Fallout Equestria: Tales from Stable 83

Ah, it was finally time to call it quits for the week, at least that’s what I gathered with my science pod opening up before my eyes. The steam hissed by for a few seconds before the restraints opened up and I could finally move my limbs again. Felt like this ‘week’ had been substantially longer than usual. I know the time dilation of the pods does that, but it felt like a year had passed this time. I guessed the technicians tuned the matrices so we could get more work done in the same period of time. That would mean a pay raise for all of us.

This place looked just like how I left it, cold and metallic. The gray steel walls stretched upwards for what seemed like forever, since the lights overhead were only a few feet above our stations. Must be a pain in the flank for the pegasi janitors to clean up there.

It was colder than I remembered it being normally. Maybe they had turned off the heaters to help save on power, or maybe I was still just readjusting to the normal atmosphere. Both were plausible options, we did spend a mountain of bits to operate the temperature controls.

“Good morning everypony!” I exclaimed as I rolled forward and dropped out of my pod to the cold steel floor below. Nopony responded. Which was odd, but I guess none of the others had been woken up yet.

The air was quiet today, no hum buzz from air moving through the vents or chatter from my coworkers talking about how they’d be spending their time off. What really irked me was none of the interns or lower level staff were around to give me a cup of coffee. It wouldn't help with the fog over my eyes as I woke up, but it would at least make me feel like my work was appreciated.

I yawned and wandered over to one of the other pods to check in on one of my fellow researchers.

Gloria was still asleep in her pod, a smile plastered on her face made her look awfully at peace considering the circumstances. Her screen wasn’t outputting anything, so she must be taking some time to let her mind rest. No new notes were written on the notepad next to her pod. She must have not made any breakthroughs yet, but that left me wondering what she was working on. Maybe a better healing potion? Or maybe a new gun with some custom rounds? Whatever she was working on would help out Equestria in the long run. Her work was of the utmost quality. Gloria was after all the brightest mind on our team.

“I’ll see you in a while Gloria, I think I’m going to go home and take a few days to spend with my family. Don’t do too much work while I’m out.” I tapped on the glass a few times to bid her goodbye for now before continuing on my way.

The fog on my eyes was lifting slightly, but slowly enough to tell me I had been under for a lot longer than I was supposed to have been. Maybe the princess ordered us to work a little longer this time just in case we did go to war. Luckily if anything big had happened in my life I would have been woken up earlier. I had told them to wake me if my wife went into labor.

As I walked, I made sure to cast quick glances at all the equipment to make sure the technicians had been doing their work. There were dust bunnies everywhere and sheets on a few of the pods that I knew were in use. All of their notepads were blank of any recent notes. This worried me a little, but I shrugged it off as the interns took the used pages elsewhere for processing. Still meant I was going to have to talk to the higher ups about how we’re running this place and who we were letting work here. Our research is important and we can’t have just any schmuck working with us after all.

Of the machines I passed by only one had anything interesting being displayed on the monitoring device. Steel Flash was working on a new weapon prototype, some sort of automatic grenade launcher. Looked like maybe he had been creating custom grenades and had a mishap or two with how charred his workbench was. They were maybe sixty millimeter grenades from the looks of them. It would take an exceptionally strong stallion to lug that thing around, but everypony knows our fighting stallions are the strongest in the world. So the weight wouldn’t be a problem. Maybe we could mount them on one of those tanks as the secondary weapon instead of those heavy machine-guns.

I kept trudging on towards the main door of the facility rubbing my eyes as I went. Upper management would be my first stop once I returned to work, everypony was slacking on their duties.

That could wait though, I needed to get back home to my beautiful wife and unborn foal. Hopefully she hadn’t had the baby yet, but she was due any day now. I couldn’t wait to hold my child in my hooves for the first time. We knew she was going to be a pegasus. So no need to worry about magical outbursts, but we were betting she’d be flying as soon as her wings would let her. Though I wasn’t looking forward to changing diapers or waking up throughout the night to feed her.

The atrium was quiet and some of the doors to the other wings were open. I could hear the sounds of some of the heart rate monitors from medical beeping in time with someone's heartbeat. The compactors we used for waste management treating the waste for use as fuel. Maybe even the scream of one of the boilers, but I couldn’t care less I was awake and going home. The door on the far side of the atrium that opened up to that big steel door marked with that yellow 83 was open as well. No keycard needed this time, my lucky day.

I did fumble around with my magic to make sure my card was still on me. My personal card was in my right lab coat pocket, alongside my notepad. I should leave the coat and notes here, but they can deal without it for a few days. None of my current notes would progress any projects, nor could anypony but me readily read them. It’d be best to take it with me, use some of my spare time to write my notes legibly.

In the airlock I saw a few basic tools were scattered around the area next to the door opening mechanism. The toolbox on the wall was open and the lock sat precariously atop the box. One of the techs must have just finished fixing something before being dragged away to a bigger more important problem. My bet would be that boiler I heard screaming, boiler six if I remembered correctly.

I levitated the few tools back into a toolbox on the wall, that was the least I could do for them. “Breeze, you and I are going to have a word when I get back about leaving your tools scattered on the ground. Creating a tripping hazard is one thing when everypony coming through the area can properly see, but for us that’s against company policy.” With a chuckle I closed the toolbox and stepped up to the console.

I fumbled around again to levitate my keycard out of my pocket and into the chip reader of the door controls. The card slipped into place and a small indicator light came on. A second later the transparent shield over the button for the door opened with a click. With the shield opened and locked backwards into place I placed my hoof on the button and pressed down. Surprisingly, there was an abnormal amount of resistance. Yet another problem to take up with the other staff.

