Same Shit, Different Wasteland

Bots and Bytes

“Threat assessment. Primary target at large and undamaged. Security lockdown in effect.”

Thomas waited as the robot rolled past their hiding place, the squeaking of its wheels fading as it disappeared deeper into the warehouse. “Well,” he whispered, “this is bad.”

“That’s the fifth time you’ve said that,” Moonbeam replied, keeping her voice low. “What are we gonna do?”

“The next one that comes this way, I’ll use one of the grenades.” Thomas peeked over the crate and looked around. He couldn’t see any of the four-wheeled, heavily-armed monstrosities, to his relief.

“What if that doesn’t work?” Moonbeam asked worriedly.

“Well… We can always try shooting. Aim for the head, maybe we can knock out its vision. Failing that, we drop something on it.” The mare stared at him. “Hey, I don’t care how tough it is, I really doubt it can survive a few hundred pounds of crap falling onto it.”

“But if we want to do that, we have to climb up,” Moonbeam pointed out. “And if we do that, they’ll see us.”

“Shh,” he said. “There’s another one coming.”

The pair fell silent as another of the wheeled robots squeaked its way towards them. “Scanning,” it said, its voice a dull mechanical monotone.

Thomas took his chance and lobbed one of the pulse grenades over the crate. It went off with familiar shockwave of crackling electrical energy, but it made his fingers and toes tingle as the energy washed over him.

“Intruder detect-ect-ect-ect-ect-ected,” the robot sputtered, turning at a snail’s pace to face the direction the projectile had come from. The second grenade bounced off its armoured shell and went off, making the robot fizzle as its spell matrix fell apart.

“Well, the grenades work, so that’s something,” Thomas muttered, surveying the unmoving robot.

“Yeah, but it took two,” Moonbeam noted. “How many are there?”

“Disturbance detected,” they heard another of the robots say, the squealing of its rusted wheels heralding its approach.

“We’re about to find out.

“Disturbance detected.”

“Disturbance detected.”

“Disturbance detected.”

“Disturbance detected.”

“Disturbance detected.”

Moonbeam stared at Thomas, who had gone slackjawed under his mask. “Fuck.”

“Okay,” Thomas muttered as more robots made it known that they had detected a disturbance, “don’t panic, we can do this. We can do this.”

“Are you saying that to me or you?” Moonbeam asked dryly. “No wonder those Rangers got killed,” she mumbled.

“We need them to cluster together,” Thomas muttered. “We do that, we take out as many as we can at the same time.”

“And how are we gonna do that?” Moonbeam hissed. Thomas just turned to face her. “No. Whatever it is, I’m not doing it!” she growled.

“Did you think I was gonna send you out as bait?” Thomas asked.

The mare blinked. “Maybe?” she asked back nervously.

“Have a little faith,” he replied, sounding a little hurt. “No, I just need you to get their attention.”

“I can do that.” Moonbeam unholstered her SMG and fired a five-round burst at the ceiling.

“Not what I had in mind, but…” Thomas took a deep breath as the squeaking got closer, each robot screaming “Hostile detected!” in their tinny voices.

“This is gonna suck, isn’t it?” Moonbeam asked, lowering her gun as she looked around.

“Just keep your head down,” Thomas hissed.

“This is now a live-fire zone. Non-hostiles are advised to leave the area,” one of the robots warned.

“Moonbeam, take these,” Thomas handed the mare a pair of pulse grenades, “and get ready to use them.”

“What do you want me to do!?”

“Do I really need to explain this?” he asked. “You throw it and kill the robots.”

“But what if I miss!?”

“We’re gonna be up to my eyes in robots, there’s no way you can miss. Here they come,” he warned.

Moonbeam tensed as the first robot rolled to a stop in front of their crate. “Scanning for hostiles, it said. It was soon joined by at least a dozen more, each one loudly announcing their intent. Silently whispering a prayer to Celestia, Luna and whoever else was watching, she lobbed one of her grenades at the robots, sighing in relief as it clanged against their outer shells.

“Warning!” they screamed, their tinny voices crackling as they attempted to find the thing that had hit them.

