T.R.O.T.T.E.R. Shadow of Cheernobyl

It was another long, hot, dry day. Everypony was out and about doing whatever as long as it was constructive.

Around the rusting hulk of the mighty HMS Jupiter, life in the Zone moved as it did for the past twelve years. There were watches to be done, sentries to be posted, business to be concluded. Compared to the blasted land around it, this forsaken dried-up river was like a little patch of heaven - which said a lot on its own.

Until they arrived. A gust of air blew through the hatch as a black stallion in an armored jacket stepped through, followed closely by a mare. Everypony in the Jupiter's cargo hold saloon stopped what they were doing when they saw the mysterious duo, and instantly knew they had seen many, many battles.

The stallion, his head bereft of a mane, took much of the attention. Two unicorn horns, curved like a bull or minotaur, jutted from his skull. A bright-yellow biohazard cutie mark adorned his scarred flank, visible under the folds of his attire. He carried two powerful AK-series Enforcers on his legs. Beside him, a dull-blue earth pony mare with a sky-blue mane and tail followed him, her mane styled in two small pigtails. Her moderately pretty form was also crisscrossed by heavily faded scars on her stomach.

Idly chatting and laughing at each other, their conversation soon getting drowned out in the hustle and bustle of the cargo hold and the saloon that had been built inside it.

...

"... and then I said 'Oatmeal, are you crazy?'"

The mare laughed loudly as the two ponies ascended the metal stairs to the rear corridors of the cargo ship. "I can't believe I missed so much!"

"I can't believe that I found you all the way out here."

The stallion gave the mare a big hug, and she responded in kind. "It's great to see ya again, Snow."

"You know Night Stalker, there's something funny about that story of yours."

The stallion turned and opened the murky door upstairs, the pale lights from the other side merging with the sickly red coming from the corridor. Without any further comments, they turned and walked into the expansive room beyond. It was a rather tall corridor, and thin going from left to right. Another corridor in the bottom left of the room, accessible only from a stairway crossing in front of the two ponies, led on and into another room at the far end. A rusted guard rail that crossed in front of the drop down to the corridor below provided him with something to rest his hooves on.

The young mare with Night, however, had become involved in the quick process of vaulting over the guard rail, landing deftly on the other side without even a whisper. She looked up to her best friend expectantly.

He looked from her to the guard rail, and back again. He walked to the stairs and lightly jogged down, coming to a stop directly in front of her.

"Funny?"

Snow looked like Night had just done a legstand and started clapping his hooves together.

"Sorry?" She said, laughing.

Night shrugged. "You said it was funny."

After a lingering blank look, Snow shook her head, smiling. "Oh! Right. Yeah, sorry. We've tried to drive out Yoga and those bandits from the Valley so we can get more supplies through." She started walking down the corridor and into another room beyond, speaking over her shoulder as she went. Night kept astride of her easily, listening attentively. "It's a dangerous route through the Quarantine. But Freedom moved their base there, so we're finally on the verge of having a better way."

"That's good news, I guess." Night wasn't one to follow every little strategic movement of Duty and Freedom, considering his personal sense of strict neutrality. "We've got problems of our own though."

"So I've heard. Those Mareine patrols must be a pain in the ass out here."

"And to top it all off, the ship's water purifier broke yesterday."

"Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh is right. We gotta check in with Einstein before doing anything else."

The two ponies continued through the ship's corridor, overturned cabinets and crates on the right hand side.

"Wait, where's Dell? I thought he was the mechanic round these parts. Can't he just fix it?"

"Dell moved south with Duty."

As they stepped through the compartment door, the familiar noise of a printing readout machine came to their ears. The chamber - a converted storage hold - opened up in front of them. On the left wall ran a long table, random artifacts of unknown origins scattered over it. The table led to a rack of shelves in the far corner, almost a dozen screens flickering away as they monitored different areas around the ship. On the wall opposite him, they could see a closed metal door, the kind that usually led to some secured object or area. A keypad beside it ensured that they wouldn't see whatever it was without permission.

