The Infernal Line, Chapter 4: Scavenger Hunt, Part 3
“Done…” Cpl. Stardust Painter tightened the last of the bolts sealing the access door leading to the vault.
He’d also sealed up the door to the actual vault, but not before Sgt. Amethyst Flare left a nice, little spell to deal with the humidity they’d let in… They couldn’t let that precious metal tarnish, after all.
They’d not even bothered to replace the mud, leaving the tunnel they’d dug; there wasn’t much point, and the mud—much of it flowing away—matched the stuff in the sewer’s corridor… the stuff they’d slogged a half-mile through, so they weren’t worried about anypony noticing anything strange about the area.
Amethyst nodded to the corporal, “Good.”
The four of them sat at the “entryway” before the door, the only dry place available. With 25 pounds of gold and 40 of silver split among them, they prepared to move along, but not before taking a breather. They were in a hurry, sure, but other than Pvt. Mercury Rise, the ponies were sick with fatigue; that slog was exhausting.
Amethyst said reluctantly, “I wanted to save all the food for the trip back to the caves, but we need to eat something… We need a little sugar… Take in a few chunks of dried fruit.”
Not inexperienced with miserable situations, Cpl. Painter and Spc. Hemp tiredly nodded and stuck their faces in their bags for a snack.
Amethyst prodded Mercury, “If you think you can stomach it, I’d have a morsel… Even you’ll feel better.”
He didn’t argue, “Yes, ma’am…”
She smiled, watching him dig for a piece of the dried mango of which they had so much… Yup, he was just an innocent kid…
The sergeant yawned, stretching; she occasionally felt too old for this shit. Deciding to allocate to her stomach a special treat she’d been saving, she ate some caramel apple chips.
Admittedly, all of them felt pretty good after a snack and some water.
And so, at 22:50, they set out.
Zip rubbed his eyes and focused on a point on the wall to relieve his vision. His head hurt some, and he momentarily reflected on that which he’d read.
Private Poplar Shade’s file had interested him little. The unicorn had some training as an instrumentation technician, which didn’t exactly lend itself to the war-zone in which he’d briefly found himself. Zip wondered why Jacinta hadn’t put him with the engineers when she’d made the error of packing almost all the war vets in a squad together, as was done with Pvt. Shade, but she’d made the decision based on where he’d been as opposed to what he could do; he didn’t dwell on it, with her giving most of the platoon the same preliminary treatment.
What Zip knew about the guy wasn’t expanded upon all that much. Pvt. Shade was something of a square peg crammed into a round hole, never really meshing with his current or previous unit; his lack of harmonizing with his old comrades was why he was sent out to Port.
It wasn’t like ponies weren’t given a reason for disliking him. He was a known cheat, a suspected thief, and a compulsive gambler, and he was unpopular at most gatherings for these reasons. Apparently, he’d even skipped going to the Military Ball to go shoot dice somewhere downtown.
But he’d done well as Cpl. Little Song’s technician, though even she only tolerated him; Little Song was kinder than most, and she gave him more chances than Zip thought reasonable. For somepony that didn’t fit in, he surely faded into the background, nonetheless.
Zip knew he’d need Pvt. Shade, and he knew he’d need Little Song; Spc. Trip Wire and Pvt. Caramel Crunch were on the same list. Somepony needed to put together the multi-channel device and forge the magic-conductive stakes they’d be using to focus their magic for the firetrap in the pass, and the four of them would be spearheading that portion of the project. He was confident they’d be able to do the job.
Speaking of Pvt. Crunch, Zip finally gave her file a more thorough reading; he’d been the least concerned with her as far as his replacements went, and he simply didn’t do anything more than scan her file. Even Spc. Cocoa Butter raised more red flags than her, looking as stoned as he did, though his living was clean as an operating room.
Private Crunch was a small-town filly who’d joined the army to get off the family farm; it was a good life and she’d had a stellar childhood, but she wanted something else. She’d trained as a machinist and had done a “good” job at Appleloosa Outpost #1 but requested to go to Port City (probably to get away from the countryside). Zip reasoned she’d improved a great deal in her new environment, appearing to “match her surroundings” when it came to work.
Trip loved Pvt. Crunch, and the two were good friends, often working together on all manner of things. Everypony loved Pvt. Crunch. Zip knew he enjoyed her good cheer, often chuckling when he thought about her conduct the night of the Military Ball… There wasn’t much to say past her being a good soldier and a good pony.
