Fallout Equestria: Rangers North

Chapters

Chapter 001: Saddle Up
Chapter 002: Enemy Unknown
Chapter 003: Crack in the Iron
Chapter 004: Scoring the Steel
Chapter 005: Brittle Cold
Chapter 006: Sanctuary

Chapter 001: Saddle Up

Chapter 001: Saddle Up

AE0090.03.24.0931

“Dreams are dreams for a reason, just don’t forget why.”

A Pegasus. A familiar Pegasus. She swooped low and skimmed over the clouds in the evening sun, banking just so that her wings could slice the reds and oranges of that endless blanket. I wished I could join her, flipping and turning, dipping and diving amongst a domain that was solely hers. Sorrow and want was dashed, however, as she came to a hover and approached me, still floating in the crisp air of a fall afternoon atop the Spineyback Mountains, the place I called my home. With a smile it all disappeared, and when she alighted the ground next to me, and stared into my eyes with her amber own, my soul felt akin to what she must feel when she soared above us all.

“You are troubled?” she asked, folding her wings and scraping at the ground with her hoof just ever so slightly. “You wish to fly?”

I nodded. “I do wish to fly, but I can’t. I’m not a Pegasus.”

My Pegasus, gray in color with hair as black as the night, only smiled at me and playfully hoofed at the ground once more.

“Perhaps some day your magic can help?” she asked a few moments later, fluttering her wings and drawing my eyes purposefully towards them, “Could you not fashion some from your spark?”

I shook my head, “Only once in history have wings been fashioned from magic, and they burnt away in the sunlight.” my sadness betrayed by the tone, “I could not fly above these clouds.”

Silence filled the air between the two of us as a light breeze rustled the blue, strangely warm grass beneath our hooves. Her hair fluttered majestically in the wind, as if it were made of strands of shadow.

“I think you are wrong.” she stated bluntly, “I think you could fashion wings from your spark.”

I did not respond, instead staring at her thoughtfully. She smiled and tilted her head stepping back for a moment, and then launched herself into the air. Watching her fly was good enough for me, as my heart went out with her every time those graceful wings caressed the sky.

A voice I had never heard spoke suddenly in my head, “There is no happy ending to this.” it told me, hissing in my skull like a snake.

Something grasped my legs, as if trying to pull me down. The feeling startled me and I tried to jump, failing miserably and smashing to the ground face first, hooves still planted where they had been before. What greeted me was a toothy skull with red eyes hidden behind a dark hood. Panic rose in my chest as I cried out to my Pegasus companion, with the world growing darker and more grainy with each passing second as if an immense pressure had suddenly filled the world. I was being pulled into the ground! Tendrils of black lightning flashed and split the sky before my eyes, crawling upwards as the clouds rose up and filled the mountaintop sky, blotting out Celestia’s sun. Wind and the sounds of wailing filled the air. My Pegasus mare swooped down low with a look of terror filling her eyes as her head turned towards the sky, then back down at my slowly sinking body.

With all my might I swam, coughing up the black matter that surrounded me and fighting its downward pulling current. My Pegasus tried to reach for me but it was no use as the tendrils of black lightning kept striking at her, attempting to bring her down out of the sky so that she too would be trapped by the darkness surrounding.

“Death.” the hissing voice spoke, the red-eyed skull revealed from under its hood, “My name is Death. And there is no happy ending to this. To any of this.”

The bones of dozens of ponies who had also been felled by Death rose to the surface and began clawing at my face with their bleached hooves, trying to take me with them. I fought with all my might all the while swimming against the dark, sinking power and grabbing hooves, batting them away when I could with my own.

I saw my Pegasus friend fly away and my heart sank. The last thing I would see would be her leaving me.

But then her voice echoed through the wails of the damned and the winds, breaking the clouds and bringing back the sun, “No!” she cried as she dove for me, my hoof outstretched for hers.

Death roared and the pressure in the air increasing to the point of suffocating, but my Pegasus fought through it unphased. Our hooves touched-

“WAKE UP, YOU COLTS!” a loud, deep and authoritative voice similar to one you might find on a specific auto-insurance commercial called out through the fog of my dreams, “IT’S TIME TO GET TO WORK!”

I sat up straight and smacked my horn against the ceiling making me elicit a surprised cry of pain. Slightly off balance, my body started to make a tumble for the ground, but I grabbed the mattress beneath me and clung to it like a cat, still groggy from the rude awakening. Shifting my gaze, I spun my head almost completely upside down and backwards to see who had brought me out of my nightmare and back into reality.

“What’s going on?” a dark red, almost blood colored Earth Pony with a lighty-brown colored mane on the opposing top bunk from mine moaned with a sleepy yawn.

His bunk was accompanied by another Earth Pony, a gray mare who I had been privy to him making “relations” with many, many times before. Not that I had much of a choice. In the bunker we lived in, 90 years after the megaspell apocalypse, there really were not very many private places one could go to screw. At least not without getting into serious trouble. She yawned and stretched a little, nuzzling back into her night-time companion’s chest with a small smile, completely unaware of what was going on despite the noise.

Crusader Jack-Hammer, the massive stallion of an Earth Pony who was our squad leader, stepped half-into the steel box that we all called home. The room itself could only maybe hold four Jack-sized individuals, but was taken up by the bunks and lockers we slept and stored our Powered Armor in. Except for Jack. His armor was too big to put on by himself, so it was kept in the deployment bay on the floor closest to the base of the mountain we lived inside.

“Elder Opal Tulip has an urgent mission for us. Protocol 02’s all fucked up. She handed me orders stating we have to start work on Procedure 23 immediately.” his emphasis on that last word tipped me off that something big was coming.

Sliding off the mattress from my precarious perch, I lighted to the floor with a soft clop, then settled on the notably empty bunk under my own.

“Where’s Shear?” I asked my squad leader between slightly stifled yawn as the red Earth Pony stallion slid out of his own bed and leaned against its rickety metal frame. He glanced up at his bunk where the mare still slept soundly under his covers.

My squad leader backed out, as he was too large to actually turn around inside the doorframe, and headed back out into the Commons of Level 3, where our barracks were located.

“Shear’s already suited up. I’ve got to go suit up as well.” Hammer’s large hooves echoed within our tiny room even though he was far outside the doorway as his overtly deep voice continued to relay information, “Be in the staging area in half an hour, the Elder wants to give us some updates on what’s been going on before-”

“Wait...” I interrupted, “Procedure 23...?” I asked incredulously, “As in... the Procedure 23?”

Hammer stopped, turned around really, really slowly and looked at me like I had grown an extra leg and was tap-dancing to show tunes with it.

“Yes...” he started, not sure what I might be leading up to and flicking one of his ears somewhat irritably, “...Procedure 23. Is that a problem?” he asked, a little more dangerously than was warranted.

I stood up from the bed and onto my hooves, “Not at all.” my response was a little slow and cautious, “I just... can’t believe we’re actually going top-side. No one’s actually stepped hoof out into the Wastes in 90 years.”

The blood red stallion next to me pushed off the bed with his shoulder and snorted at the notion. My best friend was always a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but never so much that it garnered him any negative attention. He was absolutely certain that somepony had been out there at least once since the doors had closed and insisted that it would defy logic to think otherwise.

“I know you think that it’s impossible that we haven’t sent scouts out, Red Rain, but that doesn’t matter right now, so keep it buttoned up.” Jack-Hammer warned as Red rolled his golden eyes around in their sockets mockingly, something that Jack-Hammer decided to ignore, as he began to address me as well, “As for you, Fallen Shield...”

I deflated a little inside. He had said my name, which meant I was about to get shafted in some way.

“.. just make sure that Rain isn’t late.”

With that, Jack-Hammer trotted off towards the stairwell across the Commons the open area where all the single-pony barracks were located. I breathed a sigh of relief and turned to Red Rain, who was up on his hind-hooves, staring at the gray mare in his bed. It was something I had noticed him doing a lot lately, specifically with her. I didn’t know the mare’s name, but I did know they spent a lot of time together, especially compared to the other mares he bedded with.

“Come on, Rain.” I prodded, “We have to get ready.” I added as my tail flicked the light switch next to our doorway, flooding the room with sickly fluorescent white light.

Rain sighed, and slipped off the bed, turning to me with a somber smile and a shrug of his shoulders. The light revealed the insomnia that had plagued his life since before he could even speak. Bags under his eyes betrayed that much, in addition to the relative thinness of his body.

“I know... I know...” he yawned, turning his golden eyes to my direction, “I was only late once.” he almost whined, “The heck does Jack keep messin’ with me about it for?”

I tried not to ever look into Rain’s eyes. They nearly glowed in the dark and when the lights were actually on they were just downright intense.

“Well, what else is he going to mess with you about?”

Rain just grinned at that. A toothy, shivering grin that was his and his alone and when coupled with those ever-open, never-blinking eyes of his he looked just dangerous. Almost insane. I frequently thought to myself that those traits might be part of the reason that he was so popular with the mares. He could bed two or three in a night without even trying.

I was a bit jealous of that.

Regardless of those feelings, Rain was my best friend. He and I had been together since we were colts in the Academy, all the way up through Knight Training, and now we were in the same squad as one another. For all intents and purposes, we were absolutely inseparable.

“She might be the one, Shield.” Red whispered from his locker, which he had already unlocked with his teeth, and opened to retrieve his armor from. “She really might be the one.”

I rolled my eyes. He’d said this before.

“She won’t stick.” I suggested bluntly, “You’re too interested in all the other mares in addition to her.”

Rain scoffed at me. It was not because he thought I was wrong, it was because he thought he knew something I did not. I telekinetically unlocked it and looked at myself in the mirror that was bolted onto the inside of the door. A steel-blue unicorn with green eyes stared back at me, his black-and-tan mane a disheveled mess on top of his head. I shook my head as questions about how I looked nothing like my parents surfaced. Instead of thinking about it, and wondering why they had always seemed loving but distant from me as I grew up, I grabbed my own suit of Powered Armor from my locker with my teeth, and proceeded to telekinetically strap on the different parts and pieces that made it up.

“But she’s... different.” Rain asserted, “She knows I’m bedding other mares.”

That halted my train of thought for a minute, and I nearly dropped a side-plate which I was manipulating via a telekinetic spell in shock.

“She knows?” I asked while raising an eyebrow at Rain, “Either she really, really loves you, or she’s completely nuts. I’d watch my back if I were you.”

Red Rain sighed, almost done putting on his armor. I’ll never know how he managed to do it so fast without telekinesis. Earth Ponies really were some kind of special.

“Yeah.” he admitted, “I should probably settle down.”

The last clips on my own suit snapped shut as I retrieved my helmet, hanging it on a D-ring that was attached to a section of plate.

I shook my head, somewhat worried for my friend but unable to help him in this specific instance.

“Just watch your back.” I reiterated, and began heading out the door and into the Commons of SR-15.

Rain followed suit, cantering up beside me and then slowing to match my walk as we headed for the stairwell that would lead us to the 1st Level of SR-15.

Let me tell you a little something about Steel Rangers Outpost 15. It. is. big. Maybe the biggest underground bunker that the Steel Rangers ever built. It housed over 1200 individuals before the bombs fell, and still housed about that many 90 years later. Two generations had been born in the wake of others from previous ones dying off, but we were still wary of allowing the number to increase too much even with an excess of food production and space. Soldiers still lived in 4 pony barracks rooms, and families still lived on a floor between Level 3 and 4, which took up a good portion of the adjacent mountain and was called the “Families District” for a reason. My parents lived there.

I hadn’t visited them in at least a year. Not since... well, I’ll get to that later.

Regardless of its size, SR-15 was very well laid out, and as a result Rain and I arrived on the second and then the first level within 5 minutes of setting off from our room. We made it just in time to see everyone saddling up on the AutoSleds; triple-tracked, giant, armored snowmobile-like assault vehicles that could hold a single squad each. At the time, four of them were readied up and prepped for the first action that the ancient MAgiK engine-powered machines had likely seen since the doors to the outside shut.

Jack-Hammer was already prepped and ready with his massive tank-like Power Armor heaving like it was just as alive as the pony inside. The stallion’s voice came out of his helmet muffled and a twinge of electronic static and somehow augmented his already imposing nature even more than it was with the armor alone.

“Are you colts ready to do this?”

Then again it really may have just been the suit itself, which bristled with about 4 rocket launcher systems and a dual auto-cannon system, that added to his already massive stature.

Shear hopped down from the internals of the AutoSled, dressed in a skin-tight sneak-suit.

“I would be, if I knew exactly what we were going to be doing.”

His voice was what you might expect, like a Ghost from a Craft in the Stars. (Shhh.) But we all knew his voice was entirely the sneak-suit’s doing. The breathing apparatus of Scout Suits were noisy when the pony inside spoke, but was otherwise silent. I turned my attention to some of the soldiers around me, most of which were grumbling about it being Saturday morning, and a cancelled Spellcaster’s Rugby match that was slated to kick off at 1300 that afternoon. There was a noted air of dissatisfaction amongst us all. Especially Rain.

“I’m telling you, Hammer... this mare might be the one!” I overheard him angrily insisting, pacing about in random directions.

Jack-Hammer had popped the faceplate on his armor, and had an exceptionally annoyed look on his snout. His suit seemed to echo the sentiment as it hissed and steam escaped from nozzles in the shoulderplates and spinal-spades.

“Do you even know her name?” he asked pointedly, raising an eyebrow at the smaller Earth Pony.

Rain stumbled for a moment. I coughed. He did not even know her name. Rain went silent. Hammer was not trying to be mean, but he did raise a fine point. Unfortunately, he also raised his next question to my level.

“Any luck?” Hammer asked with a slight grin.

I knew where this was going, but damned if I weren’t going to try to prevent it from going there.

I tried to feign ignorance, “Do what now?” I asked.

Hammer just laughed. It was a laugh I was familiar with, but was also one that ticked me off to no measurable end. I stomped my hoof in agitation and fell right into his trap.

“Just because my AER burned a hole-” I started, but was cut off by Hammer’s hearty laugh as his suit heaved with him.

I blushed hard, turning red as a RADish (That’s a strange danish cookie previously manufactured in the pre-war era. They taste excellent. They have caused more than one salad order to become a confused mess.). I remembered the incident too well.

“Screw you.” I muttered just loud enough for that oversized Crusader-level Steel Ranger to hear, which just made him laugh harder, and then give me a slightly apologetic look.

“Awwe, don’t get too plot-hurt over it, Shield.” Jack offered, “Just think about it like this; you got her attention, she knows your name, and after this you’ll have come home from the first combat operation in nine decades!”

That was true. Regardless, I stuffed the T-51b helmet I was carrying onto my head with a rough telekinetic snap. I was immediately thankful that I had practiced enough putting it on in a pinch that my ears had not been crushed going into their coverings. Even under the notion that Sunflower Dawn might finally take notice of all my efforts, my mind wandered elsewhere.

“She’s out there, somewhere.” I whispered, loud enough for Red Rain to hear me by accident.

He shook his head, “Pegasi are dead, all of them.” Rain whispered back trotting over to me, “Give it up already, you’ll be better off.”

I knew he was concerned. I’d already been referred to psychology more than once for my insistence that Pegasus Ponies were still out there somewhere. Luckily, Elder Opal Tulip had for whatever reason kept me out of the funny-farm and in Special Detachment Delta-3. I still often wondered why, but I was not about to question the Elder’s more benevolent decisions concerning my fate within the Steel Rangers.

I turned to him feeling a little betrayed either way, “You were there, Rain... You were the one who told me to watch in the first place.”

“I... I don’t know what we saw.” he told me, blatantly lying.

“You were THERE, Rain!” I hissed, “We talked about it for YEARS!”

Rain looked up at me, a stern expression filling his golden, bag-framed eyes.

“And I moved ON.” the harshness in his voice overwhelming, “I grew UP. Even if she were still out there today, she’d be a fossil, Fall!”

An alarm sounded throughout the staging area, prompting Rain and I to look up and around and halting our argument. Other T-51b plated soldiers and their Scouts were also looking around. Suddenly, everything got quiet as an elevator on the far left side of the staging area, facing the massive door to the outside opened up with a small ping.

“Attention in the bay!” The Star Paladin leading Delta Detachment bellowed back at his soldiers. I immediately stood up straight, and took the position of attention.

Elder Opal Tulip walked across the metal paneled floors, her hoofsteps clanking on their freshly washed surfaces. She was dressed in deep purple robe with plating on her shoulder and along her spine, which covered most of her deep-blue coat and lighter-blue, albeit graying in some areas, mane.

“Guess she hasn’t gotten the windbreaker burn hole fi-”

“Shut UP, Shear!” Crusader Jack-Hammer seethed through gritted teeth.

Midnight Shear huffed a little in his suit, granting him a death-stare out of the corner of our squad-leader’s eye. He went quiet. I was secretly enjoying the little bit of retribution he received for mentioning that event, even if it only because the Elder was in our presence.

“At ease detachments!” Elder Opal Tulip barked with a voice that one would expect from someone of much greater stature and harsher visage as she came to a stop in front of the entirety of Delta, “As you all know, Protocol 02 was put into effect approximately 30 days ago! However, in light of recent developments, we are unable to complete the edict at this point in time!”

A few soldiers grumbled in their suits, while other quietly voiced their concern. Protocol 02 was supposed to save the Equestrian Wasteland, and help make it easier for ponies that would be exiting the Stables in the coming years to settle in.

“... In light of this,” she continued beginning to pace, “We have decided that it is time to enact Procedure 23 and begin preparations towards its execution immediately.”

She stopped and pulled out a large binder, flipping it telekinetically with her magic. She was the first Elder who had spent most of her career as a scribe.Like me, she had shown exceptional aptitude in combat, and as a result, was eventually accepted into the Knights despite her being a Unicorn. Eventually she rose through the ranks to become a Star Paladin, and eventually the Elder of our entire North Contingent.

“Procedure 23 is very, very simple!” Elder Opal Tulip barked, reading through some of the pages of her binder at the same time, flipping her hair to look up at all of us and adjusting her glasses back onto the bridge of her snout, “Because of radiocative and severe cold temperature damage, the terminals that we need to complete the activation of the Manufactorum are damaged. We need to begin securing supply depots and manufacturing plants across Equestria to ensure that if we are unable to activate the Manufactorum, that we will still have some means of assisting the rebirth of our once great nation.”

A few of the soldiers stomped appreciatively at the idea, and the Elder stopped speaking for a moment to allow it. When the ponyplause died down completely, Opal Tulip continued.

“This does not, however, mean we have given up on activating the Manufactorum! The terminals can be repaired, and the necessary power can be acquired to supply the Manufactorum with energy when it is time to activate it. While the rest of the Steel Rangers North is doing the EASY stuff it is YOUR duty, that is Delta Detachment’s duty, to do all the HARD work and take over those lost power plants and points of interest from whoever or whatever happens to be living, operating, or salvaging from, or in, these key points of interest! That being said, I absolutely do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT approve the killing of civilians! Move them out of the area, or imprison them, but do NOT abuse or kill them!”

“What if they-” I started to ask.

“Shield!” Jack-Hammer barked, “That’s the Elder who’s speaking right now! Where’s your military bearing!? Drop! Now!”

I started to get into pony-push-up position when the Elder shook her head.

“Stand, Knight Shield!” she commanded with a slight frown, to which Jack was surprised by and glanced fearfully in my direction unsure of what kind of wrath I had just brought down upon myself.

I could swear I heard Shear whispered “fuuuuuuuhhcked” under his breath, but I pushed my annoyance aside, holding my ground despite the very real fear of being punished openly (again) by the Elder. Red turned his gaze back to the position of attention, directly, but I could see him gulp out of the corner of my eye in trepidation.

The Elder stood in front of me, staring me down with an intense fire that I was far too familiar with. I was screwed. Especially after that incident with the AER-9 rifle that had burned a hole in her windbreaker last month.

“You had a question, Knight Fallen Shield?” she asked with a serious tone that in all probability would have felled me if not for the extra strength afforded to me by my Powered Armor.

I stood at attention, “I do, Elder Opal Tulip, ma’am!” I barked back, more because I was scared of the consequences of the path I had chosen than anything else.