His eyes drifting over past some lockers beside the metal door, Night found himself looking at an upper level, the windows overlooking the hold boarded over securely with thick planks of wood. Crates and old computer screens littered the upper level, and the area beneath didn't look better. On his immediate right, a table held the readout printer, the continuous splurge of papers falling neatly into a recycling crate. The desk was similarly littered with various scientific tools, papers and pencils strewn about haphazardly. Behind it, tucked into the far corner of the room, two small vats of luminescent orange liquid bubbled, a monitor beside it keeping a close eye on whatever was being experimented on.

A white unicorn wearing a labcoat over an armored suit muttered to himself as he typed up a document. "Just a few more words…there! Finished my report on Flesh migration patterns. Let's see the other scientists laugh at me now when I present this baby at the next conference…"

He was interrupted from his daydreams of laughing maniacally at his colleagues, all of whom were bowing to him to prove their inferiority, by a voice saying "Ring ring ring!"

The scientist pony absent-midedly looked up. "Oh, hello Night! Just a moment please." He trotted to a small pet crate in the corner. "Now, blast that little… where did she get to? Lassie!"

Night Stalker laughed as he walked over, giving Snow a roll of the eyes as he went. "Everything all right Einstein?"

Still not stood to his full height, Einstein glanced over at the couple, still keeping his head firmly in the cage.

"Oh. Hello Night. Looks like Lassie's gotten out again." Finally, the scientist pony stood to his full height. He thrust a deducing hoof into the air as he walked past the stallion, musing as he went. "If I didn't know better, I'd -" His words stopped in his throat as he almost bumped headfirst into Snow.

"My goodness." His grin matched Snow's. "I didn't even notice you there. It really is you!"

Night poked a hoof Snow's direction, a wry smile on his lips. "I found her wandering around outside." He turned and winked. "Bit of a troublemaker, isn't she?"

Einstein put up a silencing hoof as he spoke, his bespectacled gaze firmly set Snow, as though he might disappear if he took his eyes off him. "I owe a great deal to you two."

Before any further comment could be made on that matter, Einstein bustled past the two ponies, heading for his train-wreck of a desk.

With only a cursory glance at Snow, Night walked over to stand beside Einstein. "Hey, I just got you the parts for your little cannon gizmo. I can't take any credit. Speaking of parts, how's the purifier doing?"

"Oh, it should be fixed by tonight," He explained, "There's no need to worry. But don't leave yet. I do have something else that is very important you could do for me."

"Sounds like bad news." Snow couldn't help but laugh.

The scientist ignored her. "I hired some mercenary fellows two days ago to retrieve a package at the mill up the road. An old friend of mine outside the Quarantine got his hooves on some military documents."

Night cocked an eyebrow. "Huh... What are they about?"

"No idea, but the pony who sold them said it had something to do with some... experiment." The scientist unicorn shrugged. "I guess it's valuable information. It costed me a fortune. If only those mercenaries ever made it back."

Night Stalker had already connected the dots. "So you want us to go get 'em?"

Einstein nodded. "Standard fee, of course."

"Fair enough. Let's get going, we should try to get there before sunset," said Snow. The two ponies exited the lab the way that they came.

...

Night crossed the main road with Snow close behind, passed near the old pipeline – noticing as he went that Piranha still hadn't posted a proper sentry – and followed the concrete track.

Curving with the flow of the blasted landscape, the road was dusty and cracked and barren. Only the irradiated pine trees provided any shade. Snarled bushes carpeted the ground, eternally wilted and devoid of life. Decaying buildings and facilities dotted the horizon around the valley, spires and apartment complexes of the Ponyiat outskirts visible far to the southeast. On a clear day, the cooling tower of the MPP itself stood tall, forever taunting the ponies of the Zone with promises of glory and wealth. But the weather did not allow that at the moment.

