Fallout: Equestria - Red Alert

by Obvious German

02: Survival is of the Essence

02: Survival is of the Essence
“One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage, if no one is thinking of firing it." – Anton Chekhov

The destroyed town was now barely a few meters away, and already I am panting like a mad dog. Even though the air was supremely frigid, I could not bear the heat of being torn away from my world just for some stupid experiment.

“Artyom,” Dmitri piped up from behind me and I spun my head to face the flak trooper.

“Yes?”

“You think there will be anything alive out here?” I pondered for a good while as I stopped, and regained my stamina. Then again, I did get ready for a fight and considering that we’re in a place where we don’t know anything of, I think there is something here.

“If I get ready to fire, it means there’s something here,” I reply as we reached the borders of the wrecked town. It looked worse than I thought as I hugged a wall, poking out the barrel of my ADK slowly. I could feel the cold fingers of death in this place, as watched the crumbling walls of the buildings. What caused this much destruction? I have witness the true might of the Soviet Union repeatedly, but almost nothing could match the scale of destruction this place reeked of.

Dmitri was on the other side, lugging his hefty flak cannon and ready to pounce on anything that moved. If I knew him, one single and unfortunate step from even a rabbit will set him off into a chain reaction of destruction. I put up my glove to signal to him that the coast was clear, and we moved out into the large chunks of debris ahead on the cracked path of Ponyville.

I quickly checked the map on my PipBuck, considering that it was found on my arm, and found just the marker just a little to our left and into the heart of the aftermath of the destruction. What laid in this town just for us?

“How long more?” Dmitri asked me in haste, getting more and more concerned about the condition of the wasteland we were in. For a Siberian, I have never seen even one act like this. But I couldn’t blame him, for I felt a feeling of dread building up inside me like a Super Reactor waiting to be destroyed. I miss the coziness of my apartment in Moscow, the warmth of Vera’s constant state of affection with me.

But alas, I was subjected to being here.

“Should be an hour before we get there,” I responded as I moved forward, my gear properly fastened and therefore almost muffled. Then I heard something moo out in the town and I immediately waved to Dmitri to hug the looming darkness of one particular housing. How surprising, a cow here.

Considering what happened so far, I couldn’t wait for anything more. Maybe even an Allied Mirage Tank rolling through here seems highly possible. I breathed a sigh of stress and crouched to avoid any hostile attention. Peeking out of my cover, I saw the source of the mooing: a horribly mutated bovine with not one head, but two. I wanted to faint, if this was indeed real. The bovine appeared to be carrying several crates filled with items of some sort, and following it was something surprising.

Two ponies, both colored with lightly mottled brown and wearing caps with goggles. Very odd, in addition to that one of them was looking around and even smoking a cigar, similar to what we smoke in Leningrad. Something felt wrong, ponies weren’t supposed to do such things with a mindset of an animal, or was I wrong?

This place was called Ponyville, and I was mostly wrong as I picked up on several lines of intelligent speech, seemingly from them. Dmitri quipped up and got ready for a fight just in case, but I quickly calmed him down and listened attentively to this conversation. What grabbed my newfound curiosity was that they spoke clear English, which I understood quite well for a Russian.

“Shucks, I hate going through this raider hellhole.”

“Shut it, the Rangers at Gecko are helping us and we should be glad, instead of moping about.”

“Really? Then where the hell are they?

“They said they cleared out the area for Chase’s raiders quite a while ago, so I think it should be safe.” From that conversation, I now had a well-pictured view of the situation as I breathed out puffs of mist. They were most likely wandering sales…ponies, if I am proven correct and they seem to be heading for an unknown destination that was probably located in Ponyville. Where was it, I don’t know but I knew of this so-called ‘Gecko’. It was an interesting name for a place in any way, but I shook myself out of the daze I was stuck in.

“Psst! Artyom!” Dmitri hissed from his veil of shadow, and I turned my attention to him from the clattering of cargo. “What the hell is out there?”

“Two ponies that can talk, and one hell of a cow,” I reply, keeping my voice down as low as I could. I could actually make out his immediate scowling, and it was then I realized these contacts registered as green lines in my vision. Friendlies? Most likely. Fast blurs of thoughts travelled through my head, if they were friendlies, will they react?

