Fallout Equestria: The Light Within

by FireOfTheNorth

Chapter 57: Friends and Foes, Old and New

Chapter Fifty-Seven: Friends and Foes, Old and New

“What do they want, do you think?” Sage asked as she watched the flickering television screen.

The screen was currently showing the view from one of the cameras we’d mounted to the Clinic’s exterior before leaving Vanhoover. It would allow those of us in the trailer section of our rolling fortress to see what was going on without stepping out. Pictured on the screen was a squad of ponies in PRS uniforms with rocket launcher battle saddles pointed at the Clinic’s tractor.

“I have an idea,” I said as I locked myself into Shining Armor’s power armor.

The last time we’d been waylaid like this, it had been so that a message of Chairmare Peach Cream could be delivered. She’d requested molds for anti-machine rounds from Frostpoint, and while I’d found them, I hadn’t brought them back to her. It was too dangerous to give the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad ammunition for killing Steel Rangers. I already felt bad enough about giving them a seeding megaspell that they’d attacked Railyard in order to use.

The back of the Clinic swung down and Rare and I trotted out, two power-armored ponies ready to face the PRS. The soldiers kept their weapons pointed at the Clinic’s cab, Zherana frowning down through the glass, as we trotted up to them. The same officer as before was here, and she looked quite cross with us.

“Well, turn them over,” she demanded.

“Turn what over?” I asked.

“There’s no use in playing dumb,” the PRS officer replied angrily, “Give us the AM-905 molds from Frostpoint. You returned from there weeks ago, and haven’t reported to the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad or any of our patrols with them.”

“That’s because I don’t have them,” I said defiantly, “I never retrieved them from Frostpoint in the first place.”

“You were ordered by Chairmare Peach Cream to retrieve them!” the officer said furiously.

“If I remember, it was more a request than an order,” Rare chimed in.

“There is no difference when it comes from the Chairmare!” the officer ranted.

“I won’t be part of her plans anymore,” I said, “I thought I made that clear when I never returned to the PRS after leaving The Stacks.”

“Well, consider yourself to be exiled from the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad for now, but don’t think this is over. You will pay for defying the Ponies’ Republic!”

“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time,” I said, thinking about Lord Lamplight’s expulsion from the PRS, and the officer gave me a confused look, “If you don’t mind, we’ll be on our way.”

What could she do? Her orders obviously didn’t account for me being uncooperative, so she had no authorization to destroy the Clinic or attack us with the rocket launchers they’d brought along. She was also clearly a pony who followed her orders and the rules exactly, so there was no immediate threat from her. There may be a long-term threat from her, but she’d have to report back to Chairmare Peach Cream before that surfaced. Hopefully we’d have concluded our business in Stalliongrad before then. The officer headed back to her squad and led them away as we returned to the Clinic and resumed our journey.

***

“This ‘North Equestrian’ Alliance seems pretty tilted in favor of Vanhoover,” Count Heavy Rain commented as he perused the NEA charter.

“At the moment, you would be right, but you’re only the first settlement in Stalliongrad we’ve brought this to,” I replied.

The County of Rain was the nearest settlement to Stalliongrad’s western reaches, so it made sense to come here first. I’d anticipated some reluctance on Heavy Rain’s part because of that, though. It was one thing to agree to help out neighbors you could reach in a day or two and return in the same short amount of time; it was quite another to come to the aid of somepony over a week away. Most ponies didn’t have the benefit my friends and I did in the Clinic, so it would take ten days to travel between Stalliongrad and Vanhoover on a good trip instead of our two days. It was a big commitment to make, but the same applied to the Vanhoover settlements who would agree to come to the aid of a settlement in Stalliongrad, whatever the threat.

“You’ll have to find a lot of settlements here to balance this out,” Heavy Rain huffed, “You’ve already got six in Vanhoover. Do you think you can find six here to join?”

“Including yourself, I know four that are almost certain to,” I said, thinking of Neon, Stallion Hill, and Castle Bridge.

“One of those undoubtedly being my brother’s settlement,” the count grumbled.

“I thought we were past this,” I said, “When I was last here, the two of you agreed to work together and defend each other’s settlements from the Northern Lights Coalition. Your alliance was the first step to the North Equestrian Alliance.”

