• Published 28th Jan 2018
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Fallout: Equestria - War Does Change - tom117z



It has been nearly two hundred years since the megaspells rained fire down on the world, reducing it to a tainted wasteland. And ever since that day, the changelings have never been sighted in the wasteland...

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16 - The Equestrian Hive

Chapter Sixteen: The Equestrian Hive

“As Queen of the Changelings, it is up to me to find food for my subjects. Equestria has more love than any place I've ever encountered. My fellow changelings will be able to devour so much of it that we will gain more power than we have ever dreamed of!”


It didn’t take long, traversing through the dark cave with only the light of our horns and my PipBuck to light the way, before we came across the door.

It was a very big door.

It was easily the size of five ponies lengthways, made out of a black stone with intricate green detailing that almost looked like vines spread all over it. It just cut off the dark, jagged surfaces of the cave. The border where it ended and the hive truly began.

And it was open.

“So… has somepony been here or did a changeling forget to close up shop when the world went to shit?” I asked towards nopony in particular.

“Probably the latter,” Cobalt muttered as he approached the door, studying the vine-like detailing. “No denying this is the place though.”

A pained groan came from Stripe, still unconscious as she laid on my back. I could feel her fever from the contact, and I couldn’t stop that pit in my stomach from sinking further. If I didn’t get her to the stable in time…

No, I couldn’t think of that. I just had to do it. I had to!

“The stable is at the bottom of this place, right?” I asked, approaching the door.

“You saw the memory orb,” Cobalt confirmed.

I nodded, creeping towards the open gap and slowly peeking through. I couldn’t see anything on my Eyes Forward Sparkle, but it was also quite dark inside. I’ve got to admit, my basic light spell didn’t even give as much light as Cobalt’s or even the PipBuck lamp. But come on, it was the only other spell I knew beyond my levitation, and I wasn’t an avid magic user like Cobalt.

But my horn wasn’t casting much light into the entrance of the hive, so I stuck my foreleg in.

Fuck my life! What’s with all the desiccated remains today!?

There were about a dozen skeletons inside, though from my position in the doorway I couldn’t see if they were ponies or not…

“Bodies,” I warned Cobalt. “A lot of em’.”

He silently acknowledged me as I crept my way in. I shone my PipBuck over the remains as I approached, and on closer inspection, I could see they definitely weren’t ponies.

No ponies had blade-like horns like these skulls had.

“Changelings…” Cobalt saw fit to mutter the obvious. Thanks, buddy. “What happened to them?”

“You’re asking me…?” I muttered in response, shining my PipBuck map around the rest of the room.

The entrance hall was large but empty. Three separate passages spanned off around us, the structure being made out of the same dark brick and chitin-like substance I saw in Chrysalis’ memory orb.

Somehow, in this maze, we had to find our way down. Stripe’s life depended on it.

“Which way…” I muttered as I looked towards my E.F.S., seeing the blinking objective marker pointing down the passage directly ahead.

“It’s down here. Come on,” I informed Cobalt, not even letting him respond before I was moving at a fast trot down the corridor.

The entire hive was dark, silent as the grave. The only sounds were our hooves echoing off the walls, and Stripe’s haggard breathing.

Damn it, she was only here because of me. I’d asked her to come along, nagged her until she did. Now she was going to die down here, painfully, and in the dark deep… Fuck that. Damn it! Those caps, that scrap, that house wasn’t worth her life! She was too good to die here, and I wouldn’t allow it!

She was here because of me, and she would be leaving here with me.

If willpower could keep a person alive, then I was doing my damned best to give her all the willpower I had.

“Scrap Heap…?” Cobalt said questioningly, though I kept my teeth gritted and my eyes directly ahead.

Just had to keep moving… No stopping, no curiosity. Just get to Stable 84, save Stripe, and then everything would be great. Wonderful even. Just save her.

“Scrap,” Cobalt said far more firmly. Was he trying to piss me off!?

What?!” I hissed back at him, keeping my eyes firmly ahead.

“That wasn’t your fault, you know,” Cobalt said as if he knew what the fuck he was on about. Stupid Twilight Society prick.

“What? Should I blame you instead?” I asked him, getting silence in return. “Didn’t think so. I convinced her to come, even when she wasn’t sure she wanted to. It’s my fault.”

