Fallout Equestria: The Indefatigable

October 24, 1077 - Mission Day 14

"All hooves, this is your Captain speaking. Last night at twenty-two hundred hours, we received a transmission from the mainland. This transmission was a general notification from Command to all military units. They have advised us that our intelligence network has detected unusual activity around Zebra missile silos on the Imperial mainland. Because of this, we have been reminded to maintain all possible measures of readiness aboard our ships. I, as well as our new flag officer, assure you that this has nothing to do with our mission objective. This is not some sort of psychological experiment to psych you out, but at the same time there is no reason to panic."

"I will remind you that such alert levels have been instituted several times throughout this war's history. Many times, these were revealed to be false alarms, or simply just Zebra posturing to threaten us. Despite this, we are instituting extended watches for the damage control teams working on the Sunrise Shield Projector, as an extra precaution. If you are part of those teams, you will of course be compensated with overtime as well as hazard pay for the chances of radiation damage. I trust you will see to your duties well, and conduct yourself with the same honor and discipline I have always expected from you all for the past ten years."

"As you were."

Rain fell upon the flight deck of the Indefatigable as a plane was raised up by the lifting platform into the open air. With the rising whine of a jet engine, it taxiied and took off with the assistance of the repulsor talismans on the flight deck, soaring into the air to begin its orbit of the fleet, its advanced sensor suite constantly scanning the horizon for threats.

Down below, in the hangar, hundreds of ponies maintained and operated the ship's air wing of over 130 machine-powered aircraft. Multi-role jet fighters, long range scout planes, robotic drones for performing suicidal bombing runs, and of course a healthy complement of Vertibucks. From attack configurations to heavy-lift transports, they were designed to help transport personnel between ships and for the Steel Ranger Marines to load up on for their missions.

A full inspection of all of the ship's offensive hardware had been instituted for the purposes of increased readiness. The ship's sea-to-air dragonkiller missiles, the guided bombs, the torpedo launchers, the rockets, as well as the set of tactical single-use megaspells stored behind a set of very, very strong blastdoors. The maintenance crew practically swarmed like ants, scanning every rivet, plugging their PipBucks into every hardware socket, and jotting down notes left and right.

Bordering the ship's hangar was the ship's Armory, where personal firearms and other combat equipment were stored. After a row of firefighter stations was the main hatchway leading into the armory, guarded by a pair of Ranger Marines. Past the lockers, filled with traditional ballistic firearms along with laser rifles and other experimental laser weapons, was a secondary bulkhead labelled 'Power Armory'.

Multiple ready rooms branched out from a hallway within the power armory, most of them reserved for the ship's Rangers, or for the ship's rescue divers and heavy utility teams. One ready room, however, was labelled 'MoA Spec ops 51st Reconnaissance'.

Ten suits of Nightmare Black-painted armor sat in power armor stations inside. They were lighter, more flexible than the heavily plated Ranger armor sets. The helmets had wider viewports, looking more like insectoid eyes than the thin glass slits used in the infantry models. At their sides, metal-plated sleeves for wings to fit inside hung limply, while at the back a long, mechanical tail extension hung, terminating in a cruel metallic stinger.

Each armorset had a cutie mark painted on the front, indicating its owner. On their shoulder was the division's patch, three laser beams cracking open a fortress, with '51' emblazoned upon it. Some had war paint on their armor, around its eyes and on the wings. All of them, however, had a tally mark written on the side, just below where the battle saddle would be mounted.

Corporal Ice Slushee brushed a speck of dust away from her tally mark, numbered 21, with a grin. Her and her squadron too had been affected by the 'increased readiness', with inspections and maintenance to be carried out much earlier than scheduled to ensure full combat capability.

While the Rangers liked to characterize them as gung-ho, snotty flyponies with no respect for power armor, in all truth the only reason pegasus-pattern armor broke down so often was because it was designed delicately. It took a lot of ingenuity and corner-cutting to get such a complicated kit to fly and stay competitive with a dogfight with a flying machine. Ice Slushee, along with all of her comrades, cared just as much about their kit as the Rangers did, if not more.

