Same Shit, Different Wasteland

More Than a Horn

Thomas reached under his helmet and scratched his head. “Well…”

“Shit,” Moonbeam agreed.

Grim Star had said that the raiders had set up in a train yard. To Thomas, that meant dirty old diesel engines, freight cars and rails criss-crossing the ground. The train he could see, though, was an old steam train, a giant boiler on wheels. He’d never seen anything like that before.

The pair had expected the area to be relatively clear, a few train cars here and there that could be used as cover. They had expected the raiders to be rather disorganised, walking in small groups that could be picked off without any trouble. Unfortunately, the reality did not match the expectations.

Train cars to have been pushed around to form walls, small guard towers had been made from scrap so the inhabitants could see outside, and patrols were walking on top of the walls. In the distance, at the back of the compound, the pair could make out the shape of a building, easily three stories high.

“They want us to clear this out?” Moonbeam asked, keeping her voice down. Even though they were pretty much out of view, she wanted to be careful.

“This won’t be easy,” Thomas said.

The mare shot a glare at him. “Really? You’re just gonna point out the obvious?”

The man kept silent. As he watched, a deep, long toooooooooot! suddenly pierced the air. Thomas and Moonbeam quickly ducked out of sight, thinking they had been caught. A few seconds later, after a lack of stamping hooves and screams of ponies out for their blood, they poked their heads out warily.

Two small groups of raiders were walking towards each other on of the overturned cars, nodding and talking. One of them took something off from around their neck and passed it to a member of the second, then disappeared down a ramp out of sight. “They’re changing the patrol…” Moonbeam muttered, wide-eyed in shock.

“This isn’t right,” Thomas muttered. “Raiders aren’t this organised, this… civil with each other. Someone’s controlling them. Someone smart. Someone strong.”

“You’re right,” Moonbeam whispered. “We can’t do this. Not just us.”

“I’ve fought worse,” he commented calmly. “And I bet the only thing keeping this group from tearing itself apart is their leader. Cut off the head, the body dies.” Thomas carefully pulled his Medicine Stick from its sling and readied it. “So…”

“So we sneak into their base, find their leader and kill him or her, who is definitely strong, smart and most likely scary enough to keep a hundred raiders in check?” Moonbeam asked flatly. “Any other plan besides ‘get killed horribly’, Thomas?”

“Gimme a minute,” he said, looking around. “I’ll think of something.”

“This is your plan!?” Moonbeam hissed angrily.

“Shut up,” Thomas hissed back, leaning against the car. He turned and began creeping towards the nearest opening, which was at least five ponies wide, Moonbeam just behind him. On either side was a small guard tower, a unicorn armed with a rifle in each. Despite how well set-out the defenses were, they had made the mistake of having ledges that extended out that left blind spots directly underneath the towers, leaving them practically invisible.

“Now what?”

“I’m gonna need to borrow your gun,” Thomas whispered back. “It’s not as loud as mine, won’t get as much attention.” Moonbeam silently passed the gun over while Thomas reached into his duster. He hastily wrapped a cloth around the receiver and as much of the barrel as he could before tying a crude knot, hoping that this would work.

“What are you doing?” Moonbeam hissed curiously.

“Something that might not work,” he replied casually. “Can you give me a boost?”

The sensation of being levitated was not a particularly pleasant one. While before Moonbeam had simply grabbed his foot or torso and pulled it up, this was more like swimming. He did his best, though, and managed to grab onto the underside of the ledge, grabbing the gun in his teeth.

“You hear that?” a pony asked, the voice almost directly above him.

“Hear what?” his compatriot asked, the tone of her voice making it clear that she was annoyed. “Leave me alone, I’m trying to sleep.”

“You know the boss is gonna yell at you, right?”

“But he doesn’t shoot us anymore. Now shut up and don’t wake me up until something actually happens.”

As the pair talked above him, Thomas was carefully making his way into position. There was enough space between the tower he was hanging on to and the train car next to it that he could use the gap as a way to climb up. He did as carefully as he could, making a little noise that was masked by the squeaking of the rusted metal caused by the pony’s steps.

