“And I thought I was here to be a sеx slave!”

“What?! No! What a disgusting idea! …I'm simply going to harvest your organs!”

Step by cautious step we walked together, Blackjack leading up the rear and me in the front. All around us, the lights flickered and dimmed periodically, and I once again found myself thanking my upbringing on a hive world for the experience with badly lit, confined spaces it had granted me. Blackjack was similarly unperturbed by the claustrophobic corridors and the less-than-adequate illumination; apparently, aside from being a rape factory, Stable 99 also featured conditions similar to an underhive.

Messages similar to the first were painted on the walls every few feet, proclaiming such reassuring platitudes as ‘you walk among dead ponies’, ‘the mechanism sees everything’, ‘pLAYTIME!’, and in one particularly notable case, ‘it’s time to DIE’.1 I say notable because that last message was written next to a disemboweled brown-furred pegasus reclined backward against the wall, his chest and ribcage turned inside out and his internal organs scattered all along the floor.

Blackjack recoiled as we rounded the corner, and I clamped a hoof over her mouth right in time to stifle the ear-piercing scream that erupted from her throat.

I couldn’t really blame her for that; internally, I was screaming just as loud as she was. I guess being an unwitting war hero who has spent a not-insignificant portion of his life outfighting, outwitting, and fleeing in terror from the very worst a millennia-long galactic war can throw at someone meant I had a lot more practice with projecting an air of outward calm at times when I was anything but than she did.

It took a good thirty seconds for her muffled shrieks to subside to the point that I could let her open her mouth without letting everything in earshot know exactly where we were. The minute she did so, she started sucking in huge lungfuls of air. “What… what kind of sick fuckers would-” A drop of blood from a still-fresh message of “It Sees Everything!” landed in her mane, and she glanced back at said message, sucking in a tiny gasp as her ears went flat against her neck. “That’s… all those words were written in blood, weren’t they?”

“You didn’t notice?!” I exclaimed, struggling to keep my voice low.

“I thought it was just dark paint!” Blackjack cried out defensively, not even trying to keep her voice down.

“And the coppery smell?” My prehensile feathers curled around the hilts of my chainsword and laspistol; from the way Blackjack was shouting, I had a feeling that something undesirable was about to pay us an unwanted visit.

“I… I thought it… was just… the metal…” And then Blackjack started to hyperventilate; apparently the realization that she’d walked passed and quite possibly through a truly disturbing amount of blood had sent her into a full-blown panic attack. Frak.

“Calm down.” I instructed as I stepped forward, grabbing Blackjack’s shoulder with one hoof, my training for snapping individual soldiers out of Battle Shock without blowing their brains out kicking in. “Now is not the time to panic-”

I was cut off by a burst of static from our pipbucks, which quickly resolved into an eerie, oddly artificial-sounding melody. Blackjack began frantically fiddling with various knobs and buttons on her Pipbuck, her breathing becoming increasingly labored as her attempts to switch off the music failed repeatedly.

“You can’t turn it off, can you?” I asked, my voice low. Blackjack shook her head in agreement, her ears pressing tight against her head.

And then the singing started.

“Pony number one; he thought his armor would avert the end…”

A voice burst from the speakers of our pipbucks, warped, distorted, and slightly studdering like it was coming from a vox-caster that had been possessed by a Daemon.

“Pony number two; she lost all will to continue…”

An orange bar appeared on a curved bar in the bottom of my vision, a number popping up above it and ticking down from 99 as the bar moved back and forth across what I realized was a compass. Blackjack winced the moment it appeared, her head swiveling toward the direction it pointed.

“Pony number three; he locked himself up and starved away…”

“Oh fuck… Oh fuck…” Blackjack whimpered, her expression a near-perfect mirror for my emotions in that moment.

“Pony number four; she just couldn’t take it any more…”

The bar suddenly stopped moving, the countdown freezing at twenty five as the ghostly voice trailed off into silence. For a fraction of a second that felt like it dragged on for ten millennia, everything was still.

And then, the silence was broken by the screech of tires on metal floors, the countdown going from 25 into the single digits in half a second as the numbers and bar both turned a shade of red reminiscent of the emergency lights on a half-destroyed voidship. Acting on a hunch, I dove to the side, tackling Blackjack and bringing her along in the process. My hunch that the red bar was a display element for some kind of xenotech auspex was promptly proven correct; by the time the other half of that second had rolled around, the wall we’d been standing in front of had exploded in a shower of debris and dust, it’s collapse accompanied by a shriek of “HOLY SHIT!” from Blackjack as the thing that had shattered the wall came into view.

