Fallout Equestria: Alphabet soup

by Doomande

The day the bombs fell: Miners by Fallingsnow

Lapis Lazuli had been awake for two straight days. As deep as she and her crew were, though, it was easy to lose track of time. The quota numbers floating in her head made it even easier to forget what day it even was. She had lost a lot of sleep lately, but she just pushed through it with a combination of coffee and occasional face slaps.

She spent too little time around other ponies. Running a mining crew of diamond dogs for the last few years had been a bit of an alienating experience for the unicorn mare. “Ugh… I really need a vacation. Someplace nice, with lots of sun and drinks, and if Luna is kind, no diamond dogs.”

“What was that, Chief?” Rosie poked her head out of a tunnel, caked in dirt.

“Nothing Rosie, I’m just running the numbers again.” Technically, she was. The clipboard floating in front of her and the pencil sticking out of her mouth supported the image.

“ We’ve almost got this vein carved out. A whole mess of gemstones. Then we get a break, right?” Rosie had one ear perked up, as ever. She always looked so excited and inquisitive at the same time, it always made Lapis feel a little better. Her crew were good at their jobs, and she enjoyed their presence, but she needed a break.

Lapis smiled lightly and nodded, shifting the pencil to the other side of her mouth as she did so. Break time. The perfect time to put in for a vacation somewhere outside of the Manehattan area. She even had a bit of cake stashed away for an early celebration. They couldn’t say no, not with the numbers her crew put out. There was even rumor of her getting an assignment above ground somewhere. Maybe then she would give in to her mother’s badgering and actually look into getting married.

The war couldn’t go on forever, could it? She had to start thinking about life in a war free Equestria before too long. The Ministry of Morale maintained that the end was just around the corner, and it wasn’t like the Ministry Mare, the Element of Laughter of all ponies, was going to lie. The very idea was laughable.

“Done!” Rosie’s voice echoed from the tunnel she’d just ducked back into, and the rest of the crew let out their customary three barks for a job well .

The four diamond dogs filed into the central tunnel pushing carts loaded to the brim with gems, directing them onto the primary tracks around Lapis. Ace, the alpha of their little pack stood closest to the chief. Rosie fell in place just behind him, alongside Buster and Lola. All four were coated head to tail in dirt, and Lapis smiled up at them. They were all wagging and panting, happy with their work.

Diamond Dogs rarely complained about digging. It made managing them in the mines relatively easy. All she had to do was detect gems, and point her crew in the right direction and stand back. She was so lucky to have them this far away from the main gem mines near Ponyville. She’d heard stories about how unruly the dogs in those mines could get, and was glad that hers were so mild tempered.

Running her magic over the minecarts, she took a final tally of what the haul of the day was. With those they’d already filled, they had a train of eight carts all loaded and ready to be pushed to the surface. Writing down the numbers on her clipboard, she signed her name to the paper and slid it into the small bag at her side and tucked the pencil behind her ear.

To Tartarus with the break, they’d already made the day’s quota.

“Okay crew, I changed my mind. No time for a break.” All four of them drooped, ears falling and tails ceasing to wag.

“Because I’m calling the day early! I think you’ve all earned treats, so let’s head back up.” She had to wave them down, because the excited yipping that came from the quartet, especially Lola who seemed to be having spasms of excitement, quickly filled the tunnel with an echoing racket. She was laughing as she got them to quiet back down, and directed them to their places to push the carts back to the entrance.

With all four prepped, Lapis made a chopping motion and shouted out “Let’s go!”

She had taken a single step when the lights cut out. There were only a few seconds of darkness before the five of them turned on their lights. Power outages were not uncommon this far down, but normally the lights would flicker a bit before cutting out.

“Everyone okay?” Lapis turned to look at her crew out of habit, but paused as she saw the looks on their faces. Their ears were all straight up, twitching at a sound that she couldn’t hear. Lapis heard nothing other than their breathing in the dark tunnel.

“What’s wrong?” They were worrying her.

“Something happened.” Ace spoke in his deep, gravelly voice. “There’s a… roar.”

Lapis noticed her mane start to drift past her face away from where they’d been heading, and turned to confront the breeze. They were way too far underground for natural wind, and she couldn’t fathom where it was coming from.

