Tartarus Divers

Hell slowly stirred, then quickly, immediately remembering her location and relative speed.

Just as she got her vision to stop swimming, she was hit with another wave of G-Forces as the Tartarus Pod fired its landing rockets. Gritting her teeth and clenching all of the muscles in her body she could consciously clench, she fought through the black encroaching at the edges of her vision to look at the cameras. She was about to hit the ground, before she could route the angle of landing, she did.

The force of striking the ground was jarring, but still far less than the entry forces. The shock absorption systems did their job to make sure the Pod didn't just become a meat smoothie. Hell vaguely had a sense for what was going on around her, enough that when the Pod cover's explosive charges sent it flying into the air, and the platform she was attached to raised up, she managed to maintain her balance.

Once she was on the surface, she landed down from the standing position and looked around.

She couldn't really see far. The air around her was thick with green acrid smoke. The dirt around the pod was filled with rocks and loose mud. Nearby was a puddle of liquid smoke, the green gas rolling around the surface of the puddle. That and a dead bush, and a rock formation about her size. The rest of the terrain within visual range was the same. Spread out strange rock formations, and pools of acid and sandy rock filled mud.

Based on the composition, Hell had the idle thought that this area may have been under water at some point.

Shaking her head, she pulled up the map over her visor and marked a pin to her heading. There was an orange hexagon with the picture of a pointy, low detail bug sitting on it within a range that her scanners had figured it would be in. Closing the map, and adjusting the direction she was facing until the marker appeared on the compass at the top of her vision, she began moving at a trotting pace. Maneuvering around the, seemingly, dying bush in her way.

The ground was exactly what she expected. Gross. Her hooves sank up to her fetlock unless she stepped directly on a rock; something she couldn't pay attention to, as she was busy scanning the few meters in front of her she could see for enemies.

Her hackles were definitely up. This was enemy territory. Bug territory. Everything she believed in was stood against right here. Which is what she was here to solve. Still, the anxiety of not being able to see the danger was beginning to poke and prod at the edges of her flight or fight instincts. In Hell's particular case, the fight instincts. Flight isn't really her thing, both literally, and metaphorically.

Not having something to shoot while she was this stressed was severely aggravating. The kind of aggravating that gave one the incentive to shoot something, which, obviously only propagated the issue.

Turning her trot into a sprint once she crested a hill into more open ground, she spotted what looked like tall spires and glowing green lights ahead of her. Through the acidic green mist, it was impossible to tell; though this was where her map was pointing her.

"For Liberty!" She ran down the hill, smiling all the while.

Halfway through the sprint towards the now recognizable bug hive material, she started to hear screeching. The telltale sound that there were bugs somewhere around her in the mist. Slowing to a stop, she rolled her short rifle trigger into her mouth, and used her left hoof to draw. The weapon connected at the front on her hoof, the stock locked into the ball joint on her shoulder pauldron.

She swiveled in place, trying to spot any enemies.

Stomping a hoof, she quickly brought up her HUD, only to see that she was surrounded by tiny red dots. Closing the map and shifting in place, she spun towards the sound of a gargling screech, and the sound of impact on rocks. As she turned, she got a face full of bug, as something black, green, and chitinous landed on her face.

"AAH!" She did the only viable thing to do in such a situation and began to backpedal and flail her head. Training taught her not to flinch or close her eyes, so she got a close up through her helmet visor of mandibles scraping through the mouth sockets in her helmet as several bits of her were sucked out of her mask before she threw the thing off of herself.

Failing to bite through the pain without teeth, Hell leveled her rifle at the thing now sprawled on the ground and turned it into paste. Luckily her jaw worked just enough to squeeze and subsequently hold down the trigger.

There was no Hell Diver anymore. Surrounded in green mist and bugs. There was only a complex pile of meat and honed instincts as her conscious mind fell away and her eyes locked onto the nearest targets, her armor covered tufted ears folding and marking targets she couldn't see. Her mouth filled with blood as she spun to her next target.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK

The sound of the gun mixed with cracking chitin and exploding meat only drew more bugs to her location. She kept spinning, kept firing.

CRACK-CRACK-tick

Until she was out.

