Chapter: 13

by Chapter 13

[Fo:E - Frozen Gears] Story Setup

Author's Note:

Lost interest.

Fo:E - Frozen Gears

By: Michael A.

“Some secrets are better left buried.”

There are many things in this world that surprise us. Sometimes they are events that happen without any formal warning, and end with a life changing event that will stick with us for the rest of our lives. Sometimes they are ponies who pop into our lives without warning, friends who you feel you could never live without, or enemies that you wish that you hadn't even met. And sometimes they are something that is so random, so shocking, and so overwhelmingly sudden that you don’t even know how to react, and just freeze. These types of situations happen a lot in life; things that happen that we don’t expect. Sometimes, they signal great change, for better or worse. And sometimes, these sudden and massive changes break us.

And sometimes, they define us.

---

“Stupid… no good… robotic… piece of crap!” I mumbled through the wrench I held between my teeth, foggy breath escaping from my nose. “‘Go fix they Sentry Bot,’ they said. ‘We’ll cover you,’ they said.”

The air is freezing, a fresh coat of snow coated ground, and the sound of magical energy weapons and the roar of artillery filled the air. Yup, welcome to the Northern Equestria, where the temperature flutters between freezing and death, and the fear of freezing to death is second only to being shot.

“Junk Gear! When you get that damned bot up and running, get your skinny plot over here and fix my auto feeder!” Boomed the amplified voice of my squad’s heavy (Heavy Hoof, believe it or not) from somewhere behind me.

I groaned, rolling my eyes from behind my goggles before continuing to repair the robot. My head was currently neck deep in the maintenance panel of one of our Sentry Bot’s. The damned thing had stopped running, and our recon team’s Knight had decided that it was essential for me to get it back up and running. So, here I am, like the good little field engineer I am, trying to get the damned thing to reboot. Now, usually I don’t mind fixing these things. Hell, I actually enjoy it. But when one breaks down it the middle of a fucking firing zong, I have some issues. Beams of magical energy and burning hot lead wizzed passed me from all directions, some just barely missing me. It’s kinda hard to focus on fixing a pre-war piece of junk while, at the same time, trying not to get shot! The only luck that has been thrown to me so far is that the problem seems to be more software than hardware, so a simple reboot should fix it. “Just one more tweak, and…”

“Sentry Bot, Online. Weapons system’s initiated. Threat level... Omega. Use of deadly force... authorized,” the Bot cried out as it whirred back to life, it’s minigun that had been dormant on it’s side beginning to spin up. “Time to die, Zebra skum!”

I cried out in victory as I slammed shut the access panel on its back and jumped off in one fluid movement, running as fast as I could back behind the concrete slabs that the rest of the recon team was currently using for cover. After vaulting over the slab, I pressed my back against the cool rock, happy that I had several feet of hardened stone between me and incoming fire.

“Oh! Gon’ run an’ hide, ya’ li’l cunt! Why don’cha come back ‘ere and have som’ real fun!”

I let out another sigh. I freaking hate Raiders.

Moments later I heard a loud “Bang!” followed soon after by a sickening “Crunch!”. From experience I already know that was our team’s sniper, Keen Shot, blowing the head off of the offending Raider. I smiled, letting out sigh of relief before wiping the sweat and grease that was caked to my once whitemane with the back of my hoof. Weather or not I was successful in cleaning anything was any ponies guess.

“Hey, Junk, my auto loader ain’t gonna fix itself!”

Smile gone. My body visually sagged as I let out another sigh, contemplating ignoring that oaf’s command. But, my the desire to not hear him complain when we got back to base won out as I pushed myself back onto my hooves. Not too far from where I was resting sat our team’s heavy gunner, who was currently tapping his hooves impatiently on the ground. He was a large, lumbering stallion that was easily three times the size anypony has the right to be. As it is we had to cram him into a specially-fitted suit of power armor. But, his size did add some advantages, mainly the fact that we could load him up with enough armament to make him a walking tank. On a tactical view, he was a force to be reckoned with. On my view, he was a large pain in the ass with a shit load of moving parts that I had make sure kept moving, or else he became even more of a pain in the ass! Two full sized mini-guns that were supposed to be mounted on a Vertibuck sat on each side of his armor, while a single, large caliber anti-personal rifle sat in the middle.