Then, the rumbling began. It was growing louder by the second, following the wind. Hearing the whimpering of her crew, Lapis began backing towards them.

“Run.” She whispered, not believing what was coming at them. Her light, magical in nature, was penetrating much farther into the darkness than their helmet mounted bulbs, and she saw a wall coming straight at them.

The tunnel was collapsing, and a wall of dust and debris rocketed straight towards them.

“Run!” She didn’t even know where too, but she didn’t know what else to say. Her hooves were failing to move, and she stood frozen in the face of being buried alive.

She felt a pair of giant clawed hands grab her from behind as the darkness hit and everything went black.

---

She awoke to a light sobbing sound and someone shaking her by the shoulder. Her eyes burned with grit, but she still recognized the form of Ace above her, shaking her lightly. “Chief, are you with us? C’mon Chief, wake up.”

Lapis coughed, trying to clear her throat. Looking around, she could make out dirt walls in every direction. She saw Rosie and Buster near the closest wall, hunched over around something. Rosie was the one crying, judging from the twitching of her shoulders.

“What… what happened?” Lapis asked, knowing it was a mine collapse, but not knowing why. Diamond dogs were good at digging, and their tunnels didn’t just collapse with no reason.

“We’re in a side tunnel. The main tunnel has totally collapsed… and…” He glanced back at the two behind him.

Lapis pulled herself up, not feeling any injuries other than a few bruises. She pushed lightly past Ace and came up next to Rosie. Tears immediately sprung to her eyes and she gasped, holding a hoof to her mouth.

Lola, always energetic and twitchy with excitement, had been the last inside. A collapsing buttress timber had landed on her neck, and only her head and one arm reached into their shelter. Her eyes stared up at them, glassy and unfocussed. Blood was beginning to seep out from beneath her, and Lapis looked away.

Ace stepped forward to close Lola’s eyes, and the four survivors stood there in silence. The loss of a pack member was rare, but Lapis knew how hard it hit. Diamond dogs formed strong bonds, not easily broken.

“We need to dig ourselves out.” Ace muttered quietly, as if afraid to break the silence. “We don’t know how bad the collapse is, and there might be others down here with us.”

Both remaining members of his pack nodded, and then all three looked to Lapis. She was still their crew chief, and they were all sticklers for the chain of command. Crying had at least cleared the grit out of her eyes, and she wiped away the tears as she tried composing herself.

“Okay… okay.” She sniffled and coughed, trying to compose herself. She reached for her pencil with her magic unconsciously, but her magic fumbled blindly around her ear as she found that it wasn’t there.

“Okay. Ace, Rosie, Buster… we need to get back to the surface.” Repeating the goal helped to focus her a bit. She did some quick math in her head, knowing how far they were beneath the ground. It would have been easier if she’d had her pencil.

“A 40 degree incline with switchbacks every thirty lengths.” Pointing to one wall, she indicated where they should begin. “That should get us back up to one of the higher tunnels quickly, or the surface if we miss. We need to work fast, or we’ll run out of air down here.”

Her crew nodded at her sadly, but sharply. They were still the best diggers around, and there were few creatures more handy in a cave-in. They would all be fine. They would go for help, and then come back for survivors. They would have a funeral for Lola. Her crew would be given bereavement leave, and she would go on a much sadder but still all too needed vacation.

She felt guilty that the management part of her brain had ordered it like that.

The diamond dogs began digging, burrowing easily into the earth of one wall. They moved quickly, carving out great handfuls with each swipe of their powerful arms. They would be out in no time. Lapis trudged slowly uphill, occasionally losing her footing on the loose earth left behind the burrowing dogs.

-----

Three times during their ascent they popped through a wall into an empty section of mine. The air had been turning foul, and each new section they opened up bought them a little more time with a rush of cleaner air.

The fourth time they emerged into a tunnel, it was into a charnel house. It looked like the ponies trapped inside had tried blasting their way out with dynamite, but there hadn’t been nearly enough room in the small chamber. Amazingly it hadn’t collapsed, but it was hard to tell how many had actually died in the blast unless Lapis felt like counting pieces.

Without a word, they had just kept on moving.