He pulled himself up, grunting as he did so, and found himself staring right at a rather unwelcome sight. Fortunately, the stallion was facing away from him, looking over the side for the noise from before. Thomas carefully brought up Moonbeam’s SMG, very nearly touching the stallion with the barrel. He let out a five-round burst, the rag he had wrapped around the gun managing to at least muffle the sound.

As the stallion fell, Thomas hastily pulled himself up and caught him, managing to stop him from making too loud a noise when he landed. Unfortunately, in his rush he missed the rifle, and his shin-guards slammed into the metal, each making a loud clang, making him wince.

“Huh? Whuh?” The mare in the other tower was jerked from her half-sleep by the sounds. She uneasily got to her hooves and looked over to the other tower. All she saw was something with red eyes pointing a gun at her. In the moment it took for her to say “Oh shi - ” the gun had fired.

“Coast is clear,” he called out, passing the gun back to Moonbeam as she stepped quietly into the compound, looking around nervously.

“This feels really unsafe,” she muttered, untying the rag and sticking it into her armour.

“What did you expect?” Thomas asked, taking his rifle from its sling. “Now come on, we should get out of sight.”

Those words had barely left his mouth when a whistling sounded, catching the pair off-guard. The cry of “Intruders!” that followed only cemented the idea that things were only going to get worse.

Thomas saw who was responsible, a trio of ponies dressed as raiders on top of one of the cars. With eerie speed and precision, the Medicine Stick was fired three times, each shot finding its mark. “We gotta move.”

“Ya think!?” Moonbeam asked sarcastically.

“They’re over there!” came another cry.

“Come on!” Thomas yelled, sprinting away from the thundering of the oncoming stampede. Moonbeam followed beside him easily.

“We gonna keep running?” she asked, pointing the SMG behind her and blind-firing.

“For now, yes!”

“Why did I agree to this!?”

“Hell if I know!” Thomas yelled back, doing his best to ignore the bullets whizzing past him.

“You fuckwits, don’t let them get away!”

“Circle around, cut them off!”

Moonbeam let out a low whining noise, which Thomas ignored. As carefully as he could while sprinting for his life, he shoved his rifle back into its sling and yanked out his SMG. “Just hold on. We’ll lose them.”

“You’re crazy!”

“You’re dead!” The screaming was getting uncomfortably close, but Thomas ignored it, instead reaching inside his duster again. Digging through it a few days ago had revealed a number of things he didn’t remember packing. He guessed that they’d gotten lost or had been forgotten at one point or another. It suited him fine, almost everything he did find had a use. “Moonbeam, whatever you do, don’t turn around.”

The mare glanced at him just in time to see him throw something over his shoulder. Taking heed of his words, she kept her focus ahead, fighting her curiosity. When a flash like the world being set on fire came from behind her, along with the pained screams of almost every single raider, she was glad she had listened.

“Where the fuck did they go!?”

“No idea, sir.”

“That’s not good enough! Tear this place apart if you have to, just find them! You fuckers better not interrupt me unless you’re bringing me their heads! You clear?”

Thomas and Moonbeam looked at each other. In the dark it was impossible to make out features, but they didn’t need to. The sensation of mutual relief was something they could almost physically touch.

“That… was too close,” Moonbeam whispered, waiting until she was sure they wouldn’t be heard.

“Yeah,” Thomas replied distractedly. During their mad dash to safety, which had eventually led them to an old shipping container near the center of the train yard, he had been looking around to get an idea of the place. What he saw only confirmed his suspicions: the place was too well-organised to be a basic raider compound. He had seen weapons stockpiles, an old train carriage converted to be some sort of sleeping quarters, and even what looked like grindstones. This wasn’t a raider compound. It was a military base.

“Okay, we’re still gonna stick to the plan,” he said. “For the most part. We need to cripple them, I bet Grim Star won’t be happy with us if we let a pack of well-armed raiders get away.”

Moonbeam nodded uneasily. “Do you have any more explosives?”

“Wish I did, but I’m gonna have to improvise.” Thomas sat there in silence for a few moments, thinking about what he could do. “The weapons stockpiles. There’s bound to be some explosives in there. We could use those, set them off near the ammunition.”

“Yeah, and kill ourselves in the process,” the mare said. “Unless you know how to rig a timer or something.”