"... Heaven Eyes?" Snow. "Never heard of her."

"She used to be one of Yoga's girls. Then she split and made her own bandit gang. Moved up here and started causin' trouble ever since." Night explained as they walked down the broken road. "Word around here is she made them into a cult."

"At least Freedom keeps the scum away from the Valley." Snow spoke. "I've heard too many loners rant on and on about how much they hate Duty and Freedom..."

"Well I don't really like them either, but even they're better than bandits." Night interrupted. "If not much. Even Yoga's alright if you don't piss him off, but the others..."

"Exactly!" Snow nodded, "That's what I always say. Those bandits, they're like a Faust damned cancer. Take out one group, another pops up."

A rare smile slowly came to Night Stalker as he thought of an apt comparison; gophers.

The sun was beginning to sink in the sky as the two ponies approached the mill, a raft of clouds massing to the north. Holding up her PDA, Snow looked up the general radio chat to see if there were any messages from the mercenary group and found nothing.

"Weird... Place seems awful quiet."

Quiet in more ways than one. While Snow had been tipped off by the stagnant atmosphere about the area and the lack of any messages from the prior trotter party, it was the absence of that inexplicable awareness of others which alerted Night. Now, walking along the tracks which ran towards the eastern complex, the mill's brick chimney looming high in the twilight, the trotters began to suspect that the place was simply deserted.

"Try your radio again," Night suggested.

Snow cocked her head. "What if they still aren't taking calls?"

"Then we look for them."

...

"Nothing here."

"Nor here." Night swept his light over an expanse of crumbling wall, following the beam lashed to his right hoofgun's barrel with a length of twine.

"This place gives me the creeps," Snow complained. "I hope there aren't any bloodsuckers around."

It wasn't exactly the right habitat for those fearsome mutants, but even they knew how to sneak up on the unsuspecting. And even they couldn't elude Night Stalker. But the suckers were absent.

"There's nowhere left to search over here," he stated. "Let's check the back door."

"The what?"

"This used to be a base. The gap in the collapsed wall on the west side was called the 'back door' because mutants and the odd bandit would attack through it."

"Gotcha." Snow glanced back over her shoulder. "Kind of like a fort, isn't it?"

That had been the belief of those who once settled here, Night remembered. Then a change in the wind brought a better fort within their reach: the tractor factories where the Hundred Rads bar and Duty headquarters were now dug in beside the aptly named Wild Territory, a maze of concrete and steel teeming with anomalies, mutants and worse things.

"Yeah," he concurred. "A fort without a garrison."

"So why'd they leave, anyway?"

"Duty was relocating south and they got tired of fending off the dog swarms. Not to mention the 'zombies'."

Snow's ears perked up, "Zombies?"

"Yeah, something about ponies losing their minds and becoming feral. They don't really come here though."

An electrical anomaly had appeared on the road itself, crackling around the derelict truck next to the entrance, so the couple detoured up the hillside below the complex's crumbling wall, following the barrier until he arrived at the back entrance to the facility.

Aiming his light around the corner of the end building, Night spotted a flash of green fabric.

"I see a body. Get over here."

Snow did so, adding her headlamp to the meager illumination of the scene at the back door.

"Shit," she hissed. "They're all dead!"

It was a mess. Night had seen plenty of massacres and gunfights, but he hadn't seen one this bad for a while.

The party had been six in number. Five of them lay in smears of blood around several maintenance hatches leading to an underground tunnel, one of several under this old industrial plant. The apertures had been welded shut long ago and the trotters had not succeeded in opening them before they met their end. It appeared to Night and Snow that the sixth trotter had covered their backs. Each corpse was rent with multiple bullet wounds, still quite fresh.