“I led us to Our Town, and I blamed myself for that,” Cobalt retorted. “And yet you went and talked me out of that. You couldn’t have known about a crazy giant radscoprion which had moved into the cave in the last two hundred years.”

My PipBuck’s clicking increased a bit, and I could just feel Cobalt’s eyes turn towards it.

“And with all the radiation, little wonder it grew so big,” Cobalt pointed out. “But you saved us with that balefire egg. We’d all be dead if you hadn’t thought to repair that launcher.”

“And she still might die anyway.”

“People die in the wasteland,” Cobalt said. As I said; a prick. “It’s horrible, I know. But you’ve lived out here your whole life, while I’ve only been out here since we met, and yet I know that. You must have had this kind of thing happen.”

“Nope. Never.”

“Seriously? You’ve never once lost a friend out here?”

“You have to have friends to lose them.”

I glanced back at Cobalt, his mouth open as if to give a reply… before he shut it again, the stallion blinking at me.

“What, Cobalt? You think you’re the only one?”

“Well… with how you and Stripe seemed to be all chummy when we first met…”

“We weren’t friends then,” I rebuffed. “We’d just met, earlier that day in fact! And then Our Town happened. But before that, I was just a couple of working hooves to my folks, and when they died I was all about number one. I didn’t have any friends… until Stripe.”

I scrunched my eyes up, blinking away some forming tears.

“But even before then, she was always going on about my heart. About how I was better than I made myself out to be. I was already struggling with that, ever since that Calamity guy saved my life for no reason other than I was in trouble…” Goddesses, why did friendship have to hurt… “I’d never really thought about it before then. Heroics were stupid, just look out for yourself and don’t bother! And yet she believes there’s something beneath the stupid useless scavenger going about his stupid useless existence with no point being in the world!”

I didn’t like that look Cobalt was giving me. It almost looked like pity. Maybe sympathy. Maybe both. I couldn’t tell; but screw it, I just didn’t like that look.

“Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before. Hell, I didn’t even want to hear it. But she believed anyway…” I gave a humourless laugh. “And I’ve led her to her death. Shows how much she knows!”

I kept expecting Cobalt to butt in at any second, to make some remark that would annoy me or something. But he just remained silent, and we were back to listening to our hooves echoing and our own breathing. Gah, this was maddening! This place… it couldn’t be too large, right? Or it had to at least have a signpost or two. Something!

Or else…

“Fuck. She was the one who was out here wanting to help people. Not me…” I muttered. “She’s the good one. Goddesses, I can’t let her die.”

Silence, and then…

“We won’t,” Cobalt finally said. “And she’s right, you know. You are a better person than you give yourself credit for.”

“Yeah, and how do you figure that?”

“You wanted to help the ponies of Our Town. Before they tried to kill us, anyway,” Cobalt said. “Most ponies would have left without a single thought of helping out. You were concerned about what the Twilight Society would do, and if it was dangerous. You called me a friend, even though I was a complete dick when we first met. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you felt sympathy for these changelings.”

I guess he’s got me there…

“But most of all, you want to help your friend,” Cobalt stated. “You care. And that’s a good thing. But, Scrap Heap, it’s up to you to decide whether you want to be the person Stripe sees in you or a scavenger after a simple bag of caps.”

I stopped, turning to stare at Cobalt. Scavenger or hero. To spend my days looking for that next payday, or to go around helping people like the Stable Dweller or Security Mare. This job was always about the caps… But, could I say I was the same stallion who’d gotten that PipBuck in New Appleoosa?

I just didn’t know anymore…

I sighed. “Let’s just keep moving. But, thanks for the talk.”

“It’s as you warned me; whiplash,” he remarked as we continued trotting forwards. “And if it’s any consolation, I think she likes you too.”

Well, we’d already decided we were friends. Wait, what was that smile he was giving me?

And why did I like it even less than the pity look…?

We didn’t talk anymore after that, heading deeper and deeper into the hive while following my objective marker all the way. I didn’t know how long we had been walking for, but we didn’t stray from the path. There were plenty of other corridors, rooms and bones around us, but we didn’t deviate to investigate. Stable 84 was my priority, nothing else.

