Fallout Equestria: Rough Water

by Ben Garrison

Chapters

Naval archive: File 1928: the Wind Way Event
Chapter 1: Recrudescence
Chapter 2: New Mission, New Threat, New Concept, New Parameters, New Contingency
Chapter 3: All Our Failures
Chapter 4: Draconian Past
Chapter 5: Rising Action
Act 1 Marker

Naval archive: File 1928: the Wind Way Event

Fore note: this is for the 500-member contest on the FoE group so, Hi Doomande!

“Sir we are picking up multiple launches from within the Zebra mainland!”

“Report this to Canterlot immediately and prep the Pegasus rockets for launch!”

“Sir retaliatory launches have begun!”

“I hoped it wouldn’t have come to this… Launch the Pegasus.”

“Oh my… Equestria just went dark…”

“Last Zebra chatter’s dying out now…”

“Mares, stallions, we are all that is left.”

Fallout Equestria:

Rough Water

I forced my eyes open, and stared at the rusted ceiling above me. Due to the thick disgusting gunk that lined my mouth I could tell I was dehydrated. What a cruel ironic twist of fate it was to be surrounded at all times by water as far as the eye can see, yet be unable able to drink any of it. I rolled out of my berth and felt the familiar feeling of the constantly bobbing and rocking deck under me. I staggered to the foot of my bed and started to put on my gear. It was more or less just the (extremely aged) wartime armor of the Equestrian Marine Corp. The gas mask built on to the helmet had a crack in the left eye piece, the helmet itself had dents and even a bullet hole or two in it, the ceramic plates that made up the armored chest plate had cracked in a few places, and most noticeably the once Navy camo pattern had faded to a dull blue-grey. Now this armor had defiantly seen better days, but it was still the best armor available out here, and more importantly it identified me as one of the Compact Agreement’s Marines, and my dog tags displayed my ship’s name, the battleship HMNS Patriotic Fire, in a proud sort of way, one that said “home sweet city leveling home”, what ever a city is…

I staggered out of the room, dehydration really sucks, and made my way through the winding rusted, patched up hallways to the galley. I walked into line, got the same meal as everyday, coconut water and some fruit. Then I found the rest of my fire team and sat with them.

“Hey Rip Tide you look like shit!” Swordfish, the greyish blue coated pegasus mare who was currently sitting across from me commented on my appearance, oh yeah I should probably mention that my name is Rip Tide. In response I sat down and tried to enjoy my breakfast, I should also mention that I hate mornings.

“Swordfish shut up, or they will change the name of the crows nest to the Swordfish nest with the amount of time you will spend up there!” Our commanding officer ghoul, corporal Brawny, said in agitation from behind his gas mask. He had been made a ghoul when he and his squad boarded a Zebra dragon carrier that had a balefire reactor leak. Crow’s nest duty on the other hoof was used as a punishment onboard the Patriotic Fire since it involved hours of staring at the empty ocean, and isolation, but he was wrong, most of the crew already called it the Swordfish nest.

“It’s ok, I’m not a morning pony.” I mumbled, then drank the coconut milk, it has a weird taste and isn’t as instantly refreshing as pure water, but it’s much better at keeping one’s self hydrated. At this time, Signal Fire, the fourth member of our fire team sat down.

“Permission to speak freely?” Swordfish asked.

“Permission denied.” Brawny replied flatly.

“Ok, what are we doing today?” Signal Fire half yawned. He also isn’t one for mornings.

“Well I heard the Rear Admiral got a report from Wind Way of an attack. We’re probably being sent to assist the crew of the Monarch, and the Wind Way militia fight it off.” Swordfish answered. This would be a good time to explain the compact agreement. After the bombs fell the Zebra Navy declared martial law on their chain of island colonies, after a few weeks of them abusing power, the Equestrian Navy arrived and the single largest navel battle known to have occurred proceeded. It ended with the zebra Navy being shattered, and the islanders celebrating being freed. Since the remains of the Zebra Navy had reorganized into pirates, the Zebra villages needed protection, and the Equestrian Navy needed food, and thus the compact agreement. They gave us food, and each island would have a ship and marines for protection, Wind Way island was guarded by the Monarch, and every 6 islands had either a capitol ship or a aircraft carrier, the Patriotic Fire served this role for Wind way and 5 other islands.

“Swordfish were you eavesdropping again?” Brawny asked. If so, she was probably going to have a couple more hours of crow’s nest duty.

“Hey you’re the one who put me in the crow’s nest that night, and it’s the Captain's fault for taking the call on the bridge where I can hear him from.” Sword Fish replied. I guess that’s a good way to avoid crow’s nest duty since Brawny didn’t say any more.

With that oh so lovely screechy crackle the P.A. system sputtered to life. “Attention, this is Rear Admiral Monsoon, the island of Wind Way was attacked last night and the Monarch has been sunk. All crewmembers are to prepare for heavy combat, also my personal fire team, and fire team Sea Lion are to make contact with the local population. All other fire teams are to prepare to storm the beach if necessary.” Sea Lion… that would be us.

“I bet you anything it’s those dam Zebras! The agreement means nothing because it’s with the fucking striped!” Brawny said as he got up from the table and the rest of us had to hurry to catch up with the stormy earth pony ghoul, he never had gotten over the war, which I guess can be attributed to him being from the now bombed out main land.

“Oh come on, I get that you have a grudge, but the locals don’t have a fraction of the fire power needed for this!” Signal Fire said as he raced to keep up with our pissed of C.O.

“Yeah I mean obviously it was those dumb pirates!” Swordfish said as she flew a head of him, and had to periodically drop to a run for the flood doors.

We reached the armory and grabbed our weapons and some ammo for them, as well as the standard marine kit. My primary weapon was a top loaded pan magazine fed LMG chambering .303 rounds, my side arm was a standard underwater firearm that fires flechettes via pressurized gas, and in a sheath on my shoulder I had my combat knife. Signal Fire hooked a fuel tank up to his flamethrower and loaded a mag into her marksmen’s rifle, and Swordfish racked some shells into her shotgun and pulled the strap of her Javelin anti-tank rocket launcher (how she can fly with that thing is beyond me) over her head. Meanwhile our ever stormy C.O. slammed a magazine into his assault rifle and racked a grenade into the under barrel grenade launcher.

“Now, let’s do what we should have done 200 years ago!” Brawny said, and the shear amount of hatred I felt from him made me inclined to believe him. Oh yeah, one of my three spells is emotion sensing, which isn’t much since in a firefight I already know the other guys want to kill me, and any one who calls them self a spy would be able to mask their emotions from my mediocre skills, on that topic, my other two spells are telekinesis and a basic sonar spell all unicorns are taught, which is not that useful since sonar isn’t too great on land and the seas are so irradiated that if you grabbed a rock and jumped in to the sea you would develop severe cancer before drowning.

“Oh for the love of clear skies! Brawny you’re over reacting, and you’re quite racist.” Swordfish yelled after him. Then she proceeded to race after him, leaving us to follow.

As I once again found myself running after my ghoulish C.O, a sandy brown coated mare with an orange mane and a fairly worn out civilian cloak cut me off in the hall. “So, you are going to land?” The mare, Low Tide, my younger sister and only family, asked in a very concerned tone.

“Yes we are, don’t worry it’ll be in and out, it was probably just a pirate hit and run.” She was a civilian; she managed a small ration shop on the lower deck. As a civilian hearing that a fellow ship of the fleet had been sunk would be devastating. I however as a soldier knew a bit more about the Monarch. It was a merchant marine vessel, so it wasn't armored to stand up in a prolonged fight. Also its primary armament was composed of 6-inch guns, now while I wouldn’t like to get hit by that, it was nothing compared to the 11-inch guns of a pirate pocket battleship, much less the 14 and 18-inch guns of the Patriotic Fire. In essence the Monarch was a floating coffin for whoever was unlucky enough to be born on it. “Listen, I’ll be fine. You know what to do in the event of a call to arms right?” In the event of call to arms even the civilians had to pitch in to keep our home and its 2,000 inhabitants afloat.

“Yeah yeah, set up sand bags on deck, reload anti-aircraft gun when need be.” She replied in an annoyed tone.

“Ok, take care, and I’ll see you once we get this issue sorted out.” I then left her there and proceeded on to the deck to find my fire team.

Once on deck I had to shield my eyes from the harsh rays of sunlight that cascaded down onto the deck. To the port side of the ship the sea seemed to stretch out for eternity, which was some what true since if you went in the absolute right direction you wouldn’t see any land until you hit the Equestrian mainland. To starboard I could see Wind Way little more than a kilometer or two away. Also on the starboard side of the bow just ahead of the double mount of 18-inch guns and the more forward quadruple mount of 14-inch guns, I saw my fire team making last minute checks before climbing down a rope ladder to our rigid hulled inflatable boat, that would take us to shore. Farther to stern I noticed the Rear Admiral and his fire team getting into their RHIB. I rushed to join my own team before we departed.

The ocean was quite still, and despite what I had told my sister, I had a strong sense of dread telling me this was the calm before the storm. The sky was definitely clear enough to say otherwise, in the literal sense at least. As our boat came closer to the island more of it became clear, notably the barrier reef which separated the water on the inside that had been cleansed of radiation by some form of seaweed, and the highly radioactive water of the ocean, and the dock which extended past the reef to allow boats to dock without disturbing the reef. Those however were not what I was focusing on, still moored to the dock was the melted, not crushed, torn, or blown up, but melted wreck of the Monarch. Three things where off, one: It was melted and I’ve never seen a weapon that melts things, two: it was still moored and no ship could have snuck up on a clear night, three: the top was melted, this implied that the strikes had come from above, but the fact that the dock and reef were intact made it clear that the attacker had been too close to properly arc artillery down on to the target. “So you still think the Zebras did it?” I asked Brawny in a sarcastic tone. What? I had time to wake up by now, no more morning depression.

“Shut your mouth or you’ll be joining Swordfish in the crows nest.” He growled as we reached the dock.

“Oh that’ll give me an excuse to ditch the nest!” Swordfish exclaimed as she flew up and moored us to the dock. Brawny simply grumbled something about dragons, what ever those are…

Once on the dock things I felt weird. Why? The surface I stood on was still! Living most of my life on a constantly bobbing up and down and rocking side to side ship, made standing on normal ground weird. There was to rhythmic shift, just the feeling of planks beneath my hooves. It was an alien feeling; it was like the ground was… dead.

The R.A. and his men had already moored and were heading towards land. Our fire team was quick to follow them into the Zebra village. If the fact that something much better armed had taken out the Monarch was not enough to convince Brawny that the Zebra’s weren’t to blame, the burnt houses and pink ash that filled the streets certainly was. Everywhere Zebras where packing up their homes and bringing what ever they could carry with them into the jungle. All under the protection of just 4 zebras from the local militia, who were armed with Zebra rifles held together with duct tape. Something very bad had happened here, or was still happening. The R.A. entered the hut of the village’s elder, an extremely old ghoul, who had been on or soon would have been on his deathbed when the bombs fell.

I leaned up against one of the walls of the hut so I could eves drop on the conversation. “… da stars came!”

“I don’t care about the sexual conquest of some stripper group, if they’re pirates just tell me their heading so I can send them to the bottom of the ocean.” The Rear Admiral’s voice responded in stark contrast to the raspy accented voice of the elder.

“Nah! It wasn’t pirates; I tell you prophecy came true like how sea is blue! Dey had one’a dem sky sheeps and dey rained star fire on us!” The elder cut in abruptly. Sky ship? I didn’t like the sound of that, not one bit, and star fire gave new meaning to the pile of pink ash I was standing on…

I jumped of the pile and dusted off my hooves, thus preventing me from eavesdropping any further. Apparently I hadn’t missed much since the R.A. exited the hut with his guards shortly after.

“Ok, Brawny your team is being assigned to trek through the jungle to the top of the island’s plateau, from there you will use this targeting laser to give us an angle for direct fire on the target, which I should probably mention can fly, and has air support of it’s own. To guide you along this trek you will be meeting up with a member of the militia named Xager. Now my team and I will return to the Patriotic Fire and get her primed for an invasion landing on the other side of the island. Can I trust you with this?” The Admiral said and tossed me the targeting laser. "Authentication code is Embellishment-Delta-08"

“Consider it done.” Brawny growled, having to work with a Zebra obviously bothered him greatly.

“Very well then, get to it.” The R.A. said and left down to the dock with his guards.

“Ok, let’s get this… where the hell is Swordfish?” Brawny asked.

It wasn’t hard to find her, drinking was prohibited aboard the Patriotic Fire, and she defiantly qualified as an alcoholic. My search amounted to asking a local where the bar was, going there and dragging the mare away by the tail.

“Oh come on! I didn’t even get a drop!” She complained, to which I could only roll my eyes.

“No, you're an asshole when you're drunk. An asshole I would rather not have wielding a Fire and Forget missile system.” Something told me that would be a pretty terrible idea.

“Fine.” Oh wow so she can roll her eyes too. We regrouped with the others and embarked down the jungle path, we had been deployed here before so the birds in the trees and all the exotic life that crawled, slithered, climbed and stung wasn’t anything new, but by no means where we experts.

Once we reached the first fork in the road, we were greeted by a Zebra in militia attire, with a conical straw-hat, many odd tribal tattoos, a Zebra rifle and an RPG slung across his back. “Friends! It is good to see help has arrived!” He exclaimed.

“Yeah whatever, just lead us to the Celestia Damned plateau.” Brawny cut in.

“Very well, not so friendly friend.” The Zebra that I presumed to be named Xager replied, and lead us deeper into the jungle.

“So what exactly happened?” Signal Fire asked.

“Cloud came in, then star ship descended on the Monarch and released little star demons and things like your fly boats. Then it flew over the plateau and landed, we have been evacuating everyone to the bunker of old in the forest so we can wait out the apocalypse.” By fly boats I believe he was referring to the Sky tanks on our aircraft carriers and even on the Patriotic Fire via aircraft catapult.

“Well that sounds pretty shitty.” Swordfish replied. Yes, thank you for those enlightening words of great wisdom Swordfish.

“Um… well at least the flack guns on the Monarch got something…” Signal Fire called from the front of the group. Everyone rushed forward to see what it was.

It was half a body, a body that was encased in a carapace like metal armor, but more shocking was what the body belonged to. A pegasus. Making note of the armor I replaced my pan magazine with a standard 30 round magazine of armor piercing rounds. “Shit look at the way the wing is bent…” Swordfish trailed off, apparently wings are sensitive or some thing like that.

We continued on through the jungle, constantly having to swat at the mosquitos that swarmed the place, they itched pretty bad, and you never know which one could be carrying island hopper’s flue, a disease that makes you feel cold despite being in a tropical environment, causing you to shiver, and with no known cure only a few treatments that would make it pass quicker, it made most ponies boil from the inside out before it passed.

As we continued the jungle thinned out, and soon we were face to face with the rocky plateau. It was a good 45 degree angle up, but by no means would that deter a marine, or a member of the island’s militia. However, Xager had made the mistake of offering Brawny a hoof. “I don’t need your help, so listen here, I don’t like you, and it has nothing to do with anything you particularly have done, but because you’re stripy Zebra scum.” That seemed to really hurt Xager as he immediately lost his smile and withdrew his hoof.

“Wow, and you wonder why I don’t respect you!” Swordfish exclaimed. Ok, I’ll give her that. That was insightful, sort of.

We continued to the top in awkward silence. I think Xager might have at one point shed a tear or two. I felt bad for him, I don’t know what Brawny went through in the war, but nothing should excuse this behaviour. Once at the top we saw our opposition in one piece for the first time, 6 of the armoured pegasi stood around some sort of antenna. A few squad gestures from our racist C.O. told us what to do. I dropped the bipod of my LMG picked my target and after Brawny popped a grenade on the antenna, and opened fire. My shots tore through my target, dropping the pony nearly instantly. Most of the others in my group had similar results, except Swordfish who tackled her target and despite pleas of “You’re a pegasus why are you helping them?!”, she fired three 12 gauge rounds into the poor pegasus mare’s chest. Apparently using armor piercing rounds was a good decision, as the buckshot didn’t penetrate, it merely bent to armor, caving in the mare’s chest and preventing her from breathing.

I would have normally spent a bit of time looking at the antenna and wondering it’s purpose, but I had a laser that needed to target something big. I ran to the edge of the plateau and got a glimpse of my target, it was massive, black, and… there were 2 sky tanks coming to get the antenna running. I jumped back just as one lunged up the rise. There was a beep and the whoosh of a rocket and then the world exploded. Well not really, just the tank, and a piece of shrapnel was hanging millimeters from my eye. Luckly, it had been caught by the visor of my gas mask, and now I couldn’t see.

I ripped off the mask to see that the battle wasn’t going well, for one thing the second tank was right above me, for another, since Swordfish had to reload, the tank had scattered everyone. I watched as Brawny’s cover was pounded to oblivion by ‘star fire’, and he was knocked to the ground, totally at the tanks mercy. Now he was a jerk but by no means did I want him to die. There was a swoosh and the world exploded again. I looked over and Xager stood out of his cover with a smoke trail leading to the now unloaded RPG. Xager had just saved Brawny; after all he had said, Xager still saved him. I couldn’t see Brawny’s face behind his mask, but if I had to guess, it would have been one of total shock and embarrassment.

The blast of a ship’s horn shattered my eardrums, and I turned back to the edge to see that the Patriotic Fire was in position. I raised the laser target designator to my eye, focused the beam on target, and after hearing the beep of a target lock, I telekinetically pressed the button signalling a proper lock. "Target Locked! Authentication code Embellishment-Delta-08!" I yelled into the small radio on the designator.

The horn was nothing compared to what followed. The 14 and 18-inch guns roared spewing massive plumbs of smoke into the sky and less then a second latter the massive black craft in the forest was slammed with the high explosive shells. In response it began to rise menacingly from the tree line. As it did so it unleashed a swarm of pegasi and sky tanks, which were quickly forced back by the Patriotic Fire’s SAM launchers and flack cannons. However rather than returning to their armored ship, they dove into the forest, and I noticed why, From the Patriotic Fire numerous landing craft where departing for the island, no doubt carrying the rest of the 100 marines living on the ship.

Things weren’t going well for the sky… thing. At its angle it wasn’t high enough to hit the ship’s deck and apparently star fire can’t be arced thus removing the deck as a target, also water seemed to neutralize star fire so it could only hit the hull, the most heavily armored part of the ship. However the Patriotic Fire’s shells continued to slam down on it from above. Realizing the hopelessness of its situation the sky ship thing began to fly away, leaving its out-matched soldier to fend against better skilled, marines, who could call in fire support from the Patriotic Fire’s 11-inch side guns.

Noticing its retreat, I pressed another button on the side, this one signaling the ponies loading the guns to swap over to thermite rounds, "It's on the run, swap over to thermite rounds, authentication code Embellishment-Delta-08." I watched them strike the target, starting fires throughout the sky ship, and causing the impact sites to glow a bright orange. However the thing continued to pick up speed, I couldn’t let it get away. "Minimal difference! Prep an Exocet! Embellishment-Delta-08!" I pressed the last button on the side of the target designator. The signal was given and a single Exocet missile flew out of its launch tube, and flew parallel to the sea before arcing up and hitting it’s target. I watched as the enemy craft was gutted by the strike, it spiralled out of control and crashed into the sea. From the ledge I saw it descend deeper and deeper until the power malfunctioned and the lights cut out.

The walk back had been mostly uneventful, unless you count swatting massive amounts of bugs as eventful. By the time we had returned to the dock the Zebras had begun to come out of hiding, there wasn’t much celebration, as despite the death of the “star ponies”, they had lost too many friends, family and neighbors to call it a victory. We returned said our goodbyes to Xager, even Brawny managed to choke out an “I’m sorry for being an ass hat”, then we climbed back into our RHIB and made our way around the island to where the Patriotic Fire was clearing out the last stragglers.

We were greeted with celebration, and I looked forward to seeing my sister, she had been worried about me, maybe the fact that I hadn’t been hit once the entire time against the invaders would finally get her to stop worrying about me. I went to check the list of casualties knowing she would be over to check them eventually. Going down the list I felt sad yet relieved, sad since I knew all these ponies, relieved since I didn’t know any of them all that well. Except one that is:

Name: Low Tide

Cause of death: faulty flak round exploded prematurely in the flack cannon she was assisting.

She really would never worry about me again… I felt my legs weaken as I fell down on my haunches and just stared at the list. I felt a tear run down my cheek. I had lost both my parents to pirates when I was young; Low Tide was the only family I had. I heard the raspy voice of Brawny from behind me. “So you’ve lost someone you care about. Same thing happened to me back in the war. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life; it’s that war never changes.”

"Fuck you Brawny."

---La fin---

Author’s notes:

Do you want me to expand on the world here? Because I wouldn’t mind doing so and I have a plot planned.

Oh God how I hate the fallout “War never changes” thing, because never is an absolute term, and thus there is nothing that “never changes”.

So for the contest it’s obviously mainly “on the sea” but the intro was a “before the bombs” thing, and the enclave brought a bit of above the clouds in.

Theme song

Sad ending song

Hope you enjoyed the story, it’s the single longest chapter I’ve ever written.

Chapter 1: Recrudescence

Fore note: After the quite positive response I got back from readers, I felt like continuing the story. No, this isn’t milking it since I had plans for a full-length story before I even published it.

Chapter 1: Recrudescence

I heard something… My eyes slowly opened to see a nice drift wood counter.

Yes I defiantly heard something. Somepony is speaking.

I pulled my upper body off the counter and it’s splinter filled grain and noticed the empty bottle of Sake (the alcoholic beverage the local Zebras make from their rice Patties) beside me.

I could here the voices a bit clearer now that I was slightly more awake, and I heard hoof steps to.

A hoof touched my shoulder and a grabbed the Bottle and swung it around to beat the shit out of who ever was trying to fuck with me.

When I found myself looking at a quite scared Swordfish I stopped my swing, dropped the bottle, and the sudden spin I did made me nauseous so I also threw up.

“Damn dude you’re hammered…” She said as she watched me empty the contents of my stomach onto the ground. Judging from the texture of my bile I had been binge drinking and not eating for the past three to four days.

