42

Chapter Five

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Equestrian Wasteland
Manehattan, Equestria
21 Years after the battle of Hoofington

I stared at the robot. "You were lonely?"
"Yeah, so?" He asked as if this was obvious. I shook my head and laughed. "Looks like we're rubbing off on you, you bag of bolts."
"I have admitted enough for one day." He said.
"Anyways…" I said sharing the data from my Pipbuck with him.
"Shattered Hoof ridge is pretty far from here, and goes through raider territory." He stated.
"Yes. I think some teleport magic is indeed called for in this." I replied waving a claw.
"Homage, it's been interesting. We must do this again soon." I said looking at her.
She raised an eyebrow with a smirk. "Yeah, this was interesting."
I grabbed both of my companions around their necks and waved another hand and snapped.

***

Equestrian Wasteland
Shattered Hoof Ridge, Equestria
21 Years after the battle of Hoofington

We appeared in the middle of a desert area with a ridge of cliffs around us. There were shattered hulks of tanks and still some sun bleached skeletons out here. I'm looking around and I'm not seeing any black walls.
"Any ideas guys?" Phoenix asked, looking around too and examining the cliff sides in front of us. "Not yet." I say trotting around to the opposite side of a tank and seeing the burned in shadows on the hulls of the broken tanks of what looked like ponies shadows had been left without their pony and only bones littered around the ground. I looked at the bones then shifted my gaze around the area.
Dirt, grass, broken war tanks, bones, and hello what's this? I started walking toward the cliff face and a bunch of frames of tents and behind the bones of the tents was a boarded up mine entrance.
"Equestrian Coal Mine #5" read a sign next to the entrance. I turned back and called for Byte and Phoenix. As they got closer I asked, "What if we're supposed to be looking for a literal wall of black. Like a coal mine?" I asked, turning back to the boarded up entrance.
"That is logical." Byte replied analyzing the coal mine entrance, then a little panel opened on his right side and three tiny mechanical parasprites buzzed their wings and took off toward a broken plank in the door. The panel closed as the little bots disappeared into the tunnel.
I looked at him raising an eyebrow. "Mechasprites?"
He nodded.
"They are great for recon. Limited distance though, we might want to follow them."
I snap my claw and the wood melts like ice cream on a hot day, the melted wood lay on the ground as we walked over it entering the mine entrance.
The mine entrance was dark and Phoenix illuminated his horn lighting the way ahead of us. Byte's eyes observed the rock around us. "Judging by the geological analysis so far it seems this mine still has plenty of coal left in here. I wonder why they abandoned it?" He said his monotone sounded thoughtful.
"That doesn't make sense if it had plenty of coal in it still they wouldn't abandon a rich resource like that, it was critical to Equestria during the war." Phoenix replied.
A little more ways in I spotted a gray carving in the stone and chaos pulled at me. "Probably because OIA had a nefarious use for it." I said pointing to the 6 interconnected symbols of the ministries cutie marks set against Luna's moon.

The OIA, Office for Interministey Affairs, was an office setup by one Golden Blood during the prewar Equestria. They were responsible for all the projects pretty much. Pulling the strings behind the scenes. The wall ahead of us was black, made of obsidian. I tapped it with my paw. "I'd say this was a black wall wouldn't you?" I asked, looking at it.
They both nodded and pulled the Water talisman out of a subspace pocket and tapped it to the wall. The wall shrank back from the gemstone and admitted us into a Stable-tech hallway. "Well this isn't ominous at all." I said and the lighting in the hallway flickered to life as somewhere deeper in the facility rumbled to life the magical power generation system.
We carefully made our way down the corridor until we reached a Stable door with the seal of the ministry of peace on it. Above the door it said Project Steelpony. "Ugh why does my life have to revovle around the same things as Momma?"
"Because you are Blackjack's daughter." Byte said going over to the control panel and looking it over and presented his leg and a Pipbuck interface cable popped out and inserted itself into the console. A few beeps later and the door ground and shrieked as it opened and rolled to the left.
"The password was: Cheesewhiz." Byte said in an amused fashion as he retracted the cable back into his leg. "Cheesewhiz?" I asked raising an eyebrow. “Cheesewhiz.” Byte confirmed.
“What a word for a password. “ Phoenix said dryly, floating out a pair of machine guns. “I’ll take point.” He said walking ahead of us. I look over to Byte and we both shrug at one another and walk behind the alicorn bat-pony.