Finally, they emerged into an open space. They had dug back into a primary tunnel, and in the distance could be heard the sounds of pickaxes and shovels. Clean air filled their lungs, and tears sprung into Lapis’ eyes. They were going to be okay.

Ace, Rosie, and Buster needed a minute to catch their breath though, each one panting heavily and leaning against another. Lapis let them have that. Rescue was only a short ways away.

As they approached the excavation sounds, Lapis could see several lights bobbing in the distance. She called out to them, her voice echoing down the tunnel and bouncing back on itself so many times she wasn’t even sure what she’d said.

It didn’t matter though, as one of the lights split off and began bouncing towards them in the darkness. Once it got close enough, Lapis saw that it was Bagger, one of the crew chiefs from the higher levels.

“Lapis! Oh thank the Princess you’re still alive! You were so far down, I didn’t think you’d made it” He was carrying a pickaxe with him, and from the look of his sweat drenched sides he’d been digging for a while. His face lit up as he got close enough to see that she still had part of her crew with her.

Lapis couldn’t fight the urge and hugged the earth pony, who blushed heavily as she pulled back. “Bagger... What happened? Why did the mine collapse?”

Shaking his head, he could only shrug, causing a small avalanche of dirt off of his shoulders and back.. “No idea. We’ve lost all contact with the surface.”

He looked past her to the three hounds. “You’re the second team my crew has run across. The only Diamond Dog crew so far. We’re trying to dig back to the surface, and now that you’re here it will go much faster.”

Lapis looked back at the panting trio, and nodded. “Okay… but just give them a minute to rest.”

“Of course. I’m amazed you made it up here that quickly.” He took off his helmet and wiped some of the dirt and sweat from his face.

Lapis gave a dismissive wave and the practiced response she always gave when complimented about her team. “My team is the best.”

He smiled at that, and turned to lead the group back to the other survivors. Lapis felt a pain in her chest as she looked upon the ponies working on digging through the debris that had blocked them off from the mine entrance.

Pony teams tended to be larger in number than diamond dog teams, simply due to the difference in digging power. Both groups were halved, at least. Five ponies were busy digging with picks and shovels, and Bagger went back to work with them. The digging ponies looked back and gave half-hearted cheers when they saw the diamond dogs approaching from behind them.

Lapis turned around in front of her crew, gesturing vaguely towards one wall. “Okay, the three of you take a short breather. It’s only a short dig from here, and then we’ll get back to the surface.”

Ace nodded and sat down on the spot. Buster, always a quiet one, hadn’t said a single word since Lola had died and just curled up on the ground to cry. Rosie knelt next to him, stroking his head and whispering softly to him.

Lapis looked around, feeling guilty that she hadn’t done anything other than boss her crew around during their escape tunneling. She peered around the tunnel and recognized that it was indeed one near the surface. A patch of ruptured wall was adorned with an L1 in white paint.

In the center of the tunnel sat a single mining cart on the track, which she saw was filled with tools. Approaching it, she pulled out a shovel with her magic and went to step around the cart to begin helping with the digging. Her hoof caught on something and she tripped, landing on a lumpy tarp.

She pulled herself up quickly, but the tarp came with her, snagged in the strap of her bag. Three ponies lay beneath the covering, bloodied and broken. Her breath caught in her throat, and she reeled backwards dropping the shovel in the dirt.

Lapis had never seen a dead pony before except in the news. Now she’d seen far more bodies than she ever wanted to again. Shaking, she lifted the edge of the tarp and covered the corpses back up. She picked up the shovel and turned around, forcing herself to stop shaking and willing the tears to stop.

It didn’t work.

The next best thing was to get her mind off of it with some work. Trying to keep her composure as best she could, she approached the wall where the ponies were digging.

“Gonna help?” Bagger glanced back at her briefly before swinging his pickaxe again. “Help out Juniper with moving the dirt.”

A green earth pony was loading the dirt as it piled up into a wheelbarrow and depositing it off to one side. Without a word, Lapis began shoveling.

---

After five minutes of shoveling, her crew had rejoined them. The three diamond dogs took over the digging, and began making it look like the ponies had not actually accomplished anything. They tore into the new tunnel, moving quickly and efficiently. The ponies all began clearing the cleared dirt and debris.