“I know,” Heavy Rain sighed, “You’re right about us needing to band together, but … I don’t know if I’ll ever trust those priests.”

The count stared at the NEA charter, seemingly looking for any fine print. He was considering, so we let him think, my friends seated around the count’s audience chamber while I continued to stand before him and the desk that had seen better days.

“You said four settlements,” Heavy Rain said, looking to stall for time, “Where do you intend to find the other two?”

“Quarry and The Old Guard are currently part of the NLC, but one or both of them might defect,” I said.

“Former NLC settlements? I wouldn’t trust them,” Heavy Rain said with a sneer.

“Castle Bridge was an NLC settlement not that long ago, and I’ve heard of no trouble from them,” I said, “If I can recruit them, I will.”

“I wouldn’t bother with Quarry,” Heavy Rain said as he set the charter down on the desk, “They were half-raider already.”

“Still, I intend to try,” I said, and I looked down at the charter, “Do you have a decision?”

“Yes, I’ll do it,” Heavy Rain said, “Like you said, we’re already doing this with Neon. It’d be good to have the help of some other settlements, even if the only ones we can count on at the moment are in Vanhoover.”

“Congratulations. Welcome to the North Equestrian Alliance,” I said, and Heavy Rain snorted.

“Now you’ll need to choose a representative to represent your settlement at Sorceress Square,” Sage said as she joined us, prepared to help settle the details.

***

“The Great Illuminated will speak with you now,” Flashbulb announced.

I (and I alone) was in the same theater where I’d first met the leader of Neon. The Great Illuminated—Summer Showers, before he’d attained his current position—trotted out onto the stage. It was a little eerie seeing him so soon after Heavy Rain; the twin brothers were nearly identical except for the Great Illuminated’s beard.

“Wasteland Doctor, you have returned, and I hear that you have brought another with you who carries god wherever she goes,” the Great Illuminated said.

“Yes, that would be Sage,” I said, assuming he was alluding to the PipBuck-like device she wore that she used to remotely control Radio Free Wasteland.

“Sage. A fitting title to one who must hear the voice of the god in the machines,” the Great Illuminated said with a thousand-pace stare.

“I’ve come here to propose that Neon join the North Equestrian Alliance,” I said as I extracted a copy of the NEA charter from my saddlebags, “It is a protective alliance between settlements with an initial goal of standing up to the Northern Lights Coalition. Six settlements in Vanhoover have agreed to join, as well as the County of Rain in Stalliongrad.”

Before I could go on any more about the North Equestrian Alliance, the Great Illuminated snatched the charter away from me and examined it closely, almost pressing his face against the paper.

“This—this was woven electronically!” the Great Illuminated proclaimed, “The god of the machines lives in this document! Every line and letter precise, every drop of ink laid down with care! Every character the exact same size, shape, angle, and weight! It is divine!”

I hadn’t done it on purpose, but I’d grabbed one of the copies of the charter that had been printed off rather than typed via typewriter. Honestly, there wasn’t much of a difference so far as I could tell other than the paper, but apparently the Great Illuminated was able to notice it.

“Um … about the alliance …” I said, trying to interrupt whatever was going on between the Great Illuminated and the charter.

“Yes, of course, we will join,” the Great Illuminated said without a second thought.

“What?!” Flashbulb exclaimed, “Without question, you would bind us to nonbelieving settlements?”

“This is a sign,” the Great Illuminated said, holding up the NEA charter, “The god in the machines has sent this to us. Who are we to reject it?”

Other than Stallion Hill, I expected Neon to be the easiest settlement in Stalliongrad to convince to join the North Equestrian Alliance, but I hadn’t expected it to be this easy. Maybe there was truly something divine at work here, but I still didn’t think it was the god in the machines. This was turning into a productive trip, with two more settlements recruited with minimal fuss. I had a feeling that the next settlement wouldn’t be quite as easy, especially with the warning from Count Heavy Rain. Once I finished things here, we’d be headed to Quarry.

