Fallout: Equestria - Common Ground

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Griffonstone

After parting ways with the Steel Ranger defectors, we headed north to Shearpoint. Just like when Rael and I had fled Pleasure Coast with Lurk, we crossed the mountains rather than circle through the valley, though this time we fortunately didn’t have to contend with snow; the Weather Corps had turned the seasons from winter to spring to summer, and would soon begin turning it to autumn. With more griffins than just Rael, we were also able to lift our group of ponies with less trouble (although Ironheart took three griffins at once to lift him, so maybe it evened out).

With the Commonwealth Crooner still spouting Steel Ranger propaganda, it was difficult to keep track of what was going on. Even so, I hoped Blaze and his defectors had succeeded in finding others to abandon Elder Teakettle’s crusade and hadn’t just been gunned down on the spot. It was hard to tell whether such a mutiny had pushed the elder to act or whether it was just part of the “accelerated timetable” Blaze had spoken of, but by the time we arrived at Shearpoint, word among the griffins there was that the Indefatigable had moved on Griffonstone and had already been there for three days.

Lurk was still in the roost but preparing to return to Pleasure Coast, and I got the details from her on Grand Marshal Gideon’s disposition. There was no more need, it seemed, for me to buy the grand marshal’s support. Mercenaries from across the Commonwealth, as well as the Air and Land Corps, were streaming into Shearpoint, preparing for an assault on the Steel Rangers. The occupation of Underpeak had convinced Gideon of the necessity of intervention, but the recent move of the Steel Rangers on Griffonstone had stirred him up into a frenzy, as it would any who knew what dwelt in that cursed mountain.

There seemed to be nothing more for me to do in Shearpoint, and so we soon left, with Lurk joining our company. She knew the same as I did: that the Commonwealth forces alone had only a small chance at defeating the Steel Rangers, and it would be an uphill battle. If we wanted a greater possibility of success, we needed to enlist more help. There was also no guarantee that Grand Marshal Gideon would do anything about Pleasure Coast once the Steel Rangers were ousted from Griffonstone and Underpeak, but that was a problem to be solved at a later date.

To reach New Pegasus in time, we had to fly, which meant yet more purchases of hoppers. We had nowhere near enough caps to acquire one for every non-flying member of our party, so I used the last bit of von Plume’s gold I had to buy seven more hoppers from Guthrie—something that was sure to raise suspicion once the allure of gold wore off, but we were in a hurry. With the loss of my eye, my skill as a pilot had degraded. I hadn’t had any chance to practice flying, so it was not a graceful journey, but at least I was not the only one who had difficulty piloting the things. Graceful or not, we did all manage to make it to New Pegasus. The pegasi remained on alert, but not, as I’d hoped, preparing to act against the Steel Rangers.

“I’m sorry, Doc,” Captain Mereskimmer said after I’d found her in the settlement and asked about the current situation. Her eyes lingered overlong on my eyepatch and lost horn, and I recalled the warning she’d given me the last time I was here, when the only part of me I’d been missing was my foreleg. “The Executive Panel continues to debate, but the majority opinion is that we should avoid antagonizing the Steel Rangers and wait for them to come to us. Colonel Flitter and Colonel Ravine are in favor of a preemptive strike, but they’re outvoted.”

“And what about President Snowmane?” I asked, and Mereskimmer’s face hardened.

“Don’t even think about it,” she cautioned me. “President Snowmane has remained supportive of the Executive Panel and intends to defer to their decision. As far as he’s concerned, this is a purely military matter.”

“The Steel Rangers are attempting to break into Griffonstone,” I stressed. “If they succeed, then nowhere will be safe. Isn’t there any chance of the Executive Panel changing their decision?”

“Colonel Fairweather will never flip, and Colonel Cloudwake will likely see changing his decision as a sign of weakness. Colonel Highflier might be persuaded, though, and Flitter has been working on him,” Mereskimmer shared (more than she probably should have about high-level New Pegasus politics).

“Could I speak to him?” I asked.

“You’re a persuasive pony, Doc,” Mereskimmer said, glancing at the crowd of followers I’d accrued, “but I’m afraid with you being who you are, Highflier would not be likely to listen to you.”

