Fallout Equestria: Protect and Serve

Chapter 2

I told Doodle, Sweetie and Sapphire about the Overmare’s plan.

Needless to say Doodle was beyond upset, Sapphire was absolutely furious that the Overmare was sending me up there and Sweetie left the room and returned an hour later with a data tape in her mouth.

“If groups of people are up there use this to barter with them,” she said, handing me the tape, “It’s information on salient green and some other things from Science.”

“How will they be able to use it?” I asked, inserting the tape in my PipBuck.

“The tape has instructions on it.”

That evening I sat in the Atrium, looking up at the Remembrance Wall, the wall opposite the Overmare’s circular window where every nameplate of every dweller was placed after they died. Yes, every single past dweller’s name was attached to the wall, hundreds of names in a pseudo family tree, all the way back to the first generation at the very top.

Mom always said it was our duty to bring the plates with us when we eventually returned to the Surface.

To fulfill their final dream.

Growing up the idea of returning to the Surface had always felt laughable, we were stuck down here and eventually we would die out down here too. A dusty forgotten tomb dedicated to the sins of those who destroyed the world…

But now it was a very scary fact that we would leave.

I thought about what Mom would’ve done if she was alive today. She always hated living down here… Dad always described her as a songbird caught in a cage. Safe sure, but not free to live as she wanted.

Would she have been as cautious as the Overmare and waited?

Or would she have been willing to take any chance to leave?

I didn’t like the answer…

I stared down at Nimble’s plate, placed under her grandparents… with enough space for her parents’ plates when they died.

Her parents broke down when I told them the news, her mother was beyond consolable and her father tried to strangle me.

I couldn’t blame them…

It was very late when I got up to go to bed.

*** *** ***

I stood in front of the door to the Caves the following morning, Sapphire and Sweetie stood with me, Doodle had locked herself in our room and refused to come out. Or even say goodbye to me when I left.

I tried to focus my mind on the job ahead… but it stung deep.

I was wearing the Surfacer’s armored suit over my jumpsuit, Black Bolt, a unicorn mare from Maintenance, had spent most of the night looking over the armor, patching the holes and adjusting it to fit me a little better. Though she had to remove the sleeve and armor plate where my PipBuck was latched around my foreleg.

I quickly triple checked my small saddle bag on my flank, the flask of water, the bottles of salient green, a healing potion, roll of bandages and three spare magazines of 45 Auto bullets my pistol were still in place.

“Alright, Jasper,” the Overmare said, standing near the door to the rest of the Stable, “Remember, just survey the immediate area and report back in one month.”

I nodded… as professionally as I could. Sapphire typed in the code into the terminal and the door screeched open.

Suddenly Sweetie took my head in her forehooves and pulled me into a kiss, when our lips parted I stared at her in confusion.

“For luck,” she clarified, “Sapphire and I will watch over Doodle while you’re gone, so hurry back.”

I promised her and stepped up to Sapphire.

“Hope you’re not expecting a kiss,” he joked, offering a weak smile.

I instead pulled him into a hug, “Try not to burn down the Stable while I’m gone, little brother.”

“No promises,” he said back, returning the hug, “Stay safe out there.”

We let go of each other as I pulled out my pistol and stepped out into the cold air. The door slid closed behind me.

It was slow going at first, but I knew there had to be a way through. A number of times I had found deadends and looping tunnels.

When I reached the room Nimble had died I stopped and knelt down, “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you, Nimble. I promise to do everything I can to prevent that again.”

It felt like hours before I finally came across a large chamber where piles of moldering crates and rotting wooden beams pushed up against the walls. Rusty metal carts on decaying metal rails led to an angled elevator on the far end beside a small control panel and a very long rusty stairway that led up a long tunnel that sloped steeply upward toward a bright pink light.

“Well, that would explain why nobody’s found us before now,” I muttered to myself.

I stepped up to the elevator panel, but it had no power. I noticed a leg thick cable snaking across the dusty floor toward a small rusty metal building. Stepping inside I found a large rusty generator.

“Well, here goes nothing,” I muttered, clapping my forehooves together before getting to work.

But after an hour without any luck I gave up and went back to the elevator’s stairway… there must’ve been a thousand steps… at least.

“Right,” I muttered, looking up, “If there’s no other way.”

It was at least an hour of climbing before I finally crawled over the last step, one thousand nine hundred in total, and collapsed in the cold dirt and warm pink light. I laid there for a long time as I caught my breath. As I pulled out my flask to get a drink I noticed something, the air felt cold against my sweaty fur. The air in the Stable had always been regulated by the air talisman, kept at about seventy decrees all day long. So this cold hard air felt… very weird.

