Fallout Equestria: Duty

Fallout Equestria: Duty

Chapter 3

Picking up the pieces

“Excuse me if I withhold my enthusiasm.”

~O~Frostmane~O~

Dear Frostmane,

I was quite surprised to see you of all Ponies after all this time. But I am glad I did. When I got wind of the Enclave planning to salvage the “Ghost ship” some troops had reported seeing, I wasn't too worried. I've never been a mare to take such things as ghosts seriously after all. Then I got my hooves on the mission report, and boy was it a doozy. The Commander of the Glorious Dawn reported that the operation had resulted in almost a hundred dead or maimed Pegasi, and that he had shot the ship down as a result.

Still unable to believe it, I decided to investigate myself, and really it wasn't too hard to find your ship, or what was left of it. Thunder-Head Type II Prototype eh? You always had a soft spot for those abandoned projects...

But I digress. Why I was so surprised to see you is, that I had thought you had died long ago. The war has been over for almost two hundred years by now after all. In August it will be 187 years since we annihilated each other with Mega-spells... Since then, Equestria hasn't been the same anymore. There is no government. The Princesses are dead, and most cities are just piles of rubble, full of Pony bones.

The Pegasi, as you might have guessed, have abandoned Equestria all together, ganging together in their “Great Pegasus Enclave”... Seriously, it makes me wanna throw up.

You have, of course, no reason to believe me, since I can't tell you who I am. Doing so would endanger me eventually, and I am not willing to risk that. But... you will believe me soon enough. As soon as you step out of the wreck that once was your ship at the latest.

I have taken the liberty to take the Mega-spell Talismans you had in one of your Cargo bays, and bring them to a safe place. Don't worry, nopony will ever find them. That includes you by the way. I have also copied most of the data I could salvage from your computer core. There wasn't much, but at least I understand what happened to you now.

There is no easy way to break this to you, so I'll say it as it is. About six months before the end of the war, your name came up on the “Missing in Action” list. Princess Luna had the Ministry of Awesome search all over the place for you. Near the end, it was the accepted theory, that you had deserted. Whoever iced you, it sure wasn't the Princess. In fact, she was pretty upset about it. Until the end, she would snap at anypony who even hinted at the possibility of you deserting. I don't know what you two shared, but she obviously had a very high opinion of you.

I can't help you directly right now, but I can give you a few pointers to survive in the shithole our beloved Equestria has evolved into. Attached to this letter you will find a list of dangerous creatures and how to deal with them. I have also stored a good amount of food in the infirmaries freezer. Take it. You will need it my friend. I have sent a location marker to your Pipbuck. It's for the nearest settlement, and I suggest that you go there first.

Since there basically is no military anymore, you are no longer a soldier, so I can't order you to do anything. All I can tell you, is that you are a good mare, and I trust that you will do the right thing. Should you ever encounter a situation in which you are in so much danger that you don't know how to get out of it, sent a distress signal over the Ministry of Awesome distress frequency. I will keep an eye on it, but please don't try to contact me. You never know who is listening in.

A Friend

P.S.: You will find the Shadowbolt Insignia you left behind when you quit the ministry of awesome in the envelope with this letter.

I read the letter that had been tucked under one of my hooves again and again. I had woken up about an hour ago, and since then Firestorm had been unable to get my attention. All of it was on the letter. Oh I recognized the muzzle writing alright. There was no need for her to put down her name, but what she was writing was simply impossible. I was just about to start reading it again, as a hoof struck me across the face. Finally, I looked up into the teary golden eyes of my second in command.

“Snap out of it!”, she shouted, unable to contain her tears. I had read the letter aloud each time, and it certainly was a shock to the both of us. My hoof came up and I rubbed my cheek where Firestorm had struck me. It didn't exactly hurt, but it certainly made me get my act together.

“So... what now?”, I asked in a shaky voice. Firestorm, who had started pacing after she had shouted at me, whirled around again, looking at me intensely.

“Oh, I don't know. You're the commanding officer here.”, she spat at me sarcastically.

“I'm not your Commander anymore.”

“Ah come on, we both now that letter can't be true! I mean, come on Frostmane! 187 years? That's ridiculous!”, she started to panic, and I couldn't even blame her. However, I was certain that this letter was genuine. Not only that, but it explained so many things. The state the ship was in when I first woke up. The Pegasi that attacked us... Not to mention that it would explain why Firestorm was unable to deal with a few enemy soldiers. She must have been pretty weak after such a long time in stasis. From what I had seen, they hadn't even been particularly well trained.