Looming over the two of us was a four-legged behemoth, at least as large as an Astartes in Terminator armor. One of its arms bore a weapon that vaguely resembled a far more compact version of a Scout-Sentinel’s multilaser, while the other carried what looked for all the world like a deranged union between an Astartes-grade Heavy Bolt Gun and an Emperor's Chainsaw.2 And atop it's oddly humanoid-looking torso, right where its head would be, was a translucent, cylindrical jar, containing a pulsing, apparently-still-living blob of pinkish flesh that looked just about the right size to fit in a pony’s skull.3

“Nevermind, time to panic!” I shouted as the two of us scrambled to our hooves and bolted, tires squealing as our surroundings burst into a roaring kaleidoscope of multicolored lasbolts and fiery detonations. I couldn’t hear Blackjack over the noise of the detonations, but I could read the words she was saying off of her lips. Or rather, the single word she was saying, over and over and over again; “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck-”. And somehow, over the screaming and explosions and sizzling, the deranged singling was still audible over the roar of the monstrosity’s guns.

“You want to live? Don’t make me laugh…”

“This isn't life, it's hell on Equis-uis-uis-uis-!”

The voice began looping like a busted vox-ghost repeating the same fragment of Imperial Gothic over and over and over again as something metallic and rod-shaped—Blackjack’s shock maul, I belatedly realized—struck it right on the canister that served as the thing’s head. The barrage of lasers and bolt rounds was reduced to nothing, the distance between the two of us and the temporarily-incapacitated robot growing rapidly as we rounded a corner…

And nearly collided with a heavy metal door.

“No no no no!” Blackjack shrieked, her hooves flying toward the handle on the door, the latch on it groaning as she tried and failed to move it. I did the same, adding my strength to hers, and that somehow did the trick. The door’s rusted locking mechanism let loose a loud, audible screech as it slowly began to shift…

“But don’t you fear, we're most humane…” The singing started up again, the massive wheeled robot rounding the corner, its gatling boltgun spinning menacingly. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for a painful end…

And with a final squeal, the bulkhead door flew open, my eyes snapping right back open as me and Blackjack tumbled through. For an instant, I was treated to the lovely sight of Emperor-only-knows how many tonnes of steel bearing down on me, its weapons leveled and warming up to fire…

You'll never feel a thing aga-!

And then my telekinesis seized the door and slammed it in its face.4

For a long second, we just lied still, sprawled on the floor we’d collapsed onto, gasping from exertion and trying to recover from running for our lives like our very souls were at stake.

And then there was an ear-splitting BANG, a dent appearing in the door, and the two of us scrambled to our feet. Apparently the killer robot on the other side of the door wouldn’t be satisfied until we were all dead. I frantically wracked my terror-addled brain for a plan to prevent that bloodthirsty piece of semi-sentient machinery from getting its wish beyond simply running for my life and hoping it ran low on batteries, but came up empty.

Fortunately, Blackjack didn’t come up empty. Her plan was pretty stupid, mind you, but it was at least better than mine.

“You find some Med-X and get out of here. I’ll distract the crazy robot.”

I swiveled toward the alabaster mare, my jaw dropping. “Splitting us up?! Have you lost it?!”

“Got any better ideas?” While I was floundering for an appropriate response, she added, “Together we’re a big target. You saw that thing coming, and I didn’t. If I use myself as bait, you can get what P-21 needs and get out of here while they’re preoccupied with me.”

“While you frakking DIE!” I shot back, all of the mare’s perfectly sound reasoning totally lost on my panic-addled mind. Another CLANG rang out, the hatchlike door buckling a little more as the Ultra-Sentinel continued to force its way through, as if to remind me that this pony was offering to sacrifice her life in my place, but some insane, delusional part of me was screaming at me not to leave her to die.

“It’s okay…” Blackjack tried to reassure me, even as she glanced at the door, visibly shuddering. “I have my shock baton, I’ll… I’ll be fine…” I could tell by the way her voice was quivering that no, she wouldn’t be fine, and she knew it.

