Fallout Equestria: Mothership Eta

I tried not to look too smug as Dewdrop turned towards me, a shocked look on her face. “Rusty? What happened?”

“Security lockout,” I lied. “I must have tripped something when I tried to access the door.” That's right, hon, not my fault at all.

Dewdrop’s eyes started to moisten. “No… He was so close to getting out!”

I turned away from the terminal and started to head down the hallway. “Rusty, where are you going?” Dewdrop called out.

“We’ve got to find a hiding spot before more of them show up!”

“We can’t just leave him!” she said, as tears started to blossom from her eyes.

“Dewdrop, it’s the wasteland. Death happens. Get used to it.”

“We’re not in the bucking wasteland!”

Dammit. If she got any louder they'd be able to hear her all the way in Manehattan! I had to calm her down quick. I just hoped my acting skills were up to the challenge.

“Dew, listen to me. There’s nothing we can do. I’m sorry he’s gone.” I totally wasn’t. “But he’d want us to make the most of our own escape.” No, he’d want to talk incessantly until we were inevitably discovered and recaptured. “We can mourn him later, but we need to go now!” Mourn. Right. I’d be doing my best to purge my memory of that obnoxious jackass.

“All… All right.” She gave a final sniffle. “Where are we going?”

Finally. “We need to get out of the immediate area and find somewhere to hole up,” I told her. I started galloping towards the T-junction at the near end of the hall. “Keep an eye out for ventilation ducts or service tunnels. We don’t want to be cornered, so side rooms are a last-ditch option.” I reached the junction just ahead of Dewdrop and craned my neck around the corner. Good, no aliens in either direction. I arbitrarily chose the left hallway, and continued my flight, assuming Dewdrop would follow.

I was nearly to the next junction when I heard Dewdrop shout from behind me. “Rusty, wait!”

"Dammit, not so loud!" I hissed. "The fuck do you…" She stood, pointing at a handle attached to a small hatch with some indescribable alien script above it. "Oh." How had I missed that? "Good catch. Is it unlocked?"

Dewdrop gave a small smirk in response and pushed the hatch with her hoof. Not even latched? Whatever these aliens’ goals were, security was not high on their priority list.

I galloped back over to her. "Dew, you’re a lifesaver!" I tried to give her a quick hug, but she shied away from it. Right, probably still torn up over Meadow. Note to self: avoid mentioning death around her.

“Sorry,” I told her. “Good find. Let’s go.” I reached my hoof up to push the hatch open.

*bzzz*

What? Why was my leg vibrating? I looked down and noticed the alien device attached to my leg lit up with text: Freight transport access point. Did it just translate the sign? Damn, this thing was useful!

“Rusty? What is it?”

“Our hiding spot,” I grinned.

The goddesses themselves couldn’t have given us a better find. The advantage of having such large captors was that this network of tunnels, too small for the aliens themselves to fit into, was large enough that we could trot comfortably if we kept our heads slightly lowered. And the width! Two cog railway tracks ran parallel to each other, each wide enough to fit us both side by side if personal space was no issue. Even when we ran into one of the transport carts coming our way, we were just able to step over to the other track. Compared to my times hiding in ruins from guards or raiders, this was absolute heaven!

We took a meandering path through the tunnels, avoiding any exits back to the alien-sized hallways, and eventually came to what looked to be a cart storage area: wide, high, dimly lit, with shelves of carts stacked floor to ceiling. I stopped in the middle of the room, far from any tracks. This seemed like a good enough spot to catch our bearings. “Dewdrop," I asked her as she stepped into the safe area beside me, "are you doing okay?”

“Better now,” she replied. “What are we doing? Is there a plan? We’re not just going to hide here forever, are we?”

“One thing at a time,” I said. I had been contemplating a basic plan during our trek to this safe haven, and now was a good enough time as any to share with my temporary partner. "We have a hiding place, so now we need to work on getting food and water. After that, some better weapons. I've never been much good with melee weapons, and I imagine there wasn't much call for them in this 'Enclave' of yours. Am I right?" She nodded in confirmation. "Figured."