After all, she suspected there had to be some slacking on their end if they experienced breakdowns, even with how much hardier the heavy-infantry pattern was.

Taking out the interface cord from her PipBuck, Ice Slushee plugged it into a port on the inside of the armor's helmet, watching the screen on her foreleg scroll as it read out the software's diagnosis. Nothing out of the usual, but it couldn't hurt to backup the data on it into a holotape and then clear out the cache on the suit's memory banks. She wouldn't want to delay the chore until the drive choked up as they were pulling 20 hour shifts.

The sounds of hoofsteps distracted Ice from her work as a light grey pegasus mare walked in, chewing on the end of a cigar.

"Cap'n on deck, finally got out of the wardroom for long enough to come and grace us with her presence," Shot Stack joked from behind Ice, looking up from his own work.

"Stow it, stack," she shook her head, "Just got done with a briefing from Lightning Bringer. According to her, you lost the bet, Admiral's pretty down to earth."

"Bullshit!" Shot Stack spat as Radio Whistle gave a whoop in the background. After grabbing a nearby grease rag and throwing it in Radio's general direction, Shot looked back to their sergeant and asked, "How do you figure that anyway, Trail?"

The mare, Sergeant Crystal Trail, grinned, "Well apparently after getting done talking some defeatism shit she turned down a hornpipe and got down with the officers n' gentlecolts to some electronic swing instead."

"Crap," Shot Stack spat as Radio came to loom over him.

"Don't worry, Shot, I'll share some peanut frizzles with you," Radio said, reaching around his squadmate and giving him a pat on the chest.

Shot Stack, deathly allergic, raised a middle primary at Radio as the other stallion walked away cackling. Turning around with a solid frown on his face, he patted his breast pocket suspiciously, before bringing out his wallet and opening it, "Asshole," he muttered, noticing the fifty bit paper missing from its place.

Sniggering to herself, Crystal Trail walked past the thoroughly pissed off stallion towards her own armor set. Marked with a golden arrow shooting through a set of puffy, twinkling clouds, as well as a tally of forty-two marks on its side, she sat down to start her own chores.

Hay Weave, a green pegasus mare with a torque wrench firmly secured to a bolt on the lower jaw of her half-disassembled armor helmet, sighed, "We're like, a hundred million miles away from the Zebras. By the time we get into combat, we're gonna have done this a million times over," she was the newest in the team. A cutie mark of an exploding hay bale was freshly painted on the front, along with a tally mark of 5 on the side.

"You use million a lot," Radio Whistle said, standing back in front of his armor with a small hoof-vacuum, sucking up particulates from the creases and joints. His armor had a musical note with radio waves radiating out of it, on the side of his armor was a tally of 12.

Hay stuck out her tongue at him in response.

Crystal Trail, standing opposite her, shook her head, "Never know when a submarine might rock up, or a dragon wing, or one of their flying fortresses."

"We're recon, we don't do planes and dragons. Planes do planes, destroyers do submarines, and missiles do dragons-"

"And I do your mom," Shot Stack interrupted, hooves submerged inside of his suit. A cutie mark of bullets loaded into a stripper clip adorned the front along with 14 kills on the side, expressed in skulls rather than the usual tally marks.

Rolling her eyes, Hay Weave finished, "We go out, blast zebras, and blow stuff up, right?" Hay Stack asked.

"Orders are orders, private," the sergeant answered with a shrug, "Besides. Have to keep neck and neck with the Rangers on breakdowns."

There were no more complaints raised to that. Aside from their hatred for the enemy, the only thing that united 51st was their even greater hatred for the Rangers - specifically the Ranger Marines aboard the Indefatigable. The ones out in the field were probably alright, but mostly because they never got to meet them.