Also it was a lot quieter, there wasn’t the buzzing of overhead light bulbs or the low constant hum of the spark generator made the Surface quieter. I sat up and looked around, only for my vision to be slightly blurry. I felt very confused by that, but after a few moments my eyes slowly adjusted to the openness of the Surface. I quickly realized that after a lifetime of being confined to Stable 105’s tight hallways and small rooms, the very thought of not being in a tight space hadn’t even occurred to me.

When my eyes had fully adjusted to the eerie pink light I saw I was standing in a small town with a number of small moldering huts surrounding an open semicircle with the opening of the shaft in the side of a large mountain. In stark contrast to the Caves, the clearing was littered with hundreds of pony skeletons of all sizes armed with the rusty lumps of metal scattered around ancient makeshift barricades.

My PipBuck pinged me an alert, checking it I found that the map function had opened and had marked my location as the Whitestone Mines. I checked my geiger counter… and yes the dial was still firmly in the green… not moving at all. I tried to keep my hope from growing more hopeful that we could at least settle here if not nearby.

“We don’t know what’s up here,” I quietly scolded myself.

I picked up the magical energy rifle and searched the town. Most of the buildings were dilapidated and ruined by the ravages of time, but a few of them seemed upright… enough. I checked a couple of them, but the only open one looked like a barracks with over one hundred bunk beds, most were pushed up against doors or windows and crudely welded together to form makeshift barricades with dozens of pony skeletons. Whatever they were fighting against must’ve been terrifying because most of those were damaged, destroyed or blown open by something with a crazy amount of force.

I didn’t find anything of use though before I reached what I assumed was the Overmare’s office. Inside a unicorn mare’s skeleton wearing a moldering suit leaning back in a swivel chair behind a small metal desk where a small faded photograph of a stallion and a mare with three foals standing in front of a large waterfall and a large lake sat.

The nameplate on the mostly destroyed door said Mari Song.

“So,” you’re a Song then?” I asked, mostly to myself as I checked over the skeleton… spotting a large hole in the side of its skull and a rusty 45 Auto pistol lying on the moldering carpet beside it, “Well, your family survived, mostly at least.”

I looked through the desk and found a couple of magazines and a box of one hundred 45 Auto bullets, a valuable find. Rifling through the other drawers I found a stack of papers in the bottommost drawer. I flipped through the papers, most of them were so damaged that I couldn’t make anything out until I found a just barely legible page covered in black smudges.

-ken back to ____ and no prizes for what’s about to happen.
Listen, I don’t trust that bitch Applebloom! Her___the___Head, right? What’s keeping her from ratting us out? You’ve heard what____did in Canterlot, we won’t last three fucking minutes! Dad said we need to get____Stable before shit goes sideways!

I put the papers down and left the building.

As I left the mining town I noticed a rusty metal sign hanging in the crumbling fence,

Stable-Tec Private Property

Trespassers will be persecuted by the fullest extent of the law!

The area surrounding the mining town was a landscape of large hills dotted with rocks, partially buried by long dry grass. I followed a dirt swath cut through the grass down the hillside for about an hour before I reached an ancient crumbling set of metal tracks that headed northwest to southeast, slicing through the hillside.

After a long moment of consideration I decided to head southeast.

*** *** ***

After hours of walking the hot bright sun was finally setting behind the mountains casting me in gray shadows. The cold barren rocky hills seemed endless as the tracks sloped down as it snaked down the mountains for miles.

I was beyond exhausted, my teeth were chattering so much they were almost tap dancing. My whole body was numb from the increasingly icy winds slicing through my clothing and armor down to my bones. I knew I’d collapse into unconsciousness and freeze to death soon if I didn’t find somewhere closed off to sleep.

I desperately shone my flashlight around the hilly landscape for any safe place before spotting a large angular shape a ways down the hill in a blackened trench. Stepping closer I saw that the shape was a large vehicle that vaguely looked like a big bird made of badly scorched black and silver angular metal paneling and a bubble like window with a spider web of cracked glass partially buried in the dirt and a set of broken wings with weaponry that looked like bigger versions of my rifle and machinery haphazardly tossed around the smoldering crash site. Shining my flashlight at the end with the broken window I saw a painted outline of a large sword with wings over what looked like storm clouds.

Alright… this was very creepy… but it’s not like I really had any choice as I looked around the vehicle for a way inside, spotting a circular hatch that was slightly ajar.

Opening the hatch I jumped back as a pony fell through the opening circle and collapsed in the smoldering dirt. After my heart calmed down I noticed that it was a pegasus… and then I noticed she was dead… most likely had been dead for awhile now judging by just how stiff she was when I flipped her over. I noticed she was also wearing a rubbery suit with mismatching patchwork leather and metal armor, the same as mine.

I shined my flashlight into the vehicle and found at least a dozen other dead ponies, a couple were pegasi wearing yellow rubbery suit armor while the rest were unicorns and earth ponies, but all were strewn about the cramped space. Likely having died when the vehicle crashed.