“Rest, soldier.” she commanded.

I didn’t move.

“I said rest.”

I still couldn’t move.

“I’m giving you a direct order to relax, right now. At this moment. So freaking relax!” she barked.

I finally spoke up my voice cracking in apprehension and dread, “Elder, ma’am, I am absolutely relaxed... Right now!” I lied.

Despite the fact that my lie was feeble as hell and I was by no means relaxed, nor had I moved an inch, she let it slide much to my bewilderment. However in the next few moments I gained more respect and adoration for the Elder than I had ever even considered having in the past.

“Everyone except Knight Fallen Shield, At-Ease!” she bellowed, her voice filling the massive staging area like that of Celestia herself (I assume that, at least.), “Let me ask you all something very simple...” she started off, “What has Fallen Shield done, just now, that is absolutely...”

I steeled myself for it, words such as “stupid,” or “wrong,” filling in the blanks before she had even finished.

“...right?” she finished as a smile shimmered at the edge of her mouth.

Silence filled the staging area, the only noise coming from the idling MAgiK engines in the AutoSleds.

“No one?” she asked matter-of-factly, “No one at all?”

Elder Opal Tulip laughed a little. It was scary to see someone with that much power laugh. I prayed at that moment that I would never see such a thing again.

“He asked a question, you hoof-dragging plot-licks!”

A few soldiers looked around at each other, as if confused. Asking a question was a good thing? I assume that never in their military careers had such an idea even crossed most of their minds. It certainly had not crossed mine, despite the fact that I had done it anyways.

The Elder sighed, “Look, you are my top soldiers, set ahead with a specific task. Your Crusader squad-leaders are in charge of 4, not 8 Knights because they show aptitude beyond the normal sergeant class and I believe they can get things done better with half the units than would normally be necessary.”

She paused for a moment, a few smiles breaking through on the faces of some of the soldiers who were not wearing helmets as they caught onto where she was headed with her new tangent. I watched the Elder, enraptured by her speech in a way that I had never been before. This was a leader of ponies, not just a leader.

“You are DELTA. DETACHMENT.” she barked, “The cream of the crop, the elite of the elite! You have earned my respect, and as such, I want to be more involved in your operations than any other unit within the North Contingent.” she took a breath, “So ask some damned questions!” the Elder bellowed with an almost comical stance that just screamed (for whatever reason) ‘yay!’

My best friend flashed his creepily nervous smile at me signaling that he was impressed and happy, maybe even enthused by what I had done. I looked to my squad leader, and an even bigger smile rested upon his face. I guess he was proud of me or something. I felt a little better about his picking at me than before.

“So!” Elder Opal Tulip called out from where she stood in front of the now smiling squads, “Detachments! Rest!”

All the ponies in the bay suddenly relaxed, leaning towards one side or the other, a few even taking some cigarettes from their stashes within the side and chest pouches that they wore, and began to light one up.

“Except no smoking!” the Elder called out.

A grumble filled the air.

She smiled, “Geeze you guys are easy! Fuckin’ smoke ‘em, I don’t care! Just pay attention while you do it, or I’ll have you ASS when you mess up!” she warned while popping out a cigarette of her own, “Now what was your question, Shield?”

I found myself relaxed in her presence for the first time since I’d met the Elder, “Well, ma’am... what if they start shooting at us?” I asked.

Silence filled the room. No one had considered that. Not surprising since there had been virtually no combat in nine decades between the Steel Rangers North and... well, anypony else.

“Why would they do that, Shield?” the Elder asked, no questioningly, but as if she already knew the answer, “If we’re trying to help, why would they do that?”

I had not expected that.

Stumbling on the first few words I began to explain, “The effects of radiation have been known to cause terrible mutations, insanity, or mental degradation.” I began, “Or what if they think we’re invading their home!?”

The elder puffed a whisp of smoke out and got closer to everyone, motioning with her hoof for them to gather around.

“Welcome to an introduction in Rules of Engagement.” she chided, “We’ve never had to set any, but I’ve read enough about previous wars and the atrocities committed under leaders within the ranks of the old Equestrian Army that...”

A half hour later, we knew everything we needed to know about when to kill another pony, and when to attempt to negotiate. My heart was at ease. I did not like the idea of killing anything that got in our path, and the Elder had once again proven she was just as intelligent as her position warranted.

“Alright everyone!” Star Paladin Thread Spool called out, “Saddle up, Gates open in five!”

The Elder had finished her speech twenty minutes ago, and had gone around specifically talking to the leaders of each squad. Now she approached us, as we began to board the rear of the AutoSled we had been assigned to.

“Crusader Jack-Hammer and company, stand-to!” she yelled over the roar of the engine.

We all turned around and surrounded the Elder, taking our helmets off out of respect. It was not a requirement but it just felt... right.

“Listen.” she said demanded softly as she walked us away from the engine’s angry rotating, “Your squad is the most important on this operation.”

The Elder handed us each a folder from the binder she had been carrying earlier, “Within these folders are specific instructions on what to look for in addition to securing Geothermal Station #7.”

I thumbed through them quickly, noting something about a Scout and some lost documents.

“You absolutely cannot fail in this tasking. The documents that I’m sending you after are more important than the plant itself and cost the life of at least one Scout to gather.” the look on her face was deathly serious. “Failure is not an option, make their deaths count.”

I nodded in understanding, as did the rest of the team, with only our squad leader speaking up.

“We understand ma’am, and we will not fail. I’ll have them review these files on the way to number 7.”

She nodded and wished us all good luck, waving at us as we stepped into the AutoSled.

Moments later, the doors to a world that only a few Steel Rangers had borne witness to in 90 years opened up, protesting and screeching against decades of rust and dust. The MAgiK engines in our ‘Sleds roared as the drivers began to inch forward across the metal panelling, heading towards a portal that would eventually spell doom and disaster for almost every Steel Ranger in the North Contingent.

But then, that’s how most stories go, isn’t it?

Chapter 002: Enemy Unknown

Fallout Equestria: Rangers North

Chapter 002: Enemy Unknown

AE0090.03.24.1047

“And if your dreams are in truth reality, be even more careful what you believe.”

Airborne. We were airborne. I wasn’t sure if it was just a quirk of all drivers, or if it was simply a lack of experience on his part, but the whole AutoSled was in the air for the third or fourth time in the past 15 minutes. I was beginning to rethink if I ever wanted to fly, even in my own dreams.

“Keep us steady!” Jack bellowed over the roar of the engine at the driver, a very young Scribe who was about as familiar with driving the craft as we were, except that he has supposedly read its manual at the last minute. “If one of my Rangers gets knocked cold, it’s your flank I’m coming after!”

Thud!

Rain and I fell out of our seats. Jack and Shear somehow managed not to be bothered by the sudden impact. I attributed Jack’s reason being that he was so danged heavy anyways that he’d not come off the ground during the sudden mid-air drop. As for Shear... well he was always a bit mysterious anyways. No explanation needed.

“Geeze!” I complained, “I hope this thing can handle what he’s dishing out!”

Jack snorted as Red Rain wobbled a little, settling back into his seat, “Back to business!” he commanded, “Are we clear on what needs to be done?” he asked us all, using an unusual appendage-like device that unfolded from his faceplate to pick through the pages of the files we had been going over.

“It seems pretty obvious.” I confirmed, “Get the papers, activate the plant. Get back home once reinforcements come and relieve us. Easy.”

Right?

Shear heaved a sigh, “I think we’re going to have to be careful. Regardless of whether or not we find the files, our first priority should be getting through that deathtrap alive.”

Red tilted his head at Shear, “You always this negative?” he asked, knowing the answer, “These are the first notes that anyone has gathered about the outside world since the fall of civilization!”

I noted Red’s excitement. As soon as he got back, he’d be bragging to the other detachments about what we had been sent after, barring the Elder’s possible insistence on secrecy. If she did put us under oath it would probably crush his spirits a little, but he would get over it.

Shear sighed, his breathing apparatus making his voice sound even more aggravated than usual, “I know. You’ve said it at least three times. Congratulations, you’re not as big a conspiracy theorist as I had given you credit for in the past.”

Red Rain puffed his chest out proudly, then suddenly stopped, “Wait, what’s that supposed to mean?”

I could almost see Shear roll his eyes behind the visor of the stealth suit. I sighed, slightly annoyed by their banter. Normally, it would not have bothered me, but I had been on edge since we had set out from SR-15.

“We need to be careful.” Shear said suddenly, ignoring Red’s question. “These buildings will have been decaying for almost 100 years. It’s almost a guarantee that they will be dangerous, even without the radiation that might still afflict the surrounding land.”

Jack nodded, the strange-looking, spidery appendages protruding from his helmet’s mouth area folding back up into the safety of his helmet, “Shear is right. This is our first combat operation. Our first real combat operation. We need to be on the tips of our hooves and ready for whatever may come our way.”

A loud explosion rocked the floor beneath us, breaking the conversation.

“Uhm... guys?” the driver yelled, his voice cracking in fear over the com-system which linked into our squad’s, “I... I think we’ve got a problem!”

Jack turned his head to face me directly.

“Get in the turret.”

Unsteadily, I clambered up into an oversized hole in the top of the AutoSled, but then fell back out as an explosion rocked the sides of our AutoSled like an earthquake. Almost like clockwork Rain and Shear helped me back onto my feet and into the seat of the turret.

Success! I found myself sitting in the cockpit of a weapon that I had never used outside a simulation.

Rockets rained down from the mountaintops like deadly, volatile arrows. No time to think. If I thought, the pressure would crush me. Leaning back into the gun-chair, I slipped all four hooves into the control points for the weapon, drawing on information that had been drilled over and over again until I could do it in my sleep. Locks clamped down around my suit, effectively integrating my movements into the massive weapon. Uncertain of how the Autosled’s Rotary-Guns handled outside a simulation, I moved my back legs up along the rails that they had been locked into. The turret’s barrels moved up with them, with the horizontal lay of the weapon being controlled by my forehooves. Simple. Almost exactly like the simulator except that there was real weight behind this machine instead of just pedals connected to screens that showed me what I was doing.

Gaining mental momentum, I confidently slipped my hooves into the trigger wells, which were two large buttons that I had to press my forehooves into at the end of the control arms that locked me in place. A jump-inducing roar sounded-off as the rotary cannon fired a spray of searing metal out into the sky. I adjusted, gaining mastery over the additional weight that real guns had and learning to compensate for true recoil as I moved the reticule from target to target. Sprays of chipped rocks and pink-red mist began to appear every so often as I began hitting my targets with ever-increasing accuracy. More rockets fell from the ridgeline, cratering the ground around our convoy as it moved. The earth shook bad enough to make my teeth chatter. I swung the turret to a new target as the rotary-guns blared in my ears with their awful thunder. A bipod machine-gun ripped open the air from its previously hidden position in the snowy ridge, its bullets denting the metal plating that protected sides with one round shattering my left shoulder pauldron.

The machine gun position didn’t last two more seconds.

The flash of four more bullet-spewing weapons caught my eye on the other side of the ravine. A single thought crossed my mind at a speed that barely registered: The other AutoSleds were engaging targets to our front and rear, meaning I would have to take on more than one enemy at once if I were going to survive.

A technique I had been told that few knew how to execute with this weapon returned to the forefront of my memory for the first time in years. Remembering how it worked could have meant the difference between survival and becoming a dead Steel Ranger..

So I decided to remember.

I spread my forelegs as far out and back as I could manage in my cumbersome armor. My memory served me well as the targeting computer integrated into my E.F.S. began compensating for dual targeting with a new reticle for both of the belt-fed weapons as they began to fold out in a manner that they would not impact each other no matter how the long barrels turned.

There was no time to celebrate as more rockets began dotting the sky once again. I focused. Time seemed to slow as belt-fed ammunition spilled forth in the direction of those incoming javelins of death. One down. Shift left, up. Two down. Shift down, right. Three...

And one more, as it stabilized in the wake of the last missile that had met it’s demise. In my haste to find the next target I had redirected my guns elsewhere, too late realizing that one last rocket had been unintentionally hidden in the contrail of its brother. I clenched my eyes shut. It was over.

An concussive sound overloaded the hearing protection software of my armor suit’s external microphones, washing my ears with a roll of static. There was no pain. No bleeding. For a moment, the certainty that I had died was almost as real as death itself.

I opened my eyes, expecting to see a white light. Instead, blue haze permeated my vision. A... shield?

“Well no shit.” Jack laughed deeply into the coms. “It is your name, after all.”

Had I said that out loud?

I could hear Red cheering in the background noise. We were back in the game. With newfound confidence I lowered the magically crafted barrier and began firing again. I was beginning to like this:The sheer power behind the weapon I wielded, the impenetrable strength of my shield. We could make it out alive, and take these...

… What WERE we fighting?

My suit was equipped with a zoom function so, swinging the turret around to face the other side of the ravine that our convoy had found itself in at the beginning of the attack, I rocked backwards in my chair and brought the whirling guns to bear on another mass of enemy troops. Zooming in, I watched at first with a smile. With the realization of what they were, my smile faded. Regardless, I did not let the Rotary-Guns cease unloading their punishing fire even as blood speckled the snow that we passed. I saw one of the enemy fighters get blown in half, his body-parts splattering onto his comrade nearby just before I shredded him into bloody ribbons as well. Bodies fell, cast down into the snow that our tracks pounded against in an effort to leave the kill-zone, and were crushed beneath our AutoSled line leaving a trail of broken forms in our wake.

Ponies. I was killing ponies. Ponies like myself, like Red... like Sunflower. I do not know what I had expected to find, but it certainly wasn’t my own kind. The face of the last pony I had killed flashed before me, and I deactivated my zoom. I couldn’t watch the carnage this close, not like this, but I had to keep fighting. It was either them, or us.

I continued to fire.

Sweat trickled down the inside of my suit as the moments of life-stealing destruction continued. Fear was beginning to rise in my throat. If they did not stop...

“No...” I hissed into the coms at myself, adjusting for the source of the next missile-attack.

I think someone replied, asking what I was talking about, but I did not hear them as I surged forward in my seat, tipping the guns directly in front of the ‘Sled. A large mountain cliff leading up higher into the peaks caught my eye.

There. That’s where they had to be.

A rocket skittered across the top of our AutoSled, ricocheting off the bullet-scarred surface and spiraling out of control into a rock-face behind us. Zooming in once more, my hooves smashed the controls with all their might, not letting up even as the barrels turned yellow, then red, then white with heat.

Tenacity paid off in the end.

A spray of molten lead peppered one of the caves from where the rockets were flying from, and a fiery burst of light filled my vision, flinging ragged bodies from atop the cliff, raining them down atop us as we rolled by. One landed on the metal plating next to my turret, eyes wide open in shock. Any armor it had been wearing had been shattered or ripped from its body in the sudden impact of what I assumed was an ammunition dump explosion. Blood pooled lazily from its open mouth, its ribcage collapsed inward like a fleshy tin-can. I could not tell if the pony was a stallion or a mare. I wondered if it mattered. The rockets, after all, had stopped and the enemy seemed to be retreating further into the mountains.

My heart started to race even faster than it had been moments before.

“Shield, you alright up there?” Jack’s voice asked calmly over the coms.

I did not answer. I stared at the dead bodies of our nameless foes as we passed them, the Autosled crushing many under its treads as if it were nothing. I was not sure if the driver could see them. I hoped not, and that he was only running them over because there was no way to tell.

“I killed...” I whispered into the coms. “I just killed a lot of ponies, Jack.”

Silence crept in after that, and it felt as if the world was trying to tear me apart.

“Come down from the turret, Shield.”

I slid my hooves out of the control units to the turret and slipped below the control seat, eyeing the body as it slowly slipped over the side of our Sled. Settling into one of the passenger seats of our armored personnel carrier, I began to feel very, very sick. Suddenly, I was glad I had not been given time to eat breakfast.

“Look at me, Shield.” Jack commanded.

My eyes were fixated on the floor, my ears ringing from the sudden “silence” that filled the air without the guns’ roar. I had just killed so many...

“Knight Fallen Shield! I’m ordering you to look at me!”

His stance seemed to relax and soften a bit when I finally rose my head to stare at him.

“You did what you had to. We would be dead if you had not been sitting in that chair, alright?”

I swallowed hard, a dry, bitter taste in my mouth permeating my senses. I knew he was right. That I had done what was necessary. I knew we would be dead if somepony had not taken up the turret and attacked. I also knew that it was not making me feel any better, even with Crusader Jack-Hammer’s... approval. That is when I came to the conclusion that so many warriors before me had come to.

I just had to ignore it. Nothing could change it. Those ponies were dead.

“I’ll be fine, Sir.” I whispered into the coms.

Rain scooted over and put a hoof on my shoulder just moments before another earth-shattering explosion ripped a hole in the bottom of our ‘Sled.

The last thing that I heard over the coms was that we were under attack again.

The last thing that I saw was the interior of our ‘Sled kissing me right on the face.

***

I awoke. Sort of. The world was silent, and it was as if the color had seeped out of everything, leaving it all black, white, and grey. I couldn’t move. But I was aware that someone was moving around me, jostling me with their hooves. I blacked out again.

Once more, my eyes opened. My vision was greeted with the eyes of another pony. But the eyes were dead. They had no expression, except that of fear. They seemed glazed. I stared at them, wondering what was going to happen next. I stared at them...

Again, I awoke. I was not sure how long I had been asleep. I felt cold. Which was more than I was feeling... however long ago it was when I was last conscious. The dead pony was gone. I could feel something wrapped around my forehead. Soft hooves, softer than the last, were moving around my body. It was almost sensual. I could have died like that, being caressed. Maybe it would have been better that I had.

Once again, unconsciousness took my mind, this time thrusting me down into a dark abyss of pain and unintelligible dreams. I could hear a soft voice speaking, but could not make out the words.

***

AE0090.03.24.1156

“Wake up. Come on, wake up!” a soft, female voice hissed in desperation into my ear, “I worked way too hard keeping your ass alive to have you turn-in now!”

My head swam, ears ringing. I felt positively awful. Opening my eyes, my memories to make a slow return, allowing me to remember what had happened. The events felt as if they had occurred a lifetime ago, but in reality had only occurred half an hour prior. That’s when I noticed the source of the voice that I had identified while slipping in and out of consciousness.

It was the second time I had ever seen a Pegasus outside of my dreams. Though in the state I had been in at the time, I was unsure if I was dreaming, dead, or if it was just my mind looking for a reason to make me get up. My gaze moved slowly upwards to look at her.

“At least you’re awake now...” this new Pegasus began, when all of a sudden her ears pricked up and she started to back away, swiveling her head towards something to her left. Her wings opened. I looked in the direction she had glanced in.

I could hear gunshots. We were still in battle. I shook my head, making my stomach turn as I stared out and focused in on a massive, blurred form about 20 meters in front of where I was. I began to wonder why everything sounded so clear, when I realized I no longer had an E.F.S. or a helmet at all. I groaned and started to stand, glancing back to where the pegasus had been at only moments before.

She was gone. She had been standing in front of me only moments ago...

I remembered the caressing of... somepony. Was it her? I shook my head. No time to bother with thoughts like that, even if she were real. Was she?

Shaking off the sluggishness that came with being knocked out and ignoring my previous thoughts, I stumbled towards our destroyed AutoSled, which was spewing pink and purple clouds of MAgiK fuel from various holes in its engine compartment. The hull itself was half buried in the snow as if tossed there like a colt’s playtoy. I felt like water was draining out of my ears as they began to register sounds clearer. I could make Jack out as he roared battle cries and orders almost simultaneously from his position. He was holding them off but, from the sound of it, without help eventually even he would fall.

The snow was thick, and coupled with the state I was in, it caused me to stumble. Blood trickled down from the saturated bandage on my head, getting in my eyes. I blinked hard, trying to clear them.

A rocket passed between my ears. All of a sudden it no longer mattered that I had a little blood in my eyes and that I had been unconscious a few moments ago. I needed a weapon. Moving faster than I would have ever thought possible in the condition I was in, I managed to make my through the powdered snow and into the wreckage of our nearby ‘Sled. Bullets plinked off of my armor, ricocheting off into the distance. Inside, I glimpsed a pair of pristine carbines. They weren’t my favorite, but it would have to do. Floating them out with a telekinesis spell, I attached them to my T51b’s integrated battle saddle. Only when I connected them did I realize that, without a helmet, I was firing blind.