Trotting to the corpse of the sole unicorn in the group, Night picked up the hoofguns with his magic and struggled to put the larger ones into his saddle bags before giving up and throwing the rusting weapons away. Snow had already stripped the other ponies of goods, carrying a bag filled with wild boar hooves in her pack.

"I don't get it," said Snow, inspecting an empty RPK-74 light machine hoofgun. "They just opened up on each other?"

"No." Night investigated the bodies and the casings laying around. "These bullets are from a single type of gun. Doesn't look like the mercs even got a shot off. Whoever did this is thorough."

The attacker had finished their work by putting a single shot into their PDAs. The dead told no tales, and their effects would tell none either. Letting the shattered pocket computer fall, Night Stalker gingerly reached out and lifted the gas mask of a corpse next to the manhole. What he saw prompted a sharp intake of breath through clenched teeth.

"What's wrong?"

"His name was Widowmaker," the long-coated one explained. "He used to be a liason for the supply runners by the Banei station."

"So was he, you know... unstable?"

"No, not at all."

"Well, then... Maybe a controller got them?" The idea put Snow even more on edge.

"We haven't seen a controller for five months." Night Stalker replied. "Plus, I don't think the average controller would be able to take this many ponies completely by surprise. C'mon, in here."

The two ponies stepped through the mill building entrance. It had been stripped of tools and supplies years before, but it still gave good shelter.

Both of them promptly saw a young filly in the corner of the ground floor - maybe only about nine or ten - laying face down on the concrete with a pool of red around her. She wasn't wearing armor, and didn't have a hoofgun or a bag. Next to her was a piece of cloth attached to a long stick, pitched like a makeshift tent inside the building. The girl had obviously been living here.

A curious Night Stalker - his hooves stained with blood just from stepping near it - turned over the body.

The filly's face came up. Except it didn't, because there was no face there. All he could see was a shattered mass of red and a black hole that had been her mouth. Below it was a litter of white that he at first thought was rice. Then he realized it was her teeth; what was left of them.

Snow recoiled in horror with a loud "Ugh!"

Night respectfully turned the corpse back over, wiping his hooves as best he could. He shook his head. Bandits, outlaws, whatever. Whoever did this was no-good scum and Night was going to make sure that they would pay.

But the carnage seemed a bit extreme even for mere bandits; no hostages, no extortion or ransom demands. Night put the thoughts out of his head for the time being.

Faded bloody hoofprints led away from the filly to the stairs leading to the second floor.

"Upstairs." Night motioned to Snow and readied his right Enforcer, making sure it was loaded with his favored 5.45x39mm BP rounds. Snow did the same with her PP-5A submachine hoofgun

Ascending the stairs of the building with hoofguns at the ready, the two ponies came upon an old conference room strewn with half-rotted chairs and tables. Sure enough, Night almost instantly noticed a counter top on the wall - and a cream folder laying on top of it. The macabre trail of blood stopped in front of it.

He gestured to it. "Over there."

Checking the corners, Snow scanned the room for any surprises or ambushes while Night picked up the folder with his magic. The words "CLASSIFIED" stuck out on the folder like a sore hoof, the file emblazoned with the faded symbol of a pegasus silhouetted by a sun.

Snow cricked her neck and lowered her hoofgun. "Hey, at least we got them."

Thunder rumbled outside as clouds dark as coal rolled in. A storm was approaching from the north and presented a menacing front. The dusty valley was swallowed into darkness by the monster as it circled above the land. The lake valley matched the clouds above in a montage of grey on grey, made hazy by an advancing screen of precipitation.

A beep came from the PDAs of the two ponies, signaling a vital message from Beard or one of the faction squads in the area.

"Attention trotters, a rainstorm is about to hit. Take anti-rads or find shelter as soon as possible. Medicines are available at the Jupiter if required."

Night switched his attention from the PDA to his best friend.

"Well, we're not going back to Jupiter in this weather. Let's camp in the top floor for the night." He slipped the folder into his bag. "It's getting too dark to find anything more anyway."