A few rows down from Ice Slushee was a cream-colored pegasus stallion with brown hair, a flash visor over his eyes as he delicately soldered at an armor plate on his set; marked with a snake wrapping around a gravestone and eighteen tallies on the side. The team's field medic, Lead Syringe, said, "You know that we have a Zebra working in the kitchen?"

Behind him, a bulky, red mare named Spear Bash gave a disgusted look as a legging of her armor popped off and rattled to the floor, "You fucking saying a Stripe's been touching my food?" her armor (which was actually the stallion-pattern, as she couldn't fit into the standard set), was marked with a cutie mark of a rubber ducky, with twenty more rubber duckies written along the side.

"Yes, apparently his name is Ivory Heart," Lead Syringe intoned, his tool beginning to spark once again as flashes reflected off of his darkened visor.

"Aww fucking Celestia on a bike, doc," Spear Bash growled, "Thanks for the fucking information. Now I can't fucking look at my breakfast omelette the same ever again, dipshit!"

Ice Slushee grinned, seeing her opportunity to poke the bear, "Hey Spear Bash. Was reading a book on the MoA SpFs the other day-"

"You can read?" Shot Stack asked, looking back from his work.

Waving a hoof at him, "Just cause you can't doesn't mean you gotta project, Stack," a cackle came from Radio, who was quickly assaulted by another grease rag, "Anyway, I saw there was a squadron that had a half-breed working for 'em."

"Huh?" Spear Bash asked.

Leaning towards Spear, Ice Slushee grinned impishly, "Half pegasus, half stripe. Flying wing to wing with ponies, wearing the same pattern armor as us."

"Fuuuck!" Spear Bash growled, yanking a worn washer clear from its bolt with a furious tug, "Nah no fucking way. You're just trying to rile me up. Shot's right you probably don't even read!" she shouted as she threw washer at Ice, who ducked out of the way as the metal sparked dinged off of a strike plate.

A diminutive orange pegasus stallion neighboring Spear Bash, by the name of Waffle Cone, leaned back from his armor set (an image of a melting ice cream scoop was on the front, with nine tallies on the side) around the divider between each station, asking, "Hey Bash. You ever get mistaken for a stallion?"

Spear grinned, "No, do you?"

Laughs were instantly elicited from all in the room, even Waffle Cone, who simply turned back to his work and said, "You know you love me."

From the very back of the room, a banana-colored pegasus with a bushy brown mane named Sugar Beach, the squad's second sharpshooter with the first being Shot Stack, asked, "Hey, Pounce Chaser, you think this scare is the intel guys jumping at shadows, or what?" she asked, screwing the headlamp back onto her suit, marked with a palm tree on the front and ten tallies on the side.

Pounce Chaser, a dark purple pegasus mare, was checking the status of the the heads up display on her armor, marked with a green cat's eye on the front and twenty-eight tallies on the side, "I bet they're probably trying to scare us into backing down from Poppy Field. If we push them out from there, they're fucked big time," her mane and tail was dyed a fading spectrum of colors, styled after the Ministry Mare.

Shot Stack's ears perked up at the mention of a bet, and he turned around to say, "Hey! Why don't we make a pot? One says it's a false alarm, other says it's to try and scare us off from pushing their shit in."

"Twenty that Pouncer is right," Crystal Trail immediately chipped in.

Ice Slushee hummed, saying, "Probably just another military 'intelligence' fuckup."

"Twenty for the opposite of whatever Shot picks," Radio piped up.

Shot Stack chuckled, "Fuckup it is."

"Same, fuckup," Basher said.

Waffle Cone gave a glance towards Spear Basher, before nodding, "Yeah. Fuckup."

Lead Syringe hummed for a moment, before finally answering, "If the pattern so far repeats, it's a fuckup."

Sugar Beach nodded, "It's military," she made air quotes with her forehooves, "Intelligence. Fuckup, one hundred percent."

Pounce Chaser folded her forelegs, "I stand by my word, it's a tactic."

"Whoo!" Shot Stack whistled, "Big stakes for the tactic ponies."

