“I can’t believe we had to… you know… kill one of our own,” Marcus quavered, looking more inward at last night’s traumatic memory than outward at the road he and Brutus were supposed to be watching.
Vulpes Inculta had been livid. Just getting through the Profligate ambush in the gorge had been bad enough, the enraged Vexillarius urging the men to a full-frontal assault. Then, when they’d returned to the camp, the punishments for what had happened in Nipton had begun immediately.
“’One in ten must die,’” Brutus recited, “’this is the price of failure.’ Fuck Marcus, this is how we do things. Be grateful the Vexillarius let him die fighting! I’ve seen a man selected to die, and he was just strung up and used for spear practice.”
Marcus gagged.
“Oh, stop being a baby. We’re supposed to watch the road, and I think there’re a lot of people coming. See the dust? Could be a pack train.”
“It is a pack train,” Marcus agreed, squinting at the line of horses and people. “Wait – I think I see those small ones from Nipton!”
“I think you’re right,” Brutus agreed, “We need to tell the camp. This will please the Vexillarius.” And hopefully get us a reward, he added silently.
“Get to cover,” Marcus added, “I count seven… no, eight… people. They’ll be on edge after seeing Nipton, so we wait until they pass, then go for an ambush. There’ll be those Profligate bandits in front, then us in the back.”
Brutus couldn’t see any fault in that plan. After all, it had the double win of taking on a distracted foe, and it kept them away from the Vexillarius a little longer. So they hunkered down behind the billboard among the scrubby bushes about its base, keeping concealed as the pack train and the ponies walked by.
“Found you!” The voice was like an air horn, startling the two Legionnaires out of their wits. They jumped with surprise, spinning around with machetes in hand to confront the smiling –
It was her. The pink one. With the cannon.
“So are you guys playing hide and seek or is this some super special Legion thing you’re doing oh hi guys! This is Mister Aaahhh and that’s Mister Yaahhh so I think they might be brothers and they’re from the Legion…” Pinkie babbled happily, ignoring the chorus of released safeties from the assembled mercs and Joe.
“So…” another pony approached them almost diffidently. This one had a pink mane as well, but her coat was yellowish and she had wings too. “Um… what were you going to do?” She blinked huge, almost bottomless eyes inquisitively.
Marcus tried to formulate a reply, and then Brutus beat him to it. “We would inform the Vexillarius and attack,” he said with great straightforwardness and very little intelligence.
“Why?” Something about the question made Marcus’ heart leap into his throat. Maybe it was the hardening of her eyes, or the slight edge in her voice. Brutus, naturally, didn’t notice.
“Because we are the Legion, and you are the Dissolute, who will either serve Caesar or die.”
Before anyone could fire, Fluttershy responded. “Well shame on you!” she declared harshly. It wasn’t quite a shout, not that the two Legionnaires cared. Their worlds had shrunk to two huge and bottomless pits of outrage from which a swelling voice rose in condemnation. “So you’d attack and enslave pon– others who’ve done nothing to you to deserve it? You think you’re better than anyp– anyone else because you attack others for no reason?”
Marcus was overwhelmed with self-loathing.
Brutus, if we can be candid, lacked the capacity for that sort of thing.
“Yes!” He declared, secure in righteousness and deficient in introspection, “We are Legion! We are the stronger, and you are weak! We –”
– weren’t bulletproof, obviously.
“Let’s move! Now!” Joe snapped, then knelt down and shook Fluttershy. “Snap out of it girl! Those lunks would’ve run off and finked if we left ‘em here!” He shook her again, making her blink. “Now listen to me. An’ that goes for all of you ponies.” His voice was hard.
“If I tell you to ‘Run Home Slow’,” he enunciated the phrase carefully, “You book it for Novac. Just follow the road past the station, through a gulch, an’ look for that big Dinky. ‘Cause those fuckers know someone’s here an’ they’ll come callin’. An’ they won’t want any chocolate.”
The ponies just stared at him. He stared back. Given that it was likely that he might not survive the ensuing fight, he had to make sure they were safe.