“It can’t hurt to try, though, right?” I asked.

“I’m afraid it could,” Mereskimmer sighed. “Allow Flitter and Ravine to do their work. They may be able to convince him where you would only antagonize him by your presence.”

“He has to be convinced to fight now, not later. If the Steel Rangers get control of the Griffonstone Missile Base, it’ll be too late to fight. They’ll either hit you with a megaspell or use the threat of one to force you into submission. Grand Marshal Gideon is preparing an attack on them, but their chances alone against the Steel Rangers, and especially against their airship, are not sunny.”

“Are our chances much better?” Mereskimmer snorted. “Granted, our power armor is a boon, but against a flying battleship, that alone is not enough.”

“There must be something I can do,” I said.

“Unless you can find a way to make the Zephyrus fly again …” Mereskimmer said hopelessly. “I don’t agree with him, but I can sometimes see how Highflier and the others came to their stance. If we do not have the means to engage the Steel Rangers from an advantageous position, why fight at all?”

I looked at the cloudship looming over its surroundings. I’d always suspected the Zephyrus was permanently grounded and the Dashite Enclave claims that it was fully operational were propaganda, but to hear Mereskimmer say it was still disheartening. I had no idea how to make a cloudship flightworthy, but maybe there was a way. And, if there was a way, maybe it would give Highfiler the hope he needed to decide that fighting the Steel Rangers was possible after all.

“I can’t begin to comprehend how to fix a cloudship,” I said as Mereskimmer matched my gaze. “But I might know some ponies who can.”

***

It was odd to be back again in the bowels of the Consortium, alone in the all-white room where the Triumvirate of Trustees had given me an ultimatum for New Pegasus. While what I’d seen of the Consortium since my return (which was extraordinarily little) had not changed since my first visit, there was a notable change in this room. Rather than the symbols of the three factions on the wall, there were now only two. On the left was a mechanical skull that looked like it was sniffing a rose. On the right was a six-pointed star surrounded by a cog, itself surrounded by a ring of five-pointed stars.

After a brief wait, a trio of ponies marched into the room, all different from the last time I’d been here. The pondroid who was the spitting image of Ache and now called herself Hope took a seat in the center chair, and two others I didn’t recognize sat on each side of her. On the left was an earth pony stallion with a green coat and hair, and on the right was a unicorn stallion with a white coat and violet mane wearing a lab coat.

“I am Hope, chairpony of the Board,” Hope said, making it clear that she was indeed the copy of Ache I’d assumed she was. “And these are Crank, representing the synthetic lifeforms, and Scepter, representing the organics.”

“Thank you for meeting with me,” I replied, hoping I was displaying the proper courtesy.

“It’s lovely to see you again, Doc,” Hope said. “But why are you here, and why did you want to meet with the Consortium’s leadership?”

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat, “I have something to ask of you.”

“Anything for the First Friend,” Crank said, and Scepter looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“Let us see what he has to say before making promises,” Hope cautioned the overeager pondroid.

“I want the Consortium to help New Pegasus repair their cloudship and make it flightworthy again,” I said, coming right out with it.

“Ah, yes, New Pegasus,” Hope mused. “Although they no longer hunt us down or kill us on sight, relations with them lately have been … icy. Why would they accept our help, and furthermore, why should we give it?”

“You can’t be completely blind to what’s happening in the Commonwealth,” I attested. “The Steel Rangers are seeking to take the Griffonstone Missile Base. With that in their control, they could rain megaspells down across the world.”

“This concerns us?” Scepter asked, though not maliciously.

Living underground for generations had isolated all within the Consortium and inured them to fear of threats on the surface. They considered themselves safe from all harm; perhaps they were when it came to the Steel Rangers, but that wasn’t the issue to which I intended to appeal. Before this audience, at least, higher ideals were much more persuasive.

“It concerns all who value life, organic and synthetic,” I said. “Too long has the Consortium been a bogeyman of the Iron Valley. If you truly intend to bring what you’ve developed here to help the surface, now is the time to prove it, and to show you mean to lend a helping hoof to this broken world.”