I trotted up next to the stallion, tapping at the side of one of his armored hooves.

He turned, his helmeted head staring me down. “Took you long enough!” he said, his voice slightly digitized. “Now get up there and fix the damned thing so I can start shooting again!” He leaned down, allowing me access to his back.

I hopped up, wasting no time and began to troubleshoot his minigun’s autofeeder. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the issue was that main feed chain had become unhooked. “Damn it, Heavy. The damn chain got unhooked, again!”

The stallion grunted, apparently not giving a crap about the logistics of his mechanical issues.

I grumbled to myself. This is the third time this month I've had to do this! I think it’s about time I sat down our chapter’s head mechanic and reamed him a new one. After a few more internal curses and some growls of annoyance, I got the feeder back into working order and hopped off the heavy. “Okay, you’re good,” I said, dusting myself off as best I could.

Heavy lets out an acknowledging grunt, before getting onto his hooves. He fired up his auto-feeder, the mechanism churning to life as it reloaded his side guns. He nodded, to himself, before jumping over the concrete barrier and charging headfirst towards the Raider nest.

I shook my head, leaning down and re-wrapping up my toolkit, before tucking it back into its place on my wrist mount. (Which was a little thing I rigged up a while ago when I got promoted to field engineer.) It wasn't as fancy as a pre-war Pip-Buck, but it had a hobbled together clock and basic tactical functions (such as hacking and terminal interface), basic memory functions, and a compartment for all of my basic field tools.

After making sure it was secure

“Knight, Mellon,” I began, standing at attention and give him a salute. “I am here to report the sentry-bot is back up and functional and Heavy Hoof’s auto feeder is now up and running as well.”

The Knight gave me a curt nod. “Good work, Mechanic. It seems like Heavy and Keen Shot have this pretty much wrapped up, so just wait around the extraction point unless something else breaks.”

I nodded, saluting again. “Yes, sir!”

/* It wasn’t long until we arrived back at our Chapter’s headquarters. We were currently stationed at Fort Fireside, an ironic name considering our proximity to Equestria’s northern border. Fireside was a modest outpost, not the largest of the Steal Ranger’s settlements, but far from the smallest. Before the war, this outpost was used as the command center for all of Northern Equestria’s guard posts, and acted as the home base for all Northern based operations. Considering most of the fighting took place */

I shrugged off my field uniform, which consisted of a light-weight leather barding with pockets for all of my tools and various equipment. I had designed it myself with the assistance of our armorer a while back, and I was really impressed with how it turned out. It provided as much protection as I needed and could hold all that I needed, while at the same time being agile enough to not impeded my movements. Ponies used to call me lazy because I didn’t have to partake in the usual training regimen, but they didn’t know how much I had to jump around and move. To be honest, I’m probably more fit and agile than half of our chapter. But, they don’t care. I am just the mare who they call when they break something.

I carefully hung up my barding, taking extra care to fold it neatly. I usually wasn’t one for organization, as evident by my workstation, but I tried to be neat when I could. After placing it in its proper place in my locker, I trotted back over to my workbench, booting up my terminal to check my repair ticket que.

“Only seven new tickets… sweet,” I mumbled to myself, a soft smile gracing my face at the easy workload. I opened the first message and began to read.

“Hey, Junk, some of the terminals in administration are acting up again. The pompous asses requested new terminals, and I quickly responded with, ‘Are you kidding me?’ Anyways, if you could come up sometime this week and see what you could do I would be greatly appreciative.

- Head Scribe Quick Step”

I smiled. Quick was one of the few that actually seemed to appreciate what I did. I’m pretty sure it’s because he’s the only other pony who works harder then me to keep this place from falling apart. I made a note on my wrist mount to check on the administration terminals as soon as I got time… Then made another note to finally give the thing a name. Junk Buck, maybe?

I opened up the rest of the tickets and found the usual requests: “My ‘insert something’ isn’t working properly, get down here and fix it!” I sighed, logging the requests onto my wrist mount before logging out of my terminal.