“I was able to fix your gun with parts from three different guns, two of which are completely different calibres,” he boasted. “A time bomb shouldn’t be that hard. Just need to find a timer first.”

“We could destroy their food,” Moonbeam suggested.

“No, it’d be easy enough for them to resupply. Ideally, though, we wanna hit both. With no food and nothing to fight with, they’ll turn on each other.”

“And if we take out their boss, there won’t be anyone to stop it,” Moonbeam added, starting to smile.

“Exactly,” Thomas replied. “Our first target should be their ammo. It’ll make it easier for us in the long run, and the panic will give us a lot of cover to move with.”

“Might even get some ammo for this,” the unicorn added, gesturing at her still-unused battle-saddle.

“Okay then. We’ll wait until night.”

“What? Why?”

“Give them a few hours, and they’ll think we got away. They’ll probably send a few parties out to find us. That, and it’s a lot easier to sneak around when most of them are asleep.”

“Do you really think we can stay hidden for that long?”

“That’s why Plan B is to murder anyone who gets too close and hope they don’t come looking.”

Moonbeam stared for a moment. “That is the worst back-up plan I have ever heard.”

“I never said it was genius, either, but it’s all I’ve got.” Thomas stretched his legs out in front of him and sighed, looking at his Pip-Boy. “I’ll set the alarm for… eight hours sound right?”

“What are we gonna do for eight hours?” Thomas shrugged. “Great. Eight hours in a fucking container inside a fucking raider base.”

“I’ll tell you a few things I’ve been through, that’ll help pass the time.”

“That… sounds a lot like Canterlot.”

Thomas blinked. And then he blinked again. “You’re shitting me.”

“No, really. I don’t know why I didn’t realise it before. Canterlot is, well, was the capital, it got hit by some super-deadly megaspell. The Pink Cloud created Canterlot Ghouls. They… sound a lot like those ‘Ghost People’.”

Thomas blinked again.”Of course, something happened to the radios there, too.”

“Apparently, the speakers got corrupted by whatever fucked up magic is responsible for the Cloud, because it makes any non-Canterlot Ghoul’s brain leak out of their nose or something.” Moonbeam shrugged. “I don’t believe that, though. I don’t think the zebras were that fucking insane.”

Thomas just sat there, stunned. “Okay. Don’t go near Canterlot. Ever. Thanks for that. I just got over those nightmares about the Madre.”

“You brought it up, not my fault we have something similar,” Moonbeam shrugged.

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“A few ponies get really brave every so often, make a trek in. Most don’t make it out.”

“I can imagine…” Thomas muttered darkly. “Most who went into the Madre fell victim to their own greed, turning on their own friends at the idea of becoming rich enough to buy half the NCR.”

“You mentioned them before, this ‘NCR’. What are they?”

“Good people, good intentions, enough bureaucratic bullshit to make you want to eat a grenade. No idea if the government was like that before the war. Wouldn’t surprise me.” Thomas looked at his Pip-Boy. “Okay, seven and a half hours. That’s enough waiting.” He turned to Moonbeam. “Ready?”

“Not yet,” she said, getting up and stretching.

As she did that, Thomas carefully opened the door to the shipping container, ignoring the squeaking the hinges made. “Finally!” He hadn’t expected a pony dressed as a raider to be standing there waiting for him, though. “Were you trying to bore me to death!?” the mare asked loudly, brandishing a pistol with her magic. “All you did was talk, talk, talk!”

Thomas stared for a moment before grabbing her by the throat and pulling her into the container. He slammed the mare into the floor, causing her head to clang loudly against the metal. As she lay there, dazed, he leaned in, putting his nose barely an inch from hers’. “If you had paid any attention to a single word I’d said, then you would’ve pulled the trigger the moment the door opened,” he growled. Before she could respond, he drew back his right fist and slammed it into her throat.

Moonbeam gaped when his fist seemed to erupt, distorting the air around it. What was more alarming was what happened to the mare, her neck vanishing along with most of her head and barrel in a shower of gore. “Holy shit!”

“We need to move,” Thomas said calmly, ignoring the blood dripping from his helmet. “She was probably meant to tell someone or get reinforcements.”

“How did you do that? Some kind of power hoof?”