“Damn...” I cursed, and disconnected one of them, taking it up between my teeth. I’d have to do it the old fashioned way.

I cursed again and backed away from the ‘Sled, moving towards Jack’s barking war-cries. Jack had been holding them off with his mini-guns and rockets, but it was a losing fight without some assistance. I galloped forward, tripping through the snow more than once and fighting off a headache brought on by a concussion and blood loss. Jack let loose four rockets at the same time upon the enemy position, sending blood and rocks flying through the air. I dodged a torso, entrails sliding out as it soared past my right ear and landed with a bone-cracking thud in the snow, staining the once virgin powder with crimson death. Some of the pony’s blood ended up on my face.

“Jack!” I hollered hoarsely, finding that it hurt my throat to yell. “Crusader Jack!”

My squad leader looked over in my direction and seemed to jump a little in surprise, before a bullet pinged off his helmet, ticking him off into what seemed to be a little bit of uncharacteristic rage. The deep-voiced squad leader rarely lost his head, but clearly he was in rare form as he injudiciously sprayed down yet another cliff face with mini-gun fire. More ponies dead. I pushed the thought back, feeling sick again.

“Shield!” Jack barked, “I’m glad you’re alive. I saw you lying there, but there were no combat medics to spare after the last one had a bullet put through his head trying to bandage that wound on your head. Look, Star Paladin Spool has been hit! Our only remaining medic is tending to him right now!” he fired a few rounds at a position up high, suppressing a machine-gun nest. “Good job dressing that wound on your own, though!”

I took cover behind a large piece of what was the second of our disabled AutoSleds.

“What happened to your helmet?” he asked, heading to my position as fast as his trundling armor allowed after barking orders to two Steel Rangers in the prone position. They began laying down more suppressive fire where Jack had been doing so moments before. He joined me behind the AutoSled, “You lookin’ to get a new vent installed in your skull?”

“It broke when we were hit. I have no idea where it went.”

An explosion rattled the ground, as a new wave of enemies approached, firing off rockets and sending machine-gun fire down into our position. Jack seemed to become more determined as they displayed their strength.

“We need to get a defensive perimeter set up, NOW!” Jack insisted while shaking his head back and forth, “I know you don’t have coms anymore, so I’ll tell you where our squad is. Shear’s off setting up a daisy-chain of C-4 to cover our path when we get one of the ‘Sleds online. Red Rain is providing overwatch for the last medic we’ve got, sniping anyone who gets a bead on them and-”

Another thunderous sound ripped the air apart, making Jack and I flinch.

“Just set up a damned perimeter! Get some sandbags, fill them with snow! You know what to do! I need a triage center and some cover near the only ‘Sled that hasn’t been hit too badly to be repaired!”

One of the enemy ponies had broken out of his own line and ran at Jack with a shimmering energy blade of some kind. Reacting on instinct I flipped up the carbine, rolled out from behind cover, and shoved rounds of 7.62 rifle ammo down his throat. The kick to my teeth hurt like hell. The kick to the attacking pony’s neck nearly shore his head from his shoulders.

Spitting the rifle out onto the snow, I turned to Jack, “Gotcha, sir.”

My headache had just gotten a whole lot worse.

“Good! I’m going to pull a flanking maneuver with two of our other stallions. Get it done!”

With that, my squad leader bolted from behind cover, barked orders to two suppressed ponies and headed up to a higher point on around our low-lying position. I turned to the ‘Sled I had been taking cover behind. Sandbags. There were plenty inside the wrecked vehicle, so I grabbed up about thirty or so of them with a simple telekinesis spell and began filling them one by one with packed snow, hoping it could at least stop a rifle bullet. Thirty was a start, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. We needed a foxhole.

Of course, that’s where everything started going to shit.

Thinking quickly I dropped the sandbags, using my telekinesis spell, a short distance away and began to assemble a small wall with them and then rolled into the open. Bullets immediately struck my armor, chewing away at what was left of the shattered plates. I stumbled and fell, crawling the rest of the way as more lead death whizzed past my ears. I attempted to project a shield, but it fizzled out as my magic drained. I wasn’t used to the high-intensity scenario, and I had just used most of my will to make a small wall. I needed help.

“Hey!” I yelled over the rocket fire, battle-cries and bullets, “Hey! I need help building a foxhole here!”

One of the ponies looked up, only to have his head punched through by a lucky machine-gun round. He seemed to be okay for a moment, then crumpled to the ground, his life-blood draining from his helmet and into the snow. I looked up at the ridge. Even with the carbines, I wouldn’t be able to suppress the enemy. They were tenacious and vicious, almost to the point of uncaring about their own well-being it seemed. Bullets began to rain down on my position again and ducked behind my wall, gritting my teeth against the sounds.

“Heads up!” a raspy, angry voice called out as a small canister landed next to me.

“Fuu-!” I screamed and jumped up, hop-running hastily back to the AutoSled where the empty sandbags had come from.

I didn’t even hear the explosive go off as my legs propelled me through the air to come to a crashing stop into the wreckage. My ears rang like bells, and everything sounded like it was happening behind a pane of glass. I was not dead at least, but I was beginning to feel like I should have been. Running, Shear began to approach from around the back of the ‘Sled.

“You almost killed me!” I roared at him, unsure if I was even saying anything at all because of all the ringing, “The heck is wrong with you?”

“There’s no time, Shield!” he barked back, pointing at the massive crater that now occupied the space where I had been before, “You have a foxhole now!”

He was right. I didn’t like it, but he was right.

“Fine! Fuckin’ help me get the rest of it set up!” I demanded, partly in exchange for his nearly killing me, partly because I really did need help.

Shear nodded and began to use his own magic to start filling and floating bags into place around the crater. More than once, a bullet shattered a piece of my damaged armor, or nearly took off Shear’s head, but we did not stop. Stopping meant death, or death for those that he and I were building the foxhole for in the first place.

Screaming and explosions erupted around one of the fighting positions on the ridgeline. The body of yet another unnamed pony ragdolled over our position, to splatter in a crumpled heap of shredded meat behind us.

“Looks like Jack’s making progress.” I stated with grim detachedness.

Shear just nodded. I still don’t know how he heard me through all the noise.

“We need to get our last medic, wounded, and Star Paladin Spool into this bunker ASAP.” Shear stated in his usual bluntness as the last sandbags were put into place, “Otherwise it’s just a moon-damned hole in the ground.”

I nodded in agreement. Without another word, we prepared ourselves mentally and galloped out into the firefight. Shear went left, hiding his small frame in an indention in the ground where a rocket had impacted at an angle where he began to fire up at the ridgelines, doing little with the grey-colored, standard issue 10mm Pistol that he held between his teeth. I moved a bit slower, canting slightly right to a different piece of debris, catching a bullet in the shattered armor-plate next to one of my ribs. I felt the broken, jagged bits dig into my flesh, but the damage felt superficial as I ducked behind the remains of a door assembly that had once been attached to the back of the second destroyed Autosled.

Our pinned medic and one of our remaining Knights spotted our attempts to move. With promptness born of practice, they began to shift their attention to the enemy, firing their rifle-equipped battle-saddles into the nearest position, causing the suppressive fire that had pinned us down to ease as enemies ducked from the sudden and unexpected assault. Other soldiers scattered about in defilade or behind rocks and wreckage also began to shift fire in an attempt give us a clear path at the Star Paladin. Jack must have been giving them orders because from what I saw, the lanes of outgoing fire shifted further across the ridge as explosions and streams of lead rippled across horizon from the direction where Jack had made his presence known only moments before.

It was time to move.

Running out from behind my cover, hooves slipping a bit at first but catching ground after a few moments of struggle, I dashed to the medic’s position. Bullets sprayed across my path, cratering the snow where I would have been if I was only a few milliseconds faster.

“We need to move him!”

The medic shook his head, “No! There’s too much fire We can’t risk him getting hit again!”

The medic may have been right. A large, gaping wound was wrapped in gauze and a thick, black material that looked a lot like sludge. Our leader was down for the count, barely breathing by the look of it.

“There’s a foxhole I’ve dug out! We need to move the wounded and dead there! There’s no time to argue!”

The medic glanced my way with incredulity, “And then what?!” he screamed over the cacophony.

“Then we load up in the... DAMMIT!”

It hit me like a thermonuclear warhead.

I had made a fatal mistake. I was supposed to have put the foxhole near the ‘Sled that was not in 3 different pieces, but I had totally forgotten about the ‘Sled amidst the frenzy! I had to think of something new now. Something that would guarantee our success, because with the time I had just wasted, if Crusader Jack-Hammer didn’t get through... we wouldn’t be able to weather another assault.

The sled was 50 meters away from the medic. Across a field of fire and flame and death.

I needed to get to it. I was strained beyond my normal capacity for projecting shields, and even telekinesis had become hard to execute when Shear and I had been putting up the “snowbag” walls around his crater-foxhole. Regardless, I focused hard and then took off running using the last bit of mental strain I could muster to put up a barrier around my exposed head. The action gained the attention of some of our enemies, who apparently thought that “shoot the big blue glowy thing” was the best idea since balloons at a birthday party.

Searing hot bolts of pain spiked through my vision as one of the bullets struck true, penetrating the shield just enough to knock me on my hindquarters, splaying my body out upon the ground. Fortunately, the bullet had not killed me, but it had hit me hard enough to make my vision blur, and I was certain that I was bleeding again, since my bandage had fallen off at some point during the firefight. The hail of fire shifted to somewhere else, just as Shear ran past my near-unconscious form and dragged me the rest of the way to the AutoSled using a telekinesis spell. I was certain that It was the last one he could pull off, because by the time my vision cleared and his spell let go, he was breathing so quickly through his sneak-suit that I couldn’t tell when he stopped breathing in and started breathing out.

“Shield...” he wheezed, “Here!”

He threw a manual at me. A bullet pinged off the ramp behind me and nearly took off my head for the umpteenth time that afternoon. I flinched, hating everything about everything at that moment, but the closeness to death that I had come to once again woke me up a little. Staring at the book like I had just been smacked on the back of the head and had forgotten my own name tipped Shear off that I had might have no idea what to do.

The truth was closer to that than I cared to admit at the time.

“You’re the closest thing we have to a mechanic!” he pleaded.

I had never heard Shear panic. I knew things were bad, and his sudden loss of demeanor meant it wasn’t getting better.

“The medic’s dead! Shear, come on! I’d do it myself, but I have to start dragging the Star Paladin in here, or we are FUCKED. We can’t call a retreat without securing him and the injured!”

I didn’t reply, between the nausea from blood loss and the earlier concussion, I just sat and started hoofing through the pages. My thoughts were jumbled, but I could only think of one thing: Schematic. I needed one. Something to compare to the broken MAgiK engine that I had to repair.

Shear ran out into the firefight. I think I saw him get hit by a round in the front leg. It was bad. Everything about this was bad.

“Focus!” I hissed at myself, and continued looking through the manual. “It has to be here!”

Page after page of currently pointless pre-combat checks, maintenance guides to minor parts, and other miscellaneous information bombarded my addled brain until I finally reached the end of the book. Nothing. I was out of time, I knew it. I couldn’t afford to waste any more time looking again. I looked up at the exposed engine components. Even if I knew what I was doing, there was no way I could manipulate the parts without the use of a telekinesis spell, which I was fairly certain would fade before I could plug whatever into whatever it needed to connect to. I came to a sudden conclusion, however. One that stemmed from countless desperate ponies all over the world at some point in time, and I seriously thought was passed down genetically as a last-ditch survival technique.

I stood, wobbling on all fours and bucked the living hell out of the engine. Bucked it so hard that I fell on my face and scraped some of the coagulating blood from my forehead. I winced as something fell out of one of the crooks in the machinery, where after it began to glow with an internal light.

Praying that it was an indication that I’d fixed it, and that my legs would hold me up for another few moments, I headed for the cockpit of the AutoSled.

Regrettably, an explosion against the hull rocked the machine before I could get there, and I stumbled, smashing my face into the interior of the ‘Sled again just as Shear literally flew into the room. Maybe it was just my loss of mental faculty, but I could swear Shear hadn’t touched the ground since the last time I’d seen him. He was covered in cuts, bullet grazings, and had more than one hole in his suit where blood pooled and seeped into the fabric on the outside.

“I hope you fixed that engine, Shield... otherwise... we’re really, really fucked.” I could sense his teeth gritting in pain and panic in his voice.

I looked over and out the door as the random roaring of voices that I had been hearing throughout the battle changed into a single cry of battle. The enemy was charging. Jack had...

The Crusader appeared out of thin air, slammed down in front of the entrance to our ‘Sled and opened up his mini-guns on the charging line, blocking their path. I couldn’t see the ponies dying, but their screams echoed painfully in my ears. A sharper pain suddenly stitched into my side. And then another.

Pain lanced without warning up throughout my body, making me convulse on the floor of the ‘Sled.

“Med-X!” Shear barked behind me, “Med-X and Dash!”

A powerful surge of energy rippled through my body as the drugs that Shear had jammed into me from between the open spaces in my armor began to take effect. I suddenly felt a lot better.

Clearly the battle was not over with. Not just yet.

Chapter 003: Crack in the Iron

Fallout Equestria: Rangers North

Chapter 003: Crack in the Iron

AE0090.03.24.1234

“You may think yourself invulnerable to shifts in mental state.”

“Can you fight?” Jack asked me as the enemy began its first retreat. Shear and Jack had fended off the incoming wave with the help of our remaining 12 Steel Rangers.

I stood, nodding my head up and down.

“The drugs, are they too much?” he asked, citing that Shear had manually injected my with probably what was twenty times the dose of Med-X and Dash that a normal Steel Ranger was supposed to receive at once, “You know as well as I do that your suit is supposed to release the drugs for you.”

My vision rippled as I forced myself to fight off a strange ringing in my ears. I jumped in surprise. A new pony had, entirely silently and without warning, appeared inside the hull of our AutoSled. Encased in scarred, white armor with a nearly rubbed out butterfly-trio marking on its flank, just the way the Ranger stepped in and of itself was as if every move was calculated carefully. This new pony let off a formidable air of experience on a level that I had not seen before, even in Jack Hammer.

“You have no idea what you’ve done. Unfortunately, I cannot explain it now. Battle is still upon us, and we have just enough time to start dragging the dead and dying inside.”

“Doc Hollow,” Jack rumbled amiably, “I wasn’t aware you were with us on this mission.”

“Hello, Crusader Jack.” he returned respectfully, albeit ignoring the second statement, “I see you have a protege’. One who is just as prone to getting chewed to pieces in battle as you were.”

Wait, what?

“What’s he talking about, Jack?” I asked, “Isn’t this your first-”

My squad leader looked over at me, “Not now.” he whispered through his external speakers, then looked at ‘Doc Hollow’, “Can you still do a lookover?” he asked.

Doc Hollow laughed grimly, “It’s called an examination, and yes. I can.” he replied, gesturing to one of the jump-seats that remained intact within the hull of our AutoSled.

I sat, obediently. What else was there to do? A strange, possibly ex-medical pony had just entered the scene, ordering me to sit. That same pony also happened to know more than I did about my squad leader, and got along just fine with him.

“This is going to hurt. Probably.” he began, as he peeled back the shattered plating from my ribs.

Despite the Med-X, which had been keeping me from falling over in pain as I stood earlier, the act of removing the plating was an experience that even years later would probably make me cringe. In part due to the sudden feeling of pain that accompanied an even stranger feeling of something being removed, and the other part because the embedded pieces made sick, fleshy, sucking sounds as ‘Doc Hollow’ removed them one-by-one which made my ears twitch in odd directions.

“Auuch... DAMMIT!” I yelled as the last piece was unceremoniously ripped from my side, “Do you HAVE to rip them out!?”

Doc hollow snorted, and chucked the crumpled steel off to the side without using his hooves, or teeth. That’s when I noticed that he, like me, was a unicorn. I stared at his armor-encased horn for a moment.

“What. Did you think that you and Shear were the only ones?” he asked with a little irritability present in his voice.

I averted my gaze for a moment, as he bandaged the wound and slathered some kind of salve over-top it all. It quickly hardened into a mesh-like black skin.

“That’s new.” Jack commented, looking down at my now-treated wound from within his hulking armor.

“What’s NEW is that no-one’s armor is healing itself.” he countered, “The wound that your soldier has should never have happened to begin with.”

Jack nodded. Apparently, he’d noticed the same, but at that moment, I assumed it really didn’t matter much.

“Can he fight?” Jack asked.

Doc Hollow ignored him for a moment, as he continued to examine my in places that I didn’t even know I had, or at least wished I didn’t have at that particular moment. Jack didn’t seem to mind his being ignored much. I assumed that they had a history, and the more I thought about it, the more curious I became.

I feared I was becoming like Red. ‘All things for a reason,’ I remembered someone telling me once. So I stuffed my curiosity back where it belonged: in the back of my head until it was time to ask questions again.

Finally, Doc Hollow stood up straight.

“I wouldn’t recommend he be fighting. No.” the white-armored pony began, “But considering the situation, I really don’t think there’s much of a choice.”

Jack nodded, “Is he in immediate danger of splitting that... stuff you put on his wound open?”

Doc Hollow moved towards the back of the Auto-Sled, looking as if he were about to leave.

“The stuff is called Spriteskin. Don’t ask me why, exactly. I didn’t name it, but I’d assume it’s because it stretches and multiplies until it doesn’t have to stretch to cover a wound anymore. It’s based on nano-sprite technology. Very rare. Very hard to make.”

“So that’s a no.” Jack stated. The good doctor stopped and turned his head back around to address us both.

“Correct. But my worry is more in the drugs he was just injected with. There’s really no telling what twenty times the standard dosage of Med-X and Dash will have on him. It could kill him. It could turn him into a raging lunatic. It might do nothing at all.” he took a breath, “Unfortunately, it’s also the only thing keeping him standing, and he WILL need more doses the longer the battle continues. Likely of something that will stabilize his mentality and not fully counteract the Dash’s effects. Something like the concentrated form of Rage that he would normally have access to in a proper manner, were his shoulder pauldrons not shattered to pieces.”

Jack heaved a sigh as Doc Hollow started towards the exit ramp of our damaged Auto-Sled once more.

“I’ll do whatever it takes.” I blurted, “I’ll do whatever is necessary to win this. We can’t let the Elder down!”

Jack stared at me for a moment until Doc Hollow stopped.

I could almost feel his eyes narrowing through his helmet at me before he turned away and answered in a cryptic manner, “You best be prepared for the consequences of what you’ve just said, if you have any intention of going through with it.” then he trotted out, presumably to return to his own forces.

I blinked and stood. Doc Hollow... was a very scary pony. Jack sighed audibly in his helmet again.

“So...?” he asked.

I stared at the ground for a moment. I was feeling fine. Better than fine, really. I raised my head to stare back at Jack.

“I mean what I said.” I stomped my hoof, “We have to win, don’t we?”

“That’s good to hear, because it’s far from over. We have to get the wounded in here, and there’s no telling if and when these guys will charge again, and with your damaged suit, especially the missing pauldron...” Jack trailed off.

Shear interjected at that moment as we both headed for the door, leaving Jack to ponder whatever had suddenly occupied his mind, “You have no standard drug-injection system. Since all we have is the syringes for that specific system... well, someone has to administer doses manually, and due to design, there’s no way to do it in small increments without the assembly.”

When Shear and I stepped off the ramp of the AutoSled, I took a look around at the field of battle. Bodies of the enemy lay strewn about in heaps. Blood had stained the area in front of their only exit in and out of the pass and there were more than enough body parts missing their owners than I cared to admit. Amongst the bodies and crimson-stained snow I spotted Rain standing alone on what had become a killing field.

His usual nervous smile was gone, and he looked more sad than anything else, staring into the distance with an indifferent and glazed look in his eye. His gaze scanned the horizon and the carnage with a look of sad disdain.

“You alright, Red?” I asked, trotting up to him.

