Hell regained consciousness

Plummeting through the sky at just over the speed of sound with seconds before impact will do that.

This time, she didn't fiddle with the controls, just took a deep breath and watched through the exterior camera as the ground rushed up to meet her pod. She reflexively flopped her ears down, which only slightly worked within the interior of her helmet, luckily the sound of the crash was muted by the sensors.

There was a short delay before the pod lifted her up, and she fell onto her front hooves and took stock.

She made sure not to take a deep breath this time to avoid getting a mouthful of acid as she looked over the few meters she could see ahead of herself. She checked her weapons and her map, her main objective was nearby, closer than the brood commander was, but there was another marker in-between the two that she clicked on while looking at the map. The marker appeared at the top of her vision and she started walking.

Walking through the mist was just as gross as it was before. Her hooves sank in the mud, and her eyes stung along with the rest of her skin and mouth and nose.

Filthy bug planet She thought to herself, Once we take this for Equestria, The Ministry of Expansion will clear away all of this toxic mist and make this place a paradise.

Hell reminded herself of what she was fighting for, and looked up through the mist at the partially visible sky when a golden beam of light shot upwards. It was dim, clearly coming from a damaged pod, sending out a kind of distress signal she'd never seen before.

Breaking into a light run, and making sure not to trip over any of the rocks, she approached.

Cautiously. It wasn't going anywhere after all.

It was a good thing too, she ran up against a hole, slowing down to look into it. In front of her was a throw up building, damaged and abandoned, painted with the colours of Equestria. She wandered around the hole and spotted the staircase leading inside, but continued looking for the beacon. Scattered around was a series of ammo boxes and random useless objects, there was a pack of spare grenades that she took without hesitation and a sample she stored away for later.

She turned away from the building and made her way into the hole. There was some kind of metal storeroom embedded in the rock, with more random objects scattered around it, and some weird looking device with wheels and a metal fork extending from the front.

She tried the door. No latches, no openings. Just a metal sheet over something that was clearly hollow, she checked by tapping it with her hoof, the sound of reverberation that her combat boot made when it hit the cover was enough to tell her there was something inside.

"Hello? Is there somepony in here?" She knocked again. Nothing

"Welp." She stepped back and pulled one of the new grenades from her bandolier and tossed it forwards after pulling the pin. The blast sent the 'door' flying off of its welding points and opened the way for the closet. On the inside was a pair of samples and a medal.

Hell smiled to herself and stored the medal away in her smallest pocket. There was no better way to support capitalism then by engaging in it, tl:dr, finders keepers.

With nothing else out there, Hell ran back up the staircase and checked her map again before dropping a pin and running towards the next marker on the map.

If one of those things had money lying around in them, I wonder what the next one will have?

It didn't matter that she'd never seen an emergency beacon like that before, nor that she couldn't find its place of origin, it having apparently shut itself off as she approached. She was just excited to find secure loot for herself and her team, ignorant of the potential conjecture.

The next location was far more sobering. It was two gravestones she came upon. She didn't have to think for her run to slow itself to a stop as she approached.

It was a clear story. Three dead, with two buried, and one more lightly clad soldier holding a long weapon in his dead hooves, leaned up against the gravestones. There was a bug in pieces, melted and scorched meters away from him.

Hell stopped walking, her HUD had identified the flamethrower, and the two samples, but she spent a few precious moments saluting the hero who guarded his fallen comrades on this barren planet to the end.

She did eventually take the loot though, she was respectful; not overly moral, it was a flamethrower. Where else was she going to get one of those out here? The weapon came to rest on the rail under her barrel, where it could rest without interfering with her running, or making her center of gravity too high.

She opened her map again once the thing was settled and marked her primary objective and began running until she came up upon a hill. Happy to step off of the mud and gunk and onto solid rock, she ran up the side, only to peek over the top and see the other side was covered in grubs.

She flipped out her short rifle and dropped prone on top of the hill, leaning to the right to avoid resting her weight on the flamethrower. They hadn't seen her yet, so her eyes had time to mentally mark her targets. She aimed down the scope and then fired two shots at the closest bug.