I wanted to say no. I wanted to tell her that we’d find some way to lose that murderous machine in these twisted hallways, that she was throwing her life away for nothing, that I couldn’t lose her too and what the ever-living FRAK has gotten into me?!5

I clamped down hard on my oddly-uppity conscience. “Good luck.” I whispered, fighting back the tears welling in the corner of my vision. And with that, I turned and ran, fleeing like the craven excuse for a Commissar I am as one of the only two allies I had left turned to face her death.

*** *** ***

Pony number twenty-five; she never made it out alive…

Pony number twenty-six; his gun suffered a malfunction he just couldn’t fix…

Pony number twenty-seven; he couldn’t bring himself to abandon a friend…

Pony number twenty-eight; his screams sealed the former’s fate…

The inane singing continued to play over my pipbuck’s speaker as I staggered from shadow to shadow, keeping a half-eye on the auspex display in my hud as I fought the urge to curl into a ball and weep. It did more than unnerve me and give me an unpleasant reminder of what I’d done to save my rotten, mutated hide; it also covered up the sounds that wheeled mechanical monstrosity or anything else roaming these halls might be making. It could’ve been unintentional on the singer’s part, but I certainly wasn’t going to count on that.6

I pushed my way into a nearby office; my Pipbuck wasn’t showing any red bars, and I needed a moment to regain my composure. Dear Him on Terra, what was wrong with me?! I’d shrugged off worse sins like they were nothing before I’d wandered into this hellhole; why the frak was my brain choosing today of all days to have an existential crisis over the fact that I’d done what I’d had to do in order to survive?!

A nearby computer terminal of some sort had been left on, so I trotted over to it, half-hoping to find something to take my mind off of the sight of Blackjack standing on trembling legs as the door finally began to give way that had inexplicably seared itself into my memory. There was still some kind of text file open on the terminal, and I began reading it.

STABLE-TEC Standardized Operating System Ver. 2.075

Lieutenant Scootaloo

Entry… fuck it. Can’t remember the number of the last entry I wrote.

If whoever’s reading this happens to be one of the ponies back at Headquarters, do me a solid, cut this bit, and tack on the right number. It’s the least you can do for me after this clusterfuck.

You guys were right about this place being a treasure trove of pre-war tech. And I can’t really blame you for not knowing that said tech was semi-sentient and out for pony blood, or that it would be able to tear through ponies in power armor like they were made of tissue paper. How robots like that ended up in a fucking hospital, I have no idea-

Shit. I can hear one of those things coming. I can hear the screams from wherever it drags the ponies it catches off to, and there’s no way in fuck I’m going to let myself die like that. Whoever finds me, keep my Volkite Pistol; chances are it’ll do you a whole fuckton more good than it’ll do the cowardly idiots back at

Before I could read any further, all the lights in the room went off with a loud, jarring CHOOM, plunging me into pitch blackness. I froze, my blood chilling in my veins. My ears strained to hear whatever was coming for me, but they sensed nothing but dead silence; even the singing had stopped.

And then, the terminal lit back up, two lines of text appearing on the monochromatic screen

STABLE-TEC Standardized Operating System Ver. 2.075

The Mechanism Sees Everything

You included

There was a pregnant pause. And then...

"KILL ME!"

The flashing red lights and chorus of who-the-frak-knows how many ponies suddenly screaming in abject agony prompted a scream of mortal terror to erupt from my throat. I reared backward from the terminal, my laspistol flying up and blowing out the screen, plunging me into blackness once more. And then I lost my balance, toppled into a corner of the darkened room, and landed hard on something that felt vaguely like a pony-shaped mound of ceramite plating. I promptly curled up on top of that mound, too terrified and grief-stricken to do anything other than cry my heart out.

Yep, you heard that right. The Hero of the Imperium took some precious time out of his busy day to curl up into a ball and sob like a toddler whose cribmate was discovered to be a mutant and had to be put out of his misery. Believe me, you’re not the only one who was thinking “what the frak”; the whole time the rational part of me was screaming at me to shut the frak up, get back on my hooves, and get OUT of there, but for some reason I just couldn’t bring myself to move my hooves.

I’m not entirely sure how long it took me to finally stop bawling like a baby and get back onto my feet, but when I did, I discovered that the thing I’d curled up on top of was another dead body, this one old enough to have rotted away until it was just a skeleton. It was clad in a worn, damaged suit of power armor, a glowing orange weapon with a shape that was vaguely reminiscent of a Mechanicus Gamma Pistol next to it. The armor was tarnished, dented, it’s helmet had a gaping hole where one of its photolenses was supposed to go, and the suit was currently being worn by a corpse, but if anything other than the helmet was damaged in any way that would affect its functionality, it was damaged in a way I couldn’t identify.