Red’s ears flicked as he turned around.

“Shield?” he asked at first when he saw I was standing, eyes going wider than I thought possible, “Shield!”

Rain nearly tackled me into the drifts, a smile spreading across his face.

“I saw you laying in the snow, bro! Last I saw, you were nearly dead!”

I smiled back, “Well... I think I had a little help...” I started.

“Incoming!” one of the Steel Rangers yelled, interrupting our little reuinion.

Red and I looked up at the ridgeline. Sure enough, a column of ponies was stampeding down the pass that they had retreated into, with melee weapons in their mouths. A few shots rang out from the cliffs above, but nothing more than rifle fire.

“Buck.” I hissed under my breath, spotting a shotgun. I tossed aside my rifle for the more familiar weapon. One I could actually use with some skill. I looked to my right control arm, which stuck out oddly from my side, obviously damaged beyond use. The other was simply gone. I had nowhere to store any extra weapons.

“Double Buck.” I whispered, and settled for just the shotgun.

“Form it up!” Jack yelled over their roars, “Cover the Star Paladin’s stretcher with suppressing fire!

Red nodded and grabbed his helmet from the clip on his chest, stuffed it onto his head, then galloped through the deep, cold snow, to take up a position where he could get a good view with his scoped rifle-equipped battle saddle.

For a moment, it occurred to me that I had no idea how Earth ponies could handle anything with their hooves, but the thought burst like a soap bubble when the amount of bullets that were raining down on us increased. I decided that the best place was near the front of our lines, since my shotgun was about as useful at range as say, a rock for instance. All I had to do was get there. Easy.

Right?

I broke into a hard gallop, shotgun in my teeth. Already, a few of our enemy had broken through with their jagged, scrap-metal swords, spiked brass-hooves, and various other implements of bludgeoning death. The sudden on-rush of enemy soldiers flared my anger, as if the very nerve of our enemy was grating harshly at my soul. As sporadic gunfire peppered mine and other Steel Ranger’s positions, I began bounding forward to reach the front with ever increasing fervor, ducking, dodging, and rolling between the remains of the destroyed ‘Sleds, and the dead or dying enemy.

“Get offa me, y’bastard!” one of our own called out as the armored Ranger engaged a bloody, blue and green-maned, sword-bearing pony at close range. The Steel Ranger was blocking slices with his hooves, but had already been knocked to the ground and was on his back.

“Huld onf!” I called through the racket of Jack’s mini-guns.

Too late. The blade-wielding enemy reared up, knocked aside the Steel Ranger’s blocking hooves with a back-hoof kick. Then he, at least I assume it was a he, slammed the sword right between two armor plates on the neck of my comrade.

“No!” the toppled Ranger screamed as the blue pony started working the blade deeper and deeper between the joints at the throat.

Just as the Ranger’s screaming became incoherent, I entered gunshot range, and fired away. 12 gauge buckshot sliced open the air, first peppering the flank of the assailant with open, bloody wounds. The second shot was closer, and better aimed. Almost all of the shot’s shrapnel entered the side of the blue pony’s face, tearing away skin, muscle, and bone and leaving its nasal cavity mangled as the now vanquished enemy fell bleeding into the scuffled powder.

I slid to a stop, and traded my attention to the Steel Ranger who had been attacked. I hadn’t been fast enough. He was bleeding through the hole in his neck now.

“Medic!” I yelled in desperation, calling out again, “Medic! I need a medic! Ranger down!”

A bullet nearly took my head off. I ducked, but not before a raucous shot from atop Red Rain’s perch rang clear. I peeked around the cover where the dead assailant had been moments before and saw a pony fall from the ridge, rolling down into the snow and trailing blood. Three more shots rang out. Three more ponies died. I slipped back behind cover, and pressed my hooves on the wound, finding it near impossible to do so without choking the bleeding Ranger even more.

“Medic! Where the buck is our medic?!”

My comrade gurgled through the suit’s external speakers. The Ranger was dying. I knew there was nothing that could be done. The pony at my haunches reached for the barrel of my shotgun. I knew what the mortally wounded pony wanted. Putting my hooves on the clasps of the helmet covering the armored pony’s head and popping its quick-releases, I removed it, then took the shotgun in my teeth as I stared at the pony beneath me, hoping it wasn’t as bad as it looked.

I nearly cried, it wasn’t even a stallion, but a mare. A beautiful mare even, a soft pink with auburn hair and bloodshot eyes that I was certain were dazzling before she was cursed with impending death. The wound was one of those that even a medic wouldn’t attempt to fix, a massive gash across her neck and throat, where blood spurted out in short streams into the snow beneath us. Even if a medic made his way over here, he was trained shoot her himself to save her the pain, and this mare would wait in pain while she waited to die. Putting her through that... was more cruel than doing it myself.

If only the suits were working properly! My anger seethed.

She tapped the barrel of my shotgun, blood dripping from the corners of her mouth, dragging me back into reality, disarming my rage, and filling the resulting hole with sorrow.

“‘M srrwy.” I mumbled with the gun in my mouth and squeezed the trigger, closing my eyes.

Blood spattered my face. The mare was dead. I dropped the gun and it clattered against her armor, then rested in the snow, also spattered with sticky, scarlet fluid.

“Why?”

But there was no answer as our merciless and overwhelmingly numerous enemy continued to pour forth into the pass. It was another reality of war. Ponies die. Ally, friend, and foe. Ponies die.

Anger swelled in my chest again as I wiped my face and took up my shotgun once more, opening my eyes to scan the battlefield. Other ponies were engaged in melee combat. Rain was taking potshots from the roof of one of the tipped-over. Jack fired a few rockets onto the ridge, then reared up and smashed a pony into the ground with a sickening splatter of brain and bone as it attempted to rush him. Shear was... right next to me. My world seemed to twist and ripple, the mountain before me stretching towards the sky and the hooves of the dead reaching up with them, then rushing by. In what felt like seconds my sight cleared again.

The mare that I had put out of misery was gone though. I was floating my shotgun telekinetically at my side. I was covered in blood. When had that happened? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember moving away from the mare either. Shear stared at me, also covered in blood and still sporting the bullet-wounds from previous engagements. I got the feeling he was becoming impatient for some reason from the way he tilted his head as we crouched below some boulder-like rocks amidst the chaos. Scents of death and blood permeated my nose, which I desperately was trying to ignore. It wouldn’t have mattered, all I was capable of doing really was dry-heaving.

“I’ve told you the plan, are you ready?” he asked, breathing heavily through his mask.

I nodded, unsure, but I was willing to follow suit at that point. He floated out three grenades, and ran out into the open without another word. I stumbled and galloped out into the open. He was clearly crazy.

“PONZAI!” Shear laughed, quoting something from a war long passed and telekinetically pulling the pin on the first and throwing it at the incoming column from the ridgeline.

Most of the enemies that had been rushing either panicked and ran back into the column or rolled out of the way. The ones who had panicked were instantly filled with enough shrapnel to kill a... Well, I suppose I didn’t really have anything to compare at the time. Either way, we rushed. I knocked down two ragged, hungry-looking ponies and forced lead down their throats, then barrelled through three or four more, cracking bones with my damaged, but still strength-enhanced armor. The fell to the ground, either knocked out cold, or writhing in pain probably from broken ribs and punctured lungs.

Another pony rushed at our flank as Midnight Shear pulled the first pin.

“Fuff yrrw!” I growled as loud as I could letting a round of buckshot loose into his stomach, knocking him flat. I wasn’t about to allow another Ranger fall if I could help it, and certainly not one from my own squad.

I snorted with a small grin at the bloodied core of the gasping, rag-covered stallion before turning my head back up. Rushing through the deep snow, causing soft powder to bunch up around my path, and pushing myself closer to Shear, who chucked another grenade right into the stumbling, resurging on-rush of poorly-equipped ponies.

“Take that, you ragged bunch of moronic foals! You shall dishonor us no further with this barbaric form of combat!” Shear barked, prepping another grenade.

Personally, I thought his insults really, really needed work. And barbaric form of combat? Really?

I let loose another round from the muzzle of my combat shotgun.

“Forward!” Jack roared over panicked screams of retreat and fear to my left as the enemy began their retreat for the second time. “Take ground!”

The remaining 11 of 16 Steel Rangers in our unit moved forward, leaving the dead and injured behind so we could protect them better by taking hostile ground. Rifle rounds and mini-gun 5mm bullets had shattered their ranks, and were tearing apart those who still stood against us. The rag-and-fur-wearing ponies retreated back into the ridgelines and the holes beyond the pass where they all belonged.

Wait... Did I really think that-?”

The world rippled again, and I found myself sitting behind another boulder, flanking the pass, almost abreast with its entrance.

“Hold!” Jack shouted over the victory cheers of my comrades, shattering my untimely introspection, “Hold here!”

Shear and I came to a halt just as he chucked his last grenade into the mass of fleeing ponies and took cover behind a nearby boulder. A thunderous explosion echoed throughout the mountains, punctuated by fountains of red further staining the trampled, already crimson slosh that the ridgeline pass had become. I raised my shotgun to take aim at the backs of a few stallions who had not been blown up by the explosive the Shear had lobbed, but I found that I was still unable to shoot them when they were retreating.

Still, the whole thing was pretty awesome.

“Delta-2 team, take care of the wounded, and start loading the dead onto the AutoSled!” Crusader Jack Hammer bellowed at one of the unnamed ponies on our task force. I really wished that I had a helmet at that moment.

I was still holding the telekinesis spell around my Shotgun which was, strangely enough, completely full of rounds. I checked the bandoleer that remained wrapped around my sides. It was only missing a few rounds. When had I picked up more rounds? I supposed it didn’t matter much, as the Dash and Med-X combo that Shear had hit me with was really doing wonders, despite Doc Hollow’s warnings, and I wasn’t low on ammo. Both were great things to have happening right then, and I was not about to ask questions. Now that I had a moment, though, I thought it would be best to try and find Red, maybe make sure he was still okay.

“Hey Shear...” I prodded my comrade in arms, “I’ll be right back.”

Shear nodded, then went back to watching the pass. Red approached from behind the fallen AutoSled. He looked weary, more than usual.

“Hey Red...” I said quietly, “You alright?”

“Why were you smiling?” Red asked abruptly. “You were smiling almost the entire battle, like you enjoyed it.”

I stepped back, confused. My vision felt like it was clouding. It was almost like there was no one but Red and I on the entire mountain for that moment in time. I only remembered smiling once...

“Why!?” he asked pointedly, one eye twitching. “Do you even realize what’s going on here?”

I gritted my teeth, “There’s about a thousand or so badly equipped ponies trying to kill us!” I argued, “What more is there to bucking ask at this point?”

“They’re all slaves, Shield!”

I stared at my best friend in disbelief, he was actually bringing up conspiracies there, on the battlefield!

“Of all the times!” I started, but I was quickly cut off. “I could give a moon’s damnation about-”

“Shield! I’ve been WATCHING! They aren’t fighting of their own free will!” he insisted, “There’s a pony up there dressed in some kind of crazy-looking armor. He’s SHOOTING them if they don’t fight!”

That stopped me cold. Red was never one to lie, even if it would prove his theory true. Even if no one would ever know he had lied. Except if it was for the sake of a surprise, or that one time at the bar.

“Where is this pony?” I asked, not out of incredulity, but because I wanted to know what my next target would look like.

“Follow me.” he uttered quickly, taking off towards his previous perch while speaking on the way, “It’s not just one. There are at least three of them, and they seem to be commander-types.”

The two of us climbed to the top of the overturned AutoSled that Red had been using as a vantage point. Oddly enough, the slight rise in elevation gave me a much greater view of the battlefield, one that I would not have expected if I were just looking up at it from the ground. Red Rain pointed out over the landscape, and stared directly at the ridgeline, where a groups upon groups of enemies patrolled in a disorderly fashion, running back and forth, and generally seeming to be committed to chaotic, disorderly movement. I could tell he was zooming in with his visor.

“Red... I don’t have a helmet.” I stated bluntly.

My best friend craned his neck sideways, “Oh. Hm. Here!” he blurted and shoved his scoped rifle into my chest plate, “Look right between the pass and the rise just to the right of it.”

Staring down the scope, I quickly found one of the ponies that Red had been talking about. He was directing individuals about, gesturing with his hooves. I assumed he was yelling all manner of foul things at them. They probably deserved it anyways, I thought. Undisciplined, worthless...

“This doesn’t change anything.” I said with a dark undertone, floating the scoped rifle back to Red, “They’re all still trying to kill us, and they’re still going to try to kill us if we get rid of their overseers.”

I narrowed my eyes for a moment, as something had occurred to me that just didn’t add up.

“Red, why haven’t you shot them yet?” I asked with a pointed tone, almost accusing.

Red Rain flinched, his golden eyes seemed to dart a bit, but it was too fast for me to really be sure and, despite my near-accusatory tone, he replied with renewed confidence, “Crusader Jack-Hammer ordered me not to. I only just found out about these ponies. They weren’t on the ridge before the retreat. Jack ordered me not to fire because we need this time to recover a bit, and as long as these officers are on the field, there’s a chance they might remain on the ridge for a little bit.”

His explanation was sound. It would buy us time, which we needed desperately to recover the dead and wounded, and prepare for the next assault.

I was thinking clearly now. The mental fog that had filled my head only a half-hour ago was completely gone, aside from weird rippling every so often, and I felt like I could cast shield and telekinesis spells with abandon, but I knew that was not likely the case despite the refreshed feeling I had.

Then again... Doc Hollow had said I had been injected with 20 times the dose of a normal one... Maybe I could? Deciding to wait until I really needed to find out was a better idea, I figured. There was little sense in burning out, not when there was a very possible future battle to be concerned with.

“One thing bothers me though,” I started to consider, “Why aren’t they shooting at us now?”

“Well...” Rain began.

I cut him off, I had figured it out already, “Those officers don’t want to be in the area when the battle begins.” I exhaled roughly, I could feel my heartbeat increase as I began to realize how we could win, “We need to trap them. That will force them out.” I stomped my hoof as a vindictive smiled crossed my face.

Red looked sidelong at me, “And then-”

“We kill them.” I finished with a small grin.

Rain’s eye twitched, and he stomped a hoof on the cold, metal hull of the overturned AutoSled we had situated ourselves upon.

“This isn’t like you, Shield.” Red Rain snorted, “You’ve never been so callous before! You’ve never smiled at the idea of killing, or boasted about how you could do it if you had to! Less than three hours ago, you were feeling sick because you had killed so many ponies!” he frowned and glared at me, “Are you going to tell me next that you want them ALL dead?”

Red Rain’s outburst surprised me. My mind reeled backwards, as if it had been hooked by something and was being torn back, revealing some sort of nasty monster for me to stare at within my own head. Rain was right, I was... something was wrong.

“Are you already so lost, bro? We’ve only been in battle a few hours! Do you even remember the time Wood Nail and his friends were torturing that mouse with a stolen can of spray-cleaner, and then lighting it on fire over and over again?”

I cringed, remembering the event with uncomfortable clarity. A pony doesn’t just forget something like that, not when they are young when it happens.

Red Rain continued, “Do you remember what you did?” he asked staring directly at me, making me shiver just from the look he was giving.

“I remember...” I started quietly, “I remember knocking him out of the way once I saw the mouse, and putting up a shield to protect us both as Wood Nail attempted to burn a hole in it.”

Red Rain smiled a little, “Yeah. You’re a protector, bro. Whatever’s going on inside your head-”

“I also remember smothering it later...” I interrupted, “So it wouldn’t be in pain before it died from its burns.”

I shivered. I had done the same to that Steel Ranger mare. I had killed her quickly to save her from dying in pain.

Rain went silent. He stared at me with a shivering frown. Had he seen...?

“Rain. It’s the same thing here. Except that they” I pointed out to the ridge angrily, “are both the mouse and Wood Nail at the same time. To save anyone here, we have to smother both the mouse and the fire at the same time.” I began to reason, “We have a mission. The Elder gave us that mission so that we could help those who are not already lost.”

For a moment, it all made sense. Everything. War was the only answer right then, and I found that comforting. At least I had an answer to the problem. I began to wonder how much of this new understanding was the concentrated drug in my system. I wondered if this was as good or bad as it was going to get. I wondered...

My world flipped upside down and spun again. I felt nauseous. Rain was saying something, I knew he was, but I couldn’t make it out. A sudden urge to take the scoped rifle and shoot the enemy officers myself arose in my mind, but before I could act on the impulse everything snapped back into full clarity, except that all I could hear was ringing in my ears for the most part.

“Shield, you need to calm down.” Red’s voice echoed in my head, as if I was hearing him from far away.

Shaking my head, I finally came completely out of... something.

“What?” I asked, suddenly heaving as if I had just come up from underwater. “Whatnow?”

Red seemed scared, and a shaky frown had appeared on his face. My friend’s pupils were even smaller than usual. Why? He wasn’t scared a minute ago, just disappointed. My head started to ache in time with my heart.

“Shield, you were growling.” he whispered, tilting his nose towards the ground, and staring at me with his tiny-pupiled golden eyes, “Like a... like a dog, I guess. What in Tartarus is wrong with you?”

Images of rabid animals that I’d only seen in books and in old holotapes came to mind. I wiped my mouth. No foam. Thankfully.

“I need to talk to Doc Hollow.”

Rain sighed heavily. “Yeah. Maybe.” he responded with an airy voice, probably unsure as to who or what I might have been referring to. I knew that Doc would have an answer, or... something that could help. Probably.

I couldn’t wait around and ask how much Rain knew about Doc Hollow Bone, though. There was only so much of time before the enemy might attack again, and if the older ex-medic was shot or stabbed before I spoke to him, then whatever was truly going on with my mind as a result of this...infusion of drugs may stay lost upon me. If that happened, then whatever was left of my personality might not be somepony I wanted to be, and chances were that I wouldn’t even know it.

“Listen, Rain.” I started, using his less formal sounding name in an effort to put him more at ease, “Everything’s going to be fine. We just have to get this mission done and over with.”

Rain stared out at the ever-moving throngs of ponies that occupied the ridgeline, “But will there be anything left of who we were before all of this when we’re done?” he asked, sadness and confusion present in his expressions.

I didn’t have an answer and every second probably counted. I was wasting time. Not because it was Rain that I was addressing, but because nothing I could say would make anything that had happened thus far be okay. I stepped off into the snow, hopping down from Rain’s perch and began trudging through the white, brown and red slosh in an attempt to find Doc Hollow before it was too late.

“What does it matter...?” I began to ask myself aloud, “What would it matter? If I knew?” as I moved amongst the dead, broken bodies of our enemy. Once more, the mountain seemed to twist and stretch before me, and I had to catch my breath as it all returned to normal.

A voice from beside me to my left answered the question from out of the blue, “It matters because you can try to fight the effects, though the chances of your failing are great, and the consequences of those who have fallen to the same as you are even greater.”

Doc Hollow’s white, scratched armor gleamed with an eerie glow under the overcast sky. His was an older model, upon further inspection a T-45 of some sort or another, but his was covered in various modifications, both cosmetic and functional. Likely, it was just as tough, if not more-so than the standard, Winterized T-51b(U) armor I wore.

“What is worse than failing the mission?” I asked, becoming impatient with the riddle-esque style that the good doctor had approached me with as I turned to face him.

“Failing yourself and who you are.” Crusader Hollow Bone replied with exact simplicity, then he began to elaborate, “Failing those who love you in doing so is even worse than that. Understand: there are tortures for the living that are greater than there are for those who are dead.”

I pondered that for a moment. I suddenly realized the answer to my own question of ‘what could really be worse?’ I didn’t have any real loved ones, but there was always Rain. He and I were close, as close as brothers.

“Rain...” I mouthed.

Doc Hollow nodded, somehow reading my lips.

“There’s no choice now, either way. You either take the Rage soon, or you run the risk of dying shortly after the Concentrated Dash really kicks in. The formula is designed to be delayed until the catalytic activator is metabolized, after which it exponentially increases the effect over a short span time. Strangely enough, a concentrated dose of the Rage combat drug is the only thing that can counter a sudden rejection of the time-released Concentrated Dash chemical, if you have a negative reaction to the catalytic activator.”

