Fallout Equestria: Mothership Eta

Weapons. Stored with food. The crate was clearly labelled, no mention of weapons anywhere. “This has to be some kind of crazy alien thing, Dew,” I told her. “I bet all their crates have weapons in them. Whatever messed-up minds they’ve got must’ve told them, ‘Hey, let’s combine the armory and the food supplies!’ But great, that’s another task checked off. Give me a boost and I’ll toss out what we can use!”

With Dewdrop’s help I clambered into the crate and inspected our find. Dew could certainly use a shock stick. I tossed one over the edge. The turret-looking things turned out, upon closer inspection, to more closely resemble energy weapons: pistols and rifles. I had only seen a few examples of such weapons in my lifetime, but I could definitely recognize the energizer coils and mouthgrips. The pistols were half the length of my body, but usable. There was no way anypony but a Steel Ranger could operate the rifles; they were far too big to use without power armor. A pistol for each of us went over the side.

The layer below was packed full of small oblong objects. Each one appeared to have two shiny dots on the top. Contacts? Were these batteries? I brought one over to the hole at the end of a pistol’s mouthgrip. Looked like a perfect fit. I slid it in, contacts first. It clicked into place and, with an almost imperceptible hum, lights along the weapon's body illuminated. Yep, definitely batteries. I filled the remaining pockets in my barding, and tossed a few out to Dewdrop as well. I ignored the armor. No way it could possibly fit us anyway.

I climbed back out of the crate to find Dewdrop staring down at the pistols with a concerned expression. “Rusty, are you expecting me to use these?”

“...Yes?”

“Rusty, I can’t! I’m a farmer, I never had weapons training!”

Weapons training. This mare… “Dew, almost nopony in the wasteland has any sort of weapons training. You don’t need to be an expert, you just need to know how to make it shoot. That part’s simple enough. You just hold --” I maneuvered the mouthgrip between my teeth “-- and fire!”

I tongued the trigger. Or at least I tried to. There was something in the way, something that certainly didn’t feel like a trigger. I released the grip. The fuck? Why was there a guard in front of the trigger? I couldn’t fit my tongue through it! And the guard was firmly attached to the casing, there was no way I could remove it!

Of course. Those fucking aliens and their tiny little digits. Those grabbers of theirs could activate the trigger just fine, but a pony tongue was just too fat to reach it!

“Okay, slight problem.” Dewdrop looked at me quizzically. “I’m actually not able to use this. You’ll be fine with your magic, but this gun will need to spend some quality time with Mister Hacksaw before I can do anything with it.”

“You want me to shoot a deadly weapon and you can’t even show me what to do with it? Are you insane?”

I'm getting there. “Dew, listen. If we ever get into a straight-up fight with these aliens, we’ll be slaughtered if all we have is melee weapons and your light spell. I can’t shoot this gun, and unless I find a way to get rid of this stupid guard, you’ll have to mare up and figure out how to use it.”

“Rusty…”

“Dewdrop. You may have been a farmer before, but right now you need to step past that. We don’t have any other options. There’s heaps of ammo, a nice isolated tunnel to practice in, and plenty of time to get used to it. I need you to be willing to pick up the gun and just try. Can you do that?”

She definitely looked fearful, but she slowly nodded in response. “Thank you, Dew. I can’t do this without you.” That was definitely a lie. I just needed something to get her to pull her head out of her ass. Almost made me wonder if working in a team was worth it. As soon as I got myself a gun I could actually use, I would definitely be reconsidering our partnership.

We brought our first meal back to the transport tunnel. There was always the danger of being run over by oncoming carts, but it was far less than the danger we faced if discovered by aliens. We ate in silence. Dew was focused on her food, but I noticed her occasionally sneaking glances over to the pistol I had taken with us. Was she warming up to the idea or eyeing it nervously? Celestia, I sure hoped it was the former.

I waited for her to finish the last of her noodles before approaching the subject again. "All right, Dew, it's crash course time. Let's get our learn on." She rolled her eyes, then gave a single nod. "Here, catch!" I tossed the unloaded pistol at her head, which she caught and turned over clumsily with her magic.