“Dmitri,” I called out silently to the grizzled flak trooper on the other side who coughed and shook his head.

“What?” He grunted back.

“Should I contact them?”

“The fuck, Artyom?” He cursed back, basically indicating that he highly disagreed with my course of action. “Do you want us to die?”

“Of course not,” I reply with all my energy as the lines started moving to my left. Neither good nor bad, I just watched them shuffle out with the clanking of their inventories. “Well, they’re going.”

“We should move,” Dmitri suddenly spoke out in an alarmed tone, and I took the liberty of climbing over the debris and sprinting towards the inside of a building. “I didn’t say move now.”

“Let’s just say I don’t want to die out here,” I reply as I took glances on both sides, not wanting to be caught in anything he sensed. I knew them, for troopers like Dmitri had an almost unnatural ability to mentally detect hostiles moving in from any direction, and that made me re-assured for they always saved us before we were taken out by Vindicators. I shuffled further into the building, and that was when I heard gunfire.

Gunfire.

The sure sound of trouble brewing. Dmitri almost fired his Vorana, but luckily he could not find the targets anywhere. But I knew for a fact that it was not us who were the targets, rather it was that very caravan I saw earlier on. With a quick look outside a shattered window, I saw bright flashes being emitted on the flanks of the cornered ponies and the bovine taking a lot of hits, which caused blood to spurt out of it like a fountain. Soon the bovine fell after a long period of gunfire and the two ponies had equipped themselves with guns.

I found that very odd, considering they had no appendages like us. But that was soon cured as I found that they actually bit the weapons, and upon inspecting them, they were clearly modified for equine usage. Not modified, built.

Built for equines. So now we’re in a land where talking ponies could kill you with versions of our guns. How fantastic.

“Artyom! What’s going on?!” Dmitri yelled from beside me as he propped up the Vorana for engagement. “Please tell me it isn’t the same fucking ponies!” To this, I saw their weapons flare up and his following scowl. I also raised my ADK and checked it before I aimed it at the brown ponies. They might be friendlies, but I was going to have to find out myself. Suddenly, from the street emerged a brick-red pony biting a machete who then charged at the dazed caravan ponies huddled around their deceased bovine.

I didn’t know who was right or wrong. Anyone could be the villains. What can I do? Training didn’t instate the rules of engagement, but everything was screaming at me to kill that red pony. The lines below also told me as the same machete-wielding pony was marked as a red line, in fact there were four of the same ones. I hesitated.

“Artyom! Are we going to help them or not?!” Dmitri yelled as I felt the anger emanating from him. I thought longer and longer, until I reached the decision point.

I was a Soviet.

I will do things right, and the end will justify the means.

I aimed the ADK at the red pony and pulled the cold metal of the trigger. It fell within three shots of my rifle and he crumpled onto the ground like paper, his machete flying through the air until it landed next to the ambling caravan ponies. Then they turned to find the dead body, and then they looked at us.

Cover was not of the essence, it was the essence of survival. I stood up and hopped over my cover to help them out, sliding to a wall as Dmitri followed while he attempted to cover fire the defending ones. They then quickly trotted to us, not before I watched a bullet pierce the heart of one of them. It made me feel a little…sickened.

“No!” The remaining one said as I saw three different colored and armed ponies emerge from the ruined buildings ahead, the lines confirming they were hostiles. Dmitri then rose up and fired his highly destructive Vorana, and one of them vanished into a red mist to the others’ surprise as they looked at us.

The brown pony slid to cover next to us and huddled the wall, still biting onto his clearly visible pistol. “Whoa! Who the fuck are you?” He asked us as I looked over at it, with all attention still at the approaching ‘raider’s, as it had mentioned earlier.

“No matter! We will help you out!” I blurt out in perfect English, as Dmitri boomed once again. His flak cannon missed the shot, but decimated a building within the firing line of his shot and caused the ponies to stumble back in suppression and confusion.

“Well, thanks!” It thanked as it fired again at the ponies, with me following suit. “Damn! I lost Suitcase!” At this, I felt a little lurch in my stomach. So that was his friend, laying dead next to the rotting bovine as I fire my ADK in two successive bursts, catching one of them in both its head and chest and causing him to collapse with his weapon sliding on the ground. Dmitri then moved up to a large piece of masonry and begun his symphony of destruction, just as a reverberating crack of a sniper caused him to recoil back.