My heart sunk, even more so because I barely understood what he was saying, what with my limited knowledge of medicine, “And if I do? If I have a negative reaction?”

“Then you will not be in conscious control of your body, and will probably hallucinate yourself into death. Likely by simple heart attack, or perhaps by falling off this mountain.” he made an open gesture with his left hoof as I approached to stand right next to him, overlooking the massive mountain range that we were situated in, “The Rage drug won’t help much with controlling your emotions, but it will likely counteract to a great degree the severity of the hallucinations by focusing your mind into a severely aggressive and psychologically base state, which will allow you to focus on reality more than with the Dash alone.”

Doc hollow sighed audibly, as if he was bearing a great weight upon his shoulders. He then continued to speak, warning me even further of the dangers that I had been dragged into by the initial injection of Dash and Med-X by Shear. I kind of wanted to hate that guy right then.

“Just remember, that if you DO take it, that there’s a chance that you’ll commit to actions and plans that you would not normally commit to.” he sighed and looked directly at me then, “It’s not fair, but you have little choice. You can chance losing your head completely and crumpling mid-battle into a little psychotic heap of uselessness or worse, or you can chance losing your morals and doing something you may regret later.”

I had two choices, and no matter which way I thought about it, there was only one answer to the events that were determining my existence at that moment.

“If I fall apart in the middle of battle, I won’t be able to kill any more ponies against my ‘true’ will.” I began, hoping the doctor understood, “But if I take it, the Rage, then those who I really care about may live to see another day... and I might have a chance to do something to make up for what I’ve done today, and what I might be about to do.”

A gunshot echoed off into the distance. He and I stood our ground, prepared for another attack, but no other shots were fired. Doc Hollow and I faced each other again once we were sure the threat was just an errant trigger finger.

“I’ll take it.”

“You should probably take it now, actually. As a matter-of-fact, the sooner the better.” Doc told me in a very serious tone, floating the large cylinder towards me. I looked at the swirling, muddy-red drug as it roiled within its chamber, very much akin to its name.

“Why?” I asked, despite everything he had told me.

The question had felt very out of place coming out of my mouth, as if I had asked it for a different reason than just because I did not understand. But Doc Hollow Bone was gone. Or rather, he was very unexpectedly behind me.

“Because you’ve been talking to that snow bank for the past five minutes.”

Chapter 004: Scoring the Steel

Fallout Equestria: Rangers North

Chapter 004: Scoring the Steel

AE0090.03.24.1313

“But even the strongest minds can succumb to instinct when pushed too far.”

“I hate needles...” I groaned, hovering the hyperactive, red, fluid-filled syringe over the nearest hole in my armor, “... I hate a lot of things right now.”

Standing in the snow, Doc Hollow watched me jam myself with another potentially deadly dosage of chems. I could not be sure, I could swear I saw him sag inside his heavily modified armor.

“I’m surprised.” the doctor seemed to consider darkly, “I hope you’re prepared for this.”

The syringe clamped down onto the armor and forced itself into my skin. I let out a cry of pain, which was followed by a sudden rush of vertigo. My heart fluttered in my chest, as if I had been running for miles. Eyes going wide, my world swam beneath a haze of red and blue, the world around me stretching out longer than I was certain my field of view could possibly allow.

And then... silence. Where my thoughts had been rushing before, now I could hear but one, small voice.

My vision snapped back violently, the sudden change in perspective throwing me to the ground. Doc Hollow was gone. For just a moment, I wondered why he had left.

“There is no happy end to this.” a voice in my head growled, “He has left because there is nothing else to be done.”

I knew, it knew. We knew.

“Who are we?” I asked the voice. No answer came. It did not matter.

...This would be the last attack before the blizzard hit. Already I could see the enemy forming up on the ridges. They knew time was short. If Rain was right, this was the endall.

We had to kill. Kill to survive. Kill to ensure there was a tomorrow to live for. And it was as simple as that. I looked to my comrades-in-arms, to those who had fought alongside me, who had killed with me. These stallions and mares deserved to live, and I would make sure they damn well did, if I could. If we could.

Red Rain

‘All the world’s a stage.’ I had once been told, remembering some of the past as I shook my head at the scene before me. The sky roiled above us, the approaching RadBlizzard drawing upon the sky like massive curtains that were poised to end our little ‘act’ prematurely.

“If this is a stage, then I despise the script, and its writer...” I mumbled under my breath.

“Say again, Red Rain?” Jack’s voice demanded over the communications net, sounding more hoarse than earlier today, likely because he had been barking orders since earlier this morning.

“It’s nothing, Jack-Hammer, sir.” I responded back with more formality than was necessary, “I’m just musing, that’s all.”

I looked around from my perch, spotting the massive, thudding armor of Jack’s as he turned to identify me.

“I’ll be over in a second.” he said, his voice strained.

I pressed a button on my neck, sighing. This time I made sure my comms were off as I began cursing quietly into my helmet Just cursing. Cursing everything.

“... bucking officers on the ridge... damn it...” I finished just as Jack Hammer plodded up, crushing dead enemy soldiers as he did, completely disregarding their existence.

“Red.” he began, “Something’s bothering you, and it’s not just the sheer amount of death we’re causing and seeing here.”

I stared up at his tank-like armor. It was covered in gashes, blood spatterings, and char-marks. He looked like hell. I probably did too. Even then amongst the hell surrounding us, there was a soft, wise side to him in the way he carried himself within the confines of his armor.

“Yeah... there is.” I admitted after a moment of quiet contemplation.

Jack sat with a thud, taking a load off his legs. His suit let loose pressurized, superheated gasses from the joints in his armor, where special nodules sat between plating. His faceplate dropped and unfolded like backwards origami, revealing a sweating, tangled mess of blonde mane and white pony.

“It’s Shield, isn’t it?” his concern echoing in my head.

I scanned the horizon after he asked, for a moment, unable to see my best friend anywhere. I knew he was alive, though. He had been alive when the last wave had fallen back. He had been alive when Midnight Shear blew up the retreating enemy with a grenade. Shield had been alive when he had cut a swathe of blood and entrails across the battlefield using only a shotgun and his hooves, and before that, when I’d witnessed him end the life of one of our own out of mercy because she couldn’t be saved.

“Yeah...”

Jack’s face echoed my concern.

“We need him, you know. We need him like this, like he is right now.”

I scrunched my nose at Jack, twisting my eyebrows into what felt like the angriest scowl in the history of frowning, and with my anger simmering I began yelling, “We need him to be a killer maniac?” I spat, “We need him to sacrifice everything he’s stood for so far?”

Jack’s face went stoney. His looked away from me and off into the distance.

“Yes.”

“WHY!?” I ask, my voice elevating into explosive exasperation as I gritted my teeth, “Is it not enough that we’ve killed so many today!? Is it not enough that many of our best are dead!? Are you willing, TRULY willing to throw your soldier’s way of thinking completely aside so we may kill more of them!?”

Jack lowered his head to my eye level. He was easily twice my size normally, and with the armor, Jack could squash me like a bug. Literally, and suddenly all of that power was glaring in my direction.

“I am...” he growled, “Because without this trump card, we all die, and nothing will change, Knight Red Rain.”

I flinched at the use of my full rank and name, but I stood my ground.

“Do you even know what’s going on here!?” I asked, positioning my nose literally inches from his, close enough to kiss him.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen. I wondered suddenly why a thought like that one had flashed across my mind. It wasn’t really the time to wonder about random thoughts, though.

Jack heaved a heavy sigh and withdrew.

“I really wish I didn’t.” he groaned, “Rain. Take the shot.”

“Sir?” I asked, initially confused.

Jack raised an eyebrow and glanced at the ridge.

“Oh...” I caught on, “When?”

Jack must have been listening to me on comms earlier. I regretted forgetting about the switch on my side of the system.

Jack stood up, his heavy armor creaking in places where it had dented in a little too much from what I assumed was rocket-fire, “When I give the signal.” he replied, “You will kill all of their officers. We need to end this now.”

Jack turned his head, and began addressing someone on the other side of the comms system.

“You’re ready?” he asked, “Alright. When I give the signal, then move out. We will stay behind and meet up with you in an hour.”

The pony on the other side obviously didn’t like hearing that last part.

“I don’t CARE!” Jack barked deeply into the microphone inside his helmet, “It’s only one kilometer, and a snowstorm is about to hit! No arguments, we don’t have the time!”

The other side seemed to concede, with a condition.

“I will look after Shield. But we need him right now. We need him, or this entire operation will be a complete disaster.”

With that last sentence, Jack began trodding away.

“Isn’t it already a disaster?”

Jack stopped, obviously having heard me. His visor unfolded, allowing him to look at me directly, and I at him.

“Yes.” his frown told me that he would not be allowing anymore questions, “It has been. And I should have seen it coming.”

I narrowed my eyes at my squad leader. He sighed, the heavy shoulderplates attached to his armor sinking lower than I’d ever seen them on him.

“But... that would mean....” I started.

Jack gritted his teeth, glaring. “I’ll explain later!”

We looked up at the ridge, ponies surrounded us on three sides, with the only exit being down a narrow pass heading towards the Geothermal Station. Our enemies cheered and barked insults down at us. They brandished their weapons with menacing, sick grins, even as the roiling, slow-moving “wave” in the clouds above came ever closer, bolts of cloud-bourne lightning crackling and sparking within the incoming storm, casting strange shadows in the sky.

“Crawl up there.” Jack gestured with an armored hoof, “Take the shot. I will NOT say it again. Then cover us as the rest of the wounded are loaded and the AutoSled makes its escape. I had Doc Hollow and his stallions load up the Star Paladin a few minutes ago.”

I nodded, we were out of time. I knew that somehow Jack had exhausted all of his options, or at least I assumed as much. I stuffed my helmet back overtop my head, ensuring that my ears went into the spaces where they belonged, and started a short crawl up to the top of my previous perch. Snow began to drift in flurries down from the sky above.

“Rad-Blizzard” I hissed between my teeth, two-and-two and five finally piecing together in my head. Jack had a reason for everything, even if I didn’t like the reasons.

“I feel like a total ass.” I whispered to myself as I reached the top, setting up the sniper rifle that had been my companion for the past few hours. “How could I have forgotten-”

“There will time for that later.” Jack’s deep voice barked over the comms, his tone softening afterwards, “Take the shot, so we can get the wounded to safety, and start-”

No. I was just numb. Numb from everything. The battle began. Our last battle, most likely. I lined up the next shot, placing it right where the next officer’s ears would be. His crystal armor would protect him from most bullets, but not mine, not if I placed it right. Again I pulled the trigger, and again I barely felt the recoil. I could feel the bags under my eyes. Every shot I fired, every kill I made was a concentrated effort to end the life of a specific enemy. A flutter of excitement surged through my veins as I felled yet another officer. It made me feel ill.

“Keep it up!” Jack yelled through the comms as ponies began rushing down from the ridges above the killing field, “Just a little longer!”

Another shot. I heard it ricochet off the helmet of one of my targets. I saw him fall, and watched as he was trampled. I smiled a little. Then I forced the smile from my face.

“Killing should never bring joy...” I thought with grim resignation, and lined up another shot.

And another. And another. In two and a half clips, all the officers that I could see were dead, lost in a sea of their charging subordinates. But I could see them breaking. I could see them beginning to falter. I chanced a glance down at the field below, where the slush was stained with blood, and ponies fought it out like savages at close ranges with knives, scrap-metal swords, and anything else they might’ve found in the icy mountain valleys and lost way-stations that surely dotted the range.

With the officers dead, the enemy was a messy sea of disorganized, badly trained warriors. I watched as some of the Steel Rangers that I was not familiar with moved between rocks, pieces of AutoSled wreckage, and piles of the dead. Some carried dead Steel Rangers on their backs, others helped the wounded make their way across the killing field and into our last remaining AutoSled. For a moment, I considered sliding back down into the fray and making my way to the turret of the AutoSled, but then I remembered that it was probably essential that the enemy did not know that the ‘Sled was working. If they did, all hope would be lost and the wounded would soon be dead.

My eyes turned to my squad mates, who were battling it out with our enemies in the valley below. Jack was smashing the enemy with his forehooves, crushing them beneath his weight, charging them when possible. He trampled more than he directly engaged. The gaunt, under-fed, under equipped raider-ponies were no match for him.

The sound of explosives cutting the air grabbed my attention. It wasn’t hard to identify the type of weapon, based on the sound. Fragmentation grenades. That was Midnight Shear. His sneak-suit was useless at those ranges. He could not turn invisible, but it made him silent, not that it mattered since he was chucking grenades with a telekinesis spell into throngs of ponies, blasting them away and into piles of little more than pulp and pony-meat.

I quickly had my fill of watching our normally quiet squadmate, and the carnage he was causing, and searched the raging crowd for Shield. It only took a few seconds, since he was standing atop a small pile of bodies, climbing over the ones that fell to his shotgun or the knife he occasionally whipped out so that he could reload the roaring weapon and still fight.

Zooming in, I mouthed “What have you become?” in his direction.

Shield’s eyes were bloodshot, his face was bathed in blood much like his armor. He slashed at a blue pony that crawled up from the bottom of the pile to get at him with a sharpened metal stick. Blocking with what was left of one of his armored pauldrons, lunging at the attacker with enough force to knock him over and riding his bleeding corpse through the air and onto the bleeding grounds below, he smiled as if he was enjoying himself and charged at another pony, a red one this time. With a quick shotgun blast, that pony was leveled in his warpath, with two more falling as well, their faces streaked with shrapnel and fresh wounds. I looked away and lined up another shot, picking off ponies that were still attempting to flood into the valley. One by one. I was certain that this fight would never end. That they would just keep coming. I lined up a shot near Shield. But... none of the enemies around him were moving. They had all... stopped. They were... watching. It was as if time itself had stopped around Shield. It only took a moment to understand why as more and more ponies in makeshift armor slowed to a stop, and began watching the emerging spectacle.

“Jack...” I began, “Ja~ack!”

Jumping down from my perch, landing and slipping in the gore below, I started my rush to the center of the crowd. Blood pooled in the place where I had left an indentation with my body, and then into my hoofsteps as I ran, pushing my way through the crowd. To my surprise, none of the enemy combatants made any effort to stop me, instead pulling away from me as I came through, expressions of sheer terror on their faces.

“What!?” Jack barked through the comms, “Rain, what is it? The last of the casualties are on-board! Doc, tell your driver to move it, now!”

I could only stare at the scene before me. Shield was... he was...

“Rain!” Jack yelled, re-addressing me again, “Rain, what is it!?”

“Sir... you have to see this.” I responded with a whisper, and took off my helmet.

The battle had all but stopped, and Shield was the cause of it. The ponies around me shook in their poorly-crafted armor. Shield was yelling.

“Do you SEE what I did to the last mare-fucker who attacked me?” he snarled and pointed to a ball of gore and fur, “Or maybe you need to see it again?”

A pony next to me vomited.

“Shield... how did you...?” I asked, staring at the pasty, sloppy looking ball of guts next to his feet.

Shield’s visage darkened as he grinned with malice.

“It’s amazing what you can do with a shield spell!” he laughed as his horn glowed a deep, dark red, projecting a bubble around one of the shaking enemies. One of the ponies behind Shield ran at him, jumping into the air for a tackling attack. Shield ducked and drew his blood encrusted knife only to bring his head up and gut the would-be assailant in mid-air, entrails falling to the ground as he impacted, a gurgling, shaking, bleeding mess.

“You buckers never learn.” he smiled.

Shield’s horn began to glow brighter as he focused in on the barrier that he had projected around our enemy. The transparent bubble began to shrink, sending the pony within into a fit of unbridled terror. Shield’s pupils constricted so much that they seemed like little black pinpricks amidst a sea of green insanity.

“Guess it’s time for another demonstration!” he yelled.

“No...” I mouthed, “This can’t be happening.”

My legs felt weak, and weaker still as the bubble shrank slowly, crowding the pony’s legs into his chest and stomach. There would be no room soon. I threw my helmet off and into the slush below.

“Shield!” Jack barked, pushing, notedly instead of simply crushing them, the ponies that surrounded us out of the way as he made for the center.

Some of our scantily-armored enemies began to back away as the screaming intensified. Even I backed away.

“No!” Jack yelled at me, “Stand your ground! Talk him out of it!”

“What do you mean!” I bellowed over the screams taking a step forward as Shield laughed maniacally once more, “He’s lost his moon-damned mind!”

“You’re his best friend!” Jack insisted, commanding me, “Talk. Him. Out of it!”

It was far too late. I heard bones start to crack, splinter. My stomach lurched as the barrier enclosing the hapless pony became way too small. The screams continued, but began to burble and bubble as the trapped stallion’s internals squeezed and shifted helplessly inside the still shrinking prison. Blood and internals burst from his squashed snout as the stallion’s eyeballs burst against the increasing pressure, having nowhere to go. Skin split, letting a surge of intestine and whatever else fill the small leftover space between the pony’s ribs and the last space between him and the barrier’s edge.

Now it was my turn to throw up, which left me shaking in my armor.

Then the screaming... stopped. Shield let go of the spell, dropping the compressed ball of pony to the ground where it splattered in a half-crumpled heap.

“Who’s next?” Shield hissed as his horn glowed once more. “Whoever runs first, dies first!”

I did the only thing that could come to mind. I stepped forward, the taste of vomit still fresh in my mouth.

“I’m next.” my voice demanded, wavering in the sick weakness that had overtaken my body from the sight I had just witnessed.

What was I, crazy?

Shield paused, narrowing his eyes and giving me a look of disbelief.

“Rain, you are not the enemy.”

I stood in front of him, “Let them go.” I snarled, “They are beaten!”

Shield lifted his head up and stared down at me with incredulity, “They are not. There are still murderers here.” His green-eyed, glazed-over gaze scanned the horrified crowd as he continued, “All of the ponies here... they all deserve to die. They killed our own! We did nothing to them, and they attacked!”

I couldn’t deny that. But I still had to try! Jack stared at me from across the crowd. For the first time, he seemed helpless and at a loss. He was right: Shield was my best friend and I knew him better than anyone. We had always been side-by-side, for longer than I could even remember. Saving what was left of Shield was now up to me. Or it would have been, if not for an explosion that ripped across the back ranks of the crowd, sending the already scared-witless mass of ponies into a screaming frenzy, one that was so hectic that even Knight Fallen Shield, my brother-in-arms-gone-batpony-shit-insane, could not make out a target from as they made their way into the ridgeline from where they had poured from.

“Get back here, cowards!” Shield roared, picking up his shotgun and wedging it in his teeth, barreling into the crowd. “Yrr wrrll NOFT erkscrap!”

Acting on instinct, my body threw itself on top of Shield, “They are in retreat!” I screamed into his ears, pinning him down, “It’s OVER!”

Shield spat the shotgun out onto the ground, “It’s not over until they are all dead! We are not SAFE until they are all...”

Just as the last of our enemies ran with their tails between their legs over the ridge and back into whatever Tartarus-holes they called home, Shield went pale, his eyes unfocusing. Then he stopped struggling, stopped doing anything at all. I got off of my friend, initially thinking I’d finally gotten through to him. But he didn’t get up. I frowned, and started looking him over. His eyes were closed and was just lying there in the bloody, muddy slush.

“Damn... damn...” I mouthed, turning him over with a shove of my hooves. “Shield!”

Jack plodded over, accompanied by Midnight Shear.

“Is he dead...?” Midnight asked with the same cold detachedness looking around at the scene.

Ignoring Shear, I scuffled through the sick, sloshing mess around Shield, peeling back pieces of armor. There was nothing wrong, other than the cuts and everything else that had been wrong earlier. There lay the problem.

“There’s no bleeding!” I panicked, looking at the wounds where his armor had been shorn off from our extended battle, “There’s no bleeding! If he’s not bleeding, then that means...”

Jack stomped the ground, crushing a dead pony’s face into the mountainside without realizing it. I cringed. When a normal pony stops bleeding from his wounds, it usually means he is dead. That’s what we were taught in basic training. If they weren’t bleeding, they were most likely already dead. I gazed up at my leader, a weight building in my stomach, threatening to drag me down into despair.

