Fallout Equestria: The Indefatigable

October 31, 1077 - Mission Day 22

Afterimages were burned into the eyes of the bridge crew as the lightning danced across the outer hull and over the windows of the bridge. Power flickered, the lights overhead blinking rapidly as indicators on instruments and readouts warbled and waned. An incessant screeching came over the radio, causing its operator to rip off her headset in pain. Sparks covered the outside of the ship to the point where the windshield glowed a pure white, with the crew ducking and shielding their eyes as the searing light threatened to take their vision.

Then, all at once, it stopped.

With a clap of thunder, the lightning retreated from the windshield. The lights blinked a few more times before finally brightening to their full power. A series of beeps came from banks of terminals and instruments as they booted back up.

Captain Anchor, despite being completely unable to see his hoof in front of his face, groaned and began to blindly pick himself up from the floor, "Eugh.. Status report."

"Did we get hit?" somepony else said, eyes fluttering rapidly as they peeked back over the top of their station.

Ship Right, having been looking down at his scope before the flash, simply saw a picture of his terminal bathed in light burned into her eyes, that followed her vision wherever she looked. Wincing, she reached up for her headset, feeling up the side of her head after initially missing and pressing the microphone button, "Harmonics?"

"Harmonics, Bridge! All readouts at zero. We fucked her! Dangerous radiation levels in the Passage."

"Bridge, Damage Control. Status report," Ship Right groaned, raising her hoof in front of her face as she began to see a blurry shape form through the fading image. That was a relief, she couldn't afford to go blind at this point in her career. Hah!

"Fire and intense radiation in the Sunrise Passageway, we're suppressing the former and closed the shutters for the latter. We have temperature warnings on a bunch of exterior compartments, but no fires yet. All other systems green."

"Captain! Shields down, another burnout," Ship Right reported as she blinked again, the faint lights of her scope appearing in her vision, "Fire and radiation in the Sunrise Projector. High temperature in exterior compartments. No other damage detected."

The dark silhouette of the Captain staggering to his hooves moved in Ship Right's peripheral vision, him still clawing at his eyes. Barking, he ordered, "Sensors? Were we hit? Do we still have the contact?"

"Sorry sir! I can't see my scope!" came a voice in response.

How the Captain managed to find his way to it, Ship Right couldn't know, but the shape of the interphone levitating to the Captain's ear flew narrowly past her muzzle. Shouting into it, the Captain demanded, "Bridge, CIC. What are your sensors reading?"

As the Captain talked to the secondary command center, located inside the body of the ship, Ship Right's eyes finally felt like they were adjusting, the world fading into a muted blur from a completely opaque set of shadows. She cautiously peeked at the windshield, finding the ash still falling outside as usual. Wipers cut against the fallout clinging to the glass, glowing particulates covered the flight deck like fluorescent snow, and clouds scrolled endlessly overhead.

The Captain lowered his intraphone, looking over to the communications terminal, "Comms. Try raising the fleet from your station."

To her left, the radio operator reached down for her hanging headset, slipping it back on and flipping a few switches on her console. Depressing her microphone switch, she said, "Indefatigable, Constellation do you read?" a pause, "Indefatigable, Victory do you read?" another pause, "Indefatigable, Hoof do you read?" silence, "Indefatigable, Seaward Shoals do you read?" then, looking back towards the Captain, the operator shook her head, "I'm just getting garbled nonsense."

"We have nothing up here either, Admiral," the Captain said into the phone, "How about the sensors?"

Ship Right looked down at her board. Squinting at the light next to the radio mast, she eventually saw through her bad vision that the light was still on. Pulling open the retractable keyboard on her terminal, she began a diagnostics check. The data echoed the displays on the main board. Nothing was wrong, electrically. Her brow knitted.

"RADAR's gone soft up here, Captain," the sensors officer reported, tapping the screen of his RADAR scope with a hoof, before looking over to the square Eyes-Forward-Sparkle compass, "EFS is more of the same. Signatures are just appearing and disappearing all over the place. RADAR is just seeing nothing."

Captain Anchor looked towards Ship Right, "Anything wrong?"

"Everything's powered, no faults reported. I can reboot the system, but I'm not sure if that will help," Ship Right gave a shrug, "We'll be out for about thirty."

"Do it, we're blind anyway," Captain Anchor nodded, before looking back down to continue with his conversation with the Admiral.