Wait. That wasn't clumsy at all! Was she sighting down the barrel? And did I just see the trigger move? I was suddenly grateful I had kept the pistol unloaded.

"Dew, I thought you said you had no idea how to use a pistol!"

"What? I never said that! I've never used a weapon, but this is just like the water guns we used to play with when I was a filly!"

"...what kind of guns?"

"You know, water guns!" She looked at me like she expected me to recognize the concept of combining water with weaponry. "...You don't know?" she asked disbelievingly. "…Plastic guns that you can shoot water out of? …What the hay did you play with as a colt?"

"Play? The only games I played were 'hide from the raider' and 'outrun the ferals' What the hay kind of fillyhood did you have?"

"Oh, it was great! Like with the water pistols, the pegasus colts would fly by and shoot me from above, and I would hide behind a cloud and ambush them when they landed! Things like that, with my friends! Are you telling me you never did anything fun?"

Fun. "Fun was for town ponies. My mom and I were never able to stay in town for long. And outside of town, you only worried about survival. No, Dewdrop, I never did anything fun." My tone was harsh, but I didn't care. Her poking was bringing me uncomfortably close to some dark memories I thought I had hidden away forever. Better to shut down this line of questioning, and damn the consequences. And if I lost my companion already? Fuck it. I had made it out of dire situations on my own plenty of times.

"Rusty, I'm sorry, I didn't mean… I just was… I… Oh, horsefeathers." I turned away from her and sank to my haunches. We both sat in silence for quite a while.

Dewdrop was the first to break the silence. "Um, Rusty?"

I suppose I had let her stew in her own mistakes long enough. I glanced over at her.

She broke eye contact immediately, then sheepishly raised her eyes to meet mine. "Do you think you could help me with target practice?"

"Yeah, Dew, let's get you set up." I tossed her a battery. "Load that in the mouthgrip and I'll head back and grab some targets. Don't shoot anything until I get back."

She nodded and started to insert a battery. The wrong way. "Contacts go in first, hon."

"Oh. Sorry…"

I trotted out of the tunnel and up to the noodle crate. The lid would make a big enough target, and there were smaller circular features imprinted on it that would work for more precise aiming. I took the lid in my teeth and dragged it to the tunnel's mouth. Surprisingly, even though it was longer and wider than both Dewdrop and I standing nose to tail, it wasn't particularly heavy. I absently wondered if it was cloud-based, like the technology I had once read about in a hacked terminal.

I propped the lid against the tunnel's opening. Hmm, it covered the exit pretty well. As long as no carts came through, we'd be completely hidden in here. Something to think about.

I returned to Dewdrop, who had miraculously managed to correctly load the pistol without ruining it. There were green lights arranged in mysterious designs at the grip end of the barrel, just the same as on mine. I held my hoof device up to it. …Nothing? Must be decorative.

"All right, Dew, I want you to take a few shots at that lid. Don't aim for anything in particular, I just want you to get a feel for the gun."

"Got it," she said, and squeezed the trigger. KRACKOW! A bright white beam emerged from the muzzle and impacted the lid. Right in the middle, I noticed. It's odd, I always thought energy weapons would have a more melodic sound. She fired three more times, each one hitting at nearly the same spot.

"Pretty good, Dew," I told her. Let's see you hit that top left circle. Same number of shots."

She fired again. Four shots, overlapping remarkably well from a distance of five lengths. "Not bad at all. Let's move back a bit and try for another area."

All that practice with the water guns must have been worthwhile. She wasn't what I would call a crack shot, not even close, but for a beginner she was quite competent. I just hoped her skill would hold up in actual combat.

"Rusty?" she asked. "A couple lights changed color, I think it might be an ammunition counter?"

I looked where she was indicating. There were five lights in a straight line, two of which were red. I knew there had been no red lights when the pistol first powered up. Let's see, two out of five lights, combined with maybe 40, 50 shots… "That thing's got a 100 round mag!"

"Is that a lot?"