"Yeah," Snow said reluctantly, her ears rolling back. "Don't know if I'll sleep after this, though."

Night could sympathize with the sentiment, though it was by now a remote one for him. His two horns glowing crimson, he magically rolled two tiny, worn sleeping bags out on the floor.

"I'll stand first watch," he volunteered. "In the morning we'll deal with the bodies."

Blearily, Snow dragged her pack to the window and dropped down.

...

Rain.

What had started out as a light drizzle was a gusty downpour by midnight with ambitions towards a brutal deluge. The darkness shrouded the valley as the water polluted the dead world. The Geiger counters in Night's bag crackled unceasingly.

Night listened to the rain dance upon the pavement, drenching it with poisonous filth. Taking out a drink of purified water from he canteen, his eyes drifted to the folder sticking out of his pack. The one with the military symbol.

Wheels in his head began turning. Maybe there was something in here worthwhile; stash locations, a new artifact, anything that could be helpful. A peek wouldn't hurt, and there wasn't much else to do anyway. So he took out the folder and began to read the documents.

Entry One:
Had a surprise inspection from Command yesterday. We pretty well knew it was coming, and I'd been given instructions on what to do; but I couldn't believe how smoothly it went! We slip them a small percentage of the special product, and they give us clean marks? Even if they were dirty, I couldn't understand why they wouldn't bring the cage down on us. Seemed too good to be true.

So I did a little digging (unreadable) who claims to have an inside peek gave me this; according to him, the head mare of First Cav herself actually loathes the new contraband laws. And since she enforces those laws, that means all sorts of artifacts are slipping into Equestria right under the Princess's nose, apparently in exchange for weapons and food. I figure this means as long as she says golden delicious, we're golden delicious.

The first entry was ancient, apparently dating back maybe a year or less after the Disaster. The others were all much more recent. Some of the pages were missing, others stained with dried blood that covered up the words. A few were just plain incomprehensible to Night's mediocre reading skills.

He continued as best he could, using his hoofgun's flashlight for illumination.

Entry Two:
Finally wiped the crap from the AA complex. Three-hundred plus documents that I have absolutely no use for (and many of which it's probably best there not be a record of). All except that one damn file from forever ago with the weird-ass flag on it that prevents tampering. And trust me, I've tried. Fucking magic spells.

Don't know why we even bother keeping record of where we send the goods, since they're all going to the same damn place anyway. I don't know what (unreadable) all these foals for, but unless (unreadable) whatever it is has one hellish rate of attrition.

Boss is more worried about the attrition rate in transit. A third of these fuckers don't make the journey, and they ain't paying us none for corpses. I'm supposed to figure out a way to keep the damn (unreadable)

Entry Four:
I've finally convinced the boss that we need to start a little side business in intel market. The young ones are easier to corral, control and train. Sure, we have to play up the "investment" angle, since they (unreadable) there are plenty of ponies out there who see the potential. Unfortunately, she ain't one of (unreadable)

Turns out, (unreadable) What happens to them after he gets his hooves on them ain't none of my concern. Still got to talk about going a bit easier on them though. Might suggest swapping out which prisoners (unreadable)

Entry Ten:
The cells in the old lockup have been perfect for holding. The pre-Disaster locals might have constructed a lot of this place with an eye to speed over longevity but they sure knew how to make a holding pen. I'd even (unreadable) in the list of stuff I'm glad they left when they all kicked the bucket.

Turns out, gathering foals has made hitting isolated regions a better risk. The adults have a tendency to get annoyingly shooty when we come to claim them, but they also take such great pains to keep their little ones out of the fight that even if we have to kill off all the adults, we still get good intel.

Entry Seventeen:
What a fucking cock-up! A whole platoon slaughtered. Damned trotters fuck everything up. Now I hear that Canterlot is sending a "special representative" to take a look-see at our operation. Sounds more to me like they're planning on taking over. I think they're in for a surprise. And this "special representative" best watch her tail.

