Chapter 29
Make Highball stay: 42%
Silver sighed and pulled out her revolvers. Highball winced and drew back, unsure of what she intended, but she popped open the cylinders and deftly fed a fresh load of bullets into the chambers. She gave each one a good spin to test the oil and the action before snapping them closed and tucking them away in her holsters. Finally, she gestured vaguely off to her side. “Sit,” she told him. “Gotta wait for the rest of the Gang to turn up.”
Though Highball hesitated, he ultimately did as bid, keeping a comfortable distance between him and this armed stranger. Still, he couldn’t keep his eyes off of Kestrel. “You part of her gang, then?”
“Nah, I’m just the milkmare.” Silver snickered and nodded. “Kessie took me under her wing a few months back. I threw away a life of luxury so I could be a gunslinger. Call me stupid, I ain’t gonna mind. Probably what I am.”
She could tell by the faint expression on Highball’s face that he was thinking about it, but he still had the worry—or common sense—to not rise to the bait of an armed outlaw. “She still with Tumbleweed?”
“Tumbleweed’s our leader,” Silver said. “It’s more than just him and Kessie these days.”
“I always figured he’d build a posse in time, assuming the law didn’t get him first.”
“They’re tryin’,” Silvie said with a wink. “We just crossed the San Palomino to get away from the Pinks. Though considerin’ how bad we botched this job, ain’t gonna be long ‘fore the Pinks are back on us.”
“If you’ll pardon me for saying it, then I’m glad that your mare with the dynamite botched the toss,” Highball said. “Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t be here now.”
“Yeah, guess that worked out well in the end.” Silver looked the train engine up and down. “Kessie told me you went north when you got bought out. What you doin’ all the way down here on a military train?”
Highball shrugged. “Company closed down. The Apples, they buy companies up and then prune off the dead weight. Their conglomerate wants to own Equestria’s food supply from top to bottom. That means the fields that grow the food, the factories that process it, the trains that ship it, and the markets that sell it. But to do that, they have to be efficient. My company got merged with another, and then they shed all the ponies they figured they didn’t need. I was one of them.”
Silver felt bad for him in her heart, but she tried her best to not let it show. She was an outlaw, and outlaws had to be feared and respected for other ponies to take them seriously. “Didn’t you have brothers who needed your pay?”
“They’re grown now—mostly,” Highball said. “They can look after themselves. Me, I just took whatever job I could get. Army needs contractors, and I may have been a conductor, but army engineer pays more.”
“Well,” Silver said with a chuckle. “Be glad that we’re the ones who robbed you and not the Vipers.”
“That another gang here?” Highball asked. “I’ve only run the route a few times, and we don’t stay in Rock Ridge that long.”
Silver nodded. “They’re vicious and mean. We only ran into them briefly, but we fought over a take. There’s more of ‘em than us, so we’re tryin’ to steer clear.”
“I see.” Highball let out a sigh of relief, perhaps realizing how much worse the day’s ordeals could have been. “My wife is going to be happy about that. She wasn’t keen on me contracting with the army, but bills have to be paid and food’s gotta be put on the table, so…”
He looked over to see Silver giving him a surprised look. “Your… wife?” she asked.
Highball’s eyes darted away from Silver, only to settle on Kestrel. His cheeks flushed a faint red, and he found an interesting cactus to look at instead. “Yeah… guess Kestrel told you how things… things ended between us…”
The sound of hooves drumming over flat desert ground perked Silver’s ears, and she drew both her revolvers on instinct as she hopped to her hooves. “Tumbleweed?” she shouted, tensing in anticipation of who would round the corner of the coal car and step into her line of fire.
It wasn’t Tumbleweed, but Roughshod’s broad shoulders and huge frame were unmistakable for anypony else. “Silver?” he growled, and Silvie couldn’t help but notice the edge of surprise in his voice. No doubt he figured she and Kestrel would be dead after chasing the train by themselves. He gripped his revolver between his teeth, and Silver found herself staring down the barrel for just a moment before he lowered it and tilted his head toward Highball. “You ain’t killed this bastard yet?”
Highball shrank back, but Silver hopped off the engine and put herself between the two stallions. “He surrendered,” she told him, holstering her revolvers once more. “Kestrel got shot bad, and he was helpin’ me look for a potion to help her.”
Roughshod glanced over her shoulder, and his brow lowered when he saw Kestrel passed out against the engine controls. “Bitch ain’t dead? Damn. I was hopin’ she’d bite it when she chased the train.”
Silver bristled and her feathers puffed out some along her wings in indignation, but she quickly remembered who she was dealing with. Roughshod and Kestrel didn’t like each other, but they had a grudging respect for each other’s abilities. “We wasn’t gonna let it get away,” she growled back. “You should be happy we got it stopped. Where’s the others?”
“Comin’,” Roughshod said, and he finally holstered his revolver. He pointed back the way he came. “In fact, here the boss is now.”
It took a few seconds more, but Tumbleweed finally caught up to them, red in the face and his neck slick with sweat. He took a moment to rest against the car and catch his breath before looking around. “Well I’ll be,” he said, a smirk momentarily taking shape across his muzzle. “I didn’t think you two had it in you.”
Silver smiled back, then grunted and winced when her injured foreleg shot a stab of pain up to her shoulder. “Took a few hits, but we stopped it. Kessie’s hurt though. You got the wagons?”
“I put Kestrel’s recent disappointments to work haulin’ them over,” Tumbleweed said. “Snapshot’s makin’ sure they don’t screw that one up, too. I had half a mind to toss them off the bridge, but when I saw you stopped the train, I figured they could be useful for somethin’.”