“Private Swordfish! Use Navy approved language around indigenous zebras or I will stick you with crow's nest duty until the day you die!” Oh fuck me Brawny was seeing this to! As I coughed up the last contents of my stomach I noticed the irony that this was the same bar I dragged Swordfish out of about a week ago.

I stumbled to my hooves and tried to focus on what was going on around me. “What’s? What’s going on?” I asked as Swordfish stepped over to help me stand, making me realize that I had been swaying back and forth. Odd usually it’s me helping her out of a bar.

“Well you’re on hangover, lucky Xager taught me how to get over that really quickly. In terms of what’s going on well-”

“We’re not at liberty to discuss that. Also Swordfish told me what Xager’s technique for breaking hangover is and I believe it will serve as adequate punishment for not conducting yourself as a marine should while on shore leave.” Brawny interjected.

While they walked me out of the bar they conversed as only they could.

“So as long as I use Xager’s method I can drink as much as I want of shore leave?”

“No.”

“But?!”

“No, because it’s not a deterrent for you. So drop it.”

“But?!”

“Remember when I told you to drop it? Consider that a standing order.”

They had maneuvered me over to the beach by the dock. Now I wasn’t sure what made this anti-hangover treatment constitute punishment, and I didn’t even want to know.

Swordfish gave me a violent shove and once I had fallen over, held my head under the water! Air escaped me as I tried to call out for help, my lungs burnt and my vision darkened. Then I was pulled out coughing and breathing fast and shallow. “You see oxygen helps fix hang over.” Back under again only to be pulled out before drowning. “So by drowning you to make you hyperventilate,” Back under back up. “we flood your lungs with oxygen.” Back under, back up. “The only problem is that it might make your heart explo-” I cut Swordfish’s explanation short with a right hook to the head, and I think I could figure out what she was going to say. “Ow… Ok he’s better!” The look on her face told me that she wasn’t too hurt and that was good, I didn’t want to hurt her she was trying to help. Right?

I staggered to shore and emptied my stomach again in the sand. “Ok… Now what’s this about a mission?” I asked, breathing slowly to reassume normal heart rate, breathing patterns and adrenalin levels.

Brawny’s tone reeked of disgust and disapproval. “Well now, while you were drinking your self to death the Patriotic Fire returned from repairs and-”

“The Patriotic Fire was out of segment for repairs? Forgive me my memory’s hash at the moment.” I cut in. Well what? My memory was!

Brawny’s tone turned to one of annoyance, like I was an insolent cadet in need of discipline. “Hull damage, damage to the Bow 18 inch guns, we had to get a replacement for the Monarch, and in case you forgot; one flack cannon completely torn apart!” The last part hit me harder than any bullet could, and rightfully so.

“I feel that last part was uncalled for sir.” Swordfish tried to interject.

“Swordfish speak out of line again and I’ll get them to reinstall boilers just so you can shovel coal! Now if you’ll let me finish. Our new assignment has to do with the third ship on the horizon.” I took my first look out on the ocean with the setting sun silhouetting three ships. The tell tale front profile of the Patriotic Fire dominated the scenery, however to it’s port there was what appeared to be a Destroyer, the command segment we operated was more or less the back water (literally) so a destroyer was a rare sight. To the Patriotic Fire’s starboard there was a small ship that met the description of a corvette. That seemed more akin to our command segment.

“So what? Are we being reassigned?” I asked, reassignment was an unusual thing; if you’re born on a ship you generally spend your entire life in service aboard that ship.

Brawny gave an annoyed grunt. “We don’t know, they just want our fire team for briefing. We would know already if we didn’t have to drag your sorry ass out of a bar.”

“So which ship is the Monarch’s replacement?” Prior knowledge told me it should be corvette, but most ships aren’t replacing a ship that was literally slagged.

“We don’t know-”

“The admiralty wants this event and all pertaining to it secure so the destroyer is actually being assigned to Wind Way, the destroyer also has a mini sub in cargo that will be used to explore the downed sky ship. I have no clue what the corvette is for though.” Swordfish interjected.

Once again, Brawny was anything but amused. “You were eavesdropping again weren’t you?”

“Among other things. I keep telling you I eavesdrop because I get put in the crow’s nest, and you keep putting me in the crow’s nest. I’m starting to think that you enjoy my “intelligence service”.” She said, moving her fore hooves up and down on the words “intelligence service” to simulate quotation marks. AKA even she thought the term was a stretch at best.

“Let’s just get back to wherever we’re supposed to meet the others at and find out.” I said before Brawny could go on a rant about insubordinate youth or something like that.

I couldn’t see behind his gas mask, but I’ll bet anything that he wanted to kick me, he certainly sounded like it. “Then get your ass to the RHIB ASAP!”

Back aboard the ever-shifting deck of the Patriotic Fire, I felt much better. This was home. While it’s true that the Patriotic Fire was in a class of ships, a Celestia Class ultra heavy ironclad battleship (non standard armament, and patched with wood in places) to be precise, time had made each ship unique, no two ships rust the same, nor are they repaired the same. This was home, there’s no replacing it. The pony standing before us how ever didn’t think so. His face appeared calm, but his legs betrayed him. He was constantly readjusting his stance. To a pony that’s home is a ship, being on any other ship is like being in a twisted parody of their home.

Since there was little interaction between each command segment each segment had developed it’s own accent over the centuries, the visitor spoke with one such accent. “Tis quite a victory you had, yes?” He spoke with what I assumed was a Thermodon accent, I assumed that because the black trip on his collar, signifying that he’s from the Termodon Segment. That’s the other thing that makes segment’s easy to tell apart, each one has a different collar trim, our segment, Xooland (named after the famous zebra explorer, had an orange trim, Thermodon had black, Alpacadonia had red, etcetera etcetera… Thermodonia was where fleet command was located, so this guy’s orders came from… somewhere near the top.

Brwany never liked taking credit, deserving or not, which is probably the reason why in two centuries of service he had never ascended above the rank of corporal. “It was hardly our victory. The ship did most of the work and the marines assaulting the beach-”

“Well now that’s why we want you. Your absence will have negligible impact on Xooland Segment’s security, and regardless of you protests, you did manage to take out two sky tanks with no casualties. Making you perfect for what we have planned.” Fuck we are being reassigned to a new ship. “Now that you now the circumstances surrounding your selection, you should know what you have been selected for. While interrogating one of the survivors we learnt that, those pegasi call themselves “the Enclave”, which is apparently some larger faction from the ruins of the Equestria mainland. Also we have learned that an Enclave regiment consists of four raptor class cloud ships with full personal and vehicle compliment. Also I’ve read your reports, and it’s called a raptor, not a “Sky Ship”.” Of course a “well learned” bigot is briefing us.

“Hey we didn’t know what it was! Not all of us read rather than fight!” Swordfish exclaimed in response to the mocking tone the stallion added to his last sentence.

“I’ll ignore that… Well, since a Raptor with navigation systems just going off into the middle of the Zebratic Ocean by mistake are highly unlikely. This “isolated event” is obviously part of an Enclave Expeditionary Force dispatched to do… Well command hasn't figured it out yet, but there are probably 3 more raptors scattered throughout our territory and it’s you mission which you have no choice in accepting to hunt them down.” This stallion wanted us to go hunting for giant sky ships, yeah I’ll keep calling them that, in (if Swordfish is right) a corvette?!

Apparently Brawny and I saw I to eye on this idea. “Yes four marines from a back water segment, verses three Raptor class cloud ships with high energy plasma projectors and point defence turrets capable of targeting objects moving at super sonic speeds. How does this idea sound remotely plausible!”

“Well you won’t be doing the fighting, you just find the darn things, and what ever segment your in will take a fleet action to engage the darn thing. Since all you’re doing is tracking, which I know you’re capable of, you’re personal sea taxi is the Corvette “Salvation”. Now, I have an island command to take over, thank you for your time.” He said and exited the room, any grace he had was cancelled out when he tripped in the hall out side the briefing room. Obviously the Patriotic Fire didn’t like it’s guest.

“Gee I sure feel bad for the Zebras of Wind Way! That guy’s an asshole!” I exclaimed once I could no longer her the clanging of his footsteps on the metal floor.

“Who was that guy and what was his rank?!” Swordfish asked angrily, his superiority complex had quite literally ruffled he feathers.

“What do you think he meant by “which I know your capable of”, and why did he look directly at Brawny when he said that?” Signal Fire, who apparently didn’t come to retrieve me because he felt “land sick”, asked.

“I’m right here.” Brawny indignantly grunted.

“So then what did he mean by that?” Swordfish asked sarcastically.

Oddly enough he looked down to his lap before replying. “Never mind, go back to your speculation.”

“Ooh! Did we hit a nerve?” Swordfish asked.

“I think we did.” Signal chuckled.

“That’s enough speculation. Go pack your berths and lockers, then we transfer to our new posts.” Brawny said, preventing any further teasing, prying, or legitimate speculation from happening. Then he left the room rather quickly, something must have rattled him, because he’s always… a different type of asshole.

I got up and proceeded out into the hall, there where some new faces, mostly replacements for those most recently lost pulled from other ships in the command segment, but I also noticed a fair number of ponies with black trimmed collars. Clear skies dam it this is a home invasion, and occupation! Not all of them seemed to be as high and mighty as that guy… seriously why didn’t he give us his name! Frustration threatened to boil over as I reached the room where my bed, and a hoof full of other male marines slept. I walk on over to the foot of my bed, my footlocker’s there, empty. A stark reminder that I was still in the uniform I had put on a week ago expecting a routine day… What had I done with myself this week? Under my bed I had a ruck sac filled with what little personal items I had, and Low Tide’s personal items. My items where mostly just a hoof full of caps, a sparkle cola bottle perfectly rounded into beach glass, some old doodles, a couple of old comics that had been snuck on board during the war, and my personal information papers. Low Tide had a lot more stuff, stuff that was now in my possession, and stuff that for various reasons I have yet to look through (mostly because I was drowning my pity with drink). I put the sack on my back and walked down to the armory to get my kit.

The walk to the armory was better; the weapons masters had barred the visitor’s access to the inner sections of the ship. When I got to the armory a familiar blue pegasus was there to greet me. “So… what do you think of all this?” She asked as she rummaged through her locker, which much like her life, was a bit of a mess.

“We took out a sky ship, with 18-inch artillery. I hardly see how that makes specifically us qualified for this…” I said and pulled my LMG out of my locker and removed 3 of it’s 30 round box mags and it’s 100 round pan magazine.

“Well, the way I see it, there’s something they aren’t telling us, or this is just a publicity thing so they can say that they’re doing something.” She said, and I took my newly repaired helmet and gas mask out of my locker, then closed it one last time.

“Or? This is fleet command we’re talking about,” I put on my helmet, the padding was still worn out, and then pulled the gas mask over my face. “it’s both. Now let’s get a look at the ship we’re spending the next few months on.”

We made our way back up to the deck, the ponies we knew wished us the best of luck, and we completely ignored the Thermodon ponies. On deck I closed my eyes a silently said my good bye to the rocking deck of home. Of to starboard the 77 m long corvette “the Salvation”, looked pretty small, especially compared to the 256 m long Patriotic Fire. However something was off, and I didn’t know what it was.

“It’s…” Swordfish trailed off, apparently as confused as I was.

“New?” A voice from behind us asked. We whirled around to see a yellow earth pony mare, in a captain’s hat, with grey trim on the collar of her unbuttoned officer’s uniform. Grey trim… that means she’s from Galvin Hoof. “Eeyup that’s my ship, ain’t she a beaut? Name’s Captain Shanty, and unless ah am grossly mistaken, I’m your new captain.” She said, with an air of cockiness that the accent didn’t disguise.

I looked behind me. The words “new” and “ship” together, not preceded by the word “not”, was like... blasphemy. All my life I had been told that there weren’t enough resources to make new metal ships, and that the only large ships I would ever see would be rusted out hulks of made or wood, but there it was. No rust, no dents, and no holes. It was new. “H-how?” I stammered out as I whirled around again. Ok, that’s enough turning, starting to get dizzy here.

“Well, Galvin Hoof has enough minerals for ship building to continue on small scale. Since we can’t make large ships, or very many ships, Ah’m not surprised the news hasn’t reached here. However the fact is, we have been producing corvettes, ammunition and smaller vehicles and boats since the Compact Agreement was made.” She replied. Well, I knew they made ammo and RHIBs because anything we got that was made of metal had “product of Galvin Hoof” all over it. Still, that ship… it sparked. That’s not natural…

I would have continued to stare at the ship, and the rather laid back and somewhat slobbish captain, but I heard Signal Fire’s voice coming from the exit on to the deck. “You have got to be kidding me! In the event of your death Swordfish is in charge? SWORDFISH?!”

Brawny’s gritty voice replied with a certain firmness to it that made me think his mind couldn’t be changed. “Rip Tide is a train wreck, and you are an imbecile who thinks the chain of command is for beating those who don’t agree with you. Swordfish at best a has no respect for authority and at worst is a drunk, but she at least has restrain when it comes to positions of power and has actually almost earned a promotion.” Wait, I’m a wreck, and what’s a train? They emerged, and Swordfish’s face wore the sliest, most untrustworthy, creepiest, widest smile in recorded history. Brawny didn’t need to be able to read minds to tell what she was thinking. “Swordfish I have 200 years more combat experience than you, so don’t you even think about it.”

Captain Shanty looked somewhat shocked. “Yeh wouldn’t actually kill him, right?” She asked with a somewhat awkward expression.

“No, of course not.” That was a lie. She had thought about it before, she had tried it before. Oh yes their arguments may not seem like much, but put two polar opposites together long enough and one will try to kill the other, then upon realizing it’s futile return to the status quo. It had happened before, friendly fire here, a poorly thrown grenade there, and then when it fails, back to normal. “Seriously though, I won’t try to kill him for the duration of this mission, because I know this wild seagull chase has actual meaning to some ponies here.” I knew she meant me, but she said ponies, had she, Brawny or Signal lost anyone? Was I that distant over the week that I had never noticed anyone else’s suffering? Or was she guessing it meant something to Brawny because the guy had singled him out. “Now Captain do we have permission to board your vessel?” She asked and all heads turned to Shanty.

Brawny took one look at her and went on a rant. “You are a captain? You’re not even wearing you hat properly? How did you pass your CCFT?” The CCFT (Captain’s Course Final Test) is the last test in the two-week course from fleet command that decides whether a commander is eligible to become a full captain. I had heard that it’s no laughing matter, and stressful to study for.

“With a 98.” She replied.

“What? How no one scores that high, you must have cheated.” Brawny said. Despite the rude accusation, I had to agree with him, no one scores that high.

“Enope, Ah knew everything. I actually put down a few wrongs on purpose just so Ah wouldn’t be accused of cheating. The test is actually not too hard; you fail if you over think it. Since it’s such a big deal most ponies get worked up, lose sleep and think there’s a trick to each question, those who keep calm under this pressure pass. Those that cave fail. Ah’m too laid back to possibly fail such a test.” She said very “matter of fact-ly”. “And don’t ever accuse me of cheat’n ever again, t’is an insult to my honor.”

“I… see, sorry ma’am, won’t happen again. Now permission to board your ship?” Brawny said in the half respectful half resentful tone he uses whenever addressing any commanding officer.

The two stared at each other, Shanty’s calm demeanour was gone, replaced with a steely determination to defend her honor, and I assume that behind his mask Brawny was staring daggers at her. Finally her expression broke and with a sloppy shrug she answered. “Sure why not?” I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, and the peanut gallery that had gathered to watch all exhaled loudly as well. “Yeah, the RHIB’s just over here.” She said and led us over to the rope ladder that tethered the RHIB to the Patriotic Fire. We proceeded down the ladder and into the small watercraft.

The engine of the RHIB rumbled to life and propelled the craft through the fairly calm water over to where the Salvation had dropped anchor. Once we pulled up beside back half of the corvette, Shanty radioed for her crew members to raise the boat on to the deck. The idea sounded odd, every ship I had scene used a launch and retrieval ramp for this sort of thing. However to my surprise a crane arm was extended over the deck rail, and a cable that split into four smaller cables each ending in a hook was lowered down to us. “Well what are ya wait’n for, there’s four hooks and four loops on the boat, it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out!” She said through a mouthful of cable and hooked the end she had to one of the loops to demonstrate. We did as instructed. “All right, Mooncalf raise us!” She yelled up to the deck. At her command we were violently tugged out of the water and up and over to where we hung 4 feet above the deck. “Alright, now Mooncalf, jus set us down gently-” We hit the deck with a mighty crash. Shanty jumped to her feet, and angrily put her captain’s hat back on top of her red mane. “Mooncalf yeh darn blunder’n idiot! Ah ought ta have you thrown in the brig!” She yelled at the dark blue-coated yellow maned stallion standing at the controls of the crane.

“Ah just don’t know what went wrong, ma’am!” The pony said as Shanty advanced towards him menacingly.

“Oh I have to see how miss “I’m too laid back” handles discipline.” Brawny said as he got up and trotted over to where Shanty was chewing Mooncalf out.

“Urgh… ya… I’ll just stay here…” Signal said as he lay in a heap at the bottom of the RHIB.

“I already know where this mission is going…” Swordfish said as she pulled out her canteen and then took a swig.

The smell that hit my nostrils told me the canteen was filled with her favorite contraband, and I felt the need to hurl. I walked my self over to the railing and rested against it. I felt the boats rocking, since it was in the same water, it was quite similar to the Patriotic Fire’s had been when we had left it. The rocking was disturbed by a bump against the hull. I peered over the rails and found that a 4-foot by 4-foot drift wood raft carrying a single zebra in a conical straw hat. At the risk of reinforcing the stereotype that all unicorns think all Zebras look alike, I asked. “Hey! is that you Xager?”

The zebra looked up at me and waved. “Rip Tide! Good to see Swordfish got you out of that bar!” He replied happily.

“Thanks! What are you doing?” I yelled down.

“My house was burnt down by rowdy zebras during the post cancelling the apocalypse party.” He shouted up. “So now I’m going to see the world!”

That idea screamed bad to me, especially since I could see the supplies he brought, a bag of coconuts. “Do you even have anything to open those coconuts with?” I asked him.

“Um… no… Can you get me back to the dock?” he asked.

I was going to go inform Brawny of the situation and ask for permission to take him back, when I had an idea. “Hey, you speak Equish well enough, do you know standard zebra?”

“Imo.”

“Southern islander?”

“はい”

“Northern islander?”

“نعم”

“Tribal?”

“да”

“Ancient dialect?”

“sí”

“Tell you what, give me a coconut, and we’ll hire you on as our translator, you can travel the ocean with us.” What I’m hungry, and you would be to if you had recently regurgitated everything you had eaten over the last week.

“Ok!” after his reply two things were thrown at me; a coconut, and a grappling hook. He climbed up the rope and deposited himself on the deck with a thud.

“Rip Tide? Why is there a zebra on deck?” Brawny asked, peeled his attention from the Captain and Mooncalf.

“Oh, I thought we might need a translator for the more obscure islands, and Xager’s house was burnt down so-”

“Oh, ok, Xager saved my life so I can tolerate him and it means I won’t have to speak to any zebras so this is actually pretty good.” Brawny cut me off. Wait… so he’s fine with Xager but he still hates zebras? Fuck his racist logic.

“Meh I’ll take it.” Xager said with a shrug.

“Xager’s here?” Signal Fire asked from the bottom of the RHIB.

“Yeah… Now it’s a party!” Swordfish said with the canteen of alcohol in one hoof.

“SWORDFISH ARE YOU DRUNK?!” Brawny practically exploded.

With a groan she fell backwards and judging from the “Ompfth” sound, landed on Signal Fire. Yeah I could see where this mission was going, and hopefully the first stop we make can provide some course correction.

Foot note: No pip buck, no level up!

New perk: Wild Wasteland

(What? I needed someway to justify the JeremyJahns reference…)

Author’s note:

Yes fuck-all happened action wise this chapter, but not every chapter can have an epic Dreadnought vs Raptor battle

Well it’s the start, of something… Hopefully something good!

I don’t remember if I mentioned this last time but Rip Tide’s LMG is based on the WWII Bren gun not the Fo:NV LMG.

also Recrudescence is a synonym for "return"

oh and theme for the somewhat depressing beginning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScNNfyq3d_w

Chapter 2: New Mission, New Threat, New Concept, New Parameters, New Contingency

The Salvation slowly crossed the sea and for the first time in my life I was going to leave my home segment. However instead of enjoying the 25 Knots we were travelling at up on deck, myself and the rest of fire team Sea Lion found ourselves bellow deck staring at the large plastic crate before us baring the Thermodon Crest.

“So since ya are kinda like a task force now the spooks over at Thermodon sent yah a goody bag. Since Brawny was alive when this was standard issue I’ll leave explaining it to him. Now I need to make sure Mooncalf doesn’t sink the ship.” Shanty said and promptly trotted out of the room. I from the corner of my eye I noticed Swordfish watching our new captain’s rear end go out the door, and I barely suppressed a facehoof at the sight.

“Ok, let’s see what fleet command sent us.” Brawny said as he opened the crate and began rummaging through it. “Ok, these are night vision goggles.” He said holding out what looked like four telescopes that could be strapped to one’s head. “This is a HAZMAT suit… not sure why they sent us that…” He said pulling out a yellow rubber full body… bubble? “And this is… wait I remember when these where in service, why in Luna’s name would they give us these things?” Brawny wondered as he pulled out what looked to be blades that could be strapped to one’s wrist, and I instantly saw the flaw. “You can’t even use them with trigger hooks!” A trigger hook is as the name would suggest a hook strapped to your wrist to allow you to pull a gun’s trigger from a reared up or prone position, they where standard for marines, and the way we were trained. According to Brawny the army got “battle saddles” and “power armour”, marines (needing a bit more maneuverability) were trained in the zebra style of pulling the trigger with your hoof, or rather in our case hook. “Wait these night vision goggles are an older model, and this HAZMAT suit has a hole in it… They gave us their garbage!” Brawny exploded, and to be honest I couldn’t blame him…

Meanwhile in Thermodon:

Two ponies carried a container to the incinerator. “Why do you think command wants to get rid of all this stuff, it’s practically new!” The first asked.

“Kid I’ve learned things, and chief of them is don’t question command.” The second said and bucked the supply crate into the incinerator.