“He’s alive, Rain.” Jack flat-toned, “ He’s just... unconscious. Now pick him up, put him on my back, and let’s go. The Rad-Blizzard’s going to hit in fifteen minutes,and none of us will survive if we’re caught in the thick of it.”

My head turned upwards, and I gazed into the green-hazed, darkening sky. I picked up my childhood friend, and pulled him so that he was draped over my back. Jack began to protest, but I glared and started walking. I didn’t care if he was my superior. He might’ve been in command, and it might have been our only option, but... I just couldn’t put my trust in him. Not this time.

“How do you know?” I asked Jack. I couldn’t feel Shield breathing. “How can you be sure... he’s not breathing... not moving.”

Jack started walking as the snow flurries increased in intensity around us.

“If I know half as much about Shield as you do, maybe less, then I know he’s a stubborn stallion, and won’t let death take him so easy. That, and I can see his pulse is weak, but still there on the squad-monitoring program in my helmet display.”

Hope surged into my chest. He was alive.

“But he won’t be alive much longer if we get caught in this blizzard.” Jack reminded me.

Shear trotted up behind us. I guess I was emitting one Tartarus of a field of anger, because he kept his distance. Assuming the dark blue stallion was feeling guilty about everything that had happened, even though he and Shield had saved our lives, I looked back and glared anyways. Jack spotted my laser-point gaze out of the side of his visor, somehow.

“Don’t be so hard on him.” Jack whispered, “He did what he thought was best.”

I didn’t care, and I didn’t respond to the question, instead keeping silent as the snow around us went from flurries to a full-blown blizzard. My anger at everything was just about the only thing keeping me going. And so, we walked. Away from the wind, thankfully. My stomach growled. After all the excitement and fighting that we had been through, I could bet that everypony else was hungry too. My thoughts turned to Broken Shield. Was he hungry?

“What if Shield’s already a corpse...?” I whispered aloud.

When nopony answered, I noticed that the wind had picked up, and was tearing and howling through the mountains like one of those... dragons... before my time. If we ran into one of those, we wouldn’t stand a chance.

I reminded myself that now was not a time for flights of fancy. Shield was counting on me to get him to the Geothermal Station. If I let myself wander... he might die. So I pressed on, the cold biting at my helmetless face, the snow building up between my ears.

“I wish I had a stronger stomach... this cold wind is going to make my eyeballs freeze.” I groaned aloud, “I can’t imagine how Shield’s dealing with it.”

The large, armored tank in front of me was impatient, “If you don’t be quiet and WALK, he won’t HAVE to deal with it for much longer.”

The thought alone tore me down, just enough to let me stumble in the snow. Just as I was about to hit the ground and spill Shield onto the cold snow, I felt a pressure on my chest holding me up.

“Gotcha...” Midnight Shear’s voice whispered just below my neck as he pushed me back to my feet with his head, “... Maybe I should take Shield for a while?”

I grimaced and shook him off.

“Haven’t you done enough?” I asked angrily.

Shear recoiled. He DID feel guilty after all, and I should have forgiven him, but I wanted to wallow in my anger for a little while longer. It felt better against the cold than to be sad.

Jack shook his head, “Stop fighting, now is not the time.” he spat.

Silence began to loom over our party. Jack, our normally compassionate and wise leader was at the end of a frayed rope. I guessed he deserved that right, after all the terrible decisions he made.

“Now, now, Rain.” my conscience began, but before it could finished the thought, I mentally beat the “better me” into submission, insisting that I should be allowed to be angry for a little while longer. At least until Shield was safe, and I was warm and had a full stomach.

As if to drive the point home, my stomach growled again, the pitted feeling growing even stronger than before. Pressing on with my squadmates, I was ever-thankful for the additional strength that the Powered Armor that we wore afforded me, else I might not have been able to carry my best friend under the conditions we were then trapped in. The blizzard had whited-out everything. The clouds, the mountains around us, everything beyond a ten foot radius was nothing but white. I shivered a little. Without my helmet, climate control was nearly useless.

“Stick together now!” Jack yelled over the raging wind, “If you get separated, I won’t be able to look for you!”

I nodded, a gust of freezing wind and snow blasting my face hard enough to force my eyes to squint.

“Shear!” I called behind me, “You alright back there?”

“Yeah, I’m okay!” he bellowed back.

I noticed his voice was wavering, even with all the wind in my ears. He must have been doing pretty awful. I remembered that his suit had little armor, and was full of holes, which made me feel a little guilty about my treatment to him earlier, finally breaking my anger towards him.

Jack stopped and addressed him as well, “You should get up here, closer to me! I can barely see you!”

“It’s okay, I’ll be fine-”

“No arguments! Get your ass up here. We can’t afford to lose you in this snow!”

Shear continued to canter at a slower-than-normal pace. He wasn’t listening. Probably, again, because of how I’d treated him. I could see his head drooped low in the silhouette that the snowstorm afforded my sight.

“Come on!” I yelled against the wind, “Heck, I can barely see you. Y’look like a polar-bear in a bliz-... no wait... wrong joke. We ARE in a blizzard...”

I shook my head. Not the time.

“Shear, we need you!” I insisted wishing that I’d listened to my “better self” earlier, “Come up closer, so we don’t lose you! Look, I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I knew you did what you had to! I just didn’t want to admit it!”

I breathed a sigh of relief as Shear half-jumped through the deepening snow to join Jack and I as we continued our slog to the Geothermal Station. He didn’t say anything, only smiling half-heartedly as he passed me, plodding up beside Jack and I until he spotted something in the distance.

“Sir!” Shear barked over the wind at Jack-Hammer, his ears perked, “Sir, do you see that?”

I glanced forward, seeing nothing at first, until I followed Shear’s hoof, which pointed to the sky.

“What... IS that?” Jack asked.

“A light.” I said aloud, squinting at it as the orange glow of a flying... something... careened across the sky, then dropped with a soft thud into the snow, ten or so meters in front of us, “A beacon, maybe?”

I stared at the glow and for a moment, I could have sworn there was something more standing there, just behind the light, before it disappeared into the wall of snow behind. Broken Shield stirred on my back, mumbling something about wings. I grinned a little. Maybe it was the hysteria from all the things that had happened to us in the past few hours, but all I needed to know was that where there were working lights, there was power. Power meant heating, usually.

“She’s... here.” Shield mumbled on my back, slipping back into unconsciousness.

My grin disappeared as concern rose in my throat.

“Who?” I asked, more to try to keep him awake than anything else.

If he was awake, then he was alive.

“Who is here, Shield?” I asked again, more desperately this time.

Shield only groaned.

Jack shook his head, “He’s delirious. Come on. If they ARE beacons, they might lead to Geothermal #7.”

“Or it could be a trap, set by our strange and previously much more numerous enemy.” Shear added, eyeing the beacon of light with warily.

I had to agree with both.

Author's Note

Finally, after a long deliberation process, I've finished writing about that damned valley! I thought long and hard about what occurred here, and this seemed like the best conclusion to "The Valley" arc, as I like to call it. Sure, they're still in it, but they're going somewhere, instead of slogging through bloody, slushy snow now!

I hope you like Red Rain's brain. He's an interesting one. Right now, he's not his usual self, for obvious reasons, but if they all get out of this alive, you may see more of his internal monologue and strange thoughts than you are now.

Also, poor Shield. I feel kinda bad about putting him through all this. Kind of.

Chapter 005: Brittle Cold

Fallout Equestria: Rangers North

Chapter 005: Brittle Cold

AE0090.03.24.1456

“And when these minds finally snap, best watch carefully, for they are worst of all.”

Red Rain

The light in front of us glowed a warm orange under the darkening greenish-white overcast, and with enough intensity that I could feel its heat even with the blizzard raging and flurrying about around us. In the back of my mind the little, better pony in my head was jumping for joy. We had been found, or we had found our way. One or the other. But my fore-self, the other more logical pony that thought for me most often, was skeptical.

“Rightfully so,” I thought.

Sure, it was warm. Sure, there was little chance of an attack in this kind of weather, but after all of the things that we had been through that day, I WAS going to look in the gift-wagon’s bed-cover.

“I do not trust it.” said Shear, echoing my concerns, “Isn’t it at least little convenient that something such as this would appear out of nowhere?”

Without much warning, I began to feel sick. The blizzard wasn’t getting any calmer, and we certainly couldn’t stay here forever, no matter how warm it might be. Thunder, muffled by the wind, rolled past my ears and across the now invisible peaks the surrounded what we hoped was the path to Geothermal Station #7.

“We should keep moving.” Jack agreed, moving past the beacon.

“It’s warm.” I murmered, wishing we could stay just a little longer.

“It’s also the only thing that we’ve seen that wasn’t just a wall of eerie greenish-white snow.” the “better” pony in the back of my head told me, “Can’t we stay a while?”

I glared at myself, “Aren’t you supposed to be the better one here? The one more concerned for our survival and moral standing?”

The other pony in my head did not answer.

“Fantastic.” I muttered , “I’m having conversations with the... whatever it is I’m having conversations with. Myself?”

I snorted, but I guess the pony in my head had more important plans, like taking control of my feet, and sending them into the ONE rock on the entire mountain that was not covered completely in snow. I grunted, stumbling and landing face first with a very heavy Broken Shield on my head. Shear rushed to my aid, surprising me a little.

“Are you injured?” he asked kneeling next to me, “Any more than you were before, that is?”

“I’m... fine.” I muttered, “... What about you?”

The better pony in my head started to try to guilt trip me about previous events with him, but I reminded it that now really wasn’t the time, and that it could do that when we weren’t about to freeze to death. Shear helped brush me off and help settle Shield on my back again.

“I am quite a bit little better now, actually.” he said slowly, stooping low on his front hooves, “I think we are all going to be doing a little better after this.”

“What in TARTARUS are you plot-lickers DOING?” Jack roared in sudden anger, stomping through the snow towards us, “Do you two WANT to freeze to death on this mountain or WHAT?”

I had almost forgotten we had a very emotionally-frayed squad-leader at that moment. Thankfully, Shear had randomly pulled either a miracle, or was just the luckiest pony in all of what was left of Equestria, if only for that moment.

“Jack wait!” he began, pulling out what looked to be emergency supplies, “We’ve found something! Here, inside the beacons!”

“What do you mean, inside?” he asked, a lot calmer now that there was an actual reason for the sudden stop. “Is it useful?”

At least he hadn’t seen me fall.

“Rain tripped over it, he must have opened it somehow. It looks like basic supplies. Rad-X, mostly. There is a Stimpack as well.”

Well, now he knew. Jack did not seem concerned however, as the sudden acquisition of supplies probably overshadowed my poor choice of footing. As Midnight Shear finished his sentence, the howling wind died down a little, and oddly it made me feel a little colder than before, like maybe the rushing wind had been distracting me from the other “miserabelia” that I had managed to collect. I began to shiver, my teeth chattering against themselves.

“If you’re wondering what miserabelia is...” I began thinking to myself, but cut such thoughts out of my little pony brain as quickly as I came. Certainly there wasn’t anyone listening in. Probably.

Ticktickticktick. Ticktick. Ticktick. Tick. Tickticktick.

“What’s that?” I looked around for the source, “Is that our back-up Geiger counters? Tell me it’s not the back-up geiger counters.”

“Fuck.” Shear sighed.

Jack looked up at the sky, which was a slowly darkening green hue.

“It’s called a RadBlizzard for a reason.” he rumbled, “I was hoping we’d gotten lucky, and our Geiger counters weren’t going off because we were ahead of the storm, or something.”

“Doesn’t that suit have readouts for that kind of thing?” I asked.

Jack sighed audibly, “Not after the fight we were in earlier, no. I don’t even have health monitors for you two, or ammo counters for my OWN weapons. We’re lucky that even ONE of us has a working secondary Geiger counter at all. I really wish you had kept your damn helmets on.”

“Well... we’ve got the Rad-X” Shear reminded abruptly.

“Wait, Shear, you’re still wearing your helme-”

He pointed a hoof at a massive crack that ran across the entire surface.

“Ah...”

Jack ignored my lack of awareness, addressing Shear instead, “Won’t do us any good without Rad-Away at this point.” Jack countered with an unhappy sigh and turning around, his heavy armor hissing and scraping between the dented plates, “We need to move. Now. If we are lucky, there’ll be Rad-Away in the next one.”

I nodded, and my stomach turned again, but Jack was right. We had to keep moving.

“Come on.” I motioned with my ears in Jack’s direction to Shear.

Shear trotted alongside me, watching me carefully through his sneak-suit mask. Or, I assumed as much. His visored gaze made me nervous, so I looked ahead, certain that the next beacon wasn’t that far. We continued trudging through the thickening, deepening snow. The wind had picked up again, obscuring our vision worse than before and forcing me to stick closer to our Paladin. Thunder cracked above our heads, a flash of lightning making it through the dense snowfall around is, casting gritty, harsh shadows upon us all.

The beacon was farther away than I thought. By the time we’d reached it, I could barely stand.

“Guys... I think I’m gonna...”

I hurled, or tried to at least, but because we hadn’t eaten there wasn’t really much to throw-up. Bile managed to rise in my throat though staining my tongue with its bitter taste as I collapsed into the snow with the weight of my partially armored friend. It suddenly felt like the heaviest thing in Equestria, crushing my lungs and neck into the snow, suffocating me. I heard Shear call to Jack, but couldn’t make anything out as they tried to bring me back up to my feet. The sound of rushing static filled my ears as the world started spinning and just refused to stop. I wasn’t about to give up though. My friends, my squadmates needed me. But as I struggled to right myself in the orange under-glow of the second beacon I could feel Shear pulling Broken Shield off my back, thankfully allowing my lungs to suck in air between wretches. I blinked hard, trying to stop the nauseating feeling that continued to grip the inside of my skull.

I let out a small whimper between the lurching of my internals. Everything burned. My lungs, my skin, my coat and eyes. Everything. I knew instinctively that it was probably over as my body slowly shut down, eyes welling up with tears and closing in pain, even as Broken Shield was hoisted up onto Jack’s back along with me.

“Dammit...” the little pony in my head whined and stumbled, “I just waxed this...” and then he fell over too, finally letting me black out.

Jack-Hammer

AE0090.03.24.1500

“Damn... Just damn...”

Thankfully, Knight Midnight Shear had enough mental strength left to telekinetically lift the both of them onto my back. The Sisters know that I could not have done it myself. Not in this tankish armor.

“Knight Shear.” I called to my last remaining conscious subordinate, “I’m going comms quiet for a bit.”

Knight Midnight Shear only nodded. I suspected he felt guilty. In any case, we continued our plodding through the snow, the scraping and scratching of my suit’s damaged components ringing in my ears and causing my teeth to chatter more than the cold outside warranted. My coat burned a little, accompanied by lightheadedness. Ignoring those distractions, and the slow onset of radiation poisoning, I flicked my ear a slightly left four times in rapid succession, turning my outgoing communications off so I could perform the final duties required of any Crusader:

Recording my final transmission so that, if in the event that we all died, there’d be something to recover. I flicked my left ear twice towards my front, and then left once.

“I don’t know how to start this, really...” I began, the tape-recording device installed in my helmet beginning a live recording, “But we tried, Elder...”

I sighed into the microphone, continuing the long walk. I turned my head around to face Shear. He was keeping up, but still looking worse for wear.

“I know that’s not an excuse... but to be honest, none of that even matters. We are dealing with a problem bigger than anything either of us imagined. Bigger than the War Council could have predicted.” my voice cracked, sounding foreign and strange as my normally deep rumble jumped in pitch, “Hundreds of unidentified ponies hit us shortly after we left the bunker. Opal, they had rockets, entrenchments, and coordination. These aren’t just ragtag raiders! When they hit us, the ordinance kept falling until our AutoSleds were disabled. Knight Shield put up an amazing fight for never having been in open combat. You’d know we trained him well, but even still, he went beyond the line of duty there, and much more after.”

I took a deep, sighing breath as the wind howled in unearthly groans. My spine tingled a little as it mixed with the creaking of my armor, sounding like the grim-reaper himself come to get me at last. I continued, gathering myself.

“After that, they just... swarmed. It’s nothing like we’d encountered earlier. Star Paladin Steel Spool was injured badly after we took to the valley in defense.” I swallowed, the fear rising in my chest, “You and I know his service record. That kind of thing doesn’t happen to him, even in the worst of situations. I really hope you had those scouts record more than just troop movement. We need to know where they came from, who’s in charge!”

A screeching sound followed by a hiss echoed in my ears. Two more alerts showed up in my EFS. Thankfully they were minor, and so I ignored them both.

“Shield’s... Opal, Broken Shield is in bad shape. I don’t know if he’ll ever be the same. Something happened... something bad. It’s my fault, I let him do it. He drugged himself to keep fighting. Not a bad thing normally, but it was without the use of the injection system. He got the whole dose of Med-X and Dash all at once.” I looked back to make sure Knight Shear was still behind me, “We had to stabilize him with a full dose of Rage...” I trailed off, remember the sight I had beheld, “He crushed a pony inside a shield of his own making. That’s not supposed to be possible, Opal... It’s just... unnatural. I don’t know he’ll ever be the same if we manage get out of this.”

I gathered myself again, taking a deep breath. I was breaking down. I could not let that happen.

I’m carrying him on my back now, along with Red Rain.” I sighed, wavering, “I failed him as a leader. I forced him to make a decision that he couldn’t have rightly made on his own. But if I hadn’t, Shield wouldn’t have pulled off the scare tactic that saved us all. It was... awful, but effective.” I looked behind me, at the two young soldier-ponies on my back, “I don’t even know if either of them are still alive. I don’t know how long Knight Midnight Shear will last. To be honest, I don’t know how long I’m going to last if we don’t get to Geo Number 7 soon.”

I took a deep breathe, doing my best to keep my cool.

“You can. Not. Break.” I reminded myself, hammering the words into the back of my head mentally. “Not now. Not after all this.”

I needed to stay professional. The shuddering in my voice calmed a little as I brought my mind to focus on the mission and recording the message.

“The RadBlizzard’s taking it’s toll on us, Elder. It’s freezing out here, and our suits are heavily damaged, unable to filter or climate-control properly. The spare Geiger counters have been going off. Worst of all, night’s setting in quickly. You know how it is, what with the winter sun, and being as far North as we are and how early it sets.”

I took another deep breath, preparing to finish the recording.

“It’s going to get dark fast, and colder even faster than that.” I reiterated, “I’m going to have Shear hide the recording with a transmitter hooked to it, maybe set it inside one of beacons that are leading us... somewhere. I don’t know if it’s a trap, or if it’s just dumb luck, but the orange beacons are lighting a path for us through the snow.”

I was about to cut off the transmission when I remembered that there was something I had been needing to say for years, and might never get to.

“And... Opal, I’m sorry. I wish I’d given you the time you deserved... I know it’s too late now, but if I ever got the chance again...” I trailed off, gathering myself again.

The tape clicked. I cursed the device for being so small, but was glad it had been built from older tech. The newer stuff invented just before the balefire bombs fell probably wouldn’t have survived our battle. I flicked my ears again, repeating the initialization sequence for both the comms and the tape-recording device, turning them both back to their default states before addressing Knight Midnight Shear.

“Shear!” I commanded, afterwards realizing how harsh I sounded, and softened my voice. “Shear, come here for a second.”

Broken Shield

AE0090.03.24.1350

A Pegasus. With sweeping wings and a flowing mane. Recognizable simply from the way she flowed through the clouds above like water, spinning and dipping, rolling and diving. For a while she soared through the sky as if looking for something. I stood up and gazed at my surroundings. I noted sadly that there was little to be seen except the snow and the grey-green clouds above.

But I knew what she was looking for.

When she spotted me, she dove like a meteor only to pull up at the last minute, the great span of her wings casting gusts into my mane. She stared at me for a moment, as if she did not recognize me, and then became solemn.

“What has happened to you?” she asked, her normally lilting voice low and sad, “What have you done?”

I sat in the snow which, despite my sudden apparent lack of armor or cold-weather gear of any kind, did not feel cold.