The mechanism whirred to life and that damn siren began to blare. Soon enough the orange beacon lights twenty feet overhead began to fill the room with that bright flashing light. The steel arm swung down to grab hold of that big steel door. After a few seconds the arm locked into place and began to pull the door inwards so it could roll out of the way.

I hated that this was the common procedure for entering and exiting work, but apparently with the potential war hanging overhead we needed to do our research in one of these new stables. A precautionary measure, just in case the enemy got a hold of a megaspell or some devastating explosives. As if that would happen, surely Twilight and her friends would figure something out before we went to war.

As the door began to roll away and the natural light of day began to seep in, the foulest smell I’d ever had the displeasure of knowing hit me and made me gag. “Oh, for Celestia’s sake! I thought we told those idiots to dump the trash around the back and not right in front of the main door. It’s just one thing after another today, isn’t it? What next? Princess Celestia drops by to say they’re cutting our budget again?” I said with an exasperated tone.

Hopefully not, I’d need the extra pay to cover the unpaid paternity leave. My savings would likely be enough, but Celestia knows how much money you burn to raise a foal.

I brought my labcoat up over my nose and trotted down the steps and out the main door, not even bothering to hit the button to close it behind me. If I had to smell this trash pile outside everypony else did as well. Maybe if they smelled it we could finally get some new garbage-ponies that actually listened, but that would be a miracle.

I’d hear that siren and the grinding of metal again in a few minutes or so as I got just out of shouting range. Just as planned, the squeaky wheel gets the grease as they say. I strolled outside about ten feet and stopped to let my eyes adjust so I didn’t put my hoof into whatever pile of trash or fecal matter that was sitting out here. A minute or so passed before my eyes adjusted and I could see the world outside properly for the first time in probably a good few weeks.

What I saw was not a pile of trash, but something far far worse. Instead of the path lined with beautiful flowers, trees, and shrubs that normally welcomed me back to the normal world. There were instead branches strewn about the ground and the few trees that were still standing had been killed and stripped of their leaves. “What… what happened here? Did we get attacked while I was under? Oh no.”

My wife was in danger if we were attacked. What if they did attack and she wasn’t in one of the stables? Surely, she would have been taken to one right away, right? I worked for the princesses after all, my family was supposed to be some of the first ponies to be locked safely away.

Just as I was about to take off in a sprint towards the nearest train station, I heard a rustling to my right. I turned to look and see who was there. I caught a glimpse of a bright green tentacle swinging what I assumed was a crowbar directly at my face. There wasn’t enough time to identify whoever was next to me as the crowbar slammed into my face at eye level.

My skull cracked from the impact and a searing pain took over my mind. I stumbled back and started to yell at this dumbass but was stopped as I heard a gunshot and felt a bullet rip into my chest knocking the wind out of my lungs. A second shot followed quickly after causing me to collapse and sprawl out on the ground. My keycard clattered onto the ground and blood began to pool around me.

“Finally,” his voice was slimy and dripping with malice, “one of you ponies opens the door and lets a true scientist in. Thank you my good stallion. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to ask that you kindly bleed out while I go and make myself at home.” That voice sounded familiar, but with my ears ringing I wasn’t certain. Whoever this was bent down and grabbed my keycard from the ground before trotting inside. One of his limbs was dragging with the sickening sound of bones cracking. Even so, he moved a lot faster on his hooves than I would have expected.

I tried to force myself to get up and fight back, I couldn’t let that creep walk in there and hurt my friends. Try as I might, I just couldn’t force myself back to my hooves. Every breath or tiny movement caused searing pain to rack my entire body and my mind scrambled as I tried to think my way out of this. I started to crawl towards the door as fast as my now broken body would let me. I knew I was too late as my now bloodshot vision and ringing hearing slowly returned with the report of the stable door closing.

“Fuck” I muttered as I started to crawl away. “I’m going to die out here, and that bastard is going to ruin everything we built.” I made it another 10 feet before running out of energy to keep pulling myself along. I accepted my fate and began closing my eyes, ready to die.

It hurt to know I’d never see my wife again and she’d have to raise our daughter alone. As my eyes closed and I accepted death, I heard a mare’s voice and the flapping of wings. My mind focused as best it could and held onto this new beacon of hope.

“Dammit, he must have gone inside. No way we’ll catch him now.” The wing beats grew closer, and the downdraft kicked up a cloud of dust from the ground around me. “Hello? Are you still in the world of the living?” She got closer to me and began checking for a pulse. A good samaritan, with a gentle and kind voice. If she wasn’t alone I would have a chance to get to a hospital and live through this attempted murder.

I coughed as the dust and what was probably blood entered into my lungs. “Yes, barely” I croaked out, lifting my head off the ground. My eyes refused to open but I knew the mare had closed the distance and was thinking of what to do. If she didn’t hurry I would suffer a death by exsanguination. I tried to speak again but couldn’t muster the energy. My head hit the ground and the dark abyss I found myself in began spinning.

“That’s enough for me. Just hang in there, we’re gonna take you somewhere safe. Smoky get over here, we got a live one!” She popped the cork on something that I could only assume was alcohol and shoved it into my mouth. The liquid didn’t taste like alcohol, so scratch that idea. Maybe a healing potion, but it tasted bitter in comparison. “Drink this and don’t you dare die on me…” Were the last words I heard from her before losing consciousness completely.