Fallout Equestria: Mothership Eta

We walked right into an ambush.

All right, technically it wasn't an ambush, since we weren't being attacked. But it easily could have been an ambush. Except for the fact that the humans confronting us were unarmed. And seemed to be more surprised by our appearance than we were by them. But "ambush" just sounds so much more exciting than "couple of humans sitting on benches in a small, circular room."

“Vi estas invadanto?” one said.

“What did you say?” asked Dew, stopping in her tracks in front of me. “Sorry, I don’t know that language.”

"He was asking if you’re invading us,” said the other.

"Uh, no?" This was not the sort of reception I had expected.

"Good,” the second human continued. “Paul, you handle this. I got a date with some ice cream back in my cabin." She spun away from us and trotted towards the exit.

"What?" responded the other human, apparently named Paul. "You saw the alert first, protocol says you deal with them!" And Paul could apparently speak Ponish.

The first human's only response was to raise her arm as she walked, with what appeared to be her central finger extended.

"Malĉastino," Paul said to himself. “Fucking Trish.”

"Um, hi,” Dew nervously interjected. “I'm Dewdrop, and this is Rusty. Are you an Engineer?"

"Yes, hi, welcome to Engineering. Look, I'd rather not spend any more time than necessary dealing with a couple emissaries. I've got places to be, and I'm sure you do too. Let me get your info real quick, and then I can send you off to someone who actually cares.”

The patronizing tone was depressingly familiar from my time in the wasteland. I was tempted to call upon my shock stick buddy to hurry things along, but that would run contrary to my new status as a reformed savage. Civil behavior really sucked sometimes.

“What faction are you, and why are you here?" he continued, ignorant of my internal debate. He pulled what looked to be a small notepad out of his pocket.

"We aren't really in a faction, I don't think," Dew answered, glancing over to me. "Did we ever get invited to one?" I shrugged in response. That wasn’t the sort of thing I’d pay attention to anyway.

"Look, it's very simple," Paul told us. "Whatever group you got sent to after they took you out of your cell, that's what faction you're in. Now who was it?"

"Well, that's the thing," I told him. "They didn't exactly take us out of our cell. We sort of broke out on our own."

Paul blinked a couple times, looking at me like I had just told him magic didn't exist. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"We… broke out of our cell?"

"Feke. I was hoping I'd heard wrong." Paul stepped over to a terminal recessed into a nearby alcove. He began muttering to himself as his fingers tapped at the keyboard. "Perfect. I finish my shift, I'm a minute from hitting the bar, and we get the first intruder alert in years. And of course Trish takes off first chance she gets. So now I get to deal with all this myself."

"Sorry," Dew said. "We can find some other Engineer if it's not your shift. I know how much it sucks picking up somepony else's work."

Paul sighed in response. "Believe me, I’d love to do exactly that. But that's not how things are supposed to work around here. Trish may not care about proper procedure, but I do. The Sup can deal with her work ethic."

"The Sup?" Dew asked.

"Short for superintendent. He's the top Engineer here in the core."

That sounded promising. "When can we meet the Sup?" I asked. "He sounds like the exact human we need to talk to!"

Paul angled his head to face me. Damn, it was still so unsettling to see their necks pivot like that! "One thing at a time. Still need to get you registered here before I can send you where you need to go next."

"We need to go see the Sup."

"I get that, but there are steps to go through first. After I get your information entered, the ombudsman needs to approve it. Then you need to get an exception for an unscheduled arrival. Until that goes through, you won't be allowed out of the intake area. Shouldn't take more than a few days."

"A few days?" I blurted.

"Then, of course, there's the whole 'escaping' part to deal with," Paul continued, ignoring my interruption. "That'll add at least a couple more days while our Faction Relations Coordinator figures out… something, I'm not exactly sure what. After she clears you, then we can see if the Sup has any appointments available. He's on stress leave this week, so he'll be booked solid for a while. And somewhere in there we'll have to run the general health and wellness check, but that can be done while you're waiting for the Sup's schedule to open up. After, of course, you get your lower deck permit; the doc can only perform examinations on level forty-eight. All told, I'd estimate about three to four weeks, minimum, to get a meeting with the Sup."

Most of what Paul said after my first outburst had gone in one ear and out the other, but I could definitely understand that last bit. "Are you seriously expecting us to sit here with our hooves up our asses for four weeks? We don't really need to do all that shit, do we?"

Paul's expression shifted to one that suggested I had personally insulted every single one of his ancestors. "Oh, of course, pony," he said, throwing more scorn than I thought a single creature could contain into that one word. "Let me just skip over every single step in the procedure. We've only been using it for centuries. You two obviously know better than the entire Engineering section. In fact, why don't we get rid of all our repair procedures too? It's not like they're the only thing that’s kept this ship running for a thousand years!"