The lieutenant had also taken another look at Pvt. Linseed Oil’s and Pvt. Blood Sapphire's, and he was a lot less worried than the ponies that had written up the psychiatric sections of their files. Zip knew Linseed wasn’t the “clinically-depressed necrophiliac” that frequented the morgue, just as he knew Blood wasn’t crazy.
Both of them were different, and their place in a combat situation was questionable, but the two of them had done more for the impending defense of Equestria than anypony had: they’d had a plan—a feasible, gruesome plan—and had provided some real hope.
Hope had been lacking; Zip had no delusions otherwise.
That said, having analyzed Mercury’s papers for the umpteenth time and finding nothing, Zip had moved to the classified material, knowing he’d certainly be looking at the first two bags of files again before long.
The SECRET files had more upsetting revelations, though this wasn’t unexpected.
The leader of Amethyst’s 1st Team, Cpl. Aster Yellows, had been court-martialed for embezzling from his old battalion’s “slush-fund”. Zip’s current head cook and master of magical charms was craftier than Zip had imagined, but an error in his scheme—that went unnoticed for six months—finally caught up to him; the algorithm he’d concocted began taking entire bits instead of the fractions of bits generated by rounding down on whole bits.
Being as good as he was in practical charms, he was given a chance to serve out his term in Port City—a great demotion from magical development—instead of serving it out in prison or a work-camp. It had been kept fairly quiet, and the amount he’d funneled into his own pockets only amounted to about 700 bits—enough to pay for a couple months’ rent in some crappy apartment—so it was easier to go that route.
After Cpl. Yellows’s file, Zip had read Cpl. Raspberry Jam’s.
Embezzling was bad, Zip certainly knew; it was just leeching money from others for one’s own benefit. Compared to that, what Cpl. Jam had done was tame and mostly harmless in Zip’s eyes. He’d run an illegal gambling hall out of a warehouse on his old base… very intricate and found by mistake one night, when a colonel had shown up for a surprise inspection.
Had Cpl. Jam been caught by somepony even as high as a battalion commander—a major or lieutenant colonel—it might’ve been swept under the rug, as none of them kept their hooves all that clean. However, their new brigade commander—a mare looking to clean up her new charge—had caught them. Even this was kept pretty quiet, though Cpl. Jam took the blame and was sent off to Port City.
It just seemed unfair to Zip… Most ponies gambled a little in questionable places, even the officers condemning it… And Cpl. Jam hadn’t made a profit off it, it wasn’t some scam or moneylending or loansharking operation, and not a single soldier had put themselves into destitution. All he’d done was run a few card and dice games—with a little sports-betting on the local college’s hoofball team—in a corner of the warehouse, where they drank beer and enjoyed themselves.
As good with logistics as he was, Cpl. Jam was sent out to Port instead of being discharged. After all, they’d gotten rid of him, evidently punishing him, and they’d actually sent somepony useful out there.
What upset Zip were the things he learned about his lady corporals, Little Song and Lily Hawk.
Corporal Little Song had been Sgt. Little Song, as reading her file’s cover had told a shocked Zip. He’d seen her “normal” file, which Amethyst hadn’t bothered to bring along, and there wasn’t a thing in that half-assed skim of a report that the real thing didn’t cover.
It wasn’t pretty. The modest, charming mare they knew and loved had been previously assigned to a platoon down south and had caught the eye of her company commander. The long and short of it was that Little Song was allegedly sexually assaulted by her captain, and it was settled as a misunderstanding “out of court-martial”. The lovely mare of whom he’d asked a lot of advice on dealing with Jacinta and Amethyst was discretely removed from her position and sent away.
It was bullshit, Zip knew, and he was furious at the army for some of the things they did! He’d suspected—and was right—that if the world had a little more justice in it, the truth would make for a much uglier presentation.
…Not that he didn’t see the truth…
Zip had come across it only two or three times, her slanted script being unmistakable, but Amethyst had included some magically written notes in a couple files. It was a high crime, modifying a file, even if it was obviously not officially added… Then again, Amethyst flagrantly committed high crimes just about any time she went looking for information. And given Amethyst’s ability to read the mind when she really wanted to—and the possibility Little Song had shared her experiences with her older friend, or Amethyst had just found out somehow—Zip believed what he read.