Got a new herd of POWs ready for (unreadable) Another benefit of dealing in foals: you only have to kill one of them in front of the others to take the fight out of them.

Project Sol-

Most of the page was torn off. So were the next several pages of the logs.

Entry Twenty-Two:
The last week has been beyond words. Canterlot was playing it close to chest with that "special representative" business. I never had any idea! Let's just say I was shaking in my shodding when our new boss heard about some of the stuff I'd been saying back when we didn't know him. But I guess it's easy to be understanding when you're connected (unreadable)

The rest of the intact documents were either diagrams of technology than Night could barely even read - let alone understand - or maps of various Zone regions.

Some areas were circled with red marker. The AA complex to the south and the machine factory to the southeast were the closest. A few of the more stable anomalies also happened to be circled - Oakpine, Circus, Scar. Even farther south, several locations near the Banei station were also marked. The next map was torn, but Night could still recognize the area; the Dark Valley on the other side of the Zone, and then another circle near Lake Cantar even farther south.

Not the documents Night had expected a scientist to need, that was for sure. But something in them was obviously important enough that some unknown pony would murder kids to get it.

In particular, the information about kidnapped trotters intrigued him. Night hadn't heard any stories about young ponies disappearing... but he had been out of the loop for a while on news from other parts of the Zone.

Night checked his PDA; a few hours before sunrise. He'd talk to Snow about all this in the morning. Time for bed.

The trotter gently shook the body of the mare sleeping across the room from him. Smacking his hoof away, she rose with a loud yawn. With her at the watch, Night Stalker lay down on his own bag and slowly closed his eyes.

...

Sleep came in fits and starts.

Night saw ponies loading into a passenger wagon. Families on their way to a day of laughter and fun at the opening day of the Ponyiat amusement park - parents smiling warmly as their colts and fillies pranced in place with anticipation. He saw mothers urging their colts not to climb on the seats, fathers checking to make sure their cameras had film. And a great wall of sinister magic rushing towards them that somehow nopony could see.

He saw a pony leaving a message on the door to her apartment, grinning as she assured herself that her whole life was about to change. He saw her walking away from that door even as he called out to her to come back, knowing that if she left, she would never live to see her little home again.

He saw ponies giving their loved ones kisses. He watched as they - bright and colorful and living ponies - trotted into their homes, the clocks on the walls above them counting down the minutes until their doom.

The land faded to black. Words in the darkness pierced his ears, under the wail of sirens and klaxons.

"Breaking news! A meltdown has occurred at the Cheernobyl Magical Power Plant. One of the magical reactors has been damaged. The effects of the accident are being remedied..."

...

Night Stalker woke up much the same as he did most mornings; to the cawing of the scavenging birds eagerly hunting for their next meal. Snow was nowhere in sight.

He dressed quickly, grabbing his bag, hoofguns, knife and anything else he would need. He all but ran down the stairs, stopping at the bottom of the steps.

The filly's body was gone, although a dark smear of blood still remained. No sign of the other corpses either.

Night stepped outside and looked around for anypony. He saw nothing. The cloud ceiling had not yet dissipated, casting the Zone into a dreary grey. Fog had started to roll in, putting the stallion on edge. It made seeing and reacting much harder.

He also felt something in his horns; a soft vibration, like a message creeping up and down on his mutated appendages. Artifacts were nearby. Night had no idea where or what kinds, but they were certainly close.

"Morning sleepyhead." A smiling Snow stood a short distance away, her mask under the crook of her leg chewing on some dried boar meat.

He aimed his hoofgun at her instinctively.

"Oh, didn't mean to scare ya." Snow smiled mischievously. She calmly approached him, "When did my favorite colt get all jumpy?"

Night Stalker let out a long sigh and sulked in response to her teasing. "For fuck's sake, Snow... Now, where are those bodies from yesterday?"