“No, listen to me Storm. It makes perfect sense. I don't say I want to believe it, and believe me when I say that I am at least as shocked as you are by this, but we can't loose our heads now. What was the first important thing I ever said to you?”, I replied, putting my hooves on her shoulders. It was a little lie on my part. Sure it was a shock, but I relished the idea of not having to kill others for the sake of some stupid war anymore.

“Panic means death.”, she panted, as she plopped down onto her haunches. I wrapped my forelegs around her neck as Firestorm began to sob uncontrollably. I wanted to cry myself, but years as a military Commander had made me unable to do so when there were witnesses around.

It took her quite some time to calm down again, and we began to discuss what we were going to do now. She didn't believe the letter still, but I had made her agree to accept it as a working hypothesis. For now we would assume that it was telling the truth, until there was evidence to the contrary.

I knew how hard it was for my comrade to accept this, but it was the best course of action for now. After we had gathered any medical supplies and the food that had been stored for us, I knocked down the double door of the infirmary with my Power-Hooves. Firestorm and I split up in the hallway, deciding that we should check if there was anything salvageable on board. If what my “Friend” had written was true, then anything could be useful for trade.

I didn't like the idea to cannibalize my ship, but the Luna Dream was just that now. A Dream. A Memory at best. The hallways were twisted and warped. There were even sections were I couldn't get through at all, due to the walls and ceiling being warped so badly...

~O~Firestorm~O~

I was almost on auto-pilot as I moved through the twisted bowls of the wreck, that had once been the Luna Dream. I trusted Frostmane, but her trust in a Pony who wouldn't even give her name, was more than I could take. Not to mention her indifference towards the fact that the Talismans had been taken. Who was to say that this Pony didn't decide to use them after all?

I shook my head. No. Nopony would be that insane. If anypony ever set them off, they would be dead before they knew that they had made a mistake. After all, the Talismans were no Mega-spells yet. Massive facilities were needed to weave a sufficient spell-matrix around even one Talisman. I decided to keep my eyes open for such a compound. If I found one, I would  go in and depose of the Talismans.

While trotting, I held my right eye closed, recording the situation at hoof with my new cybernetic eye. It still made me dizzy to use both of them, but I had noticed that I could use the cybernetic one, as long as I shut my organic eye. It was horrible.

The once gray, straight hallways were now blackened where electrical fires had raged. Many of the panels that had made up the ceiling and walls had fallen from their places, sometimes blocking my path completely. In such moments all I could do was sigh and look for another way. It wasn't like I had found anything useful anyways. Most of the valuable or useful stuff had been in our cargo bays, and they had been destroyed in the crash... or were they?

I stood in front of an elevator shaft as the thought hit me. Maybe the computer was damaged, and couldn't display the damaged sections of the ship, or the internal connections had been severed by all this twisted metal. Originally I had planned to go to my quarters two decks below, and see if I could find some of my stuff that was still usable, but now I decided to try my luck further down. Switching my cybernetic eye to night-vision mode, and switching off the lamp on my helmet, I jumped down the shaft with my wings tugged in.

The shaft was about four Ponies wide, so I had more than enough room to spread my wings if I had to. The only thing I didn't see coming, was that the shaft itself was twisted and damaged. Only a few meters into my dive, a jagged metal spike forced me to flare out my left wing and flap into that direction to evade it. Had I hit it, it would have either impaled me, or sliced me open like a fresh loaf of bread.

The further I fell, the more I began to doubt my decision. Now I had my wings out every few seconds to change my course, evading debris and even a still burning pipe once. I had been unable to evade that last one completely, singing a few hairs on my mane as I banked to my right and turned, so my back was facing the pipe. What made the whole thing even harder for me was the fact, that my cybernetic eye displayed my surroundings in a green and grainy way, that made it hard to see how far an obstacle was away from me.

Then, just as I evaded another bent section of the elevator shaft, I flared out both of my wings, trying to stop myself. Only about four meters behind this last obstacle, hang the elevator car. My EFS lit up immediately, displaying a collision warning, but I wasn't fast enough. Twisting my body as best I could, I impacted the top of the elevator car with my hooves first. Due to the speed I had been going at, I could feel the vibrations of the impact all the way to my tail and muzzle. My metal clad hooves made a very loud ~Thunk~ noise, and I was very happy about my armors leg supports. Without them I might have broken all four of my legs. Still, it took me a moment to catch my breath.

OooOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

After forcing my way into the elevator through the escape hatch at the top, I had pried open the elevator doors with a piece of metal I found inside the elevator cabin. Switching to my organic eye again, the light on my helmet flashed to life as the doors slid open. I was where I had wanted to go alright, but there seriously wasn't much to see here. There wasn't even a floor left! Where there had once been a steel floor, there was now dirt. I began to doubt that the computer had a malfunction. Seeing the ragged metal edges of the lower parts of the walls made it quite obvious to me that every deck below this one had been scraped away when the ship had crashed. The ceiling was now so low, that it was impossible for me to stand upright, which forced me to crawl out of the elevator.

“Oh what's the point?”, I thought, shining my light over to the cargo bay doors. Fourteen cargo bays, many of them filled to the ceiling with weapons or food. One of my duties as secondary Commander had been to make sure that everything down here was alright, and that we didn't run out of anything. “Here goes nothing.”

With this thought in my head, I crawled out of the destroyed elevator, making my way towards the row of cargo bay doors at the far end of the corridor. If there was anything valuable on this ship, it was bound to be in there...

~O~Frostmane~O~

My quarters were almost non-existent anymore. I had to pull the twisted slap of metal, that had once been the door, out of it's frame since it didn't want to move. Inside, I was met with a compact version of my room. The far wall, that had been towards the outer hull of the ship, had been pressed inwards, destroying my bed, TV and desk in the process. Water was trickling in through cracks in the metal and I soon decided that there was nothing in here worth taking. The few things that hadn't been broken, had been ruined by the few inches of water covering the floor.

I had already turned around, when my head snapped back towards the small cabinet that had stood next to my bed. Of course, there wasn't much left of it. My bed had pushed it into the wall by the door and crushed it, soiling all of my casual clothes inside with the dirt of ages. But there had been a shimmer when my lamps light had passed it. Something had reflected the light. Something that had looked as if it was still intact.

I squeezed myself into the corner, using my magic to rummage through the rags that had once been my favorite clothes, until I found a small metal box. It shone beautifully in the artificial light as my light blue magic enveloped it, bringing it up to my face. I retracted part of my helmet, enough to reveal my blue eyes and a bit of my light blue coat, but not enough to cut my lamps power supply.

My Cutiemark, an ice cone with three different types of ice-cream on it, was etched into the top of the box, showing everypony that it was mine. It wasn't exactly true, but I couldn't have cared less. Holding my breath, I opened up the small box, revealing a silvery strand of mane. Up until now, I had totally forgotten I had brought this along with me from Manehatten, but I was happy to see it.

It was a strand of my mothers mane. A reminder that there were Ponies out there who needed my protection. She had never been much of a fighter, and I seriously doubted she had survived even the first few years of the war. I didn't know what had become of her after she had left me with my father, to “make her dream come true” as she had stated it. At first, letters had come quite regularly, and sometimes she had even included a photograph of herself on stage.

Later however, the letters had become more scarce, until they had stopped coming all together. The last thing she had ever sent me, was this little box, containing a strand of her mane. There had been no note, no letter and no explanation. Only the box.

Up until she had left us, I had loved both of my parents, and they had loved me in return. After she had gone though... everything had changed. My father had done more to me than just love me as a daughter, and I felt a shudder of disgust run through my body as I remembered this. I had a lot of fond memories of my mother, but the unpleasant ones of my father outweighed the positive ones. After all... he had been the first victim to my heart attack spell in the end....

OooOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

This deck was devoid of anything useful. The only halfway decent things I had found, were a few spark batteries, that I could give to Firestorm for her rifles, a box of fancy buck snack cakes, and a single bottle of Sparkle Cola...

Since there had been a maintenance area on this deck, I could only assume that those Pegasi had taken the tools that had been stored there. If that was true, then they surely had taken some other stuff as well. There was no way of knowing for sure though. My “friend” had rerouted all power that was left on the Luna Dream to medical, so the computer was dead. Each Terminal I had tried to access was either unresponsive, or displayed the section of the ship I was in as destroyed. It was certainly beyond repair, but destroyed meant that it had been blown away, which was obviously not true.

I climbed down one of the maintenance shafts that were especially sturdy to make my way to the next deck. It was a little tricky to get the cakes down the shaft, since the box was to big to fit through it, but I managed it eventually by floating them down one by one and then fold the box. The next deck was... not so empty however. As soon as I stepped out of the shaft, and began picking up the cakes to put them back into the box, I noticed three red bars on my EFS.