***

We finally made it into the main room of the place. As we looked around we saw different research labs, storage, and production. “Everything the wasteland needs to get their cyberpony production up and running we should definitely tell the Colleaget about this place.” Phoenix said walking up to a Poniqune with cyber parts on it.
“Why would Flutterstay want us to come here?” Byte asked, looking around himself and starting to collect tech samples.
“I’m not too sure. Maybe this is the place he was when he woke up in the Wasteland. We never really talked about it.” I said poking a cyber eye display the eyeball rolling to the floor making a glass breaking sound but didn’t look any worse for wear.
“Well whatever it is, maybe there is a Pipbuck tag you can follow to whatever it is he wanted us to find?” Phoenix asks, looking around still and pushing a button and a door opens, he jumps back as a broom falls out at him with a pony skeleton.
I see the male enhancement cyberpony parts and go to open my mouth to make a joke and Phoenix bonks me on the head with a baseball bat that reads, “Horny Bat.”
“OW HEY!” I protest rubbing my head.
“No horny.” He says simply making the bat vanish back into his saddlebag.
“Fine, fine, no potty humor.” I said toggling my Pipbuck Eyes Forward Sparkle. I see the navigation tag in the storage area. “This way.” I say trotting into the open door.

The doorway led into an unfinished area where piles of boxes lay around labeled with different cyberized parts. We trot through the warehouse to another hallway labeled, “COLD STORAGE” we enter, “This is where the tag ends.” I say and push the button the door doesn’t open. “Hmmm.” I turn to Byte, “Hey Byte, can you open this jar of pickles for me?” He steps up and pulls the panel off and begins playing with wires. After a few moments the door slides up into the ceiling. A standard Stable-tech retracting door. I turn on my Pipbuck lamp and illuminate the room. Inside there were tubes. Each one says “PROJECT ICICLE” with a number on each panel several of them were in operation. “So this isn’t creepy at all. Stasis pods?” Phoenix looked at one and a mummified frozen pony was inside. “OH SHIT!” He jerks back from the surprise of a mummy. “Careful Phoenix. Don’t piss yourself.” Byte says in monotone going to a terminal in the room and plugging into the system. He then begins to recite data.
“Project Icicle, Stasis Pod prototype research. Head researcher True Blood. 5 active cryopods, 1 surviving test subject.” He paused, then looked at the cryopod in question, “One of these was recently activated, 195 years ago.” He said looking at the pod.
“If it's a frozen jerky pony I’m going to be pissed.” Phoenix says as he goes over to the pod and wipes away the frost on the window. “Uh… you should really see this.” He says, blinking in surprise.
“Oh?” I ask trotting up to the window. “What is…it?” I trail off looking into the pod. What I see is a cyberized Anthropomorphic wolf. Her eyes were closed and the vitals on the cryopod screen indicated cyberparts are functioning perfectly.
“How in the hell did a cyberwoflie make it here?” I ask the boys.
“No idea.” Phoenix said as he looked over the terminal and pressed a button.
“Let’s ask.” He says.
At this point I just blinked at him. “Uh, Phoenix do you really think it's a good idea to unfreeze random strangers?” I ask as the process begins.
He shrugged and readied his pistol machine guns.
The tube cracked open.

Author's Note

Short chapter today, Chapters will update ever Thursday until completion from now on. It has been a busy few days and I haven't been able to write as much as I want. Work gets in the way, life gets in the way.