The Freelancers

“You’re joking.” Access grunted, liberating the pilots of their weapons. “There’s a Matterhorn look-alike after us now!?”

“He may look like him, but his personality is the vilest I’ve seen among corporate grunts.” Scarlet remarked thoughtfully. “I have no doubt Matterhorn could be cruel if he had to be, but he doesn’t strike me as the kind of stallion to gain a perverse sense of pleasure from it.”

“Raptor’s worse than that.” one of the pilots interjected. “You should’ve seen what he did to a cadet that refused to put a bullet in a dock workers head. To teach him a lesson, Raptor ripped the dock worker apart and made the cadet watch while he did it.”

“That explains the corpse, and why he didn’t take the key from their body.” Access sighed. “He didn’t need it, not if he can peel open ponies like someone does a can of kibble.”

“Access, what was on the chip Phantom threw you, did you check?”

“You’re welcome to slot a chip from the mare who betrayed us if you like.” Access said plainly, holding the chip out for her to take. “At best its a trace program, at worst, it’ll turn your brain into the consistency of pizza sauce.”

Star put her hoof up and pushed it away from her.

“Thought not.”

“We should leave.” Sheet Rock added. “Preferably before this Raptor stallion shows up again, I doubt he’d let us leave without a fight.”

“That’s not the thing you should be worried about.” one of the pilots said. “Rift City is on high-alert after Raptor’s stunt here, they’ll be watching the roads.”

“This far outside the city?”

“Take us with you, we’ll make sure they wont bother you.”

“Nope.” everyone said in unison.

“Seriously?” he shrieked. “If Raptor finds out we let you leave he’ll kill us!”

“Not our problem, we’ve had enough of liars today.” Sheet Rock said as she knocked the pilots out with a couple swift strikes from her SMG’s stock.

She looked to the others, and it appeared they lacked any sympathy for the pilots as well and they set about packing up their gear. They decided to pilfer a few souvenirs from the Crown’s supplies before they left, purely to pour salt in the Crown’s wounds.

Chief among the supplies just left around for anyone to take were several large bricks of plastic explosive and their detonators stacked up neatly inside a large metal crate, many of which had been partly emptied.

They surmised that this was what they used to breach the Arcology’s outer and interior walls, and the source of the rumbling they’d heard while deep underground.

Access figured they wouldn’t miss a few kilos of it, and eagerly packed some onto the van’s racks, which got a strange look from Star until he assured her that it was safe to throw around in its current state, as it can’t explode without being triggered by a detonator.

This did not make her feel any better though, since her “spot” in the van was right next to the stuff.

“Isn’t that an AV in the trees over there?” Access said, pointing out a dark shape in the treeline as he stepped out the back of the van. “Are you lot thinking what I’m thinking?”

“You want to use your new toys don’t you?” Sheet Rock chuckled, heaving a small crate of ammunition and assorted ordinance into the van. “Make it quick we need to go, everyone hurry up and grab what you can!”

Access dragged the last of the explosives over to the AV, which had gone unnoticed until now until the briefest glint of light reflecting off of its fuselage gave it away. If it was any later in the day or deeper in the treeline, he might well have missed it.

Access stuffed a couple bricks of plastic explosive in the engine nozzles, one under the access door and a couple more on top of the fuel tanks for good measure and linked them all to a detonator. Even if Access forgot to trigger the explosives himself, starting up the engines should reduce the AV to nothing but scrap metal, that is if he understood the instructions correctly.

Normally, explosives of this type were stable and could be shaped according to the desires of the user without any danger involved. In short, unless you used the detonator designed for use with this particular explosive, it was completely inert.

Despite this, the small instruction guide he had to hoof alluded to the fact that extreme heat could set off the explosives, such as an AV’s engine, which seemed to be completely unintentional and obviously something of a design flaw.

“Access, move it already!” Sheet Rock called from the van. “We’ve got more AVs in the distance!”

“Yeah yeah, okay!”

He finished up his task and dashed into the back of the van. Almost as soon as he slammed the rear doors closed, Sheet Rock floored the gas pedal. In moments the van was in motion and screaming onto a side road.

Access thought about hitting the button himself, but a thought formed in his mind. He held it out to Star who looked at it strangely, as if to question why he was giving it to her. There was a silent exchange of words and an understanding was shared between the two, and Star took the detonator, fiddling with the cover as she decided whether to actually use it.

“Want my advice?” Sheet Rock said suddenly. “Push the button, send them to hell.”

“I’ll have killed two ponies.”

“Ponies that would have killed us had they gotten the chance.” Scarlet corrected. “Nobody is innocent, not really, so you’re going to have to pick the decision you can live with.”

Star thought for a moment, then a small flash of anger boiled to the surface of her mind as she remembered what Raptor had done to Snowy. She flipped open the detonator’s safety cover, braced herself, and pushed the button.

The resulting fireball could easily be seen from the road, shortly followed by a bang of epic proportions. Larger trees bowed in the wake of the detonation’s shockwave while smaller trees and plants were uprooted and ripped apart.

“I wasn’t expecting that big of a bang.” Star said, a little rattled. “How much of that explosive did you use, Access?”

He grinned.

“Sheet, please stop driving like a maniac for one moment!” Scarlet barked, trying to steady a pair of binoculars on a partly open window. “Please, for the love of all that’s good, I’m trying to get a look at those AVs.”

“What’re they doing?” Star asked.

“Circling around the results of allowing Access near high-explosives.” Scarlet chuckled. “Looks like they’re dropping troops, and one… oh dear.”

“What?”

“Take a look for yourself.”

Star snatched the binoculars from Scarlet’s grasp and peered through the scuffed and dirty lenses for a brief moment, nearly dropping them in the process. Perhaps two dozen troopers had been dropped into a very literal hot zone, each of which looked like they were walking into a battleground.

A heavy multi-legged combat Mech was the last to be dropped, bristling with enough anti-personnel weapon systems to reduce any organic obstacle in its way to a bloody lump of meat. It’s pilot moved like they were just looking to be given an excuse to use them.

“Drive.” Star said. “We shouldn’t tangle with them, especially that Mech.”

“Couldn’t agree with you more.” Sheet Rock nodded. “So what’s the plan, Rift City for the night, or the long way home?”

“We shouldn’t attract attention, we look suspicious enough as it is, and that’s without the explosives Access stole on board.”

“Plus whatever was on the chip Phantom gave us.” Access pointed out. “Whatever it is, it’s valuable enough to warrant sending in a kill squad after us.”

“I know that poking our noses into things is the entire reason why we’re in this mess, but we have to know just what was so important for Phantom to do what she did.” Sheet Rock said, scratching the back of her head. “I know Phantom and she wouldn’t just turn on us like that, at least not without a reason.”