The floor of the deck was surprisingly straight, with only a few holes here and there. On the far end, I saw three Ponies, fighting over what looked like a locked ammunition crate. In that moment I damned the Prototype status of my armor, and it's lack of night-vision. Two of the three were carrying torches in their magic, but the beam from my helmet lamp illuminated the corridor much more efficiently. Of course, it caught their attention, and their argument ceased as the only Earthpony of the group stepped towards me, a naughty grin on his face. The “armor” he wore had spikes on it's shoulders and he looked filthy all over.

“Ah wat a s'prise. So t'ere was still some'ony alive in 'ere.”, she chuckled, obviously not taking me seriously. His two buddies didn't make that mistake however. Both of them lifted what looked like rifles at me, and I was suddenly glad I had reformed my visor earlier, as their bullets both impacted on it. My head snapped back from the physical force of it, but the bullets themselves slid off my face, flat and harmless.

“I would advise you not to do that again.”, I said, as I righted my head to look at them. My neck hurt a bit, but it wasn't too bad. Of course, they didn't listen to me. Two more shots rang out, and I jumped to the side to avoid the bullets. The first buck, who had stepped forward, now drew a weapon I knew only too well. One of these had been responsible for the scar that ran from the base of my horn, to the side of my muzzle after all. A Zebra assault sword. He charged towards me, hoping to catch me off balance. His blade sliced through thin air, as I reared up on my hindlegs and stayed upright.

He shot his blade upwards quite fast, but it just impacted on my armor harmlessly. The look of utter surprise on his face, as my right hoof connected with his jaw, sending him flying towards his companions, was priceless. He dropped his sword, and I took it up in my magic. It wasn't as sharp as it could have been, and the enchanted Gemstone on the hilt had died ages ago. Still, it was a formidable weapon, so I decided to keep it.

“'at kin o' manster ar ye!”, one of the Unicorn bucks yelled at me, fear etched on his face. Floating the sword next to me, I took a step towards them, planning to make myself look as scary as possible. I didn't want to kill these Ponies. Sure, they had attacked me, and I had killed Ponies just after I had woken up, but by the looks of their armaments I doubted they would be much of a danger to anypony. It was much more likely that they blew their own heads off, if they continued using these rusted rifles.

“I am Vice-General Frostmane, Commanding officer of this equestrian military vessel, and you are trespassing by being here. Any further attacks on myself or any Pony with this Insignia on their flank, will result in lethal retaliation!”, I said, amplifying my voice through my helmets speakers, while jabbing a hoof to the skull shaped moon on my armored flank. A second later, they were scampering off into the dark, in the direction of the outer hull. I suspected that there was a hull breach there, through which they had entered the ship. Making a mental note about that, I dropped back to all four hooves and began to pick up my cakes.

Just as I was putting the last of the cakes into the box I had unfolded again, I heard a metal clinking sound from under me. I looked down, and the lamp on my helmet illuminated a small apple shaped object. My eyes widened as I recognized a grenade. I had only a split second to grab the box of cakes and throw it down the other end of the corridor, before all hell broke loose below me. I felt as if a dragon had taken a swing at me, as I was thrown upwards and literally into the ceiling. My armor protected me from the worst of the damage, but the physical trauma still hurt pretty badly. I would be bruised up pretty badly the next morning.

My head got stuck in the indentation it left in the ceiling. It must have looked pretty comical as I hang there. Then I heard cackling laughter from beneath me, and I knew that my wishes had once again been ignored. I would have to kill those buckers after all....

~O~Firestorm~O~

“JACKPOT!”, I shouted, as I crawled into the secondary armory. The weapons here were mostly battle worn, or slightly defective, but many of them were still usable. My prize sat on the far end of the room, fastened onto the wall with steel chains. An ammunition crate for energy weapons!

Most of the other crates had fallen over, scattering rifles and other weapons all over the place. I grimaced as I saw a barrel of some magical acid that had fallen over. It had the Ministry of Arcane Sciences logo on it. I had always hated such things, since they could turn on you all too easily. One mistake in applying them, and you suddenly had one less hoof. It had been brought here, because exactly that had happened. Princess Luna had sent it to us for testing it for military applications, and the first Pony to open the barrel, had lost her face, due to splashing and bubbling liquid.

Oh it was usable alright, but Frostmane had deemed it way to dangerous to be used in the field. We had tried all sorts of substances, once even pouring a little bit of it on a suit of Power-Armor, and that stuff had eaten through everything. Had it leaked, I wouldn't have found a single thing in this room, and may have even died from the fumes alone.