"Fuck yeah that’s a lot! You’d never see that in a pistol, you’d have to get a belt-fed rifle for that! And even then you’d only be able to carry maybe three belts with you. Shit, I must have two thousand rounds in my pockets now!”

“So that means we can carry a lot more other things, right?” Okay, I was slightly impressed. She was picking up the basics of scavenging quick!

“You got it, Dew. I thought we’d have to use this area as a base and keep coming back here for food and water, but fuck, now, we can take all that shit with us!”

My scavver senses were going crazy. The amount of weapons and ammo in that one crate was astounding. If I could get that crate back to the wasteland, I’d be set for life. Shit, with how rare energy weapons were, I could build a house out of caps and still be able to retire! Maybe this alien abduction would work out after all!

“Come on,” I called out to Dewdrop as I turned back to the storage area. “Let’s head back to the cargo room and trade out these extra batteries for some snacks!”

We trotted back to the crate we had previously looted and exchanged most of our batteries for more noodle cups. I wasn’t particularly worried about our theft being discovered after the fact. With how gigantic this storage room was, the chances of one of the aliens checking this particular crate were practically nil. Even if they did, all the communications dating from wartime Equestria I had read indicated that any missing items would automatically be chalked up to profiteering or skimming. I had no reason to assume things would be any different here. Corruption was universal.

The one thing we still needed, though, was a way to bring water with us. Empty noodle cups wouldn’t work; there was no way to seal them back up after they were opened. I glanced over to the crate next to the one we had opened. What had that label said? Something about condensation? Would be worth a look.

I used my forehooves to slide the condensation crate’s lid to the back and peered in. Perfect! It was completely packed with green screw-top bottles filled with some kind of liquid. A little like Sparkle-Cola, except the bottles definitely weren’t glass. Were they using plastic to make these? And the caps were plastic too. Worthless. No trader in the wasteland would ever accept them.

I pulled a bottle out in my mouth and unscrewed the cap with my teeth. I was immediately hit with an overwhelming sickly sweet odor and I quickly placed the bottle on the ground. I sensed a taste slightly reminiscent of Rad-Away as well. Was this a magical potion? Those tiny bubbles forming throughout the liquid and racing to the surface certainly indicated so, but this was nothing like any potion I’d ever seen. Maybe alien potions were different, who knows what they were capable of cooking up.

“Dew, I think we’ll be able to use these to carry water with us. I don’t know what’s in them, but if we rinse them out well enough we should be able to get rid of the junk that’s in there now.” There was no way I would ever consider drinking this stuff. Anything smelling that sweet had to be deathly toxic, even if there were healing energies in it.

Dewdrop reactivated the spigot and we thoroughly rinsed out two bottles each. With the size of these bottles, we’d have enough water for days! I also took the opportunity to remove my barding and wash under the purest water I had ever seen. Dewdrop had remarked earlier that I smelled "utterly rank," and to be honest I wasn't going to pass up my first-ever opportunity to bathe in non-irradiated water. It was an amazing feeling, taking as long a time as I wanted under the admittedly cold stream, and even letting myself drink my fill. That was something I had had to train myself to avoid back in the wasteland. Radiation sickness was no joke.

Dew took a turn under the water after me. She honestly looked like a little filly, splashing and prancing around under the stream. Come to think of it, I doubt I had looked much different.

"Wow!" She was all smiles as turned off the faucet and shook herself off. "That's way better than a cloud bath!"

Cloud bath. “You’re going to have to explain some things to me, Dew. Are you saying you washed with clouds where you came from?”

“Well, sure! Liquid water isn’t all that common up in the clouds, and it’s mostly used for drinking or maintaining the stratus layer. But that layer’s under military control, so we’re stuck using the cumulus layer for crops and buildings, and any alto clouds we can grab for personal use. We usually can’t get much moisture out of them, though, and cirrus are way too high to bother trying to get. Yeah, liquid baths are the way to go!”

Smile and nod. There were way too many bizarre words in her explanation for me to bother trying to understand. Just accept that cloud baths were a thing, and move on.