"Just get your armor back into one piece before the end of the watch, everypony," Crystal Trail demanded. That was the last word, and until everything was stowed that was the end of the conversation.

CRS270 - TIM1020 - ELO8823 - TIMX - 1039
CRS269 - TIM1331 - ELO8823 - TIMX - 1033
CRS268 - TIM1899 - ELO5223 - TIMX - 1909
CRS267 - TIM1021 - ELO8823 - TIMX - 1352

The next day, Summer Fruit sat at her controls, staring blankly out into the green glow of her terminal as her magic danced across the keys. A thin line of drool hung from one side of her mouth as it hung open. A depressingly empty coffee cup sat on her desk, next to a half-completed printout of array instructions and a notepad full of equations and maths that would look like the runework of an insane mage to anypony other than Summer.

As the repair progress on the projector had been sped up, so had her work translating energy values to coordinates on the hundreds of projector arrays lining the length of the Sunrise Shield Projector. She was now on her fifteenth hour since she had arrived in the morning and been informed that her deadline had been shortened.

Occasionally, she would blink and rub at a twitching eye, wrenching her eyes off of the terminal for a moment to check the status of the electrical grid, write down some oddity on a checklist with an increasingly worn down pencil. However, even if the ship had completely lost power outside of the control room, she probably wouldn't notice for spans of hours at a time as she scrolled through hypnotizing lines of calculations and code.

This time, however, a hoof shaking her shoulder vigorously caused her to blink and link away.

"Summer? You okay?" Ship Right said, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Huh?" she said, suddenly becoming aware of how splitting her headache had become and reaching up to rub it, "Erh- yeah. I'm almost done. Just another hour and I'll take it down to the computer lab."

"I just got word that the pony meant to relieve you was 'chased off by a series of hisses and thrown scrap paper'," Ship Right cracked a smile, "You know somepony else can take this over for you, right?"

"Uhh, it's fine," Summer said, eyes wandering back towards her terminal screen, "Like I said, I'm almost done."

"Better be. If not, sign off and get some rest. If I see you fallen asleep at your desk next morning I'm going to be very upset. The CO might be upset that we need to take the projector down to program the new values in late, but that's a fall I'm willing to take," Ship Right shook her head, beginning to turn away.

Summer, a spark triggering at the back of her thoroughly cooked brain, turned in her chair to stop her, "Hey! Uh. I wanted to tell you something, actually, about the new projector values."

Ship Right stopped, "Yeah?"

"Umm..." Summer's brow wrinkled, "The power level isn't effected, so it should be the same effectiveness for shielding in combat. But there's some really weird choices with the secondary and tertiary deflectors?"

"In what way?" Ship Right slowly walked back to her side, looking at her work again.

"Well usually the projector has the deflectors project in a similar way to the main bubble? But these arrays..." she pointed at the screen as she scrolled up to a particular set of numbers, "They're tessellated really weirdly. They're into, like, a pyramid shape rather than a bubble. All that's really gonna do is make the Sunrise take more power than normal."

"How much more?" Ship Right asked, leaning forward and squinting at the numbers. She was only vaguely familiar with the field of shield harmonics, most of the numbers just seemed like Prench to her.

"Two percent more, maybe?" Summer shrugged, "Again it's not like, a massive problem? It probably wouldn't matter if we had to use it to stop an attack. It's just something I thought you should know."

"I'll keep that in mind," Ship Right nodded, standing back up straight and patting her on the shoulder, "Just get it done or pass it off, then get some rest, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Summer nodded, not paying any more attention as she turned back to her screen and scrolled back down to the most recent lines. Her jaw once again slackened as the rhythm of her keystrokes filled the air again.

It was early the next morning, before the sun came up. Rain continued to pelt the Indefatigable and her escorts, the water growing choppy below the hull of the great ship. Great floodlights on the deck illuminated the pelting rain, as well as the grey, steel frigate moving through the swelling waves towards the side of the Indy.