Thomas had prepared his grenade when the first went off. He paused, waiting to see if a single pulse would have the same effect on that many. “Hostile detected!” the robots declared, the sounds of their missile launchers slotting rockets into place and miniguns spinning up.

Before the man could do anything, they opened fire. To his confusion, though, absolutely no bullets or explosives came in their direction. Even more confusing was that it sounded like the robots were under attack. Cautiously, he looked over the top of the crate.

He ducked back down again when one of the four-wheeled death machines blew another up, sending scraps of metal and bullets flying. “What’s going on?” Moonbeam asked.

“I think the pulse fried their combat inhibitors,” Thomas guessed. “Now they’re killing each other.”

“Wait, really?” Moonbeam peeked over the box, ducking back down a moment later, yelping “Aigh!” as she threw herself to the ground. A wheel passed through the space her head had just occupied. “Okay,” she muttered breathlessly, “that was scary.”

“Well, we can just wait,” the man said, leaning against the crate. “Pick off the survivors, then dig around.”

“Do you really think we’ll find what you’re looking for?”

Thomas glanced at the mare. “Honestly? No, but that’s because experience has taught me that it’s always in the last place you look. And seeing that they gave me two other possibilities, one being Canterlot…”

“No,” Moonbeam said loudly. “No! I don’t care what you promise, I am not following you into that... that…”

“Calm down, Moonbeam,” he replied, chuckling a little. “I ain’t going anywhere near that place, you can trust me on that.”

“I hope so,” she muttered.

Thomas poked his head around the crate and saw that there was one robot left. Without thinking, he threw the grenade, watching as it bounced off its head and detonated, killing it. “Now that that’s taken care of,” he said, standing up and walking over to the wreckage, “we can continue scavenging.”

“About damn time,” Moonbeam muttered. She stopped walking when she saw just what they had been fighting. “Those… are Sentinels,” she stated calmly.

“Sentinels?” he asked. Now that he could get a better look at them when they weren’t trying to murder him, he saw that they strongly resembled sentry bots. The armaments seemed the same, a minigun complemented by a missile launcher. He was very glad that they had been able to take them out without getting into a fight.

From the glimpses he had caught before he knew that they were vaguely pony-shaped. Seeing that sentry bots were vaguely humanoid, it made sense that the Sentinel’s designers would follow the same thought processes. The weapons were mounted like a battle-saddle, the minigun on the left side. Their armour was impressive, smooth plates that covered every joint and made the Sentinel appear very unnatural and imposing.

“Yeah, guess it makes sense that they’d be here. They were designed to provide heavy protection for high value sites, like this,” Moonbeam explained. “The only thing worse than a Sentinel is an Ultra Sentinel.”

“What, a giant version?” Thomas asked jokingly.

“No, more like a death machine the size of small house,” she clarified. Hearing that reminded Thomas of the mess in the Big Empty’s Forbidden Zone. “Only read about those, but one was used to reclaim Stalliongrad after the zebras captured it.”

“Zebras?” Thomas asked.

“I never explained that?” Moonbeam asked back.

“You can tell me about it later,” he replied. “Right now, we need to find where they kept the inventory.”

“Yeah, last thing I want to do is spend the next week opening every crate to try and find that thing you’re after,” Moonbeam muttered. “The terminal with it should be at the back, if it’s still working.”

“The fact that the robots were is promising,” Thomas said positively.

“Won’t mean much if the power supply failed and we can’t put something together.”

Thomas grinned under his mask. “That a challenge?” he asked cockily.

“You wanna stick your hand in a spark generator and kill yourself, be my guest. Just try not to damage your gear too much, okay?” she asked. “I wanna be able to sell it afterwards.”

Thomas chuckled, knowing the mare didn’t really mean anything by it. “Come on, let’s find this terminal.”

The two set off towards the back of the building, hoping to come across an office or a workstation. The pair’s hopes weren’t that high, given the age of the building, and their expectations were matched when the office they found didn’t have any power.

“Well now what?” Thomas asked.

