the corridor. Oh of course. It had been two days. It was inevitable. Lana appeared at the doorway, her eyes seeking me out. "Robots are trying to open one of the doors into the room," she said. "The others are still on guard. What should we do?" I thought about it for a moment. "Ambush the bastards," I responded. It wasn't how we had planned to deal with them, but I realized no matter what we did, our strategy had changed, and there was no way to hide that. From now on, victory was the only acceptable outcome. "We all gather down there around the doorway with our weapons, then we let them in. As long as we still have control of the door, we can limit how many get in at once, and we beat the shit out of them. With any luck, we won't need to use the guns, but we can if it gets out of hand. Everybody! Grab your weapons and let's go! Lee, bring your gauss rifle, just in case. Saffron..." "My hooves are at your service," he replied, trotting towards the doorway. "Anne, grab this," Lee instructed, holding up the second gauss rifle. "It should be up to the task." I levitated it over to me, using a binding spell to attach it to my battle saddle. If it failed, I still had the other guns on my battle saddle. Lee grabbed her own gauss rifle and followed. It was with enthusiasm the mass of ponies headed down the corridor. The more mobile such as Ruby and Lana were already at the other end, helping to open the barricade. By the time the shuffling mass had made it down the corridor, a good two or three minutes at least must have passed. The room at the end was still dark, and it echoed with clangs and bangs as the robots hammered at the other side of the door to our left. A glance at my E.F.S. indicated a concentration of red behind that door, too close together to count numbers. The ponies armed with melee weapons formed two groups, one on each side of the door way. The mare with the shotgun and Lee stood in line with the doorway, giving them a clear shot between the groups, though they would only open fire if things got out of hand. They would have to be very careful not to hit any of the other mares. Saffron positioned himself near the door, as part of one of the groups, rearing in readiness. Two unicorns hung back, ready to reach into any damaged robots with their magic and disconnect their spark batteries. I remained just inside the corridor, with a few of the slower mares, where we would form the last line of defense. I had another reason for being here too - I had mounted the door switches here. "I'll try to let them in one or two at a time. Everypony, get ready!" I called. I saw them tense themselves. I hit the switch, and the door shot into the ceiling. Light spilled into the mostly dark room, and I saw the shapes of a couple of floaters moving forwards. I hit the switch again, and the door slammed shut, apparently hitting one of the robots if the resounding clang was anything to go by. What followed was a few seconds of cacophony as Saffron and the mares literally smashed the robots apart. The two mangled machines bounced over towards me as the unicorns did their work. I flung them down our corridor for the salvagers to grab. "Let a couple more in!" someone called, so I hit the switch, again closing it after a couple more robots burst into the room. Pretty much the same happened again, and two more robot corpses were send down the corridor as salvage. I wondered how many robots we could get this way. I expected it would not be many. The computer directing them would be well aware that any that passed through the door lasted mere moments. "Let a couple more in!" came the call again. "On your guard. I doubt the trick will work again!" I warned, and hit the switch. The door shot up again, and several robots burst through at once. I quickly hit the switch again, but the door stayed put. Had they cut the power feed elsewhere? Bugger it! I jammed my horn to the switch box and projected my magic into the wiring. Nothing. No power at all. I had to hurry. Not only was there the chance that the mares could be overwhelmed, I was also totally vulnerable while I was doing this. Using my magic, I felt along the wiring, passing along the new routing I had put in without finding anything. Reaching the door mechanism, I found that too was totally dead, so I followed the main feed deep into the stable... ah there it is. The main breaker for the doors on this floor had been opened, presumably under computer control, after I opened the door. Using my magic I reached out, across the breaker finding the other the wires connected to it, and pulled them together, fusing them, effectively removing the breaker from the circuit. Immediately I felt the door mechanism activate. I dropped the spell as the door slammed shut, returning my attention to the immediate. There was a lot of yelling going on, but none of it sounded like yells of distress or pain. Five more smashed floaters were propelled from the shadowy crowd of ponies, landing near me. "Is everypony all right?" I asked. The response was a chorus of cheers. Well, good. "The robots won't