“We got into a fight. My squad was the last out.” I began to explain, “I got hurt pretty bad, but I survived... I think.”

The Pegasus in front of me shook her head, staring at me in the same sad manner that she had been since she’d found me this time around.

“Your eyes.” she began, “You’ve done something horrible.”

In that moment I understood. My heart sunk, but also took off at the same time, catching in my throat. It felt awful. I collapsed in the snow, and covered my eyes and snout in shame.

“Oh, what have I done...?” I asked the grey pegasus in front of me, “... I crushed them inside a shield spell! That’s... it’s all wrong! Shields are for protecting ponies, not killing!”

A hoof fell on my shoulder. It was unusually warm where I had felt neither cold nor warmth at all before. I removed my hooves from my snout to see her smiling sadly down at me, tears in her eyes.

“It was not your fault.”

Her absolvement only made me tear up. I practically jumped into her lap, crying on her shoulder.

“You don’t understand!” I sobbed, “It is my fault!”

She cuddled me softly, holding me close.

“How could it be your fault?” she asked, “You weren’t you... I know that much.”

I pulled away a little, looking into her sad, blue eyes.

“But I made the decision... I took the drugs... everything that happened falls squarely on my shoulders.” I sniffed.

She let go. At first I was afraid she had finally seen the truth, maybe that she had finally seen what an awful pony I had become. I glanced up at her where she stood only a few hoofsteps away. She was smiling. Still sad, but smiling.

“Come.” she commanded in a soft voice, “Let me show you something.”

I stood, shaking a little. Them the world around me crumbled, then shattered as it fell into an infinite void. Screaming, I dug my hooves into the snow beneath me, pedalling backwards as a fracture nearly allowed me to slip into the abyss below. I looked up at her. She too stood upon a single block of what seemed to be ice or snow.

“I will not let you fall.” she said softly, her voice echoing somehow against the stars of the space we then occupied. “Take a step, dear.” she gestured with one of her hooves.

Once more, I stood, carefully stepping forward on my precarious platform. Some of the snow that remained on it fell off into the space below. I watched it until it fell out of sight.

“Take a step.” she offered again, “I will not let you fall.”

Swallowing hard, I took a step forward looking straight ahead on purpose, leaning my hoof down until I was beyond certain that I would fall. My hoof hit a hard surface. I glanced down for a second, and saw that a platform similarly made as my Pegasus guide’s had appeared beneath it.

Her ears perked, and her smile turned into a smirk. Not an unkind one, but more of a “Gotcha.” kind of smirk.

...And then she took off, trotting towards... nothing as far as I could have seen.

“W-wait!” I called, to receive no answer, “Don’t go!”

Later I would realize that she had done it on purpose. I took a few steps forward and began unsteadily walking across what seemed to me the most impossible walkway in all of Celestia’s heavens.

“Wait!” I cried again to no avail.

Ignoring the survival instinct in my brain screaming at me not to try to step into empty space and just HOPE that something would catch my hoofsteps, I broke into a straight run, galloping after the Pegasus.

“Wait! Where are we?” I asked, slowing to a trot, “What is all this?”

My Pegasus slowed to a stop, and I did the same as she began speaking again, “Nopony is truly sure.” she told me, “But the Sons tell me it was used by the Goddesses themselves to show ponies important things that they needed to see. It is said that one of the Ministry Mares was even brought here by Celestia herself at one point.”

I stared around at the open expanse before me. What could possibly be gained by walking through a blank, starry void?

“The Audaeus demands to be shown.” my black-maned, blue-eyed guide noted cryptically as an ethereal screen appeared before my eyes as if answering my question, “But though there be no holy song for this place in time, the Aethor shall reveal.”

Inside the screen, an image appeared. For a moment the outside of SR-15, my home, appeared. It seemed to be warmer then, as the snow on the ground was not as thick, and there were fresh tracks from AutoSleds on the ground. The view was obscured by a... cloth covering?

“The Audaeus may not see this part yet!” my guide stomped her hoof on the platform she stood upon, “The Aethor commands!”

“What is the Aethor?” I asked, looking incredulously at my Pegasus friend, “The Audaeus? What are you talking about? What are the Sons, or was it Suns?”

She shook her head, “You may not know it yet.” she answered, nuzzling my mane a little in a comforting manner, “In due time, however.”

The screen changed once more, now instead displaying Rain and I. We were playing. I smiled a little. Blocks. The classic toys of any unicorn foal in SR-15. Supposedly, they were used to tell if a foal had the mind of a scientist about them. I watched as ponies in the background took notes, my younger self completely oblivious as I built a small fortress using basic telekinesis.

“Betcha can’t knockit down!” I challenged my foalhood friend, “Betcha can’t hittit with one’a those!” my younger self pointed at a small set of spherical play-things.

Young Red Rain grinned. He wasn’t a unicorn, and he didn’t speak. We had been inseparable since birth, though. Before my guide and I, he set himself up to play a game that Rain and I had both become familiar with, getting into position silently and gathering the spheres in front of him.

He was quieter back then, and didn’t really begin saying anything until he was half way through primary school, which was about the time our sizes started to equal out.

I glanced over at my Pegasus companion. She had a faraway look in her eye. A small smile pulled at the corner of her mouth. I was unable to bring my mind around to come up with a reason why she would react that way, though. Mentally, I shrugged as we both watched Red Rain skillfully manipulate the toys with his hooves, chucking them and hitting the small fortress with capable skill, which to this day was something that I could not understand.

Some called it “Earth Pony Magic” but I wasn’t convinced. Earth Ponies didn’t have magical abilities.

Right?

My fortress finally fell. Huffing, my younger self smiled a little.

“Y’always win. Tookya longer this time, though...”

My pegasus companion turned and walked away. I turned my head just in time to see her start.

“Wait, there’s more... don’t you want to...?”

“We only have so much time, Shield.” she said flatly.

I could still see... something... sorrow maybe, in her eyes. Like she’d seen something that she’d missed before, but was glad that it’d happened. As we walked, the screen behind us faded, and another up ahead appeared.

“How much do you actually know about me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes and furrowing my brow a little, “About Rain?”

She ignored it like she hadn’t even heard it.

“This,” my Pegasus companion started again, “All of this, is a record of your life. We’re only going to see glimpses of it, however. The Audaeus needs to see it, but the Aethor deems it unworthy to show everything at this time.”

This time, I didn’t ask about either. There was no point. Obviously, she was following some kind of ambiguous, invisible set of rules and I was clearly only along for the ride. Though I felt a little bit bothered by the fact that this... Aethor person-thing had decided that entire sections of my life weren’t worth showing to something or someone... the idea of which struck me as just as strange as anything else that was happening at the time, so I stuffed those feelings and thoughts into the back of my head where they belonged.

Displayed within the next screen was another one of my memories in third person. Two colts, running down the hall during what I remembered then as a rare occasion where we had free time. Rain ran ahead of me as I watched. My younger self made chase as best he could, but Rain had always been, even into our later years, faster than I was. He jumped, grappling onto a ledge as we entered one of the many hundreds of store-rooms scattered throughout SR-15.

And of course, he stuck his tongue out at me. As my Pegasus guide and I watched, she laughed a little.

“Are things still like this when it comes to you two?” she asked me, still staring into the screen.

I nodded, sitting on my hindquarters and shrugging a bit, “Yeah, except he can scale even higher things. I could swear he should have been born with wings.”

At that she fluttered her own a little and then turned back to watch the screen.

“Yes...” she responded quietly.

I did not ask.

We moved on shortly after that. The screen disappeared behind us just like the last, with another appearing some distance down the crystal pathway that appeared beneath our hooves as we walked. Each piece held a tune it seemed, and a slow, sad song chimed as our hooves brought us closer to our next destination.

Once more my guide and I began watching a screen in front of us, this one depicting the day Rain and I graduated from boot camp. I grinned a little, remembering back on that day and how Rain had been late, somehow ambiguously marking the beginning of a long-standing habit of sleeping well past muster and forcing me to have to return to the room to get him. This time, however we stood at attention, lined up next to each other amongst a hundred other faceless recruits, all of whom were awaiting a chance to receive their “certificate of completion” along with myself.

“All right, you fillies!” the drill master, whose name I had long since forgotten, barked in his gravelly, cigarette-eaten voice., “Today is the day that I can finally, finally, at last and foremost, finally, be OKAY with you existing.”

That was his way of saying he was proud, I was certain of that, even looking back.

“Of all the chalks I have trained, this one has thus far been the most interesting. Especially with THOSE two” he pointed a hoof at Red Rain and I, “little turds there in the back. Don’t think I don’t know you were late. I see everything. You know that.”

Rain smiled nervously, sinking a little where he stood.

“But that’s not why we are gathered here, TODAY. No! Today we are gathered in the training pit to commend you all on a job...” he looked up to the improbably-high ceiling of the four-mile wide by two-mile long SR-15 training facility as if searching for the words, “... well done.”

I smiled, proud of all we as a team had accomplished, and glad that the tortuous nights of running around the simulators would be over.

Yeah. Sure.

“The Elder will see to the hand-out of your certificates, and then each and every one of you, despite my insistence that you all are strong enough and mentally capable enough to go right-straight into duty, will go on R&R after orientation in your new quarters.”

My Guide turned away and began walking. I followed.

“Miss?” I asked.

She did not turn to look at me.

“Miss, who are you? Why are you only here, in my dreams? I saw you out there today. I know you’re watching.”

My Pegasus guide stopped. Her gaze slowly drifted over to look behind her, to look at me. Sadness. It was... familiar. Like something I had seen before. Something I had lost long ago. Echoes floated through my head. Voices and rhythms. Flashes of memory too fast to sort or recognize. Thankfully the slight accompanying vertigo passed, and though it wasn’t painful, I felt a little disoriented.

“Time is short.” she said simply, her eyes seeming far away and glazed-over, “Come.”

Again, we continued on our way. I stared about at the stars and swirling comets that lit the “sky” around my Pegasus and I. Quickly we arrived at the next screen, the image before us swirling and undulating within the pony-sized frame as it tuned in on another one of my memories.

“I’ve never seen a shield quite like his.” the Elder, much younger than she was now commented as three armored Steel Rangers attempted to breach it, “It’s quite impressive.”

My younger self’s horn glowed brightly as the three notedly PINK-painted rangers armed the laser rifles on their battle saddles, and prepared to fire. A massive, white pony with a yellow mane stepped up to try to stop them, clearly fearing for my life, but the Elder pulled him back.

“I want to see this. Stand back.” she warned.

“Elder, they’ll kill him. It’s not worth it. Sure, he dropped fifteen gallons of pink-paint on them... but this is too much.”

A crowd was gathering. Within it was the very mare I had been trying to garner attention from just moments before.

The Elder just smiled knowingly, “Have a little faith, Jack. A negative action of this magnitude, in such a short time right after the previous?” she questioned him, “He somewhat deserves this little test.”

“T-test?” Jack asked, “They’re-”

The discharge of three laser-rifles crackled through the air. Two were stopped dead in their tracks, absorbed by the shield. The third made it through, slicing a sizzling cut across my less-experienced self’s right shoulder. I buckled a little, but my stubborn nature had allowed me to stay my ground, bring the shield back up and slowly push it out against the angry, pink fellow Steel Rangers.

“Elder...” Jack stared at his leader with those cold, grey eyes, “This has to stop... another volley and-”

“STAND DOWN.” Elder Opal Tulip roared with a voice that a pony who did not know her well would expect, “All of you stand DOWN!”

Jack was the only pony there who hadn’t recoiled. Even I had. Still would, if the Elder had yelled like that near me again. Elder Opal Tulip, in all of her rainbow eyed, midnight-colored glory, was standing in front of my younger self, looking more cross than my mother after I’d eaten all the cookies one time.

It was more than once, actually. As was frequency of situations like the one I was viewing now. Rain and I could never stay out of trouble back then.

I remembered what came next. It still hurt my jaw to think about, and I could almost feel it when as I watched it in third person with my Pegasus. The Elder reared back, and twisted her body in such a way that her right FOREHOOF impacted my hard enough to send me flying off my hooves and onto the ground a foot or two away. She then turned to my assailants.

“I know why you’re covered in paint. I also know that you antagonized Shield, and have been doing so for some time for reasons more petty than his reaction to it all.”

One of the paint-covered soldier-ponies spoke up, “But, Elder-”

“SHUT your MOUTH. Go clean up your armor... all of you. NOW.”

My younger, more foalish self turned to go as well, but the Elder’s stopped me.

“Except you.” her eyes narrowed at me as my adrenaline-shaken body seized at her hoof on my shoulder.

Watching as my gaze rotated, shivering in fear , I could almost feel the Elder’s hoof even there, watching it happen.

“My office, ten minutes. And tell Rain to get down from the rafters and stop letting you modify his guard saddle. That paintball gun you crafted is not authorized to be used with that weapons system anyways.”

Without another word, the Elder headed towards the elevator. The very same one that no one except Jack and a few others were allowed to use. Jack began to walk away, but turned back to look at me. He smiled a little, winked, and walked away.

“The Elder is an interesting mare.” My Pegasus guide noted, “Strong, but kind.”

“She punched me in the face.” I reminded her, “But, yeah. I suppose you’re right.”

My guide smiled a little, “Let us find out why...”

The screen rippled like water in front of us, signalling a transition between where it was, and somewhere new and soon showing a new setting. The Elder’s office. Rain and I, on the cusp of stallionhood, stood shamefully in front of the desk, preparing ourselves mentally for what was certain to be a tongue-lashing to tell our children.

Elder Opal Tulip and Paladin JackHammer entered the room together, settling across from us all, and sorting through the papers on her desk. When she had finished, she addressed us all.

“I have called you all here, because I have need of you.” she began, “Each one of you has a special talent that I have seen fit to consider useful for Delta Detachment. Each of you has a choice. You may train with a unit that is more talented, powerful, and dangerous than any other unit here, equipped with the best gear, and ready to be the first-responders to any threat that may be outside these walls. Or you may walk away.”

She paused for a moment, then continued, “Good, you want to know more. That’s damn good, actually. I knew I’d chosen right. Follow Jack out to the training grounds. Get the buck out of my office, and don’t come back until you’re either dead, or Delta.”

I watched as we looked around at each other until she bellowed loud enough to make even JackHammer jump.

“I remember thinking we would be lucky to live to see the next day.” I laughed quietly.

My guide only grinned.

“You keep interesting company, Broken Shield.”

I shrugged, “Just wait until you see the ponies I ended up on a team with.”

Chapter 006: Sanctuary

Fallout Equestria: Rangers North

Chapter 006: Sanctuary

AE0090.03.24.1536

“Leaders should be careful of pushing their charges too hard. Your regrets are only yours, but theirs are yours as well.”

Jack-Hammer

“Jack?”

I did not answer. The last beacon we had encountered was now a half-an-hour behind us, and I could not see it, even with thermals.

“Jack?” Shear asked again. “Jack, are you still with me?”

I stared ahead. Everything was burning.

“Jack!” Shear almost demanded.

I managed to choke out a groaning, “What...?”

I would have sounded angrier if I could have. I did not want to speak, or move, or anything. Just walking with two ponies on my back and a half-ton of damaged, half-working armor there was hard enough. That, and it was buckin’ freezing without the integrated heater, which had been disabled by a rocket shot earlier.

“We’re here.”

I almost collapsed in relief. As if on cue, the snow parted just enough to reveal large metal doors about five meters in front of us.

“Open the door.”

Knight Midnight Shear moved forward, with a bit more bounce in his step, I noticed. He must have thought we would be safe soon, but as luck had been so far, that was likely not the case. Doc had not posted guards outside, if he was even there at all. I couldn’t see the AutoSled either. So for all I knew, they had fallen off a cliff or gotten lost. Maybe it was parked nearby, and they’d never gotten inside, frozen to death in the confines of a half-destroyed assault craft.

That was my first guess, since Shear could not open the door.

“Sir, it’s sealed.”

“Figures.”

I readied my rocket-launcher set, the control arms folding out from their protective housing. We were going to get inside, even if I had to blast a hole through the ground and come up through the floor on the other side. Didn’t think it would come to that, though, since I was going to blast the doors instead.

“Knight Shear, stand back.”

“Wait, Sir. There’s an intercom here. It looks like it was brushed clean a few hours ago.”

I stared at my charge incredulously through my visor.

“What makes you so sure?”

Shear pointed at the intercom. I squinted instinctively through the falling snow, but it didn’t help, so I walked to his side.

“No ice, Sir.” he said simply. “Mostly. Honestly, I’d hack the door’s access console, if there was one here to hack.”

Damned if he wasn’t right about both. The intercom was chipped mostly clean of ice and there was very little snow collected on its steel housing. There was no sign of an access panel, either. Shear pressed the button.

“Anyone in there?” he asked the speaker, “We’re stuck outside, it’s cold, and we have injured.”

Immediately, I saw that Shear was gambling and under normal circumstances, I would have stopped him from telling anyone we had injured soldiers, but the situation called for desperate tactics. In my mind, inside was one of three things: Nothing, enemies, or friendlies. If it was enemies, I would kill them. If it WAS Doc, I would be tempted to kill him anyways at this point for leaving the door locked without someone to look for us out here.

“Dammit Doc... if you’re still alive-”

I caught myself. That sort of thinking lead to darker thoughts and actions. There was no excuse for that. It was freezing outside. Guards standing outside without working climate control would die within the hour unless they were moving around. Sickness might even take them hours later, considering how the holes in our Powered Armor had not healed themselves yet as they were programmed to. I would have to talk to maintenence about that when we got back to SR-15.

“Identify yourselves.” the intercom belched.

I could not recognize the voice through the howling winds and the crappy quality of the device in front of Shear and I. The younger stallion looked to me for guidance. I nodded simply, not needing to say a word for him to get the message.

“Steel Rangers. Delta-3 detachment. Last of the Delta detachment for all we know. There were others, but we were separated in combat earlier today. It’s freezing, and we have wounded. Open the door, or we will be forced to blast it open.”

Very nice. He offered detailed information, and then threatened. I hoped that was the right call, and that these ponies within could be intimidated by the Steel Rangers name. Or high explosives. With my body slowly absorbing the radiation the accompanied the storm, I would be less useful than usual, but I could still launch explosives.

“Hold your saddlebags, dammit.” I heard someone yell faintly in the background. “Get out of the way, Knight Snow Cap. Open the door while you’re at it.”

My ears perked at that as I heard a muffled “yes, sir,” before the slightly garbled voice of Doc Hollow came through the box.

“Welcome home boys, the door will open shortly.”

I let out a curse. Not an angry one, but a relieved exhalation.

“We made it, Shear. We finally made it.”

Shear nodded. I couldn’t be sure what was going through his head a that moment, but I was glad he had been around and in good enough shape to help me out along the way. He had hidden the beacon, and stayed awake and aware despite what looked to be considerable injury.

“It was of little concern, sir. I kept my helmet on.”

I was thankful for that.

Midnight Shear

AE0090.03.24.1545

For once in my life, I was glad not to be a Knight. Being as elite as I was had its perks, but oddly enough did not come with Powered Armor. Instead, it came with a sneak suit, one of the most advanced suit systems to date. Certainly, it lacked the strength and rigidity of the Knight’s powered armor, and it did not have the cloaking capability of the Stealth suit that I’d heard the Zebras had used during the war, but it had something that both of those really lacked: Freedom of movement accompanied by complete silence while doing so. It even had pressure seals that prevented the radiation-filled air from entering my suit, unlike my heavily armed comrades. Somehow, the lab rats back at base had managed to design and manufacture a small number of what they lovingly dubbed the SS-14d, or Sneaky Suit. Through their assumed genius, I was capable of achieving the aforementioned, as well as gaining a considerable a boost to my already substantial skills in explosives, hacking, and picking locks through a series of suit-integrated devices, and adapted macrochips specifically repurposed to make me the baddest-ass Commando that SR-15 had ever seen. Not that I needed any of that, of course.

Needless to say, a lot of ponies were jealous of both my skills and the tech that was available to me because of those skills.

Despite all of that, however... I had failed.