"All right, do your stupid procedures," I told him. He gave me a final shake of his head and turned back to the terminal. "Just saying, there's a more direct way," I said, mostly to myself.

Dew sidled up to me and laid her foreleg on my shoulders. "I think I know why the Tragicians didn't want to do this themselves," she whispered to me. I chuckled bitterly and nodded in agreement. "We have these types in the Enclave too," she continued. "Heavens help you if you need something from them. They'd rather let you starve than do one step of their precious procedure out of order."

"Of all the things wrong with the Wasteland," I whispered back, "I'm glad we at least don't have to deal with this type of horseshit down there."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Dew replied with some amount of whimsy. "That Tenpony Tower place you mentioned? I'd give you hundred to one odds you'll run into the same thing there. Ponies that have no idea what it means to work for a living love getting caught up in procedure. They probably think a ‘shortcut’ is located right next to the tenderloin!”

“That sounds... depressingly accurate.” Shit. That’d be something to consider before making the final choice to move there. Although... “On the other hoof, rules don’t apply to you if you’re rich enough. I’ll just have to make sure I’m in the top tier of wealth before settling down there.”

“That’s… also depressingly accurate.” Dewdrop sighed. “I may have to steal your ‘selling weapons’ idea. Get my settlement some clout on the Council for once.”

“Hey, what did you say your names were?” Paul’s question cut into our shared commiseration.

“Rusty Rivet and Dewdrop?” Dew replied.

“That’s what I thought.” Paul slid away from the terminal and motioned to the screen with his hands. “You mind telling me how your names are already approved for a meeting with the Sup?”

We took Paul’s place at the terminal. I didn’t notice at the time, but the terminal’s text was entirely in Ponish, not the alien script we had seen previously. Sure enough, our names were listed as the Superintendent’s next scheduled meeting.

“Huh. I guess we did get approved and forgot to tell you?” Celesta, I prayed, please let him believe that. I knew my persuasion skills were shit, but there was a slim chance he wouldn’t question my lie.

Paul looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “You expect me to buy that?”

“...Yes?”

“No.” Dammit, Celestia, you failed me again. “I’ve listened to plenty of bullshit excuses, but that was the worst attempt I’ve ever heard.” Paul locked the terminal, then strode towards the entrance to Level 46 proper. “You two stay here. I’m sealing you in this room while I find out exactly what’s going on with your fake appointment.”

“Locking us in?” Dew interjected indignantly. “How long do you expect us to stay here?”

“You’re free to go back to the Analyst levels if you want,” Paul told us, as he stepped through a sliding glass door and tapped on an object on the other side. The door slid closed behind him and he continued speaking, his voice now coming from a set of speakers above us. “In fact, I would encourage it. Protocol only ties me to you while you’re in our turf. Once you leave, you’ll be someone else’s problem.”

I mimed taking an enormous cock in my mouth as he turned to leave us. I would definitely be staying in this room, if only to piss him off even more. What a shithead. In any case, there was still the question of what our names were doing on an alien screen. Again.

“So, Rusty, any idea how we got that appointment?” Dew was apparently pondering the same things as me. “I know we didn’t actually forget about ‘getting approved.’ Really? That was the best you could come up with?”

“Don’t you start with that shit too.” She grinned and gave me a wink. “All right, you’re forgiven. But I can think of somepony who isn’t forgiven.” I turned to the terminal and yelled, “Pinkie! Get your poofy ass out here!”

“You think she was responsible?” Dew asked.

“Unexplained shit going down? Fuck yeah I think she’s responsible.”

“Dusty Divot! I thought I told you not to use that type of language!”

The text on the terminal’s login screen shifted to coalesce into a rough approximation of the pink pony’s face.

“Yeah, I think it’s justified when you ignore my explicit order!”

“Wait,” Dew cut in. “Pinkie, you’re able to use this terminal too?”

“Well, sure! I’m still trying to see just what I can connect to, the network is in really rough shape! But getting into this one was easy-peasy! And of course I tried this one first, I didn’t want to lose track of my two new friends!”

The idea of a psychotic pony keeping tabs on us until we finally left this Celestia-damned ship was not particularly appealing. We could basically wave goodbye to any semblance of privacy, especially considering her history following orders. Speaking of which…

“Don’t change the subject! Why did you suddenly decide to forget what I told you?”

“Wait, what did I forget?”

For an image composed entirely of Ponish letters and numbers, it did a surprisingly good job of conveying surprise.

“Don’t play dumb. Did I, or did I not, tell you to check with us before trying to ‘help?’” I was pissed. I hadn’t expected her insanity to fuck with our mission so soon after we left her!

“Hmm, let me think…”

More text appeared, overlaying an oversized gray hat and curved brown object onto her stylized face.

