Fallout: Equestria: Stars & Stripes

Chapter Four: Rezzurection

            The dawn sun rose over the horizon, streaming the pure white cloudcover with fire-colored ribbons of refracted light miles long. The bright red light streamed through the RexiGlass window, falling over my body and casting shadows on parts of my face, while illuminating others. The stainless steel stasis pod, now used only for sleeping, shined with a dull gleam, dimly reflecting the larger features of the room to whoever may happen to be conviniently clinging to the outside of a subspace vessel miles in the air, looking inward.

             With that mildly disturbing thought, the shrill screech of the alarm from my PipBuck was projected directly into my inner ear, vibrating the inside of my skull with more speed than a Wonderbolt on Filly Flash.

              "Whaa..." I yawned, rolling over in my pod. I stopped myself as my body almost went over the edge. I rolled over, and punched my pillow repeatedly, thinking it the cause of the innane noise that was disturbing my slumber.

              As I pummeled my pillow into submission, the movement of my muscles helped my regain some semblance of consciousness, allowing my brain to dig through my mental files and pull out the dossier marked "sounds" out of an overturned 911 toll-free call box.

              I proceeded to violently ram the bulky instrument against the Molybdenum outer ring of my so-called "matress" until I hit the snooze button. This took me about seven tries.

              I figured that I had about five minutes before the rest of the team got up, so I decided to suit up myself. But before I did anything, there was one thing that still had to be done.

              I walked to the fridge and grabbed a waffle.

              I promptly shoved the culinary delight into my mouth and began breaking it down with my teeth thoughtfully. It was indeed an amazing waffle for a piece of 150-year food.

              After a few waffles, I decided that another source of  edible material needed to go into my mouth to sate my hunger. I eyed the fridge for a while, as if the food fairy would come and restock it with something un-stale, but nothing in the room really caught my fancy. Actually, the sink faucet looked pretty high in pottasuim...

              SMACK! My eye collided with the outward-facing faucet of the sink, jarring me from my half-slumber, and probobly giving me a nice shiner in the process.

              And, to complete my wake-up, the alarm on my PipBuck went off again, as I had hit the snooze button. My brain now functioning, I pressed the "off button, and swung back into my "bed". We still had a couple of hours...

I camly walked through the lobby of the hotel, keeping my wings still. The special covering for them would allay any hostile suspicion, but it never hurt to be careful. My assistant, Featherwieght, walked next to me in the same manner. I could see the strain on his face to keep calm.

"You're doing good, rookie. Just keep your voice low, and don't talk." I mumbled under my breath into my throat mic, projecting my voice directly into his inner ear. He almost jumped at the noise. "I know this is your first op, not to mention the fact that it's high-risk."

Featherwieght was only seventeen years old, and yet had been met with great success. Out of boot camp only weeks ago, he showed incredible results on the "stealth and infiltration" portion of the course. Since he needed the real experience, I picked him as my partner to infiltrate the zebra capitol of Roam.

We walked up to the receptionist. The wieght of the small pistol concealed under my right wing seemed to become heavier.

"We're here to see a guest." Said Featherwieght, in a perfect Zebra slur. His accent skills were remarkable!

"Who?" Asked the receptionist, again in that strange accent.

"The Grand Ceaser."

"He will be right with you. Drink?"

   "Wake up. C'mon! Up and at them! A fuzzy accented voice interuppted my dream.

      Oh god. How long had I slept!?! I asked this.

      "Only about an hour, silly flank. We are having coffee and discussing plan of action. I thought you might want to have a say in the discussion." Lost Star beckoned for me to follow her into the weapons room. I noticed she had armed her power hooves, an electrified gauntlet that shocked anyone unlucky enough to be on the wrong end. Plus, you know, having a big metal hoof was nice too.

       "Hell, and here I was thinking that I'd have some time to suit up correctly." I mentioned. "We have, what, half an hour till descent?

        "We have already started. We are only fifty-three feet above the cloud cover, though. We are directly above Baltimare as we speak!" Said Lost Star, excited.