“You get me?”
Twilight spoke numbly. “Yeah, we understand.”
“Good. Now let’s move!”
Twilight and her friends hurried away, Fluttershy casting one last teary glance at the two corpses left behind.
Two hours later, the road stopped rising. Before them, the road became accompanied by another railway track, closing on a gulch. What made Joe sigh with relief was the radio tower rising above a wall of wrecked mobile homes and cars. “Station Charlie,” he commented, “All downhill from here.”
Three hours later everything went to Tartarus.
Nopony had ever seen anything as disgusting as a mole rat before, and while Fluttershy was successfully staring them away, a trio of Vipers started sniping at the caravan from a convenient billboard. That drew the mercs and Joe out of position.
It was Rainbow Dash that felt her mane prickling. Taking wing, she saw the standards coming up behind. “LEGION! THEY’RE COMING!” she screamed, “AND TRYING TO CUT US OFF!” she added, spying figures in red scuttling around the rocks.
Twilight levitated a pistol out of her saddlebag. Like three days ago, it felt strange, no, wrong. She wasn’t a killer. But now she had to. Concentrating, she focussed part of her telekinesis on that one fateful lever.
She hadn’t expected any recoil. Startled, she lost her grip on it, and the pistol went spinning away.
“Dash!” Joe shouted faintly, muffled by distance, squealing horses and gunfire, “Get to th’ station! Get help!”
Rainbow Dash hovered in midair, unable to make out what Joe had said.
Rarity, meanwhile, had better control over her own pistol, only in that she was able to keep hold of it. Most of her shots missed their targets, not that the Legionnaires cared. The Vexillarius had made it clear he didn't care if the ponies lived or died.
That one was behaving in a Profligate manner also inclined them to killing first.
The first volley of spears landed on the rearmost horses and guards. Screaming in pain, the animals stampeded northwards – through anyone and anypony who didn't get out of the way fast enough. And the Legionnaires continued their march.
Twilight was seeing double – she vaguely remembered a horse screaming, then something slamming into her. And somepony was shouting. Then something pink was shaking her.
“Twibilibight gibet ibup! Jiboibe jibust yibellibed ribun hibomibe slibow ibactibuibally hibe yibellibed ibit thribeibe tibimibes sibo wibe'ribe iball...”
Vaguely the unicorn recognised Pinkie – a distraught one. They had to get out of here, she thought to herself, but her legs kept being in two places at once.
Pinkie shook her friend, looked at her unfocussed eyes, then made a decision. With an effort, she grabbed Twilight's forehooves and slung the concussed unicorn onto her back. Ignoring the sensation of vomit splashing down her side, she turned north and began to run, following her friends. Fluttershy was already in the lead, trying to chase the pack-horses. Applejack and Rarity were not far behind. That left her and Twilight... and any of those Legion.
She tried not to imagine her friends hanging limply, hindlegs shattered.
She almost succeeded. She imagined herself instead.
That probably helped give her an extra burst of speed.
“What the hell's going on out there?” the lookout wondered, watching the dust begin to rise. From what he'd seen, a caravan had come up over the brow of the hill, then gunshots had been exchanged with... oh, probably those Viper assholes... at the billboard. Now...
He could see horses now. Pack horses and one or two brahmin. Shit, it was a stampede! He rose from his chair, wishing not for the first time he hadn't broken those binoculars. The dust made it hard to see what'd attacked the caravan...
“Oh, shit,” he muttered. Even through the dust kicked up by the terrified animals, he could spot the distinctive outlines of Legion troops.
A lot of Legion troops.
He scrambled down to ground level as quick as he could. Officer Stepinac would need to know about this!
Fluttershy was pulling a Scootaloo, using her wings to assist her hooves as she pursued the lead horse. Those awful Legion people had attacked the poor horses deliberately! And now they were just running blindly into who knew what. There could be more bandits, or those deathclaws. She had to stop them, but they just wouldn’t stop running!