Swallowing, Ship Right punched a series of buttons in sequence. Lights flicked off one by one. A timer was set for five minutes, the standard cooldown time for a system reboot. As soon as it expired, she flicked on the breakers for every system, and scrolls of code appeared on screens as they bootstrapped.

At some point as the sensors rebooted, the radio operator turned on the speakers for the Captain to hear. Garbled voices came through in tinny tones, with single syllables and half-words spoken like one of those sham ghost detectors. Tiny fragments of music, tones, Mares Code, and static interspersed between them. Ship Right squinted over at the selected radio channel, only to find it was on the same one. While her experience with radio technology was only theoretical, she couldn't for the life of her imagine a situation where such an output could be explained by a technical fault.

Crew moved to operate the spotlights on the flight deck. They blasted into the storm of ash into the relative positions of the escort ships, attempting to regain contact as sensors finished restarting.

This time, Ship Right got up from his desk to stroll over to the sensor wing. Standing just behind the Captain and craning his neck, she watched as the data feed connected back to the sensor officer's scopes. The RADAR's sweeping line connected first, sailing clear around the scope without a single object reflecting a single ping back. The weather RADAR, despite there most definitely being weather systems above, did more of the same, as if it was a clear day for the next thousand miles. EFS sparked and glitched, red and yellow pings appearing and disappearing from the compass in a nonsense pattern. Not even their own scout plane that they had launched a few hours before appeared on the RADAR.

The Captain bit his lip, looking back to Ship Right with a raised eyebrow. Ship Right could only give him a somber look, before looking back to their nonfunctioning sensors with a whispered, "Fuck."

Ivory Heart exited the kitchen with a sigh. Over the past couple of days, the oppressive heat that had been creeping in since the explosions had retreated. While apparently puzzling to the ship's specialists, he certainly didn't mind not sweating to the point of exhaustion every watch.

The corridors hit a T-junction. The left was his usual path to his berth, but the bulkhead at the end of the hall had been sealed shut. A padlock sat on its handle, with a paper note taped to it warning about the radiation lurking beyond. It had been that way ever since the shield projector had blown up two days ago. To the right was a longer way around to the berths, which was just as fine with him. He had a few things to think about.

It was almost a week now since the world had blown up. Most of the crew had simply taken to pretending like nothing was wrong, that the world hadn't ended. He had to admit to doing the same, it was why he had delayed for so long.

They'd stopped telling even the cooks how much food was left. Nopony could go into the pantries aside from the officers and the masters-at-arms.

What definitely caused the most disquiet in him, what was whispered about the most in berths and in the messes was the power surge. There was word that the ship's sensors had gone deaf, and that they'd lost track of the destroyers. That they were truly alone now, that there wasn't any remnants of Command coming to help them.

That's really what made Ivory's mind up. It was just unfortunate that there was a line at the kitchen's bathroom.

After taking another turn, he spied the stairwell leading down to the deck below, where the berths were. However, he paused as he spied three ponies loitering right by the stairwell. Two earth ponies and a unicorn, all wearing a beige uniform. Instead of moving to wherever they were required to be, as sailors aboard usually did, these three stood right where they were.

His heart truly started to thunder when their eyes all locked onto him at once.

"Hey Mister," the unicorn said, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth and tossing it onto the floor, "C'mere for a second."

The smuggled kitchen knife, sitting underneath the waist strap of his uniform weighed heavy on the zebra's back. Swallowing, Ivory took a step back, saying, "Hey, guys, I don't want any trouble."

"No trouble necessary," the unicorn shrugged as his horn lit up and a button swung out of his belt. A small whine filled the air as the aluminium rod of the beatstick telescoped outwards in one smooth motion. The two earth ponies, one yellow and one pink, began to stride towards him.

Ivory's hoof went for his knife, which yanked out of its hiding spot and cut a neat tear across the back of his shirt. Wielding the shining, steel tip at the approaching attackers, he shouted, "Stay back motherfucker, I'll cut you!"

Unfortunately, he saw the third earth pony to his left just a tad too late. She lunged at him before he could turn his knife-hoof towards her, smashing a baton into his neck and pushing him into the wall.

His lungs spasmed as electricity arced across his spine as his skull bounced back and collided with the cold steel behind him. A second blow came down on top of his head, the rod of the nightstick making a solid "TWONG" as it bounced off of his head, his vision exploding in sparks as a second stun ran straight into his heart.

