Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 74: Chasing Shadows

“When I said I’d help, I didn’t think I’d have to do paperwork.” I flipped through pages of boring emails and even more boring spreadsheets. Somepony bumped my chair, and I looked back at the crowd in the Cantina, glaring at the stallion that had stumbled into me. He gave me an apologetic look and backed off. “Don’t you guys do crime once in a while?”

“I didn’t think you went in for the small stuff,” Chum Buddy said, shuffling a pile of papers with magic. “If you want to go pick some pockets, be my guest. I just assumed it wasn’t something in your wheelhouse, lass. I thought you were here begrudgingly to help find your friend.”

“I am!” I protested. “I thought that meant… a big heist and excitement, not hanging around in a bar and listening to a band slowly unlearn how to play music!”

“It’s called Jazz, Chamomile. It’s music for ponies that like the art of music. I also recall you boasting that you were well-read. You remember that, don’t you, Quiet?”

The young hippogriff nodded. “She seemed really proud of it.”

“Most Enclave ponies don’t read a lot,” I mumbled, blushing. “I’m dumb but I know a lot of useless facts, okay? It was the one thing I could do that Dad was proud of.”

”Ah, see, there she goes again,” Chum Buddy said.

“Shut up,” I grumbled, doubling my pace and skimming through more papers, barely reading them. They were almost all intensely mundane, and I tossed a bunch of them into the junk pile before something caught my eye.

I stopped skimming and read the section more carefully.

…as part of Project H requirements, Enferon will be added as a supplement at all production levels. See the attached spreadsheet for the required concentration in finished products. Quoted levels are at a minimum and will be spot-tested for quality control. Please ensure that no grapefruit or pineapple enzymes are included as part of the production process…

“Enferon?” I mumbled, feeling a chill go down my spine.

“What’s Enferon?” Quiet asked, looking over my shoulder.

“It’s an anti-radiation drug,” I said. “It was an alternative to RadAway for ponies with allergies, but sort of expensive. According to this spreadsheet, they’d need a heck of a lot of it just for this one factory.”

“That doesn’t sound bad,” Quiet shrugged. “I guess it’s fortified against fallout? We don’t really have any here, but once every few years there’s a weather cycle that changes the tides and some contaminated water comes in from the mainland and we have to stay inside until it goes away.”

“That’s not the only thing it’s used for,” I said. “It’s also used to fight SIVA infections.”

I let that bomb drop and realized I was the only pony in the room who even knew what SIVA was. They just stared at me like I’d said total gibberish.

“SIVA is a kind of… machine plague. A technophage made from micromachines,” I said. “There was an outbreak in my home town, and Destiny thought we could use Enferon to cure an infected pony, but… things went bad.”

“Does that mean your friend is involved in this Project H thing?” Chum Buddy asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe hippogriffs all have a reaction to regular Radaway, or maybe gillwater negates it somehow and they needed an alternative. That doesn’t explain why they’re also drugging it with sedatives.”

“What we need is a pony on the inside who can just tell us what’s going on,” Chum Buddy said. “I might know just the right mark for that. I’ll check with Fabula and see if it’s a good lead.”

I frowned at that. “Why?”

“Aside from the fact that she can see the future, she’s also my boss,” Chum Buddy reminded me. I frowned at that. Something about it seemed wrong, the clockwork ticking away in the back of my mind saying that Fabula might have been in charge of the Guild but she wasn’t the Boss Mare and Chum Buddy shouldn’t be calling her that.

“That’s…” I hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if peeking at the future is a good idea?”

“I don’t know if I trust her.”

“Lass, you are in a place that is lean on ponies you know and trust.”

I looked over at the ornate silk curtains partitioning off Fabula’s little ‘office’. I debated pressing this more, maybe even trying to explain to Chum Buddy that the last time I’d trusted anypony leading a clandestine organization it had been a mistake.

“Whatever,” I sighed. I waved for him to do what he wanted. He stood up and walked over to the booth, vanishing behind the curtains.

“I don’t blame you,” Quiet said softly.

“Huh?” I looked over at her.

The young hippogriff shrugged. “Fabula. I don’t really like her all that much. I think she was jealous of the way Shore Leave treated me.”

“She still had me rescue you.”

Quiet looked uncomfortable. “Yeah. Only… I think she wanted you to fail.”

Chum Buddy stomped out of the booth, looking upset. He came back over to the table and sat down heavily, holding up a hoof and finishing his drink to steady himself and get a moment to cool off before he spoke.