“I find it hard to believe arming New Pegasus will be taken as something beneficial to life,” Hope said, “but I see your point. The Steel Rangers are a threat to the Commonwealth, and allying ourselves with our former enemies against them may be what’s needed to finally break the ice. All I can promise is that we will offer, but there is no guarantee that the Dashites will accept.”

***

I wasn’t privy to the talks that went on between the Consortium negotiators that returned with me to the Zephyrus and the Executive Panel, but my gambit seemed to have paid off. Colonel Highflier certainly wouldn’t be thrilled to work with the Consortium, but he had seen the need and the greater threat posed by the Steel Rangers. Two days after the negotiations, an army of pondroids and Consortium scientists descended on New Pegasus to help the overworked Dashite Enclave engineers who had already begun trying to make the Zephyrus shipshape.

Work went on around the clock, both to restore the cloudship that had been dormant for years and to prepare New Pegasus for its launch. Homes and shops that had been built against the ship’s hull were torn down, much to the outrage of those who owned them, even when compensated by the Dashite officers who tried to keep the peace. The bridges packed with ramshackle construction bridging the decks of the Eurus and the Zephyrus also had to be cleared away as much as possible. Mostly, the ponies and griffins living there had to be cleared out so that they wouldn’t be caught up in the cloudship’s liftoff.

The bringing together of Commonwealth factions wasn’t an idea exclusive to me, it seemed. Two days into the work, messengers from Grand Marshal Gideon arrived in New Pegasus. Again, I was cut out of any discussion, but I did later learn from Mereskimmer that a temporary alliance with the Griffin Commonwealth had been worked out. Gideon was planning for his attack on Griffonstone to take place in four days’ time and invited the Dashite Enclave to take part, promising that no fighting would occur between them, the Commonwealth troops and mercenaries, or (when pressed by the Dashites) the Consortium.

The Consortium had decided that they would do better than just make the Zephyrus fly again; they too would fight in this battle to drive the Steel Rangers out of the Commonwealth. Pondroid troops with faceless armor arrived in New Pegasus, and though the Dashite soldiers gave them sidelong looks at first, they all worked together as the battle approached. The Consortium workers and scientists also did more than just restore the Zephryus, they improved it, providing new technology and armaments, including several completed MEIRPALs. By the time the day came for liftoff, the Zephryus was better equipped than it had been since the Enclave Civil War.

That day came after three days of continuous work. I understood that there were still some internal components that needed repair, but the Zephyrus was flightworthy. If the pegasi wanted to arrive at Griffonstone when Gideon’s forces did, they had no more time to spare; the rest could be fixed during flight. The sky was clear and bright blue that morning, every cloud for miles around harvested by the pegasi and brought back to the cloudship. I (and my band of followers that stuck close to me) had been allowed upon the Zephyrus to accompany the pegasi to Griffonstone, and it was a sight to behold as I stood upon the deck and the cloudship regained its purpose.

Warning klaxons sounded, accompanied by announcements that liftoff was imminent. Distantly, I could hear power-armored pegasi using their suits’ speakers to warn the citizens of New Pegasus, evacuated from the city, to keep their distance. With a great roar that sounded like a cascading waterfall, steam billowed from vents on each side of the cloudship, enveloping half of New Pegasus in fog. Abnormally loud hums sounded as lightning jutted within the fog from the struts that were now completely obscured. Slowly, the fog congealed and condensed into clouds, a bank of them on either side of the Zephyrus, soft, fluffy, and pristinely white. The Zephyrus shuddered as the clouds tugged on it, seeking to pull the cloudship free of the earth as they returned to their proper place in the sky. Crashes sounded as unsecured bits of structural buildup still clinging to the hull fell away. The ship slowly ascended, and the remaining bridges between it and the Eurus plummeted down into the alley below with a noise to wake the dead.

As the Zephyrus lifted away, the announcements from the officers piloting the ship became less anxious. Cheers could be heard on deck, as well as faintly from below. Griffins flew up in defiance of the Dashites on the ground and flitted around the ship, wishing the crew luck. Great lines of propellors along the rear of the ship groaned to a steady thrum as the Zephryus began its journey, angling northwest toward Griffonstone.