Back in the perspective of Rip Tide:

“Fucking horse shit!” Signal Fire remarked as he helped me toss the useless crate over the side of the ship.

“I can’t believe that! I was looking forward to getting proper combat armour too!” I complained.

“Yeah now we’re poorly prepared and supposed to do spec ops shit…” Signal Fire replied.

Then the thought struck me, I still didn’t know who else had lost someone. “Hey Signal? I don’t remember if I asked but, did you lose anyone?”

He slowly began backing away, and his voice because the kind of squeaky awkward one that implies an awkward situation. “Well… I might as well tell you… You see I was uh… kinda… dating your sister.” He blurted out then put on the most forced smile I had ever seen. I’ll kill him.

“What?! Dude What The Fuck?! I’ll Kill You!” I yelled as I lunged after him. Our hooves crashed on the metal deck as I chased him around the Salvation for about two minutes.

Then Shanty decided enough was enough and stuck her head out of one of the bridge’s windows. “Stop crashing around and shut up!” She yelled, then calmed down. “If I find one dent in mah ship I’ll have ya both shot for sabotage.” She joked. She must have thought it was funny, but as captain she actually could do that, which made it much less funny for us. “Besides Brawny has ‘n idea for how to burn some time until we reach Centralumberland.” She elaborated and led us to the bridge, and then into the backroom that was apparently her private quarters. The room was cluttered, her officer sword hung in it’s sheath off of a coat hook, there was a mattress in the corner, and a blue and grey flag hung on the back wall. Something about the flag held my attention, we had learned a bit about other Command Segments back on the Patriotic Fire, but the flag wasn’t a standard flag, blue with a segment colored cross dividing the flag into four parts, on this flag the cross was off set so it extended from the corners instead of the centers of the sides.

“Ok what’s up?” I asked trying to take my mind off the mystery flag.

“Well, although we are still fire team Seal Lion, and the ship is still the Salvation, we are now a task force, and thus we should have a task force name.” He explained.

We sat around trying to think for a bit. “Yeah I got nothing.” Swordfish stated and that summed up everyone’s thought process. We sat in that room for what seemed like an eternity. I was so bored that I was convinced that I had become convinced that while we sat in that room there ceased to be anything of any remote interest in the universe.

Meanwhile on Earth:

(music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZcPN6UGUw8 )

There was a great rumbling from above, and a bright light greeted those who looked up to see what was making it. From that light emerged another Earth. With in an instant both planets mobilized their air forces and deployed them against each other. The two forces of equal strength and number fought it out to the bitter end to see which earth was true!

Meanwhile back in the perspective of Rip Tide:

“I know! We’ll be the Maredowells!” Swordfish exclaimed.

I started to explain why that wouldn’t work. “Sword, we’ve been over this before, more than half of us are stallions so that name simply won’t-”

“Contact off the port bow!” The senior security officer of the ship hollered through the open door way.

“Oh! They’re Pirates! Ask them if they have a parrot!” Mooncalf suggested from the bridge.

“Ugh ok.” Shanty said as she put on her captain hat, strode on to the bridge and grabbed the PA system. “All crew to battle stations, the opposition appears to be a single Xoo class Attack Boat, prepare for external and internal contacts!”

We strode on out of that room, we had gone over our roles, we would be on deck with a few of the vessel guards to over see the first contact, then we would be protecting the bridge in the event of a boarding. We rushed on to the bridge and saw the most peculiar thing, the pirates, identified by their mane style were slowing down, waving a white flag and tossing their weapons over the side. “Wha…?” I murmured in confusion. I had seen a canoe of pirates try to board the Patriotic Fire once, so an Attack Boat surrendering to a corvette seemed considerably out of character to say the least. The Salvation’s 4-inch main gun, and a few TOW missiles that had been set up on deck to bolster firepower were trained on the craft.

Shanties voice blared out of the large forward speakers. “Pirate Assault Boat! You will stand down immediately an’ prepare to be boarded an’ searched-” There was the screeching sound of a microphone being grabbed that made me cringe.

“Pirates! Do you have a parrot?!” Mooncalf’s voice came out of the microphone. There was then the sound of a struggle and a few cusses.

“Pirates? Yall still there? Yeah, prepare to be boarded by our best!” Shanty proclaimed.

“Best? That must mean us…” Brawny grumbled and made his way over to the RHIB.

We made our way to the RHIB, which was quickly dropped into the water, and Signal Fire piloted the RHIB to intercept the attack boat. “We surrender!” One of the Zebras called out.

“Please don’t kill us!” Another Zebra Pirate pleaded. Odd, they sounded scared…

Brawny motioned for Signal Fire to stop the boat. “Rip Tide, scan them.”

I nodded and reached out with my emotion sensing spell, they were scared, of what I had no clue. “They’re legitimately scared.”

“I’d be scared too if I was sent on a suicide bombing mission.” Brawny said distastefully. “Hey! I want every single one of you up on deck, and the keys out of the ignition now!” Brawny yelled at the pirates, who quickly rushed to comply. Once the engine stopped and the keys were dropped on the deck we boarded, and at gunpoint put them into the RHIB.

I was about to assume that the pirates were just cowards, when a zebra mare said something that honestly shocked me. “Thank you.” I would have jumped overboard if it wasn’t for the fact that the ocean was irradiated. Something was up, and I wanted off this attack boat.

“Imperial Navy Viking.” Swordfish read off the bow of the boat.

“Viking? Odd. That was the name of a pre-Celestia Tribe.” Brawny said in confusion.

“It was a name instilled fear in you Equines all the same.” A zebra, who to my amazement was in fact a ghoul, commented. Wait a second, to veterans from opposing sides of the war having to share a RHIB? That doesn’t sound like a good idea.

“Shut it.” Brawny growled as we climbed into the RHIB and patted the pirates down to make sure they didn’t have anything that could pose a threat to us.

“Hey respect your elders!” The ghoul snapped back.

“Oh I think we’re about the same age.” Brawny replied, and gave the all clear signal to Signal Fire who began piloting us back to shore.

“Oh I know, you’re that punk who blew the reactor on my ship.” Wait my ship?

“Admiral Xattax?” Brawny questioned.

“The one and only.” Xattax replied.

“You’re responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of ponies. Good ponies.” Brawny seethed menacingly.

“And? It’s war. When you caused that reactor leak on the Invictus you killed the majority of its crew of six thousand. If you did that in a day I’d hate to think of what you did throughout the majority of the war. Yet I don’t hold a grudge, because it’s war.” Xattax’s replied calmly. The boat ride back to the Salvation was unusually quiet. I decided that once I get back I should take some rad away before the ocean spray makes me a ghoul like those two old enemies.

Once back aboard the Salvation the group of prisoners were sent to the brig, probably so they could be used for a prisoner exchange later, and Shanty sent the ship’s E.O.D. team to check the attack boat, because if it could be used, it would be useful. Then after a swig of Rad Away it was back to the room of perpetual boredom. “Hey Brawny, did the Vikings track?” Swordfish asked once we got back to Shanty’s office.

“Hmm…” Brawny was the only one amongst us who had any real knowledge o Equestrian history, since it was apparently mandatory ‘schooling” which sounds like a less useful version of basic training, yet even then it had been about 200 years since he had brushed up on his knowledge of history. “Well, they certainly raided and sailed boats with only the sun to guide them, so they probably tracked.” Brawny answered after a moment’s thought.

“Okay then all in favor of calling ourselves ‘Task Force Viking’ and moving on with our lives raise a hoof and say ‘I’!” Swordfish said, and the vote was unanimous, probably just so we wouldn’t spend another hour on just picking a name.

“Okay next order of business, Civilian Cuts?” Shanty asked, and all of us except Brawny raised their hoof. “Ok next, what should our motto be?” In the Compact Agreement there was a motto for everything. The Agreement as a whole had ‘Unity Above All’. Each segment had it’s own, Xooland’s was ‘Bravery is Power’. Each island had it’s own, each ship had it’s own, and even each family.

“Um… How about ‘Right is Might’ because they attacked us, and thus we’re in the right.” Signal Fire suggested.

Shanty shook her head at this. “Sounds too close t Thermodon’s.” Oh yeah that’s right ‘Might Makes Right’.

“Oh don’t tell me that Galvin Hoof still holds a grudge.” Brawny joked.

“Oh we do, cause we woulda won if more segments had joined us.” Shanty’s reply was one of pent up anger.

“I’m sorry, am I missing something here?” I asked.

“Well the rest of you wouldn’t know it, because the higher ups at Thermodon don’t want anypony to get any ideas, but around forty years ago Galvin Hoof declared independence from the Compact Agreement.” Brawny began.

“But” Shanty jumped in. “Thermodon didn’t like that their only source of new equipment was going to be able to put a price on it’s products, and sent a ‘liberation fleet’ to Galvin hoof and destroyed our building docks, then claimed to the other segments that we were holding back supplies they needed, and thus they alienated us and were able to return to finish us off with the largest fleet since the bombs fell.” I noticed that as she went on the usually calm Shanty became increasingly more irate.

“And thus the mighty Galvin Hoof Confederation was forced to bend the knee, disband, agree to produce new equipment for the rest of the Compact Agreement, and as a result live in poverty stricken bombed out ghettos.” Brawny summed up.

“ Y’all get the fuck out of my office!” Shanty ordered, tears of anger running down her face now. The rest of us quickly scrambled to get out of the young captain’s office.

“Brawny, you’re a dick.” Swordfish said once we were off the bridge.

“The statement you have made is out of line. Speaking of which, so is your eyeing of the captain.” Brawny replied.

“So what? I like sleeping with officers, I slept with Monsoon back on the Patriotic Fire.” Swordfish stated, then noticed our expressions and elaborated. “What? Did you really think I overheard all that stuff from a 35-foot tall crows nest? Also, what made you think a pony that can fly would stay in a crows nest?” We all face hoofed at this revelation. Of course Swordfish wouldn’t stay in the crows nest, and of course she’d complain about it so that Brawny would believe that it worked. She is an evil genius.

“So for the better part of the past 6 years, the crows nest has been empty?” Brawny asked.

“Yeah, really shows how radar has made the position obsolete.” She replied smugly.

“Better question, the R.A. is like 60, you’re 21, don’t you see some sort of problem with that?” Signal asked. I would have thought it was creepy, but I was internally kicking myself for forgetting that Swordfish was 21 and not 20 (which is especially bad since we’re the same age).

“I don’t get pony logic, why would you put a bird in a nest as punishment?” Xager’s statement crystalized the stupidity of the situation.

“Fuck it, I’m done! Reconvene in a hour when Shanty has had time to cool down.” Brawny said as he threw up his forehooves and trotted off.

“Swordfish one, Brawny zero! Damn I’m loving this new mission already!” Swordfish laughed and flew a lap around the Salvation in celebration.

“Hey Rip Tide, I heard that a few of the vessel guards are holding a game of pick up Hoofball. It could be cool.” Signal said.

“Yeah, I’m in, but don’t think this gets you off the hook for dating my sister and not even telling me.” I just want to show some Galvin Hoofers how we do it back in Xooland.

Swordfish truly was a bird of a different feather, aside from her drinking, unwholesome amounts of sleeping around, and her feud with Brawny, she was, like me, an orphan. Well not precisely like me, because she never had a dad, the deadbeat dropped her mother when he got news of her being pregnant, and her mom died when she was four, she was orphaned for longer than I was and she had no other family (except a dad that no one knows the identity of). Most in similar circumstances would kill themselves or become prostitutes in some sketchy port village, but not her. She however clung to the Patriotic Fire like an infestation. Being the same age as her I knew her growing up, and I know what she did, stealing, then selling the stuff she stole, apparently she discovered alcohol when she decided to sample some merchandise she snagged from the ship’s pantry. Considering this it isn’t hard to see how somepony could end up being like Swordfish.

The game ended up being called short when Signal Fire and a vessel guard named Ironclad got in a hoof fight over what Signal insists was a bad call by the referee (given that Mooncalf was the ref that constituted pretty much every call). Fortunately however when Shanty came out to ‘scold’ us she seemed to have calmed down. “You know, Ah don’t even care. Ah had to leave my office to get more .476 rounds anyway, so Ah seriously don’t care too much about this.” Shanty said and gave a bit of a shrug. The .476 round was the ammunition for the special magnum that functioned as a captain’s side arm, she must have been stalking up on rounds because the entire ship would have heard her taking a practice shot. “Also we’re going to dock at Southumbria and refuel before continuing on to Centrailumbria, so inform Brawny that we’ll be stopping in 15 minutes or so.”

Signal and I saluted and ran to the area we both knew Brawny would most likely be, the brig, and where Brawny is, when there’s no alcohol around, Swordfish is eavesdropping or mocking him. After a short jaunt through the metal corridors of the ship, we arrived at the brig, and sure enough at the metal interrogation table Brawny sat across from his mortal enemy, Ex-Admiral Xattax. “For the last time, I’m not planning anything!” Xattax responded to a question we had not heard.

Brawny shifted around to look at us, “What? I said an hour, it’s barely been 45 minutes.”

“Uhh… this is supposed to be some what confidential so we should go out in the hall so there’s no chance of a prisoner overhearing.” I said.

“Fine, but this had better be-” Brawny hadn’t even taken a full step when the fell to the floor with a crash. From under the table came a chorus of laughter. One glance under the table revealed Xager and Swordfish rolling around in utter glee.

“I told you that it would be funny.” Xager managed to croak out between laughs. It took me a moment to realize what had happened, the two of them had tied the laces of Brawny’s combat boots together causing him to trip. I found a smile creeping up on my face, not really because the prank was top tier, but more so because it was nice to see Swordfish getting entertainment from something that as a result of her childhood (or lack there of) she hadn’t done much of.

“Yeah that was pretty great!” Swordfish replied and pulled herself to her hooves. “okay, before we go to the hall way to discus whatever, there’s something that’s been bothering me.” She said as she rounded on Xattax. “Pirates don’t give up, what gives?”

“Well after what we saw pass over Southumbria we figured we were better off as prisoners on a big ship that free zebras on a little one.” Wait, did the Ex-Admiral just say Southumbria?

“Uh what did you see?” Signal asked as he slowly approached the zebra ghoul.

“A Raptor Class cloud ship.” Was his reply.

Signal rushed forward and shoved Xattax into a cell. “We got to tell Shanty before she refuels us at some Enclave death trap!” signal said with urgency flooding out with every word.

We returned to the bridge as fast as our hooves, or in Swordfish’s case her wings, could carry us. The sun had set, and I could see harbor lights as we went on deck to get to the bridge. On the bridge things were already going wrong. “Damn it! Still no signal!” A unicorn mare operating the radio cussed as we barged in.

“Hey, we seem to have some technical difficulties with our radio, either that or someone’s jamming our signal.” Shanty said. From her tone the second part was a joke, but at the moment is seemed very possible.

Xager was the first to speak. “Star demon bird ponies and a sky ship are here!” Wow Xager way to get the point across.

Brawny was the next to pipe up. “What he meant to say is that the Enclave is here, and you need to bring this ship to arms now!”

“Meh sure.” Shanty said and trotted over to the PA system. “Attention this is Captain Sea Shanty, we have a potential priority one threat, Ah want all non essential personal sealed in the safe rooms, all Vessel Guards to go to their squad leaders and prepare for assignment. If this turns out to be fake, then this will serve as this weeks call to arms drill.” After turning of the PA she turned to us. “Seriously, the place seems fine.” She said and gestured to the port. Then the lights went out, then the chilling sound of an air raid siren filled the night air. “Oh fiddlesticks…”

After making our way down to the armoury then making our way on to the deck, we received our assignment, land via RHIB and take out the jammer so reinforcements could be called in. a second fire team lead by Ironclad was going to secure the port’s fuel dump. I myself now carried a satchel of C4 explosives to destroy the jammer with.

The ship’s main gun, SAM site, flack cannon, deck mounted HMGs and even the anti-submarine mortar system were being operated, as well as the TOW missiles from earlier today and a couple portable mortar systems were set up to bolster fire power. Brawny, who was now carrying a large radio set to notify Shanty when we destroyed the jammer climbed down the ladder to the RHIB, then Swordfish. I heard the ‘thoomp’ of a mortar; the white phosphorous round was slowed by a parachute, and then ignited finally clearing away the inky darkness that drowned the port. “Hey Signal!” Ironclad called over as he descended down his RHIB’s ladder, Xager was currently climbing down to our RHIB. “Good luck!”

“Pfft, what do I need luck for?” Signal said as he descended down the ladder. As I began to maneuver myself over the deck rail and onto the rope ladder multiple blinding lights lit up, all focused on the Salvation. I had a vague idea of what would follow and climbed down the ladder as fast as possible. I heard a bang and let go of the ladder and painfully feel into the RHIB.

“GO! GO! GO!” Brawny yelled as fire from the harbor guns straddled the Salvation. The RHIBs engine roared to life, and I quickly sat up and readied my LMG, which in preparation I had loaded with a pan mag. Across the harbor there were many guns firing, but a realization hit me like a rock, none of them fire the Enclave’s signature energy rounds, and thus we were fighting our kin.

I deployed my bi-pod on the prow of the RHIB and fired a quick burst at a guard tower over looking the harbor. Our RHIB continued on it’s rush across the bay and into the harbor that was now a blasting zone for any improperly aimed shells, now a steady stream of tracer rounds targeted at us whizzed around like fire flies. Tracer rounds from my own LMG followed the enemy tracers paths towards the many MG nests around the harbor. I noticed something, their aim was not as good as I would have predicted. I heard a ‘fwoosh’ from nearby and a massive explosion formed in the corner of my vision, and half of a patrol boat flew out in front of us and fortunately went mostly under when we passed over it.

We hit the harbor and immediately rushed into the town where we would be able to at least force the hostiles to engage us in lower numbers. A second fire team of marines rushed down the dock to engage us. A round from one of their assault rifles winded me on impact, but fortunately the bulletproof vest used by all marines was impervious to small rounds, a fact that these marines must have forgot. Brawny and Signal Fire however didn’t and the majority of their rounds were headshots pretty much executing the opposing fire team. “You are a disgrace to the marine core!” Brawny yelled into the night, and despite this somewhat insane action, I had to agree. “You betray the Agreement! You put up a miserable fight! You aren’t worthy to the uniform you wear!” Brawny screamed, if it weren’t for the continued fire of the harbor guns I would have worried about somepony hearing us.

“Hey Brawny, this seems like a reverse of our normal roles, but we have a job to do!” Swordfish interjected before this act of insanity could continue. I quickly collected the dog tags of the fallen soldiers.

“Fine, tight formation. Xager you know what that means?” Brawny said and the zebra nodded in reply. We made our way from the harbor and into the town in our tight formation we checked each possible angle of attack as we rushed through the main road of the town. However once we had made it a few buildings into the town, a distinct rumble roared from behind us. Not knowing what was to come Brawny motioned for us to break formation, however before we managed to get to the relative cover of an alleyway a massive metal… thing with treads and what appeared to be a 150mm gun smashed through a building in the direction we had come from. At the same time, the large building at the end of the road lit up with muzzle flashes.

I opened fire to provide cover for my teammates. However Brawny simply motioned for me to get to cover. I didn’t head his warning on time, and a massive ‘BOOM’ followed by my finding myself thrown into the alley, and a burning pain in my hind legs. When I tried to get up I felt a horrible pain as something further dug into my flesh, shrapnel. “Hey Signal, toss me a healing potion I said as I dug out my tweezers and dropped to the ground. I inserted the tweezers into one of the wounds, and immediately the wound flared up with pain, I closed the tweezers on the shard of metal and with near unbearable pain pulled the metal sliver out. I repeated the process 4 more times, and then took the pink potion Signal Fire had passed me.

“Okay, on three, one, two, three!” Brawny counted down, and he and Swordfish made their move, he fired a grenade at the gunners in the building, and Swordfish fired her anti-armour rocket launcher at the tank. Two explosions rocked the street, and parts of the metal thing went flying everywhere, while the fire from the building quieted down. “Rip Tide you lucky son of a mule! You just survived a run in with a IF-46 Main Battle Tank!” I assumed that the metal thing was the ‘tank’ Brawny spoke of.

I got to my hooves, and we reassumed formation, now able to use wreckage of the tank as cover as we pushed to the house. Once we reached the house it was Xager’s turn to collect dog tags, as the town’s local militia had fortified the building. Once inside it became crystal clear that things weren’t even close to being all right, as a female zebra rushed us with only a knife as a weapon. Swordfish dropped her with a single round of her shotgun, and being indoors I was glad that our standards helmets had been enchanted to make gunfire and explosions more bearable while not muffling voices. “This is wrong. Star demon wrong.” Xager commented. Xager fixed his bayonet as we proceeded further through the building. A Zebra holding a live grenade, and hollering something I couldn’t make out, jumped out of a room to our left, I whipped out my side arm quickly enough to fill him with flechettes and telekinetically shoved him back into the room before his grenade went off in his mouth.

“Any one catch what he said?” I asked, typically those trying to martyr themselves yell out their cause before they go, and I wanted to know what these ponies and zebras were fighting for.

“For the Over-Realm.” Xager replied. “I have no idea what that is…” He added. The next door on right held two zebra militia members armed with Zebra rifles that would probably fall apart with a hard enough look.

To not have to fight every dam room here I simply sprayed the entire hallway with my LMG. While clearing each room I found that there had been someone waiting in ambush behind each door. “Hey Brawny do you think we’re near the jammer?” Signal Fire asked.

“Well this is the most heavily defended building in the town, so the jammer should be here.” He replied.

I opened the next door, and saw a nursery with a pile of dead zebra foals that had been cowered in the corner. My .308 rounds killed them… I had killed 6 foals… I felt like if I didn’t stop staring at that moment I never would stop, so I shut the door. “Clear.” With that I began the downwards spiral.

