Fallout Shelter Fourteen

Fallout Shelter Fourteen
Chapter 9 - Three Feet Of Steel; Sixty Feet Under

Finally, dammit. After a week of non-stop patrols in the area around the library, they were discontinued. I wanted to start working as quickly as I could. But we had to wait for a reactor break down once more; Engi also advised me to steer clear of that section around the library altogether for at least two weeks.

“Dakota, the Overseer probably has every camera log of you stored somewhere. Best to stick to your duties for the time being. And NOTHING else.”

So, during that time I had to wait before I could go back to the joys of reading. (There wasn’t much to do in the Stable on a daily basis outside of your duties. The lounge had grown quite stale.) I had been working on the best route to take our supplies to level 1. The library was in the south wing, the east wing would be a shorter trip, but that was security central. My observations showed at least 6 different patrol routes through the east wing. The trip to the west wing staircase was further, and took me through the hub, but at best I could tell there was only 2 patrol routes. Time was of the essence, but not getting caught was more important.

I asked Engi, he said the best bet would be playing it safe. Evading two patrols would be easier than six. Accessing the staircase wasn’t difficult. I had clearance for it. Being put in Maintenance had been both the worst (Right after my CAT) and best thing to happen to me (meeting quite possibly my best friend and the most awe inspiring pony I had ever met).

The thing was, if it came right down to it, if worse came to worse. We could just wait for another reactor breakdown. It was bound to happen again.

Under Engi’s advice, I started trying to figure out any gaps in the two patrol routes. Another thing I had to watch out for was Oliver. Everyday he had to do a systematic sweep of the Stable. I tracked his route a few times. He went different ways each time, but left the Hub from the same exit. That would be a wild card I had to keep an eye out for at all times. But from what I could tell, I only had to worry if the reactor went down at the same time he was patrolling the east wing.

But then again, I wasn’t sure what he did during power-outages.

Something else crossed my mind, so I stopped following Oliver around. (I was pretty sure he had noticed by now) and went and talked to Engi.

I trotted into the Maintenance office.

“Hey Windy. Just in time. I could use your help with something.” He said, leaving his desk and going over to the workbench across the room.

Once more, I refrained from telling him not to call me that. Friends put up with friends? I internally shrugged, I guess.

“I found a hole in our plan.” I flatlined.

Engi stopped about three quarters over to the bench.

“You what?” He asked.

“We’ve got a problem. And it’s fortunate I caught it now.” I said.

Engi sat down on the floor, he brought a hoof up to his chin.

“Impress me.” He said.

I spoke, “How am I supposed to know if power is still out or not if I’m on level 1? Power is off permanently.”

Engi let out a loud ‘Hmmmmm’.

“Good question. But I think the answer is two-fold.” He said, I sat there listening.

After a few moments he started talking again.

“The best way to avoid you being missing when the power comes back on is that you need to minimize the amount of time you spend on level 1. As to the second, letting you know power is back on. I got nothing. Just don’t screw around, get in and get out.”

I nodded, that was probably as good as it was getting.

“Okay, now I need your help...” He finished his trot to the workbench.

Oh Celestia, not again.

***

We waited for the reactor to break, it had been nearly three weeks since we had last worked on it. It was due to go any day now. I was finally able to get back into the library. I checked around to make sure nothing was changed in the two weeks I had been absent from it. Mostly that and security cameras I didn’t know about. Power was off, but not vacant. I was just smart enough to never go flip the light switches on, and I knew where they were. During my first weeks within the library, I checked to find any security cameras. When my search came up with nothing. I continued as I pleased.

I was pretty thorough in my search. I didn’t find anything. Maybe the Overseer thought she was being a bit too paranoid for even her standards? I hoped so. The only thing that seemed to be powered was the intercom, which had been only used a few times since my first days within the library.

Following a bit of Engi’s advice, I started reading some books on magic. The thought was fascinating. That I could theoretically lift something twenty times my size with mental will and practice? Freeze things? Operate something without even touching it. I even found some entries about teleportation. TELEPORTATION of all things. I thought about the concept. One of the books argued that teleportation would simply make a perfect copy of yourself, killing the original by transferring them to energy and then reassembling them somewhere else, and that contained all your memories.

NO thanks! Note to self: NEVER teleport.

Okay, maybe I was getting ahead of myself. I wasn’t even out of the Stable and I was thinking about all the things I wanted to learn. And another book I read said your magic would be limited to whatever your talent was.