At least until that red bar appeared…

And that thing jumped at me from the darkness!

I didn’t even think as I let off a shotgun blast, spraying the walls around us with gore as the thing that had rushed me got shredded.

We stood ramrod as the body skidded to a halt, lying limp on the ground. It was a changeling…

Or, at least, it had been a changeling.

Its eyes, instead of the bright blue I’d seen in the memory orbs I’d used, were milky and dead. Its chitin seemed to have turned a greyer colour than the dark black other changelings had, it was missing both its wings and had chitin missing in various places while exposing the rotting and twisted flesh beneath.

“Changeling feral ghouls?” I questioned, kicking the dead creature lightly.

“That counter hasn’t stopped since we got here,” Cobalt said, gesturing at my clicking PipBuck. “And with all these skeletons… Maybe these changelings were away from the hive when the bombs fell and made it back home only to die of radiation before reaching the stable.”

“Or turning into ferals,” I finished, bringing my PipBuck up to look at the radiation counter. “My rad count has moved from the green to yellow.”

“Right, take this,” he said as he retrieved a RadAway from his saddlebags and hoofed it over to me. “Into that room, just for a moment, in case more come.”

We slipped into a nearby doorway, stepping inside before I gently laid Stripe down onto the floor. I then drank the vaguely orange tasting putrid liquid down, doing my best not to gag. Cobalt had retrieved a second one he’d fed to Stripe, who stirred slightly at the terrible tasting stuff, before taking one himself.

My rads dropped to a more acceptable level.

“We’d best be quick, we don’t have many of those,” Cobalt noted, before looking around the room. “Is this a bedroom?”

Now that I looked at it, this room was indeed a large bedroom. A king-sized bed lay at the very end, the sheets long rotted and full of holes. On the walls were various shelves full of Knick-knacks, mostly archaic looking weapons and armour pieces of changeling design. I presumed, anyway. There were also a few cabinets as well as a bedside table with a drawer.

“Let’s have a quick look, see if there’s anything usable,” I suggested. “Who knows, we might get lucky and find some RadAway.”

But as we looked through the cabinets, there was no RadAway. We did find a healing potion, so that was a win! A couple of bottle caps too, not sure what they were doing in there though…

Aside from that, however, there was nothing of use. And in the end there was only one more place to look, that being in the drawer of the bedside table. I approached the piece of furniture, giving the bed a cursory glance as I went. Any comfort that thing had was definitely long gone… But still, it was no matter. I opened the drawer and had a look inside, finding only a single object inside. An object I was developing a knack for finding, apparently…

“Another memory orb,” I informed Cobalt with a frown.

Oh, but this one had a tag!

“For her majesty, Queen Chrysalis,” I began to read. Wait, so does that mean that this was Chrysalis’ room? “Legate Wrede, assassination.”

“Sounds almost like a mission report for the Queen,” Cobalt noted. “Stick it in your bag, we can look later.”

“I wasn’t exactly about to go memory diving with my friend dying on the floor,” I muttered dryly, sticking the memory orb into my saddlebag.

I returned to Stripe, who was still unconscious. I lifted her gently and placed her onto my back again, moving towards the door.

The moment I opened the door and found myself face-to-face with a changeling ghoul I realised I should have checked my E.F.S. before stepping outside.

Whoops.

BLAM.

I blew the ghoul away in a second, its body crumpling down to the floor.

Which only caused the rest to hiss at me, and oh, they had big fangs. They seemed so much bigger outside the memory orb, too…

I engaged S.A.T.S. before they could get any closer, counting five immediately outside the doorway. I targeted three, and once I engaged the spell I quickly took all of them out. The final two gave a shriek as they ran forwards towards me, only for them to be hit by two bolts of magic from Cobalt. The first had half its skull blown off by the magic bullet, the second stumbled to the floor where another shotgun blast finished it off.

“Nicely done,” Cobalt complimented, before gesturing down the hall. “But we’ve woken the hive!”

Two more were running down the corridor towards us… from the direction we needed to go.

Well, I did say nothing would stop me…

I took a shotgun shell into one of the ghouls as Cobalt used a magic bullet to take down the other.

And then we started to run.