“All right. Dew, I’m going to need to ask something of you.” She looked at me quizzically. “I’m actually pretty beat right now. I’ve been up for a while and I just need a quick nap before we move on. I don’t want to get run over while I’m asleep, so I’m going to have to sleep in this room. But that means I’m in danger of being discovered. I need you to stay here and keep a lookout for any aliens, and wake me up the second you think one might spot me. Got it?”

“Of course, Rusty! You’ll be safe and sound with Dewdrop on the job!”

Good filly. Wow, why was I so tired? I suppose five days of doing absolutely nothing would ruin anypony’s endurance. And I bet the sleep I did get was constantly interrupted by my asshole neighbor’s constant blathering. I hope he’s burning in Tartarus right now. I placed my barding on the floor as a makeshift pillow and fell fast asleep.

I woke up feeling remarkably refreshed. Dewdrop must have been watching for me to open my eyes, because she immediately bounded over and dropped something in front of my muzzle. “Rusty, look, I found you something!”

“Dew? What did you find?” All I could make out was a pair of handles.

“It’s a pair of shears! I know you said you weren’t able to shoot the pistol with that guard in the way, so I found something to get rid of it for you! Now we’ll both be able to shoot!”

That was certainly useful. And I wondered what other kinds of tools these aliens had. “Thanks, Dew. Where did you find these?”

“A few rows down. I didn’t have your hoof translator thing, so I had to check each box individually before I found anything. They have a lot of stuff here!”

That was probably an understatement. The amount of things they would need to keep a place like this running… wait. What did she say?

“You went a few rows down while I was sleeping?” What the fuck? “What happened to staying here and watching me?”

“I mean, I was still watching you, mostly. I peeked back every few minutes to make sure you were still okay, and I would have heard any aliens coming.”

“Dammit, Dew!” I wasn’t able to yell, but I made sure to lace my words with every bit of fury I felt. “If I tell you to watch over me, that means you fucking watch over me! You don’t go wandering off leaving me to be captured again while I’m asleep! Shit, you could at least have woken me up so I could go sleep in one of those crates, out of the way! Instead, I’m easy pickings for whatever alien decides to poke its head down this aisle! For fuck's sake, what were you thinking?”

She looked ready to cry. Good. This bitch was getting to be more trouble than she was worth. One more fuckup like this and I’d be leaving her to fend for herself.

“Rusty, I’m sorry!” And there came the tears. “After all the help you’ve given me, I just wanted to do something for you! I didn’t leave you, honest! Please don’t be angry, you’re the only friend I’ve got here!”

Friend? Hardly. “Listen. I’m going to sit here and get the guard off this pistol.” I gestured with my hoof. “You are going to stand in this aisle and keep a lookout. And I fucking mean it. No wandering, no nothing. You stand there until I tell you otherwise.”

“O...Okay, Rusty.” I turned away from her and took the snippers in my mouth. I could hear her occasionally sniffling behind me as I worked at cutting the trigger guard away. This is why I preferred to work alone. You just couldn’t trust anypony else to handle anything other than the simplest of tasks. But for something as easy as keeping watch? I’d worked with some sketchy ponies in the past, but they could at the very least handle watch duty. This mare was easily the most incompetent pony I’d ever partnered up with. I had a feeling the straw that broke the proverbial brahmin’s back would be arriving very soon.

The snippers were a useful tool, but I would have loved to get my hooves on a file. Sharp edges near mouthgrips were a great way to end up with a mouthful of blood. There was no way I was going to justify Dewdrop’s earlier actions by asking where she had found the snippers, though. I had done enough already just by accepting them. I did my best to work the remnants loose with the snippers, and I’d say I did a pretty bang-up job. I gave the trigger a test tonguing. Good to go.

“Dew, I’m finished working on this. I’m going to take a few test shots on my own, and then we can head out.”

“All right…" Her head was hung in shame. "Rusty, I’m really sorry about leaving you.”