I stared at my flank. Stupid swirly thing. What the hell do you mean? You just kinda showed up one day.

Yo, ‘sup? I’m here. I’m just gonna chill out on your flanks if that’s alright.

SHUT UP BRAIN! You’re the last pony I’d ever want to have a conversation with.

I couldn’t imagine what I would be like talking to my own brain. We’d probably argue... nonstop.

Yeah, you’re probably right.

SHUT. UP. BRAIN.

I continued reading, it was very enlightening. But Pegasi couldn’t just fly. They could move clouds! Control weather? Everything I knew was out of textbooks. I was reading about the water cycle awhile back. The sun, which I had never seen. A huge ball of plasma with such a huge amount of mass and pressure at the core it could push hydrogen atoms together to create energy through fusion. Spewing photons out that would give enough energy to evaporate water from oceans and lakes, the pegasi would then move the clouds over areas that needed it. As the practice continued they eventually started making their own clouds!

I wondered how a cloud that had a weight around 20 thousand kilograms could float around on air. Then I learned about density, how the mass of an object divided by volume would give you the amount of mass per x volume. An object's density dictated it’s buoyancy. How mass and weight weren’t one in the same, and how light was a particle and a wave, that what we could see was a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. I learned so much in the last 5 years. The speed of light was something I found to be a bit of a shock, three hundred million meters per second, C. That was astronomical. Literally.

And I was trying to get away from here? That thought ran through my head. It was a fair argument.

But what good is knowledge, if you have nopony to share it with?

Exactly. What they had taught me in school was the basics. How to learn, how to learn. If everypony else had access to the library, we’d all be better for it. Maybe one day, one day. I’d make my own library. When I got out of this place. Right now I still had priorities. Getting out and finding a B.U.C.K.E.T if I needed to. If not, then the library plan was the next best thing I could think of.

And if you don’t need to make a library?

What nonsense was that, you can NEVER have too many libraries. The list of songs on my PipBuck defended my words. I kept reading, and after a solid day of doing so I reported back to Engi. He dismissed me, and I went back to my family’s suite. I went to bed at 23:00 like I normally would.

...

...

...

I was enjoying a quite nice dream. Not sure what spawned it. I honestly didn’t care. Wasn’t lucid though. And I think I prefered it that way, not wanting to have another repeat episode of the first and last time I had a lucid dream. Just to be sure, I removed the Stable-Tec poster from the wall across from my bed. Safety first!

What I remember from the dream was just bits and pieces after the fact. The following morning when I woke up, I went to brush my mane. I got seriously bad bed-head. I didn’t actually brush my mane, my mom did. So while I sat there looking in the mirror while she did that, I got a single flash. Middle Dakota in the mirror instead of myself, only for a second. I would have shook my head to clear the thought, but not while she was running the brush through my mane over and over again.

“Brushie, brushie, brushie.” She said, “Don’t forget to brush your teeth either.”

Prewar toothpaste, that’s all we had down here. There was a picture of a pony, a unicorn to be precise, with an electric blue and white mane on the tube. The toothpaste itself was two colours, one blue and one white. I wasn’t sure what the actual name of the unicorn was, so I just called her the Colgate Pony as that was the name of the brand of toothpaste.

Mom trotted away after she was finished brushing my mane. I picked up the toothpaste. It said mint flavoured. I argued otherwise, or maybe it was just age? But I swear it tasted like, well to be quite honest, it didn’t taste like anything. Just foamy and messy and slightly tingley. What was worse was drinking water right after brushing your teeth. It would feel like the back of your throat was being doused with liquid nitrogen.

So, like mom said. I brushed my teeth. After I was finished I looked up into the mirror again. Middle Dakota reappeared.

“Go away.” I said. I wasn’t in any particular mood to be having a conversation with her. She rolled her eyes.

“What did you miss me?” She asked.

“Not really.” I deadpanned.

“I don’t get why you don’t like me.” She looked to both the left and right, “Maybe it’s because you don’t like yourself?”

“No, it’s just I don’t like you. At least Right Dakota was genuine, and left Dakota had a no BS policy. You’re... neither.”

“Well, I guess you need to accept your own faults. Even if they’re staring you right in the face. Because I am you afterall. We’re kind of all over the place aren’t we?”

I was confused, “Whaddya mean?”