        "Well, nothing's gone boom yet. That's a good sign!" I said casually.

        With that, a massive boom sounded across the sky, followed by the distinctive sound of shrapnel striking the side of the Skreex.

        I just HAD to open my stupid fucking mouth, huh?

        "Flak rounds!!! Yelled Colgate. "I know my big guns, and those are some PRETTY BIG GUNS!"

         "Kilowatt, use the manual override. We won't last much longer!" Yelled Char as we were pelted with thousands of tiny pellets at the speed of sound. It felt sort of like it was raining.

          Kilo immediately ran into the terminal room and began furiously typing on the terminal labeled "override".

          "This is gonna be about thirty seconds!" Yelled Kilowatt, a stricken look on his face.

          "We don't HAVE thirty seconds!" I yelled, ducking as a pellet from a flak round punctured the hull and flew over my head, nearly shaving a part of my mane.

          We were losing altitude, and fast. The automatic evasive systems in the Skreex's mini-crusader maneframe were bringing us lower, towards the cloud cover. Towards the flak guns!

          "Done!" Yelled Kilowatt triumphantly. He eased the craft into a downward spiral, the flak cannons' targeting computers baffled by the evasive manuever.

          We drifted down towards the cloud covers, each flak burst detonating where we were a few seconds ago.

"You cut it a bit close..." I said. it was true. The right side of the vessel was already shredded like swiss cheese right through the metal, but the oxygen talismans had enough torque to keep our Oh-Two levels at a minimum.

"Okay, I'm gonna be the first to ask this then." Piped up Char. "What... the hell... WAS THAT?"

"Yeah, the megaspell radiation would've hit the pegasi, too, so it coulnt've been them. Unless it was a total cloud cover across all of...

We all looked at him.

"Ah, shit. Does this mean that we're gonna be persecuted by whoever's down there? Cuz if it was me on the surface there, I'd be pretty fucking pissed!" Exclaimed Char.

"We will just have to wait and see. And watch your tongue around me." This was Lost Star.

DESCENT IN THIRTY SECONDS. PREPARE FOR DROP.

Me and Char were the only ones in the team that needed battle saddles. The rest of us sat with our gun straps clenched firmly in our mouths. My battle saddle consisted of a crappy autoshotgun on one side, and my old, non-hummingbird sniper rifle on the other. The IF-76 was in a safebox, and I could retrieve it later. Char carried her customary load of grenade launcher and machinegun.

DESCENT IN TWENTY SECONDS.

We checked out barding next. Most of the team wore the new Hammerhead combat armor, but I wore the older Tigershark model. It allowed for more mobility. However, because of the O.I.A.'s fucking low budget, almost all of our barding had a slight defect, such as mine, which was stitched over only once in some areas. My Tigershark, which only covered my chest and lower body in multiple kevlar layers, was custom painted with red zebra stripes, the insignia of Wing 6-g.

TEN.The final countdown began.

Colgate, with her magic, racked the chambers of her signature dual G26's, Flesh and Blood. She was getting ready for whatever waited for us down there.

FIVE. Kilowatt farted. A big one, too. I mental-high-fived him, despite my nervousness.

FOUR. THREE. TWO. ONE

The ship began to descend slowly, and then began to pick up the pace, it's aerodynamic hull slipping through the air like a hot knife through butter.

"Umm... Guys?" Asked Kilowatt. "We got a minor fire on the right side, where we got hit. Nothing serious, but we should..."

BOOM!

"RIGHT SIDE ENGINE FAILURE!" Yelled Kilowatt.

I firmly planted my now-traded feet on the floor, and bit onto one of the bits that came down from the ceiling, stabilizing myself. The craft was spinning faster and faster, and the cetrifugal force only got worse. My teeth were starting to hurt like hell from holding onto the bit.

ALTITUDE LEVEL: 100 FEET.

"HOLD ON TIGHT! DONT LET GO!" Yelled Colgate. She was typing on a terminal hastily, an expression of pure stress upon her face.

