Fallout Equestria: Undermountain #16

Prologue

I like to think I’m a smart pony.

After all, would a stupid pony be able to give the precise specifications of the Chrysalis PD-225 Skybus? Would a stupid pony be able to disassemble, diagnose, and reassemble a Stable-tec Model 37 Spark Generator entirely in her mind?

The answer is no.

But there are times, rare though they are, that I seriously question my intelligence.

Times like now.

The cart rocks harshly as one of the wheels hops over some rock or something. Seriously, they need to hurry up and give this cart suspension. Because my legs, currently curled up under me, are telling me that it’s something extremely important.

“Hey Ace,” calls Longview from atop the covered portion of the cart. “You mind not trying to throw me off the wagon?”

“You wanna git down here and pull this thing!?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then stop tellin’ me how teh do mah job!”

“Both of you, focus. We’re in dangerous territory here, so stay! Sharp!”

The firm voice of Platinum Blade silences them both, though I could swear I hear a little grumbling from Ace’s general direction.

I go back to ignoring them both and nervously fiddling with my Battlesaddle. Firing the kick-lever of the Jambuster to make sure the pistons are well-oiled. Checking the Auto-loader. Detaching and reattaching the single-shot shotgun that’s attached to the left side. Checking the sewing job attaching my saddlebag to the right side. Extending and retracting the trigger-bit. Nosing into my saddlebag to check my inventory. My maintenance kit, some spare parts, duct tape and wonderglue, food, drink, canteen full of pure water, healing potion, bandages, and my lighter and cigarettes. All still there.

It doesn’t matter that I already went through this checklist a dozen times. What matters is that it once again distracts me from the gnawing terror in my gut.

“Nervous?” comes the ragged-yet-attractive voice next to me. A quick glance shows Manner giving me a gentle smile from her position of being curled up against Haywire.

“I…um…” instead of answering, I just turn my gaze back to the battlesaddle before me, re-checking the Jambuster. Still works fine.

She laughs. “It’s okay to be nervous, Silver. You’re allowed.”

“I know. I just…I mean…”

“You wanna act tough for the bucks, so they don’t think you’re a total wuss?”

I blush nervously, her accuracy momentarily distracting me from mentally disassembling my weapon. Then, quietly, I mutter, “Am I that obvious…?”

“Yeah, you are.”

When I don’t say anything, she heads off the anxiety growing in my gut by saying, “Hon, you’re a wimp. No, I’m not just saying that.” How does she know what I’m about to say like that…? “I have literally watched you go into a panic attack over the fact that you get panic attacks. You’re a total wimp, and the sooner you accept that, the happier you’ll be.”

Forelegs wrap themselves around my barrel, and I’m about to bolt for my life until I realize it’s just Manner giving me a hug. “But just because you’re scared of everything doesn’t mean you aren’t useful. All the bucks and their big fancy guns? Who keeps those guns working? Straps on mods that make them so much better?” She gives me a little nuzzle. “Your cutie mark is gears for a reason, and that reason lets us all stay alive a little easier.”

I take a glance back toward my flanks, spying the image of a seven-gear array that adorns them. Yeah, it’s a cool cutie mark, and the special talent it represents has done me a world of good.

And yet, there’s no point to those gears. No purpose. Nothing to be driven. Nothing to drive them. Just gears that spin endlessly without rhyme or reason.

It’s a little more appropriate than I’d like to admit.

I turn away from it and offer her a fake little smile. I don’t know if she buys it or not, but she smiles back and returns to her husband’s side to curl up against him.

I go back to my battlesaddle, pulling a cigarette from the pack in my saddlebag. It takes a few tries to get it lit, but the tricky dance of coordination that is lighting a cigarette without magic has become almost second nature to me. And with one long pull, a couple seconds to let the smoke tingle in my lungs, and a long breath out, my nerves get a little less frayed. I’m not calm by any stretch of the imagination, but…less frantic.

Hang on…

Did I check the Auto-loader?

Oh, Goddesses strike me down if I left home without a working autoloader on my battlesaddle…

“I think that’s it, guys!”

“We here?”

“Yup. Close as we can get in this thing.”

“Alright. Everypony suit up and get ready!”

One quick check over the battlesaddle later, and I’m slipping into it and pulling the straps tight. A quick flip-out of the trigger-bit shows everything to be set up and ready to go. One last pull on the cigarette, for luck and all, before I spit it out, stomp it out, and leave the wagon.

The wasteland sky seems particularly bright here, with the occasional hole in the clouds suddenly a little more common. I turn my gaze downward onto the barren desert before I go into another panic attack, taking in the vast expanse of nothingness giving way to steep brown mountains next to us. There’s no plants. No animals. Even the sky seems to reflect the monotony of this corner of the world.

So much brown…

The other ponies are grouping up near a small cave set into the nearest mountain, so I hurry up and run to follow.

“So this is really it?” Haywire asks, his baritone voice at odds with his lanky gunmetal-grey body.

“In that cave there, if this map is right,” affirms the tan buck that it takes me a few seconds to remember is Longview. He’s nosing at his Pip-Buck, playing with the map function to try and see if he’s right.

Ohhh, that Pip-Buck. I would kill a pony to get my hooves on that thing, but it’s unfortunately fused to his leg. And he’s not willing to give me his leg.

“Well, keep your eyes peeled, everypony. This may be the edges of Splendid Valley, but it’s still hellhound territory.” His voice alone is imposing, but Blade himself looks even more so now that I see him. Most ponies are taller than me, but he in particular towers over everypony. Bright silver coat like my own, with a baby-blue-and-white mane and tail…he really does look like a wall of steel. It doesn’t help that he’s wearing thick metal armor fashioned from chunks of a chariot. And the way that armor looks on him...revealing the bulges of his muscles while accentuating his curves...