Still with targets in front of her, Hell dove forwards over a rock while she drew her sidearm. The pistol folded out of its place in her right hoof armor as she hefted herself up and onto the rock as her makeshift cover. Taking less than a moment to identify her targets, pick a trail to cover, she began precision shooting one after another

CRACK

CRACK

CRACK

CRACK

Hell tried to scream as she felt her back leg buckle, the pain causing her to tumble away from her cover. The blood in her mouth stopped the scream from sounding anything more like a gurgle as she stumbled sideways past the bug that had just tore a chunk out of her leg.

CRACK

The bug exploded as she tried to heft herself onto her legs again, only managing a slow crawl. With one limb aiming and the other out of order, she barely got to a standing position before another monstrous black and green, bulbous, chittering enemy crawled up to the crest of the rock she had just used as cover.

She fired three times in quick succession, yielding two misses and a click as the gun exclaimed its lack of ammunition. Without ammo, Hell turned to the next best thing.

On reflex, she threw her hoof into a viscous backswing just as the bug fell within range. It struggled and failed to grasp at her outstretched hoof as the pistol made of heavy metal alloy smacked into it and sent it flying a few meters to her side. Wasting no time, Hell kicked off from her leaning position with her single still functioning back hoof and drove the pistol into the bug like a spike. The thing squealed and writhed under the pressure before Hell lifted the pistol and cracked it down onto the wet and green part.

Two slams, followed by three more, probably unnecessary slams, ended with the bug mostly on Hell, rather than in its own body.

Still choking on blood, hell pulled up her map to see the pleasing lack of red dots.

She spit, trying to get enough out of her mouth so she could breathe again, and pulled out a stim with her pistol still drawn and dangling from her hoof. After jabbing it into her neck, her eyes nearly rolled back as the drugs hit her system. The pain rolled away like sparking ice on her fur and she nearly moaned at how good it felt to feel her teeth pop back into her mouth and her leg fold back into place as the magic filled the joint back.

Gasping through the combat stimulants designed to be used in combat; she began the process of reloading. She pulled a pistol clip from her bandolier, discarded the current clip, and popped in the new one. Then repeated the process for her short rifle.

By the time she was done, the stimulant began to wear off; much to her disappointment.

Still unconsciously standing, Hell pulled up her map again and oriented herself towards her destination.

She was shell shocked, but more, she was proud. If she wasn't in a combat situation, or if she hadn't just nearly died, she would have been celebrating. She had just killed bugs! Spread Liberty to those sections of rocks! She was really doing it! It wasn't like killing bugs in the training course, this was real honest to Democracy, Tartarus Diving.

It may have been the combat stimulants talking, but she smiled with her new teeth and skipped her walk into a trot as she began moving over slightly biological black bug matter. There were spires of the stuff rising around her with green bulbs growing off them at varying heights.

It would have been eerie if Hell wasn't so excited. This time, however, after learning her lesson of charging into bugs with reckless abandon, she kept her right side stuck to some structure, either stone or bug rock for cover. Coming around one such spire, Hell quickly stepped back into cover as soon as she spotted another bug. Still a small one, about the size of her barrel with the armor on. She pushed her head barely around the corner to get a good look at it.

It looked like a kind of beetle, with a black chitinous front, and an engorged backside glowing green. That's where its similarities to the beetles she used to crush at the schoolyard ended. The thing had crystalline blue wings under an elytra and large blue compound eyes that she could barely see the top of from where she was behind it. Parts of its chitin had strangely placed holes, with only more chitin underneath. It lacked antenna, which was probably why it couldn't smell her.

She was covered in blood and bug guts. She couldn't smell anything except for herself. It was a nice change of pace from the burning gaseous acid going down her nose, but Hell didn't waste the time trying to figure out which she liked better.

Carefully moving from out of cover so as to not disturb any of the rocks or make any sound, she came up behind the bug as it chittered over something in the ground. Once she was close enough, she reared up onto her back hooves. The change in light alerted the bug, but it was too slow to respond as Hell's front hooves came down with the force of a blacksmith's hammer on its exposed bulbous backside.

Hell grinned as her armor got splashed again with bug internals, and the thing let out a curtailed screech of pain that abruptly ended as it went twitchingly still.

She lifted a hoof to wipe the gunk out of her visor, and successfully only added more gunk. Flicking her hoof to get some of guts off, she then wiped again, and then looked down at the offending bug.

"That's what you get for being a dumb bug." She spat 'dumb bug' at the thing. Hoping that it understood when it died that it was on the wrong side of ideological and biological history.