Sputtering for breath, he looked up as the unicorn stood over him. His baton came down on top of the knife, lying on the floor next to him, before it was simply flicked away, "Smuggling weapons out of the kitchen? Are we planning a mutiny, sir?" the unicorn raised the baton and poked him in the muzzle, causing him to seize again with pain.

"Looks like we haven't won the war yet, Sergeant," the earth mare said, stepping back from Ivory's twitching body, "We didn't manage to blow this fucker up."

"Just... kill.. me... quickly..." Ivory panted.

"That'd be the equinitarian thing to do, sure. But the equinitarians done invented the megaspell too, and look where that's gotten us," one of the stallions-at-arms said.

The unicorn leaned over, reaching into his pocket and taking out a red plastic baggie. A biohazard symbol was printed on the front, and the contents glowed softly. He shook the contents in front of Ivory, "Balefire Fallout. Fresh from the flight deck lift. I heard the radiation treats the tender tissues of the body real ugly-like. Even if the medics try and treat you, you'll probably die pissing blood and vomiting up your stomach lining, just like all the little fillies and colts showing up for class back home," he took a moment to grin at Ivory's horrified look, before nodding towards his lackeys, "Hold him down," the sergeant ordered as his magic began to undo the straps holding the bag closed.

Ivory's eyes widened as the earth mare and one of the stallions held his back firmly to the wall. The last remaining earth pony grabbed his jaw and wrenched it open, pinning his tongue to the floor of his mouth with a hoof. Muffled screams made their way around the lodged hoof as the bag came open.

Suddenly, the earth mare did a double take over her shoulder down the hallway, "Sarge!" she suddenly hissed.

Ivory's eyes followed hers towards a butter yellow earth stallion standing about 10 meters away down the hall. He still wore his apron and his mane and tail net. Most oddly, however, was his left sleeve - rolled up to make space for a military pattern PipBuck.

The sergeant waved him off, "This ain't any of your business, sir!"

Butter Apron looked around for a moment, before reaching for a fire extinguisher, mounted on the wall nearby, "Lettem go," he ordered, ripping the pin out of the handle.

The sergeant nodded towards the earth mare and the stallion holding Ivory's jaw, "Fuck him up."

She nodded, grabbing her stun baton from the floor and pushing it into her mouth. The other gave Ivory a smash to the back of the head before picking up his baton to do the same.

The mare took a single step towards Butter, inhaling to say something around the handle of her weapon, when suddenly Butter's PipBuck glowed.

In the blink of an eye, he appeared in front of her. In a swift, inequine motion, the fire extinguisher smashed her across the face with a solid "BONG!". Flung like a ragdoll, her skull bounced off of the corridor wall, leaving a bloody smear. She didn't get back up.

The stallion backpedalled as he braced to ward off Butter's incoming assault with his longer weapon. However, Butter simply fell to his haunches and depressed the lever of the extinguisher.

A torrent of foam and wind gushed out from the Class D extinguisher, quickly covering the stallion's face and chest. Globs of foam splashed onto Ivory as well, and fire bloomed in his left eye as a drop found its way inside. The wind from the extinguisher kicked up the opened packet of fallout. The sergeant coughed as a faceful of ash billowed out from the packet and into his mouth and nose.

Wasting no time as the foam-covered stallion staggered, Butter hurled the red can straight into his face, which bounced off it with enough force to hit the ceiling before tumbling back down.

The stallion holding back Ivory scrambled back, reaching for his belt and whipping out a revolver, "FREEF!" he ordered while one of his hooves picked up his baton.

However as soon as he had the revolver levelled, Butter was already behind the foamed, stunned stallion. With the click of a revolver's hammer, Butter drew his captive's service pistol and levelled it at him.

In a panic, the stallion-at arms got a single shot off, exploding through his friend's shoulder and into Butter, though all he got was a grunt out of the cook's mate.

Butter's PipBuck glowed again.

Ivory thought for sure Butter shot the stallion-at-arms right through the head, due to all the blood pouring from it after the echoes of the shot stopped ringing in his ears. However, as the stallion collapsed screaming and clutching his face, dropping a shattered revolver to the ground, he realized the truth; Butter had somehow managed to nail the revolver from right between his teeth.

His eyes travelled to the sergeant, face covered in glowing ash. He'd retrieved his revolver from his belt, and was in the process of raising it.