Before they even knew what was going on, two more shots dispatched another one. Then three, the second having gone wide. There was a screech as they finally got a bead on Hell on top of the hill and began to charge forwards.

Hell continued to take precise shots, occasionally missing while the bugs rushed up the hill. One of them stayed behind and began to release some sort of barely visible pink chemical into the air, she snapped the rifle in its direction and fired four shots. Three ended up hitting, and whatever it was doing stopped when it died. She turned back towards the rest of the bugs and fired an individual shot into each one, now that they were close enough for her to aim for their bulbous ends.

There was a slight building of anxiety as they got closer, but with one more cracking report of the short rifle, everything in the clearing lay still.

Hell took a breath and stood up. A short reload later and she continued in the direction of her main objective, at least, she would have if she hadn't spotted pink smoke in the air over the acidic green mist. The telltale sign of an opening to one of the subterranean lairs of the disgusting bug scourge.

Turning in place, Hell began sprinting towards the smoke once she had the direction memorized. She instinctively spread her wings to help her stay cool as she ran. Her hooves tossed up mud as she ducked down to gain more speed.

She was getting closer, and shifted her gallop into a three legged run as she pulled up her stratagem system, pressing the buttons and sending her ID through the system, she got a ping back from her The King of Starlight as a targeting sphere rolled down from her chest into her hoof. The bugs screeched as she ran by, leaving a blur of Thestral mare and green acrid smoke as the little sphere bounced off the head of one of the larger bugs, then into the hole.

Two seconds passed once Hell came to a stop and whipped out her pistol, she aimed it towards the hole and waited. There was a sound like someone scraped a warbling sheet of aluminum past a microphone at the speed of sound, and an explosion that tossed up mud and rubble, the shockwave of sound and physical force reaching her through the ground and air a split second after the bug hole exploded in a shower of gore.

Only one grub made it out, missing a leg. She put a single pistol round into its head and it fell over gurgling on its own organs as its body failed.

Hell walked over to the hole, just out of curiosity. It was a collapsed tunnel surrounded by pulverized bug. She spat on the pile for good measure, then continued on her way.

There were no more obstructions to the crashed pod. Just mud and puddles of acid... you know, not obstacles.

The pod was half embedded in the ground, looks like it fell on a pretty decent trajectory and didn't explode. Her HUD showed her an alert as soon as she got close to it to trigger a data transfer, which she did, a few bleeps on her hoof mounted control system set that. Then she got to looking around. There were a few samples scattered around the pod, which was empty.

Otherwise? Nothing.

Hell grumbled to herself and tapped a hoof while she waited for the data transfer to finish. An agonizingly long time for her adrenaline addled body.

There was a beep an- "Finally!"

Hell Diver shifted on her hooves as her all-comms switched on, "Primary objective complete, good work Tartarus Diver, extract at your leisure."

She began trotting forwards before stopping, her head snapping up to a radio tower in the distance. "What the- How did I miss that?" She opened her map, marked the radar and kept moving towards it. As she walked, a grouping of quietly moving bugs slowly became visible through the mist.

Hell whipped out her pistol, and started firing into the crowd, two grubs went down, then she focused her firepower on a pair of larger bugs. Her eyes snapped away from her aim at a new bug type she'd not seen before and she missed a few shots. She shifted on her hooves and began backpedaling as she fired the rest of her pistol clip into the massive head of the new bug.

Its entire front side was covered in thick black plating, there was no green glow from eyes, only thin mandibles hanging down from the bottom. Each bullet ricocheted or outright stopped against the thing's head. At this point, the large bugs, 'drones' her mind dubbed them, had closed the distance. One of them took a swipe at her and Hell didn't wait to see if was going to connect. She threw herself into a roll with a flap of her wings, ending up on her side. As she rolled to her hooves she pulled a grenade from her bandolier and chucked it at the offending massive shield headed bug as she pulled the pin.