We ran forwards, keeping to the map marker as I tried to keep Stripe firmly on my back despite the speed increase. There were who knows how many ghouls in this place, we had to get to that stable now!

Speaking of ghouls…

Right! I let of another shotgun blast that took off the front legs of a ghoul, and it couldn’t crawl fast enough to follow us.

Left! Cobalt took that one. Those magic bullets did have their uses…

Three more gave their undead screams as they began to pursue us, but with a doorway ahead we just kept on running until we barged through them! We then turned, and I entered S.A.T.S. to target all three. We both fired into the group, rendering them into bloody pieces as my shotgun shells and his magic bullets tore into them.

And then we turned to see where the marker had taken us…

Wow.

It was a huge cavernous space, a multistore structure spanning far beneath us, with us being on the very top floor. Unlike the rest of the hive, also, this place seemed to be getting some power. Electronic lights, and some other weirder light sources, lit up the place so brightly I imagined this was what the sun was like. Huge chitinous pillar spread down from the roof, floor to floor, as if they were all that was keeping the thing from caving in. This definitely felt like a hive… and the local residents weren’t happy with us.

Just looking down into the dizzying abyss, I could see the bones of those who’d failed to make it to the stable, some further down than others, depending on which of them succumbed to the radiation first.

Same went for the ferals.

“There were more changelings outside the hive than I would have thought…” I muttered.

“Clearly they were in high demand,” Cobalt joked.

The hive structure was clearly designed for creatures with wings, though we did locate a set of stairs. Probably put there for pony visitors, though they probably never had us in mind.

We very quickly began to rush down the stairs, Cobalt using his magic to help keep Stripe steady. Oh Celestia, I swear she was emitting more and more heat, that fever was not getting better…

Several of the floors we passed did have a few ghouls milling about amongst the bones of their dead friends. They’d probably all been infiltrators, working with Equestria against the zebras. Now they were mindless zombies. None of them seemed to notice us rush by, either, too busy staring off into space like a foal being taught maths. We didn’t stop, couldn’t, not if the fever was worsening. We kept moving onwards, floor after floor, deeper and deeper into the hive beneath the ground. And then, at long last, the staircase came to an end. The bottom was a smooth, flat surface with only a single doorway leading anywhere.

And the map marker was pointing to that doorway.

I drew my pistol and shot the nearest feral in the head, content to conserve what little was left of my shotgun shells. Cobalt helped me take out the last few, quick and clean before we moved towards that doorway.

See? Small groups of ghouls are manageable, unlike that ridiculous horde back in Haven.

We proceeded through the doorway, moving out into a long and yet familiar corridor. Well, I mean, the corridor appeared almost the same as every other corridor I’d seen in the hive, but…

We emerged from the corridor into a familiar, cavernous chamber.

So I was right, this was the same place from that first memory orb…

And there, right before us, sat the large cogwheel entrance of Stable 84.

There it was... Wow, we’d made it. After all of that, we’d finally made it. The door certainly looked a fair bit grimier than I’d seen in the memory orb, but in that the door had been brand new. It’s been two hundred years ago, but this was the here and now. The large room was free of skeletons or ghouls, the large cog silent and foreboding. The last thing between us and medical help for Stripe.

Cobalt approached the door slowly, an almost disbelieving expression on his face. He looked up at the faded ‘84’ displayed proudly in the centre of the stable door, before he moved over the control panel.

“Get us inside,” I asked of him. “You remember the password, right?”

“Of course,” he said as he turned the console’s display on, the screen flickering to life. “Hm, the last opening was the day the bombs fell…”

I guess that means none of the changelings who returned afterwards survived the radiation…

“Right, here we are…” he muttered as he worked the console, muttering the password as he imputed it. “For… the… hive…”

There was a sudden click, and then the warning light above the door began to flare as the alarm began to sound.

An alarm that probably was echoing throughout the entire damned hive…

“Damn it, that’s going to bring every damned ghoul down onto our heads!” Cobalt shouted in alarm as he shot back from the console, the doors mechanism working from within.

“Get inside! Quick!” I shouted back as I got close to the door.