Diamond Dogs didn’t need to use buttresses as much as ponies did while digging. Lapis had never figured it out, but they knew just how to dig and not have everything collapse in on top of them. They’d been doing it as a species forever.

Lapis had never been more proud of her crew.

They all worked in silence, conserving what air they could while still exerting themselves. Lapis kept imagining that any minute now they’d run into the rescue team tunneling in from the outside. There were protocols for mine collapses, and her muddied sense of time wasn’t so broken that she didn’t know it had been about a third of a day since the collapse.

The first voice to break the relative silence came from Rosie. “I’m… not feeling too great.”

Buster let out one word. “Itchy.”

Ace just kept on digging. “We’re almost outside. I can smell it.” He couldn’t hide the grimace, and the wrinkled muzzle. Whatever he smelled, it didn’t seem to be pleasant.

Lapis was starting to feel something too. A slight burning sensation on her skin. All of them were, judging by the fidgeting the miners were starting to exhibit. Trying her best to ignore it, she just kept shoveling to keep the tunnel clear.

Suddenly, green light filled the tunnel. Ace had broken through, and the three of them cleared out the rest of the tunnel opening, giving them access to fresh air and safety. Lapis was expecting the excited victory barking to start in, but the three Diamond Dogs stood shoulder to shoulder in the exit to freedom.

“What’s wrong?” Bagger’s voice came from behind her, and she just shook her head.

Pushing forward, she came to her crew, and lightly pushed on Ace’s back. He looked back at her with a look she’d never seen on his face. It looked like fear. Pushing harder, she got him to give way and walked out into the open for the first time in what felt like days.

Everything was burning. The Manehattan skyline in the near distance was fractured, with great pyres of green flame lighting everything for miles around. The industrial land between the mine and the city was scattered with plumes of smoke which blackened the sky to the point that she had no idea if it was day or night.

The green light was the most horrific thing she had ever seen. Everything about it felt wrong. Even where it touched her felt wrong. The burning sensation had spread and intensified. She could feel it in her chest and her head.

She fell to her knees in shock. There were dead ponies scattered around the mining camp, discolored and bleeding from every orifice. A sky carriage had crashed into a storage warehouse nearby and gems were scattered all across the camp. Each one sparkled brightly in the green hellfire dominating the land.

The shocked gasps and cries from the other ponies filing out into what she was sure was actually a horrific nightmare and not reality just flowed past her. She was going to go on vacation as soon as all of this was over. A long, long vacation to somewhere far, far away.

A dirt caked claw grasped her by the shoulder and she looked up into Ace’s face. There was blood running from his nose and eyes, and she saw that every other creature around her was starting to suffer the same.

“The fucking zebras finally did it. They killed us.” Bagger sat down heavily next to her, staring at the burning city. Blood ran from his ears and eyes, and Lapis touched her own face to confirm her fears. Her hoof came back soaked in blood.

She was feeling weak, as though her strength was actively draining out of her by the second. All of the other ponies were on the ground now, suffering the same as Lapis. Bagger’s crews were moaning from the pain, too overwhelmed by whatever invisible force was killing them. Buster and Rosie had gone back inside the tunnel, but Ace still stood over Lapis. He was shaking. They were all shaking.

Blood spattered the ground as Lapis coughed up a mouthful of it and collapsed. Ace tried helping her up, but fell to one knee as he tried. She looked up at the diamond dog, and weakly managed to put her blood soaked hoof to his cheek.

A bloody hoofprint was left behind as her strength gave out and her leg dropped with a thud. Her body wasn’t reacting to anything she willed it to do, and she watched the pool of blood flowing from her face slowly trickle downhill towards the city.

It was getting hard to keep her eyes open.

Ace was still there next to her, struggling to stand. She could hear him whining with the effort. Slowly, he shakily pulled himself up to his feet using a shovel as a crutch. He looked down at her, sadness and fear visible through the rivulets of blood.

He practically crawled away from her, back into the tunnel to rejoin the pack, and she watched out of the corner of her eye as the diamond dogs collapsed it behind them. She couldn’t blame them for wanting to be back underground.

She just wanted to go on vacation.

Author's Note:

By Fallingsnow

Comments

[Salted Pingas]

Damn, that ending was chilling.