The “alleged sexual assault” solved “out of court-martial” consisted of Little Song’s company commander restraining her by magic and raping her in the ladies’ room at the previous year’s Hearth’s Warming Eve party; she’d been spurning his advances for weeks, even making an official complaint (that was ignored), and he’d finally gone for it when he was drunk.
If that hadn’t been bad enough, the captain came from a rich-as-shit family, and the whole thing was messily—though thoroughly—covered up due to their connections. She hadn’t been sent out to Port because she was a good engineer… she’d been sent because she was a “mentally-unstable liar” who was a good engineer; if she’d been less useful to the army, they would’ve simply dismissed her.
Zip had read a few sad, miserable things that night. Some of his ponies came from unhappy circumstances—alcohol abuse in the family, other abuse, poverty, and more—but that was seen in ponies in every line of work.
This was the first time that night Zip actually felt sick… and the first time he broke down and cried… If he’d only known the hurts Little Song carried… his gentle friend… he’d…!
Well, he’d probably be powerless to do much… and that hurt almost as much.
Having caught the reader up to the present time, Zip had to take another break, and his eyes drifted to the pocket-watch sitting on his makeshift desk.
23:03… Zip sighed.
He wasn’t far off from having gone through every file. He’d be doing so again, but… he would have an honest attempt under his belt.
Wiping his eyes and taking a refreshing drink of water, he opened Cpl. Lily Hawk’s SECRET file.
He expected nothing pleasant and was so rewarded for his thinking.
Zip knew Lily's father was in prison—had been for years, but he didn't know Lily's mother was something of a no-show. Lily Hawk wasn’t even her real name, or rather, her original name; she’d been Brook Bluebonnet, NP (nurse practitioner), and she’d been a medical student. The braided, two-tone mane with which Zip was so familiar had been dyed a shocking indigo in laborious curls.
Zip recalled his first impression of the noncom mares in his company… Amethyst was an Equestrian belle, Little Song was pretty in a demure way, and Jacinta…
Well, Jacinta had been the most gorgeous mare Zip had ever seen, and this hadn’t changed, but just looking at pictures of Lily, it was possible Jacinta would've been given a run for her money. Unfortunately, Lily’s phenomenal beauty, replaced by her current—but attractive—practicality, was the only good thing about her file.
Lily had done modeling to help pay for medical school; nursing wasn’t always the most lucrative profession, especially if a pony only did it part-time. When modeling hadn’t been enough to pay her mounting bills, she’d resorted to exotic dancing.
Zip saw these pictures, and feeling his second boner of the night wrestle around in his uniform, he breathed, “Holy shit…”
He said the same thing when he saw the next batch of pictures, and if he’d gotten worked up even a little more than he had, he would’ve had to go choke the chicken in the corner. Even with the couple of lie-downs he’d had with Jacinta, he was feeling repressed, and it wasn’t taking much to get him hot-and-bothered. He couldn’t help it, even with their terrible situation.
Lily had done pornography, specifically peepshows.
Zip blew out a breath… This was unexpected…
With her sometimes-wild “second life”, she fell into regular alcohol and drug use—if not abuse—and her “real life” suffered. After a wild night entertaining some big-shots in hard commodities, she’d carelessly administered the wrong IV bag to that filly, killing her.
Lily’s mugshot… Zip didn’t think he could imagine a more guilty and hurt-looking pony; it was as if her soul was being tormented.
Zip knew the rest of the story, other than her several suicide attempts, and he took no pleasure in reading about the plea deal that more-or-less legally set her free, besides serving a term in the army. Freedom from the pain he was sure she still felt was more fleeting, he supposed. Advancing very quickly, she became a corporal in near-record time. As time went on, her career shined, and as far as the army was concerned, her past was some faraway thing.
Her achievements positively glowed.
But as with Little Song, all Zip could think of was his friend... Lily...
“Goddamn it…” Zip wept into his lap.
Wanting to throw the file and its contents against the wall, he instead reassembled it, setting it aside. Falling on his back, unable to calm his crying, he saw the time out of the corner of his eye.
It was 23:17.
Desperate to put his mind elsewhere, he thought of his special team, despite his reading files was meant to distract him from dwelling on their mission. He was beginning to worry some. It was just under four hours since they’d likely entered the sewers.
Barring trouble or other hang-ups, Amethyst had figured they’d be in and out in four hours or less. Zip knew it wasn’t unlikely that it would take longer, but he fretted. And he had no idea of what was going on up there; he and Amethyst had agreed on strict silence from his end, and she wouldn’t be contacting him until they were done… or if they ran into some worst-case scenario, though there wasn’t a thing the platoon would be able to do to help the four.