“Fabula says it’s too dangerous,” Chum Buddy said. “We don’t have her blessing.”

I shook my head. “I’m not just going to drop this.”

“I know,” Chum Buddy said. “She went all ‘ill portents and bad tidings’ on me. So she’s a dead end and she won’t help us plan anything. That means only one thing.”

“You’re going to sit back and wait for a better time?” Quiet guessed.

“Nah. Chamomile won’t sit around. That means either I leave her hanging out to dry or else I go against Fabula and do a side job outside the auspices of the Guild.”

“So which is it?” I asked.

“Well the truth is I’ve been stalling to try and figure out the best thing to do,” Chum Buddy admitted. “But I just came up with a brilliant plan. As cunning as all eight tentacles on an octopus put together. You’ve got those travel papers from Lady Thresher, yeah?”

I nodded.

“Good. I know an informant we can use. We’ll go out to chat and see what slips loose when we ply him with a few clams. I’ll tell a few of the other crooks around here to distract Fabula with some little jobs, we’ll pretend to be busy with all this paperwork, and she’ll never even know we were gone.”

“Sounds fun!” Quiet chirped.

“You need to stay here, lass.” Chum Buddy patted her talon. “You keep looking through this and cover for us while we’re gone. Chamomile needs to go or else she’ll find other trouble, and I need to go with her to make some introductions.”

“I’ve been stuck in the Cantina for days!” Quiet groaned.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Chum Buddy promised.

“You better!” Quiet huffed.

---

“I think I know why Fabula didn’t want us doing this,” I whispered.

“Just stay cool,” Chum Buddy whispered back. “Act casual.”

It was easier said than done. We were walking right into a security station like it wasn’t a big deal at all. Two ponies in padded barding dragged a third between them through the doors, his hooves cuffed and his face swollen with bruises. Chum Buddy put a warning hoof on my chest and shook his head.

“We can’t afford trouble yet,” Chum Buddy hissed. “The pony we need is inside.”

“He’s with stable security?” I asked. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“There aren’t that many ponies on the inside we can trust. If we want to find out about the gillwater being doped and if your friend is involved, this is the way. He’ll be able to access confidential records we couldn’t touch otherwise.”

“I still hate it,” I mumbled.

Inside it looked, well, like a police station. I’d love to pretend I’d never been escorted into the local lockup for petty vandalism and getting into fights, but I wasn’t a good enough liar to make that stick. The ponies who’d done it back home had been decent, though. They’d never treat a prisoner the way I saw ponies being treated here.

As we passed through the doorway, something beeped loudly. A pony in security barding stopped us, holding up a hoof.

“Step back. Put all metal in the bin, then walk through again.” He pointed to a box next to the archway above us. Small lights blinked red and green on it. Chum Buddy emptied his bags and walked through, and this time it didn’t alarm.

I sighed because I knew what was going to happen. I stepped through again, and it went off.

“I said, all metal--”

“I have a metal plate in my head,” I said. Among other things, but he didn’t need to know that. The stallion frowned and grabbed a wand, waving it across my forehead. It beeped when it neared my right eye.

“Huh,” he said, sounding genuinely apologetic. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I gave him a smile. “If the scarring isn’t that obvious, it means the doctors did a good job!”

“You can go on through, miss. And if you need to make a report about whoever hurt you, this is a safe place to do it. Nopony is above the law.”

Oh stars, he thought I was being abused. I probably still had a few bruises from being exploded and having that idiot hippogriff at the gillwater distillery slap me around!

“That’s very kind of you,” I said.

“You’ll want to talk to Sergeant Coconut Milk at the front desk,” he said. “He handles initial statements.”

“We’re in luck,” Chum said. “That’s just the pony I wanted to talk to.”

“Thanks again,” I said, and he nodded to me and let us pass.

A tired-looking earth pony was behind the desk, flipping through paperwork with the same expression I’d had doing it back at the Cantina. He didn’t look up when we approached, scribbling a few last notes on the papers in front of him.

“Yeah, yeah, be with you in just a sec.-- oh buck, not you,” he grumbled, looking at Chum Buddy. He lowered his voice to hiss at us across the counter, looking around to make sure none of the other cops were close enough to hear. “If Fabula wants a favor, she can send one of you when I’m not busy!”

“Come on, I thought we were friends, Coconut Milk. You don’t have time to help a friend like me?” Chum Buddy smiled.

“Friends don’t trot in here and try to get me fired,” the cop growled. “Do you know who that is?” He nodded to me. “You’re lucky nopony else has noticed her! She’s a wanted mare! Assault and battery on a peace officer, destruction of property, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to make a domestic terrorism charge stick!”