"The mercs? I buried them after the rain stopped." Snow looked around, pointing at the nearby hill with small piles of rocks stacked up. "Never thought it would rain that hard in a place like this."

Sitting on the sealed manhole cover next to her, he magically took out a piece of bread and a rolled-up hunk of soya sausage. Breakfast in the Zone wasn't fancy, but enough to keep a pony moving and fighting for a while.

Without warning, Snow took out a small denim rucksack glowing with a myriad of colors. "It looks like that dead filly had a few secrets of her own. Look what I found this morning."

Night took a peek and nearly choked. Chugging down a drink of water to get his food down, his eyes feasted upon the discovery. At least a dozen common artifacts lay inside the pack - Droplets, Jellyfish, Gravi.

"You saw it too right?"

He didn't take his eyes off the bag and its contents, particularly the light-blue object buzzing around the other artifacts. "That Soul?"

"A Meat Chunk too." She grinned, pointing at the glowing red-orange crystal hidden on the bottom beneath the other lesser magic objects.

Night switched his gaze from the treasure trove to his friend. "Where the hell did you find this?"

"A stash inside that garage." She turned and pointed. "It was hidden really well too, in a tube underneath some boards. I only found it cause I dropped my detector and saw it was picking something up." Then her expression darkened. "That filly... She was probably looking for it."

"Or protecting it." Both ponies paused, thinking about the young girl's horrific fate

Snow eventually spoke up, putting the gruesome images out of her head. "Either way, there must be a few thousand bits right here." She counted the artifacts. "Even more with that Meat Chunk and Soul."

Night swallowed a rancid piece of flesh. "We're not giving the Meat Chunk and Soul."

"Why?" Snow sounded incredulous, "Thousands of bits, remember! Your favorite thing in the whole wide world."

"Come on, Snow. Don't tell me you haven't heard the stories of ponies getting brained and surviving? Those things are lifesavers."

"Money money money..." Snow batted her eyelashes.

He gave her a stony expression as he swallowed the last of his food, but did not say anything.

She huffed and rolled her eyes, "Oh fine, have it your way."

Night Stalker slipped the artifact bag into his pack, just as he remembered the documents. Then he recalled the things he read about in said papers. Magically lifting a pack of smokes, he lit one up with a match. He offered one to Snow, and she politely refused with a hoof wave.

"I took a peek at the documents last night."

"What d'ya find?"

"Not sure, but mostly scientific crap and stuff about machines. Most of the logs were missing, but a couple referred to ponies being abducted. You know anything about that?"

The mare, visibly confused by his information, shook her head. "Only gossip from the Freedom grunts, but I've never seen it. At least, not in the Valley."

"Einstein probably knows more about it then we do." Night tucked the folder safely back in his bag and took a nicotine hit. "The fog's getting thicker. Let's head back."

...

Night and Snow went to the saloon bar while the others clustered around the table by the door.

"Hey, is Einstein in today?"

"Naw, he's off somewhere sendin' a message to his partners in Cantar. Why?"

"Oh. Well, he hired some mercs to go to the old mill for some papers," the former began. "They didn't call back, so he sent us to look."

Beard cocked his head. "What about it?"

"We found the bodies last night," Snow chimed in. "Somepony ambushed them. We buried 'em up the hill from the factory."

"Yes," Night confirmed, placing a large, thick-walled bag with a heavy zipper on the bar. "We did recover some of the paperwork though. And they had some common artifacts among them," said he, adding the bag of boar hooves and the merc hoofguns to the assortment. "Two thousand for all of this."

The colt across from him opened the artifact bag and briefly looked over the hoof-sized lumps inside. ''Eighteen hundred."

"Nineteen hundred," Night pressed.

"Eighteen-fifty."