***

If you want a detailed account of the Battle of Griffonstone, you can easily find one from all five major perspectives. The Griffin Commonwealth has its official histories sanctioned by the grand marshal. Many Dashites after the battle wrote their own accounts. The Consortium recounts have all the mechanical precision you’d expect from pondroids, but they aren’t terribly lively to read. Blaze’s Steel Ranger defectors, who joined up with the Zephyrus on our way to the battle, have their own version. You can even find some accounts from the Steel Rangers who fought for Elder Teakettle, though most in the Commonwealth read them with a heavy degree of skepticism.

I don’t know the details of the Battle of Griffonstone, because I didn’t fight in it, not really. For perhaps the first time in my life, I was at the site of a major battle, and I didn’t take part. To do so would have been suicide, with Steel Rangers, griffin mercenaries, Dashites, and Consortium pondroids slugging it out, and me with one eye, three legs, and no magic. I could have summarized other historians’ works here, but I’ll leave that to other ponies. Instead, I’ll give you my high-level impressions of the battle, with details where relevant, but mainly focus on what I was doing.

First of all, the attack on the Steel Rangers was not simultaneous. No matter what you may hear from the Commonwealth’s grand marshals and their pet historians, the Zephyrus arrived at Griffonstone a full hour before the Commonwealth troops and mercenaries did. Nogriffin had traveled to Griffonstone and returned in the past century-and-a-half, but Elder Teakettle had the Indefatigable, he had an army of Steel Rangers, and he’d had over a week to use them to break down the ancient defenses. The Indefatigable was anchored to a mooring tower designed for the purpose when we arrived, but it wasted no time in detaching and engaging the cloudship and traitorous airskiff that accompanied it.

On the surface, a battle between an Enclave cloudship and a gas-based airship would be no contest, but neither were really more technologically advanced than the other. Both had been built at the tail end of the War or were based on designs from that time. Though the Zephyrus had Consortium weapons aboard, the Steel Rangers had had 160 years to fortify their airship with all the technology looted across the Grittish Isles. Both flying battleships took and withstood hard hits as they engaged. I wondered about the wisdom of staying aboard a ship that hovered over an immense drop during such a battle, but during the early stages, the ground was no safer.

While pegasi either in power armor or sky-tanks engaged Steel Rangers in airskiffs above the sundered mountain, Consortium troops and Blaze’s Steel Rangers took the fight to them below. Smoke rose from what was left of the ancient capital of the griffins as explosions and magical energy weapons popped and crackled from a distance. It was difficult to make much out, as a dark haze seemed to envelop the mountain. I tried anyway, and it was not a cheery picture.

There were no two ways about it: at the start of the battle, despite the advanced technology of the Consortium and the aerial agility of the pegasi, their alliance was losing. Steel Rangers were known for their over-the-top shows of force, and it was on full display that day. Missiles shot from tubes, following pegasi as they looped through the sky, and grenade miniguns used concussive force and repeated strikes to break through even Consortium-made armor. The Zephyrus’s cannons roared and MEIRPALs whined as they broke through airship defenses, but the Indefatigable’s guns bellowed in return and their airskiffs strafed pegasi and the cloudship’s deck. Lurk had conjured a protective field for our group so that we weren’t as exposed as we could be, but I doubted it would hold up to heavy fire. I also worried that the Steel Rangers had more of those orbs that had taken my magic. As I scanned Griffonstone, I could sometimes see crackles of light where they had trouble with unicorns and was sure that was what I was seeing.

I think all of us were beginning to worry that the griffins weren’t going to arrive after all, and Grand Marshal Gideon had led us into a trap. But, at last, they did show themselves. In large formations of griffins and in airships far less impressive than the Indefatigable, they came from the north. Mercenaries in mismatched combat barding flew alongside griffins in the off-white armor of the Air Corps and the brown of the Land Corps. I even saw a few in the sky-blue of the Weather Corps flying over the battlefield attempting to turn the local weather against the power-armored ponies. The Steel Rangers were caught between griffins on one side and pegasi and pondroids on the other. It wasn’t enough to completely overwhelm them, but the tide of the battle did begin to turn as they had to split their attention.