I climbed inside and closed the hatch to keep out the cold wind, of course that would do fuck all for the cold air inside the vehicle. I was still freezing to death and I had to make a decision… I offered an awkward prayer to the Goddesses as I searched over the pegasi for anything to keep me alive and found a small device with a red gemstone in its face.

“What are you?” I asked, pressing the gemstone.

After a few seconds it started glowing with a dull heat that slowly chased away the bone splitting cold.

Slowly…

As the space slowly warmed up I climbed up a short ladder to the cockpit, that’s what they’re called right, and found another pegasi wearing a single piece uniform made of gray cloth and some quilted padding over his shoulders. He was slumping over what I reasonably assumed were the vehicle’s controls, a large scorched hole in the back of his head just below a black flat cap.

“So that’s why you crashed,” I muttered through shivering teeth.

I looked over the hat before putting it on my head over my horn as I stepped back into the lower cabin. I offered another awkward prayer to the Goddesses before carefully moving the bodies to the opposite side. As I moved them I noticed that all of the non-pegasi all had blackened eyes like the colt.

“Were you all related to him?” I asked, “Well… he’s safe now, so don’t worry about him.”

I took a moment to rummage through the containers above the seats… sense I was already robbing the dead. I found a few packets labeled as Emergency M.R.E., a bottle of cold water and a few magical energy weapons, some of them looked like pistol versions of my rifle and some others had three gemstones at the muzzle, but they were all broken from the crash… or maybe from what looked like weeks if not months of jury-rigged repairs, judging by just how miss matching the exposed parts looked.

I sat down on the open seats and balled up there in the cold darkness shivering like crazy until the space warmed up enough for sleep to finally catch me.

*** *** ***

It was probably the second roughest night in my life.

My body was very stiff and my bones ached as I stretched out my limbs…

But… I was alive.

After a quick breakfast I took the heating gemstone and continued following the tracks. It was several hours before I came across a small wooden shack down a little dirt path. I stepped closer to it, my PipBuck told me that I’d found Park Ranger Cabin 7.

Unholstering my pistol, I pushed the door open to the shack’s main room. The place looked well ransacked with the ancient moldering furniture turned over, a fridge sitting in the corner and rusty cans and glass bottles and other clutter spread all over the floor.

“Hello?” I asked, “Anyone home?”

I stepped around, looking through every nook and cranny and found a bottle of whiskey. I pulled on the fridge door’s handle, but it was stuck. After checking around I found there was nothing else of use. I righted a chair and sat down for a break, I pulled out a bottle of salient green and chowed down.

As I ate lunch I noticed that the crisp cold air was getting easier to breathe, back in the Stable the air was regulated by the talismans for air purity. Maybe that was why I almost froze to death last night.

I noticed a large picture frame on the floor under the bed. I picked it up and blew off the dust. It was a faded map of a massive vaguely crescent shaped mountain range that easily covered hundreds of miles of southeastern Equestria labeled as the Maritonian Mountains.

“Huh,” I muttered, looking over the map, “Well… now I know where I am.”

Suddenly my PipBuck pinged an alert to me, checking it I saw the map had updated with the location of a marker relatively close by, maybe a few more hours if I continued following the tracks.

*** *** ***

I was very exhausted when the sun was setting behind me as I finally caught sight of a small town built on opposite banks of a river with a long concrete dam holding back a large lake connecting both sides of the town. According to my map I’d found the town of Good View. And to be honest the town did have a very good view of a massive valley that spread out for hundreds of miles before disappearing off into the horizon.

On the dam’s central section a collection of ramshackle buildings were built up with smoke trails lifting up from it. I felt excitement rise in my chest, there really were people alive up here and maybe they were even friendly. I tried to keep my hopes from rising.

Many of the town’s ruined buildings were all boarded up or dilapidated with the rusty remains of dozens of wagons littered the streets. But I noticed there was a lack of skeletons around, I thought that was weird because according to the town’s sign at the entrance, the place had a pre-apocalypse population of nearly two hundred. So wouldn’t there have been more skeletons? Unless they all survived and left when the world ended.

As I reached the lakefront I had a clear view of the dam and the massive forty foot span of missing dam which separated my side of the town and the ramshackle buildings, allowing dark water to spill over the side down a three hundred foot fall down the mountain. I looked around for some way to cross the span before spotting a couple of long swaying cables connected to large posts on both sides.

I knelt down behind a big mailbox and thought about my next move. I knew nothing about this settlement, but there weren’t any signs saying to keep out… So maybe they were at least tolerant of outsiders.

Or maybe they were psycho cannibals that were gonna kill and eat me…

“This easily has to be THE dumbest idea I’ve ever had,” I bitterly muttered before I got up, “Well, there was that threesome…”

Don’t ask.