***

Quarry was located south of Stalliongrad, much farther south than the County of Rain. If I hadn’t gotten directions and marked the location on my PipBuck’s map, we probably never would have found it. There were several quarries south of Vanhoover, and we had to abandon the Clinic in order to weave our way around the pits on hoof as they became more densely packed. There was no way to tell at a distance which one had become the settlement we were searching for, so we just had to follow the map.

When we finally arrived at our destination, we couldn’t tell if it was right or wrong until we trotted up to the fence and looked down in the hole. In concentric rings as the quarry deepened, there were scrap metal shacks built as well as some mobile homes parked, no longer mobile. At the center of the quarry, at the lowest point of the pit, the townsponies had erected their NLC tower. The pit was deep enough that the top of the tower was below us, concealed along with the rest of the settlement. Residents of Quarry trotted around below, apparently oblivious to our presence. Everything seemed fairly normal.

A shot suddenly rang out and a bullet shot past our group. I cast SATS to get an idea of where the shot had come from, and identified a mare with a sniper rifle a couple levels down in the settlement looking up at us through her scope. As time returned to normal, I pulled out my binoculars and took a better look, lower to the ground now than before. The mare lowered her rifle and punched some buttons on an apparatus next to her that was wired into the town’s tower. A speaker fastened to the fence several paces down from us crackled to life, one of several I could see stretching in both directions.

“Who do you be? Friend or foe?” a mare’s voice came from the speaker, the assumed voice of our sniper.

I trotted over to it and checked to see that the speaker had a microphone attached before replying.

“A friend, I hope,” I said, “We want to talk to you about the Northern Lights Coalition.”

“We already be part of the Northern Lights Coalition. Did Lord Lamplight send you?”

“Not exactly,” I said, “We’re here to see if you want to defect and join the North Equestrian Alliance to fight against the NLC instead.”

Sirens instantly went off down in the settlement, and a sniper shot barely missed Rare Sparks a second later. All of us dropped to the ground to avoid future shots.

“Good going,” Rare said sarcastically.

“Well, what was I supposed to say?” I asked as EFS began to light up with hostile marks, “I wasn’t going to wait until we were down there in the middle of them to make a revelation like that.”

Shouts went up in Quarry alongside roars that sounded more mechanical than biological. I crept up to the edge of the pit, counting on my power armor to protect me if the sniper spotted me, and peered down into it. Some of the houses, I realized, were actually garages. Vehicles constructed from the remains of auto-carriages and scrap pulled out of them, some belching smoke in time with the roars from their engines.

Zherana began to take shots with her sniper rifle, each one finding its mark, as the residents of Quarry in their makeshift auto-carriages began to climb the spiraling path around the edge of the pit. I grabbed my rocket launcher and aimed for the lead auto-carriage, a six-wheeled vehicle with a minigun mounted on the back and a row of spikes in the front. I sent the rocket streaking toward the vehicle, but its driver saw it and put on a burst of speed, flames jetting from the auto-carriage’s stacks, and the rocket exploded harmlessly against the rock wall.

I flinched while reloading as a sniper shot careened past me, fired by the original pony who’d greeted us. Zherana took her out, and I picked the rocket up off the ground where I’d dropped it and loaded it into the launcher’s tube. I couldn’t hit the lead auto-carriage anymore from where I was, so I aimed at another, one with huge tires from construction equipment with a comically small and bulbous cab on top. This one couldn’t get out of the way in time, but it was headed toward us and fired missiles from the pods fastened to the vehicle’s sides. The missiles shot past the rocket that obliterated the auto-carriage and carried on toward us.

“Get back!” I yelled before the missiles struck the lip of the pit ahead of us or flew over us and landed behind.

The edge of the quarry collapsed inward, tumbling down onto the road the auto-carriages were traveling upon. One auto-carriage that had started its life as a bus and had later had the top hacked off swerved to avoid the dislodged stone and pulled to a stop. Before it could get moving again, Sage threw a couple metal apples down on it. The wrecked bus was only an obstacle for a short bit, as the following vehicle with a dozer blade attached to the front shoved it out of the way and sent it tumbling down into the settlement.