We stacked up at a door at the end of thee hallway and kicked down the door. Inside we found another fire team of marines and some sort of machine. Brawny was the first to fire, downing one, I ran to attach a C4 charge to the machine. Singal Fire and Xager teamed up on the other team’s flamethrower trooper, who was fanatic enough to use such a weapon at close quarters. A spray of tracer rounds kept me pinned behind the machine. I chanced a glace at the opposition, the squad support gunner. My opposite number was armed with a belt fed LMG, so I could just wait till they ran out and had to reload. There was a sudden pause in the fire, and I smiled to my self, belt fed LMGs jam more than magazine fed ones like mine. I dove out of cover and dropped a round right between the fucker’s eyes. All that was left was Swordfish who, up against her counterpart, was in cover behind one side of the crate, her opponent on the other side. Finally Swordfish made her move, she pushed the box into a wall to stun the pony, then dove over the box to finish her off. All said and done, with a nod from Brawny we exited the room and detonated the charge.

Brawny immediately got on the radio. “Shanty! This is Brawny, the jammer I down!” he said.

“Well duh, we’re talking.” A voice on the other end crackled. “Hey, some sort’a sky tank that doesn’t show up on radar just came out of the forest and has been harassing us, can yall send Swordfish over to deal with it, as we just lost our only other peagasus?” Shanty asked while I collected the fallen fire team’s tags.

“Yeah my launcher has a dumb fire mode so I can take it.” Swordfish replied.

“Okay sending her over.” Brawny replied. Swordfish saluted they few out a blown out window and off toward the continuing battle in the harbor.

“Ok, since that Sky Tank must have come from somewhere, I’m sending you to find where it came from and destroy whatever ya find.” Shanty ordered.

Sheesh she’s ordering us around like we’re robots of some kind. “Roger Roger.” Brawny replied.

We had been searching the forest for almost a half hour and the only hostiles we found in the dark depths were the bugs. Once again I found my tail whipping back and forth furiously to drive the bugs away. The problem with this was, that it made noise. I silently hoped the bugs would leave so that my tail would stop trying to give away our position. I took this time to reload my gun, off came the pan mag, it’s 100 hundred rounds had gotten us through the town but it was now almost depleted, and I pulled out one of the 30 round box mags. As I fit it into the magazine well it didn’t go in. I tried again; the magazine release was locked up. I had never had this problem before so I just tried to force it, and it didn’t work. Under closer inspection everything seemed good on the outside, as I set it down to do a field strip however I noticed a slight shimmer. “Wait, what the-”

Before the thought completely left my mouth there was a rustling from the underbrush and I found my legs swept out from under me, then bucked hard in the torso leaving me sputtering on the ground. From my position as I struggled back to my hooves I could see the attacker, dressed all black, engage Brawny in quick hoof to hoof combat, then toss some sort of blade at Xager which caught his uniform and pinned him to a near by tree. Brawny even with his two hundred years of combat experience was being beat by the figure; of course the first enemy on the island who showed any skill in battle would beat our asses. At this time Signal fire took a risk and fired a quick burst of flame from his flamethrower, and though the assailant avoided it, it had and affect, the attacker backed away, until their back was up against as tree. We surrounded the pony. With the light of the fire I could see that the pony was in fact wearing marine armour, with the armour and uniform dyed black, also the general stature of the pony lead me to believe the pony was a mare.

Although the mare was cornered she didn’t attack, instead simply looking at our collars the dropping to the dirt and putting her hooves over her head. “I think it’s surrendering.” Signal Fire stated, and I had to agree.

“Helmet off, answers now.” Brawny demanded and shoved the barrel of his gun in her face.

The pony did as told, removing her helmet and reveling her self. The mare was… unexpectedly cute. Her coat was a very light blue, she seemed to be about twenty, and her mane was a silvery grey. “Um, my name is Contingency and I was just here on business when the locals attacked, so since you guys are out of segment, I’m guessing that you’re a recapturing force. So I can help you.” I looked at her collar, Centralumbria had yellow as it’s colour, her collar was red, Alpacadonia red.

“Your out of segment too, so what brings a soldier from Alpacadonia all the way down to Centralumbria?” I asked.

“Well, I’m not really a soldier-” she began.

“So give me one reason why I shouldn’t execute you for desertion.” Brawny cut her off.

The mare gulped. “I can lead you to the shack in the clearing that I assume you’re looking for.” That’s a pretty good reason.

“Okay, get leading.” Brawny ordered. “Rip Tide pick up your gun and stay on the six.” Brawny said glancing back at me. I quickly scooped up my LMG and inserted the magazine. The mare for her part freed Xager by removing the blade (which was some sort of machete), luckily the blade only caught a loose fold of his uniform.

I followed the mare through the woods, and decide that I wanted some more information on who I was tailing. “So what’s your name?”

“Contingency, yours?” She replied.

“Rip Tide. So are you a mercenary?” I asked. Most marines who deserted became mercenaries as they had guns, armour, and combat experience.

“Nah, I’m a hunter, and I’ve killed my fair share, but I’m actually a treasure hunter. A lot of Zebras are willing to pay good caps to recover the artifacts of their ancestors.” She answered. “While scoping out the island for a cave I found the shack in the clearing.”

Now I decided to try for a more friendly conversation. “So did you find the cave?” I asked.

“Yup. I was just sent to collect the dog tags of some relative who died during the war, no truly ancient temple or anything. But hey, I’ve never been here before so adventure.” The mare said.

“Wait ‘truly ancient’? And how did you get so good at CQC?” I asked.

“Well ‘truly ancient things were ancient before the bombs fell, and I was my team’s sniper, so if I didn’t work extra hard at my CQC I would have been next to useless in close quarters.” She answered. Before I could ask anymore she raised her hoof signaling for us to stop and get low. I did as signaled and looked passed her to see that we were at the edge of a clearing. Brawny edged up, and motioned each of us to a position. I moved into mine, a small rise that gave me a good view. Another fire team guarded the shack.

The shacks door opened up, and I moved a bit back to prevent me from being spotted. From the shack emerged four enclave soldiers in their black armour. They were looking at each of our position as if they knew where we were. I picked my target, the enclave pony looking right at me, and hoped that they had just came out for a smoke break. That couldn’t be farther from the truth as they opened fire into the woods. A glancing energy round grazed my helmet, despite being made of heat diffusing ceramics it became painfully hot and I removed it before returning fire. The Enclave ponies apparently didn’t grasp the idea of cover (presumably because above the clouds there’s nothing for them to use as cover), and thus out retaliatory fire cut them down where they stood. The hostile marines on the other hoof while still not as efficient as a well-trained fire team should be, at least took cover. “Fasten bayonets and clear ‘em out!” Brawny commanded and after quickly securing our ring bayonets we pushed through the tree line. The opposition opened fire as we did so, and I felt a round graze my left foreleg. I reached my target and shoved the blade into the mare before she could bring her combat knife out to bare. My companions had similar success, with the exception of Contingency who had been hit in the leg. “Okay, Signal your with me in clearing the house. Xager go take a look to see if this is where the Sky Tank came from, if it is there should be depressions in the ground. Rip Tide go check to make sure our ‘guest’ is ok.” Brawny ordered.

I telekinetically retrieved the dog tags of the marines then made my way over to Contingency and noticed that she had a tool kit out. “Uh what you doing..?” I trailed off as I noticed her leg; she had pulled back the uniform’s leg so she could work on her own. Her leg looked bad to say the least. The leg itself looked considerably under developed as if it hadn’t been worked out in a year at least, and there were metal plates and pistons riveted on to it. “Uh what’s up with your leg?” I asked awkwardly.

“Well it’s a long story, but it’s not just my leg, my whole body is like this.” She said as she applied a metal plat over the wound and visually grimaced as she riveted it in place.

I cringed at the sight. “Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.

“Well most of my nerves were burned out by the operation, so for shooting a burning hot nail into my leg it’s not that bad.” She answered and began rolling down her uniform leg.

“You were awake when it happened?! And did you…?” I trailed off not sure how to word the question.

“Yup, worst 16 hours of my life, and I’ll take a wild guess at what your second question would have been. I didn’t have any choice in this, and if I were to be given a choice I’m not sure if I would have taken it.” She answered.

“Um okay, so what does the stuff do?” I asked.

“Well, it replaced most of my organs with a Hydro Carbon Combustion Engine, and having pistons rather than muscles does make me stronger. It has it’s downfalls and it’s benefits.” She explained.

“Okay then…” I began to think of another question. “Do you have any questions about me?”

“No, you’re a marine, the marine life is boring. It’s why I left it.” She replied smugly and trotted about to test her leg.

“Really well I’m on an adventure.” I replied. Well this Enclave dog hunt was definably an adventure for me.

“Really? So you’re not just on a mission?” She asked.

“Well technically it’s a mission with very wide parameters.” I replied.

“Hmmm… sounds interesting.” She mused.

“Rip Tide! There are depressions behind the Shack!” Xager said as he ran over.

“Ok, so this is where the Sky Tank came from. We should go meet up with Brawny so he can radio Shanty about this.” I said as I got up and made my way to the shack.

Signal greeted me at the door. “Good to see you, because I have no idea what I’m looking at.” The inside of the shack had a few things of interest. There were two jars of water, an ash pile of what I guessed had been an enclave scientist who offed themself when we showed up, two dead ponies on tables with their throats slit, a strange machine, a terminal and two jars of blood. One jar of blood and one jar of water were labeled infected, while the other two were labeled ‘clean’. I also noticed that there was a lot of a gunky black stuff leading from a skeleton siting in a chair in the corner to a drain in the floor.

“Ew. I’d like to report that this is where the Sky Tank came from.” I said. Then made my way over to the terminal. There was a text document open, and it looked like a message to e sent to some sort of superior. Brawny got on the Radio with shanty, but I felt compelled to read the document.

Dear: Captain Double Helix,

Although I don’t like carving up civilians, I must admit that things couldn’t be going better. The virus has been successfully adapted and now we have complete control. While we did stay behind to look out for side effects and guard the transmitter, I’m writing this off as a success. Who would have guessed that the sample we got from 250, -115 could be adapted so easily!

-Doctor Sunshine

I looked at the strange device and emptied the rest of my mag into it, and regretted it as I didn’t have my sound dampening helmet on. Once my ears stopped ringing I looked over at the rest of the group. “Do the numbers 250, -115 mean anything to you?” I asked.

Contingency immediately sprung at the question. “Sounds like co-ordinates on a map! One of you should take note of that, because if I remember correctly those are just on the edge of the segment.”

Brawny however doesn’t trust easily. “Oh really, and what do you, a poor merc, know about maps?”

Contingency looked very undignified then replied. “A) I’m a treasure hunter not a mercenary, so I probably make more per job than any merc does in a year. B) I have a map for a cutimark so I think I know about maps.”

Signal Fire who had been digging through a drawer on the workbench came up with something in his teeth. “Hey, what’s this?” He asked as he showed us the little orb in his mouth.

“Hmm let me see…” I said reaching out with my magic.

“NO!” Both Contingency and Brawny shouted at me.

However it was too late ass I felt the world fall away, and the last thing I heard was Brawny ask, “Why do Unicorns always do that?!”

oooOOOooo

I was on a field on some Island, it was day, and I was standing behind a row of infantry wearing funny white with gold trim uniform. “Captain Shining Armour!” A pegasus addressed me as when she rushed up beside me. The orb must have put me into some kind of dream. At least I could get a promotion in my dreams. The Pegasus had a cyan coat, and a rainbow mane. Wow there’s something I never expected to see. This orb must be some kind of crack dream.

“Yes scout?” My host body replied.

“The Japonies still aren’t here, and the Zebras have begun moving their skirmishers across to our western flank.” The mare replied.

“Blast those Zebras and their lack of honor! At least we can count on the Japonies, to be late.” My host body fumed. This was like watching a movie! “You and the other scouts will stall out the skirmishers while we deal with them.” My host said gesturing across the field at a line of Zebras in some sort of red uniform. The mare saluted and flew of to what I assumed was the west. “Cannons ready! Ponies take aim, fire by rank on my signal!” My host yelled. Oh my, I’m dreaming about the war! “Fire!” My host voice commanded. The 4 cannons thundered off, not as loud as any cannons I’d heard before, and the first line of infantry fired their weapons, then dropped to the ground to reload, then the next line did the same, then the third, and then dang I thought belt fed LMGs reloaded slowly, those one shot what ever they were, were terrible! A few Zebras on the opposing line fired, then a second cannon volley broke their line. I watched as the line of red coated Zebras turned tail and ran, then looked at the line, somepony had fallen. I trotted over to see. “Private Caramel, first Equestrian Casualty of the war. It’s a noble death at least.” I remarked then turned my attention to the sky. There was a steady stream of pegasus fleeing from the west. “Ok ponies! Form a Square!” My host yelled and the soldiers did as told forming a box around me 2 ranks deep. The Pegasus with the rainbow mane stumbled into the square from the square. From the looks of things she had been grazed a few times.

“I’m sorry sir, we had to pull out, couldn’t risk casualties.” The mare said.

“You all made the right decision, the sky guard is undersized as it is. Plus now I can put that technique that the Gryphons shared with us to use.” My host said and patted the mare on her shoulder.

“Contact left!” a stallion on the westward facing side of the square shouted.

“Remember your training! Wait till they’re about 20 yard off!” my host yelled.

I couldn’t see beyond the square of ponies, it was rather unnerving, but then the ponies fired, and soon the entire square was firing. A few dead zebras who still had momentum fell through the square, and the ponies who had miss timed their shots found themselves on the wrong end of a bayonet. However the skirmishers broke and fled. That one Equestrian casualty of the war had escalated to about fifteen. A series of shoots rang out from the other side of the field and the Square’s northern flank began to fall apart. The opposing infantry had reformed and was fire directly on us, and those loading and firing the cannons had joined my host in the center of the square leaving us with no cannon support. “Reform! Reform!” my host commanded, and as our infantry did so, the death toll heightened.

Just when it seemed like we had lost, cannon rounds decimated the opposing line. I looked over to see who our saviors where and my view was greeted by a line of ponies in khaki uniforms waving a flag with a red sun on it. My host released a sigh of relief I hadn’t noticed him holding. “As I said, we can count on the Japonies being late.”

oooOOOooo

I awoke on the metal floor of the Salvation’s mess hall. The orb sat by my side, and with shock I noticed that Contingency’s head rested on my chest. Startled I jumped to my hooves, dropping her head to the floor. “What the fuck! Contingency! What are you doing here?” I asked. And got a bunch of nasty looks from the other ponies sleeping in the mess hall. Also, why are we all in the mess hall?” I asked quieter.

Contingency shook her head then replied. “I must have forgotten how douchey Thermodon was, because in you’re mission peramitters you guys need to get the funds for repairs and fuel yourselves, and after my comment about how much money there is in the treasure hunting business they asked me to tag along.” Wow when we include Xager and Contingency, our fire team increases to a squad. “We’re using the mess hall because the actual crew rooms where damaged last night, and I was resting my head on you because well, I literally don’t have a heart, and I find the sound of one comforting, so yeah…”

“Ok, that’s ok.” I said as I began to relax. “Wait, what about the battle last night, are the others ok?” I asked.

“Oh yeah the battle ended when the ponies and zebras of Southumbria surrendered, an occupation force from Centralumbria is managing it now and the rest of your team is fine. Although the captain did make the pegasus mare stay behind after the meeting you missed do to being in the memory orb.” She replied. “Oh and we’re going to those coordinates now.” She added. Feeling tired I lay back down and nodded that it was okay for her to rest her head on me.

I don’t know what to say. That was our first battle during our mission, and it wasn’t easy. I no longer just want to avenge my sister; I want to avenge every pony and zebra that the Enclave had made my enemy. I clutched the small sack that I had put the dead marine’s dog tags in and swore that I would avenge them.

Author’s notes:

This chapter is more than twice as long as anything I’ve done before.

The next chapter will be noticeably shorter.

It will also be the Halloween special!

Musical theme(s):

Memories of Galvin Hoof:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpq7uqFca_8&list=PL9mCMKp0o7xsej2XNCvaNn3xQPVI5IWhn

battle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBLQ8AOVlis

the memory orb:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JulCg6hXe0

questions:

One thing you like so far?

One thing you don’t like?

One thing you find interesting?

Chapter 3: All Our Failures

Chapter. 3: All Our Failures

“Oorah! They’re droppin’ like bad habits!”

“Really so I was viewing another ponies memories?” I asked Contingency who sat across from me. We were eating breakfast-er supper in the salvation’s galley. It was dusk now, I had slept through much of the day, and we were now nearing the co-ordinates I had found in the shack.

“Yup. You don’t get the hosts thoughts because that might cause duel personality disorder.” She replied, and took a sip of something that smelled decidedly unlike coconut water.

“Oh cool, so what are the risks of treasure hunting?” Swordfish asked. “I want to know in case I ever end up jumping ship.” she elaborated, ‘jumping ship’ was a slang term for disserting (ok it also refers to literally jumping off the ship when it’s sinking).

“Well let’s see, there’s traps, rival treasure hunters, all the normal threats posed by going to any island you’re not familiar with, and the treasure may be cursed.” Contingency explained, and we all laughed at the last part. “Well, I used to laugh at curses too, but I’ve seen things.” She said, and we stopped laughing.

“Really like what?” Signal Fire asked.

“The feeling of being watched, the a random chill that no one but me seems to feel, a blade that can hurt anyone who simply goes near it, a tablet that was thousands of years old yet was somehow irradiated, I once gave up a hunt because out of the corner of my eye I kept seeing a dark figure approaching me that disappeared each time I turned to face it directly, Once I checked up on some old clients and found that they had killed themselves and wrote ‘the past is alive’ on the walls with their own blood.” The things she described sent a chill down my spine.

“Wait, you said a tablet that was thousands of years old? The zebras only colonized these islands 800 years ago.” Brawny questioned.

“Well, I’m not surprised that you don’t know, given that the Zebra Empire tried it’s hardest to erase all trace of pre colonial civilization from the islands. However, before the Zebras came creatures called Alpaca inhabited the islands. The Alpaca lived in a tribe-based society, had boats made of reeds, and worshiped the krakens as gods of the sea. When the Zebra came they turned the different tribes against each other, herded the survivors into the ocean to drown, and destroyed almost every trace of their existence. Of course they missed a few hidden temples and mundane relics, otherwise I’d be out of a job.” Contingency explained and I noticed Xager seemed a bit disturbed by this.

“So Sword Fish what were you up to with the Captain? I heard that she made you stay behind.” I asked, causing her to spit out her drink of… some sort of alcohol.

She glanced down at the shredded coconut meat on her plate before answering. “Oh she just wanted to thank me for taking out the stealth sky tank, and asked about you.” Sure. I decided against pursuing the topic any further as I knew we had a mission a head and I wanted to see what would happen if we weren’t a dysfunctional mess squabbling over some issue or another during the op.

Instead I opened up a discussion about the mission. “So what, do think we’re going after? A ship, an unmapped island?”

“Maybe it’s an oil rig?” Contingency piped up. “I have a good stock off petrol, but I wouldn’t mind getting a few barrels.”

The PA system crackling to life halted our conversation. “Attention crew, we are with in seeing distance of our target, as it is a presumed biohazard we will be maintaining our current distance, while fire team-er-Sea Lion Squad is dispatched to investigate. All vessel guards are asked to be on alert at this time.” Ok show time.

As we made our way from the mess hall, to the armoury, then to the RHIB we’d be using I noticed the number of ponies that looked unrested, of course they did, they had been up the entire past night as well, and many of them didn’t get the luxury of a memory orb nap, or any form of rest for that matter. I also noticed that Swordfish didn’t seem that well rested either; yup, her and the captain.

Once at the RHIB launch Ironclad and his fire team greeted us. “Hey, good to see you all made it out alive. Shanty just wanted my guys to inspect your gas masks, and make sure that they’re all up to code.” We all removed our helmets and with hem our gas masks, except Xager who had one of those rubber masks that went over the entire head, and Brawny who’s mask was fused to his face. After they inspected our filters and made sure that there were no cracks we boarded the RHIB and Mooncalf violently hoisted us over the side and dropped us with the crane. After roughly hitting the water, Signal Fire piloted us towards the ship.

As we approached the ship I made out the name pained on its bow, M.o.P. The Giant. I heard Brawny… make some sort of reactionary noise, it’s hard to tell since he’s a ghoul. “Huh, a Ministry of Peace ship? Can’t say I’m surprised with their ships being basically hospitals.” Contingency said. I had to think about that for a moment, a ship entirely for medical, it seemed redundant since most ships already had Med bays, but then again, I wasn’t entirely sure if even the Patriotic Fire’s med bay could support the casualties that occurred during the war. Our RHIB pulled along side The Giant, and we quickly tossed a grappling hook ladder onto the deck, and climbed aboard. The ship really was giant, 4 levels below deck our deck, 1 above, roughly 250 meters long.

“Ok, let’s make and entrance.” Brawny said and took up a breaching position by the door. We followed suite and stacked up behind him. The directional charges were set. “Three, two, BREACH!” The explosion knocked the reinforced metal door down, and through the small amount of smoke generated by the explosion we rushed, and made a defensive semi circle with our backs to the doorway.

“What the hell?!” Signal Fire’s question summarized my reaction as well, around the room skeletons were scattered, and bullet casings littered the ground like sand on a beach, most disturbing of all was the dark substance that that coated the walls in wild spatter like swaths. On top of that the room had been literally torn apart, doors ripped out of their doorways, bullet-ridden walls, busted vents, and an unsettling dent in the reinforced metal bulkhead.

“Crikey this is bad. Bad bad bad bad BAD.” Contingency muttered beside me, and I had to agree with her.

“Ok, Signal Fire, Xager, and myself will secure the bridge and turn get the PA system and elevator up and running so that we can communicate, Swordfish Rip Tide and Contingency will get a sample of what ever it is, then we get the hell off this ship, I know that the patient levels and labs are below us, so you guys should head under and start looking around.” Brawny explained. We nodded and went our separate ways, Brawny’s group making it’s way towards the bow where the bridge could be found, my group walking through the damaged doorway further into the ship.

The room we found ourselves in a room that looked an awful lot like the waiting room to he Patriotic Fire’s med bay, however it had been decorated with the same level of damage and gore as the last room. I stopped to look at the notices and propaganda posters behind the secretary’s desk, in no particular order a few stood out; “Lost Dog”, not sure why there’d be a dog on a ship but what ever, “Brighter Futures –MoP”, yes because the end of the world is certainly a bright future now isn’t it, “Ministry of Peace: Our Business is life itself” that’s not creepy at all, “Lab section 2 off limits to all non essential personal: Biohazard”, Bingo. I tore down the last notification and galloped after the rest of my group to catch up with them, only to crash head long into Swordfish since it turns out that her and Contingency stopped 2 meters beyond where I had.