fall for that again." I warned. "It is time for a change of strategy," Saffron responded. "We attack, right now. The way I see it, either they are bringing up something heavier and it needs to be dealt with immediately, or they are at a severe disadvantage, and if we push we can end this." "Any objections, girls?" I asked, directing my question to all mares present. More cheering. "We have a notable hole in our strategy," Helvetica stated, when the noise subsided. "Headquarters has no heavy weapons, and if we allow ourselves to be drawn away, we are leaving our young in danger. There is still the supply corridor to be guarded, and this whole thing could be a diversion while they attack via that route." I thought back to the way we had come in, and the locked door into the robotics lab. Helvetica had a very good point. "You are right," I agreed. "Allow me," Lee offered. "I believe a single gauss rifle should provide adequate fire power if I sit myself in the corridor just outside the barricade. That way I can shoot them so they explode while they are still at the other end." She turned, and walked back down our corridor towards Headquarters. Seeing her walking around upright was still bizarre, but it did give her a great height advantage. A couple of the slower moving mares followed her out. "Be careful not to try returning via the service corridor!" Lee called back. "I'll be shooting first, identifying second!" "Noted! Okay, girls. Let's do this!" I said. So we advanced, and we attacked. We found three more sentry bots, and I guess they did count as something heavier as per Saffron's warning, but even these didn't have a chance now that we had momentum and technique. Between me and Ruby firing solid slugs from the two combat shotguns, my new gauss rifle, and Saffron's rain of death in convenient five millimeter diameter packages, the robots quickly fell. Once we had passed the sentries, the floaters were embarrassingly easy to deal with. We'd fire one or two bullets at them. If that didn't knock them down, the following onslaught of thrown junk usually finished the job. Once they fell they were practically torn apart. It was almost like a production line. We shoot the bots. They fall, and are drawn back into the mass of ponies. Somepony would crack the casing. Another would disconnect the spark battery. The ammunition for the stunners was salvaged, and stuffed into my battle saddle for me to use with the gauss gun. Other bits and pieces were ripped off to improve the mares own selection of throwable items. The rest was ejected out of the back of the pack for later salvage. We'd move forward and reclaim the last pile of thrown junk. After a while, we stopped encountering robots at all. My E.F.S. was only indicating friendlies, but I was not prepared to totally trust it. There was a lot of metal and rock in a stable: materials that could easily shield enemies from detection. It was time for us to go hunting, so we split the group into three teams, one heavy hitter in each. I noticed Lana extract herself from the mares around her and deliberately follow after Saffron. Hmm. I wondered if she had worked out he was still whole under that armor. What would he think of being pursued by a crippled mare? He knew they wanted a new stallion, and had so far remained silent on the subject. He could easily have every viable mare in this stable if he wanted them, and I don't mean any viable mare, I mean every viable mare. Was he simply not interested in disabled mares? Was there someone else he liked? If there was, he hadn't mentioned them before, or tried to contact them when he decided to go with us. Oh, unless it was one of us, though I doubted that - a nut case, a celibate and a filly - what a choice! Of course, Lana could simply be following the largest artillery we had. Again we advanced, all teams remaining relatively close, each guarding alternative routes, or following them as the stable layout required. I was amazed at just how well these ponies worked together. They were so in tune with each other, they could communicate concepts with a few words. In the team with Ruby, if one pony was in a better location to take a shot, the shotgun would be passed across as needed, without a word being spoken. The other teams had to make do with getting we outsiders to follow their suggestions when needed. I did notice that not one pony tried to take command though. They would follow a leader through some inherited understanding of the concept, but the robots had killed any inclination for them to become leaders themselves. They would need a leader on the surface, and that leader would shape their lives. Eventually we came to our target, the Department of Robotics, as the sign over the door indicated. And of course it was locked, and powered down. That left it to me to try to open it. It wasn't the easiest door to bypass. In fact, I was sure I would remember this door for many years. A seven minute game of tag between my magic, and what I imagined to be a team of robots, ensued as we fought for control over the wiring to the door. Every