The grenade rolled under the thing, and it seemed to look at it in confusion momentarily before it exploded. The bug was far too sturdy, and instead of a shower of gore, the thing merely slumped in place, dead.

Hell drew her short rifle and emptied a clip into both of the drones at close range as they closed on her again, they didn't get close enough to get in another swing before their front halves were reduced to mush.

"What the buck was that." She said, walking up to the thing in question while she reloaded her drained weapons. The buck it was, was what looked like a drone, but with all of the armor on its face and front legs instead of... anywhere else. The rest of it was a gross glistening series of exposed, raw hydraulic muscles and pulverized meat. Hell's nose wrinkled in disgust and concern.

She trotted away, back towards the radio tower, ignoring the strange new creature.

The radio tower and its surrounding terrain were much better kept than the building she'd seen before, the lightweight reproducible plating made quiet tinking noises as she walked across towards the command console. She pressed the screen with her hoof, and the console began to whir to life as it turned on. There were a few flashing logos, but Hell ignored the data stream and let her equipment do its work, a few beeps later, and the radar dish was sliding up the metal strut on the other side of the structure.

Hell heard a screech and turned to face the wave of bugs rushing up towards her elevated position.

"Seems like a perfect time to test you o-" Whatever else she was going to say was drowned out by the spark of liquid flame exploding as she bit down on the support weapon trigger in her mouth. The flamethrower deposited a lovely amount of vibrant orange flame onto the enemy position, and in the next few seconds, if there were any bugs left alive down there; there would only be cooked meat soon.

"Nice." Hell Diver said to herself as the console began to beep from behind her, she turned back to it. It wanted her to manually turn the dish in the right direction, except the dish was already facing the right direction, so she just pressed the digital 'accept' button and it dinged and started a long wave data transmission. Her objective 'ding' noise dinged in her ear to commemorate the moment.

Hell shrugged and continued on, she was sad to leave the solid structures designed and produced by Equestria and return to the disgusting bug planet terrain, but then again, it was her job. Her calling even.

She caught a breath and sprinted up towards more pink smoke she saw.

Hell...

Hell felt something as she bore down on the monsters and their home. Her hooves hit the ground harder, her wings caught more air, she felt an electric smile coming to her face as she tore up the mud in a dash. One jump was all it took to clear the hole and toss a grenade into the hole. The bugs in question barely responding in time before being thrown away by the shockwave. She hit the ground and the impact sent a wave of adrenaline fueled blood through her muscles.

Her heart thumped in her chest as she sprinted towards the next hole, not even realizing she was holding a gallop with only three hooves. A grub ran into her path, and she punched it in the head with the lit grenade as she ran past it before throwing the grenade over the heads of the drones crawling out of the next bug hole. The next hole was straight ahead.

She wasn't out of breath, she wasn't even tired, her hooves didn't ache, and Hell felt no pain in her lungs as she ran faster, the grin on her face growing as she blitzed the bugs around her so fast they didn't even see her.

Her wings spread wider as she prepared another orbital strike, the targeting sphere rolled into her hoof as she jumped a distance she shouldn't've been able to jump. She dropped the ball straight into the hole as she cleared it and the bugs around it.

She hit the ground and spun on a single hoof while pulling out her short rifle and latching it onto the shoulder mount in one smooth motion, a split second later, and her eyes laser focused on her first targets, the bugs swarming towards her and the red beam now shooting up into the sky.

She opened fire, screaming and laughing. "WOOOOO! HAHAHA!"

Bugs exploded, and Hell dove backwards, throwing herself into an airborne corkscrew with her front hooves just as the sound of the orbital strike and the subsequent explosion of impact happened. The bugs rushing her got a face full of kinetic and explosive force, sending several of them into the air, and pulverizing the rest.

There was no more hissing, the whole series of events took less than ten seconds.

Hell took several deep breaths from her spot in the mud on her back. Blinking away the euphoria of what had just come over her.

"Whoah." She said to the sky, the very small starry section of it she could see through the acid.