“Why is she smoking a pipe?” Dew whispered to me. Okay, it was a curved brown pipe. Sue me, there aren’t many of those lying around in the Wasteland.

“So… if I’m remembering this right, there was a lot of boring talky stuff just after you made the analysts go boom. And Grungy was all ‘I don’t get it,’ and Drippy was like ‘Ha ha, I know what’s going on,’ and I went ‘BEEP BOOP I’M A COMPUTER!’ And then Busty said I couldn’t help unless he said so, even if I really wanted to! Yepperoonie, that’s exactly what you told me!”

“Then why, dear computer, did you ignore what I specifically asked you not to do?!”

“What? I didn’t ignore that! The only thing I ignored was the weird way you pronounce your M’s! You should get that checked out by the way, it’s probably cancer. But I haven’t helped you out, no siree!”

“Then how did an appointment with our names on it get created precisely when it would be most useful?”

“That appointment? It wasn’t created precisely when it would be most useful, it was found precisely when it would be most useful! And I had nothing to do with Paul finding it, honest!”

For fuck’s sake. I felt like I was on the verge of going insane myself. “The appointment was set up before we got here?!”

“Sure! Take a look at the timestamp! Here, I’ll pull it up for you!”

Pinkie’s face disappeared, replaced by the calendar Paul had shown us. The human timekeeping scheme was strange, but I could make out what looked to be a day, month and year. And comparing that to the appointment’s creation time…

“How was it set up a hundred ninety years ago?” Dew gasped. Smart ponies and their quick maths…

“If I had to guess, I’d say it was the Pinkie working with the Closet Bronies! Oh no! I’m sorry, Rushy, I didn’t mean to help without you telling me to! Just forget what I said about other Pinkie! And the Closet Bronies too, now that I think of it. Okay, the last twenty seconds never happened, deal?”

Another Pinkie? What did we get ourselves into?

It was finally just the two of us again. We had extracted promises from Pinkie -- Pinkie 37, since there was apparently more than one we were dealing with -- that she would continue to not “help” us unless asked, and just as importantly, to not contact us unless there were no witnesses. I had no idea what the humans would do if they found a 200 year old pony swimming around in their ship’s network. Better we keep our advantage, if we could call it that, a secret.

It felt like hours before Paul returned to us. I’m sure it didn’t take quite that long, but my previous strategy of passing the time by hacking seemed ill-advised in this case. For one, Paul wouldn’t be as willing to forgive my transgressions as the Tragicians were. Plus, I wasn’t going to risk Pinkie 37 infecting my hoof terminal. Despite her repeated promises, I still didn’t trust her. Anypony that unstable was capable of anything.

Paul announced his presence by once again calling through the room’s speakers. He was flanked by two muscle-bound humans, one taller than any human I had ever seen before, the other shorter, but still impressively built.

“Still here?" Paul's condescending voice reverberated through our surroundings. "Not like it matters much anyway, all I have to do is drop you off and I’ll finally be able to go on break.”

“Drop us off?” Dew shouted to the wall. “Does that mean we get to see the Sup now?”

The door slid open and Paul spoke directly to us. “Yeah. I don’t know how you did it, but we couldn’t find anything out of line with that appointment. And believe me, we tried.

“Follow me,” he ordered, beckoning to us. “Grandeco? Kranio? Sekurigu al ili. Teniĝu ilin proksima.” That last bit was to his companions, who fell in step behind us. Terrific. We were under heavy guard, but hey, at least we were moving again.

“I hope you two are happy,” Paul spat back at us. “My next shift starts in five hours, and if I want to get even close to enough sleep I’ll have to skip dinner. Fikantoj.”

We proceeded in silence through largely abandoned corridors, until Dew finally spoke.

“Paul, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Fekino… What do you want?”

“I was just wondering, do you know anything about closet bronies?”

“Closet bronies?” Paul stopped in his tracks and spun around to look Dew directly in the eyes. “Where the fuck did you hear about that?!”

“Um… I heard it from the Analysts?”

“Figures…” Paul turned back toward our presumptive destination, raising his voice to the level that anyhuman within two levels could hear. “I don’t want to hear you say those words ever again! I don’t care what the fucking Analysts think, we are not in the closet and we are not bronies!”

“Deĉenigio averto,” muttered one of our guards.

I had no idea what those words meant by themselves, but the tone indicated the guard was as annoyed with Paul as I was. I said one more quick prayer to Celestia over Paul’s ranting: “Please let the Sup be close…”

“...Just because we have ponies working with us doesn’t mean we're obsessed over them! We’ve got important shit to do! They’re here to help us, not so we can draw creepy art of them or get them in the sack! That's the most offensive shit I’ve ever heard! We can appreciate them without worshipping them! We focus on Engineering on these decks! Thats! It! If other factions can’t handle that, that’s their problem! Not ours! The shit we have to deal with…”