“Ow. My head…” Swordfish groaned as she rubbed her head and with a flap of her wings set her self back up on her hooves. “Any reason you decided to practice you’re 100m sprint right while I was looking over the deck layout of the ship?” I looked up at the wall and noticed that there was a framed deck layout map with a spatter of what I assume to be blood across it.

I passed her the notice, “Well if you can find lab section 2, that’s where we’re most likely going to find what we’re looking for.” I said.

“yeah yeah, give us a moment.” She replied, and I took a quick glance around the room, and noticed something disturbing behind the secretary desk.

It was bones, a mixture of pony bones, and something decidedly not, long hook-like claws, multiple spinal cords, a split lower jaw, bone forming around the right eye, while the left eye seemed to be noticeably larger, and .50 cal rounds lay amongst the bones. “What the fuck?” I questioned over and over again as I tried to take my eyes off it and failed.

I guess Swordfish must have heard me, because turned to check on me, “Hey Rip Tide is something wro- oh that’s just great. Fucking wonderful. Hey Contingency, have you ever seen any shit this fucked?”

“Uh… well, I’ve seen mutations and mutilations, but this… wow.” Great even the treasure hunter who believes in ghosts can wrap their head around this.

“Let’s just get what we need and get off this boat so we can send this ship to the bottom of the ocean from the safety of the salvation.” I suggested, and both my companions nodded in agreement.

After finding lab 2 on the map, taking the map, and going through the next door into the medical ward itself we were greeted by a much worse room, the dark nearly ancient blood spatters were everywhere, the once white bed sheets of the ward had been drenched in the sanguine liquid and shredded to ribbons, on top of that the florescent tubes of the room flickered in that most chilling way. A chilling wind from a shattered porthole blew past us, and door abruptly slammed shut behind us.

Oh that did it. A half rotting lump of over muscular flesh dragged it’s self to it’s hooves, I watched as muscle spasms shook every part of it turning the beast into a twitching mass, the hulk turned towards us, it’s right eyes seemed sealed shut, while it’s left had bloated out of it’s socket and extended out like a tube, it opened it’s mouth and let out a long hollow roar. Said roar echoed and reechoed throughout the ship, and more of the creatures began twitching to life around the room. “Fuck! Weapons free!” Swordfish yelled, and who was I to disagree I raised my LMG and fried about ten rounds into the center of mass of the first monster, which in response came barreling towards us. Swordfish fired directly into its center of mass with her shot gun which merely staggered it long enough for Contingency to take its head off with her machete. Fortunately that killed it. “Fuck it run!” Swordfish shouted and we dashed across the room as fast as we could and through the door on the opposite side. Upon getting through the door way and slamming the door behind us we found our selves on a stairway leading down deeper into the ship.

The next level was clearly worse as the metal partitions between the different rooms had been reduced to little more than ribbons, the fact that the howl was louder down there made everything worse. Another of the creatures rushed towards me and I fired the remaining twenty rounds I had in my clip into it, the good news was that headshots apparently still kill them. “Keep pressing towards lab 2!” Swordfish ordered and we moved in a loose formation down the hall of the ship, I reloaded as quickly as I could then returned fired a quick burst at a creature I saw lurking in the shadows behind one of the slashed up partitions. Just as I felt like we could make it a large tentacle like formation of pony flesh lashed out from the ceiling and grabbed Swordfish. When Contingency and myself ran over to free her the metal floor we stood on gave out and wee fell through, we hit the next level and fell through again, this continued until we broke through into the boiler room. Contingency landed on a catwalk that ran above the boilers, I kept falling.

I landed on something, something warm and cushy… Fortunately my, “WTF? ew ew ew ew ew ew!” reaction got me off of whatever it was before a half ton of steel flooring and structural material fell on it. Thus there I was, alone in the dark, with only the continuing bellows of those creatures to accompany me. I stumbled around in the dark for a while; too scared that turning on my flashlight might attract one of the creatures, before I bumped into something metal on the ground. Feeling around it was roughly the size of a small bowel I telekinetically picked it up with my telekinesis, in it’s feeble glow I noticed that the object was some sort of lamp, well since my horns glow was probably attracting everything any ways I flicked it’s switch and immediately had to turn away from it’s obscenely bright light. I tuned and noticed that pile of metal was shifting. I raised my LMG and got ready to fight what ever it was. What emerged could only be described as massive; I unloaded my entire clip into it, yet it wasn’t bothered in the slightest, not even by the headshots. As I hastily reloaded my gun it dove at me, I wouldn’t be able to dodge on time, so instead I levitated my LMG off me and caught the creature right in the neck with it. The action was enough to halt the creature’s advance, but the weight of the creature snapped my gun in two.

Now let’s see, I still have a knife and an underwater pistol… fuck it run! I ran as fast as I could and soon found myself running out of boiler room. Luckily I spotted a substructure of sheet metal set up, I rushed in and suddenly the sounds of the creature’s pursuit stopped, I heard the sound of it moving around, but it wasn’t chasing me, if anything it sounded confused as it lumbered about, eventually I heard it walk away. Then I heard a crack like thunder, after a few moments I heard it again, it wasn’t close but it was certainly loud. I settled down in my small shack and began to take in my surroundings. A sign on the wall read “security substation 3” I looked around the room and noticed a skeleton in the corner. I flicked on my flashlight for a better look at it. I noticed two .44 casings on the ground and two holes in the pony’s skull.

The skeleton seemed to be clutching two things, a piece of paper and… oh my… A top loading LMG! Strangely convenient… I Picked up the gun and looked over it, The first thing I noticed was it’s considerable heft, it didn’t take long for me to realize why, some sort of metal I don’t know what covered it, complete with wires and some sort of slot. I turned my attention to the note.

Dear: Reader

I’m a coward. As I write this note I’m too scared to fight the outbreak, too scared to kill myself, and too scared to starve with out leaving a note. I signed up for this because I thought I would find purpose in serving Luna. Now I know what my purpose is, I’m a slave to my fear, and honestly I don’t really care, back in Equestria I would have probably just been killed in a munitions production accident. My only regret at this moment is that I didn’t listen to my fear when it told me that what was going on here was wrong. I heard that poor stallion scream and beg for his life, I should have ran, but no, I ended up being the vessel guard that restrained him when they gave him the shot. Now look what’s happened.

In summary, listen to your fear, fear is normal there is no dishonor in it, in your fear you can find strength, I was weak, I did what I was told by other rather than what my fear told me was right, now… this. I was sent down to retrieve the key for the megaspell, but now I find myself here petrified with fear. If you feel like it the key is on the key rack by the entrance, good luck.

P.S.

Since you found me have my gun, Lead Storm, pop a spark pack it the slot for something a bit more powerful.

-Pipsqueak, rank doesn’t matter when I’m dead.

I closed the letter and pocketed it. I loaded my pan mag into my new LMG and rooted around in the small room until I round a radio that I dismantled and retrieved its spark pack. I inserted the spark in to the slot and was amused by the slight blue glow the gun began to give off. I turned to the entrance way and took the large yellow key, then I turned to the door, I won’t claim to not have been scared, but at the time I was more scared for the safety of my friends.

I stepped out of the small shelter and once again into the boiler room that was still lit by the lamp I had turned on. I made my way along the perimeter of the boiler room looking for some form of ladder to climb. I noticed the hulking beast pacing around the pile of metal that now took up the space it once inhabited, I quietly raised Lead Storm to my right shoulder, aimed down the sight, aimed for the head, and pulled the trigger. The sound the gun made was by no means a ‘bang’, if anything it was more of a ‘PA-TEW’. I didn’t both question the odd sound, because the creature no longer had a head. I continued my way around the perimeter and found a stepladder up to the catwalk. After climbing the ladder I found myself in a somewhat mazelike system of catwalks overlooking the boilers. I started to make my way down the catwalk in hopes of at least finding Contingency, but after no more than three steps I heard that thunderous noise again, and I felt something whizz by me. I felt the shock wave of impact on something behind me, and some fluid spattered out on to me. I turned and noticed one of the regular sized creatures blown in half be hind me. I Ran further down the catwalk and began to make something out in the dark. “Hey Rip Tide! I was afraid you wouldn’t make it!” Contingency’s voice sounded through the darkness. I was glad to here her voice.

“Ok, let’s get Swordfish, the sample, then well, I have something of interest.” I replied, “and what the hell kind of gun are you using? It’s not a standard issue sniper rifle, is it an anti-machine rifle?”

“Naw, the AM rifle’s for plebs. I got this .75 Cal wall rifle from a long lost zebra weapons dump. Also I agree, this is getting out of hand.” I let my hang open in my gas mask for a moment, .75?! “Um if it’s not to much to ask would you mind covering me while I re chamber and swap the barrel of my rifle over, being able to use a clip of .308 rounds would be better than have to reload after every shot with my fortress rifle.” I nodded and returned to my thoughts, if it needs to be reloaded after each shot then it’s not totally over powered… oh who am I kidding it’s a one pony artillery piece. I watched her fiddle with parts of the gun and things from her saddles bags, and then she levitated up a standard issue sniper rifle, “Ok let’s go.”

We made our way down the catwalk, eventually finding a door that lead to some stairs going up. We ascended quickly and found ourselves in the ship’s living quarters. The unending roar was louder here, Once again the lighting was flickering and large tears were slashed into the walls. We made our way down the hallway looking for a way to the next level. I noticed a creature lurking at the end of the hall, *PATEW* one less voice in the roar. We continued, taking out the creatures whenever they emerged from the shadows. As we made our way down seemingly the hundredth hallway we stopped as a the PA system made a sound like it was breaking, “ALL HAIL RIO RULER OF DEATH!”

“Signal Fire stop messing around and try to get in contact with the others.” Brawny’s voice abruptly cut in.

I dashed over to the nearest speaker and hit the reply button underneath of it, “Signal! Brawny! It’s me and Contingency, we’re on the living quarters deck!”

“Uh huh, where’s Swordfish?” Brawny asked.

“I don’t know for sure we were separated by the creature attack.” I answered.

“Well find her, the a sample, and let’s get off this ship.” Brawny replied.

“Oh I’ll send down the elevator for you guys.” Signal Fire added, “Having captain Rio’s keycard is so great!”

By this time our helmets had begun to phase out the roar, so I could clearly hear a motor start to hum followed by a tone. “Thanks for the lift, literally.” The sound had come from down two halls and to the left, after we stepped into the elevator and started heading up I finally started to relax, then my mind noted something that it had previously ignored, the note said that he was too scared to kill himself, he wasn’t a unicorn yet the bullet casings weren’t near the body, there was no pistol to be found, and there were two shots, both to the head, fired. Clearly it wasn’t a suicide, the next most logical explanation would be that another vessel guard found him huddled up in the corner, and executed him for cowardice, however that wouldn’t explain why the executioner didn’t take the megaspell activation key to complete the mission, I was getting a strong feeling that the outbreak was more than what meets the eye, when the elevator tone notified us that we had reached our destination, the lab deck. I put aside my worries of dark treacherous conspiracies and stepped out on to the new deck. Even with my gasmask the air felt heavier, I noticed that the entire floor was a deep crimson as where much of the walls. “What the fuck?” I whispered to myself.

I continued ahead, my mind came up with a million nightmare-fueling scenarios of how the out break started. The one that came up most often was the concept of the test subject having not died, and becoming the catalyst of the outbreak. I tried to push those ideas out of my head as I rounded the corner, what confronted around said corner made me almost jump out of my skin. A marine, drenched in blood leaned against the wall; blood dripping from it’s uniform in large drops. As I continued to stare I noticed that it was a Pegasus, and that it was armed with a shotgun. My brain finally made the connection, “Swordfish?!” As the name left my tongue the marine collapsed to the floor. I rushed to her side. “Swordfish! Speak to me!” I urged, I had already lost my sister; Swordfish was the closest thing I had to family now.

“Ugh… Rip Tide… don’t tell… Rip Tide, but Shanty and me… I though true love… was a lie.” At I quickly pieced together the reason for her discombobulated state, cuts all over her; the Kevlar of her uniform had offered no resistance to the claws of the creatures. At that moment I realized that she could very well be infected. I noticed a sign that read ‘lab 2’ and made my towards it. “Contingency guard Swordfish! I’m getting the sample.”

The lab was in disarray; the room I was in was some form of monitoring room. I peaked through the shattered glass window to the first room, there was a bed covered in broken restraints. I looked into the next room and noticed it was full of vials and other such lab and medicinal equipment, rather than trying to pick the lock on the door I just used Lead Storm to shoot out the bolt, then to my disappointment the blue glow cut out and the spark pack was ejected, either this thing used a lot of power per shot, or the spark pack was mostly spent by the time I found it.

I entered the room and quickly noted the massive yellow box with the biohazard symbol, I opened it and noticed that the shelf labeled samples was empty; of course the Enclave took everything! However there was a test tube labeled ‘Experimental Sample’. I took the vial and found a large quantity of airtight sealing plastic bags to stick the vial in. I tucked the sample into my satchel and on my way out into the hall noticed another memory orb; I telekinetically opened a bag, and put the orb into the bag with a hoof. After that I noticed that in the room across from the hall there was a large yellow box with 2 of the megaspell keys in it I made my way to it, inserted my own key and noticed the display change,

All keys present, activate countdown for M.o.P. biological hazard containment last resort?

Y/N

I selected Y and was relived at that the countdown started at 45 minutes. Then I exited the room. Back in the hallway I rushed to where Contingency stood over Swordfish, I telekinetically lifted Swordfish on to my back, and went over to the nearest PA system speaker. I hit the button and spoke up to the machine, “Hey Signal after we return to the deck we came in on, you guys come down ok.”

“Signal fire isn’t here anymore! The death lord Rio will be addressed by his real name!” Signal Fire’s voice replied, really? FUCKING REALLY?!

“Stop joking around! Swordfish could die, and I just activated a megaspell!” I shouted at the speaker.

“Wait did crazy pony just mention mega bomb?!”

“What the fuck? This isn’t following procedure!”

“Ok! No more joking! No more joking!”

The other three exclaimed, but Contingency and I were already in the elevator waiting for the door to close, “I know you said that you had something of interest, but I sure wasn’t expecting a megaspell.” Contingency joked as the elevator moved two floors up to the floor we had come in on. I checked Swordfish’s heart beat, it was faint but still there.

The door slid open and we exited into a room that heavily resembled the room we came in through. I set Swordfish in a semi prone position and set up Lead Storm’s bipod on an over turned crate, “Get ready, we’re waiting for Brawny and the others, and I have a feeling the creatures are going to want to keep us company.”

Contingency nodded and unsheathed her machete. As predicted a number of the creatures began rushing in shortly after, As I fired I noticed that without a spark pack Lead Rain behaved like a normal top fed LMG. I gunned down a few more creatures as they ran in, but it was nowhere near enough to stop the tide, just as we ere about to be over run, a painful vibration began pounding my eardrum, and my helmet quickly worked to cancel it out. The creatures however turned tail and ran. I looked over at Contingency and noticed that from her right fetlock a blade had been extended out about 20 centimeters, and I could see the air distorting around the blade, a blade that can hurt anyone who simply go near it. Once the creatures were gone Contingency returned the blade to her fetlock. “What was that?” I panted out and shook my head to clear the ringing from my ears.

Contingency leaned back against the elevator door, “Sonic vibrations, I figured that with such messed up eyes the creatures must be pretty reliant on hearing, I didn’t try it before because it’s pretty tax-whoa!” As she finished explaining the elevator tone sounded and the door opened causing her to fall back into the elevator.

“Hello grave robber.” Xager greeted her then helped her to her hooves.

Signal Fire ran up to me and shoved the key card in my face. “See doesn’t that Rio fellow look kinda like me?” I had to admit, the face on the key card bared a striking resemblance to Signal Fire.

Brawny simply shoved past us, “Grab Swordfish and let’s go.”

I heaved her on to my back, and I heard her mumbling something along the lines of Brawny being an asshole. Clearly she would be ok.

It turns out that the next room over was in fact the room we came in through, and just a quick dash out the door and down the ladder put us in the RHIB. Signal Fire piloted us back to the Salvation as fast as possible. When we were hauled on board the ship ponies in HAZMAT gear immediately swarmed us. However the clock was ticking, “There’s an active megaspell on the ship!” I yelled out, and after some confusion I noticed that the Salvation began to move away from the ship, I relaxed and let the HAZMAT ponies strip me of my tainted clothing and begin to scrub me down.

Behind us there was a blinding light emitting from the ship, so bright that it was shining through the ship’s hull. After about a minute of such blinding light, it stopped, and a cool night ocean breeze blew the ashes of what had once been The Giant away. At this time I slowly drifted off as the HAZMAT team continued to sanitize us.

I awoke in the medical bay of the Salvation, I noticed Swordfish lying on a bed near me, literally mummified with healing bandages. I recognized Test Tubes, the head of the med bay, “Hey Doc, will Swordfish be alright?” I asked.

Test Tubes looked over at me and gave a small chuckle. “Define alright.” He stated, and seeing my worried look added, “Well her blood-alcohol level was high enough to qualify as a micro disinfectant. In all honesty I’m more worried about that then the actual disease.” Ok, I guess I’ll have to have a talk with her about her drinking then, but then again her cutiemark was a shotgun shell at the bottom of a shot glass.

“I’m not in quarantine or anything?” I asked.

“Nope you’re free to go.” He replied, “In fact I’d prefer it.”

I knew what I was going to do. As I made my way to the bridge I thought to myself; I had almost lost Swordfish that night, and it put things in perspective. I noticed that Shanty wasn’t on the bridge, so I trotted over to the door to her office, and knocked. “Come in, the door’s unlocked.” Her accented voice sounded from the other side. I entered the room and took a seat at the chair on my side of her desk. “So Rip Tide, what’s on yer mind?” she asked.

My answer was simple, “I know about you and Swordfish.”

She blushed a bit, “Oh, y’all know ‘bout that? Did she tell ya, or did ya figure it out?”

I replied quickly and fairly calmly, “She was suffering from blood loss, and told me not to tell me… Look anyways, she likes you, I mean really likes you, if I find out that you’re playing with her, pulling her along, or anything of the sort, I’ll make you regret it.” I’m pretty sure that a powered round from Lead Storm could put a hole in the hull of the Salvation.

“Yeah that sounds pretty reasonable.” Shanty replied in her usual laid back tone. “Although I’m mighty offended that you’d suspect me of such. Remember my honour code?”

I slumped back in the chair and exhaled, "Sure, sorry for doubting you."

Chapter 4: Draconian Past

Fore note: The following events take place 2 weeks after the events of the last chapter.

oooOOOooo

My host shivered as the salty spray splashed up over the walls of our landing craft as if plunged through a wave. I noted that we were in a conventional landing craft rather than one of the more advanced LCACs (hovercraft landing craft) that were developed, that wasn’t that helpful since I knew the general time the orb was from already. My host gave a flap of his wings to poke his head over the landing ramp. The island before my host, er… me, was dark with two exceptions, what looked like a town in the distance, and a few lights dotting the coastline. I was on an assault. My host returned to the deck of the LC with the other As my host began to make his way to the back of the craft I overheard some conversations whispered conversations, most of them broke down to “Why did Luna disband the Marine Raiders?” or “I wish we had our rubber rafts back so we could be stealthy rather than use this noisy tin can.” My host continued to make his way back; at the back he found a yellow unicorn buck in full combat dress frowning as he listened.

My host cleared his throat and spoke, “Two Way? Any word on that air support yet?” My host’s voice was masculine, so the only odd anatomy for me was a lack of a horn, and a new set of wings.

The buck looked up. “No word.”

“Command’s sent us to die.” My host turned around to see the speaker, and I found myself looking at a grey earth pony whose early assault rifle. “We’re in the middle of the ocean, without the firepower for a frontal assault, and with out the equipment for a stealth op, and Admiral Xattax has converted this island into a fucking fortress.”

The unicorn was the first to respond, “Oh Brawny, do you have to always be such a negative thinker?” Wait, this was Brawny before he was a ghoul with a gas mask for a face? “I’m sure command is just worried about revealing sensitive information over an insecure channel.”

“If the channel was insecure, then the zebras would be raining fire down on us by now.” Brawny replied evenly.

A crack broke the relative silence. “Show time!” My host yelled before the roar of the landers engine revving up to full speed, the whoosh as the landing craft modified to carry rockets fired their pay loads, and the bangs of our 20mm guns drowned out his voice. Despite our suppressing fire, the last bit up to the beech was under heavy fire. I noted, as a few small holes were punched in our ramp, that the Zebras were using armour-piercing rounds. I felt the craft grind to a stop and heard a hiss as the hydraulics opened the door. My host kicked the safety off of his boxy belt fed LMG, and flew up as fast as he could and then aimed to fire down into the enemy trench. Below I noticed the hundreds of ponies rushing out into the water only to be gunned down on the beach. Then my host opened fire. I noted that while the enemy’s trench provided superior cover from an equal level assault, it turned firing down on them into shooting fish in a barrel. The fire from my host created an opening that the remaining marines used to surge forward. Then a zebra turned his rifle up and fired.

The round caught my host in the stomach, and he tumbled to the ground in a sloppy mess. The impact had torn clean through me, apparently the marines had not yet received any effective body armour as standard issue yet. With my host no longer raining bullets down on the trench the zebras had returned to their positions, and now that the marines had moved out of cover to advance they had turned the beach into a slaughter house. My host drew his side arm, some sort of .44 magnum, with his mouth and tried to aim at the enemy through his blurred vision for a few seconds before dropping the weapon in deffeat. He watched as his comrades were cut down or forced into cover, continuously wheezing (probably from a collapsed lung) what sounded like "The horror! The horror!" The fight continued for another couple minutes, at which point multiple streams of glowing large caliber bullets followed by a barrage of missiles decimated the trench, and sent my host flying. My host hit the ground and presumably was knocked out.

oooOOOooo

I awoke from the memory orb to find myself still lying on the beech I had laid down on. I glanced over at the Salvation, it was still docked in the small port getting its last repairs and refueling. We had docked at the Island of Abundance, the main island of the Abundance command segment. The sun was shining, the tropical birds were singing, there was nothing to do, “OOF!” someone had just thrown a saddlepack full of supplies on top of me, and my hopes of a relaxing day quickly faded.