She rolled onto her hooves and stood. In the distance, she caught sight of another golden beam struggling to light up the sky. It was only a little bit off of the path to extraction, so she veered off to the side towards it. The ground there was harder, the mud was splashed away, and there were several fires glittering in the darkness.

She walked up to a silhouette of a Pelican class transport VTOL. There were a couple of samples she scooped up from the dirt on the way, but the most notable was a strange... almost aerodynamic drone looking pod. The robotic kind, not the bug kind.

She crept up to it, and its blinker.

It had: 'salute for freedom' written in blue on it.

Well... When in Pone She thought, saluting to the pod. There was a hiss, and the front panel of the pod blew off, she ducked to avoid it. There was money inside!

"Woo!" She did a cute little dance to get close and scoop up the resources. I'm on fire!

"More capitalism is more good. That's what Grandmama Grella used to say." She nodded to herself and the saying as she closed her pouch and turned back towards extraction. Luckily, it was far closer than anything else had been so far. The fog there was light, and there wasn't any mud.

Equestria, she was getting very sick of slchotching through mud.

She opened her stratagem screen and punched in the details for a supply. Once she threw the orb to the ground, she turned towards the extraction beacon, lighting up the sky with equal parts technology and magic.

A few more console beeps later and her comms beeped before Horizon's voice filled the channel, "Extraction request confirmed, on the way Dive-" Hell stopped listening as her audio systems tuned out the voice in favour of the hissing coming from behind her. She spun around and whipped out her pistol just as a group of grubs turned around one of the throw up concrete and metal walls and her supply pod landed.

Five shots, and three were dead, but more were coming. She had already gotten some extra space while backing up, so she holstered her sidearm and drew her short rifle. The Liberator had a far higher stopping power than her sidearm, so... simple math is simple.

Several reports of her weapon and the bugs were dead. She began moving to the ammo box, but she heard more hissing. She turned again towards the raised area of rock behind her with more concrete barriers to see drones struggling to fit in-between the gap. She bit down on the heavy weapon trigger, and there was a flicker of sparks and a fwooshing noise for a second before the flamethrower burst into light.

She took a moment to adjust her stance, aiming it up towards the opening as she just emptied the tank onto the choke point. The sounds of screeches in pain were drowned out by the loud whirring noises of the
flamethrower dispatching hilariously pressurized liquid flame.

"Extraction ETA, one minute, thirty seconds."

Hell turned back towards the supply pod and spent the next thirty seconds refiling everything. New clip for her Liberator, new one for her pistol, and it took a minute of figuring, but she eventually found the release mechanism for the flamethrower. This one was a different model than the ones she'd seen before, but before long, the flamethrower happily took a fresh tank of liquid flame.

"Extraction ETA, one minute."

She stood back up, locking her short rifle to her shoulder and putting her head on a swivel.

Her sensitive ears could hear the sounds of moving rocks and sloshing liquid. There was something nearby. She pulled up her map and oriented herself towards the red dots that appeared. She looked up from her map just in time to see a strangely coloured, albino version of the small grubs. The colour wasn't the only difference though, the thing was thinner and more developed, it had flaps and an elytra that flickered with untraceable movement as it jumped around, coming around from her side.

There was another one circling around from the other side, going around the massive boulder in front of her, if her map was accurate. That, and the hooffull rushing her.

Hell opened up. Turning and moving backwards at the same time threw her aim all over the place, but enough shots hit to at least disable the closest white tinted bug. She turned straight and emptied the rest of her clip into the crowd in front of her. They all began jumping and diving out of the way, Hell only catching a few in her gunspray before her rifle clicked and she ran out of ammo.

She drew her sidearm just in time for the bug sneaking around to her side to jump and took a swipe at her helmet. She spotted the movement and turned with the blow, but it still hurt enough for her to call out in pain. She swung with her sidearm, but the bug hopped backwards, right into her line of fire. Two trigger squeezes over the pain in the side of her head, and the bug sank to the ground twitching and dribbling green ichor from the holes she'd just given it.