“You should be sorry,” I said as I headed towards the makeshift firing range. “This all is apparently new to you, but I need you to recognize we’re in the middle of hostile territory, and shit like that could be the end of both of us. I need you to promise me, the next time I tell you to do something, you follow it to the letter. Got it?”

“Rusty, I solemnly swear on my grandmare’s ashes that I’ll follow your instructions from now on. You’re the expert and I’m just a dumb farmer that got caught up in something she can’t handle. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“Good enough.” I aimed at our target and tongued the trigger. KRACKOW! Damn, this thing had almost no recoil! Energy guns were definitely a step up from my old semiauto. I checked where my shot had landed. Not where I was expecting, I had pulled down and to the right. I loosed a couple more shots. Still off-target. I suppose weapons intended for aliens weren’t designed so earth ponies could easily aim them. I could barely even see the ironsights with the way I had to hold the pistol!

I must have gone through nearly as many shots as Dewdrop had before I felt comfortable enough with my new weapon. If I had hoped to impress her with my wastelander combat skills, I was failing miserably. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to be judging my aim. I placed the pistol barrel-first in my leg holster. It was a tight fit, but I would still be able to draw it out quickly enough if necessary.

Dewdrop was waiting patiently by the tunnel entrance for me. Her own pistol was tucked in a slit behind her neck. Awkward positioning, but I suppose it didn’t matter as much for unicorns. I nodded to her. “I think I’m set. Are you ready to head out?”

She nodded back. “But where exactly are we going, anyway?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that,” I told her. “It would still be good to find a map, but with this little device…” I shook my foreleg at her. “...we can navigate the tunnels without too much trouble. My first thought was heading to a cell block like the one we came from and releasing some ponies to help us out, but that would bring us straight to the one place we know for sure there are armed aliens.”

“Plus there’s the chance you could activate the security system again while trying to break them out.”

That’s right, she still thought that was an accident. Well, no need to correct her. “That is a concern, though I think I've learned how to avoid that. But I realized, the best place to find a map, that would also be the least likely place that our two-legged friends would be armed? The sleeping quarters. We might even luck out and catch them while they’re sleeping!”

“You’re not looking to kill them when they’re sleeping, are you?” She looked shocked, but almost immediately transitioned to sheepish. “I mean, you know what you’re doing far more than I do, so I’ll follow your lead, of course...”

Good save there, Dew. “I don’t think killing them would be productive at this point. We’d have to hide the body… or ashes, I suppose… and missing crew would give them a clue as to where we are. No, we need to do our best to not kill anything that isn’t an immediate danger to us.”

She looked visibly relieved. “Anyway,” I continued, “I’ll follow the tunnels and keep an eye out for any sign that could indicate crew quarters. There has to be something along those lines hidden in that maze.”

The good news was, I picked up the trail almost immediately after we started. *bzzz* Sleeping Berths. The bad news was, the trail just as quickly disappeared into the floor below us. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but we were going to have to leave the level we were currently on. I suppose we were lucky not to have to change levels on our way to the cargo hold.

I peered down the shaft. The cart tracks continued from the floor to the walls, and the bottom didn’t look terribly distant. Still, it would be better not to have to drop all the way down.

“Dew, how good is your levitation?” I asked her. “Can you at least slow me down on my way down there?”

She nodded. “I don’t know if I can fully support you, but you definitely won’t go ‘splat.’”

“Let’s do that. Let me go first, then I can catch you once I’m at the bottom.”

The plan worked. Annoyingly, we had to repeat the maneuver twice more on the way to our destination. I was just glad we never had to go up a shaft. We were completely unprepared for such an event. That was something I would have to fix as soon as possible.

Finally, we reached a hatch that seemed identical to the hallway junctions we had passed through previously. I pressed on the handle and pushed the door open just a crack. Bright light poured through the gap at the bottom of the hatch. I dropped my head to the floor and scanned the exterior as my eyes adjusted to the change in lighting. We had reached another hallway, this time with metallic doors evenly spaced along its length instead of magical shields. No sign of aliens in either direction.