My pulse quickened and cold sweat rolled down my back as I slowly stepped closer and closer to the walled settlement. My hooves clicked on the pavement, echoing into the dark freezing night. Suddenly my E.F.S. told me that there was a single yellow blip dead ahead of me, though I couldn’t see anyone.

“Hello?” I called out to the blip, raising a forehoof.

There was only silence though. Right, not creepy at all.

“Hello?” I repeated, louder, “Anyone ho-”

Suddenly the yellow blip turned red.

BANG!

I collapsed in the street as white hot stabbing pain sliced up my leg. I quickly dragged/rolled myself behind some nearby cover.

“Dammit!” I bitterly grunted in pain as I quickly checked my foreleg, the bullet had struck me just above my PipBuck. It felt like it hit the bone, the lower part of my limb hanging limply.

I pulled out my bandages and wrapped it tightly around the oozing bullet hole in my foreleg before putting the rest back into my saddle bag, not that it did much good, my blood was already soaking through.

“Fuck,” I muttered as my mind raced with thousands of thoughts per second, I wasn’t going anywhere with my broken leg not that I would be getting far with that hidden sniper.

My heart was pounding in my ears as I pulled out my magical energy rifle. Suddenly the street was flooded by very bright lights from the walls. I leaned out of cover just enough to see a large cable car armored with rusty metal plates slowly crossing the gap on the cables with at least four red blips. It felt like it took hours before the cable car reached my side. The doors swung open and four ponies wearing leather and fur lined armor over dark blue outfits and wielding weapons stepped out.

One of them, the leader by my guess, was wearing a suit of impressive armor made from blackened metal with a large white fur pelt tossed over one shoulder. They turned to a smaller pony wearing a strange looking cloak and asked them something that almost sounded like Ponish… but it wasn’t. The pony stubbornly replied something in the same strange sounding language, moving their cloak to reveal a large rifle held in a cloud of green magic.

They kept saying a word that caught my interest, Enclave.

The leader turned away and ordered something to the others, who fanned out looking for me.

My heart pounded in my ears as I lifted my magical energy rifle and entered S.A.T.S. I targeted the closest pony, a scrawny looking one wearing a fur lined dark blue coat three sizes too big and wielding a 45 Auto pistol in their mouth. I tried to calm my breathing, summoning my strength to will myself to pull the trigger. This wasn’t the Caves again, where I could hesitate.

These bastards attacked me first…

And fired a shot.

BRZZZT!

The red glowing beam crossed the twenty foot span in a near instant, striking the pony squarely in their chest. Their pistol dropped, clattering on the cracked pavement as they suddenly erupted into rainbow color flames turning into a pile of smoldering ashes and burnt clothing.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Bullets sparked against metal as the others shot at my hiding spot, I lifted my rifle over the top again and fired blindly.

BRZZZT! BRZZZT! BRZZZT!

Two of the beams whiffed, missing the closest pony by inches, but the third beam hit their shoulder. Melting into the metal plate, causing them to trip up and drop the baseball ball in their mouth as they tumbled across the pavement.

I leaned out and pulled the trigger again to finish them off… only for a click and dull buzzing sound to answer. Shit!

“Stop firing!” I shouted, ducking behind cover again, “Stop firing! I’m not Enclave!”

Bullets continued riddling my cover, sparking and denting with each strike. I threw my empty rifle to the side as desperation quickly creeped in. Maybe it was the quickening blood loss or maybe my general exhaustion, but I couldn’t think of a way out of this alive. I couldn’t run with my broken and bleeding leg, nor was I gonna get very far with the cloaked one with the rifle lurking around, but I couldn’t surrender since they clearly didn’t understand me… or maybe they just didn’t care.

Judging by the way they were shouting at me… it was probably the latter.

At that moment I made a harsh decision, I was most likely going to die… And if this was my end, sudden as it was, I resolved myself to take as many of these bastards with me as I could.

I pulled out my pistol and racked back the slide, “I’m sorry, Doodle,” I whispered, tears welling in my eyes.

Memories of my daughter flashed through my head. The morning she was lifted out of Honey’s opened belly was the strongest, she’d been at least two weeks premature and was small enough to fit in my forehooves. Cherry Drops had kept her in Medical for another month to make sure she was healthy. Everything in my life had shifted after that day, I couldn’t be free spirited anymore like Sapphire. I had a daughter to care for.

But now I was about to die and there’d be no way for her to know.

CLANK!

Suddenly something landed in front of me, ripping me out of my thoughts. Looking up I saw it was a metal apple with a fading yellow stripe.

“What the-”

Ka-BOOOM!

Level Up: Long Trotter: Your endurance has increased by one point.