“Think about it. You have thus far, concealed the existence of the library keeping it to yourself, save your boss. And he can’t fit through the vent. You have shoved somepony over a balcony so you could steal medical supplies. You’ve framed and then lied about framing somepony so you could break into the Overseer’s office. You haven’t even told your family, not even your own brother. How can you be proud of yourself for any of that?” She flatlined.

“I did what was necessary!” This is why I didn’t like middle Dakota, despite me being her.

“You’ll learn soon enough. What is necessary isn’t always right.” She growled at me.

“You know what? I’m not going to stand here and take this. I can’t believe I’m being lectured by MY SELF.” I put the toothpaste back and trotted away, ears down and in a bad mood.

I left and closed slammed the bathroom door shut. Well, as hard as I could push the button to close the door. The last glimpse I got of the mirror was her shaking her head. What an asshat.

Asshat? Seriously?

SHUT. UP. BRAIN.

It was 8:30, I didn’t even bother getting anything to eat. I’d stop by the cafe later if I wanted anything. Instead I went right to the library and started reading like mad, again. I found a very nice book.

The Rather Large Book of Science Indexes:

Written by: Ash Tree Willows and Cold Front

Published: 2073

Well, that was fairly recent. Technically. Seeing as there probably wasn’t any publishing of anything that went on for at least the three decades following the war. The title wasn’t kidding, it was just a directory on every single science I could image; specific fields, studies, and where to go learn all these possible types of science was included. Ash Tree Willows apparently graduated from the University of Western Manehattan. Sounded fancy.

I found a few entries within the book saying there were complete courses you could learn simply out of a book. It was dependant on how well you could learn from just reading, but I highly doubted they were just books of text explain a field from it’s most basic foundations to the most complicated arcs and finite differences. I found an entry where it cited one of such books. The book was called Firearms and Ammunition. I would have done a library search for it, but I was a bit preoccupied. It was a complete guide to how guns worked. The only guns I was aware of was the 9mm that the security could, if all else failed, arm themselves with. That was only after trying all non-lethal measures first. I’m sure what I had done over the last half-decade was enough to get me tazed twenty times over, but shot? I had no idea.

I didn’t even know how a gun worked for that matter. I knew what it did. Just not sure how to use it. Our security force used a magnetized attachments on their dominant hoof to wield their baton sticks, similar to Engi’s throwing device. But the pistols? I wasn’t sure how they made those work.

I was in the middle of the library directory when I became aware that distant background hum had died out. Could it be? We got a Stable wide announcement. Of course it was the Overseer.

“Would Copper Ingot and Silver Wind please report to level 4 immediately.”

Yes! The reactor finally gave out again. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be that happy.

Yes, the reactor finally gave out again. There that’s better.

I snapped the book shut, and left the library. I had left my saddlebags in the library, so if I could start running out stuff upto level 1, it was there to help. I wasn’t able to get my hooves on another saddlebag set unfortunately.

At the top of the staircase I shut my PipBuck light off, but then realized I needed it and flipped it back on again. I had also started a 20 minute timer. 20 minutes until the secondaries kicked in and the lights came back on. Something also reminded me that my horn might go haywire again. I prayed it wouldn’t.

Reporting to level 4, with my PipBuck light glowing at full power, I had 17 minutes until the secondaries came back on. Engi was already there, working on the reactor. So was the Overseer.

“Ah, there you are.” Engi said, awhile I trotted into the room.

“I would have got here sooner boss, and ma’am. But security upstairs was giving me a hard time.” That was an outright lie, “They seem more jerky than usual. No offense ma’am. I’m not sure why.” That was partially the truth.

The Overseer looked at me, I tried to look as innocent as possible. I actually think she bought it.

“So what’s seems to be the problem this time?” I asked.

“I’m not entirely sure. I’m running a diagnostic as we speak. But I need you to go assemble my tools for me and then get back here. I was talking to Cross when the announcement was given.” He explained, “It should take about 15 minutes for this diagnostic to complete. Actually you know what? It’s going to take that long anyway, lets both go.” Engi said. We were all standing there in the darkness, minus the PipBuck lights. The Overseer’s eyes were darting between both of us.

“Ma’am.” Engi said as he trotted by her, “Come on Dakota, lets go. We’ll be back.”

The Overseer nodded her head. She didn’t say anything.

We took the stairs back up to level 3, the elevator was dead. Once we got back, we were in the east wing. Engi made sure no guards were around.