Pulling up her map, Hell noticed the nearby red markers. There must have been at least five more of these things nearby, sitting in the mist. She realized that she was nearly as invisible to them as they were to her.

Except she had tech. She could spot them before they could spot her.

Mumbling praise to Equestria for providing her with the upper hoof, she sneaked her way towards her next bug. Dispatching it in a similar fashion.

While she was sneaking up to the next one, her radio crackled and a voice she didn't recognize came through. "This is Pegasus One. Thirty minutes remaining Tartarus Diver."

She made a small 'o' with her mouth. Having forgotten her Super Destroyer couldn't stay in low orbit forever. She quickened her pace to her next target. This one was facing towards her when she ran up to squash it. As she came down on the thing, it jumped forwards and tried to latch onto her chest, only to get sent into the ground with a satisfying splat.

Turning to the side, she could see the dim reflective glow of the next small bug and drew her pistol. As she was lining up the shot, her ear swiveled to her right to note a strange drumming noise. The bug she was currently aiming at let out a screech as she turned towards the slowly growing rhythmic sound.

Then, there was a head. A large one, coming from the mist from at least twice as high as her own height, charging towards Hell. She flared her wings in an open flap, jumping towards the small bug as she tried to dodge the charge. The thing twisted its head and clipped her back legs as she jumped, sending her spinning. She hit the ground on her side and rolled twice before coming to a stop facing the small bug that looked just as surprised to see her as she was to be suddenly this close to it.

CRACK

Luckily her gun hoof happened to be facing just the right direction, and she happened to have a faster reaction time than the small bug.

Rolling over its exploded body, and back onto her hooves, she turned to get a look at the massive creature stalking towards her in the mist.

It had six massive legs that looked like hooves near the base from where they came out of its sides. They turned into black chitinous spikes near the bottom, each filled with holes in seemingly random places. Its body was invisible behind its massive plated head, which Hell's quick thinking mind didn't have a good analogy for. Its face was just underneath the plated sections, with four silted green pupils, and an array of disgusting mouth parts, and two elongated serrated limbs stretching from underneath its neck currently reaching out to cut her in half.

Hell dove again, trying to get some distance as the thing lunged at where she was just standing. This time she was able to hit the ground on her stomach, and get back up near instantly. She shifted her weight and spun around on her right hoof, sheathing her sidearm while using her left to draw her short rifle.

From the side, she could see the green lined stomach of the thing, and its elytra, mutated to be far too small to ever gain flight. As it turned to lock onto her again, she saw a three part extension of soft flesh that looked kind of like a crown, each tendril had a little glowing green ball at the tip.

Starting there, Hell opened up, pointing her rifle at the crown, and dragging her firing line down the armored head towards its mouth and eyes before she settled into firing straight into its face.

"YEAH! GET SOME!" She screamed over the roar of her rifle. It wasn't a particularly loud weapon, but leaning over it into the sights on the front was enough to fill her ears with nothing but the reports of the weapon as she drained the magazine. She began walking backwards as she fired, not worrying about her aim since the bug in question was large enough to simply not miss.

About two thirds of the way through her ammunition, the thing's head exploded in a shower of gore; a good sign for Hell to stop firing. She took a breath, only to be interrupted as the body of the thing kept coming at her, the serrated claws diving for her as her eyes went wide.

The first one hit her armor, the second one went through her chest plate and gored her from just under her neck and down to just below her chest. She stumbled backwards as her vision flashed white and she was hit over the head by the bug's next swing. Luckily her helmet stopped her head from getting cut open, but she went tumbling onto her side and into the acidic muck as the monster continued swinging at where she was for a few moments before falling over, dead as a horseshoe nail.

Hell didn't notice, dazed as she was, trying to keep her organs inside her chest with a hoof. She shakily pulled another stim from her bag as she felt blood and bile rising into her throat from her injured chest.

The jam, followed by the hiss was just as euphoric as the last time. The magic filled her chest, pushing out the acidic liquids that had gotten into her wound, while sucking the important parts back in, and closing the slice wound like a zipper. She didn't even notice the dent in her skull until it folded back outwards and pushed against the dent in her helmet. There wasn't any discomfort though, the stims were responsible for that.

She tried to keep the bubbling giggle from her mouth as she coughed up and spat out the dead material sitting in her trachea. She managed one stimulant fueled laugh after clearing her throat, and checked her map.