time I found a successful route, a breaker would drop out, or something would physically cut the wires. I'd repair the wires or short out the breaker only to have the wires cut again, or to have a length of the wiring loom pulled from the wall entirely. It was abundantly clear that the computer guiding the robots didn't want us in there. Eventually I beat them by abandoning the wires, and directly forcing the locking bar with my magic, Saffron using brute force to slam the door into the ceiling. We were greeted with... very little at all... just the background noises associated with a stable. Suspecting a trap, the first team entered, securing themselves a defendable location. The second did likewise, securing a location a little further in. The remaining team then went exploring while remaining within sight of the two anchored teams. We still found nothing... well, we found no active robots. There was plenty of equipment and machinery in here. We took the opportunity to disable everything we found, in the least destructive manner possible. Some of this stuff could be converted into better exoskeletons. Some of it we may need just to escape from this place. I'd hate to discover the one thing we needed to open the stable door had been carelessly destroyed by us! Further scouting around even located the other side of the door we had discovered when we had first entered the stable by the supply shaft. I tested the door, and found it unlocked. Okay, that was different. We hadn't been able to budge it from the other side. Maybe Lee had the right idea! I quietly opened it, listening for any clues, checking my E.F.S. for any sign of robots hiding nearby in the darkness. I didn't have to wait long. I heard the distant thud of Lee's gauss rifle followed by an explosion. "Lee's under attack!" I announced. "Saffron, with me. It's dark out here. Girls, hold here. Protect our rear!" I commanded. The mares made way for Saffron to pass, then moved to form defensive positions around the Lab. Saffron, his headlight now on, and me with my Pipgirl glowing, moved as quickly and quietly as we could towards the sounds of battle. Saffron wasn't the quietest, but I wasn't overly concerned because our lights would give us away long before the sounds. As it turned out, we reached the poorly lit corridors Helvetica had first led us through long before we found any robots, and when we did find them, all floaters, they were heading in our direction, weapons facing the other direction, in full retreat from Lee. We finished them off with comparative ease. I walked towards the doorway through which the robots had come, and listened. Silence. "Hey Lee!" I yelled. "Don't come through here guns blazing! We got the bastards!" A muffled "Okay!" came as the reply. Good, she was still all right, not that I expected otherwise. I lowered the gauss rifle and turned my attention to the fallen robots around us. "I'm getting a little low on five millimeter rounds," Saffron announced. "I'm down to a little over a thousand of them." "Ah, the disadvantages of bulk delivery systems," I responded, putting my horn to the first of the fallen bots, using my magic to disconnect its battery. "I have the feeling that the stable is getting low on robots." "On this level, yes, but what about the others?" Saffron asked. "According to Lana there are meant to be ten levels to this place, and we are on the eighth level down." Oh, so they had been talking. I hadn't noticed that. When the batteries had been disconnected from all of the robots we returned to the Department of Robotics. Some of the mares were still standing guard, but others had dispersed somewhat around the room, salvaging what they could easily take. There were a number of doors around the maintenance bay, but most only opened into storage rooms. Not much of real value could be found in them, the spare parts having long since been consumed. I guess these mares were so used to shortage that they were not going to miss any opportunity to salvage things. "I think I've found something significant!" Lana's voice called out, from where she was salvaging. I went to investigate. "What have you found, Lana?" I asked. "I've found something the robots were trying to hide. A door." She pointed a hoof at a narrow gap only she could see from where she was standing. How she was able to recognize what she saw as a door, I didn't know. But there was a door there, hidden behind the large pile of assorted garbage. The garbage heap simply didn't look right. It had a fresh look to it, as if the robots had only piled the junk there over the last few days, if not the last few hours. The two mattresses standing on end against the wall had no place being here. Bastards! These mattresses were in great condition! An enthusiastic effort by the mares, assisted by my telekinesis, soon cleared the obstructions, giving us a clear view of the door Lana had found, and the sign above it. It read "Stairs to Level 9. Maneframe." Bingo. Footnote: Maximum Level. Perk: Meh, you got your leg working again. I don't think you need a perk this time.