“Here’s your chance get going. You’ve got 14 minutes.” Engi barked, quietly, but barked none-the-less, “Oh and you’re going to need this.” Engi took his saddlebags off.

I took off, headed straight for the south wing. Engi’s saddlebag on my back. It was bigger than mine for sure. I might be able to store more than one generator in each side of the bag. I didn’t bother pushing the bag through the vent when I got to the library, but instead I loaded up mine inside of the library with two generators, pushed that through the vent, then pushed 4 other generators through the vent. By the time I was fully loaded with 6 generators (and they were heavy) I had 9 minutes to get up to level 1. I chose to go through the west wing. Less security, more of a clean shot. It was 13:12 when I got to the top of the staircase, so Oliver wouldn’t be out on patrol. When I got to the top of the staircase, I had 8 minutes.

Through the Hub, I found a group of ponies, all talking together in their circle of light they had created, I assassinated my PipBuck light before I even got to the top of the staircase exiting the library. I crept through the Hub unnoticed. I wasn’t sure how much time I had left. Through the west wing I went. Both of the guards I saw talking to each other down one of the corridors off of where I needed to get to the staircase.

I pulled the door release to the staircase opening. Now I could relax. I checked my PipBuck, 5 minutes before power came back on. Getting up the stairs would be the problem, these bags were incredibly heavy. I had taken the liberty of removing the lamp portion from the generator, but still MF cells were incredibly heavy en-masse. Or maybe it was because the housing was made out of solid aluminum flashlight casings. Yes, this Stable had a LOT of broken flashlights. That may or may not have been my doing.

Up the stairs I went. Past level 2, level 1! This was the first time I had been up here. I pushed the door button. Nothing happened. Right, no power in the switch. I hit the manual release. The door sprang open. There was a security camera right next to the door, I looked at it from outside it’s field of view. Not being stupid on this one. The red flashing dot which would have indicated it was on, wasn’t doing anything. I prayed security was actually off. I knew the power to this level was permanently off, but I didn’t doubt the Overseer’s fanatics. I kept tally in my head, not including the 3 I have in the library powering terminals, there’s 8 more after these 6.

Level 1 was... lonely. It looked like nopony had been up here in forever. I had memorized the blueprint. Take a left from the west staircase, then a right at the second turn. Keep going, first door on your left. I had a little over 2 minutes left. I trotted along, I had turned my PipBuck light on to its lowest setting. I passed the second corner. That’s when it occurred to me.

This has been too easy. Not even guards in the stairwell? No security locks on the door to level 1? The button wasn’t powered, but the manual release worked fine.

Ah, powered lock. Shut down in emergency mode when power went out. Not even the security guards could get past that. That meant we would have to bust out DURING a power outage so we could open the door with the release.

Hey, you know what that powered lock also means? It’ll shut AND lock the moment power comes back on.

Fuck.

I took off, little bit more than a minute to go. I had already turned down hall to the Vault Door. The door was closed. I pulled the release lever, it hissed open. This one opened on hinges, rather than retracting into the ceiling, and it opened outwards into the hallway, which was odd. 1 minute to go.

There it was. The Vault Door, I, I mean Stable Door. This terminology was getting frustrating. But there it was, the Door. I turned my PipBuck light up to full power. I stared in awe. It was HUGE. Solid metal two feet thick protecting from the outside. Wherever the door lead too.

The room containing the Stable Door, there was a tiny set of stairs leading down to the Stable Door, the arm waiting to move in pull it inwards, and then off to the side was on the right side of the room. To the left was a booth.

There it was! The Door Control Terminal. Sitting there, waiting to be told the three passwords. The only thing stopping me from freedom was a little over half my height of metal.

Rules were made to be broken.

Likewise, doors were meant to be opened. I’d get you open soon enough. I thought to myself.

*Beep Beep*

That would be my thirty second notification. I dumped the contents of the saddlebags off to the side off the room, by the arm control console, not too violently. I didn’t just come up here to bust all 6 generators I brought with. Well, they weren’t really generators. Just a bunch of batteries. Well, energy cells... in series.

You’re wasting time!

I pulled the door shut. Pushing the lever back up into locked position. With two saddlebags on my back, I galloped as hard as I could for the exit staircase. I got through just as the secondary power came on. The door snapped shut.

So I guess not everything was unpowered on level 1 after all. From the sound it made, I looked like that could take your head off if you got caught in it.