Shots increasingly came up from the settlement, though they missed us by a large margin, as those few townsponies who hadn’t piled into auto-carriages fired at us. The convoy of auto-carriages was climbing closer now. Rare Sparks and Sage took advantage whenever they were on our side of the pit to assault them with metal apples and launched grenades, and Zherana occasionally fired at them (though she mostly focused on the settlement and anypony down there with a sniper rifle), but there were many more intact auto-carriages making their way up than there were wrecks of them. I fired my rocket launcher, hitting one that was low to the ground and had spinning blades on its sides, but my supply of rockets was not inexhaustible.

The lead auto-carriage crested the lip of the quarry and roared toward us. Using SATS to assist me, I fired my rocket at the front of the vehicle. Though the rocket hit, the auto-carriage had been heavily armored and shrugged the explosion off while shedding a few pieces of plating. The minigun on the back fired up and I jumped in front of Sage, using my armor to shield her from the shots. A few of them got through the armor plating and into my flesh, but the armor fixed me up, injecting me with healing potions. I took aim with my rocket launcher and fired at the minigun. It was not armored like the rest of the vehicle and was blown off the back along with a red mist that was previously the pony firing it. I threw a metal apple as hard as I could as the auto-carriage continued to roll toward us, and it exploded beneath the vehicle, finally stopping it.

No sooner had it stopped than another cobbled-together auto-carriage shoved it out of the way. This machine had previously been two that were now fused together horizontally. A harpoon was mounted between the cabs, and I jumped aside as it shot toward me. Thankfully, Sage had also moved, so she wasn’t impaled, but the harpoon did land under Rare Sparks, and a hook caught around her leg as the cable attached to it retracted. I loaded my last rocket and fired at the auto-carriage, destroying the harpoon mechanism and causing the two halves of the vehicle to twist apart some.

“We may want to run,” Zherana stated.

“Why?” I asked as I fired my magical energy rifle at the windshields of another oncoming auto-carriage that had burst through the previous one.

“There’s a megaspell in the center of the settlement, I just shot the pony who armed it, and it looks like nopony else knows how to disarm it,” the zebra ghoul said.

“I’m with Zherana on this one,” Sage said as she fired her shotgun at a pony that looked very raider-ish who’d crawled out of a wrecked auto-carriage.

The four of us hurried back the way we’d come, hoping we could get far enough away in time. Meanwhile, the residents of Quarry continued to pursue us in their beefed-up auto-carriages, not knowing why we were running. Our supply of metal apples was soon exhausted as we left some surprises for our pursuers, crippling or destroying their auto-carriages. There always seemed to be more no matter how many we disabled or annihilated, though.

I was puzzled when Sage ran ahead then suddenly came to a stop and turned around. She had her scoped magical energy pistol out and she pointed it past us. I craned my neck to see while still running and saw her shoot straight through the windshield of the nearest auto-carriage, which had a grinder on the front. It slowed to a halt short of hitting Sage, and she shot the pony on the flatbed in the back as well.

“Get on!” she yelled to us as she pulled the driver out and shot the copilot.

Rare and I wouldn’t fit inside the cab with Sage, so Zherana climbed in the front while we jumped onto the back, holding onto anything we could as Sage floored it. There was a minigun on the back, and I stepped behind it, assisting Rare as she fired her own minigun at the auto-carriages still pursuing us.

“There’s the Clinic!” Rare yelled as she turned around.

I almost did the same but hadn’t yet when the megaspell went off. My visor instantly polarized to protect my eyes from the blinding flash, a feature I hadn’t known Shining Armor had had built into his personal suit of power armor. A wave of green balefire rushed out from where the megaspell had gone off, jetting out of the different quarries in some places. One of the auto-carriages crashed and others piled up behind them. They were all consumed by the blast, only a few who’d been ahead making it through to live for a few more minutes until one careened into an open pit and another was shredded by my minigun.