A combat logistics ship, piled high with supplies from the mainland. Food, parts, ammunition, and jetfuel. It confirmed to a lot of ponies that there were no supplies waiting for them at their destination, which probably meant no tropical fruits.

Usually this mid-voyage mooring and resupply would wait until sunup, however the frigate quickly informed that it had been told in no uncertain terms to hurry back to the Las Pegasus naval base, once again due to the increased readiness levels. So, the operation had to be conducted in the dead of night, in the midst of choppy waters.

Rigging crews swarmed the side of the ship, securing a way for resupply to come aboard. Pegasi flew with cables between the two ships, a steeper than usual incline between the two. The Indy couldn't compromise her ballasts to make the slope more gentle, with the great waves tossing them about. As containers of supply came aboard, a few things left to go aboard the frigate.

There were empty cargo crates, to be reused back at port. There were holotape racks of data dumps from the ship's computers and sensors, as the SPP towers had insufficient coverage in the area to quickly and securely carry them back wirelessly. Finally, there were crates of letters, written from thousands of sailors aboard the ship, bound for home.

Standing in a hallway on the 20th deck of the ship, Ivory Heart hunched over a paper with a pen in mouth, rapidly scribbling away as he made himself as small as possible for the sailors pushing past him. Some made an effort to bump him, sending a streak of ink sprawling across the page. He ignored it, his shift in the kitchen had taken him all the way until the frigate had docked. If he was fast, he could still have the message slipped in with the outgoing mail.

Dear Mom

First things first, I want you to know that everything's gonna be okay. I can't tell you where, but we're far away from the fighting. I'm safe and sound. The ponies treat me just fine here, like I deserve. I haven't gotten into any fights or any trouble with the higher ups, I just keep my head down and work like you told me to. We think we'll be back at Las Pegasus for a bit by around Hearth's warming. They also say the war's almost over, so I'll probably be free to come home soon.

Tell Zemora I love her so, so much. I love you too, Mom, just do what the doctors say and I'll see you soon, okay?

Love, Ivory Heart

Closing the pen and quickly stuffing the paper in a waiting envelope, Ivory turned and ran for the stairs. Climbing several stairs, he stopped only briefly to don a plastic, see-through raincoat and a pair of boots before heading out onto the flight deck.

Moving fast to avoid the eyes of any officers knowing he probably shouldn't be outside, Ivory ran fast towards the rigging crew, holding his letter in his mouth to shield it from the rain that pattered off of the brim of his hat. Walking towards the railings lining the edge of the ship, where heavy steel cables snaked down from the side to help anchor the neighboring ship while cargo was moved to a below-decks hatch far below.

Heart thundering as he saw one of the sailors leaning on the railing eying him suspiciously, Ivory waved viciously at a passing wing of pegasi.

To his immense relief, one broke off and flew over. A pink mare, wrapped in a bright yellow raincoat, flew down to the side of the railing with him, shouting, "Took ya long enough!"

"Sorry Ash! I had to actually write it as well!" he shouted back over the din of the storm, he said as he spat the letter out into his hoof, holding it out towards her as the envelope was bombarded with raindrops.

"Price has gone up!" Ash Winds said, pushing the letter back, "The mailbox was already vetted and packed up. Sailors on the Cadana gotta get hazard pay for handling striped mail themselves!"

"How much!?" Ivory asked, heart dropping.

"Two hundred, on top of what you already paid me! I have to keep some in case I get audited by the Pinks."

"I don't have that!"

"Sucks," Ash shrugged, beginning to pull away.

Ivory Heart's shoulders slumped as he watched her go. His mouth suckled at the air, like a fish out of water, trying to think of something to offer her in exchange for mail. She gave one more look over her shoulder, an eyebrow raised, before she dove into the wind again with a shake of her head.

Hoof slipping from the railing, Ivory tucked his sodden letter away underneath his coat, making his way back to the hatches leading inside. Two hours later, the moorings were cast off, and the Cadana motored into the storm. Her silhouette was illuminated in a flash of lightning one last time, before she was subsumed by the abyss of the night.