The Portgate

by Archival

Part 1, Chapter 4: The First Danger

"It's better to shoot first and miss out on answers than to ask questions first and die trying."

-Captain Phil Haswell

-Andrew-

A week had passed since Andrew, Noah, and Leah arrived on a whole new world. The cozy little shelter that the three of them had cobbled together (actually, it was mostly Andrew who did the work) out of a surplus tent and some reclaimed wood was quite large. One half of the shelter was the tent, which served as the sleeping area, work area, and storage for the more fragile supplies, and the other half was tacked together with pallets that had planks nailed over them. This section, though covered with tarps, was rather leaky at times, so it was used for storing tougher, more water-resistant supplies. Rain catchers and solar stills, combined with a makeshift water filter, provided more than enough potable water for three people, and solar panels generated energy for charging storage batteries. Once Leah had caught, killed, and eaten a squirrel without getting sick, snares set up in the woods provided a good supply of food. If nothing crazy happened, they could theoretically live there for years.

Still, there were constant improvements to be made. Andrew was working on making a wood-fueled stove, which would be useful for cooking and keeping the place warm. It was getting chilly at night, and it wasn't far-fetched to assume that winter would eventually arrive. Better to be early than late on this one, he thought.

Somebody lifted the door (which was just a pallet that leaned on the doorway) and shifted it to the side just as Andrew had finished working on the grill. Leah walked inside, wood axe in hand, and slouched down on one of the crates that served as a makeshift seat.

"So, how did being a lumberjack go?"

"Well," Leah replied, it actually went pretty well. The trees around here are about as thick as I am, and they're actually pretty straight. We could probably use the wood to build stuff rather than just burning it,"

"That's good to hear. Any word from Noah?"

"He said he'd call us through the walkie talkie any minute now, so we might as well wait. Does it really take that long to scout out our surroundings, though? I'm getting a bit nervous..."

"Hey, don't worry too much. I'm sure he's fine. Plus, he's found a lot of useful stuff on his trips. The stream that he found is going to be pretty essentiall, and that cave he found would be good for storing stuff in. Maybe that's why he hasn't responded yet - didn't he say he was gonna poke around inside it?"

"You're right. He's probably-"

A loud, monstrous roar echoed throughout the forest as flocks of birds fled skywards in a flurry of wings. Andrew and Leah froze, listening as the echo died down until there was nothing but silence. Snapping out of his trance, Andrew grabbed a walkie talkie from a nearby crate and anxiously spoke into it.

"Noah? Noah! Did you hear that? Are you alright?"

...

...

"..-ashiHEYANDREWohcrap-"

"Oh my god Noah, are you okay?" Leah yelled into the walkie talkie.

"Andrew, Leah- goddamnit- Get the guns out! Like NOW! There's a-"

"A what?" Leah sprung from her chair and pulled the lid off a nearby box while Andrew listened for a response.

"No time, get the big stuff out!"

Andrew rushed towards the box just as Leah slid a loaded magazine into the M33 assault rifle she was holding. Noah grabbed the biggest gun in the box - the Barrett - and loaded it with one of its wide magazines. Leah tossed Andrew another assault rifle, and the two of them pulled the charging handle in unison as they rushed outside. They could see Noah sprinting towards their house, yelling something that the two of them couldn't quite make out.

Just as Noah reached the halfway point between the forest and the shelter, a huge, three-headed creature burst out of the treeline, hissing and roaring as it ran towards him. Its orange scales and green eyes shimmered as it made its way towards a fleeing Noah, clearly intent on devouring the man. The monster was the size of a truck, and its sharp fangs and huge claws made it all the more threatening to the tiny humans it was hunting. It trotted across the clearing at jogging pace in pursuit of its next meal, shaking the ground every time its feet landed on the soil.

A sharp crack bursted throughout the forest, then another. Leah and Andrew fired their rifles at the giant beast, tearing its flesh and peppering it with holes that leaked a caustic green liquid that dripped onto the ground with a hiss. The report of the guns and the stabbing pain drew the monster's attention away from Noah and towards the two humans shooting it. It roared in anguish as it charged the house, determined to stop the burning agony that the creatures had inflicted upon it. Although Leah had little experience with firearms, Andrew regularly hunted back on Earth and was able to accurately fire at where he assumed its vital organs were. The beast was clearly losing its strength, but it still stumbled towards the humans as Noah rushed into the shelter.