The back door opened, but the view was too blurred for me to see anything.

"Almost.." CRUNCH

"Where is he? Do you think we've been found out?" The voice of Featherwieght projected into my ear.

"Nope. There's a lot of security here, so it'll take a while for it to get cleared up. Wait, here comes somebody. Quick, be rascist towards ponies!"

Feather struggled not to snigger at my little joke as the desk attendant walked up to the sofa in the lobby where we were sitting.

"The Ceaser will see you now." She said in her accent of doom. She motioned for us to get up and follow her. We did so, and I took note of how the decadance in the lobby would aid in our escape should the need arise. Those giant pillars would make a great blockade should they fall over...

"Hello, Cyrus." Said the Ceaser.

I awoke into a world of pain.

The Skreex was not a pretty sight. The power had already gone off, and the left side was now the floor, gritted into dust by the friction with the ground.

But, more importantly, my PipBuck was flashing warnings about "servere head injury." That can't be good.

I tried to sit up, but the searing pain in my skull made me fall back down on my back. Then I made a shocking realization.

"I'm not on the floor." I stated simply. A metal strut from the hull of the Skreex had caught on my battle saddle, and I was hanging a good ten feet in the air.

As I reached for my knife with my mouth, I heard a puny-sounding gunshot from outside. But, for now, I focused on getting out of this deathtrap. I grabbed my knife firmly within my teeth, and began sawing at the battle saddle.

I was about halfway through when I dropped the knife, and it fell, clattering among the assorted debris at the bottom (or side?) of the Skreex.

More gunshots rang outside, and this time I realized they were coming from Flesh and Blood. The puny 5mm round wouldn't do much against anything, if it wasn't for the sheer volume of fire she could put out with those things. I...

"OOF!" The backstrap on my battle saddle gave way, dropping me ten feet into the debris. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt, but a new warning flashed on my H.U.D. anyways: Unknown Object Embedded in Leg.

It took my brain a while to process "embedded", and even then, my head was too fucked up to understand what it meant.

I looked down at my leg, and saw a piece of rebar sticking out of it. As I stood up, it slid out of my appendage, releasing a huge gout of blood.

"How nice." I thought. "It doesn't hurt at all..."

My brain came to terms witht the fact that I wanted out.

Ahh... what a nice breeze.

Wait, what? Breeze?

I looked to my left, and sure enough, the backhatch was open. Even more exciting was the mysterious white mist pouring in!

Logic dictated that I stay back, but that part of my brain was full-nelsoned by the stupid part. My HUD helpfully informed me that I should ingest some healing potion.

"Fine..." I said aloud. I opened my saddlebags, and was not surprised to find everything shattered to fuck. I threw them to the ground, disgusted by thier audacity. And they dared to insult me by dripping out of the bottom!

Wait... Dripping... Heaing Potion... Oh.

I sat down, and began lapping up the healing potion dripping out of the saddlebags. It rated a bit like camel piss (don't ask) and it was about the consistency of jello, but it did the trick.

      "Ow!" I winced as a piece of my fractured skull slid back into place, albiet very painfully. It felt like my head was filled with hot lead, but at least I could think clearly now.

       I had two choices now. I could go into the mist to help my friends, or I could stay in here, warm and cozy.

       Dammit, why does my conscience have to screw me over now?

       I started towards the sideways back hatch, picking my way through the rubble of broken firearms and munitions. My HUD informed me that I shouldn't have been doing so, but this was time to rock.

       As I foraged my way past a sideways stasis pod, a glint of light struck my retina. It was a metal briefcase, wedged between the matress and outer ring of the pod. There was an inscription on the side.

       "Render..." Hmm.  That might be put to the test in the near future. I opened the clasp, and found a beautifully crafted revolver inside. Sitting next to it was a box of twelve .410 shotgun shells, which would definetely not fit a gun of this size. I broke it open, and found only four chambers. I slipped a shell in, and it fit. I loaded four, and clicked on the safety.

       With nothing more to distract me, I took a deep breath.

       I stepped into the mist.