“A building like this, especially a government building, would have a backup generator somewhere,” Moonbeam said. “It’ll be close, too, I bet.”

As the mare looked around for the spark generator, Thomas turned up his Pip-Boy’s light and scanned the room. There wasn’t anything special about it, just a few desks, a number of dead terminals, clipboards and coffee mugs lying around where they had been abandoned.

The lights of the room suddenly turned on, accompanied by a strange chugging noise. “Good news, the spark generator is like new,” Moonbeam said happily. “We should be able to use the terminals now.”

“Great,” Thomas replied, turning his Pip-Boy’s screen back down. Moonbeam went over to one of the ancient computers and turned it on. As she waited, he realised something. “Wait, won’t that have a password?”

Moonbeam stared blankly as the terminal’s screen showed the message ‘Enter password’ blinking at her. “Fuck!” she yelled. “Now how are we gonna find anything!?”

“What, you never cracked the security on one of these things?” Thomas asked, gently pushing her aside. “Let me try.”

Moonbeam watched as the man hammered away at the keyboard. “What are you doing?”

“Huh,” Thomas mumbled, his face coloured green by the screen. “This is basically RobCo termlink protocol. Some of the names are different, but it’s pretty obvious.”

“What are you talking about?” Moonbeam asked, trying to get a look at what he was doing.

“Terminals like these have security backdoors for administrators to use if something happens. Pretty much the only way to do anything is by using them.”

“And how will that help?”

“I should be able to pull up a record of all the previous passwords. It won’t tell me what it is, but it’ll be easy enough to figure it out.” Thomas typed a few more times before leaning back. “Okay!” he said triumphantly. “We have a list. Now we just need to figure out which is the right one.”

“And how do we do that?” Moonbeam asked, genuinely intrigued.

“Luck,” the man said simply.

She blinked. “I’m sorry, but did you just say luck?” she asked. “We’re just gonna guess and hope for the best?”

“There’s usually a pattern to this kinda thing,” he admitted. “What were the MAS, exactly? Scientists?”

“Weapons development and magical research, why?”

“Anything to do with that is too obvious, so we ignore all of them.” He scanned the words. “So that’s at least half, I think.”

Moonbeam read down the list. “So, what, something more personal?”

“Pet names, names of their children, hobbies…”

“What about that one?” the mare asked, pointing at the screen.

“Really, ‘password’?” the man asked. “No-one’s that stupid.”

“Hey, you saw the robots,” Moonbeam pointed out. “Maybe whoever set the password didn’t really think it mattered much.”

“Guess it’s worth a shot… These things usually give you a few chances, too. All right then,” he decided.

They stared blankly at the screen as ‘password’ was accepted without a problem. “I stand corrected.”

“Yeah, there was somepony that stupid.” Moonbeam tapped a few keys and found a file named ‘inventory’. “Okay, let’s see if you can find what you came here for.”

Thomas opened the file and scrolled all the way to the bottom. “Hmm… You got any idea what day the bombs fell?”

“Nope.”

“Then this is practically useless.” Thomas went back and looked at the other options. “The shipment won’t have have a name we can recognise. Check the messages. Something as important as what I’m looking for will be mentioned there.”

“Can you tell me what you are looking for?” Moonbeam asked. “That way, I can help better.”

The man considered it for a moment. “All right, but only because you’d find out anyway. The folks fixing my way back home need a replacement shield talisman for Tenpony Tower,” he explained. “Finding it, or maybe just trying to find it, is payment.”

Moonbeam scanned the messages. “Okay, that’s… that’s pretty serious. No wonder they wanted to keep it quiet. Hey,” she said, turning to look at him, “you don’t think those raiders knew, do you?”

“I doubt it.” Thomas pointed at the screen. “Open that one, would you?”

Moonbeam did as he said. “Why do you doubt it?”

“They seemed organised, but not smart enough. I do think someone sent them, though.”

“What do you mean?” the mare asked, reading through the message to find anything useful.

“Steam Gauge didn’t seem like the brains. Smart enough, but someone must have told him to attack Tenpony.”