Scrabbling for one of the dropped stun batons, Ivory leapt at him, jamming the tip of the baton straight for the nearest part he could get at. This time, it happened to slide up towards the chin, causing the sergeant to give a choked scream as his magic fizzled. The revolver dropped to the ground. A kick pushed it as far away as possible.

Ivory looked back towards Butter, who lazily threw off the stallion he had been using an equine shield. Falling back down onto all fours, Butter winced as he felt up near his own shoulder, where a bullet wound had marked it. Though, rather than say anything, he simply spat out the stolen service pistol and immediately fell onto his face, placing his hooves over his head.

A moment of confusion flashed through Ivory's brain, before a bulb sparked on and he immediately threw the baton aside and did the same.

Not a moment later, the mechanical clunks of two, giant power armored ponies thundered down the stairwell. Ivory could practically feel the reticles of their battle saddles bore into the back of his head as a metal hoof grabbed his surrendering forelegs. Pinning them to his back, the sounds of more hooves approaching from behind him, these ones not covered in iron, was all he heard before the click of fetters around his legs.

For the first time in a full week since the bombs fell, the exterior hatches leading onto the flight deck squeaked open.

Ponies wearing bright yellow hazard suits, with silvery-white metal plates duct taped to their chests, helmets, and crotches, stepped out into the open. Floating out with them were three Mr Gutsies, their arms equipped with arc welders, torches, and precision grabbers. Some stayed to the back, pushing the bulkheads closed behind them as soon as the entire group was outside. PipBucks began to click rapidly, despite the RadSafe rushing through their veins and the ship's utmost attempts at keeping them insulated.

Some wondered the wisdom of sending up ponies in standard hazmat rather rather than in power armor, but hurried their step regardless. There was a break in the ash falling, for whatever reason. It was the best time to start clearing the fallout before it stacked up enough to inhibit airplanes taxiing

The ponies got to work immediately. The pegasi among them hefted themselves into the sky, despite the lead weights taped to their armor, flying up to the radio mast extending out from the carrier's superstructure. The Gutsies followed shortly after them.

The others, staying on the flight deck, got to work. Fire hoses were attached to specially-made valves, with attachments that looked like giant garden sprinklers. The hoses were strung out across the deck, covered in a fetlock-high layer of wildly radioactive ash.

As ponies on the roof of the superstructure hosed it off the gathered ash, others examined the sensor equipment along with the Gutsies. No damage whatsoever. The radar dish continued to spin, the EFS gem was still glowing and outputting the correct frequency. There was no visible structural or electrical damage to the antennae... in fact there was no sign of any damage from the supposed lightning that raced across the hull.

An earth pony waddled across the flight deck towards the firehose valves. Her breath echoed back into her ears through the helmet as the steady click of her PipBuck punctuated every whirr of her respirator. She raised a foreleg, taking a look at her health meter, red slowly rising up the bar with +8 RAD glowed red next to it.

Shaking her head, she simply hoped RadAway was as good as the Ministry of Peace claimed it was. Moving up to the firehose valve, she creaked it open, the sound of water filling the air as the hose connected to the spigot pressurized. Long plumes of water shot out of the rigged firehoses, washing down the deck. They stood there as the ash began to be washed out by water, diluting and forming muddy streams that flowed towards the edges of the flight deck.

A blast of cold wind blew across the deck, causing her to sigh. She checked her Pipbuck again and as the artificial rain continued to fall, so did the radiation damage number displayed on it.

Brooms were passed around. Steadily, they began to sweep away any puddles of fallout still sitting around. Diluted by water, the standing ash was much less dangerous. Still, she didn't dare take off her respirator, no matter how much effort it took to suck air through it, or how sweaty the lead-lined rubber suit got.

Thirty minutes of scrubbing later, and the job was almost done. The fire hose line for the makeshift wash-down system could be sealed from the inside, and opened whenever the ash kicked up again. She leaned up against the mop, looking down to one of her booted hooves, covered in subtly glowing, muddy slime. Some of it had even splashed onto her PipBuck, which clicked away. Her health was half filled with red. She felt nothing now, but she knew she'd feel something soon.

Something fell onto the back of her helmet.

She reached up, grabbing some sort of powder. Forehead crinkling, she narrowed her eyes as she looked down at a hooffull of glowing snow. Turning around and looking up, lightning struck overhead as glowing snowflakes fell from the heavens.