As I surveyed the fight taking place below, peering through a monocular, I caught sight of something important. The fighting in Griffonstone had moved away from where the Zephyrus and the Indefatigable continued to do long-range battle, and the combined forces were driving the Steel Rangers back, away from the missile base. However, there had already been movement in that direction before the griffins had arrived, and there had remained a heavily fortified garrison of Steel Rangers within the base, near the mountain. That garrison had disappeared.

“We need to get off the ship,” I said quietly (only relatively speaking, due to the immense amount of gunfire going on around us).

As the Zephyrus took a barrage of hits from the Indefatigable’s guns, followed by a bomb dropped from an airskiff that zipped nimbly past, the deck shuddered, and I nearly lost my footing before Rael caught me.

“I think you may be right,” Blacktalon admitted as he cast his eyes around for a way to disembark during the battle.

“You should be below deck,” Mereskimmer said as she landed nearby, ponies instantly running up to her to restock her ammunition.

“No, we need to get down to Griffinstone!” I shouted back to be heard over the whirring of the propellors on Blaze’s airskiff as it zipped overheard, pursuing the one that had just strafed us.

“Without power armor?” Mereskimmer asked incredulously. “Have you forgotten about the radiation?”

“The encounter suits we provided are perfectly adequate to deal with it,” a nearby pondroid overseeing ammunition distribution said.

The twin megaspells that had struck Griffonstone on the Last Day had left it a deadly place ever since. The Steel Rangers were unbothered by it due to their armor, and the bulk of the Dashites were likewise protected. Pondroids, power armor or not, were confident they would be unaffected by the balefire radiation. For the rest of us, though, some protection was in order, and the Consortium had provided what they called “encounter suits.” These were sealable jumpsuits with a padded, lightly armored fabric and bubble helmets that would shield us from the radiation we’d be exposed to even just flying near the cursed city. I’d assumed they were a lighter version of radiation suit, but if the pondroids were confident that they would protect us even walking into ground zero, they were far more impressive than I’d thought.

“Out of the question,” Mereskimmer said. “Why would you want to go to Griffonstone, anyway?”

“I think the Steel Rangers have succeeded at breaking into the base!” I shouted back, which got more than a few looks thrown my way.

Mereskimmer paused for several seconds, but given the way she was moving her head, I assumed she was talking to somepony else over the radio. I was tempted to use my PipBeak attachment to try to listen in, but she returned her attention to us before the urge got too strong.

“Okay, Blaze’s skiff will circle back around in a few minutes to take us down,” she announced.

“Us?” I asked.

“Yes. You don’t think I’d let you descend to a battlefield without an escort, do you?” the Dashite captain asked.

I was still surrounded by my honor guard from Duskshore plus Lurk, but I took her point. None of us had power armor, and the chance that we’d run into Steel Rangers was far from small, especially when we were pursuing them into the mountain.

When Blaze’s airskiff swung back around, it pulled up alongside the Zephyrus, keeping the cloudship’s bulk between it and the Indefatigable. The Steel Ranger defectors had remarkably managed to keep their stolen skiff flying through the battle so far, but as we boarded, I could see that it had taken considerable damage. Blaze wasn’t aboard, the crusader-turned-mutineer off fighting elsewhere, but the crew left on the airskiff kept a close and protective watch over us as we descended to the ruins of Griffonstone.

They didn’t set us down right next to the mountain, lest we tip off the Steel Rangers outside to what we were doing; surprise could mean everything. Instead, the airskiff dropped us off in a plaza of the old city, far enough for the fighting to be safe and far enough from the missile base to avoid suspicion. As soon as we’d disembarked, they were away again, returning to the battle in the air.

Mereskimmer led the way as we walked through the ruins of Griffonstone, keeping a sharp eye out for any movement with the enhanced optics afforded her by her power armor. Looking at the devastation of the city, it was hard to tell exactly when it had happened. There were recent signs of destruction caused by the battle, but other than that, it was difficult to say whether a building had toppled from its foundations due to a megaspell blast, abandonment in the time since, or decay in the time before. Everything seemed oddly preserved, as if fossilized. A large, gnarled, petrified tree stretched out above the great chasm that split the mountain in two, but from a distance it looked untouched.