She'd successfully taken out the Brood Commander, the orange marker was greyed out on her map.

Her radio crackled as she smiled and breathed deep, "This is Pegasus One, extract when ready Tartarus Diver."

Hell nodded to herself, and panned her map over to the extraction zone. Without further ado, she began her short excursion out of the bug's hive area. Once she was back out in muddy sandy acrid wetlands, she spotted the blue beacon of the extraction zone, and broke out into a sprint.

Nearly tripping over the first boulder she came across, she continued her pace through a pool of acid, which stung the fur and flesh on the back hoof the bug had bitten through, the armor no longer sealed and letting the acid into her suit.

She kept running undeterred, all the way until her chest started to burn with the exertion of the acid flowing into her lungs. Hell was a thestral, the heat never bothered her, she preferred it even. Though wet aerosol acid nearing boiling point was too much for her body to keep a full sprint, so she slowed down to a trot as she approached a raised section of rock away from the rest of the mud and gunk surrounding the rest of the terrain.

She could spot plenty of random equipment, metal tubes, rolled up wires, and a few abandoned tents.

Her HUD marked a packaged sample of biological material that she pocketed once she recognized its importance, followed by the second one within visual range.

Hell spun around with her rifle drawn as soon as she heard a hiss. Behind her was a trio of the larger bugs. Not the brood commanders, luckily, but still with thicker armor than the little ones. They were just about her size, if a little shorter and wider. Massive black and green chitinous monsters with blue segmented eyes.

Hell's head did the simple math, and opened fire.

CRACK-CRACK-tick

Hell glanced at her offending weapon before she realized she hadn't rearmed it after killing the brood commander. The two without any bullet holes in them screeched and ran at her, their visage becoming more clear as they approached. Hell was already halfway through turning around while arming a grenade. Once she spat out the pin, she let the grenade cook in her left hoof while she ran, the bugs hot on her tail. Once two seconds had passed in her head, she launched herself forwards onto her stomach with a flap of her wings as she spun in the air and kicked the grenade right in-between the two bugs.

They shared a look of surprise for a split second before the grenade went off between them. Throwing them both in opposite directions and pulverizing their insides with a wave of force that carried the deadly parts of a fragmentation grenade.

Hell landed on her back a split second later, her armor protecting her from grinding her spine into rocks, as she drew her pistol and aimed it at the third bug, stumbling forwards with one of its front legs missing.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK CRACK-CRACK-CRACK

Two three shot bursts and the bug went down, missing most of its head, and plenty of its limbs.

Hell got up and shook the daze out of her head from hitting the ground as she trotted up towards the beacon. Switching momentarily from a trot to a run she got up, muzzle close, to the screen. There were a few commands, and a data entry port for her Tartarus Diver details, confirmation of location and a tac-map data bridge for mapping out the landing details for the evac ship.

She heard screeching from behind her as she was midway through disconnecting, while putting in the rest of the information required to send the extraction team. With a quick jab onto the display to activate the beacon, Hell used her hoof to grip the screen to give her a balance point to spin around with her pistol drawn.

Her radio crackled as she spotted her targets, "Evac request confirmed, Pegasus One on the move, ETA, two minutes."

A hoof full of bugs, large and small. She holstered her pistol and ripped a grenade off her bandolier. Lifting it to her teeth and pulling the pin, she continued to back up to make distance as she aimed and kicked the grenade forwards to land a meter in front of the bugs in question. The grenade rolled into them, and one of the larger bugs was smart enough to jump to the side just as the weapon exploded; turning whatever was there into a pile of meat and broken chitin.

Hell whipped out her pistol and pointed it at the bug that had dodged the explosion. Her first shot missed, but the next to landed dead center in the thing's head. It stumbled forwards towards Hell, dazed and confused, before slouching down onto the ground, twitching in place as it died.

Hell smirked to herself. "Easiest Liberation I've ever seen."

"Pegasus One, ETA One minute, thirty seconds."

Hell looked around for any more targets. There weren't any.

She pulled up her map, to see if there were any targets. There weren't any.

So she simply elected to stand in place. Testing her recently destroyed and restored body with a few standing stretches as her evac ship continued to update her on its arrival time.

"This is Pegasus One. I see the drop zone, watch where you're standing, Tartarus Diver." Her radio buzzed in her ear.