“SNIPER!” He yelled out at the other pony approached us. The pony next to me quickly finished him off, but not before sustaining a crippling wound to his leg.

“AH!” I hear him cry out in pain as he fell to the ground, his leg bleeding profusely. I crouched down amidst the trade of fire from Dmitri and the sniper, trying to assure it.

“Don’t worry! We’ll get you out of here!” I slung back my ADK and approached it, getting quite a response as he waved me away.

“It’s…okay!” He said as he slowly got up, his shot leg still trembling and bleeding. “I’ll be alright…” He kept huffing, and I immediately waved for him to approach Dmitri as he fired away, completely destroying almost half the inflicted buildings. I knew the wounded pony wouldn’t last long in such a derelict place with a wound like that, and we didn’t have the proper equipment to treat it until we get to that safehouse.

“Just… just stay here, comrade!” I barked at him, not wanting to get him anymore injured than he already was. “We’ll handle them!”

“No way! They killed Suitcase!” He was the defiant one, but I quickly shoved him to cove, causing him to spit at me. “Hey!” Sorry, but I had to.

“Sorry! You stay there, pony!” I responded and attended to Dmitri, who had just locked on to the sniper, which was revealed to be another dark silver pony that seemed to be…levitating his sniper. Odd, but he had a horn on his head and I vaguely remembered a creature from mythology that had such a feature. A unicorn, to be exact. A unicorn with a sniper, brilliant.

But Dmitri was now visibly grinning at the doomed unicorn as he muttered in Russian. “Good-bye, you’ve been a bad boy.” His Vorana then thundered and send a spiraling flak towards the sniper, blowing up his vantage point and he himself. I sighed in victory as Dmitri grunted in satisfaction.

I then turned back to the pony, before signaling Dmitri to take a look at ‘Suitcase’ and the carcass of the bovine. It was a long day, with one conflict after another. The firefight was no different, and all I wanted is to take a rest from all this. I then spoke to the brown pony.

“Are you okay?”

“Okay? I’m fucking fine!” On the word of Stalin, this pony was rude as hell. Hey, I just saved your life so be thankful or else I would’ve killed you a long time ago. “But thank you anyway, we were in a jiffy. Poor Suitcase…”

“It was rather unfortunate we couldn’t save him,” I reply to his loss of a friend.

“Her,” he corrected me, and I shook myself.

“Sorry, I meant her,” I replied back, slinging my ADK back and rubbing the back of my frazzled hair, my ushanka still in tip-top condition. “So, what’re were you doing?”

“What the fuck does it look like we’re doing? We’re just having a routine caravan trail!” I wanted to slap him for such disrespect, but thinking about the state of the wasteland, it would be normal to pick up such language in front of something you don’t even know of. But hey, I use these language too.

“Sorry again,” I apologized as Dmitri called out from behind.

“Artyom! There’s some magazines for you!” At this, the brown pony looked at him, then back at me.

“…You’re going to ransack our load now?” I felt really, really guilty now.

“…Do you mind?” He sighed before replying.

“No… I suppose you can take what you want since I can’t carry all that shit alone.” The guilt was still there, but he just allowed us to take whatever we need for our trip to the safehouse. Then I looked around the wrecked town and subsequently, I sought to ask him what had happened to ensure such…darkness.

But first, I’ll ask his or her name. “Hey,”

“Yeah?” He looked at me, and I rubbed my ushanka again.

“What’s your name?”

“Kahn, it’s Kahn,” Very, very odd name indeed. It was Russian, but at least I knew his name. Now unto the next set of important questions.

“Good, now Kahn,” I breathed and looked around, with Dmitri still scavenging the remains of Suitcase and the cow. “What happened here?”

“Wait first, lemme ask you a question,” he asked me. I found that perfectly reasonable. “First up, what the hell are you?”

I stood back up and straightened myself. “We’re Soviets, men of the Motherland. Although this isn’t the Motherland…”

“Uh huh, explains why I’ve never seen critters like you two around.” I grunt and sigh, I felt extremely homesick. “Okay, next. Why did you save me?”