“Dew, I think we’re good,” I whispered. “We’re going to head down this hallway and keep a lookout for any terminals I can access. Don’t open any doors unless I tell you; we have no idea what’s on the other side.”

She nodded to me and I pushed the hatch fully open. I held it for her as she exited, and then gently lowered it to its original position. This was one place we couldn’t afford any extra noise.

We crept towards the nearest intersection, a four-way crossing. I didn’t see any terminals, but hopefully there would be something down one of the other hallways. I had just passed the second-to-last door before the intersection when I heard the strange intonation of alien speech coming from ahead of us. Shit!

“Into the room, now!” I hissed. Dew reacted immediately and reached out with her magic to activate the door. It slid open as she pressed the button and we tumbled through as quickly as we could. The door hissed closed behind us. Thank the goddesses, this room was unoccupied. I pulled out my pistol as I turned to face the door. If the aliens had detected us, I wanted to make sure I got the first shot off.

The voices were getting closer. Please, I prayed, don’t let them find us here. It was very easy to find religion in a situation like this. I began to pick up what they were saying.

“Vi estas freneza! Ĉielarko Kurego neniigus absolute Krepusko Brileto en batalo!”

“Krepusko normala eble, frato. Sed Krepusko alicorn murdus Ĉielarko!”

“Krepusko neniam fariĝis alicorn, kreteno!”

Good, they were moving away. Were they talking about alicorns? This must be where those things were all coming from! What were the chances these asshole aliens would be the reason I had survived my first solo trip? The wasteland certainly spawned some strange coincidences.

“Rusty, what do you make of this?” Dewdrop whispered. I turned to Dewdrop and saw her gaping at the wall. I followed her stare… What the fuck? There was an enormous poster of one of the ministry mares! I glanced around the room. A smaller painting of Celestia and Luna, a drawing of a prewar building in the shape of a cupcake, a photo of the Canterlot ruins… There was something seriously strange going on here!

“I have no idea! Are… are they idolizing ponies? What the fuck kind of aliens are these?!” My eyes finally picked out the glow of a terminal in the corner of the room, partially hidden by the mass of the gigantic bedframe in the center. “This is too bizarre. I’m going to try to find a map before I go completely insane!”

The terminal wasn’t even locked. The main menu popped up as soon as I connected my hoof device to the interface cable. These aliens were making things far too easy for me. I scrolled through the options on the terminal as my own screen kept up a running translation. Finally, I found it. A file promising to hold a full map of the spaceship. An option appeared: Download to external device. Just what I needed! I selected the map file.

Error: Invalid permissions. “Dammit!” I slammed my hoof against the terminal. So much for things being too easy. I guess they figured there wasn’t any need for a test pony to have access to a map. Dammit.

“Rusty, what’s that?” Dewdrop’s voice came from beside me as she stared at my hoof device. I checked it myself. Subject G-1321 intake recording. I must have selected another file when I hit the terminal. “Can we see what that is?”

“Sure, why not?” We were safe enough in this room, and I needed some downtime to process the freakish decorations surrounding us. I activated the file.

Subject G-1321

Race: Yak

Coat Color: Brown

Mane Color: Dk Brown

Eye Color: Olive

Magic Color: N/A

Cutie Mark: N/A

Classification: Weaver, Yakyakistan

Intake Recording Follows:

Hello strange creatures, I Yona! You take Yona from Yakyakistan, but Yona not worried! Yona learn friendship lessons from Pinkie Pie pony! Now Yona show yaks best at making friends! We do traditional yak stomp of greeting! Then creatures be friends with Yona!

Ouch! No, traditional yak stomp mean stomp on ground! Not stomp on Yona! Try again, stomp of greeting!

Ouch! Silly creatures, you still do stomp wrong! It ok, Yona still want to make friends with you! Why you point to metal with holes in? Is this how creature make friends? Yes, Yona understand!

Hello metal thing! I talk to you to make friends with creatures! Yaks best at talking to metal things! Yona not sure if metal thing can do traditional yak stomp of greeting, but Yona stomp double hard for both of us! *KSSHHHT*