Fallout Equestria: Rough Water

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

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“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.

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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.