“Why not?” I replied with coolness. If he was indeed questioning the validity of our well-timed rescue, then we might’ve just left him for dead. But we didn’t.

“Well, you are some kind of thing. And I suppose that whatever the fucking Wasteland has to come up with, it’s bound to be dangerous,” he responded sturdily as I huffed, unslinging my ADK to check its remaining rounds. As I slid back the bolt for the ADK, I began to ask Kahn what had occurred.

“So Kahn, what happened here?”

“Just now,” he replied, as I did not made it very clear of my intentions.

“Ahem… I mean, what happened to Ponyville?” I then spotted a innocent looking yellow…pegasus on a poster with eyes the size of grapefruits that were somehow sparkling. The paper was torn and severely aged as I made my way to examine it more closely.

“The war, that’s what happened.” So I was right, a massive war that most likely engulfed the world in blazing hellfire. Our war looked more timid compared to this one. “Zebra’s dropped the balefire warheads on us, and we did the same. Fuckers, they deserved it.” Balefire warheads? Our Vacuum Imploders sounded like a petty instrument of destruction with the vocalization of these ‘balefire’ warheads.

“That’s bad, and from where we come from. War is there too,” I respond as I struggled to read the English letters on it, as it was written in a strange style that was not comprehensible enough for me. All I understood was ‘War! Fear! Death! We must be…” then just like that, it cut off. I felt sad for these ponies, if they managed to wipe themselves off the map like that. The grimness of the world was sinking into me, and I wanted to curl up and wish for Vera’s warmth.

“Oh? That’s fucking great,” he remarked as I heard his hooves grinding on the broken street, meaning that he was getting up. “Beings that speak Equestrian, dress up oddly and they fucking came from a war-torn world like ours!”

I sighed and slung my ADK to withdraw a bottle of vodka, before putting it back into my belt for later drinking. Looking over to my Pipbuck, it still lit up the way to the safehouse that was a little farther away deeper into the ruins of the town.

“Whoa!” Kahn exclaimed as he trotted over to me. “How in the hell did you get a Pipbuck?”

“Woke up with it,” I spun after finishing my observations and pointed to Dmitri who was still busy scavenging. “He has one too.” Then the sudden reaction of Kahn caused me to stumble back, after I realized he had laid eyes on the engraving of the Grand Pegasi Enclave.

“Fuck me… Enclave! I knew they had to do something with you two!” He then bit the handle of his pistol nearby and pointed it towards my way, as I slowly reached out for my ADK. Dmitri heard the commotion and he faced Kahn, with his flak cannon out and ready.

“What in the living hell? Who are these damned Enclave?!” I yell in intense frustration, as my pent-up mix of curiosity and anger was released to find out just who in the hell were these Enclave.

“Pegasi! That’s what! Hiding in their little clouds! Bastards tried to clean us all out some time ago and now they send you two?!” I was hesitating to shoot the out of control pony, but it was apparent he didn’t have the strength too as I saw his injured leg tremble before he collapsed and grunted in pain.

“FUCK! YOU DAMNED ENCLAVE BASTARDS!” The Enclave was now apparently hated by the remaining survivors of the wasteland, as indicated by Kahn. Then I felt intense anger surging up my veins, a well-hated organization brought the both of us here and I wanted to burn them all.

“Ow…” He mumbled under the pain as I looked around for some sort of cloth to wrap around his leg, just as Dmitri came over with his Vorana still locked on to him. Spotting the dead raider ponies, which wore tattered remains of clothing. I sprinted over to one of them and used my de-attached bayonet to cut a lengthy piece of cloth before running back to Kahn, who hissed.

“Get away, Enclave freak-GAH!” He screeched as I grabbed his leg and circled it with the cloth, tying it up with a dead knot as I saw the blood seeping through it. He still had a bullet inside him however, and we had to wait until we get to the safehouse. “Damn… it hurts!”

“Of course, blithering pony scum,” Dmitri cursed at him in Russian as he eyed him with vengeance for attempting to kill me. “Try to kill the officer again, and I will end you.”

“The fuck are you trying to say, Pegasi language? Fuck…” He slowly got up, the pistol still in his clenching teeth. I was not worried now, just assured that he wouldn’t dare shoot me with the flak trooper around.