Feeling his disquiet rise even more than before, he tried to clear his mind of Amethyst’s crew and their mission. There wasn’t anything he could do about it.
But he could do something about the TOP SECRET files sitting beside him; in fact, it was his duty.
So, he got back to it, careful not to let his tears fall on the cover of Sgt. Razor Wire’s file. Just as he was about to open the folder, Zip heard a noise coming from the corridor leading to their communications, where he was holed up. It wasn’t just some dust settling in the caves; somepony was there.
Zip, not bothering to hide his face, determined whoever it was had heard him carrying on, so he said, “Enter.”
It was Sgt. Sweet Clover.
“How long have you been out there, Sergeant…?” Zip growled.
The lieutenant didn’t mean to sound as such, but his voice was hoarse from crying.
“A few moments…” Sergeant Clover didn’t look overly concerned with such things. “Sir, I’m… sorry. I know you asked to not be bothered…”
The sergeant hung his head.
Zip knew it wasn’t for nothing, his sergeant's being there, and he was almost glad to see another face; he cleared his throat, “I’m sorry, Sergeant… My voice is a little shot…”
Sergeant Clover nodded, “I understand, sir…”
Zip knew he did, and he wasn’t worried; he smirked, “Got anything besides water?”
The sergeant blinked, and then he chuckled; he knew what the officer meant, “Yessir… I put together an extract from some of the fruit… It’s just syrup, but it’ll taste nice in the water.”
Zip bade him sit, and the two put a little citrus-flavoring in their canteens.
“Mmm…” Zip murmured. “Orange… Nice on the throat.”
“It’s alright stuff, sir…” Sgt. Clover’s eyes strayed to the pile Zip hadn’t bothered to hide.
Before the sergeant said a thing about it, Zip acknowledged, “Yup… It’s what it looks like…”
“So… Amethyst did save them…” Sgt. Clover said.
“You knew?”
“I knew she’d been scavenging… but I didn’t suspect she’d dragged them out here… Figured they’d just gone up in the prairie fire…”
“Well, I don’t think most of us were paying the best attention,” Zip reasoned.
“So that’s what you’ve been up to…” Sgt. Clover stared at the piles. “That thing still say that I lost my virginity to my third cousin?”
His file did say that, but that wasn’t the funny part.
Sometimes Sgt. Clover knew just how to lighten a heavy load. Zip sputtered and laughed; he laughed hard. Sgt. Clover joined him, but things got somber in a hurry.
“It’s long overdue, Sergeant…” Zip took a drink. “I’ve been shirking my duties.”
The sergeant was quick to contradict him, “Naw… You’ve been doing all you need to, sir… But… I understand why. Hard times are ahead...”
Zip, still not overly embarrassed, rubbed at his eyes.
“Kerchief?”
Zip saw Sgt. Clover hoofing one his way.
“It’s clean, Lieutenant…” he gave a sad smile.
Zip took it gratefully, “Thank you…”
The two sat a moment.
Zip realized the sergeant wasn’t hung up over the files or whatever else he might've been up to; there was something else, “What do you need, Sergeant?”
Without a lot of preamble, Sgt. Clover began, “Sir… I know… we’re dead to the world, and I know it needs to stay that way…”
Zip listened. The painful fact was that everypony his platoon ever knew… friends, family… believed they were all dead; only the highest echelons of Canterlot Command knew what was going on, and to most of the continent, they were “simply” building defenses outside of Canterlot to make a stand against the Centaurs.
Yes, their success rode greatly on secrecy. The world would know when the centaurs did, that 54 ponies were alive—if not well—and raising Hellfire from the ground at the pass.
It crept up on Zip occasionally, that all the ponies he knew and loved back home thought he’d died at the Galloping Gorge along with the rest of the division. The only thing that really kept him shy of falling into despair was the fact he had a job to do and ponies relying on him.
But when he had only his thoughts before him, it was hard. And everypony felt the same, he knew.
“…they may never even know until after the fact, depending on how things go. We have a week, perhaps, before this all changes.”
Zip had spaced out a few seconds, but he didn’t forget… Sgt. Clover was 32-years-old; he had a little more to his life than many of the others. He had a family... a wife and four foals, all of whom were safe—for now—with some relatives near Canterlot. It was even harder to forget such a thing when he'd read Sgt. Clover's file not long before this.