"Done," said Night before Snow could protest. Ignoring the other's disappointed look, he rested his hooves on the bartop and placed his gaze on the old television set while the earth pony rummaged about for the trotters' payment. Today's feature entertainment appeared to be a bootleg of an old film about a group of soldiers during the First Equestrian War being sent behind enemy lines to find one of their own. The bootleg's subtitles were rife with translation errors.

"There ya go." Beard set a bag of gold coins on the bar.

Night quickly divided the money between him and Snow, and slid a few coins from his portion back to the trader. "Pass me a bottle," he said. "I need to get off my hooves for a bit. Snow, you want something?"

"I got it." Snow tossed a few bits of her cut over as well. "Podka please!"

Beard promptly placed two opened Steerlichnaya bottles before his customers. The two ponies gave each other a small toast.

"Great to have you round Snow. Bottoms up."

Snow gave him a simple nod and a bright smile before taking a long swig of the bitter alcohol.

"Away with the old, embrace the new, right mates?" Gray earth pony Mantis clopped his hoof on the counter. "Hey Whiskey, another of your specials!"

Whiskey, the bartending unicorn who ran the ship with Beard, poured him another glass. Then, as all the other ponies in the cargo hold watched, he lined up seven large berries on the counter - beautiful healthy ones quite unlike the pale irradiated ones common in the Zone - and waved his horn over them, magically transforming them one-by-one into bottles of delicious, pain-numbing, mind-easing fermented beverages. Snow clopped her hooves on the floor in applause and several ponies in the saloon let up a whoop.

"It aint the Hundred Rads, but it'll do!" Mantis took one and passed the others to the adult ponies hanging around the saloon. Snow and Night both politely declined; Night because he preferred his trusty Steerlichnaya (even if Whiskey's specials were tempting), Snow because the last Whiskey special she drank gave her a few difficult shits afterward.

"Don't spoil it, I haven't been there yet." Night chuckled.

"Ya don't know what you're missing mate! Speakin' a missing, I thought we were gonna go ta Boiler yesterday!"

"Sorry bro. We got called for a job and then it started raining." Night scratched the back of his head. "Some mercs were getting Einstein some papers and got shafted at the old mill. Probably Heaven Eyes."

Mantis's ears perked up and he gave him a look of shocked confusion. "That sheila wouldn't come all the way out here and kill ponies just for a book report."

"You do know what Heaven Eyes does to ponies who piss her off, right?" Night spoke. "You know, like us? She's the only pony I can think of who could take out a whole mercenary group by herself."

Snow gave him a light punch in the shoulder. "Other then you."

The pegasus sitting next on Night's other side known as Lech looked at him with even deeper confusion. And then broke into a too-riotous laugh. "What, Heaven Eyes?" He turned to the rest of the bar. "Hey, everypony. Horns here thinks Heaven Eyes killed a whole merc team by herself!"

"The fuck?" Cried one of the drunken ponies down the counter from them, "Heaven Eyes ain't nothing but a loony puffed up prancer!"

"Wrong." A trotter standing at a table called Rattlesnake interjected. "She's a ruthless backstabbing scumbag. Y'all would do well to stay out of her way."

"Yep, Horns's right." Another colt by the moniker of Claw also took sides. "Not a pony ya wanna meet in a dark room."

Lech and Claw started arguing with each other over the din of the saloon, but Night had tuned out the noise around him. Something was coming. He could feel it in his gut. But he wasn't sure what it was.

A loud knock came from the entrance hatch leading to the ship's hull breach. Then multiple ones in rapid succession.

"Hey, who's that bangin' on the door? Come on in trotter, it's open!" Pressing a button located behind the counter, Beard remotely unlocked the hatch.

A ragged earth pony nearly tripped as she stumbled in. Her armored jacket nearly ripped to shreds, blood dripped from her hair and down her face. She panted and wheezed with exhaustion.

Everypony in the saloon fell dead silent in an instant, staring at her like a being from another world.

Then she screamed a single word at the top of her lungs.

"PSEUDOGIANT!"