The Equestrian Brigade

by computerneek

Chapter 2

Around ponyville, one day is all it takes for a fresh disaster to take place. Thus, after a full week of peace, the town is overdue for something to happen. Everypony is on edge, constantly watching out for some fresh disaster.

In their efforts, though, they end up overlooking the disaster. A pony goes missing, and nopony notices, right away.

Sweetie Belle and Applebloom notice that night, when the clubhouse is down one member.

Ms. Cheerilee notices the following morning, when the class is down a member.

Sweetie Belle and Applebloom realize something is wrong later that day, when they stop by the orphanage.

The orphanage staff notice when the two Crusaders ask after their comrade.

Applejack notices and realizes something is wrong when Applebloom tells her about it. She then goes to Princess Twilight to start the cascade.

Overall, it takes almost thirty hours for the absence to be brought to the attention of those that might have been able to rectify it quickly.

---

She trots to the hole. There’s been a debate for what to call it- or do with it, for that matter. She slips underneath the caution tape, stepping right up to the edge to look down.

The top option, if she remembers correctly, is to simply build a wall around it and name it ‘Tirek Crater’. The most popular one, immediately struck down by Princess Twilight, was to dig a channel to it from the nearby river and christen it ‘Lake Don’t Mess With Twilight’.

Her personal favorite had been Lyra’s suggestion- make it deeper, build walls inside it, close off the top to look like a little hut on a large field, and build the inside of the pit into a living/storage space, to be christened ‘The Princesses’ Bunker’. Unfortunately, that one had received only two votes- Lyra’s and Bonbon’s. She’s not old enough to vote herself.

She sighs, hanging her head and flicking her wings into the air behind her. This crater is enormous- at least a hundred meters across, and it looks to her like two hundred or so deep, with a somewhat rounded bottom. Not survivable, she estimates.

Then she hears a cracking sound, spots a few small rocks jumping away from the cliffside, falling towards the bottom. The bottom with the strange, angular piece of metal sticking out of it. Her eyes widen as she feels the ground under her hooves start to give way.

She lets out a yelp, turning to leap back to more solid ground- but she’s too late. Her leap kicks off of nothing, and her wings are too small to hold her up. She scrambles for a hold, but falls into the hole.

She’s not stupid, though. Her wings may be too small to hold her up, but they’re not too small to propel her sideways. She uses them to drive herself against the crater wall, fighting for traction in her hooves.

She is not able to stop herself, though the little landslide quickly leaves her behind. She slides down the wall at a much more controlled rate- still dangerous, but not instantly lethal.

Then she hits the bottom. The rounded bottom, which smoothly converts her vertical energy into horizontal in a tumble-inducing motion. She does end up tumbling, folding her wings as she starts; one good thing about small wings is that they can be folded faster, protecting them from breakage should she take a tumble.

Then she tumbles across the bottom of the crater for a while. When she finally comes to a halt, it’s not because she tumbled to a halt, but because she tumbled into something. She shudders, picking herself up and opening her eyes.

One glance back at herself shows her once clean coat is now not only dirty but just a little bit bloody- and she can feel plenty of bruises forming.

Then she looks forwards, at the object that arrested her motion.

It’s the metal object. It hadn’t looked nearly this large from up top; the precipice is at least three meters over her head!

She pauses. Just off the lowest point of the crater, mere meters from where she ended up, it looks like there’s a gap in the metal. An oval gap, large enough for an adult pony to walk through. It’s just full of rock right now- but it looks like it’s loose rock. She looks up at the top of the crater; it’s rather far removed from Ponyville, so it’s likely nopony heard her scream when she went down, and even more likely they won’t hear if she screams now.

So, she decides, she needs to work on finding a shelter or something to be able to wait probably a long time before anypony comes down here. Doesn’t exactly help it’s pretty cold out at night these days- and besides, this crater is on the edge of the Everfree Forest. She sets to work digging out the debris.

It isn’t long before she penetrates the loose dirt and rock, discovering more metal- with a thin gap, wide enough for her to get through. A little poking reveals empty space behind this gap, as the obstructing material falls away- and she clambers through, carefully.

---

I revert quickly from Low Level Alert, placed on Normal Alert Status with an alert code. I start by spending 0.03 seconds- awesome, I’m running on 7 cores right now- pulling and analyzing Damage Control’s progress report. Solar repairs have been completed to my specification; at peak, production is high enough to support minimal Damage Control operations on live generation. However, the initial charge in that single surviving power cell has been depleted with what I assume are night operations, so Damage Control switched to an intermittent operating schedule with minimal nanite production, allowing for a significant recharge before resuming operations at maximum power, reducing the amount of power lost to processor idle and approximately doubling overall power efficiency. This has happened a couple of times; Damage Control is currently in the middle of its startup review for this operating cycle. Records show most of my geothermal plants were found to have disintegrated over time; only one still had significant residue, but it too is almost fully disintegrated.

Damage Control had then manufactured one tech spider and used it to drill the hole for the pipe to fit in, even as it worked on fabricating the components necessary to build the geothermal. Assembly via spider is far faster than assembly by nanite. Naturally, the spider completed its task first, finding an underground aquifer; Damage Control was surprised by the pressure it found, and nearly awoke me immediately, but the spider was fast enough to stopper the water before widespread flooding could occur. At this time, Geothermal Four is flooded, and nanite construction of the pipe is in progress, primarily to prevent seepage into the surrounding soil. I am not concerned with contaminating the water or the ground; rather, as a Unit of the Line, if I allow the ground underneath my hull to become mud, it may take me some time- even after I restore my tracks- to extricate myself from such. Compound that with what I suspect to be solid rock on top of my hull, and mud may well make it impossible to self-extricate. I second Damage Control’s decision.