"Weapons definitely need to be our next step," I continued. "Then we need to either find a map or do enough exploring that we have some idea where we’re going. That’s when we can think about getting out of these tunnels and finding a way off this damn ship!"

“All right,” she replied. “How do we get food and water?”

“Just wait,” I said. I trotted up to one of the tunnels entering the room and held my front hoof up to the sign posted beside it. *bzzz* Cargo: Provisions. First try! “Come on, Dew, this way!”

We followed the tunnel, stopping at every intersection to translate directions. I had lost count how many intersections we had passed, when I noticed Dewdrop falling further and further behind me. I glanced back at her. It was tough to tell in the dim light, but she looked worried. And… contemplative?

"Dew?" I called back. "Is something wrong?"

"Oh, um, Rusty?" It sounded like I had just snapped her out of a daze. "Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing.”

I stopped walking forward and turned to face her. “Dew, hon, right now we’re trapped in a facility filled with hostile creatures. If there’s something going on, you need to share it. We’re not going to make it far if you’re keeping things from me.”

“You're right, Rusty, I'm sorry,” Dewdrop replied. “I need to ask you: how long have we been walking?”

That was certainly an odd question. “I’d say about half an hour, why?”

“Rusty, we’ve been going in the same direction since we left our cell. I’ve kept track. And I know we’re not making the best time, but this is the biggest facility I’ve ever heard of! We’re not even to our destination yet! And like you said, there’s aliens that want to kill us all over the place! With how big this is, there have to be hundreds! What kind of chance do we have?”

She was intimidated. And she had good reason to be. Admittedly, I was intimidated as well, but unlike her, I had years of practice in dealing with that intimidation. The wasteland bred resiliency, and I had a lifetime of it saved under my coat. Well, I thought, time to share. A more competent mare keeping an extra eye out made my own chances go up drastically.

“Dewdrop, you’re right. We probably don’t have a prayer. But probably isn’t the same as definitely. Do you remember the list of tasks I shared with you?”

“I think so,” she replied nervously. “At least parts of it.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not giving you a quiz.” She smiled a little at that. Good, that meant she hadn't completely given up hope. I could work with this. “Those tasks had a purpose beyond getting us what we need to survive. They make it so we don’t have to look at the big picture. Finding food sounds a lot more doable than fighting off hundreds of aliens, right?”

She still looked unconvinced. “Dew, let me share a story with you.

“Once upon a time, I was a little tiny Rivet. A Rivetini. And I was a brave new scavenger, going out on my first solo expedition to the Whinnyapolis ruins. I was hoping to find something that would make me a fortune! Do you know what I found instead?” She shook her head. “Raiders. A whole crew. At least fifteen of them were using the collapsed school I was in as their camp. They showed up just as I had started filling my first saddlebag with loot.”

“This is the second time you’ve mentioned raiders,” Dewdrop interjected. “Am I supposed to know what they are?”

“I guess not,” I replied. “Raiders are gangs of the worst of ponies. They’ll attack anything that isn’t in their gang: traders, villagers, other raiders. Anything. They steal whatever they can get their hooves on. If you don’t have anything valuable you can give them, they’ll take you instead. Sometimes they’ll take you even if you do have something valuable. And being captured by a raider is the worst punishment the wasteland can throw at you. They’ll torture you, rape you, mutilate you. Even eat you. You can always tell their camps from the flayed pony carcasses strewn around. I was just too clueless at the time to recognize the signs.

“So I was hiding in a classroom behind a desk, scared shitless, with raiders patrolling the hallways around me. I was probably even more scared than you are now! But I knew the only way I would get out of that situation was if I did it myself. I had nopony to come rescue me. I set a goal: make it to the classroom doorway without being spotted. Once I managed that, I had a new goal: get across the hallway. It was small steps that slowly brought me closer to my escape.”