Then he turned his eyes to Highball, who until now had remained quiet. His jaw hung slightly agape, and it seemed like it took him a few seconds to realize that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. “Highball?” he finally asked. “What’re you doin’ here?”
“Army pays better than Apples,” Highball said, nervously smiling. “It’s a small world, isn’t it?”
“You’re tellin’ me.” Tumbleweed held out his hoof, and Highball gingerly shook it. “I wish we had time to chat and catch up, I really do, old friend. But we need to liberate you of your cargo and send you on your way.” He turned back to Silver. “Did you and Kessie take care of everypony on the train?”
Silver cringed as she shook her head. “The officer got away. Officer Dash, I think Highball called her.” She looked at Highball for confirmation and the engineer nodded.
Does Tumbleweed know who Officer Dash is? No
Tumbleweed frowned at the desert sands, then at Silver, then finally at Kestrel. “That’s gonna come back to haunt us,” he finally said. “She knows your faces. Still, Rock Ridge is an hour’s flight from here. We have time before she gets there, organizes a posse, and flies back.”
Does Highball know more about the officer? Yes
“Not as much time as you think,” Highball said. “That Officer Dash, she’s a first lieutenant in the Equestrian Royal Army. She reports directly to Captain Spitfire of the Equestrian Air Legions. She’s a young officer, but she’s already got an outsized name for herself. She’s one of the fastest pegasi I’ve ever seen, if not the fastest in Equestria.”
“Everypony claims they’re the fastest at some point or another,” Tumbleweed said, dismissively.
“Not this one. They say she can do a Sonic Rainboom.”
Tumbleweed faltered slightly. “Is that so?”
Highball nodded.
Still, Tumbleweed remained unconvinced. “You ever see her do it?”
“Not me, but I know ponies who say they have.”
Silver looked back and forth between the two stallions, growing more restless. She, like every pegasus, knew just how fast you had to be to break the sound barrier. And while her military dress and gear would slow her down some, the fact that this Rainbow Dash could fly that fast… “We need to get goin’,” Silver said. “She could be back much faster than we think.”
“The wagons are comin’,” Tumbleweed said. “Did you find anythin’ good on the train?”
Silver nodded. “Payroll, supplies, and weapons. Nitroglycerin, too.”
The three stallions all raised their eyebrows. “Nitroglycerin?” Roughshod asked. He whistled and shook his head. “Glad we didn’t blow the bridge, then.”
“The lieutenant didn’t say we’d be carrying cargo like that…” Highball muttered to himself.
Tumbleweed, for his part, merely nodded. “We ain’t leavin’ without the payroll at the least,” he said. “It should be easiest to move, and we ain’t goin’ back to camp with empty hooves. Silvie, you looked through the train, so you’d know best; what should we move before company finds us?”
1. Only the payroll. We ain’t got enough time to get more than we can fit on a wagon and get away with. We clean the train out of its payroll, throw Kessie in the wagon, and leave the other behind for now, we can get outta here before that Rainbow Dash pony returns with a posse to gun us down. That ain’t a fight we gonna win if Kessie’s too hurt to help.
2. Take both the payroll and raid the nitro car. Nitroglycerin might not be the only thing in that supplies car I went through. I found healin’ potions there; who knows what else we could find? Might be invaluable things we ain’t gonna get our hooves on anywhere else. [GAIN SUPPLY: NITROGLYCERIN]
3. Take the payroll and empty the weapons car. Chatter guns, though heavy and hard to move about, could really help protect camp. We could also put one on a wagon if we needed a little offensive firepower, but it’ll take several ponies to get it removed from the armored car so we ain’t lootin’ much else while we’re at it. [CAMP DEFENSE UPGRADE]
4. Supplies above all else. This train is stuffed with goods and supplies meant for Fort Harmony, but we should take ‘em for ourselves instead. Good supplies mean we don’t have to risk goin’ into town if we’re wanted, and we’ll have plenty to survive off of in case we gotta flee camp. Plus, it might lift spirits some, especially if there’s booze involved. [GANG MORALE +1]
5. Loot everything we can. We’ll almost certainly get caught by a posse comin’ back to reclaim the train, but the officer only saw two of us try and take it. She might underestimate how many of us there are now that the rest of the Gang’s here, and we could win a shootout. [VERY HIGH RISK, HIGH REWARD]
(Confidence Required: 40 Votes)
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So at some point, either the pinks or the vipers are gonna come for us. A camp defense upgrade, while not useful in the short run, would be very useful then. Might even end up convincing them not to raid us. Leaving without nitroglycerin is unfortunate, but something we can live with. Inadequate camp defenses are bound to get everyone killed.
Get the weapons too. I have a funny feeling that this attack of ours means that, someway down the line, our camp is gonna get attacked
Ooo, he's got a wife.
Hey, looks like Highball gets to live.
I want it all, but I think settling for the payroll and the weapons might be best.
Those chatter guns will be invaluable. Get them.
...Oof. I know Kessie's sort of moved on, but she's gonna find out when she wakes up and it's still gonna twinge a bit when she does.
Payroll and Potions for me. Keeping the Gang healthy should be important.
Get the payroll and guns, then blow the bridge with the nitro and run the train down it. Destroy some evidence, maybe hurt Dash's credibility. Don't take the Nitro. It's nitroglycerin. Trixie would just blow herself up, or someone would at least. Gunpowder and dynamite.