I’ll give you three guesses as to what I did next.

I know, I know, putting on a unknown set of power armor that I might not even be able to use, didn’t understand the mechanisms of, and definitely wouldn’t be conductive to staying stealthy and quiet, but to my terror-addled, grief-wracked brain putting a good solid half-inch or two of ceramite between myself and whatever might be coming seemed like an unquestionably brilliant idea.7

Fortunately, when I opened up the power armor, I found that its user had been wearing some kind of black bodyglove underneath it when they died, and the armor had protected said bodyglove from the ravages of time. The bodyglove, for its part, had kept the detritus of the corpse off of the armor’s inside; at least I wouldn’t also be wearing the remnants of the previous owner’s decayed flesh and coat. Not that that would’ve stopped me; if perfectly legitimate strategic concerns over putting on a random set of Power Armor in the middle of a mission that required me to be stealthy didn’t give me pause, then a little grime from a long-dead corpse certainly wouldn’t either.

I winced as the armor closed around me, contracting to a surprisingly snug fit. Even more surprising, the suit hummed to life, the hud my Pipbuck was somehow projecting directly onto my vision filling with a simplified diagram of the armor’s parts. According to the diagram, everything except a single back leg was damaged enough to merit being colored red, and the helmet was just an outline on account of the fact that I’d had to pry it off to fit my horn, but it was functional-

The sound of hooves scrabbling on the floor made me jump, the armor responding to my motions and launching me so high I nearly slammed into the office’s ceiling. I spun around, my telekinesis gripping my laspistol, chainsword, and the strange pistol as I leveled all three weapons… at a scrawny, grey-furred, pretty harmless-looking unicorn mare, staring up at me with wide, terrified green eyes. I sighed in relief, lowering my weapons as I opened my mouth to speak…

“Luna shitting moon rocks!” Back then, I had absolutely no clue who Luna was, but the loud, vulgar nature of the exclamation still made me reel backwards. That probably saved me from being reduced to a steaming pile of glowing green dust when she leveled her own pistol, the piece of xenotech letting loose a ray of baleful green fire that filled my whole world with equally green light.

50% to Next Level

Level 8, +11 to base Special

SPECIAL Stats
Strength: 4
Perception: 5
Endurance: 3
Charisma: 8
Intelligence: 4
Agility: 5
Luck: 10

1: Whoever came up with these messages certainly had a flair for the dramatic...

2: This is a reference to the Rotor Cannon, a multiple-barreled, ballistic rotary mini-gun favored by the Imperial Navy's Voidsmen-at-Arms. The weapon’s popularity has led to it accruing a fair number of monkiers.

3: I believe the name for this type of robot is an Ultra-Sentinel. Please note that, contrary to what you may have assumed, most Ultra-Sentinels don’t have a pony’s brain for a CPU.

4: Metaphorically, obviously. Ultra-Sentinels don’t have a face to slam a door into.

5: Maybe you’ve formed a true friendship with another creature besides Jurgen for the first time in your life and don’t want to lose that bond so soon?

6: Whoever said “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity” has obviously never been through what Ciaphas has.

7: Not that I'd fault Ciaphas for this, given all the duress he was under in that particular moment. In fact, given that he was a handful of minutes away from doing something even more irrational and heroic than normal, I’m willing to bet that suit of power armor was one of the main reasons he walked out of the Fluttershy Medical Research Center alive.

Author's Note

Only War GM: Oh, looks like abandoning the other PC's character hit you particularly hard. Make a Trauma Test.

(Dice Clatter. Alex rolls a one.)

Alex: ...crud.

Anyway, I'm going to break up major climactic chapters like this one into two parts. And in case the small stature and colorful profanity didn't tip you off, yes, the pony who nearly blows Ciaphas' head off in the end is Littlepip.

Credit to Harry101UK for the original version of the song that the Mechanism is singing. It was actually written for a Portal fan animation that got cancelled, but the creepy tune fits the atmosphere of the chapter perfectly, though I did have to change up the lyrics a bit.

Also, in case you were wondering what the pistol Ciaphas picked up from Scootaloo's corpse looks like, here's a pic to give you an idea of what sort of design I'm aiming for.