She turned her attention back towards the rest of the bugs and swung her hoof around. An unearthly focus came over her as she pulled the trigger as the pistol went past each individual. Four consecutive reports of gunfire went off within the same two seconds, and four more bugs slouched to the ground with bullets lodged in their heads.

That's when there was a spark from her helmet, and her vision went dark.

"Shit." She muttered, the sound not quite reaching her ears through the now audibly sealed helmet. She reached back with her hoof and pulled the E-release tab on the back, under the cloth that wrapped around her neck. There was a plastic click, and then a hiss as the helmet fell away from her face in pieces, the poor thing not able to take any more abuse. She pulled the chin guard and the mouthpiece off, delicately keeping the wires in place so she could still fire her weapons.

Manual fire was basically impossible so... not doing that.

Hell's short but full dirty yellow mane poofed out once it was free of the acidic confines of the helmet, and she wiped a forehoof over her head to clear away her mane and the sweat from her vision. The acid stung at her now exposed eyes and ears; she had to blink away tears as her eyes began to well up to keep the acid out.

She didn't hear the ETA reports, now that she was radio-less, but she did see the Robinson Jets of Pegasus One light up the sky as it breached the atmosphere and dropped towards the beacon.

It didn't take long for the beacon to sink into the ground and for the Pelican to touch down on the metal landing circle. Hell didn't wait to board, and the door closed behind her the second she stepped down onto the interior plating of the aircraft, the ship lifting up a split second later.

Horizon said something into the control systems, but Hell didn't hear it over strapping herself in and the roar of the VTOL from outside.

Horizon turned around, the confusion plastered on his face swept away as he got a good look at Hell Diver.

Like most mares in the Tartarus Diver program, Hell had no idea what she looked like when it came to attractiveness. Horizon on the other hoof, did know that, and ogled her on reflex for a moment before shaking his head and speaking into his microphone. He pressed several buttons, and the control stick slid forwards. He leaned across to the other seat and picked up a pair of headphones and tossed them back to her.

His aim was pristine, especially for being an earth pony, and on the interior of a moving supersonic spacecraft. He sat back down and grabbed the control stick again as Hell Diver, oblivious to the series of events that just happened in front of her, debated putting on the headphones at all.

Eventually she did.

"Great work down there Hell. The auto cannon couldn't even find a target while I was landing."

"Uh... Thanks."

"Dija lose your helmet down there?"

Hell shifted in her seat, "Yes, a bug struck it, and damaged the systems enough that I needed to remove it."

"You ain't hurt are you?"

"No."

Horizon laughed into the mic, "What's with the coldness? You ain't mad that I eyed you up are you?"

Oh so that's what that was.

"No, no. Uhm, nopony really looks at me like that, I think it's..."

"Flattering?" Horizon offered

"Yeah. Isn't it against system organizational code though? I don't want to break any of the rules." Figured that if she couldn't get her hooves on a manual to check, she may as well ask him. He wouldn't lie. Though it didn't cross her mind that if he was willing to breach protocols, he'd probably be willing to lie about it.

Horizon, to his credit, answered pretty quickly. "Oh don't worry, I've got my C-Zero One; and honestly, it was my mistake, didn't mean anything by it."

"No problem." Hell cringed. That's not what I meant to say

"Just keep comin' back alright? Twice is a pretty good number."

Hell tilted her head, glad he hadn't called her out on her verbal accident. "Coming- Well of course, I'm supposed to come back aren't I?"

Horizon laughed as if she had just told a joke, by then, they were close enough to the Super Destroyer for mission details to come in through all-comms, and the conversation ended there.

Level up!
Level: Two
Title: Cadet

New perk!

A real Tartarus Diver:
You were born for this, and the picture on your flanks says so! At maximum health, you have situational bonuses to all things Tartarus Diving! Stamina recovery, aim drift, maximum running speed and more!

Author's Note

I tried to take a lighter approach to gruesome combat with this one; to see how it turned out. While I'm amused and like the results, I'm not sure if it's... better or worse than the previous chapter, feels like it's about the same... Probably just need to sleep on it.

Anypony got any thoughts?