“I’m not trying to get you in trouble,” Chum Buddy promised. He pulled a pouch out of his saddlebags, rattling it and sliding it across the desk. “Chamomile, why don’t you go wait over on the bench for a minute while I chat with my friend?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed. Of course I’d be left out. I stomped over to the bench and sat down next to a pony in hoofcuffs with their mane done up in tall, stiff spikes. She had to be using a gallon of mane gel.

“What are you in for?” she asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Unpaid parking tickets. You?”

“I think they’re still trying to figure out how to put me in jail for being young and annoying,” she said. “These chucklebucks are arresting everypony they can before the election. I hear Senator Seascape is going to cut their budget.”

I gave her a look.

“What?” she said. “I’m big into local politics.”

“Are you also big on giving expository dialogue to random ponies?”

“It’s my cutie mark,” she shrugged, showing me her flank. Her mark was a stylized tree with quotation marks for leaves, like some kind of dialogue tree.

Chum Buddy walked over to me and sighed.

“No luck?” I asked.

“Come on,” Chum Buddy said, glancing back at the counter. I followed his gaze. Coconut Milk was smirking at us. I didn’t like that look combined with the worried expression Chum Buddy was wearing. “We’ve got maybe a minute before he hits the alarm and we have a few dozen ponies shooting at us.”

He grabbed my shoulder and walked me out. I let him pull me along, trying to keep looking casual even with the threat at our back.

“What happened?” I asked when we were outside.

Chum Buddy walked me across the street, into a little corner store, before he answered. Once we were out of the open, he relaxed a little, watching the station.

“My bribe wasn’t as big as the price on your head,” Chum Buddy said. “He figured it bought us a head start and not much else.”

I sighed and poked at a rack of old magazines and comics in front of the shop’s window. A few of them were ancient, but most were relatively new. They were still printing books down here. “So this was a waste of time?”

“I said not much else, not nothing else,” Chum Buddy corrected. “He’s heard about the Enferon.”

“He did?”

Chum Buddy nodded. “Not in the gillwater exactly, but it was used to treat some ponies after they were injured in the Riots.”

That didn’t make any sense. “Why would they need it?”

“No idea. Sure seems ominous though, yeah?”

I nodded.

“He let one other thing slip. He told us not to bother looking into Sentinel. The department’s official stance is that he doesn’t have another identity, so all the files are sealed. Coconut Milk looked into it himself, and so have half the officers on the force. Everypony’s curious and everypony gets slapped down.”

“That’s not very helpful. That’s just telling us he doesn’t know anything.”

“He doesn’t think he knows anything, but when he was trying to scare me off, he told me they arrested the last pony who found out too much, and they’re shipping him off to the Deep tonight.”

“The Deep. Guessing it’s a prison, or maybe a euphemism for a shallow grave?”

“Might as well be both. Ponies go in and don’t come out.”

I looked away from an entire shelf full, somehow, of dolphin-themed erotica and looked over at the station. “We need to get in there and talk to the prisoner. What’s his name?”

“Tranquil Sea,” Chum Buddy said. “We can’t go in there. It’s crawling with cops. But I think we can be clever about it. They’ll have to transport him, so that means we can hit them when they’re moving. Like you did when they were moving Quiet, but better-planned and I’ll give you some backup.”

“Do we have the gear for that?” I asked.

“Friend, I can get us everything we need,” Chum Buddy grinned.

---

Chum Buddy checked his dive computer, the boxy thing strapped around his hoof like a simplified, rubberized Pipbuck.

“Picking up movement on the sonar,” he said. “Engine sounds. It’s probably the prisoner transport. I don’t hear any escort sleds, but they can’t be alone. There must be a squad of hippogriffs escorting the sea wagon.”

“Maybe their sleds broke down. These look like they’re about to give out,” I said. It was a far cry from the one I’d stolen a little while ago. The cowlings were missing, the whole chassis seemed worn down, and it made a worrying noise when I put more power into the impeller. I wasn’t an engineer but even I could tell when something was one bad shock from falling apart.

“They’ll hold together long enough,” Chum Buddy retorted. “And the serial numbers are all filed off, so we can ditch them if we need to. We’ll just have to swim back.”

We were going through the water slowly and carefully, hugging the bottom and staying behind coral and seaweed as much as we could. The path the prisoner transport would take was just up ahead.