"And it worked, right?" she asked. "You escaped?" I looked at her incredulously. “Oh. Right. Of course you did. But was that it? You sneaked past all those raiders?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “Turns out I did have some outside help I wasn't expecting. Just as I reached a set of windows overlooking the street outside, I heard gunshots. I peeked out the window, and saw five of the raiders firing at a shielded creature in the sky. More of the raiders were rushing towards it, and as I watched, it begin to shoot magic back at them. It was a damn alicorn that just happened to appear right when I needed a distraction!”

“An alicorn?” Dewdrop’s mouth was agape. “You mean like one of the princesses?”

It was oddly refreshing to not hear those creatures referred to as goddesses. “Like the princesses, yes, but this one was pure green. Not actually a princess. Still looked pretty powerful though.”

“So the alicorn killed the raiders and let you escape?”

I laughed at that. “No, that alicorn got ripped to shreds! She looked powerful, but that shield of hers wasn’t worth a damn. They were just using crappy pipe weapons, but it was enough. She was only able to fire a few blasts at them before the shots took her head off! But she distracted the raiders enough that I was able to haul ass in the other direction and get back to safety!”

She looked a little queasy at that. Time to get back on track.

“The point is, I never would have made it to that window and realized I could escape without taking those foal steps first. That’s the secret of surviving in the wasteland. There’s always the chance today could be the day that you finally die, but you can’t control that. You need to focus on the small things that you can control. You keep making those small victories. Leave the big worries to the ponies that can do something about them.”

She visibly swallowed, then nodded. Nervous, but significantly less so. “I get it. Let’s keep pressing forward.”

I turned back around and proceeded to the next intersection. *bzzz* Left this time. “You know, what you said reminded me a lot of the Enclave,” Dewdrop continued. “Every once in a while there are these massive threats that pop up, but our mayor always says, ‘Keep doing your own work, support the Enclave the way you’re best at. Keep our soldiers going, so they can keep you going!’ And that’s exactly it! I can focus on farming, and our soldiers ooof!”

Dewdrop walked straight into my hindquarters, but I didn’t care. I was too busy staring at the rows and rows of stacked crates, extending far above me.

“Rusty, is that what I think it is?”

“Yep. We’re here.”

No signs of aliens anywhere near us. We broke into huge grins as we raced towards the nearest crate. I brought up my hoof device. *bzzz* Freeze-dried breaded fowl: ancient lizard shapes. Pass. The next one. Hilltop Condensation? No idea. The third. Grain noodles, dehydrated flavoring. Bingo! “Dew, I think I found something! Help me get this thing open!”

“Allow me,” she said as her horn lit up. The lid slid open. We raised our heads over the crate’s side and were greeted by an array of orange and white cylinders. “Perfect!” I exclaimed. “Now all we need is something to drink.”

“Ahem.” Dewdrop’s horn lit up again, and an identical glow appeared on the wall near where we had entered the room. The purest water I had ever seen was flowing from a spigot under the handle her magic was manipulating.

“Dew, I have no idea what I ever did without you!” A little false praise never hurt anypony. I would have seen that spigot on my own, easy.

I took a cylinder in my mouth and started trotting towards the water source. Dewdrop’s magic faded from the handle and lit up behind me as she presumably levitated her own cylinder out. Suddenly, I heard multiple thuds. I looked back and saw her still standing at the crate, surrounded by dozens of noodle containers.

Dammit, Dew, what the fuck happened to stealth? “Take it easy,” I called over to her. “There’s no need to get that excited!”

“Rusty?” She sounded concerned. “You better take a look at this!”

I returned to the crate and peered inside. I expected to see another layer of paper-covered containers. Instead, what greeted me was metallic. A collection of shock sticks, scaled-down versions of the cell turret’s emitter coil, what looked like alien-sized helmets: definitely not food!

This made no sense. I looked over to Dewdrop. She stared back at me. I finally found my voice: “What the fuck are weapons doing in the food supplies?”