There was something profoundly wrong about Griffonstone, though it was difficult to nail down exactly where the sensation was coming from. It could have been the fact that shadows didn’t seem to work properly, canting this way and that with no respect for Celestia’s sun. Though it could clearly be seen in the sky high overhead, the entire city also seemed to be cast in twilight, with a gloom that could not be attributed to anything physical permeating the air. There was an uncomfortable prickling sensation on the back of my neck, as if moist sandpaper was trying to rub across it, and I was not the only one to verbalize such feelings. Nobody knew exactly what kind of megaspells had been used on Griffonstone, only that it had been struck by one from Equestria and one from the zebras. One of them might have caused this, or it could have been an unexpected combination that arose from the two melding together. What was certain was that it was unlike any other recognized site struck by a megaspell. My PipBeak clicked to warn me of radiation, but other than an ugly dark mark plastered across the face of the mountain, there was no sign of a crater to indicate where a megaspell had detonated. More than once, I spotted out of the corner of my eye the mutated wildlife that now inhabited Griffonstone. It had to be out of the corner of my eye, for that was the only way you could see them. Look directly at them, and they were no longer visible. It was a place that gave you the feeling you should run away as fast as your legs could carry you, but instead we were heading deeper in.

The broken and depressing buildings eventually gave way to the perimeter of the Griffonstone Missile Base. The base was mostly underground, dug out of the mountain, but there was a small exterior component that, along with the other defenses that the Steel Rangers had silenced, would protect the base. The gates had been left open, and we trotted right in to the exterior yard of the base. The Steel Rangers had left a few turrets behind, but our party dealt swiftly with them before they could even fire a shot. There were no signs of the Steel Rangers themselves. One-story garrison buildings lined the edges of the yard, with an inviting opening at the far end where massive doors had been blasted and cut away to gain access to the missile base.

“Dashite Enclave Radio,” Mereskimmer said out of the blue as we prepared to enter the mountain, breaking the silence none of us knew we’d been keeping since we’d landed in Griffonstone.

I switched my PipBeak’s radio to the station she’d mentioned, and was greeted by a familiar voice broadcasting from the Zephyrus.

“—repeat, this is President Snowmane, commanding all Dashite Enclave forces and allies to abandon the Zephyrus and stay clear of the cloudship. I repeat, this is President Snowmane—”

I hadn’t been listening alone, and eyes turned together toward the Zephryus. It looked in bad shape, smoke and steam trailing from it, but still it pounded the Indefatigable and fought off the airskiffs swirling around it.

“What is he doing?” I asked Mereskimmer.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, but I think she suspected something. “We should keep moving.”

As we headed into the Griffonstone Missile Base, we quickly found the Steel Rangers. Either something about the megaspells had triggered it, or the griffins had really not wanted anyone to use the base until they’d paid for it, because the passage was clearly trapped. The first Steel Ranger we found had been melted from about halfway up his torso to the ceiling, his legs and what was left of his body fused standing up by the Steel Ranger armor surrounding them. Piles of glowing ash littered the floor as we ascended, and we saw other Steel Rangers who hadn’t been lucky enough to be disintegrated instantly. We kept a close eye out and moved cautiously onward. There were a few traps that had not been set off by Steel Rangers as they came through, and we managed to avoid most of them. Ironheart was impaled through the neck by a spiked rod, but it didn’t seem to bother him much. The ghoul simply pulled it out and gurgled when he talked for a while until the ambient radiation healed him.

I was beginning to wonder when we’d reach the end of the trail of Steel Ranger corpses when we arrived at a place where the rock had been carved out to make a cafeteria. Along one wall was a large window that looked not to be made of glass, but crystal, for security. A missile base with a giant glass window wouldn’t exactly have been secure, especially in a land where everyone could fly. As we approached the window, President Snowmane spoke up on the radio again, after falling silent when he’d finished repeating his command to abandon ship.

“I thank you all for allowing me to serve you these long years as your president. From those who woke me to break free of the poisoned dreams of the Enclave to those who built a new home in a foreign land, to those who fight here today, I thank you. And now, I perform one final act of service. Remember well, my little ponies, that in service to the people and their republic, no service is too dear.”