"Goddamnit, we can't keep going on like this any longer!"

Andrew held down the trigger of his rifle, releasing a rapid stream of copper-plated lead towards the monster. It wasn't long, though, before his firearm produced a dry click as it ran out of ammunition. He cursed, then hit the magazine release as the beast closed in at sixty meters, then fifty, then forty...

The roar of the beast was nothing compared to the thunderous, earsplitting boom that Noah unleashed into the creature. A Browning fifty-caliber round was strong enough to pierce meters of concrete, and it easily tore a hole the width of a bowling ball into the creature as he unloaded the Barrett into the creature. He had assumed a prone position and had flipped down the bipod, allowing him to rapidly deliver accurate shots of deadly steel at the monster.

When combined with the support of two M33 rifles, the Barrett was more than capable of producing a deafening noise that spread out for miles across the Everfree forest. The final straw for the hydra was the anti-material rifle's deadly armor-piercing shot that instantly decimated its two hearts. It stumbled, then collapsed with an earthquaking thud. The trio stopped firing, allowing the sudden silence that had enveloped their surroundings to take hold. Andrew swapped his magazine for a fresh one, ran up to the beast, and put a gaping hole into each of the beast's heads to make sure that it stayed down. The acidic sizzling of the beast's green blood was lost to the trio, as the earsplitting reports of their weapons left them near deaf and with ringing in their ears.

"Are you okay?" Andrew yelled.

Leah was saying something, but he couldn't quite make out what.

"WHAT?"

She was still mouthing something out, but Andrew didn't hear her.

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

Silence in the Everfree doesn't last very long, and the sounds of Equestrian nature gradually returned as the victorious humans deafly shouted at each other for half an hour and the corpse of the beast spilled its caustic blood onto the grass.

-Applejack-

Applejack knew that the first day of harvest season was always noticeably chillier than the days preceding it. Years of working on the family farm had drilled an instinctive knowledge into her head that allowed her to keep pace with the seasons and reap the largest apple crop she could. That knowledge was what brought her to the far end of Sweet Apple Acres, stretching her apple bucking back hooves in preparation for the apple harvest. She had learned from experience that working from the far back of the field to the side closer to the barn made the late day easier and less tiring. Applejack lined up the wooden buckets beneath the foliage to catch the apples as they fell, which would be picked up by Big Macintosh to be carried to the barn. As she reared her legs for the first buck of the year, she noticed that this year's apples were extra large, a product of the Apple family's loving care of each tree on the farm.

The Apple family was famous for two things: apples and work ethic. Applejack woke up every morning at the crack of dawn, ready to work until sundown. She never shied away from hard work, and she never slacked off. Even when she was doing something like spending time with her friends, she still kept a part of her mind focused on the work she would have to get back to later.

Bucking the apples and hauling them back became a sort of cycle for Applejack, a rhythm that carried itself through her body and let her mind relax as the repetitive work brought her into a sort of miniature nirvana of buck, buck, slide, buck, buck, slide. Soon, the morning became noon and the noon became afternoon. Applejack, though slightly worn out, showed no signs of slowing down. The sweat that her skin secreted had managed to seep through her coat, leaving her orange fur damp and smelly. Applejack's kicks were as strong as the ones she started the day with, and the satisfying thud of hooves meeting wood was always greeted with a steady rain of fruit from the trees.

Suddenly, a faraway roar interrupted Applejack's cyclical rhythm, causing her to stop and look over at the source of the noise. The Everfree Forest was constantly letting out strange noises, so she paid little more attention to it as she picked up her work again. She had almost gotten back into her groove a few minutes later when what sounded like a whip crack popped through the forest again. Applejack paused again, this time much more interested in the noise. There was a short delay following the sound, then a rapid flurry of the cracks bursted through the air. Applejack flinched at this sudden burst of noise, then flinched again as the rate of cracks seemed to double. She wasn't quite prepared, however, for the massive booms that joined the faraway din. It sounded almost as if firecrackers and lightning were going off in the forest at the same time, and Applejack was sure the echo of the louder thunders reached at least part of Ponyville.

After about two minutes, the cracks and booms abruptly stopped. Applejack paused a little longer, making sure that the noises had completely stopped.

*BOOM*

...

*BOOM*

...

*BOOM*

...