Back down the stairs to level 3. My initial relief was replaced with stress once again, when I realized I had to evade patrols, and not look suspicious. I made my way back to the maintenance office. It was 13:25 when I got back to the maintenance office. Engi was there.

“Mission accomplished?” He asked.

I nodded, large grin on my face. “Yes.”

Engi saluted me. That was a first.

“I’ve been here gathering up tools. Lets get them into the bags, and back down to level 4 before the Overseer comes-a-knocking.”

Engi loaded me up. I was already carrying the bags. Then I took the toolbox in my mouth. We set off for level 4. The lights had came back on when the secondaries started up.

“Where would this place be without the secondaries?” I asked.

“In a hole, dying. Probably.” Engi said very bluntly.

I laughed. He was probably right. And the reality was, we were in a hole. Dying.

We spent the next few hours getting the manes back up. Core 4 decided it was going to have a bad day and overheat. One of the coolant intakes had become blocked. It wasn’t surprising. ‘Coolant’ was just water we pumped up from the aquifer underground. I had no idea how contaminated the groundwater was, what was in it. Opening the pipe leading into the core revealed nothing until we put a snake down it, 200 feet down there was a huge blockage of calcium. It was slightly radioactive. We opened up the rest of the pipes, just to be sure nothing else was on the verge of blocking. Core 6 was pretty stopped up. That wasn’t a mechanical fault, it was a system compromise, at least according to Engi.

Sometimes I thought he just made up these terms to sound more impressive. Not that he actually needed to impress me. Engi told me I could take the rest of the day off. So I went to the library, not like there was anything else better to do.

I sat there in the library. It was peaceful. It was mine. I was running through this whole plan in my head. I started considering things I hadn’t put much thought to before.

In the 5 or so years I had been working with Engi, the manereactor was just the worst of the problems. This piece of trash broke down once a month. Our water purifier was in good repair, but the pipes that bored into the earth and pumped water up, were not. They were made from cast iron, but even that rusted and broke down eventually. Throw 200 years of aging into the mix and you’ve got a recipe for disaster brewing right there.

This Stable was living on borrowed time. It was just how many problems it could throw at us before we got to something we absolutely could not fix. The thought scared me. Because the chance of that happening was becoming a bigger possibility with every passing moment. The Stable becoming just a little bit more unsustainable. We wasted water, I admit it. It went to everything. We pushed our manereactor WAY to hard. No thanks to that damn suppression device on level 5, even with level 1 completely shut down save the doors in the stairwells.

I don’t think Engi was wanting to get out because of the prospect of starting a new, fresh, sustainable life, using a B.U.C.K.E.T, I think it was more about getting away from this shoddily-fixed on a daily basis, unsustainable lifestyle we Stabledwellers took for granted. What happened when the De-Radifiers broke, as in pooched, kaput, that repairing it no longer required just some TLC, Tender Loving Care, but instead was a TLC as in Totally Lost Cause.

Engi was breaking out because everypony turned to him when something broke. I think it was more about him not wanting to get back-lash when one of our vital systems could no longer be repaired. At least, that’s what I thought. He told me a few times.

“Dakota, nothing is ever fixed. It’s only repaired until it breaks again. The only time anything is fixed is when it’s fresh out of the box. And that don’t last long.”

The secondaries wouldn’t last forever, every moment they were on, was a moment closer they got to breaking. And even when they weren’t running, they were still aging. This Stable would fail... at some point. I think Engi just didn’t want to be around to see it; and to be honest, neither did I. I didn’t want to be around for that time where Engi told the Overseer there was no way of possibly repairing something that we needed to live. I didn’t want to be around to witness all the faces in worry when the word got out we were down to the wire because the Stable’s maintenance crew couldn’t fix something.

I didn’t want to be around, when I looked my brother in the face and told him that we were screwed because I had failed somehow. I didn’t want to fail. I wouldn’t let myself do it. Failure was not an option.

But it would happen eventually. Something would fail, and we wouldn’t be able to make it work again. And I intended to be LONG gone before that happened. So what if I was abandoning the Stable? This Stable was a totally lost cause, like 15 years ago. Before I was even born. I mean who designs a Stable without spare parts? What the hell are we supposed to do...

We were supposed to leave in 2277, it was 2281 now. This Vault was well overdue for its expiry date. This place had been running for over 200 years. It was a wonder this place was working at all! Not counting the construction time, which was at least 2074 when we got the message that this Stable would not be getting a B.U.C.K.E.T.