As we gazed out the window, I realized what it was that the president once of the Enclave and then of New Pegasus intended to do. During the repair of the Zephyrus, part of the process had involved inspecting and repairing the connections that tied the president’s chamber into the rest of the ship, ostensibly so he could observe and coordinate. President Snowmare could do much more than that, though. Assuming the Dashites had heeded his command, and I’d find it hard to believe any of them could disobey him, he was now the only one aboard the Zephyrus, and he was in control. The cloudship was in worse shape now, the damage that must have been evident to the president but few else before now clear to all. Clouds drifted away in wisps and clumps, smoke and fire trailed from rents in the hull, and the cloudship twisted as it moved, the frame bent and liable to snap under too much pressure. Snowmane pushed the propellors to their limit, however, slowly accelerating the last working cloudship in the Commonwealth. The Indefatigable tried to move out of the way, but by the time it realized what was happening, it was too late. The Zephyrus rammed into the Indefatigable, the cloudship buckling and snapping as the two colossi collided. The Steel Ranger airship fared no better. Great gouts of flame blossomed from its gas bubble as its spine snapped. Smoke, flame, and huge pieces of shrapnel rained down as the two flying fortresses slowly descended over the edge of the mountain, twisted together and destroyed.

I couldn’t see Mereskimmer’s expression behind her mask, but I had to imagine she was devastated. Half of her home and the pony she’d idolized from birth had both died before her eyes. By the evacuation of the Zephyrus and his sacrifice, however, President Snowmane may well have won the battle. It was impossible to know how many Steel Rangers had still been aboard the Indefatigable when it had gone down, but the entire crew of the Zephyrus, barring the president, had survived. Still, battle won or not, the true thing being fought over was not out there in the ruined city of Griffinstone; it was behind us.

“The control room is just ahead,” Lurk said, trying to prod Mereskimmer into action after examining the signage beside the passages leading off from the cafeteria.

Mereskimmer shook herself, but said not a word as she resumed point. Up through winding passages we went, passing another pair of Steel Rangers who had fallen prey to traps until we reached the Griffonstone Missile Base’s control room.

It was not a particularly glamorous control center. The walls were bare metal and dully lit. Large screens covered the walls, showing camera feeds of the megaspell-tipped missiles waiting in their silos. There were so many. Terminals with control panels ringed the walls, showing various readouts on the status of the base. And, at the center of the room, a pod holding Elder Teakettle.

It had been years since I’d seen that scowling, wrinkled face, its once blue coat turned chalky with age, barely a hint of a white mane clinging to the scalp. One could almost mistake the elder for a ghoul, had he not had such bare hatred for them. His face was all too visible, for Elder Teakettle had not worn a suit of Steel Ranger armor in decades. The strength it would grant him was too much of a risk; he’d become so old and shriveled that the armor would likely snap him apart. His wheelchair sat nearby, unused now that he’d managed to pull himself from it into the control pod. That was clearly what the glass-lidded sarcophagus was that he was now lounging in. Here, the griffins had splurged a little, lining it with comfortable padding and gold-trimmed control panels along its curved interior. Wires trailed from the back of the elder’s head and were threaded through a ring that interrupted the headrest. Beside the pod stood a unicorn mare in robes, a Steel Ranger scribe. Her horn glowed as she projected a protective field around her and the elder, allowing them to go about in Griffonstone without defensive gear.

“What happened to you?” Teakettle croaked as his eyes cast upon my griffin arm, and through my helmet, my missing eye and broken horn, “Wait… I recognize you.”

“And I you, Elder Teakettle,” I replied in a firm voice.

“So, you survived after all. More’s the pity,” the aged stallion said.

“Surrender, Teakettle,” I said. “The Indefatigable is destroyed and your forces scattered. You’ve lost.”

“I have, have I?” he replied with amusement, “If that was true, then why would you have to tell me it was so? No, I haven’t lost yet. I’ve. Won! The Griffonstone Missile Base is mine to control! Nopony will ever stand against me again, not unless they want to be cleansed by holy fire!”

“You’re not in control yet,” I challenged him as I cast my eyes around at the various screens and panels for confirmation.

“I’m already wired in. It’ll only take an eyeblink,” Teakettle said ominously before shouting. “Clasp! Kill them!”