A minute passed after the last peal of thunder had let itself out before Applejack turned from the forest. The roar was natural, but the pops and blasts were definitely out of place. Whatever they were, Applejack was a bit nervous. Something that could make that much noise was certainly noteworthy, and she wanted to make sure the gang knew about this as soon as possible. She trotted off towards Twilight's castle, eager to share the incident's details with her.

"Hey Applejack! Where'ya headed? We still gotta harvest all these apples!"

"No time, Big Mac! You heard those noises? I gotta tell Twi!"

Applejack picked up speed as she trotted, then cantered, then galloped at full speed with her muscular legs. They weren't just for bucking apples, she thought to herself as she kicked up a cloud of dust running down the dirt path into Ponyville.

-William-

William couldn't believe that things were going so smoothly. He had expected another accident, another failure, even a slight hiccup as the Portgate was being repaired, but no major delays had been reported at all. In fact, for once in his life he was ahead of schedule. The people who worked on the project were the kind of people who weren't afraid of a little overtime, and the extra infusion of funds he had received meant a lot of it. In fact, the projected repair time had drastically dropped from about three and a half months to less than two, even with all of the extra precautions that were taken. By all accounts, William was doing pretty well at his job.

Because of this, he was much more relaxed as he once again sat in his office, the flatscreen TV in front of his desk displaying the faces of the men and women who ran the world. His greying hair and slightly wrinkled skin made him look much older than his forty-three years, and he scratched his stubble as he put down his mug of coffee, ready to take on whatever the leaders were going to tell him.

"Nice work," the American President said. "I can see that you spent our money well, and I'm glad we chose you for the job. There's not much to discuss today, but we wanted to give you some heads up about a couple of things. Firstly, I'm sure you're aware that we've come out to the media about the incident last night. Needless to say, the people are rather shocked by this turn of events, but most of them also seem somewhat apathetic about the news. This is actually a good thing, of course, since there won't be a terribly big fuss from the public about it. Thankfully, you won't be getting any cameras shoved in your face - at least, we hope. Nevertheless, we'll be increasing security from here on out, just in case. We really don't want any more incidents, so expect a doubling in security soon."

"Do we really need that much?" William replied.

"Absolutely. Not many people know about this location, but if word were to spread it would be a good idea to have extra personnel at hand to keep things safe."

"Which brings us to our next point," the English Prime Minister interjected. "What exactly caused the malfunction? Surely you must have some answers by now."

"How do I put this...Right before the portal abruptly opened, the power regulators detected a sudden spike in energy. We discovered that the energy readings were impossibly high, ten times the maximum amount of power that was even available for the Portgate to utilize. What this means is basically...the surge of energy wasn't from our side."

William was glad that he had said that. The rulers immediately began to rapidly converse among themselves, buying him several minutes with which he composed himself for the next barrage of questions.

"Tell us all you know," the Russian President eventually managed to ask after the talking had somewhat died down.

"That's not much," William responded. "It definitely originated from the alien world, but its cause is still a mystery. What we do know is that the readings aren't consistent with electricity or heat. This means that we don't know exactly what kind of energy it was, but it resembles X-ray radiation the most. The Geiger counters didn't register a thing, though, and the medical examinations revealed no signs of radiation poisoning. Whatever it is, we aren't exactly solid on it."

"Keep looking into it. That is all."

Before William could react, the leaders disappeared and were replaced by the word "DISCONNECTED" in bold red letters. He sighed, and turned to the newspaper that sat on his desk, unread. "Portgate Project Malfunctions; Three Stranded in Alien World," the headline read.

William had always wanted more press attention, but not with those headlines.

Author's Note:

As always, comments, criticisms, suggestions and feedback are always helpful, so leave a comment and tell me what you think!

Comments

[Xanderfox]

I like this so far, I am happy you decided to make tech vs magic a bit more balanced than some people do. The hydra was a ligitimate threat and took significant effort to take down.

[Friskers]

I like the part where applejack heard the gunfire off in the distance

[VcSaJen]

The monster was the size of a truck

So... A baby hydra? I shudder to think what would have happened if it was it's parent instead.

[Pensive]

"He said he'd call us through the walkie talkie any minute now, so we might as well wait. Does it really take that long to scout out our surroundings, though? I'm getting a bit nervous..."

Am I the only one that finds it weird the radio is referred to as a 'walkie talkie'. While both are correct terms, it just seems childish to me. Might just be me, but I'm curious about what anyone else thinks.