“Shield...” I mumbled under my breath as Jack and I entered the bright light of the now-open door to Geothermal Station #7. Doc ushered two Knights towards us to relieve my squad leader of their burden. He was, hopefully, just unconscious like Red.

I had failed my team. It felt... pretty awful. I looked to Jack for support against the wave of guilt that had struck me, which was something I was not used to. He was in no shape for it, and despite Doc Hollow removing his helmet, simply stared ahead.

“You need Rad-Away.” the doctor insisted as Jack pushed the bag of Rad-Away in the direction of Red Rain and Broken Shield.

“Take care of my soldiers first. Then me.” he insisted, “Have someone check Shear over too.”

The mention of my name made me jump a little as the pony who’s voice I recognized as Snow Cap began doing what I could only assume was basic first-aid. A pinch from my front-left leg alerted my senses sharply as the boyish mare pressed about through the thin kevlar, searching each wound with all of the finesse of a foal with a hammer.

“Careful!” I hissed at her, “You want to make it worse?”

“S-sorry.” she stammered, “I’ve been pulling a medic’s duty since we arrived. Doc Hollow taught me just enough to get by...”

“Not nearly enough...” I growled, “If you must know, Cappy, the only bullet that got through was that one. Go mess with someone else.”

Snow Cap frowned, and stuck out her tongue at me. I snorted and waved her off. The bullet hadn’t even made it all the way through the skin. I’d remove it myself before I let that dumb mare poke around at my suit. He might damage the seals. If we needed to go out again, Ministry Mare AppleJack or whoever forbid, I’d need those to keep from ending up like Jack or Red Rain.

Besides, it was the right thing to do anyways, probably. Red Rain and Shield needed assistance more than I did.

The thought caused a twinge of guilt hit me again. I know I had tried to do my best. I know what I had done had saved our asses, turning Shield into a walking psychological, hyper-telekinetic weapon, or something. I couldn’t have dreamed that would have ended like it did, though, no matter how much credit I wanted to take.

Worst of all, I knew the truth. Shield was a stronger, better pony than I was. It was insufferable. Shield could not even acquire a mare of his choosing for a weekend foray! How could he possibly have been the turning point for us all?

The question simmered in my mind until Jack called my name.

“Sir?” I asked, mocking up my best servile manners.

“As soon as Rain is on his feet, we start looking.” he stated, his tone dark and weary.

I nodded as he continued.

“And as for what happened out there on the field, between Rain, yourself and Shield... don’t say anything to Shield about it. We have no idea what he remembers, or how he’ll react if he doesn’t remember and finds out.”

Doc spoke up, he was rigging up a saline IV to Red Rain and Shield each, “And if you say anything, I’ll kick your hindquarters so hard that you’ll be seeing your ass-end first every time you wake up in the morning.”

I scoffed internally. Somehow through my mask he managed to see that.

“He needs a psychological profiling from a professional before we can be certain that he’s safe to be told anything, or be around anyone. That, and I wasn’t kidding. I will kick your aft-end.”

“And where does that leave the rest of us, Doc?” I asked in anger, more at being threatened by Doc than anything else, “What about our safety? Should we just let him bucking rampage to save his conscience?”

Rain coughed, opening his eyes a bit, groaning, and then falling back to sleep, or whatever. Doc Hollow took that as a sign that my less-noteworthy companion might survive, then turned to me.

“This is as much your fault as anyone else’s.” His tone was cold, sharp. “You probably thought you’d be a hero by saving his life, when in truth, he really just needed a stimpack, which our medics who were alive at the TIME, could have provided.”

I stepped back, a burning in the back of my throat, anger rising.

“He wouldn’t be where he is if not for you, nor us. But the fact remains. Now shut it.”

I looked to Jack. He shook his head in a way that I knew meant I should keep my tongue. He was right, the battle was lost. Bastard old doctor... How dare he question my motives? As if he knew me!

I decided it was time that I got moving, look around a bit. Get my mind off of the old hashoof-medic, and maybe actually accomplish something.

“Yeah, as if I hadn’t accomplished something already.” I mumbled under my breath.

My gaze followed the ceiling at first as I meandered slowly around inside the main room which we had come into. The floor was clean other than the blood, snow, and dirt that we and the rest of the surviving Steel Rangers had dragged in with us and was just a very basic concrete grey. The walls were steel, as was befitting a structure built by our forces as it were so long ago. Fluorescent lighting fixtures cast a bright but harsh and revealing glow on the pristine walls surrounding me, leaving little to the imagination save shadows that might jump when one of the lights flickered, which was rare. Oddly enough... everything was flawless, as if the machinery within had been properly maintained for the past 90 years.

I mumbled to myself. Something was off. No way in deepest depths of Tartarus should the building have been in the condition it was still in, especially not with the elements outside raging as they had been. If such a thing were the case, then it was safe to assume that the building even was even protected from the radiation from the RadBlizzards outside, considering the thickness of the walls themselves. That too, raised questions in my mind. Why were they so thick? Had we seen this coming? Had we known? If so, why hadn’t someone stopped the megaspells in the first place?

I whipped my mind back to where it belonged, trotting into a nearby room. Questions like that lead to a pony thinking like Red Rain, the admittedly acceptable sort of conspiracy theorist. Even though he was accepted and even loved by many, I was certain I did not want to be like him. He was weak, emotional, and annoyed me greatly.

Terminals lined the wall of this room. Likely databases. Maybe just workstations, or a way to send mail over a likely long-dead LAN line to some faraway server so that a pony could send mail to his family or something while working out in this snowy, frigid wasteland. None of them were online, though. So my talents would be wasted until they were powered back on.

It was just my luck that it seemed as if somepony had purposely destroyed the wiring along the walls in a sorry attempt at making the terminals work. How was *I* going to be a hero if no opportunities presented themselves, or if I had to waste time on mundane tasks just to accomplish a grander goal? Who knew what kind of information there was inside those machines? Contrary to my internal disdain, I was undeterred and so began looking for a backup battery, or at least some way to repair all the wiring. I would find a way, it was only a matter of time. I WAS a certified, exemplified computer genius with what WOULD have been considered an engineering degree in an Equestria past.

With that thought, I chuckled to myself, spotting an auxiliary power conduit.

“Child’s play.” I sneered through my cracked visor.

Or so I thought.

Broken Shield

AE0090.03.24.1536

More snow-covered pathways materialized before myself and my Pegasus guide as she lead me to the next set of screens floating in the blackness of this... where ever it was we were. More questions buzzed around in my head, but I knew that she would just avoid answering them. It bugged me.

“Why are you avoiding my questions?” I chanced, “You seem to know an awful lot about me, but I know very little about you.”

My guide stopped, her gaze darkening before me as sadness returned.

“It’s best you don’t know.”

I heaved in a sigh, becoming annoyed.

“Look.” she started.

“I am.” I interrupted.

“I just... can’t answer everything yet. It’s not time. The only way I can talk to you here, is if I follow the rules set forth.”

I stomped a hoof, not caring that we were floating in mid... space? and that I had no idea what would happen if I fell, “That’s dogshit.” I neighed, “What’s the point of bringing me here? Is there even a reason?”

She went silent. Tears welled up in her eyes. My heart sank, like I’d hurt my own mother.

“... Ask... ask the Sons.” she stammered, “They have answers... and they are not bound by the laws I am bound by.”

A voice boomed from the space above, “YOU HAVE REVEALED TOO MUCH.” it bellowed.

I recognized that voice. It was the same as the one from my dreams before. The very same voice that had attacked my dreams just before we left was now attacking me again. It was as if my problems were parasprites and there was no way to just bottle them up or roll them out of my proverbial town.

Hadn’t someone tried that once?

“WE HAD AN AGREEMENT. YOU WERE TO BRING HIM TO US.”

“What?!” I barked, “You’re lying!” I roared, “It’s lying right?!”

She shook her head. “It’s... true. But...”

“THAT’S RIGHT. SHE BETRAYED-”

“Can you politely buck off?!” I yelled back, temporarily silencing the what-ever-it-was, “But what...?” I asked her, glaring.

“It was only so... I could see you. It’s been a long time... I... I wish I hadn’t left you at-”

A massive, all-consuming noise struck my ears at that very moment, taking the form of a pony skull and subsequent vertebre, shattering the air with its presence. Elongated, canine teeth pierced the fabric of the space around us, bearing down on our position. There was no time to think, so I reacted.

“No!” I roared back, baring my own teeth and jumping in front of the pegasus who had sold me out, “I will not allow it! I’m tired of being saved, and I will not watch another life disappear today!

“HAH!” the voice boomed, “YOU THINK THAT THIS PEGASUS IS REAL? PATHETIC.”

All four of my hooves dug into the floating pieces of pristine, snow covered platform as I conjured up the most powerful shield spell I could manage, releasing it in front of us to try stop what felt like the equivalent of a train bearing down my pegasus and I. Sheer and unimaginable power bore itself down atop my barrier, cracking it as if it were glass, but unable to shatter it. For a time at least.

“DO YOU NOT SEE?” It asked, “SHE BETRAYED YOU TWICE. SHE WILL AGAIN. YOU PROTECT HER, BUT FOR WHAT?”

“Because I can!” my teeth ground against each other with effort, the words inching from my mouth between pulses of energy from my horn, intending to knock it back with my will, “And you suck! What more reason do I need?!”

“FOALISH.” it insisted, “YOU ARE AN ABOMINATION. DO YOU NOT REMEMBER WHAT YOU DID ONLY MOMENTS BEFORE YOU WERE DRAGGED HERE?”

It struck home, my shield cracking, but I held firm.

“Do not listen to him, Shield!” my now traitorous guardian cried out, “You are a good stallion!”

The voice only laughed. My shield cracked more, beginning to push me down.

“I know your heart, dear!” urging me on, “I know that you want to protect, to make life better for those around you.”

“HOW CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT. YOU CRUSHED A PONY IN THE VERY SPELL YOU WIELD NOW!”

Shards of the blue, ethereal glass that now made up my bubble began to fall to the platform I stood upon, disappearing as they hit, temporarily hardened from the assault. My mental state wavered, crumbling under the weight of my guilt. Only a few seconds remained, I knew. Between the exhaustion from earlier which was suddenly affecting me as if I were back in the land of the living, and the horrible things I’d done, my magic, was at its limit.

It was going to crush us both. Obliterate our beings. There was no telling whether or not I would wake up if it did, but I was certain of one thing at least: If it could exert this much control over my pegasus guardian, then I was certain it would destroy her if it defeated me here.

I roared back at the incoming train of destructive power. Enough had been lost today. My sanity, some of my Ranger companions, the very purity of my most powerful spell. In that brief moment, I managed to conjure the strength to bring up another shield.

“Run!” I demanded.

But she did not move.

I yelled over the deafening rage of the being that would stop at nothing, I was certain, to get at my companion.

“I cannot!”

Her admittance was unforeseen.

“There is no where to go! I cannot leave here until you wake up!”

My defeat was absolute and unavoidable. The shield crumbled once more, as I braced for impact, taking one last look at the pegasus who had always been with me, if not at least only in my dreams.

Jack Hammer

AE0090.03.24.1550

“To think, Doc...” I started, “Only this morning we were all alive, well, and on our way to the first real mission in decades.”

My bones ached still, despite the fact that I had been given heavy doses of Rad-Away. I knew it would take time to go away completely, but at least the pain of being severely irradiated didn’t feel nearly as bad as it had the first time, back when I was still new to Delta.

Doc Hollow-Bone snorted. Just by the way he moved, those slight nuances that years of operating together allowed me to see when nopony else could, I could almost hear what he was going to say next, before he even said it.

“This wasn’t our first. It was theirs. Considering the circumstances, my friend, we are lucky that any of us are alive to complain about it.”

He was right, and I knew that saying anything else on the matter would be a waste of time. Neither of us liked the idea of wasting time. It was then that I noticed that Shear had run off, which would have had me worried, except that we were actually safe for the time being. I hoped.

“Wish you’d teach your soldiers to keep their damned helmets on.” he grumbled, “You never did like the damn thing either. ‘Why’ is something that I’ll never know.”

My armor hissed and protested as I sat down, likely as at the end of its rope as I was. I grinned just a little.

“Well, if they kept their helmets on, you wouldn’t have anyone to work on, would you?”

Doc Hollow-Bone stopped short. I could see the weariness behind his silver, scratched visor. His shoulders slumped and he looked as if he were about to say something, but stopped short and let it be as he began chuckling softly.

“I suppose not...”

I smiled back at the old doc, but it hurt far too much to continue making the effort. Instead, I lowered my gaze as Doc Hollow turned around to yell at Snow Cap, who, visible to me from a hole in the vehicle’s side, was busy stuffing her head curiously into our last working AutoSled’s mangled internals. She bumped her head and wobbled out of the back of the machine with a dazed look in her eye, managing an uneasy salute.

Our best soldiers. These were our best, and despite our efforts, SR-15’s Delta Detachment had been torn to pieces and left to die by an enemy that we couldn’t even identify. Rather one that nopony except Doc, Star Paladin Steel Spool, and I could identify. We had seen it coming, sure. But under strict orders by Elder Opal Tulip we had kept our mouths shut even to our own subordinates, leaving them completely unprepared. Musing, I realized that even had they known, it would have done little to stop what had occurred earlier today.

My stomach growled. I was hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. Even so, our job was incomplete, and as soon as Red or Shield awoke, I would take Shear and head into the underbelly of the slumbering beast we were hiding within. I heaved myself back onto my feet and took a look at the doorway into which Doc had entered earlier leading to the garage, I approached to get a look at what was left of us. The sight was depressing. A few ponies in bedraggled armor, an old doctor, and a knocked cold and severely wounded Star Paladin a task-force did not make.

“Where in Tartarus did they get all those ponies?” I fumed, “In all the time we had been watching them... after all the scouts we had sacrificed, where had what we thought were bands of roaming foragers found enough commonality to gather together and form a leadership heirarchy? Where had they acquired the guns and rockets?”

A few ponies, those who had become MY soldiers, looked up at me, questions and concerns in their eyes. Star Paladin Steel Spool wheezed weakly on a stretcher-cot, unaware of what I had said, and likely unaware of anything at all.

“S-sir?” Snow-cap asked meekly, “What do you mean...?”

I gritted my teeth. I had said too much. In my frustration I had revealed far too much that I was supposed to keep a secret. A strained hissing from my suit reminded me that not only had they attacked and killed a large portion of our task force completely unprovoked, but they had also somehow prevented our suits from repairing themselves, costing us even more. I sighed. Doc stared at me. I could see imagine the glare he was throwing at me from beneath his helmet.

And I didn’t care.

“Doc... it’s time to tell them. They deserve to know.”

Doc Hollow only shook his head and left the room. He was a soldier to the core, and followed his orders without question. I knew what he was thinking.

“I’m going to check on your boys.” his gruff voice echoed across the pristine steel internals of the garage, followed by the sound of only his metal-coated hoofsteps. “I’ll be back when you stop being an emotional filly.”

Great. That was the last thing we needed, insults. Unfortunately, it was Doc, and I didn’t have the will to tell him that. The old stallion was gruff, but from another generation. He couldn’t understand, and was cold and harsh because of the era he came from..

“Everypony gather.” I ordered, “Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.”

The remaining Steel Rangers piled around me. Some had kept their helmets on. Others had theirs off, burning away the last remaining cigarettes that they had. Smoke from those cigarettes wafted lazily about in slowly disappearing tendrils. Silence filled the room.

“Twenty years ago, that being seventy years after the megaspell incidents that thrust our once beautiful Equestria into the state it is in today, we began picking up radio signals of unknown origin.” I began, “These signals were too garbled at the time for us to decypher, so... we sent out scouts.”

Murmuring filled the small crowd. I heard their doubts. Weren’t we the first to have left in 90 years? Wasn’t this supposed to be a recovery mission for equipment and activation for the power plant they were now supposedly in?

Their confusion was quickly put to rest as I continued, “You were not given the whole truth. It was assumed that the full disclosure of possible movement outside SR-15 would spark panic, rioting, or an attempt at mass exodus.” I took a breath and started pacing a bit.

My armor protested loudly, “With no real way of confirming whether or not the radio transmissions were from a possibly hostile force, or if they were just radio beacons uncovered by the shifting winds from before the war’s end, we sent scouts out to investigate.”

A few of the Rangers nodded, others simply watched with rapt attentions, all simply taking the information in.

“This is one of the locations in which our scouts would dump information. Many times scouts would operate for weeks, even months outside the base and needed a place to back-up their collected data... just in case they did not come back alive.”

Snow Cap spoke up, “I... I’m guessing that we’re here to pick up data of somepony who didn’t come back... right?”

I was surprised. A little. Snow Cap had guessed right. What came next was more of a surprised.

“I... I found what we were looking for, and thought it was important... so... I downloaded it to my suit, so I could show it to somepony with more rank later... I just didn’t know that we were after it specifically... or I would have said something by now.”

Dumbfounded, I stared at Snow Cap until the mare cringed and shrunk where she stood, and made me realized I was frightening her. Clearing my throat, I apologized quickly, then addressed her directly.

“I want to see that data immediately...” and added an encouraging, “Good job...”

Snow Cap smiled a quick smile, but I suspected she was still frightened. How somepony so meek-sounding and quiet had made it into the Delta Detachment was beyond me. I would have to ask Opal Tulip about it later. Still, she was a blessing, thank Celestia. Now I wouldn’t have to search for the data nearly as hard.

My briefing wasn’t over yet though so I continued, “In hindsight, I should have pushed for more information to be released... but nopony had any idea that they, whatever or whoever they might be, were so well organized or numerous. Clearly we are dealing with a threat much larger than most of us had anticipated.”

I looked down at the frightened, beaten, battered ponies that had survived the encounter. None of them would ever be the same, least of all those who had seen Shield's breakdown. I dismissed the small group, allowing them to rest more and play a few games of cards. There was little more I could do for them, no matter how awful it felt not to at least try. I pulled Snow Cap off to the side shortly thereafter, and and began asking questions about her find, to show me where she had found the files, and to make me a copy on a holotape. After a few short discussions about what she’d read in the entry she brought me to a small office-space where I spotted Shear mucking about with the wiring and grumbling about something.

“Dammit, Sir.” he complained upon my entering, “It looks like somepony shorted everything out a few hours ago! At first I thought it was just a lack of power, but NOW it looks more like to me that somepony just started attempting to-” he began waving his hooves around in a comically frustrated manner, “-jury-rig power-conduits together to get this damned terminal back online!”

I stared down at the mare next to me. Snow Cap managed a quick, nervous smile and a slightly more nervous laugh. I just shook my head and smiled back a little. looking back to the frustrated Unicorn Ranger.

“Good news, Shear.”

“Sir?”

“I think we’ve found at least part of what we’re looking for already.”

Shear stared at me for a moment, seemingly not comprehending. So I spelled it out a little more, in case he was just too exhausted to understand good news.

“The little saboteur who shorted out this entire room? She also happened to get the terminals working, and copied the very documents onto a holotape already.”

Shear did not look pleased, which struck me as odd. In fact, he seemed a little devastated, or maybe relieved? I couldn’t tell which in the state I was in. Knight Snow Cap had her chest puffed out proudly, happy that she’d done at least something right. I guessed she had done a lot more right today than either herself or Doc was giving her credit for.

“I want you to keep working on this though.” I told Shear, “She didn’t know it was what we were searching for, so I want to be certain that we have everything we need before we make an attempt to return home, barring extraction by a rescue team.”

Shear only nodded, not looking at either myself nor at Snow Cap. I took it as a sign that he was tired, but willing, and left it alone.

“What should I do?” Snow Cap asked.

“Do you know how to operate a radio?”

She nodded, “I was the communications expert for my squad.”

I smiled wearily, “Think you can get us a signal booster set up? We need to contact base for extraction and explain the situation.” hoping that it would encourage a boost in morale, however small.

She nodded and cantered off to find the supplies necessary, rummaging through supply closets and bins of old scrap, presumably from when the place was first built. It wasn’t long before she was on the roof running lines to a radio that she’d salvaged from a back room store, proving she wasn’t just talking out of her flank.

Above all, that’s when I felt things were starting to turn around. We had a communications expert. Thank Celestia above.