“Displacer glove,” he replied, pointing to the contraption on his right arm. “It… displaces things. Violently. And I stopped using power fists ages ago. Not enough kick.”

That statement caused her to worry. Although she hadn’t seen what a power hoof could do with her own eyes, the books in the Library had been detailed enough for her to get a very good idea. Shattered bones, internal bleeding, and severe trauma were all expected results. What she had just seen surpassed that in every imaginable way.

“You coming or not?” Thomas asked, poking his head out. “It’s dark, you’re gonna want to stay close.”

The pair crept off into the night, the only light sources fires lit in barrels scattered around the area. Thomas did his best to not look directly at them, knowing they would mess with his vision. Moonbeam didn’t know about that, though, and their progress was delayed several times when she nearly walked into things.

“You notice anything odd?” Thomas hissed, watching as a patrol in the distance disappeared from sight.

“Like what?”

“I dunno. Just… feels like there’s a lot more unicorns around here than earth ponies.” Thomas motioned with his hand before leading the way to the next bit of cover.

“And?” Moonbeam asked back. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It just doesn’t seem right…”

“You’re being paranoid. So there’s more unicorns than other ponies, big deal.” The pair stopped again.

“I bet there will be some ammo in there,” Thomas hissed, pointing at a shack made of scrap metal. It was quite large, easily twenty feet on each side. Instead of a door was an archway, a pair of guards standing at attention. He looked warily at the unicorns. “We need to find another way in.”

“Are you sure there’s more than one stockpile?” Moonbeam asked. “There’s gotta be a lot in there, right?”

“Trust me, that’s not even half. Not even a quarter.” Under his mask, Thomas smiled. “But it’s a start.”

“How are we even gonna get in?”

Thomas thought about what answer to give to Moonbeam, a few different scenarios playing through his mind. Ideally, he’d shoot both the guards. However, he didn’t have any silent weapons. Alternatively, he could sneak up and kill them with his bare hands, but to do that he would want to take them from behind. A full-frontal assault was just asking for the rest of the base to murder him, so that would have to be a last resort.

As he stood there, thinking about his course of action, another group approached the pair on guard duty. He watched curiously as they talked before walking away, the guards following. “What the…?”

“That’s convenient,” Moonbeam commented.

“Too convenient,” Thomas growled. “It’s a trap, I guarantee it. There’ll be tripwires or mines or pressure plates or something.” He looked around. “There’ll be another way in.”

“Shouldn’t we at least try going through there?” Moonbeam asked, pointing a hoof towards the gap.

“Even if it’s not trapped, it’s out in the open. Any idiot will see us.” The man silently weighed his options. “But the longer we take, the better their chances of catching us… Fine. We go in through the front.”

Moonbeam kept an eye out for any movement as Thomas made a dash to the building. When nopony came out yelling their desire to string him up appeared, she followed, doing her best to make as little noise as possible. Unfortunately, hooves are not ideal for stealth, a matter that was not helped when she tripped up on a rail. Catching herself before she hit the ground, she stumbled into the ammo shack. “Smooth,” Thomas commented.

“Fuck off. Shouldn’t we… be… Woah.” Her anger disappeared as she looked around. Shelves upon shelves filled the space, each one with an old, military-green ammo box adorning it. Where there weren’t ammo boxes there were instead weapons, mainly pistols and bolt-action rifles. Strangely enough, Thomas was sure he could see a familiar, grey boxy shape among the wood finishings.

“Check all the boxes,” Thomas ordered. “Grab any ammo you might need, and tell me when you find some explosives.”

Moonbeam pulled down a box and opened it, eyes going wide when she saw the contents. Reaching inside her barding, she pulled out her saddle-bag straps and began to loosen them.

It took Thomas fifteen boxes to find what he was looking for, but he was very glad and worried when he did. “Where the hell did they get this?”

“What is it?” Moonbeam asked casually, grunting as he adjusted something.

The man pulled out a gun-shaped device and a handful of what looked like balls of clay. “Enough remote explosives to level this whole compound,” he stated, waving the detonator around. “At least now we can - What the fuck, Moonbeam?” he asked, cutting himself off as he caught sight of what the mare had been up to.

“What?” she asked defensively.

“Really?”

“Hey, you said to grab whatever ammo I needed,” she said.