Sage nearly drove the vehicle into a pit herself, but managed to pull through and bring us to the Clinic. My radiation meter was clicking quite alarmingly, so I couldn’t imagine how much an unarmored pony like Sage was taking. I hurriedly brought her into the Clinic and treated her while Zherana drove us away as quickly as our mobile home would go. The Clinic had become an actual clinic, and I, the Wasteland Doctor, was actually practicing the profession to go with my title. Rare didn’t make any glib remarks like she was wont to, though. We’d just seen a settlement wiped out by a megaspell, not the first time she and I had seen such a thing, but it was still terrible. In a post-War world, one never wished such a fate on anypony, even one’s greatest enemies, and the ponies of Quarry had been merely one settlement within the larger Northern Lights Coalition. They hadn’t wanted to join the North Equestrian Alliance, but neither were they part of the NLC anymore, though nopony celebrated their destruction. Not now, not with that mushroom cloud rising behind us.

***

“It’s an interesting thing you’re proposing,” Willow said as she examined the North Equestrian Alliance charter.

My friends and I were holed up in a room with Willow and Gustav, the two leaders of Stallion Hill. Both the young mare from The Stacks and the griffin from Railyard had a copy of the NEA charter in front of them. Everything seemed to be going well for the refugees that had moved in here, and their respective leaders shared power equally, which meant they’d both need to agree for the settlement to join the North Equestrian Alliance.

We’d driven straight from the crater that had once been Quarry to Stallion Hill. What I’d done for Sage was enough to keep her alive and relatively undamaged, but she was still feeling the effects of being so near a megaspell detonation with nothing to protect her but the auto-carriage she was driving. She needed help from somepony who was actually a doctor, and she found it in Stallion Hill. We stayed the night, and Stallion Hill’s leaders agreed to meet with us in the morning. After going over the charter, they were still considering.

“Now, I know the Stalliongrad settlement, and while Neon wasn’t exactly the best neighbors, they did help us out in their own way,” Gustav said as he tapped the charter with a claw, “The Vanhoover settlements, though, I’ve never heard of most of them. Burnside? Sure, even we’ve heard of them out here. Crate City? Tartarus? The Strip? Boring? New Sundale? What happened to old Sundale?”

“It was destroyed a long time ago,” I said, “Wiped out by NLC raiders searching for me. Ponies have begun to rebuild there, though, and not just ponies. Your sister lives there now.”

“Gertrude?” Gustav asked hopefully, “You saw her?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Does she still blame you for what happened to Railyard?” Gustav asked, more somberly.

“Last I heard, yes,” I admitted.

“I need to talk to her,” Gustav said.

“What about the ponies from Railyard here?” Willow asked, “Who will look after them while you’re gone?”

“Gully will do fine,” Gustav waved her off, “This is my sister we’re talking about.”

“You can’t just go gallivanting off,” Willow lectured him, which gave Gustav a pause. They were both barely more than children, yet Willow was still younger than him and acting like she wasn’t.

“If you do join the North Equestrian Alliance, you will need to send somepony to Vanhoover to represent your settlement,” Sage said, bringing the conversation back to the issue it had started about, “Not that it should be either of you, since you have duties to attend to here, but it’s something to consider. Though we hope it won’t come to this, it may be necessary for you to send aid to Vanhoover in case of attack, and that would be a better opportunity to see those you’ve been separated from.”

Yes, she was feeling much better.

“I’ll sign,” Gustav said.

“As will I,” Willow said, before turning back to Gustav, “Now, don’t think you’re going to head to Vanhoover as soon as the ink is dry. You have responsibilities to attend to, and when you go to Vanhoover, if you ever do, there is plenty to arrange before you go …”

***

Two settlements remained in Stalliongard to check on: Castle Bridge and The Old Guard. Seeing as how The Old Guard was across the river (and was part of the Northern Lights Coalition), it made sense to go to Castle Bridge first. Tollmaster Prosper was willing to sign the NEA charter without any fuss at all. He was so overjoyed by the prospect of a trade alliance with the legendary Burnside that he didn’t much seem to care that other provisions of the charter required his settlement to provide aid and troops, or that they’d need to reassemble their NLC tower. He was committed to the alliance now, wholeheartedly, no matter what.

With four settlements in Stalliongrad now in league with the six in Vanhoover, we headed for the last unknown. The Old Guard was an NLC settlement, but there was no telling whether they’d react like Castle Bridge or like Quarry to the offer to defect. Just in case they didn’t want to do so, we’d restocked on all the ammunition we’d spent in Stallion Hill. I’d had the foresight before leaving Burnside to stock up on more of the bottle caps promised to us, so we had no trouble paying.