I glance over in the general direction of where the bag came from, and I noticed Contingency standing over me and wearing a pith helmet. “G’day, hate to cut in on your leave but it’s time to start covering some costs.” Contingency said and I noticed that the pack had a lot of equipment for what I guessed was archeology.

“How do you know this island has any good stuff?” I asked as I pulled my saddlepack on.

“Every island has something good on it, and I talked with the locals, there’s a rumor of a tomb inland.” Contingency replied, then added, “Oh and they mentioned some rebel blokes in the jungle so I brought your gun.”

“Oh thank-” then I remembered that I had left Lead Storm locked in my locker, “You broke in to my locker?!”

“Yup.” She replied. “I break into tombs all the time, it shouldn’t be surprising that lockers aren’t that hard.”

“Ok, who else is joining us?” I asked as I put on my equipment.

“Xager, Swordfish, and Signal Fire.” She replied. “Oh and I didn’t bring your helmet.”

I blinked in confusion, “Why?!”

“Treasure hunters don’t wear combat helmets, they generally wear fedoras, but that's too mainstream for me.” She replied. “Relax, It’ll be fine.”

“Ok, then let’s go find the others.” I said as I pulled on the pack. “Also why is Brawny not joining us?” I asked.

“Well I asked, but apparently he was more intent over standing guard over that one Zebra. I swear that grudge is unhealthy…” She explained as we entered the port town.

“How is it unhealthy? Brawny’s yet to kill him.” I replied.

“Well, the way he insists on spending as much time as possible standing guard over that one zebra makes me think it’s less of an urge to kill and more of a bloody fixation on that zebra.” She explained, the logic didn’t make much sense, but then again when dealing with irrational behaviour maybe that was proof that it was bad.

I noticed Swordfish passed out in the gutter in front of the bar she had spent the night in. She had pulled her saddle pack under her head to use as a pillow. I gave her a little nudge as she got up with painful slowness, “Ugh… I feel like I’ve been run over by an APC…” She groaned.

“G’morning mate what me to whistle up a cuppa coffee?” Coningency offered with a hearty smile.

“Ugh… I think that if you whistled, my head would explode.” Swordfish replied and put a hoof on her forehead.

“Just wondering, what’s it like sleeping outside a boozer?” Contingency asked. Of course the ever-curious mare would ask that. Just last week she had been sticking her hoof down the Salvation’s 6” gun to see it was rifled or not.

If looks could kill, then the look Swordfish gave Contingency would be classified as a weapon of mass destruction, “Have I ever told you that I hate the Alpacadonian accent?” Swordfish’s statement deflated contingency ever so slightly, but she recovered quickly enough.

“Ok, let’s go find Xager now.” She said with a slightly forced smile.

We found Xager near the docks where he was watching some large creatures lumber through the water. Rad Lions, Sea Lions mutated by the radiation, filled the water. “Hey Xager, what are you doing?” I asked.

“the Lions, they are so… majestic…” he trailed off.

Swordfish looked at the beach then groaned, “Ugh… There go my hopes of using the Xager method to off my hangover…”

“Ok, just give me a few more minutes with these beautiful beasts, Signal’s over there on the dock.” He said and lamely pointed a hoof over in the direction of the dock.

“I’ll get him.” I said and trotted off, glad to get away from Xager’s… unusual opinion on rad lions. I trotted down the dock to where I found Signal Fire throwing fish from a basket at a very large Rad Lion bull that had a pup on it’s head. “Ok, come on Signal, we gotta go. I said and began pulling him away.

Apparently the Rad Lion didn’t like losing it’s feeder, because it rushed up to the dock, and I was able to appreciate it’s size, it was the size of an average zebra hut! It opened it’s mouth and let out a long, low cry, “BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!-” Signal Fire shut it up by shoving a… Kraken tentacle?! Into it’s mouth. A Kraken is a very large ocean creature found throughout the… well the ocean obviously.

My wonder over how Signal Fire came in to possession of the tentacle ended when a marine with and Abundance-green collar started berating him, “Eh dude that was my dinner! Why the fuck did you just throw it to the sea mutt?! Where the hell is your commanding officer?!”

The way Signal Fire had rolled up his sleeve hid his rank, so when he pulled out the ID card from The Giant they couldn’t see the obvious flaw in the rouse, “I’m captain Rio, I felt that a rampaging Rad Lion could threaten my ship and acted accordingly!” he exclaimed and gestured over to the Salvation.

The marine simply sputtered and began slowly backing away, “uh… oh gee… I’m sorry sir I didn’t realize that you were… well…”

Signal Fire clearly was enjoying this power trip too much to let the marine off easy, “So you would have acted so wrongly to another of your fellow service-stallions? You are a disgrace, get out of my sight before I decide to push for a court marshal!” The marine saluted then scampered away as fast as he could. Signal Fire then turned to me and broke down laughing, “I am a god with this thing!” Clearly Brawny wasn’t joking when he said Swordfish was the preferred choice for command over Signal Fire.

“Ok, let’s go Signal.” I said and we walked back down the dock to where the others were waiting. Once back we greeted the others then made out way through the town to the dense forest beyond.

The town it’s self was nice, considerably larger than the one on Wind Way, and much more built up. The town had multileveled buildings, a large local garrison of professional troops rather than a simple militia, and even clean water via a purification plant. The town seemed pretty happy, I couldn’t see much reason why there would be a rough group trying to wreck this.

I left the question as we entered the jungle, I quickly noticed something, with out my helmet, the bugs had a lot more exposed skin to go for. I found myself hobbling along on only 3 hooves as I used my right fore hoof to swat away the flying insects that tormented me. I noticed that the rest of my companions were doing the same, except Contingency who seemed to be ignored by the bugs. “Hey Contingency, why aren’t the bugs going after you?” I asked.

She turned around and laughed, “Wow, now I know why it’s called the bailer salute! Oh sorry, I guess I should have thought of this.” She said and started rummaging through her bags. I watched my friend continue to swat at the bugs on their heads, yes I could see how it sort of resembled a salute. Contingency pulled out an aerosol can, and pointed the nozzle at us. “Now close your eyes and keep your mouths shut.” I did as told and felt a mist wash over me, she forgot to mention to not breath, because I inhaled some, and when I started coughing got some in my mouth.

After a few seconds of coughing and spitting into the bushes I recovered. “Bah! What was that?” I asked.

“Bug repellent mate.” She replied and led on.

As we continued on through the forest we reached a creek that had a few logs sticking out of it’s bed. Contingency pulled out a map and muttered to her self a bit before tucking it back into an empty ammo pocket. “yup we’re going the right way.”

All the jungle looked the same and I doubt the map marked logs in the river, so I was a bit confused. Swordfish had the same reservation too apparently, “What how do you know?” She asked, apparently over her hang over.

“The bridge.” She replied and pointed to the map, which showed a wooden foot bridge crossing the stream, and then pointed to the logs, they all stuck out at the same angle, and were stuck deep into the river bed, so it quickly became apparent that it had at one point been a bridge.

“Uh how old is that map?” I questioned, as I took another look at the rotting logs.

She examined the river, “I’d say about 200 years old, I really doubt the locals had the time to maintain the bridge with the hostile forces in the jungle.” She explained.

“So why didn’t the rebels fix the bridge? It’s in their territory.” I asked again.

Contingency chuckled a bit, “Why would they give marines greater mobility in their territory?” I guessed it was a valid point; most rebel groups relied primarily on guerilla tactics.

We turned when we heard a loud crash. A small tree had fallen into the river, I looked at the where it had fallen from, and saw Swordfish standing on it’s stump. “Why you do that? They may hear you!” Xager demanded.

“Aw gee, I’m not to scared of the rebels, the eels in the river on the other hoof…” she trailed off.

Signal Fire crossed the impromptu bridge and stepped on to the other side. “I christen this bridge the Rio Bridge!” He said with a smile.

I crossed, followed by Xager and Contingency, “Ok Contingency, lead on.” I said and we continued following her deeper into the jungle.

Onward we continued, passing numerous strange creatures and hearing many different tropical birds. As we continued though, the smell of damp plant life was slowly replaced by a new scent, rotting flesh. Contingency noticed it to, as she stopped the group and began to wander off in a different direction the rest of us followed her on her way.

We came out in a clearing. The clearing was dominated by a single solid stone platform; into it was carved a large four-pointed star. A single dead zebra lay at the center of the star. I stared at the star for a few moments. The Zebra carried a Zebra assault rifle, and wore some sort of uniform. It wasn’t the uniform of the local defense force, so it was safe to assume that it was a rebel.

Swordfish was the first to break the silence, “That’s fucked up, is it like sacrifice?” she questioned with a look of disgust.

Signal Fire took a look around the body, “I doubt it, looks like he was killed by a 5.56 round.” He answered.

“Bl- bl- blasphemous heretics!” Xager said as he slowly stepped back.

I couldn’t see what he was getting at, but Contingency seemed to understand it, “Hey Xager, no drama, just because they seem to revere the stars doesn’t make them some sort of scary voodoo zebras.” Then it clicked; Zebras hate stars! Of course Xager saw this as inherently wrong. “Ok, this clearing is on the map, and the temple is just a bit farther inland.” Contingency said and motioned for us to continue.

We continued farther into the forest until a found ourselves as a mountain cliff with a large waterfall cascading off it. Contingency fell back, “It was supposed to be right here!” she exclaimed. I looked up at the waterfall, it didn’t seem that powerful. “Wait, I’ve seen this before! It’s-“

“Behind the waterfall.” I interjected.

She seemed surprised, “How did you know?”

“I saw it in one of my comics.” I replied. Those comics sure were useful!

“Ok, let’s go then.” She replied and began walking towards the waterfall.

We followed her, and let the cool refreshing water cascade over us. On the other side we found our selves in some sort of cave mouth, I watched as Contingency removed her pith helmet an shook the water out of her silver mane then watched her expression light up with excitement. “Ace! It’s been over a month since I’ve been in a musty tomb!” She squealed and all but bounced around in joy.

Swordfish shook herself dry and took a look around the cave, “Ok, I feel like the ceiling is about to fall on me.”

“You’re in the cramped corridors of a ship most of the time, I don’t see why you’d be claustrophobic now.” Signal Fire said as he examined the room.

“Yeah, but I know what the ceilings on the ships are made of, and the structuring systems put in place to prevent the ceiling from falling, here it’s just mud, rock, and nature.” Swordfish replied.

Xager for his part just wandered around scoffing at the cave’s decorations.

“Ok, let’s just find the stuff then get out.” Swordfish urged and continued to glance up at the ceiling.

“No worries, this is the fun part.” Contingency said and began to move deeper into the cave. We followed her in, and to our amazement the further we went in the less it seemed like a cave. The walls had been smoothed, carved and painted with detailed reliefs of what seemed to be battles. On one side was obviously some early Zebra legion, and on the other a strange looking group of long necked creatures armed with circular shields and pikes. “These are certainly Alpaca ruins.” Contingency informed us. I guess that made the long necks depicted Alpacas then.

“I really am a god!” Signal Fire exclaimed, and I turned around to see what he was on about, and then had to pick my jaw up off the floor, the relief on the wall opposite me was a depiction of a stallion that looked strikingly like Signal Fire, wearing a horned helmet, and holding a torch.

“You’re fucking kidding me!” I exclaimed.

“Well, look, it’s sandy brown like me, it’s facial structure is similar to mine, and we both carry fire!” He explained and gestured to his flamethrower.

I face hooved and moved on. I noticed that Contingency kept on glancing around the walls, floor, and ceiling of the tunnel. She raised a hoof and signalled for us to stop. With out saying anything she picked up a rock from the tunnel floor and tossed it into the tunnel ahead, I heard some sort of shifting above, and that’s when I noticed the shaft on the ceiling ahead. Before my mind fully comprehended what was happening water began flooding down the shaft. “Wow any dill would have seen that trap, this ruin’s making me bored.” She said and watched the water continue to pour down.

Swordfish groaned loudly, “Ugh! Great, just great, now I don’t have to just worry about the ceiling falling in, but eels too! I would say this tunnel will drive me to drink, but that’d be redundant.” Having said that she pulled a hip flask out and took a swig.

Xager looked at the water for a moment, then made his assertion, “The lower level is flooding.” I looked at how the water continued to flow down in the direction we had been heading.

“Well then we had better hurry up then.” Contingency said and began trudging through the water. We quickly followed her. We quickly found ourselves slipping down a stone staircase and slid out into a large dark room. Contingency flicked on her belt mounted flashlight, and shined its beam over the room, at the center of the room was a raised plat form covered in cinders, amongst the cinders I noticed a large sword. I flicked on my own light as I approached it. The blade was about as large as me, I examined it, it seemed like only somepony extremely skilled in telekinesis would have any hope in lifting it. To try my luck I tried lifting it.

oooOOOooo

I was on some form of wooden boat, the island ahead of me seemed familiar, I had seen this same view when the salvation set port yesterday. However, things where different now, judging from the billowing smoke I would guess their were multiple fires on the island. The boat I was on had a sail, which was tied closed at the moment, and a single level of oars. I noticed that I was a pony, and that everyone around me was a pony. My host gave a long sigh, “I hope this is worth it, the Alpacas have been nice traders and all, but I still question the Jarl’s decision to go to war against the Zebras on their behalf.” From what I gleamed from my host’s word was that, yet again, I was trudging to war.

“Relax, the Zebras have never fought something like us.” a stallion standing behind my host reassured.

“Ah, Moss Wood, prepare the men, the moment we land it’s right to the front lines.” My host replied and turned to face the green stallion. I noticed that Moss Wood was noticeably taller than me. Regardless he bowed and moved to complete his orders.

I let the continuing rhythmic sloshing of the oars give me a false sense of calm, it was a nice day, a war seemed out of place. However, our ships did hit land, and almost immediately my host and his soldiers disembarked and surged in land.

We continued moving until we reached the foot of the large plateau on the island. Up on the plateau I got a good look at the other side of the island, a port was ablaze, and red painted ship bearing the Roaman eagle sat up on the beach. On lower part of the plateau I noticed the battle, furry long necked tall creatures armed with excessively long pikes tried to push back the red shield baring Zebra legionaries. From the looks of it, the battle was in the Alpaca’s favor, the Legionaries we unable to get past the thick wall of pikes, and the Alpaca’s had the high ground. The only thing that bothered me was that there were multiple Roaman ships, and only a small group of legionaries. Maybe the others had been killed or were fighting elsewhere on the island. Moss Wood however saw something while my host was preoccupied watching the battle, “Stripes! Left flank!” He yelled and pointed to where a large group of legionaries crept out of the shrubbery and charged in to the backs of the Alpacas. What I guessed was a Roaman officer gestured and yelled something in zebra causing a regiment sized force to break off to engage us.

My host moved his shield to his shoulder, and telekinetically drew his hatchet, “Shield Wall!” He commanded and the other ponies rushed to form a defensive system of overlapping shields that protected both the front sides and top. Another order was given in zebra, and javelins were thrown at us, in some cases the penetrated our wooden shields, which killed a couple of ponies, but the shield wall was mostly effective at protecting us. Before the legionaries reached us, some more ponies moved to fill the gaps in the formation. My host recoiled as the force of the Zebras slammed into our formation. Through the gaps in the shields my host and his ponies thrust spears and swords through at the mass of Zebras. One Zebra felt like being a hero and tried climbing through one of the gaps, for his effort my host slammed the hatchet down on the legionaries’ head. The battle continued for a few minutes, the Zebras were taking dreadful casualties compared to our few. Suddenly, screams from further down the formation made it clear that the battle had changed; a zebra armed with some sort of combat pickaxe was smashing his way through our shields with ease. If they stayed still they would die, so my host made a pretty risky decision, “Break formation!” He yelled and shoved his way forward into the mass of zebras. My host swung the hatchet around until he had cleared a bit of room for himself, at which point he dropped it, in favor of that massive sword. I could feel the strain it put on even his stronger telekinesis. My host heaved the massive blade back and forth, the shear force behind it letting it cleave through armour and flesh with ease, I also noticed, that it’s length meant that it could be trusted like a spear to impale. Around and around the blade was swung, until my host found himself and a very beat up Moss Wood encircled by legionaries, all of who had their javelins drawn ready to be thrown.

“Well captain Morning Star, I guess this is it.” Moss Wood panted as he struggled to stand. I noticed my host’s wounds as well, I guess the adrenaline rush had stopped him from feeling them, because I was surprised at how cut up he was.

The legionaries parted a bit to let a zebra and his purple-cloaked bodyguards to the front. “So you are the accursed Viking that tried to reinforce the primitives? My it’s good to fight mindless barbarians rather than creatures of culture and grace.” The Zebra gloated, “Now then, before you die, I’ll let you know that you have just doomed your pitiful tribe as well, whenever our conquest eventually brings us there.” My host had had enough; he grabbed the hatchet, and threw it with all his might, the blade catching the Zebra right in the head.

In response the legionaries threw their javelins, and I had a feeling that my host’s body looked like a porcupine with the number of javelins that hit him. As my host bled out on the ground a zebra yelled something about the Alpacas making another push.

oooOOOooo

I snapped back to the present, “Oh shit how long was I out?” I asked.

“Um… what do you mean?” Contingency asked as she walked up.

“The sword is like a memory orb, how long was I just staring at it?” It felt like an hour.

“Uh, I don’t know what you’re talking about, you only just climbed up here.” She said as she hopped on to the platform with me. “Oh, this greatsword here?” She asked and grabbed it momentarily with her telekinesis. The glow of her telekinesis immediately faded. “Well, that was interesting. How long did that take?” She asked.

I was a little surprised, memories are supposed to take time! “Um, I’d say a second, maybe?”

“Cool sword, a little bit too heavy for my liking, but still cool.” She replied then went to work rummaging through the pile of charred bones and weapons.

I still wanted a souvenir from this place, and since the sword was too heavy, I settled on a nearby hatchet. I picked it up in my telekinetic grasp and felt it’s heft; it had a solid feel to it and the heaviness of its head gave the illusion of it wanting to be swung. I helped scour the ruins, picking up anything of perceived value. As I did so the water level continued to rise. I was slightly worried about the water, and they say a quiet marine is a dead one, so I decided it was better to ask now then drown in a flooded mountain later, “Hey Contingency, how much longer do we have to be here, I don’t like the way the water is still rising.”

“Leave! Leave now! Run! Get out!” Contingency yelled as she ran through the water from the back of the cavern.

All my friends and I exchanged nervous glances and ran after her. I managed to catch up to her on the stairway out, “What’s, going, on?” I asked between pants.

She looked back an I noticed the panic on her face, “Dragon.” She squeaked out. I had no idea what a dragon was, but I assumed it was bad. We made our way up into the tunnel, and then Contingency halted right before the waterfall.

With no time to stop and a slippery cave floor, Swordfish, Xager, Signal Fire, and my self slammed right into her and tumbled out into the river outside. Before I surfaced however, the water was full of dust and bubbles. To the ordinary pony it would be confusing, however, one of the first things they show new marine recruits is why we are given side arms specifically meant for under water action, that reason being that bullets disintegrate shortly after impact on the water’s surface. I drew my side arm and got ready to give the first rebel to come in to look for us a belly full of flechettes. However, the bullets stopped impacting on the surface and when I looked up for a reason why I found myself looking as a mass of flame that had formed.

Fortunately that cleared pretty quickly, and I took the opportunity to get air. I surfaced, followed by the rest of my friends, and gasped for breath. “The fuck was that?” Swordfish asked in horror.

Contingency looked around, “Apparently the temple had a dragon for security.”

Signal Fire was quick to ask the million-ration question, “What’s a dragon?”

Contingency face hoofed then explained, “Well, they’re generally bullet proof, they can fly, they breath fire, they have claws like swords, and they have mouths large enough to eat a pony like a bikkie. I couldn’t see how big it was in the cave, but I think we ought to head back to port where the harbor defenses should be able to handle it.” Well, I wasn’t quite sure what a ‘bikkie’ was, but it got the message across. “Since it breathes fire, I say we take the river back to port.” It was a logical choice and we nodded in agreement.

About 15 minute later of swimming in terrified silence, it had become apparent that we weren’t going to make it back. Again and again the shadow swooped over us each time a little lower, each time it did so we dove under to provide cover from any fire. Eventually the gold and red-scaled creature got fed up and swooped down to directly block us. I noted that it seemed small compared to what Contingency had described, but the smoke that flared from it’s nostrils and it’s large scaly wings stopped me from considering it killable with what we had on hand, maybe if I had a spark pack, Contingency had her .75 rifle, Xager had his RPG, Swordfish had her anti-armour missile launcher, and Singnal had a weapon that’s actually useful we would, but certainly not with our current scraped together kit. “Is this how the god Rio dies? Is it? IS IT?!!!!!!!!!!” Signal shouted at the beast.

Oddly enough his question was answered. A thunderous smashing noise echoed through the forest, and, battering trees aside like they were toothpicks, in stormed the giant Rad Lion from the beach. “BWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” it roared aggressively and body slammed the dragon with as much force as it could muster. After jumping on it repeatedly the two hulking beasts both went for each other’s throats. A dragon might have been an apex predator back before the bombs, but 200 years of radiation had kicked the old balance of power aside.

The dragon’s fangs failed to penetrate the Rad Lion’s thick blubber, and with a resounding tear, the beast tore the dragon’s head off then looked at Signal Fire expectantly. “Uh… Good boy.” Signal stammered out.

“Fuck!” Swordfish exclaimed from behind and hopped out of the water. “There’s eels in the river…” She said when she noticed the looks we were giving her.

We road back into town on the back of the Rad Lion. Signal Fire was standing on it’s head, with the baby Rad Lion on his back. Needless to say as a result of Signal Fire shouting “I am a god!”, Contingency making us stop to unload and sell treasure, or Swordfish trying to fly straight over head, the townsfolk gave us many a curious look.