Goddesses damn it, Rivet. Focus on his words, not his flank.

“Rivet?” I perk up at the mention of my name, turning my attention back to Blade’s face. “You go handle the Stable door. Ace’ll cover you.”

Aaaaaaand there goes any good mood I may’ve had.

I nervously glance over to the red-on-orange stallion wearing thick leather armor and donning brass hoofshoes. He shoots me a quick little wink, and almost immediately, my skin starts to crawl.

“Alright everypony, let’s make this quick. I wanna be safe in the Stable before the hellhounds know we’re here.” They move to start covering the mouth of the cave, and with a little sigh, I walk into the cave after them.

“Where are the hellhounds, anyways? I would think we’d’ve seen one by now.”

“Be happy we haven’t.”

“According to PON-3, Maripony got hit with a balefire bomb a few days ago. Maybe they all died?”

“We’re talking about hellhounds here. The critters notorious for being harder to kill than radroaches. There’s no chance they just—“ After a while, I’m deep enough in the cave that I can’t hear them anymore. At least, not unless they start shouting.

I keep my head down and keep walking, running my tail along the cave wall to let myself know about any corners. Only to get horribly distracted when Ace slides up alongside me.

“So…” he says, in that smooth voice that, while having nothing necessarily wrong with it, still makes me shiver. “…been a while, eh Rivets?”

I don’t say anything. I just keep walking.

“Oh, now you’re givin’ me teh silent treatment?”

Still not saying anything.

“Tch. Fine. Ah see how it is.”

My tail stops feeling wall, and I immediately stop.

Beep. “Well, if yeh need some help—” Beep. “—blowin’ off steam, don’t hesitate teh—“ Clunk. “AGH! Fuck!”

The lights gradually fade from pitch darkness to almost daytime levels, as the lights set into the well-maintained cubic room slowly turn on. With more than a little bit of a smug grin, I notice that in the pitch darkness, Ace walked headfirst into the imposing Stable door before us.

He looks back and sees me chuckling slightly. “Ah, shut yer yap,” he finally sulks.

I take in the room around us. It’s still stone on every surface except the far wall, but hewn and weathered in such a way that it was clearly, at one point, perfectly smooth. Wide drains lie in the sides of the room, presumably to keep the place from flooding, and four lights lie nearly-hidden in each upper corner. The entire far wall is taken up by the giant steel door of the Stable, gear-shaped in design and flush with the surface of the wall. Inlaid into its very center, right where the shaft would go if it were a real gear, is a yellow number 16.

And next to it, cleverly camouflaged with the wall, is a fold-out terminal.

“Ah’ll tell the oth’rs we found it,” Ace says, trotting back the way we came and rubbing his nose slightly. The minute he leaves, I let out a long sigh of relief. With him gone, I’ll be able to focus instead of keeping an eye on him.

Now, to business.

I trot over to the little square of ridges that marks out the terminal’s location, tapping it to make the keyboard fold down. As it boots up, I glance back around the room. It’s weird, really. The lights clearly detected our presence and lit up in response. That’s pretty easy to do. But I don’t see any sign of cameras, motion sensors…nothing that would actually detect our presence.

The beep of the terminal pulls me out of my reverie, as it’s now sitting there and asking for a password. A few button presses, and I’ve put it into debug mode. A few more and…whoa. That’s one helluva firewall. Waaay beyond my technical expertise. Ugh…I can’t believe we came all this way for...

…hang on…

…it looks like somepony’s hacked into this terminal before.

Whoever it was, they did a terrible job of covering their tracks. The first glance of a trained eye reveals clear signs of a forced entry. Whoever did it had to have been a professional to get through firewalls like this one, but a professional just throwing caution to the wind like this? What happened to that pony?

Curiosities aside, though. I have work to do.

Following the digital hoofprints, I punch through the firewall in seconds and start inputting passwords. Okay, that didn’t work. That one didn’t work. Oh, so close.

There! I press enter, and the password slots fill with the word ‘entry’.

Wow. Original.

The terminal finishes booting up just as the others come trotting into the entry room.

“You got it?” Blade asks, making me jump slightly at the sound of his voice.

“Mmhm. Opening now.” One tap of the enter key, and the terminal folds back into the wall.

“Ready, bucks!” Every stallion in the room gets into a battle stance, weapons aimed and primed at the Stable door. Ace is bouncing slightly on his hooftips, the childlike action at odds with the face of sheer determination. Longview has his assault-rifle-and-grenade-launcher battlesaddle (partially covered by his winter-cloak) aimed carefully, with the trigger-bit firmly in his mouth. Blade has his sniper rifle and Haywire has his ME-Pistol (Focus Optics and Recharger installed by yours truly) in their mouths and ready to go. Manner’s behind all of them, horn lit and revolver floating beside her in that half-ready stance that shows she's really prepping for a healing spell.

Me? I’m moving to go hide behind all of them. Because, shotgun or no shotgun, I’d rather let them can handle whatever’s behind that door.

The massive THUNK of nine hoof-wide steel bolts retracting sends me diving behind Manner for cover.

The Hisssss of the airtight seal breaking is enough to cover her little chuckle at my expense.

With the loudest whine of metal grinding against metal I’ve ever heard, the door pulls backward into the stable itself, until we can see a thin outline of light around the edges.

Then, with the various clanks, chugs, and groans of old machines running for the first time in decades, the giant gear shaped door rolls to the side, granting us access into Stable 16.

Footnote:
Silver Rivet

Strength: 3
Perception: 7
Endurance: 4
Charisma: 4
Intelligence: 10
Agility: 6
Luck: 6