Chum Buddy must have noticed how slow I was to answer. “You can swim, right?”

I swallowed. “How quickly can you teach me?” I was doing my best not to think about the water at all, actually. I couldn’t feel it through the diving suit, but I could sense the pressure and cold like a vice around my body.

“I’ll pencil you in for swim classes when we get back to the Cantina,” Chum Buddy said. “You’d fit right in with the Stable foals and baby hippogriffs.”

---

I took a deep breath, the clean seawater flowing through my gills. Out here, away from the heart of the city, the water was clear and cool and soothing.

“I told you it was a good idea to come out here,” my best friend said. “There are all kinds of fish that only live near the lighthouse.”

She swam around me in a circle, her fins brushing against mine. I blushed, but before I could do anything, she stopped and gasped, pointing.

“Look at that!” she said. “I think it’s a lanternfish!”

That got my attention. I turned and followed her gaze. A fish was floating below us, blinking with light.

“Something’s wrong with it,” I said slowly. Its scales were tinted strangely, glittering with metallic edges like blue steel. The light looked less like the lure of a deep-sea fish and more like one of the flickering, electric lights in the city.

We swam closer, and the fish’s head split down the middle, revealing an eye as big as a blitzball, slitted and baleful like a sea dragon’s gaze.

---

“What are you two doing?!” A voice cut in over the radio, breaking me out of my trance. “I haven’t given you leave to go off on your own!”

“Fabula!” Chum Buddy said with forced cheer. “Good to hear you! We’re a little busy right now, so it isn’t the best time to chat.”

“I’m ordering you to come back here right now,” she said. “You can’t go anywhere near that prisoner transport!”

“How did you know where we were going?” I cut in.

“Did you really think Quiet Seascape would be able to avoid talking for long?” Fabula asked. “Her name is more ironic than descriptive.”

“Oh no, I think we’re running into a storm!” I said. “It’s cutting off my radio! KHSSSH!”

“You’re underwater! There aren’t any storms!” Fabula snapped.

“She meant to say we’re going into a tunnel,” Chum Buddy put in. “We’ll have to call you back!” He flashed a hoofsign at me.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “I don’t know what you’re trying to--”

He grunted and reached over, flipping a dial on my dive computer.

“I changed your radio channel,” Chum said. “We’ve got a few minutes before Fabula figures out what channel we’re on and we’ll need to finish before then unless you want her yelling at us the whole time.”

I nodded. “I’ll try to appreciate it while I can.”

“Good.” Chum Buddy slowed down, stopping his sled entirely after a moment. “I’m gonna set up here.” He let go of the sled and swam around to the side, opening a cargo bag and pulling a long weapon out of it. “Look at this beauty. Fires supercavitating spears, accurate to over a hundred meters even underwater.”

“That doesn’t seem very far,” I mumbled.

“Regular bullets don’t work at all down here,” Chum Buddy said. “And I’m not just talking about air rifles. Get any gun you want and it’ll barely hit a target at hoof’s reach. The water just mucks up normal bullets too badly.”

“What about torpedoes?” I asked.

I couldn’t really see Chum Buddy’s expression through the rebreather mask he was wearing. I had to imagine what somepony dealing with an annoying idiot might look like, which was about as easy for me as imagining a smile.

“We’re trying to save a pony from police custody,” he said. “We aren’t trying to blow them into bloody chunks! Besides, they’re expensive.”

“And a super-whatsit spear gun isn’t expensive?”

“Oh no, the thing cost half a stars-damned fortune. But I happen to like it, so I got it anyway.” He chuckled. “Don’t act too sad, I got you something too!”

Chum Buddy pulled a second gun out of the sled’s cargo compartment, this one bulkier and boxier, with a complex trigger arrangement.

“The Harpoon Enhanced Amphibious Rifle Service Equipment,” he said. “Or the Hearse. Equestria built these during the war imagining they’d be fighting the zebras underwater in harbor invasions. Rapid-fire flechette gun and an anchor launcher that fires a harpoon up to fifty meters and can winch it back on the attached chain.”

He swam over and started strapping it to my suit’s battle saddle.

“That actually does sound cool,” I admitted.

“Yeah, that’s what the Ministries thought too. They made a few hundred, and not even one ever got used in a real fight. Some of them made their way here, the one place in the bloody world they might be of some use. Lucky for us, huh?”

“I’m going to owe you a lot of favors after this, aren’t I?” I sighed.

He slapped me on the back. “We both want the same thing, Chamomile.”

I tilted my head.