When we finally arrived back at the Salvation it was apparent that the repairs were done. We all hopped down off the Rad Lion and Signal Fire dragged over the dragon’s head. “Aw yeah! Look who killed a dragon!” Signal Fire gloated to the ponies washing the deck of the Salvation.

“Congrats on killing an adolescent. Do you want a medal, because during the war I killed 5 and didn’t get any form of acknowledgement.” Brawny said as he walked up along side Shanty.

“We were about ta go looking for ya, we just received news of a possible Enclave presence in Alpacadonia, so we’re going to have to cut shore leave short.” Shanty explained.

Immediately all eyes went to the Alpacadonian deserter among us. Contingency smiled a bit, “Ok, could be nice to see the GAFA again, as long as we don’t stop at the HMNS Boomer.”

“Unfortunately that’s exactly where we’re going.” Brawny stated dryly.

Contingency calmly pulled a paper bag out of a waterproof pouch, then began hyperventilating into it. After a few second she stopped long enough to ask a single question, “Swordfish? What type of alcohol would you recommend for afeeling of impending doom?”

“You’re… like… better to… to… um, what’s that word that means to not stop doing something… oh yeah, keep breathing into that paper bag. The last thing… you want… is to show up… to the ship you call home… too sloshed to make proper word sequences.” Swordfish slowly explained.

“Um Swordfish, the Salvation is yer home, and yall are kinda drunk.” Shanty said, pointing out the hypocrisy of Swordfish’s advice.

Contingency returned to her paper bag, Swordfish fell asleep on the dock, and once again, I got that feeling that we were a shipwreck waiting to happen sailing toward something that was out of our league.

Chapter 5: Rising Action

Forenote: you might want this:

http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html

Chapter 5: Rising Action

-The following events take place three days after the events of ch. 4-

I lay on my back in the galley, Contingency lay on top of me, and despite the late hour wasn’t asleep. “So tomorrow we drop by HMNS Boomer…” I started.

Contingency gulped and cringed at the thought, “Yeah, have fun with that, I’ll be hiding below deck.”

“Come on, don’t be that way. We need a local to show us around.” I stated, “A local who we can be sure isn’t working for the Enclave.” I added to cut off any counter suggestion she may have.

“Hey! The ponies of Alpacadonia are good ponies!” she stated. “Even if the Enclave managed to convince some of the hire ups to work with them, dad wouldn’t let that go on.” She added. Really now, she has a dad? Well I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, just because both Swordfish and myself had been orphans didn’t mean all Marines were, although it wasn’t exactly uncommon. Mulling this new information over a bit I decided that this might be good leverage.

“So, you have a dad? I used to have a dad.” I said. “I don’t remember much of him, and what can I say, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.”

Contingency looked taken aback by this, “Are you trying to guilt me into coming along just to see my dad.” She questioned. Hit the nail on the head there.

“If I received news that my Dad was alive and well back on the Patriotic Fire I would hijack a RHIB and make my way across this bloody ocean just to run into his embrace.” My words seemed to hit her like a hammer, so I continued, “You know, you’re one of the lucky ones, I knew a lot of ponies back on the Patriotic Fire who were orphans. Parents were marines, had kids, were killed in the field, kids grew up to become marines, had kids, died in the field, rinse and repeat. It’s a vicious cycle you know.” She was actually trembling, “If I were you I’d like to see my dad at least once more before he kicks the can.” She got up and made here way to the corner of the room, where she proceeded to curl up and make sniffling noises for the rest of the night.

I woke up the next morning and felt pretty awful, I had made one of my friends cry. I ignored my grumbling stomach and decided to look around for her. She had left her corner, and the galley for that matter. I stepped out side into the morning sun and began a quick look around the ship. It wasn’t hard to find her, right at the bow. I hesitated before approaching, when we first met she bested myself, Xager, and Brawny in CQC, so I wasn’t liking the idea of getting to close while she was mad. “I know you’re there.” She said and I decided to suck it up and approach her.

“Um… about last night-” Thankfully she interrupted me before I had to continue my awkward apology.

“No, don’t bother, you where right. I miss my dad. I miss my sister. I miss the Boomer. I miss the openness of Alpacadonia.” She motioned to the open expance of ocean surrounding us, “You can go for days with out seeing any sign of life, 5 tiny islands are the only land in the entire segment. Great Alpacadonian Fuck All. Perfect place for a carrier group.” She said and moved from her spot. “Ok, let’s get something to eat.” She said and as she lead the way back to the galley I noticed a faint jingling noise coming from her.

Out of curiosity and concern I asked, “Uh Contingency? Do you need maintenance or something?” The last thing we needed was her literally exploding.

“Nah I’m fine. It’s just my dog tags.” She chuckled and trotted on ahead.

I gave a little frown, dog tags typically don’t sound like that, but then again, Contingency was a treasure hunter, so she probably just added some souvenirs. I trotted into the galley after her; I got myself some breakfast, then found a seat at my squad’s bench and enjoyed the taste of my coconut water. It wasn’t long before my squad started showing up.

“Sup.” I greeted Signal Fire as he trotted up.

“Nien! Ze god Rio shall only be addressed by his true name!” he replied, then noticing me cringe he took his seat, “Let me guess, the god accent was too thick.”

I facehoofed, “I don’t think gods are supposed to have any one specific accent.” I replied.

“Ah yes, if I just be myself I shall be able to convert the ponies of Alpacadonia to Rioism.” He said out loud, in a way that made me inclined to believe that he was seriously considering it.

“Eh, religion isn’t really their bowl of rice, if you catch my drift.” Contingency piped up. “For the most part all Alpacadonians do is try to not get eaten alive by the bities.”

“Please tell me there aren’t that many bugs here.” Contingency said as she trotted in, there was an unusually well rested air about her.

“Yeah, there’s so little land out here that migrating swarms stop on out flat tops for a rest.” Contingency replied. “Sometimes there would be enough to put the carriers out of bizzo until an extermination team can get rid of them.” Swordfish groaned at this news.

“Hey Sword you look well rested, sleep well?” I asked.

“Rip, Contingency, the thing I have with Shanty has so far been pretty sexless, and since you two form the most awkward sexless relationship I know of. So tell me how you guys get by.” Swordfish answered.

“Ugh…”

“Relationship?”

“No no no we don’t.”

“Yeah nothing going on. At least I don’t think…”

“Really she’s more like an electric blanket if anything.”

“Ow, that’s rather harsh on my self esteem.”

“Wow you two are the biggest virgin’s I’ve ever met.” Swordfish remarked, and cracked open her canteen.

“Wait, you’re a virgin too?” both Contingency and myself exclaimed at each other.

“What sickie has kept you back?” Contingency inquired with a smile.

Feeling rather uncomfortable a sputtered out the truth, “No reason, I just never did it… So what’s your reason.”

She blushed herself, “Well, I never got around to it before, then the operation happened, and now my… region leads right into my engine block.” She paused a bit, then noticed how we failed to grasp the implications, “You know how an electric pencil sharpener works?”

“AH! FUCK!” Signal Fire exclaimed.

“Damn. That’s actually... horrifying…” I trailed off.

“Not hot.” Signal said and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

Xager crept in and after a quick look about the room made his way over to Signal Fire, “The package has been delivered.” He said cryptically.

“Good, good, wunderbar.” Signal Fire chuckled to himself and grinned slyly. It wasn’t long before he noticed the rest of us giving them odd looks. “Matters pertaining to the Rioistic church, gods and bishops only.” he replied defensively and gave Xager a pat on the back.

Before I could even cock an eyebrow at this development the loud speaker crackled to life. “Sea Lion Squad to the bridge, for briefing about today’s op.” Shanty’s static infused voice ordered, and we go up from our table.

Once in Shanty’s office we gathered around a crate, “This here’s our cover for today. Ya’ll are going to be sent in pretending to be an MCIS team, looking into reports of stolen ordinance.” She explained and bucked open the crate to reveal a plethora of MCIS equipment ranging from badges, to over coats, to their signature PDWs and breaching kits. “Just before we crossed into Alpacadonia I had the maintenance team put some stickers on the ship to make it look like an MCIS ship rather than our normal unmarked vessel.

MCIS, or Maritime Criminal Investigative Service, was a cross segment intelligence agency used by the Compact Agreement to settle incidents that were too delicate to make a marine task force viable. So in theory going in undercover as them was the perfect plan, if there’s Enclave we don’t outright tip them off that we’re on to them, if there’s not then there won’t be any hurt feelings between Alpacadonia and Thermodon… Wow I just realized that this makes me a spook… fuck.

“So that’s that?” Contingency asked and nervously inched towards the door out.

“No, I’ve yet to remind y’all of the stakes.” Shanty stated then cleared her throat, “Our ‘genius’ leaders over at Thermodon would like to remind us that Alpacadonia is very important. In the Alpacadonia and it’s neighboring Xer and Albatross segments, who the Alpacadonia a very close to, there are 3 carriers, 3 guided missile cruisers, and 3 amphibious assault ships. AKA a fuck up will turn the war in the Enclave’s favour.”

“Why is there such a big military build up here?” Swordfish asked in confusion. I had to agree, this many high value vessels with full compliments just sitting around here, when Xooland was getting by on tramp freighters, Central Umbria had a ship of the line as it’s flagship, and Abundance had a beached troopship? It was odd to say the least.

“Well no pony minus Thermodon really knows, but it’s always been my theory that they are supposed to act as a wall between the Compact Agreement and the Equestria mainland. You know, in case all that stuff about the mainland being uninhabited isn’t true.” Shanty answered and gave a shiver at the thought.

Before long I found myself waiting to climb down into our awaiting… not a RHIB, awaiting us was actually the attack boat Viking. Well that’s interesting. Contingency trotted up, still making that jingling noise. I noticed that she was wearing her helmet and gasmask; the rest of us had been carrying our headgear with us the way MCIS marines do. “Uh, what’s with the helmet?” I asked.

“Yeah, you know MCIS thugs only ware helmets during combat.” Swordfish added.

Contingency rocked back on her hooves, “Well I wanted to see the bastards back home home again, I don’t particularly want them to see me.” she replied, and I noticed that her gas mask effectively muffled her voice beyond easy recognition.

“Pathetic.” Brawny remarked. “I’m starting to think that you deserted out of fear rather than any need for adventure, and the only thing worse than a zebra is a coward.” Of course Brawny would say something like that.

Without any further words we climbed down into the Viking. Once inside the small craft I was delighted to find that it was dry, no ocean spray meant no radiation. Being inside an armored attack boat certainly made me feel safer, but I still felt that the PDW I was carrying with me was pretty subpar compared to my LMG. I peered through the fogged forward window of the craft and noticed the behemoth ship slowly appear through the morning fog. The radio slowly chattered to life, “Unknown vessel please identify.” The ship hailed.

Brawny took the radio and replied, “HMNS Boomer, this is MCIS investigation team Sea Lion, we are here to investigate reports of missing ordinance.

“Oh, well then, proceed to ladder five, and G’day mate, welcome to the GAFA.” The addressor replied.

“Roger, roger.” Brawny replied.

It wasn’t much longer until we were passing under the hulking ship’s shadow. HMNS Boomer made HMNS Patriotic Fire seem reasonably sized in comparison. Signal Fire brought the Viking to the ladder. After climbing out of the cabin of the Viking I finally got a good look at the ship. The ship wasn’t painted; instead the entire hull was coated in coloured variants of the same Ceramics in our combat armour. This not only boosted the shock and heat resistance of the outer hull, but also made the ship extremely rust resistant. I waited for Brawny, Swordfish, and Signal Fire to climb up the ladder, and then climbed up myself followed by Xager and Contingency. The ladder brought us to a fire escape-like balcony roughly four stories above where the Viking was being towed away to storage. The balcony was clearly some sort of processing area to prevent unwelcome guests or contraband from making its way onto the ship. Running the station where two marines… or at least what I assume to be marines, Their helmets didn’t look like the typical marine combat kit.

“Ok, so you’re the MCIS guy here to find out about those stolen bombs? Well that all checks out, mind if I inquire about the identity of the pony in black?” The yellow-coated earth pony male with sun glasses asked.

Brawny sighed then answered, “she is an ex-local we took on to act as a general guide around the ship.” Brawny stated. “Her identity is to remain anonymous.” He added.

“Ok then, I‘ll just let you in then…” the stallion said and unlocked the hatch in.

As we made our way towards the door, the other guard, a lime green coated unicorn mare, tackled Contingency to the floor and ripped off her gas mask. “Contingency you fucking bitch!” The mare growled. The rest of us quickly took aim with our PDWs, and Brawny pinned the first guard against the hull of the ship to keep him from assisting his partner.

“Uh… hi Inconvenience… long time no see…” Contingency said, barely above a whisper- wait what kind of bitch names their child Inconvenience?!

Not entirely unsure of what was going on I used my emotion reading spell, From the mare I could feel… rage, hatred, confusion, but at the same time above all else happiness and relief. Now I was confused!

“I- I’ve missed you.” Inconvenience sobbed out.

“Oh hey Contingency!” The other guard called over from where he was pinned against the wall.

“G’day Sea Weed, haven’t seen you in a while.” Contingency replied. Then she addressed us, “Guys, these are my friends Sea Weed and Inconvenience, we went through basic training together, and served together in a fire team. Speaking of which where is Clear Skies?”

“Uh… well… dead.” Sea Weed stated as bluntly as possible.

“His last words were “Contingency where the fuck is our sniper support?!”” Inconvenience elaborated.

I noticed Contingency’s face contort into a look of horror, but thankfully Brawny decided to advance the mission, “How about you guys let us in now, and I don’t unload this gun’s fifty rounds of armour piercing ammo into you two.”

Sea Weed grimaced and replied, “Uh, the door is already unlocked…”

As we made our way in to the halls of the ship I noticed Contingency momentarily hag back having a seemingly friendly chat with Inconvenience before she trotted up to guide us along.

Contingency guided us through the ship, pointing out various features as she went, “the fire extinguishing systems on board the Boomer are probably the best in the fleet, there are convex mirrors at every corner to let ponies know ahead of time to get out of the way, cameras at the mid point of every hallway for added security, the bulkheads are all bullet proof, the ship is powered by a pair of A1B mega spell reactors, the aviation facilities maintain roughly 75 aircraft of different roles and weight classes, and the ship also functions as the barracks for Alpacadonian basic training.” Contingency explained. I had to admit, it was impressive. “I only wish that the designers didn’t incorporate genderless washrooms that didn’t have stall doors.” Contingency added with a slight gag. As we continued on Contingency brought us up a flight of stairs to the flight deck, “Ok, if you want to get a meeting with the admiral or any other higher up then you should head over to the bridge she said and pointed to the forward super structure. Contingency surprising then walk off. “I’ll be out here when you’re done.”

Just before we entered Brawny passed me something, a black box with a button labeled “copy” and a USB cord.

Once I side we were greeted with a very official looking desk and eight guards all wearing that helmet. The mare at the desk looked us over then addressed us, “G’day, welcome to the office of High Admiral Aero, do you have an appointment?”

Brawny responded, “We’re MCIS, we don’t need an appointment.” This blunt statement seemed to gain the ire of every pony in the room, I choose this disturbance as the time to hook the USB cord into the computer and activate the copy function.

“The Admiral is busy at the moment I suggest you try later in the Arvo.” The secretary replied coldly, and a number of guards shouldered their rifles. I felt the machine vibrate signaling that the transfer was complete and pulled the cord.

“Fine.” Brawny responded and turned towards the door.

“And just remember,” Swordfish said after lunging over to the desk, “I’ll be back!” She stated, with the fakest Thermodonian accent I’ve ever heard. I quickly dragged her away before the secretary could get a whiff of her breath.

Back outside I took my first really in depth look at the flight deck, it seemed to be in active at the moment, with engineers working on a few aircraft, and what appeared to be a cadet class doing some sort of marksmanship test with a buoy as a target. I also notice a lack of Contingency, her silver mane and black uniform typically stood out like a sore thumb against naval personal.

I trotted around looking for her, and then stopped when I heard that jingling noise coming from under the interceptor nearest me. I looked under it and found Contingency curled up watching the cadet class. “Uh Contingency?” I asked

I must have startled her because she jumped a bit and hit her head as a result. “Ow… Yeah what do you want? I’m watching the cadet instructor.” She replied.

“What, you like, hot for teacher or something?” I asked.

In response, she bucked me. “No! He’s my dad!”

Every eye on the deck was on us, and I noticed that the instructor was making his way towards our interceptor.

“Well looks like you’re getting that reunion now rather than later.” I said and backed out from under the plane.

Contingency seemed to hesitate a bit then gulped and stepped out, nervously looking the tall stern looking, blue stripped stallion in the eye. “Uh… hey dad… I’m home…”

The stallion stared at her, “Contingency, it’s been 4 years, 4 years. Now you just show up, in a defaced uniform, your mane, mane dyed, and tail between your legs.” Contingency’s legs seemed to be on the verge of giving out. “I’m… glad you’re back.” He said and embraced her in a hug. “Finally, the daughter I’m not ashamed of is back.”

Contingency pushed away at that remark, “Speaking of her, how is Flux?” I took a wild guess and assumed that this Flux character was Contingency’s sister.

“Flux is Flux, funny how despite her name she never seems to change much.” He stated. “So, I was about to have this bunch of Cadets demonstrate their marksman skills to me, but I remember you being a decent sniper, so why not you show them how it’s done?” Her dad suggested.

Contingency contemplated it for a moment, “If I manage to break the window on my first try I get to use the rifle, you know which one I’m talking about.” Contingency asked.

Her dad groaned, “Contingency I swear you have a fetish for large caliber rifles.” I had no idea what they were exactly talking about, but I decided that it would be amusing, and followed.

Contingency telekinetically grabbed a battle rifle from one of the Cadets, lay prone on the deck and peered through the gun’s iron sights, bobbing along a few hundred meters from the Boomer, a fishing skiff had been set up to act as a target. The small window meant to shelter the operator from ocean spray appeared to be a decent challenge, but then again, I wasn’t a sniper. I watched her shift about, then hold her breath, for a while she seemed to be motionless while the boat bobbed up and down. Then there was a crack, and the shot only grazed the window.

“I’ll call that close enough,” Her dad said, “come back in the arvo if you want to use that rifle, I rather give my new recruits a chance at the target before you send it to the bottom of the ocean.”

Contingency trotted over to me, “Well ok, where do you want to start your search?” Contingency asked.

I pulled out the radio, “Where are you guys searching?”

“I’m searching the galley for Enclave alcohol.” Swordfish responded.

“I’m checking fuel records, if the enclave stopped here, a few thousand misappropriated magical gem cells would be a pretty obvious sign.” Signal Fire stated.

“I’m asking the crew.” Xager said.

“Xager, don’t do that, you’ll give us away, just go with Signal Fire. I’m going to use the MCIS right of requisition, and look at some files.” Brawny stated.

“I’ll check the armoury.” I said.

“Armouries.” Contingency corrected me. “We have two standard armories, one for flight equipment, and the grand magazine, so that’s four armouries.”

I scribbled that down in a little checklist. “So what will you be doing?” I asked.

“Well, I’m going to check with some of the ponies I used to know, and see if anything strange has happened as of late.” She said.

Before trotting off I had two more questions I wanted to ask. “Hey contingency, what’s your dad’s name?” I would feel silly if I had to greet him with ‘Hello Contingency’s dad’. “Also, why is he striped like a zebra?”

“His name is Bottler, and he has stripes because his mom was a zebra.” She replied. “Well go on digger boy, go check that armoury.” I was about to ask what ‘digger boy’ meant, but she trotted off before I could.

I found a way bellow deck, and was delighted to find that the hallways had a nice system of colour coded arrows directing ponies around the ship. I found the one for the forward armoury, burgundy, and trotted along in the directions it lead me. A few hallways and a stairwell later, and I was out side a room titled ‘forward armoury’.

I walked in, since when has MCIS ever knocked, and made my way to master-at-arms. “Hey, I’m with MCIS, I’m here to check the armoury, and storage records to see if anything other than the heavy ordinance has gone missing.” I said, hoping it sounded passably official. I showed my identification and badge to provide substance to my claim.

The master-at-arms looked at my badge, gulped then nodded, “Sure, sir.”

I grinned inwardly, so his is how Signal Fire felt with that fake ID of his.

He went over to his desk to retrieve the manifest of weapons here, and I took a quick look around. One of the first things I checked out was the helmets that they were using. The helmets were distinctly different from standard Equestrian/Zebra design, and seemed to have been made with intimidation in mind. The next things I checked were their energy weapons. Yes they had some. Although I doubted that they were Enclave weapons, due to the layers of dust and cobwebs plaguing them.

I trotted over to the desk and received the manifest from the master-at-arms, and cross-referenced a few things. I went over the list, checking the various gun cabinets as I went. Everything seemed to be fairly normal, the only major event that happened in the last year was the swap to the new helmet four months back.

After a good hour looking over the place, I headed to the second armoury. Once again I ended up following a coloured line, lime green. The path to the rear armoury was pretty much straight. Once there I found a room that was almost identical to the one I had just left. The master-at-arms at this one was actively inspecting the weapons this time. I cleared my throat to gain their attention.

“Oh, G’day!” the mare greeted me. “My counter part radioed me an notified me that you would probably drop by. The manifest is there on the desk.” That was bad news, the mare may have had time to hide something. I smiled, took the manifest and gave this armoury and extra long in-depth inspection.

I noticed a lever-action rifle hung up on the wall like a trophy, and figuring that it’d be the mostly spot for a lever to activate a trap door. I reached out with my telekinesis to give it a test, and the world fell away…

oooOOOooo

I was in a somewhat familiar body, unicorn male, then again I have only ever been a unicorn male. I observed my surroundings; I was in a ship cabin of some kind, with that rifle, a faint churning noise, and some lavender unicorn mare. “Thanks Twilly, I’m sure it’s a great invention.” That voice… Shining Armour. I knew this body was familiar.

“Well, Applejack designed the mechanisms, who knew she knew about mechanics, and I came up with the chemical composition of the powder, I theory it will produce considerably less smoke.” The mare elaborated, Applejack… That name sounded familiar, I’m pretty sure I heard it in one of Contingency’s history rants I half sleep through.

“So, Twilight, how is the royalty doing without me around?” Shining armour asked.