“I didn’t mean that you should grab a pair of ammo boxes and strap them to your ass,” he said flatly.

Moonbeam ignored his unamused stare. “Hey, I don’t want you blowing up four hundred rounds of three-oh-eight I could be using instead,” she stated, glancing back at the ammo boxes that had replaced her saddle-bags. “Saves us buying them later, right?”

Thomas blinked. “Okay, I’ll give you that. You sure you can carry that?”

Moonbeam just stared at him. “Really? You’re asking me if I can carry… what, twenty pounds of ammo?”

“That’s a lot of bullets and you know it,” the man argued. “Still, if you think you can manage, I won’t say anything.

“Yes I can manage,” the mare replied, giving the man a condescending look. “Weren’t you going to rig this place to explode?”

Wordlessly Thomas tossed a handful of the explosive towards her. “Put that somewhere it’ll cause the most damage. If we can collapse the building, that’ll delay them even further.”

Moonbeam looked around for a moment. She grabbed a few more boxes of ammo and emptied their contents over the explosives. “Now if anyone gets too close - ”

“It’ll tear’em apart. Good thinking.” Thomas finished placing some at the base of one of the supports, making sure it couldn’t be seen too easily. “Let’s move. We have a few more stockpiles to hit.”

“What did I tell you?” The pair turned around slowly, seeing a pair of unicorns pointing rifles at them. “All we had to do was walk away for five minutes.”

“If you surrender, we’ll make your deaths quick,” the other raider said.

“Why should we believe you?” Thomas asked.

“Why shouldn’t you? You’re at our mercy.”

“Shame we don’t have any,” the other raider laughed.

“Funny thing about that,” Thomas said calmly. “Neither do I.” Before any of the ponies could react, he pounced at them, tackling one into the dirt. He gripped the pony’s head and began to slam it into the ground repeatedly, not letting something as mundane as pained screams stop him.

As Thomas grappled with a unicorn, the other opened fire, taking advantage of the fact that the human was on top of his opponent. However he only managed to get a few shots off before a set of much louder gunshots ripped through the night.

The man turned, prepared to retaliate to being shot in the back. Instead, he found his target slumped over on the ground, large holes having appeared in the stallion. He turned to Moonbeam, her battle-saddle’s barrels smoking slightly. “Wow this thing is powerful,” she commented. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I should be,” Thomas said, wincing as he stood up. “I think a few shots got through. Don’t worry about it,” he ordered, waving the mare away. “We need to get away. There is no way in hell they didn’t hear what just happened.”

“Right,” Moonbeam answered, looking around. “I have an idea.”

Thomas watched as the mare dragged the two corpses into the shack, positioning one so that it hid the ammo-covered explosives. “Thinking like a raider, huh?” he asked distastefully.

“Just be ready to pull the trigger on that thing,” she said, glancing at the detonator.

“First, let’s get some distance. I don’t want to be too close to this thing when it goes up.”

The pair quickly retreated, returning to the train car they had used as cover before. “You might wanna cover your ears,” the man suggested.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Moonbeam asked.

“Trust me, I’ve had worse. Thanks, by the way.”

“Huh?”

“For the save. I would’ve been able to finish them both off myself, but I wouldn’t be in any condition to fight afterwards,” he explained. “Here they come,” he whispered.

“That’s a lot,” Moonbeam muttered, watching as close to twenty raiders made their way to the scene of their fight, the light of their horns letting her count them. They began to talk loudly when they came across the bodies, half of them heading inside the shack while the rest milled around outside, trying to find any evidence of where the attackers had gone.

“You like fireworks?” Thomas asked as he gripped the detonator. Without waiting for a response, he pulled the trigger, cheering as the shack went up with enough force to send those outside it flying.

Those that were inside were simply vaporised in the blast, giving them a mercifully quick death. The ones outside weren’t as lucky, though. The blast set off whatever ammo wasn’t destroyed, sending enough shrapnel and bullets flying to cut through the unarmoured ponies like paper.

“One down… a few more to go,” Thomas said calmly.

“There goes the element of surprise…” Moonbeam muttered.

“We’ll manage. Get ready to shoot anything that moves.”

Author's Note

Did anyone really think I'd make this a cake-walk for the pair?