Stable 8 and 21 did though. Or at least they were supposed to. That would be my first objective upon leaving. Myself and Engi would travel to either one of those, enter through any means necessary.

What’s necessary isn’t always what’s right.

That was the thought middle Dakota had left me with when I shut slammed the bathroom door. I didn’t care right now though. I just wanted out. I wanted freedom. To see the sun with my eyes, well not actually. You couldn’t look at the sun. But I wanted to see daylight, not this simulated compact fluorescent that broke down once a year. That was another thing. We were running out of lightbulbs. So it wasn’t fair to say we didn’t have spare parts. What was more accurate was that all our spare parts, were used.

We were running out of a lot of things. This Stable was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. This Stable was fortunate to be installed with food/waste recycling systems. We grew our own. We just had to return everything afterwards back to the soil.

Yes, EVERYTHING. And fortunately that was covered by the janitorial department. Not maintenance, thank Celestia on that one. Besides, all the stuff we had to do on a daily basis in maintenance, we didn’t have time to deal with everypony’s shit... LITERALLY.

I’m sure that wasn’t the entire story behind the janitorial department. But that was the one thing that stuck out in my mind. (Because I had been worried about that when I had been assigned to Engi all those years ago)

Right now we were just waiting for another chance to move more supplies up to the first floor. The first time, minus the time constraints was pretty easy. And I’m not sure if it had been too easy or not. I wasn’t sure I could make that call at this time. But I was on my guard, I had no idea what the Overseer had up her sleeve.

Yet again, I didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out. Everything came down to time.

It was the one thing you couldn’t: Borrow, steal, buy, or otherwise acquire more of when you need it on your side the most. I was quickly learning that lesson. If that had been the case, then we would have been out of the Stable long ago. But here I am, half a decade’s work and counting. For all the garbage I’ve had to go through up to this point, I deserved like, a party with... streamers, and a... a.... a cannon. Yeah! A cannon that shoots confetti!

Good job, Dakota. Yet again, time efficiency: 0%

Nice try, Brain. You’ve already pulled that one. You’re not going to get me on that note twice.

The only difference between you and the Overseer is that she’s trying to keep ponies in the Stable, and you’re trying to get out.

WHAT?! Do NOT even so much as compare me to that lying piece of, fear mongering, pathetic... I am NOT the Overseer. I don’t lie to ponies to keep myself in a position of power. The Overseer’s word is law here. And what do I get from her? Fucking, her staring at me, plotting, waiting for me to slip something up.

You know, if we had a symbol for the door every time I made you fly off the handle, you would have been out, like three years ago.

Okay, that’s probably true. My mind wandered everywhere. I thought to myself, and in the end I always ended up getting mad at myself. Everything I did took time, it was like I was... failing myself. Never good enough, if only I was faster. If only I was faster I could have made more trips in that twenty minute window I had to move supplies.

If only I had been faster, I wouldn’t have had to tell Shade that fraction of what I know. I wouldn’t have ran into him. If only I had been...

Now you’re just beating yourself up.

WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Um... yours?

Faceplant. I smashed my head into the book I was reading. I immediately looked up to make sure the book was alright. I didn’t care that I had probably just got a nosebleed. I wiped a hoof across my muzzle, then across my face. It didn’t feel like blood.

We’d probably be waiting another fortnight, maybe a month, before the reactor cut out again. Time to play the waiting game. For the billionth time. Until that time, it was time to read. Read, read, read.

One day, a couple weeks later, I decided to choose and aisle at random and take a book out of it. I did so a few times until I found something interesting. I was in H aisle.

Hunter’s How To: A Guide To Everything Hunting Related.

Written by: Forest Hunter and Sandy Shades

Published: 2056

I read through the book. It really did cover EVERYTHING, non-lethal traps for game. I guess game was their term for ‘Something we’re gonna eat later.’ Ponies could eat meat? I wasn’t aware of that. I thought we were herbivores. Basics on keeping yourself hidden, best ways to track without making yourself stand out. Their lethal traps I wasn’t a big fan of. I mean, who thought of a bear trap that had lethal poison on the tips of the teeth.

Or better yet, shotgun auto-triggers. Pull a line that pulls the trigger. That was... completely monstrous. From the depiction in the book, whatever a shotgun was, it looked a HELL of a lot meaner than the 9mm pistols that Security could use.