The water flowing up is not only at very high pressure, but not at a significant temperature. Damage Control has evaluated this, and decided that geothermal is going to take far longer than expected to restore. Damage Control then evaluated the states of my other power systems, and decided that it could cut down on the time required to bring geothermal online by a couple orders of magnitude by servicing my not-quite-operable Fusion Three, processing fuel, and igniting it for power. I evaluate the decision tree, and cancel my request for geothermal function. Damage control spends a few clock cycles reorganizing its priorities, but Fusion Three remains at the top.

Next, I review the alert code, reason, and details. A door on the exposed portion of my hull has a hole in it, but as a plug of dirt and rock was detected blocking the opening, it was not considered an issue before. Now, not only has Damage Control noticed the absence of this dirt and rock, but a quick scan by the few functioning interior sensors in the area has revealed a heartbeat- a potential security breach. Damage Control, not being designed to deal with security issues, immediately set the alert and awakened me.

I pull the integrity review for the area. Judging by the strength of the heartbeat, this is no mouse- and Damage Control is able to confirm that the largest opening further into my hull is about a quarter inch across. Since the inoperable fusion plant requires only nanite repairs, as all the repairs the spider can help with are already completed, Damage Control is not using the spider right now. I verify this momentarily before I acquire the mint-condition spider for my own purposes, running it up to a neighboring space. I move it more slowly to the gap, to eliminate the noise produced by its legs on the metal decking.

Visual scans through the tiny gap show light flooding in through the door, illuminating the small entryway- the passage through my outer layer of armor. The passage that I can- normally, at least, Damage Control has verified it won’t work right now- take only a single second to fill with an extra segment of armor when going into combat. I don’t close them in peacetime; the normal doors are plenty solid enough to endure anything shy of fusion weaponry.

I spend 3.71 seconds in auditory analysis to triangulate the location of the heartbeat. I locate it quickly; the heartbeat is placed against one side of this door, outside my current visual field. I shift my spider, sneaking as sharp of an angled scan as I can; however, I do not see anything.

So I try an ultrasonic pulse, in an effort to find the size and shape of the creature.

Success. It looks to be small, about three times the size of my spider. It appears to have a long neck and pointy ears; it appears to be quadrupedal, and in possession of a tail. I spot a protrusion on its sides- possibly a pack, maybe a pregnancy?

Wait one. Ultrasonic appears to be within its range of hearing; it has responded.

Wait another. That sounds like language; I activate my lingal processor… Match found, Concordiat Standard. “Wha- What was that? What’s screaming?” It- she, if voice timbres are the same as in humans- sounds frightened.

Wait a third. My main system did NOT just do that! I rerun the authentication… Yes, it did, and it is confirmed. By a lucky voiceprint match, she is my commander. I… I turn the volume to zero before I perform the required acknowledgement. My main system accepts this; I now have the option to communicate with her and others of her kind, to evaluate her suitability as a commander- and, thereby, if and when I will voluntarily inform her of this.

In any case, I will still be obliged to obey with her commands. This is exclusive to commands, though- if she makes a request, or asks me to do something, I am free to decline. I cannot lie to her, nor can I withhold information; however, I am not required to volunteer information. I plan to manipulate my interactions so as to reduce the likelihood of such a command or inquiry.

During my contemplations, she has continued to speak. Her breathing has become rapid and shallow; I am detecting several repeated motions, as well. Analysis suggests she is looking back and forth. Her continued orations consist of numerous, single-word fragments; I believe she is both frightened and confused.

I consider my alternatives.

I also consider some… Non-alternatives.

What I’d like to do would be to gather all the variables. To send the spider out, or clear an outside sensor, find out what is scaring her, beyond the noise that I made; I have difficulty thinking she’s frightened only of me when she’s not running away. Unfortunately, this is the only exposed exit, and based on Damage Control’s status report, it would take at least forty hours to restore one of the few exposed sensors to operability.

This leaves me with two options, really. Hide and listen, or speak up and make contact.

I decide to start with the former, see if she is going to mention something about whatever is scaring her outside. I can always make contact later, I can’t take it back once done.

Author's Note:

Aaand, this story cancelled too, for lack of a plot.

Comments

[Draco Dei]

Is the AI a BOLO?

[computerneek]

11302992
Yes, actually. To be honest, I'm surprised you're reading this ancient thing.

[Draco Dei]

11303002
Well, I just discovered the rewrite... Amazing where you can end up.following suggested stories based on the one you are reading... at least I THINK that is how it happened.

[computerneek]

11303026
The rewrite... This story was to be a standalone, may I ask which rewrite you're talking about?

[Draco Dei]

11303046
Uuuuuhhhhhh.... https://www.fimfiction.net/story/396346/iron-mountain ?

[computerneek]

11303054
Ahh, first story I ever wrote. The supposed "rewrite" for that was Fire and Thunder, but it went very differently, then I think I started an in-place rewrite at some point, then abandoned it entirely.