The mare giggled a little, “Brother, they are the princesses, they can handle themselves. Luna has personally taken charge of palace security.” So, Twilight and Shining were brothers. Good to know my family wasn’t the only one using naming conventions.

My host lead his sister out of the cabin, and out on to some sort of deck. The ship we were on looked like a crossbreed of an old second rate, an early iron clad, and a paddle steamer. My host turned to face her, I know Celestia will want a report, so you can tell her that our fleet has unrivalled control over the waters leading up to Thermodon thanks to these ships the Japonies made us. That and the destruction of the Zebra flagship, now that gave a massive morale blow to the Zebras.” He said, and made a sweeping gesture showing a good 15 other such ships. He then dropped the rifle when his sister hugged him unexpectedly.

oooOOOooo

I returned to my inspection, rather unamused by the memory.

My inspection must have gone on quite a while, because midway through checking underneath a cabinet, I had to stop when a Cadet class marched in and began returning their battle rifles to their gun lockers.

I got to my hooves, and turned my attention to the class leader, Captain Bottler. I felt the need to show Contingency that memory… rifle, and I was still interested in seeing that ‘one rifle’, to get an accurate judgment of the ship’s armament of course. So I approached him. “Ahem, Captain Bottler, I have a few questions for you.” I said as formally as I could.

The older stallion looked at me, clearly seeing me as a spook, then nervously replied, “Uh huh, sure, if it’s ok with you mate, can we have this chat in the hall, I need to drop by my cabin to pick something up.” I nodded to him, and on our way out I noted worried whispers among the cadets.

“So the first question I will ask will be about your daughter.” I said once we were out in the hall.

“Holy dooley! Did flux try to fornicate with one of you’re ponies.”

I was a little taken aback, but quickly clarified, “Uh, no. I would like to know about Contingency, particularly how trustworthy you feel she is.” I trusted Contingency, I just wanted to be sure that trust wasn’t misplaced. She was a deserter after all. To get a better read on him I activated my emotion-sensing spell.

“Oh, well, I’ve always considered her trustworthy, she tends to get rather flustered when she lies, so she typically doesn’t.” He replied. “Mind if I ask why you’re wondering about my daughter?”

“I’m asking the questions.” I replied. “Next question, you train future marines, so tell me what anti-Enclave tactics you have added to your curriculum?”

He seemed surprised by this question “Well Alpacadonia feels that the Enclave is a non-issue, I mean they are a single regiment, and they’re ponies so they can probably be negotiated with.” I sensed that something was off, before I could consider the implications, he asked a question I had to answer, “What does that have to do with the stolen ordinance?”

I had to answer this one, else I’d blow the entire mission. “Thermodon wants to be sure that all segments will be ready for deployment in the event of an escalation in the conflict. From what you’ve told me, Alpacadonia will receive a sub-par review, and a recommendation to be held in reserve for the initial few months of combat for retraining.”

“They’re really that bad?” He asked.

“Oh, they’re worse.” The mind control… Virus? Bacteria? Fungi? Protist? Whatever it was, wasn’t public yet. “Next question, have you noticed any of the Cadets acting strange? Cadets are prime pirate plants, could any of them have potentially been involved in the ordinance theft?”

He seemed to think for a moment, then replied a flat, honest, “No.” By this point we were making our way around the crew rooms. From a room on our left, came an erratic thumping noise. Bottler gave an exaspirated groan, then approached and knocked on the door. “Flux, you don’t have the hat on the door knob, therefore you aren’t doing anything private. So you and your friend cover up and-” The rest of his loud exasperated train of thought was cut of by a loud gunshot.

“What the fuck?!” I questioned in alarm, the next thing I knew Bottler had stolen my side arm and was stacked against the door.

“We breach on 3!” He shouted and I readied my PDW, and stacked up beside him. He counted, and on 3 the door was kicked of its hinges, I guess with the entire funding going towards keeping the planes airworthy the hinges had been allowed to rust.

Inside we got a look at the cause of this issue, Contingency and another mare, locked in some sort of CQC were at the center of the room, both exerting their telekinesis on a revolver, Contingency trying to keep the barrel out of her face and the other mare trying to aim it at her. Bottler and I quickly rushed forth and separated the two before this could go any farther.

After pulled the mares apart, pinning them against opposing walls and knocking the gun out of their telekinesis, Bottler had some choice words. “What the fuck?! Are you trying to kill each other?!”

“Yes.” The other mare replied.

“Uh… she started it.” Contingency said.

I took a look around the small space that was their cabin, there was blood, dents in the metal walls, and a bullet hole in the upper back corner of a wall. “Why?!” Bottler screamed.

“When you’re a marine you have duties, and oaths, Contingency abandoned those. She abandoned the Boomer, she abandoned her friends, and she abandoned us, her family. So yeah I decided that I want to kill her.” Flux replied.

“Uh dad… you just broke the door.” Contingency said, apparently just now taking in her surroundings.

“Flux that’s wrong.” Bottler said, ignoring Contingency.

“Strong feelings call for strong actions. Besides, by Agreement Law, Contingency should be executed.” Flux responded.

Bottler didn’t seem to know how to respond to that, “Well that’s-”

So I helped him out. “That’s where I come in.” I said and pulled out my MCIS badge.

Then again mentioning the Contingency was working with MCIS probably was about the worst thing I could do, and Bottler had to physically restrain her as she tried lunging across the small room. “Contingency! You fucking cunty, bitchy, sellout!”

Flux continued yelling, but by this point Contingency was screaming back, “Slutty, faggy, fucking cum dumpster!” I had to restrain her as she made an aggressive step away from her wall.

They continued screaming at each other and Bottler made a head gesture urging me to get Contingency out of there. I dragged her, kicking and screaming, out of the room, and down the hall for quite a while before she simply collapsed against a wall.

“Uh… Are you alright?” She had a black eye, a limp, a cut on her forehead, a fat lip, and numerous bruises, not the mention the probable emotional trauma. So I’m not sure why I even bothered with that question.

“My sister, who I grew up with, and always loved, whose affection I probably missed the most, just tried to kill me, and has openly admitted to outright hating me.” Yeah I shouldn’t have asked. “No, I’m not ok. I’m not sure why I’d be ok. I don’t think I have much reason to be ok.” I really shouldn’t have asked that. “You’re a real piece of whacker, you know that. You guilt me into coming along, and then just expect everything to be OK. I am not OK, I don’t think I will be OK for a while.” She was crying now. “If you need me I’ll be in the facilities. You’d better not need me.” She sobbed/seethed. Then got up, and limped off on her own.

Well, that stung. I found a sign, and followed the designated line, blue, to the magazine. I honestly didn’t think much of the walk there, after seeing Contingency like that, I preferred not to think. So I followed the blue line, and occasionally moved aside to let others by. A few turns and a flight of stairs latter, I was at the magazine.

The magazine, or as the sign called in, the ‘Grande Magazine’ as I gazed around the massive ordinance storage facility, I was shocked at the shear size and scale of it, it was not just the largest weapons depot I had ever seen, but the largest enclosed space I had ever seen. And the entire thing was racks of missiles, torpedoes, and more conventional bombs, as well as numerous crates of 20mm and 30mm high velocity armour piercing incendiary (HVAPI) rounds, and a few oddities.

I walked around until I found the supposed site of the ordinance theft. As I approached the location, which had been sectioned of with yellow tape, I showed my badge to the pair of marines guarding it. I surveyed the scene, took some photos with the camera I had been equipped with, carefully moved some things, took some ‘evidence’, mumbled calculations vaguely under my breath, then left.

I then made my way to the flight gear storage area, the last ‘armoury’. I found a sign, and then followed the designated line, red, to my destination. My destination was another large storage area (abet not as large as the last). I noticed that there were four guards around the storage room. I approached the master-at-arms and acquired a manifest. I trotted around and checked to see if anything was out of order. I noticed a lot of pressurized flight suits, used for pilots and high altitude combatants, what appeared to be those battles saddles Brawny mentioned once, some miniguns, and air-to-air missile launchers. Since this was an aircraft carrier, this room probably formed the backbone of much of the ships operational capacity. Nothing seemed out of order until I came across a locked door. “Hey, would you mind unlocking this room for inspection?” I asked the master-at-arms.

“Uhh… Buckley’s chance of that happening.” He responded. So I instead simply used my PDW’s 900 RPM and fifty round mag of 5.72x28mm AP ammo as a saw to separate the door from the bolt. I turned my back to the door, and shifted my aim between the marines who had taken positions around me. “Do you really want to do this?” I questioned, and noticed their guns trembling. “What, you’re ready to guard but not ready to protect?” I pressed. Clearly, regardless of the room’s contents, these marines didn’t like the idea of killing another soldier of the Compact Agreement. I silence the marines lowered their rifles, and carefully backed back to their positions.

I entered the room, and didn’t like what I saw. In the dim room, the light occasionally released by a spark from an old magical energy generator, revealed the angular metal of the single most damning piece of evidence in history. There before my eyes was the Enclave’s signature black power armour. I grabbed the helmet of one and brought it into the light, I noticed a crest on it, not a naval crest or even the skyguard crest, it instead bore the distinct likeness of the symbols I had seen adorning Enclave Power Armour, and their cloud ships.

“Took you long enough mate.” A deep voice cooed from somewhere in the room.

I immediately went for my gun and returned my attention to the room. “I’m sorry, who are you?” I asked, and heard the slight movement of hooves from the other side of the armour rack.

“A friend, that’s all you need to know.” The figure who I could occasionally catch a glimpse of through small spaces between the armored suits.

“Now why should I trust you?” I said, and quickly ran a calculation on whether or not the AP rounds of my SMG would be able to penetrate through the armour, the rack, the armour on the other side, and what ever this other guy was wearing.

I heard more movement, “I haven’t shot you yet.” The voice cooed, come around the rack and see what I could have dropped into your chest.”

I care fully made my way down to the end of the row, and turned to look down the next. There roughly across from where I had previously been, lay a rifle, a literal monster rifle.

When I got a closer look, I discovered to my extreme displeasure, that the weapon which had been aimed at me was some sort of anti-armour rifle chambered in 20mm, semi-auto, with a bullpup configuration. I mentally made a note that this must be ‘that rifle’. I gulped and turned to face the next row of racks. “Ok, fair enough. What do you want? Friend?”

“You’re not going to like what comes next. Just quickly take that helmet you took to you team and be ready, not even I know exactly what happens next.” He replied, and then with the sound of hoof steps he was gone.

I turned my attention to the helmet, and then turned on my radio. “Uh guys, we need to meet.” I spoke into it.

“Where?” Brawny’s raspy voice questioned over the radio.

“There are cameras everywhere.” Signal Fire responded.

“Genderless washroom, living quarters. There are no cameras in the washrooms” Contingency’s voice replied over the radio.

“Wait, you didn’t get a radio!” Brawny snapped at her.

“Oh sorry, you want to talk to Swordfish, here she is-” Contingency replied, and the sound of heavy breathing and vomiting came through the channel.

“Ok, we’ll meet you there.” I said and made my way out.

As I made my way to the meeting spot I noted that the atmosphere was considerably different. Where previously the ponies had been lazing around, they were now in full kit, giving paranoid looks at each other. None of them stopped me, yet I was getting a feeling that if a feather dropped the entire place would explode. The air was charged with such suspicion that I began to slow my pace. I noticed a few ponies setting up a metal barricade and sand bag guard post, complete with a mounted HMG, and I passed by as quickly as possible.

As I made my way down the last hallway to the meeting place, I noticed a pony armed with a collapsible anti-tank rocket launcher, and ran.

I reached the washroom, and inside my companions greeted me. Brawny, Xager, and Signal Fire seemed ok but anxious to hear my news, Swordfish was standing but still looking a little green around the gills, and Contingency although she appeared mostly fine (probably the result of an extra strength healing potion), she held her injured leg, and her eyes where bloodshot (likely from crying).

“Ok, now what is it?” Brawny asked impatiently.

I simply set the helmet out before and stated where I got it. “Aerial Combat Gear storage, there where entire racks of them.” The room was silent for a while, until Swordfish made a dash for a stall and returned to emptying herself into the toilet, and Contingency who seemed to start hyperventilating. “So, any ideas?” I inquired.

“We should run.” Xager suggested.

“Sink it.” Brawny said.

“Take hostages, all is fare in a war fought in the name of Rio.” Signal Fire stated, earning him a slap to the back of the head from Brawny.

“Why?” was all Contingency managed as she continued to look at the helmet in horror.

“I have no clue.” I said. We knew this was a possible discover, it was our mission to discover this after all. However we hadn’t come up with an actual plan for ‘if compromised and the ship has defected’. Then I had an idea, “Well we might as well just march onto the bridge, radio for help, and hold it as long as possible.” I said. I noted their skeptical expressions and added, “Well does anyone have a better idea?”

“I like it.” Swordfish stated as she walked out of the stall.

“You’re a drunk, a suicidal drunk.” Brawny replied.

“Fuck you I’m tough enough! You’re just scared! I would have thought someone as old as you would want to die by now.” Swordfish retorted.

Brawny paused before answering, “I still have stuff to do in this life, but you know what fine, seeing you die would make my day.”

“Ok… Let’s just get this over with.” Contingency moped then began limping into the hall. We followed her.

We hadn’t made it far down the hall when the unexpected happened. “Hey Contingency!” Flux, in full kit, called after us. “Dad’s doing something stupid, come on we gotta talk him out of it.”

“So you aren’t trying to kill me?” Contingency asked skeptically.

“If I was to try again, do you think I would do so, with your MCIS friends around?”

“Ok, fine where is he?” Contingency asked.

“The flight deck laying siege to the bridge.” Flux replied.

“Copy-cat…” I muttered under my breath.

“Well then, it would seem that we are going there anyways.” Brawny replied, and we continued on.

As we continued on I decided to ask Contingency a question, “Why do you guys have a 20mm rifle?”

Both her and her sister replied, “because ’Donia Cunt!” then returned to giving each other suspicious glances. I don’t get Alpacadonians…

On our way back we passed by the sandbag barricade again, the HMG had been stolen, and there were two dead ponies on the floor, stabbed from the looks of it. Our Kevlar could stop a bullet with ease, and out ceramic plates were highly effective against energy weapons, however a well angles knife could jab through our armour with ease.

As we continued we came across a few more bodies, the mutiny had already started, or was already being crushed.

Upon reaching the flight deck we entered what appeared to be a stand off. Bottler, his cadet class, and a sizeable contingent of marines and other officers had taken up positions around the bridge, and had barricaded the runway.

“Dad! What are you doing?” Contingency asked as she ran up to her father.

“I’m stopping this, I did my research, I know exactly what’s going on.” He answered, not taking his eyes off the towering bridge. “Oh, and incase this is the last time we see each other, have this.” He said and passed her a book in a plastic bag.

There was a commotion, and a pony emerged on to the bridge balcony. His uniform denoted him as… a grand admiral… “Bottler, what is the meaning of this?” He demanded.

“Aero, you know as well as I what this is about!” Bottler yelled up. “You have been compromised, and I hereby relieve you of duty!” Wait, did Bottler somehow find out about the mind control?

“Oh really? Well then… let the hammer fall.” In an instant latter, and the ship’s point defence weapons were trained and firing, the windows of the bridge were broken and assault rifles poured bullets out at us, finally a crack of thunder from an overhead storm cloud turned out to be some sort of plasma artillery shot as a raptor descended from the clouds.

I made a dash to cover, and fired my PDW up at the bridge. The constant stream of 30mm rounds from the point defence weapons only stopped when Brawny managed to toss a grenade through a smashed window.

With that down I returned to firing at what ever fired at me. From to looks of things Aero had gotten some marines loyal to him up on deck for clean up.

I quickly glanced around, most of Bottler’s supporters had been killed, things were pretty bad.

Mid way through reloading my gun, I heard a prominent crack from nearby. I didn’t think much off it until I noticed that all the shooting had stopped. I turned to face where the noise had come from. There, Flux stood over her father’s body, smoke still escaping the barrel of the revolver held in her telekinesis, her father’s brains spattered over her. Contingency dashed over and hugged her dad, tears pouring down her face. My ears were ringing too much for me to hear what they said to each other, but their mouths moved, then they began slugging it out for the second time that day.

Signal Fire, who was in cover next to me spoke extra loud for me to hear, “This would be pretty hot if it wasn’t so fucked up.” I gave him a disappointed look, then he gave a slight gin raised his forelimbs and screamed “RIO WILLS IT!” and then that baby Rad Lion plopped on the deck before us.

Followed shortly by that giant Rad Lion. "BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" it bellowed as it attacked the bridge, causing the fighting to resume.

The battle continued for… I don’t know how long, but somewhere in there, the bridge got pushed into the sea, the Cadets managed a successful bayonet charge on an MG position, one of our guys got a PONPAD (PONy Portable Air Deffence) working, and fired a few rockets at the Raptor and it’s support craft, and The Salvation successfully sank a frigate that moved into assist the Boomer.

I turned to Contingency to see how her ongoing fight was going, just in time to see flux drive a knife down into her, and not penetrate. Contingency smirked and delivered a roundhouse buck to Flux’s chest. As they squared off once more a plasma shot from the raptor crashed into the center of our defensive formation. The next shot removed the Rad Lion’s head. The bombardment increases in intensity and scale, and we were forced to fall back, I scooped up the baby Rad Lion, as it franticly prodded it’s father’s corpse with it’s nose, and made sad noises. “Looks like you’re like me now.” I said as I ran with it to keep up with my team.

All across the ship ponies on both sides were driven from the deck by the massive onslaught. As we ran for a way to escape the bombardment, Inconvenience and Sea Weed waved us over to where they were crouched. We ran over, and Inconvenience fired a grenade to the under barrel grenade launcher on her assault rifle into a panel on the ground, and with a tremendous grinding noise, the entire section of deck we were on the fell. Judging on how we ended up in the hanger, I guess that we had been standing on the aircraft elevator.

The room we were in now was massive, multiple openings, and a battle going on here to. I was out of ammo.

“Ok, what is going on?” Swordfish panted.

Sea Weed was the first to reply, “Well… We… like… what’s that word… you know like-”

“Your dad held a meeting with those he thought he could trust, and we organized the coup, well obviously that failed. So now we’re doing this our way, going to go get your boat, and get out of here.” She answered and motioned for us to follow. The two of them led us through many winding corridors, having to stop often as fighting blocked our path, and having to fight through Aero’s ponies on occasion.

By the time we reached the boat, in some sort of smaller vessel storage facility, the ship was creaking. Signal Fire and Sea Weed went to wok getting it ready to go.

“So what’s the plan? We can’t leave the ship in enemy possession.” Brawny inquired.

“Well you know that stolen ordinance…” Inconvenience said, and tossed Brawny a detonator. “We found it a couple days back, but we didn’t trust the Enclave so we kept it.” She said.

“You knew about the Enclave ahead of time?” Brawny asked.

“Yeah, they stopped for a refuel here six months ago, when we got word about Windway there was a referendum held on declaring independence, apparently Thermodon’s aristocracy has annoyed enough ponies to make succession popular.” Inconvenience replied.

“Ok, done, let’s go!” Signal Fire shouted from the wheel.

We jumped aboard and motored out of there. “Ok, let’s just wait to se if any pony else on our side makes it out.” Inconvenience insisted. So Brawny went ahead and hit the detonator. “You ass-”

The explosion that followed threw me to the floor. I glanced back to see the ship, flames pouring out of every part of it, buckle and break apart.

As we made our way around the sinking hulk to where Salvation was, it seemed that we were trudging through hades. Flaming wreckage fell from the black smokes sky, the occasional oil slick allowed the water itself to burn, the occasional explosion from the wreck, and the screams of the survivors carried on the wind. Overhead the Raptor broke off and few away.

By this point Contingency had reverted to little more than a twitching mass, babbling, and crying on the floor, the emotional stress must have finally broken her.

Thunder cracked, for real this time, and a steady downpour began.

When we reached the Salvation, Mooncalf used the crane to get us up and dropped us on deck. I gave the whimpering Rad Lion to Signal Fire, and then helped Contingency get to our usual sleeping spot in the galley, and lay her down to rest up.

I took her machete and gun away incase she got any of those thoughts, as I did so she managed one coherent sentence, “I loved her, why would she do it?”. I then returned out side to where Shanty was meeting with the rest of us.

“Well good news, bad news, and really bad news, what first?” Shanty asked us.

“Bad news.” Brawny replied flatly.

“Well first off the Xer and Albatross segments have joined Alpacadonia in defecting. Worse, is that some flaming wreckage made its way down our smoke stack, I was able to cut the fuel supply before we exploded, but we are now with out power. Finally, in the good news, Abundance, Nova Oxum, and Galvinhoof are mounting a mission to get us out of here.” The news was grim to say the least.

“Galvinhoof would be helpful if it wasn’t so far away, and really what are Nova Oxum and Abundance going to do, play floor hockey with them? Be poor at them?” Brawny replied. It was true, Abundance and Nova Oxum were rather outclassed against the power of Alpacadonia, Xer, and Albatross, although if they could get here in a timely manner, Galvinhoof would be terrific.

“Yeah that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Shanty replied. “Now get inside, the fumes smell pretty foul.”

That’s that. There we were, adrift in the sea, waiting for rescue.

Act 1 Marker

Musical theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST2H8FWDvEA

Act 1:

Control

Synonoms for control:

authority

curb

discipline

domination

force

government

jurisdiction

management

oversight

regulation

restraint

restriction

rule

supervision

ascendancy

bridle

charge

check

clout

containment

determination

direction

dominion

guidance

juice

limitation

manipulation

might

predomination

qualification

regimentation

ropes

strings

subjection

subordination

superintendence

supremacy

sway

weight

driver's seat

inside track

upper hand

wire pulling

Control, is there any better way to rule, to obtain power, to win?

During the war both sides fought over control of vital resources. To do this both sides tried to control vast amounts of power, however any progress made toward the more exotic powers they sought to control was soon lost forever when the bombs fell.

Now for the first time in two centuries a Raptor has flown over the waters of the Zebratic Ocean. Is the Enclave trying to gain control over the secrets long lost? If so to what end? Control over a resource? Control over territory? Control over weapons? Control over information? Control over beings? Or is the object of their desire for control something else entirely?