“Finding out what the buck is going on, I mean,” he said. That was a lie. He’d meant what he said the first time, about us wanting the same thing. Just not what that thing was. I could feel it on him, and I could tell he knew that I knew. But what was I going to do, demand the truth when I was already getting what I wanted?

A light passed over us, the spotlight’s edges shining in the water. It was almost crystal clear, but almost was still enough to see the outline.

“That’s the transport!” Chum Buddy said. “It’s go time. You go right at it with your usual panache, and I’ll cover you from here, seeing as how I can’t absorb quite as many bullets without having an uncomfortable swim back home.”

I nodded and gunned the sled. I’d think about it later. If I was lucky, I’d have Destiny around to help me with the thinking.

I crested the ridge and caught a glimpse of what we were facing before the spotlight swiveled into my eyes and I was momentarily blinded. The transport was an armored sea wagon, which I’d expected. I hadn’t expected the half-dozen hippogriffs around it, all of them in streamlined security barding.

Not great, being that badly outnumbered. The sled’s engine roared when I jammed the throttle forward and aimed for the dim silhouettes that I could make out against the glare, slamming into the hippogriff and running him right into the sea wagon, crushing him between my sled and the armored hull.

“Don’t kill them!” Chum Buddy warned. “We don’t need a blood bath!”

The hippogriff spat up blood and went still.

“Uh, right,” I agreed, a little too late. The sled’s engine sputtered and died, and it drifted back. One of the hippogriffs came at me with a long spear, and I surprised myself with my instinctive reaction, jumping back from the dead sled and swimming out of the way.

“I thought you couldn’t swim?” Chum Buddy asked.

“It, uh, I can’t?” I said lamely. Clearly I could. As long as I didn’t think about it, swimming was as easy as flying. I could just vaguely remember spending time swimming around the canyon, being warned not to go too deep--

Not my memories. What the buck was wrong with me? Had I run into a bad memory orb somewhere?

One of the guards was on top of me, a sparking prod in her fin. I bit down on the trigger, and a burst of three steel darts tore into her, tearing into her leg and taking her out of the fight. A jolt hit me from behind, a big griff slamming into me and forcing a prod into my neck. Sparks flew from the armor, and I could feel the crawl of static start down my spine.

“Watch your six!” Chum Buddy shouted.

A spear slammed into the hippogriff on my back, hard enough to snap him right off me like a bird had snatched him away. The spear went right through his gut, and he curled into a ball of pain around it.

“What happened to not killing them?” I panted.

“I didn’t aim for the head, did I?”

He had a point, and an even sharper point were the three other security griffs circling around. They were faster than I was, and a lot more comfortable in the water, but all they had were spears and shock prods, and I had a gun.

Not that I was very good with a gun, but rapid fire made up for poor aim. I fired a long burst, and a few of the darts caught one’s tailfin, shredding it and putting them out of the fight unless they invented a brand new way to swim.

The last two charged me from the sides while I was shooting. The water parted in a long stream of bubbles and the one on my right slammed to the side with a long spear pinning her left fin to her side and exiting her shoulder. I didn’t see what happened to her after that, because that last guard jumped me like he hadn’t just seen five of his friends get taken down and I caught a spear in the ribs, the tip cutting through the rubber of my dive suit and scraping across my ribs, unable to find a way through my weird, SIVA-made bone structure.

I grabbed the spear with my left hoof and swung with my right, popping my knife free and realizing it was a mistake in the same moment. It came out just fine, cutting through my dive suit and sending a chill shock down my hoof at the sudden cold of the icy depths. I slashed the hippogriff’s face, catching him along the cheek and eye. He let go and clutched at his ruined face.

“Sorry,” I said. “But in all fairness, you did stab me first.”

He didn’t have a great counter-argument.

“We’ll need to get the transport out of here,” Chum Buddy said. “I doubt our prisoner is in a pressure suit. I know a dock we can use.”

“I’ll drive,” I said. “My sled is wrecked anyway.”

“Oh no, I’m not letting you--”

He was interrupted by a burst of static over the radio. “Chum Buddy! Chamomile! You idiots! Get out of there!” Fabula said, obviously having used her powers to divine the right radio channel.

“We’ve already got this done,” I said. “We’re just leaving.”

Fabula groaned. “There’s a SWAT unit on the way. They called for them on the radio while you were fighting! I heard the whole thing while I was trying to find your frequency!”

“Is that bad?” I asked. “Is it Sentinel?” It’d be awfully convenient.