“…and I was hoping that I—that we—all of us—could-”
The lieutenant didn’t mean to be terse, but this was all hitting close to home, “Please make your point, Sergeant.”
He did, “I wish to compose a message to my family. I know they won’t see it until things fall one way or the other, but things will never be the same… I want to… write them as the stallion I am… not the one I’ll become.”
Zip hummed, “I see.”
Sergeant Clover choked up a moment, “I think we should all take the time in the next couple days… and write what we need to. I… think it may help.”
Zip felt much the same and wished to Heaven his parents and his sisters had better consolation than that which they had, but he was skeptical, “You think it’ll help…?”
The sergeant inhaled and blew out a breath, “For some of us… Yessir.”
Zip sighed, “I understand… but I wish to ask advice on it.”
“Advice, sir?”
“Yes… I think you’re right… We need to do it, but I think it needs to be handled a certain way.”
“I get you… I figured on it, regardless… Everypony’s wound up, and…”
“We don’t need anypony falling apart like that… not now and not ever,” Zip finished.
“Yessir.”
“Anything else?”
“No sir… Again, I’m sorry for disturbing you…”
Zip shook his head, “It’s fine, Sergeant. Thank you… Thanks for the kerchief… for the syrup… I feel better.”
The father of four nodded as he began to walk, “Glad to help, sir. Well, I’ll leave you to your work…”
Zip decided to try for some optimism and said, “When I hear from Amethyst, I’ll let you and the others know.”
The sergeant stopped and looked back with a knowing smile, “Yessir…”
With Sgt. Clover gone, Zip considered the time.
23:40. He hadn’t realized how tired he was, but he did feel okay after talking with the sergeant.
Zip still dreaded the last files—especially Amethyst’s. He was making no excuses; he was scared, but he was also finding his eyes heavy.
So, stacking all the files save the TOP SECRET ones—secure beside him—he rested his head on Amethyst’s bags and dozed off a while. He still had time…
Things had been going well in the sewer. Finding a good pace after rest and a snack, it had only taken 40 minutes to get to the pub after leaving the vault.
Breaking off a few copper pipes in the pub’s basement—besides getting sprayed with some nasty water—had been a cakewalk. As with the vault, the four of them reasoned the pub’s basement would be worth raiding if they made it out of the brewing situation alive.
Lots of booze and easy copper…
And then it only took Amethyst—bringing Spc. Hemp along—12 minutes to retrieve the pile of swords she’d stowed off their “beaten path”, while Cpl. Painter and Mercury waited. It was good metal and would make fine instruments of destruction.
At 00:05, they had three of the four components necessary. Soon the night would be over.
The armory was just ahead…
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How many chapters long will this story be?
9984590
The number of chapters depends on editing. The story is about 65% complete.
And now, what to do with a platoon or two of centaurs holed up at the armory…? If this were a US Military, I would think flash bangs and frag grenades would be in the offing. Some Willie Pete to blind and disorient, then the frags to mop up opposition, after using sound suppressed fire to take out the bulk of OpFor. But we're dealing with ponies here and may not even have gun powder enough for a flint lock pistol, so… SHould prove interesting!
9985380
I think they will just sneak in. The centaurs are drunk and have been partying the whole night.
I bet things will not go smoothly though.
They rarely do.
9985410
I can't imagine that the entire operation would go off without some hiccups. That said, Amethyst is capable of killing with but a thought… maybe she could wipe out half of the centaur group before the raid the armory and then they could blast the other all to Hell? IDK…
9985410
9985424
Fudge is closer to being right. Ponies have gunpowder and thermite and TNT, but this calls for a little finesse. They're hoping to be in and out without being noticed, but things never do go perfectly.
9985575
Plus if some monkeyhorses die, it better looks like being an accident or something like that, because otherwise the whole mission would be compromised...
So of course something like this is going to happen.
2rings of Baumkuchen and a few muffins for you. And of course you can choose from a few drinks.
Thank you for the new chapter and hard work.
9985380
So you say, if this were a covert us-military mission, they would just reveal that there are still ponies out there, armed and dangerous?
Huh, Id rather try to get my hands on some nerve gas or hard to find poisons and kill them that way.
I know, less boom, and fun, but hey, at least you stay more or less stealthy.
9989650
I'd like four liters of doppelbock...
9990075
Ok. And for the next day?
9990833
A raspberry kuchen 50 cm across.