“Now, are you okay?”

“Ugh… just fine. Sorry about that,” he apologized as he looked down, the pistol following. “Damn Enclave took out my brother, Gravel. I promised that I would kill them all.”

“Well, they didn’t kill us,” I responded as I panted and looked at my luminescent screen again. “They just simply prolonged our pain.”

“Why so?” He asked me as I ambled about, my ADK gripped on.

“Well, I can tell you everything. But first, how far is it from where you came from?”

“You mean Gecko? It’s pretty far and we made it out here without any trouble. Until Chase’s raiders came along, and then the two of you…” he was cut off and I had to help him up, giving me an opportunity to scrutinize his weapon. It was a pistol, no doubt and I was right about it being built for equine usage. It must’ve held standard .45 ACP rounds, if I was correct. “About an hour or two to get back.”

“Then you have to come with us,” I answered to him, knowing that such a journey was almost impossible in his current condition. “We’re heading to a safehouse in this desolate land.”

“There’s a safehouse here?” Kahn questioned. “Must be that Enclave tech you got. I think I’ll go with you, but I have to get back to Gecko by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Why so?” I asked back I began to shuffle out, Dmitri and Kahn following along slowly.

“The Rangers there are pretty paranoid, and they’ll bring in an entire armada just to look for me,” Rangers, what were they? I knew the Enclave and the war, but these Rangers made me curious about them.

“Rangers?”

“Yeah, Applejack’s Rangers. Pretty good bunch of ponies, but paranoid as hell,” he explained to me, and I nodded along. There used to be one commander who was paranoid, and after word about an Allied attack force he immediately set up about 50 sentries and flak cannons alone. Then the force turned out to be the Empire’s attack force, and they were completely decimated without his base being touched at all. I was there to bear witness to the destruction, and I found it pretty amusing.

“That’s… interesting,” I reply as we soon reached a crossroad, the map saying we should take a left towards the safehouse. But Kahn stopped and told me after seeing where my Pipbuck wanted us to go.

“Don’t, maps aren’t always accurate. Going down that way is like going straight into a Hellhound cave, too many raiders.” He was very right, as I saw multiple red lines appear in my vision as I pulled out the ADK, now on it’s last few rounds. I was not worried though, as I had more than enough to take on a King Oni.

“Then we’ll take right,” I respond as Dmitri nodded from behind, noticing the astounding amount of hostiles down that road. We then quickly hurried down the shattered pathway, with the Pipbuck immediately detecting the change of plans and re-directing us to another pathway that was behind the raider ponies.

Even as an experienced conscript, I will now shudder at ponies if I ever get back. Make a note of that, never underestimate one ever again. Soon, I could hear them ranting about the earlier kills, causing Kahn to grunt in disgust.

“I hate raiders.”

“You say that a lot,” Dmitri replied in shaky English, still tangible enough to be understood by the brown pony.

“What, you like them?”

“They remind me of gulags, where the Premier threw me into after I saved boy from abuse,” Dmitri grunted under the weight of the Vorana as we progressively moved closer to the safehouse. So that’s what happened, a good intention turned bloody and the following consequences. Why they chose to redact the part with the child was all too clear, for they wanted to keep his law bringing down low. I couldn’t help though, as we were far away from the Motherland.

Dmitri’s heaven, as it seemed.

We eventually snuck past the raiders, with the only mishap being my tripping over a piece of rubble and the evidential remains of dust being the only thing that hinted of our existence. As we continued on, Kahn took this time to talk with me, not Dmitri.

“So, what is your name?”

“Artyom,” I reply as I looked forward to maintain guard.

“A nice name, so what are you?”

“A soldier,” I reply. “If you can’t tell.”

“That’s pretty reassuring, considering the only soldiers we have are the Rangers,” Kahn said as we continued on, my Pipbuck blinking. I looked down and immediately, I saw something ahead flicker on and off. Attracted to this, I hurried and found out it was a passageway to the safehouse.

“Here! The safehouse!” I waved to them as they both hurry up. The passageway was locked with a tough-as-hell steel door, and next to it was a still operative scanner.

“Well shit, I never noticed this thing over here,” Kahn remarked on our discovery of the haven, as I walked up to the scanner.