An eardrum bursting metallic screech assaulted our ears, the door suddenly being pulled back into the stable before rolling to the side, revealing the entrance within. We wasted no time in slipping into the great fallout shelter, rushing up the first few stairs and up onto the platform with the other control panel for the door. Cobalt hit it immediately, the alarm beginning to blare again as the giant mechanical arm above our heads moved into position. I just saw the first few ghouls rushing into the chamber as the massive stable door rolled back into place, before being pushed fully closed by the arm alongside another deafening screech of metal scraping against metal.

And then the stable was sealed once more.

My E.F.S. dinged, and the words ‘Locate Stable 84’ appeared with a little tick next to it. Then it faded, and upon checking my E.F.S. I realised I had no more objective markers.

“What? Does saving my friend not count as one?” I hissed at the PipBuck.

‘Save Stripe’ appeared in my vision.

Huh…

That aside, I examined the stable entrance. It was a simple armoured box-shaped room, there was a single door leading out of it, a platform containing the control panel with some railings around it stopping people stepping off into the door’s mechanism, and steps leading down to the stable door itself.

Well, there was only one way to go now, and nothing on my E.F.S. as of yet…

“Shall we?” I said to Cobalt, making sure Stripe was secured on my back as I walked towards the interior door. It was a sliding door, grey metal with a yellow stripe containing the Stable-Tec logo and the stable number on it. “We get Stripe to the infirmary, changelings or no changelings, and then get your data.”

“And your haul?” he asked.

“We’ll figure that out later,” I said as I pressed a button, the door sliding open with a hiss.

There was a hallway beyond, quite a short one with another door a couple metres in front. The hallway was otherwise pretty plain aside from an air vet to the right, which was directly above a large window into some kind of office. There was a poster on the other wall with a winking Stable Colt, the words ‘A better future, underground’ written beneath him.

Yeah, better future. Right…

We stepped into the corridor, and I had a quick peek into the office behind the window. I couldn’t see much inside, just a few machines with blinking lights on the far wall and… yes, I think some kind of console below the window on the office’s side.

“Looks like a security station,” Cobalt noted. “Probably hasn’t seen usage in two hundred years, though.”

“I doubt they get much traffic through here,” I remarked, ready to move on. I didn’t know how long Stripe had, so it’d be a straight run to medical from here on out…

Wait, a green bar had just popped up on my E.F.S., out of the blue…

“Scrap…” Cobalt muttered with a small amount of alarm as a figure stepped into the security station.

A changeling. Not a ghoul, not like the ones outside. No, this was a fully alive and well changeling. He was wearing a blue uniform with some kind of security barding covering it, a bored expression on his face as the changeling’s blue eyes glanced over the console before he sat at the station and looked up through the window.

The moment he saw us, his jaw dropped with his blue orbs going completely wide, staring at us in complete shock and disbelief.

And then his bar turned red.

Before I could even shout in alarm, the changeling had slammed his hoof down onto some button or another with a look of pure panic, the door we’d come through shutting tightly behind us. Cobalt ran back to the door, pressing the button to open it to no avail. Likewise, I ran to the door directly ahead and tried that one. Damn, we were locked in!

“Give me a minute, I can probably force it open!” he shouted at me, running over to my door and using his magic to pry open the panel the button was on.

Then an alarm sounded, and I smelt something.

“Ngh, they’re pumping something in!” I warned Cobalt, looking up to see the vent pumping some kind of gas into the chamber. It was- woah… I was starting to spin… or was that the world…?

Ugh, dammit! I had to stay awake, I had to…

Cobalt grunted beside me, hard at work on the console. But then I started to see his eyes droop and his limbs go limp, before he then collapsed completely.

“C-Cobalt…” I gasped as the world began to sway some more.

I had to stay up, had… to…

My legs gave way, my PipBuck giving some kind of warning as I hit the ground. Stripe became dislodged from my back, rolling off and in front of me.

Everything was going dark, and all feeling was leaving my body…

Was this… dying…?

I reached out my hoof towards Stripe, trying so hard to reach her. She was so close, and yet so far away. I was trying, I really was trying…

And then everything went black.


Footnote: Level 15

New Perk: Stable Explorer! – You have discovered Stable 84, congrats! For this momentous occasion, have one more point to your SPECIAL. Because believe me, Scavenger, you’ll need it…