“Why attack Tenpony, though?” Moonbeam questioned, turning from the screen to look at him. “It’s one of the most heavily fortified settlements in the Wasteland, the only one that beats it is Friendship City.”

“No idea,” Thomas replied. “We’re missing something, that’s for sure. Some detail that’ll reveal everything.”

“How about we focus on this for now?” Moonbeam asked. “Then, you can go hunt down the truth or whatever.”

“Right.” Thomas turned back to the message. “Hmm. Unloading the ship was delayed by a week. So if it’s anywhere…”

“... Then we need to get on a ship that has spent the last two hundred years turning into a rusty sieve,” Moonbeam said, finishing his sentence flatly. “You can count me out.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound safe,” the man agreed. “Well, this was a waste of time. All we found were some strange rubber discs, robots and the stupidest password ever.”

“Wait,” Moonbeam said, holding a hoof up. “Keep reading this.”

Thomas leaned forwards and read further down. “Special gun… enchanted safe… combination… fifty-nine by twenty-eight by forty-two by ten. Moonbeam!” he said loudly. “Help me find that safe!”

The two scoured the room, moving desks and filing cabinets to locate the safe. After close to five minutes, Moonbeam found it. “Help me move this bookcase!” She and Thomas worked together to push the ancient thing out of the way.

“All right then,” Thomas said as he kneeled in front on the safe. “Just need to - YEEOW!” he exclaimed, withdrawing his hand.

“What happened?”

“It zapped me!” he replied angrily, resisting the urge to kick it. “The fucking thing zapped me!”

“Huh. Strange enchantment. Do you think it’ll react that way to my magic?” she asked, eyeing the safe warily.

“I hope not. If we leave empty-handed I’m going to kick a baby or something.”

“You don’t actually mean that, do you?” Moonbeam asked, staring at the man in shock.

“Not really.”

The mare rolled her eyes and manipulated the combination lock with her magic, carefully stopping the dial on the correct number exactly. With a creaking of ancient hinges, the safe opened, revealing its contents. “What is this?” she asked, pulling something out.

To Thomas, it bore some resemblance the riot shotguns the Gun Runners sold. A glance told him that it had a drum-shaped magazine instead of a feed. It was a lot sleeker, and much more compact. There was also a lot more metal and plastic involved in its construction. Along the top of the barrel was a rail, something which he recognised from a few rifles he had come across. But what really caught his attention was the large number of emerald gems embedded around the receiver.

“That is the flashiest thing I have ever seen,” Thomas commented. “That is worse than the Pimp-Boy.”

“I wonder what it does,” Moonbeam said quietly, inspecting the shotgun from every angle.

“You got any shotgun shells?” the man asked.

“I saw some inside the safe.” The mare’s horn glowed brighter for a moment. “Come on!”

“Uhh…”

“It’s caught on something!” The mare tugged for a few moments before whatever was causing her trouble came loose. “Woah!” she exclaimed as she nearly rolled over onto her head. Thomas caught the thing as it shot out.

“Careful, you nearly… broke the…” He stared at the thing in his hands. “Huh. So this is a Pip-Buck.” The device was very similar to the one on his arm, but there were definitely a few design differences. He stowed the small computer into his duster and turned to Moonbeam. “You okay?” he asked as she got back onto her hooves.

“Been better.” She shook her head a few times. “You wanna see what this thing does?” she asked, pointing at the shotgun.

“Go for it.”

Moonbeam loaded the weapon, the magazine taking ten shells. She pointed it at an innocent filing cabinet and pulled the trigger. The pair had expected the gunshot. What they hadn’t expected was the flash of emerald fire from the barrel, nor for a dozen or so holes to be melted through the weak metal.

Thomas inspected the holes, the edges glowing green. “It shot plasma.” He turned to Moonbeam who was gaping. “That shotgun shoots plasma,” he repeated in disbelief.

Author's Note

Why would the safe zap those who touch it? Anti-zebra precaution.
Originally, the shotgun was just gonna shoot fire. But I decided that was boring, especially for an MAS weapon.