The settlement was built within an old, stoic stone structure with clear avenues on every side, so we trotted right up and hoped we wouldn’t get shot. It was an imposing building, with narrow windows and turrets (the castle kind, not the kind installed that automatically shot you if you got too close). Carved just below the roof into the stone was: STALLIONGRAD ORGANIZATIONAL OFFICES. I had no idea what job the ponies who’d once worked here had done, but it wasn’t a Ministry building, so there was a chance it was harmless. A tattered old flag flapped on a flagpole attached to the NLC tower in the center of the roof. Lining the roof were ponies wearing gray military uniforms and tall, furry hats who were pointing rifles down at us. They weren’t quite the same as the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad uniforms, but close enough to give me pause.

“Hello!” I called as we got close enough that any farther and we wouldn’t be able to see the ponies on the roof.

A pony with a long pair of mustaches appeared among the others and seemed to evaluate us before speaking.

“Friend or foe, why do you come to us so heavily armed?” he asked.

“Just a precaution! I understand you are part of the Northern Lights Coalition!” I yelled up, and I looked to my friends, “Would you be interested in leaving it?”

“Are you from the Ponies’ Republic?” the mustachioed pony yelled back, and the others readied their weapons.

“Certainly not!” I called up to him, “We represent the North Equestrian Alliance, an alliance of settlements banded together against threats like the Northern Lights Coalition and the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad, as well as raiders and slavers in general! I have a charter I can show you!”

“Let them through!” the mustachioed pony yelled after a long pause.

The doors to the building opened ahead of us and I took that as our cue to advance. The lobby of the building had been turned into a heavily fortified kill box with barriers and ambush points everywhere. A soldier escorted us through it and down a hallway, where the mustachioed pony was waiting for us.

“I am Peak’s Height, Guard-Captain of the Old Guard,” the stranger introduced himself and proffered a hoof to shake.

“Doc,” I replied as I shook his hoof, “This is Rare Sparks, Zherana, and Sage.”

“Wasteland Doctor?” Peak’s Height asked, raising a bushy eyebrow, “I’ve heard about you and your companions. What is it you have brought me?”

It was odd to see an NLC settlement with knowledge that could only have come from listening to Radio Free Wasteland, but I took it as a good sign. I produced a copy of the NEA charter, and he took it over to a collapsible table to examine. Peak’s Height levitated a pair of spectacles from a pocket in his uniform and set his hat down on the table before he began to read the charter. Several minutes passed as he flipped back and forth, and I offered to answer questions a few times, but every time he rebuffed them.

“What is that made from?” Sage asked after another long silence.

“Hmm?” Peak’s Height said, looking up.

“Your hat,” Sage said, gesturing to it, “Where did the fur come from?”

“This one came from a yao guai, but we use radbeaver fur whenever we can, to be as similar to the guards who came before us,” Peak’s Height said, “They were determined during the War to preserve Stalliongrad as it was. We have the same mission, and we will not let this new ‘ponies’ republic’ change Stalliongrad.”

“Is that why you joined the Northern Lights Coalition?” Sage asked.

“It seemed the only way to stand against the PRS and not be overwhelmed, but the NLC has proven to be nearly as onerous a master,” Peak’s Height said thoughtfully, “Perhaps there is now an alternative.”

We had him, I was sure of it. Before the day was out, The Old Guard would join the other ten settlements in the North Equestrian Alliance. My dream of a unified alliance of settlements to face the NLC was coming true, and Sage had played an important part. After her radiation poisoning outside of Quarry, I’d begun questioning the wisdom of her coming alone. I tried to tell myself that my fear for her life was as much about the fact that she was DJ Pon3 as my feelings for her, but that probably wasn’t true. It was important that she be here, though, and who was I to stop her? I may have been the official ambassador from the NEA, but Sage had more experience in government from her time in the Crimson Tide and more combat training as well, so I shouldn’t have worried about her. Everything was coming together, and everything would be just fine.

[Max Level Reached]
New Quest: Finishing Up – Track down the remaining NLC bases of operation.