A couple days later I was talking to Engi.

“Look, the next time power goes out. Don’t even bother reporting to wherever the Overseer calls us too. I’ll tell her I said you could take that day off. Just move things. Try and get two runs done the next time around.” Engi ordered.

I simply nodded. We were dependant on the reactor breaking down. What happens when it broke down permanently. Secondaries could come on and stay on. Then we wouldn’t be able to even get onto the first level of the Stable. The thing I was worrying about was the particle field emitters. We had two of them, 5 feet tall each. Moving those wouldn’t be simple. Those would either go first next time around or last. I was thinking doing them first. Get it out of the way. I wasn’t sure what Engi was planning on doing with them. I got that they were to keep ponies out of places. Specifically they were so that nopony could touch the mane reactor. I wonder where he got them.

He said he “Whipped” them up. I was assuming stole.

“What are we supposed to do with the shields?” I asked.

“Which way does the door to the Stable Door Room open?”

“10 minutes? Oh that should be plenty. But is there enough gas in tanks it for that?” I asked.

“Sure hope so.” The frame for the field was too big for me to fit through the vent to the library. So it was one of the things we had to keep here. Any food we had stole earlier had gone bad already. That was awhile ago. Another thing we’d have to do before the break out. Steal a bunch of food.

“So I’m gonna move for level 1 with these, and then during the next blackout, you’ll steal food and then we’ll meet back up on level 1?”

“That’s the plan for the moment.” Engi said. I could tell he was worried, but he was pretty good at hiding it. “But if we can do it all in the next run, all the better.”

I still had 8 more generators to move as well. If I could do three trips (the field emitters Eni had probably yanked out of a closet somewhere and repaired plus the 2 runs I’d need for the generators) next time around, we wouldn’t have to wait for another blackout to finishing moving supplies. Unless Engi had a way for me to move all eight simultaneously, without being overly bulky, heavy, noisy, or otherwise conspicuous.

The timer to the next breakdown was already counting. By any luck it would happen within the month. But I had to be realistic with my expectations.

“If I can get the field emitters up there next run, I’ll be happy. And if I can squeeze in a run of generators, I’ll do it. But we’re going to have to wait for at least two more break downs.” I announced.

“Okay, that sounds like a plan. If I’ve ever heard one.” Engi was a very patient pony, “So do you wanna play a game in the mean time?”

“Sure, which game is that?!” Engi was normally really busy. I jumped on the opportunity to actually have some recreational fun. Wait, this could be a ploy for another one of his experiments.

“You get to play the waiting game.” He smirked at me.

My eyebrows slanted down. Ears dropped a bit. What sucks is your friends always know how to annoy you.

“Ha, ha. Very funny.”

“Or you can help me with this project I’m working on...” He started.

“Nope! I am FINE with the waiting game.” I spat out. Before I cantered out of the office. I went back to the library. I wanted to read as much as I possibly could.

You should probably pack some things for the trip.

It had taken so long to lay the groundwork for our escape that hadn’t even passed my mind. I had so many loose ends to deal with.

You don’t even know where you are on the planet, or if the environment is different. Take that into account.

Fair enough. Good thing our Stable Uniforms were warm. I’d have to pack a few. I think had like, 4 of them? One with red stripes, yellow, green, and orange. White and yellow was stock, but Engi had made his own dyes so I didn’t see any problem in well, changing the white to a different colour. Everypony was just a robot down here, no different from anypony else. Save personality. I bet if the Overseer had it her way, we’d all just be copies of a single template that actually listened to her. That would be ideal... for her.

Your father helped her ascend to the position. You can’t trust him.

I am well aware of that. Else maybe I would have told him, didn’t tell my brother either, or my mom. That’s all my family right there. From what I had heard, Engi fought hoof and tail against the elected position of our current Overseer when the old one died. Maybe he just didn’t like her. But I had done some poking around in the archives. Copper Ingot was the last Ingot in the entire Stable. My family, the Winds on the other hoof had spread out to three other families here in the Stable, not sure why Ingot’s family was dying out.

What I didn’t entirely agree with was, when somepony died, they were cremated and their ash was used to help grow new food. Questionable Ethics at it’s finest right there. I sat there in the library up on a stool reading a book on a desk, with my generator light shining so I could read, pondering all this in my head. It was peaceful. And that’s what I did for the next few weeks.