Please produce a valid I.D from your Pipbuck 3000. As soon as the monotonous voice spoke, my Pipbuck’s screen immediately turned into lines, and I found myself lifting up my hand to let the scanner handle the work..

Scanning…

I.D confirmed, Grand Pegasi Enclave bunker doors are now opening. Please step back.

The doors suddenly grinded open, causing all three of us to recoil back in surprise. I wasn’t expecting this door to be that loud, but I was hoping it wouldn’t attract too much hostile attention as we learnt in boot camp about noise.

Remember, noise is no good! Make one sound and the whole place will blow up, whether you like it or not!

I cracked a quick grin as the inner sanctum of the safehouse revealed itself, a metal table awaiting us ahead. I waved to Dmitri and Kahn to enter, before eying the environment for one last time. Going in, the doors then closed behind us, effectively covering us well. How did they erect such a bunker without any attention? I don’t know, but what I did know was that there was a stack of food at the corner of the room, two first-aid boxes, ammunition on top of the table, ballistic goggles accompanied by a few gas masks and finally, several unusual weapons leaning against the wall. Dmitri let out a slow whistle, followed by an awestruck Kahn.

“Pretty good place,” Dmitri remarked as the lights turned on, illuminating the room. “Would last us a long time.”

“How on Equestria did we miss this place out…?”

“Probably because of us,” I told Kahn as he trotted to a laid out mattress and flopped onto it. “We’re all tired.”

Dmitri was busy trying to place his Vorana in a position where it wouldn’t drop and kill us all, as I went over to the boxes to find something that can help Kahn live a little longer. Finding antiseptic, I went over to Kahn and began unwrapping my tourniquet. “Hey! What’re you doing-

“Just something I picked up,” I cut him off as I began to swab the wound with the antiseptic I found, causing him to hiss.

“YOW! Watch it, buddy!” Thank god the bullet went through, as from what I’ve seen under the lights. If it was still there, it would’ve been a little more…torturous than Kahn would’ve thought.

There, done. He was now good to go as I tie back the tourniquet, now putting a piece of wood I picked up along the way. “Better now?”

“Urf… at least you know how to treat a bullet wound. Unlike some ponies…” Kahn mumbled before yawning. “Hot damn, it’s been a long day. We’ve got like, three hours of sleep?”

“Don’t worry, we should be able to wake up before noon,” I assure Kahn as I unslung my ADK and laid it on the provided table, carefully observing the weapons on the side. Dmitri had taken off his helmet, and was now preparing to take a power nap. I was too, but I was very curious of their level of technology.

These guns were longer than my ADK, and they looked far more lethal than ours could ever be. But they were not made for us, as I kept in mind. Damn, I was beginning to wander off into the unconscious, as I yawned.

Taking off my ushanka and placing it on the same table, revealing my hair, which was lined with silver, I shuffled over to one of the free beds available and relaxed after lying down.

Some sleep, at last.

---

Footnote: Artyom Salnikov

Level up;

+5 Speech

+5 Medicine

---

Comments

[Lord Commissar Alexer]

Interesting...

[Pabulos]

Me Want Moar!

[Detective Chmilewsky]

An interesting idea, and more so to see another Human in - Fallout - Equestria. One thing that... sort of turned me off though was the main character's name. I realize it is petty of me to say this, but that name has been used to death in a lot of stories, ever since Metro came out. That isn't to say I don't like your story, just a small (large) peeve of mine.

[Obvious German]

2404197 Yes, I based off the idea from RoE. But the storyline of that one is about Stable-Tec while my one involves the Grand Enclave Pegasi. That one also has the protagonist looking for details about the past, while the Russians have no clue on what do to.

[MiiaTheLamia]

Needs more Tesla Trooper.

[hungrykiwi]

I wouldn't mind a chapter or two from Dmitri's point of view c:

[TracTix]

Ah, the Soviet March...

Best piece of video game music I've ever heard.

[icedude94]

2405288 Need Kirovs and Twin blades and last but not least A-A-A-APOCALYPSE TAANKS!!!!!!

[The Crimson Reaper]

4256258
actually, in red alert and in later iterations there are different timelines where soviet tech is far more advanced, who is to say flak troopers carry miniature versions of a flak cannon and the accompanying shells.