I gave the barrel a wide berth as I made my way over to the ammunition crate, opened it and took out what I wanted. Ten packs of supercharged Spark Batteries, two of them going into my rifles immediately. Ten shots per rifle, but when I brought them up, I could see the sparks running up and down them. One shot with a supercharged pack was usually enough to turn a Pony into nothing more than a pile of green ash.

Deciding that a little test of my weaponry couldn't hurt, I took aim at an empty crate and fired. To my shock, the magical discharge of my left rifle shot right through it, punching a hole into the barrel that lay behind it. The shot from my right one turned my target into a pile of ash, but now I had to get out of here, and fast!

Not caring for any of the other weapons, I flared out my wings and flew over the spreading pool of acid below me. To my horror, I saw that it was beginning to eat through the walls and even climb upwards, as if it was alive. As quickly as I could, I shot through the door and into the hallway behind it. Already I could see the blueish liquid spread into the dirt filled corridor behind me, and I did my best to crawl back to the elevator before the stuff reached me.

Suddenly, I could hear an explosion a few decks above me. It didn't sound like an accidental one either, but rather more like a grenade... I increased my pace and finally reached the shaft I had come down through. The acid was only a few paces behind me.

“What the heck? What's up with that stuff? There's no way what was is that barrel should reach up to here!”, I shouted, as I flapped my wings and darted up the elevator shaft. Behind me, I could hear the sizzling sound of the acid eating away at the metal of the Luna Dream.

OooOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

I shot out of the open elevator shaft doors, spotting ten red blips on my EFS, that surrounded a green one. I flew towards them as the Luna Dream began to tilt dangerously. Rounding the next corner, I saw Frostmane surrounded by several Unicorns and Earthponies. For some reason she hadn't formed her Power-Hooves and had instead chosen to fight them hoof to hoof. It wasn't doing her much good, since two of them were wielding sub machine guns and, unless she wanted to be thrown around by the impacts, she had to jump around or form her shield to avoid being hit.

I swooped in, aiming for the two Ponies wielding SMG's. A clean hole appeared in the head of one of the bucks, while the other one fell to the floor in a pile of green ash. The others turned towards me, but I was too fast. I had darted part them, grabbing Frostmane, and was already on my way towards the next elevator shaft to go to the next deck and it's airlock.

“What's the hurry?”, Frostmane shouted below me, as I did my best to stay aloft with the additional weight. That the corridor wasn't very high made that all the more difficult, but I had no choice. I could fly faster than either Frostmane or I could gallop.

“I made a stupid mistake!”, I shouted back. “Soon there won't be a wreck at all at this rate, so we have to get out of here!”

“Turn towards the hull! I guess there is a hull breach somewhere there!”, Frostmane instructed, and I obeyed. Banking at the next intersection, I turned to the right instead of left, flying towards the outer hull. True enough, there was a giant hole in the side of the ship, through which we darted out...

~O~Frostmane~O~

I sat on a small hill, some ways away from the pit that had once been my ship, while snacking on a fancy buck cake. When Firestorm had grabbed me in her forelegs, I in turn, had grabbed onto the box of cakes with my magic and had carried them along. Sure, we had enough food from our “friend”, but nothing as tasty as these.

“Magical acid?”, I asked after swallowing my current bite of cake. Firestorm nodded silently, unable to take her eyes of the enormous blue pit. I sighed.

“You know, it's probably better this way. The Luna Dream was damaged beyond repair, but there was so much in there that was potentially dangerous, that we would have had to come up with a way to dispose of her one way or another.”, I said, taking another bite from my cake. I feigned ignorance, but there was a strong sense of sadness flooding my being. Once the Luna Dream had been the pride of the equestrian military, until she became a covered operations vessel that had carried me and my Ponies into many battles. Now she was only a lake of goo...

Beside me, Firestorm suddenly raised a hoof to her brow in a last salute for our ship, and I followed suit. In near unison we began the traditional military burial chant for our destroyed ship, and our dead comrades.

“In friendship, we trot. With magic, we fight. For the Princess we will give our lives. May the light of Celestias sun guide you to the afterlife. May the gentle rays of Lunas moon cradle you in your eternal sleep.”

Footnotes!

Frostmane: Level up!

New weapon:

Zebra assault sword

Firestorm: Level up!

New Perk:

Cyberpony: Your ruined eye has been replaced with outdated cybernetics, enabling you to see in the dark and increasing your chance to hit targets while using SATS. However, you can only use one eye at a time. Maybe you should get an update?