I felt the surge of malice and moved without knowing why. Something flashed by me like a fish propelled by a jet of bubbles and impacted against the seabed, exploding with a subdued flash and bang, the blast wave hitting me like a sledgehammer. My organs and bones jumped inside me and I rang like a bell from the inside out.

“Chamomile, are you still alive?” Chum Buddy asked, shouting over the ringing in my ears. The shock had thrown me off balance. I could barely tell which way was up. “If you’re not dead, you need to get moving!”

A pony on a sled - this one much better maintained and designed than the one I’d broken - swooped down towards me from above. I was floating, limp, and that made him underestimate me. I got a good look at him as he came in close. It wasn’t Sentinel, but he was wearing armored barding a few steps up from the rest of the security team.

I got off a few shots, putting a few holes in his ride, but before I could drag my bad aim over to the pony, the flechette gun clicked on an empty chamber. A wash of bubbles exploded from a launcher on the pony’s side, and a torpedo flashed towards me.

Like a bolt of lightning, a spear slammed past it in an envelope of supercaviated air. That’s probably not actually the right term, but it worked really bucking well because even though it missed the deadly missile the pressure wave set it off. The blast tore at the part of the sled that I’d already put a few holes in, and the engines gave out and threw a cloud of thick oil into the water.

The armored pony jumped off with some kind of assist, like he was wearing a rocket pack. He grabbed a short staff from his back and snapped it out to double its length, blades popping into place and sparks flashing between the two prongs. I blocked it with my blade, and the shock went right up my foreleg, numbness spreading through my shoulder and towards my heart and spine.

I broke contact and flapped my wings, pushing away and slashing at the shaft of the weapon, breaking it in half. He didn’t like that much and used the hydrodynamic thrusters on his armor to jet back.

If he got away, I knew I’d be eating a torpedo. The anchor chain on the Hearse launched at a sharp bite on the trigger, the harpoon slamming into the pony’s armor and halting his motion. The winch whined and pulled back, though with no leverage it pulled me towards him just as much as it pulled him to me.

The pony reacted quickly, adjusting his aim and a panel popping open to show the bright red tip of a torpedo. Bubbles exploded out. I reacted without thought, wired reflexes sending my knife straight through the water and into the torpedo a moment after it cleared the launcher, slicing into the warhead.

It exploded instantly, my anchor chain tearing free along with the rest of the pony’s armor when the blast shredded him like a can of tomatoes dropped off an SPP tower to splatter on the ground below. The wave hit me almost as hard, my organs feeling like a giant had stepped on them and a chill washing through my whole body. It wasn’t just my imagination, either. Cold water was filling my diving suit.

I was floating, looking dully through a cracked mask that was dripping water into my eyes. I couldn’t think. It was all soft and ringing and far away for the moment, and some part of me, probably the part made out of more robust hardware, was aware I had a concussion.

Chum Buddy grabbed my hoof and pulled me towards the transport’s cabin. The front windows were shattered from the blast, and the pony that had been in there hadn’t found a way to breathe water.

My partner in crime yanked the body out of the way and shoved me in, switching my air from the broken rebreather and to the spare tank. I sucked down fresher air and tried to just focus on keeping my organs on the inside. He patted my shoulder and got behind the controls, starting up the engine again.

---

I pulled off what was left of the mask the second we got into the open air of the half-abandoned dock, coughing up blood and spitting onto the deck, trying to get the taste out of my mouth. I was shivering and I didn’t know if it was from the ice water or the blood loss or both.

Chum Buddy hopped out of the transport’s cabin after me, kneeling down next to me and looking over my wounds.

“You look awful,” he decided. The unicorn pulled me to my hooves and pulled a chunk of shrapnel out of my shoulder.

“Thanks,” I said. “How’s our prisoner?”

“Seems like even with all the excitement we didn’t punch any holes in the transport,” Chum Buddy said. “Let’s open this can of sardines. Could be another officer back there, so watch yourself.”

I nodded, and we walked around to the back of the transport. I took aim at the doors, and Chum Buddy yanked it open.

A single pony stumbled out, wearing hoofcuffs and what was left of a striped suit. He fell on his face hard enough to bust his snout, bleeding all over himself.

“No way,” I said, turning my aim away and stepping over to him, grabbing the stallion by the lapels and pulling him up to look him in the eyes.

“You?” he asked, recognizing me. “You’re dead!”

“You wish I was dead,” I corrected, shaking him. “You’re one of the bastards that shoved me out an airlock!”

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[Thought Prism]

Oh dang. That's certainly a lead.

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