The unicorn scribe beside his pod—Clasp—shot a beam of energy from her horn at us, but Lurk pushed back with a beam of her own. The two warred with magic, the beams shifting back and forth, until Blacktalon fired his machine gun into Clasp. As the bullets tore through her, her magic instantly failed, and she was thrown back by Lurk’s power. Her body crashed into a bank of screens and left a bloody stain on them as it slid down to the floor.

“What?” Blacktalon said defensively as Lurk gave him a look.

During the brief confrontation with Clasp, the sarcophagus had closed around Elder Teakettle and he was lying back on the padded cushions, eyes closed. Text scrolled across the banks of terminals surrounding him as he took control of the base. Blacktalon fired at the sarcophagus, but the lid turned out to be made of crystal like the observation window in the cafeteria, and the rest of the pod was similarly hardened against damage.

I ran over to the nearest terminal and plugged in my PipBeak. Maybe I was no good at shooting or magic or flying anymore, but there was still something I could do one-eyed and with a broken horn. I moved faster than I probably ever had before, not even allowing screens to fully print before I moved on, hacking into the Griffonstone Missile Base’s maneframes. Security was tough, and my chances weren’t helped by Elder Teakettle actively working against me to expel me from the system. In the end, however, I prevailed and succeeded in wresting control from the Steel Ranger.

“I did it,” I announced anticlimactically as I finished and sat back.

This missile base had the power to control nations with the threat of annihilation by megaspell. It was perhaps the greatest weapon left in the world—and I’d torn it out of the hooves of a madstallion.

Now it was in my hooves.

I had the power to reshape the world as I wanted. I could fix everything I’d seen that was wrong and destroy all that was evil. I could force the Grand Pegasus Enclave to open the sky over Equestria and bring their aid to the Wasteland below. I could end Grand Marshal Gideon’s bullying and hoarding of power. I could enforce peace, something the world had not seen in centuries.

“I’m going to launch the missiles,” I announced, but made no move to act on my words.

“Where?” Mereskimmer asked suspiciously as various outbursts of surprise came from the group clustered around me.

“Away,” I replied. “Beyond the sky and out of the reach of any pony, griffin, or zebra.”

“For years, griffins have dreamed of obtaining control of this base,” Lurk said with ice in her voice. “This is a great treasure, a gift that could see enemies brought low. Grand Marshal Gideon could be forced to comply with any demands. And you want to throw it away?”

“The pegasi over Equestria; we know where their strategic sites are,” Mereskimmer said. “The Dashite Enclave could return and help the Wasteland once the GPE is cleared away.”

“It’s too much,” I said as I turned to look at Lurk, then Mereskimmer, then Rael.

The Family’s fixer and the Dashite soldier were appalled at the idea, but Rael seemed to understand.

“There are too many megaspells here, too much power for it to ever be halted. Even if you intend to use it only as a deterrent, even if you intend to only use it once in a lightning strike, it won’t end there. The power and the temptation here is too great for anyone, including me.”

I turned back to the terminal in front of me.

“The megaspell genie is already out of the bottle,” I said as I looked at the faces reflected in the screen, “There’s no putting it back in. The only way to deal with it is to remove it from the situation entirely.”

Slowly, I began to type in the commands to launch the missiles. Mereskimmer and Lurk still didn’t agree with me, I could tell, but they didn’t stop me. One by one at first, and then in groups, the missiles that had slumbered unused for years in the heart of the mountain woke up. Natural light (or as natural as it could be with the gloom that pervaded Griffonstone) flooded into the missile silos as the hatches opened. Rockets flared as they propelled the missiles upward. In what seemed like a never-ending stream, the missiles blasted up through the cleft that divided the mountain in two. Up, up, and away they went, soaring higher and higher until the air around them thinned into nothingness. The rockets fired until they’d used the last drop of their propellant, and the missiles were allowed to coast through the inky blackness of space. Never again would they be used for another Last Day. They were free, Griffonstone was empty, and the battle with the Steel Rangers was won, with any luck, forever.

[Max Level Reached]
New Quest: A New Home – Finish your business and return to Duskshore.
Athletics +3 (60)
Barter +6 (141)
Electronics +12 (77)
Pilot +8 (49)
Repair +12 (143)
Science +8 (132)
Speech +4 (147)
Survival +6 (128)