Hell took a double take, realizing that she had only heard the radio transmission in one ear, rather than both. She reached up to rub at the spot on her helmet where her speaker was attached, and noticed pretty clearly the indentation from where she was hit in the head. She could feel the pressure through the broken plating on her helmet as she pushed down, understanding why her left side radio wasn't working.

"I'll have to get a new helmet." She said to herself, though the actual words were drowned out as the space worthy VTOL aircraft touched down in front of her and shut off its engine. The cargo bay folded open for her as she walked up underneath the tail of the craft and got in. Immediately the door began to fold up again, and she heard the pilot on the all channel again

"Extraction complete. Pegasus One, beginning ascent."

Hell could see the stallion in light pilot's gear in the cockpit from the fuselage as she rushed forwards to grab onto the harnesses as the craft whirred and began to move again. He was a yellow earth pony with a deep blue mane and orange stripe going through it. He had probably the biggest, fluffiest mane she'd ever seen on a pony, the strip crisscrossed everywhere through the bundle, and she was nearly too distracted to get in her seat before the aircraft lifted off, and she heard the Democracy Officer say over all-comms. "Liberty. Has been delivered."

She finished strapping in while the aircraft jerked around. Eventually coming to the normal yet still biologically strange upright sitting position.

"Hey!" The pony at the controls called back, "Good work down there Diver!" His voice was pitched, to get over the signal masking of the roaring engines.

Hell... was confused... Why was he talking to her without the comms? Did the ship take damage while landing?

"You okay back there?!" He called back again, without turning away from the controls.

Hell tapped her back hoof, which felt strange due to the sitting position, with a couple of HUD controls she switched on the comm network, and opened all-comms. "Is there something wrong with your communication system?"

She watched the stallion at the controls mouth something to himself. Something like 'dayum' before he waved his hoof in the air in a circular motion, then reached it forwards to the controls. Hell watched on in confusion until he twisted a dial and the sound of a speaker sparking filled her ears.

"Ah, there we go." He said, now directly into her ears.

Did he just open a private comm channel? Was that allowed?

He continued, "You've got quite the voice on you, miss?"

Hell didn't realize he was asking for her name, and simply responded to the compliment, "Thank you."

The line went silent, and she saw the stallion chuckle right before he spoke again, "What's your name Diver?"

Hell's ears perked up in an 'oh' gesture, still slightly confused by the nature of the interaction... Confused and suspicious. "Hell Diver. Sir."

"Ain't no need to sir me Diver." He nodded to himself, "And it sounds like you've got some patriotic parents. What does Hell mean though?"

This was a question she tended to answer a lot, one that she hadn't answered since joining boot and starting her training. Names didn't matter there, or supposedly here, yet he still asked, and she still answered. "Hell's a griffonian word, translated from 'Peraure' which is..." She decided to supplant the true name of the language, "-batpony; for Tartarus."

She'd gotten enough bullying in boot for being a flightless Thestral to know what and how to say certain things about their culture, to not spawn more of the politically ambiguous comments about her species.

"Hell Diver huh?" He mused to himself over the radio, "Thanks; you enjoy your first mission away from Equestria?"

Hell Diver's brow furrowed. "Is this an inspection of some sort? Of course I enjoyed it."

"Nah, just makin' conversation." He leaned forwards to click a couple dials as the ship breached atmosphere resistance.

Hell fell silent. She could have sworn fraternization with exterior branches was heavily discouraged in the Tartarus Diver ops manual. This wasn't some random citizen though, this was one of her crew members. They'd gone through military training the same as she had, albeit, probably less rigorous. Surely she must be missing something, or this wasn't actually against mission protocols.

He must've noticed her discomfort from the lack of a response, or maybe he was just done talking. Nonetheless, he didn't speak again, until Hell said, "What's your name?" The words didn't quite feel right as she spoke them. After they left her mouth, she felt like grabbing out to try and pull them back in, but she knew she couldn't.

"Horizon." He said over the radio, as he said it, he turned around in his seat to wave at her with a wide smile. Hell just leaned backwards into her seat, not having protocol to know how to interact with ponies meant she was flying in the dark. Bugs? Death? Holding in organs that were falling out of her chest? She knew all those. Shoot, don't die, keep those inside, as organs are important for a healthy voter.

She had no idea how to talk to ponies casually.

That must have been when he noticed her discomfort, because he turned away and then disconnected the private channel. The rest of the flight back to The King of Starlight was in silence.