There was a rope hanging from the lead horse’s bridle, and Fluttershy was chasing that. However, she needed to use her wings to keep up, and if she got close enough to bite on to the rope, she risked a hoof crushing her wing. Truth be told, Fluttershy was starting to get frustrated.
“Will you please stop RUNNING!” Check that; she already was.
The lead horse was so startled at the yell that he ended up skidding on his rump a good ten feet, partly due to the horse behind ploughing into him. When the dust settled, he turned his head to goggle at the tiny pink mare who was currently glaring at him.
“We need to go to Novac,” the mare informed him sternly, shuffling her wings stiffly, “which I don’t think is this way.”
The pack horse winced.
“Now, if you don’t mind, shall we all go to Novac without stampeding?”
The pack horses all looked at each other. Despite not being able to speak, it was clear to Fluttershy from their perked ears and nickers that the idea of changing course and heading to Novac, which no doubt would have something to eat and someone to soothe their wounds, not to mention a good rub-down, was seen as a most appealing notion.
“Well, if that’s decided, um…” the pegasus looked around, “You lead the way… if that’s all right with you.”
They made quite the peculiar herd, coming into Novac. The old Red Rocket fuel station had been converted into stables, if you didn’t mind the sounds coming from what used to be the store, which was now being used as a tool shed. While Fluttershy and the horses approached from the east, others were approaching from the west.
Rarity was an absolute fright. Never had she run so hard or so fast in her life; her mind’s eye showed, over and over, a spear quivering in the ground, right next to her shoulder.
Pinkie was starting to tremble with fatigue, and not just because she was carrying a concussed and puking Twilight. While she was normally an energetic mare, that was mostly due to the Brobdingnagian amounts of sugar she consumed – and sugar was currently not readily available.
Applejack trailed, hat held in a death bite in her mouth. In the panicked race to Novac, she’d nearly lost it. When she turned to pick it up, there was one of those Legion people, spear raised. If it wasn’t for having hindlegs of almost solid muscle from years of bucking apple trees, she’d have been done for.
That night, she’d remember the cracking sound as both his shins shattered under her hooves. That and the smell as she lost control of herself in fear.
People started drifting towards the approaching horses and ponies in confusion. From inside the mouth of a statue, which reminded the ponies a bit of Spike, a figure craned out, also watching in confusion.
“What th’ hell?” Rarity blinked at the speaker, which she guessed from the voice and – well, human teats must be that high up and that big for a reason – was a mare. “What happened? Where’d you come from?”
It took Rarity a good minute to focus her thoughts enough to answer.
About half an hour and one ham transmission later, a middle-aged, rather round man frowned at the notes he’d taken off the ham set. Straightening his legs, he propelled himself with a squeak of ancient castors over to the microphone. Then he did something that he very rarely did. He stopped the music dead.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mister New Vegas, with a newsflash from Novac. I have just received word about those six cute little ponies you might remember appeared in Goodsprings, and helped the NCR liberate Primm not two days ago. Well, this news is not good.
“Nipton has been sacked by the Legion, according to Rarity Unicorn, and those ponies barely escaped capture last night. Today, on the road south of Novac, they, and the pack train they were travelling with, came under attack by a Legion war band. The ponies were caught up in the resultant stampede, and they don’t know what happened to the traders, or to the Courier they were travelling with.”
Outside New Vegas, soldiers began to file out of Camp McCarran, heading south, barring the occasional clash with raiders.
“According to Rarity, who is one of the little ponies of Equestria, the Legion troops, led by what sounds like one of their standard bearers, attacked from behind, stampeding the horses.”
In Cottonwood Cove, a Centurion turned from the radio and punched the wall in frustration. “Damn that Vulpes! He had just one job! One job!”
“I will have him crucified,” an armoured monster declared on the opposite side of the Colorado River.
Silently, Caesar agreed with him. That was the problem with vexillarii, they started to think they were the Legion. Stringing this one up would help keep them in line. At the same time though, this would possibly help pull those Profligates in the NCR out of position…
…then a bright flare of pain in his head derailed his train of thought.