I was not a soldier.

That’s not to say I was entirely averse to violence or danger. I had often idly pondered what it would be like to conduct assassinations, or even to have served in a commando group. They were entertaining fantasies. If I were selected to play such a role in the hive, I would have done so willingly, happy to contribute to the well-being and security of the hive. My preferences, however, lay along a different course.

To an Infiltrator, violence is a tool. A particularly extreme and unsubtle tool, but a tool all the same. Usually the screwdrivers and pliers and micrometers are the best tools for the job, but sometimes you just have to break out the hammer.

To a soldier, violence is a method. The method. Their tools are focused on applying the proper form of violence most efficiently, but a soldier’s role revolves around violence. I don’t intend that as a criticism of soldiers, as violence (Or just as frequently, the threat of violence) can solve problems that more subtle means may be unsuited for. I had been given a very stark example of that truth. I am not so conceited as to assume those who walk a different path are inferior to myself. I may prefer to avoid violence when possible, but I recognize that is not always possible. Soldiers have their place, perhaps now more than ever.

As for danger and the threat of death, I am familiar with those things. It may have been in quite different contexts, but it was there all the same. Every single action taken within Equestria was done with a lingering background concern, worrying that a minor misstep might leave the clues some clever pony needs to piece together the hidden truth. When the Ministry of Morale comes for an Infiltrator, death is generally the preferable outcome. We learned to evaluate our actions through reason, rather than emotion, because the most natural emotion was that of fear.

The difference in context, however, was everything. While an Infiltrator was faced with an ever-present low-level danger, the lives of soldiers were often punctuated by moments of extreme danger. While Infiltrators had a great deal of ability to control what dangers they faced, soldiers often did not have that freedom. As an Infiltrator, the typical course was to avoid danger as much as was reasonable. To put it somewhat disparagingly, if an Infiltrator came across something particularly dangerous, the general recourse was to run away from that danger.

Soldiers were expected to run toward it.

The chill of adrenaline continued to course through my veins as we moved down the shallow gully. It teased at my nerves in a way I hadn’t experienced since my first time slipping into a pony settlement, under the watchful eyes of one of my instructors. I was going into the unknown, in a situation that was likely to demand largely untested skills. There remained the distinct possibility that I would have to stake my life on skills I had no experience to accurately judge.

We paused for a moment where the streambed neared the depot. It was not as dry as I had initially assumed from a distance. A tiny trickle of water still remained from the torrential downpour. The ground was muddy, but I kept myself crouched low. Dusty had me watching our rear this time, while he and Starlight observed the depot once more.

We were there for less than a minute when he whispered around the bit of his gun. “Follow me.” He rose up, advancing toward the crude wall. He moved at a swift walk, barely below a trot, and with so little bounce to his step that he seemed to practically flow across the ground. His gun unerringly tracked the gate.

Our path led us directly past the torso-pony, giving me a clear view of the grisly scene.

I can’t really say it was the first time I had seen a dead pony. That first time, however, had been a fleeting glimpse while scrambling for my life, obscured by heavy rain and lit only by the weak light of a PipBuck screen. This time it was in the broad light of day, searing the image into my memory in every gruesome detail.

I don’t like lingering on such things, but this was the first time I got such a clear view of the sort of atrocities that take place in the Wasteland. Though I had no idea who this pony had been, that made it feel important to me. Horrible, but important.

The remains were in a far worse state than I had originally thought, looking at it from a distance. The pony hadn’t just been dismembered and decapitated, but disemboweled as well. The gaping space that had once been a belly showed that the body was hollow and empty inside, letting us see the pole that ran through the vacant cavity. It was a pipe, with a jagged blade welded to one end to form a spear, and the other end buried in the ground. It had been inserted through the groin, up through the torso, and out through the neck. A bone had been lashed to the pole just beneath the pelvis, keeping the grotesque display suspended.

A few tattered clumps of purple were the only sign of the pony’s coat, giving just a hint of the once-colorful pony it had been. The rest of the hide had been torn away, as had most of the meat. The ragged flesh, ruddy brown from decay, clung to the bones. The pony’s limbs were scattered around it, half-buried in the ground where they had sunk into the mud, only for the ground to dry up around them. Flies filled the air with buzzing, while several crows picked over the remains. One of the crows paused in plucking at the remains of the pony’s neck to caw angrily at us as we passed by.

I hurried past, gagging at the horrific stench of rotting flesh, one that brought back far too vivid and painful memories. In a more calm moment, I might have stopped and retched. Instead, I pushed on, riding the mounting adrenaline to safety.

We paused at the gate, which was opened just enough for a pony to pass through. Dusty crept up to the corner, halting a few feet from the opening. He placed a hoof under the barrel of his rifle, holding it in place as he released it to look back at us.

Once we had gathered up, he gripped his rifle again, and moved through the gate.

Immediately on the other side was another corpse, and our entrance scared off the crows that had been feeding on it. I avoided looking closely at it; my attention was instead focused on the ruins of the wagon shelter, where the hulks of dead vehicles and hanging cloth of shelters gave many places for some hostile pony to hide. The space beyond the gate was an open field, bordered by the warehouse and wagon shelter, a wide space with no cover.

Dusty moved the other way, toward the warehouse that dominated the depot. It was a large sheet-metal building with no windows. A pony-sized door hung from one hinge. Further down the wall, the large loading-bay doors were wide open, showing the collapsed racks and scattered boxes within. He again paused just short of the pony-sized door, waiting for us to draw close, then moved in.

The warehouse was huge, and the boxes and towering shelves gave me the terrifying feeling of being watched from a hundred different places at once. That feeling was enhanced by the dimness, as the entire space was lit only by the open doors and a few holes in the huge roof. Just to make the scene even more unsettling, we were immediately confronted by another corpse.

Being somewhat sheltered by its location, this body was less decayed, but possibly more gruesome for it. He--for I think it was a stallion, despite the most identifying parts having been torn away--lay on his back atop a table, split open. A pair of deep gashes paralleled each other down his chest, cutting through the last few ribs before opening into the cavity that had been his belly. His torn-open barding hung from his body, stained dark. What entrails remain lay strewn about the table and dangling off the side, while dried blood coated the surface and left a discolored circle on the ground. Only a few patches of off-white coat were left unstained.

I didn’t know a pony contained that much blood. Conceptually, sure, but it was shocking to see demonstrated so clearly.

Just to cap off the horror-show, his neck was a mess of torn meat. His head was missing. I found that discovery to be particularly unsettling. An all new feeling of horror started to bubble up in the background.

Dusty hadn’t hesitated for even an instant. He moved forward along the front end of the warehouse, his rifle tracking each aisle of shelves as he moved across it. I followed as the number of possible hiding spots rapidly dwindled.

We reached the end of the warehouse, exiting through the loading docks, and moved toward the ruins of the wagon shelter.

The hulk of a ruined skywagon formed a wall for the area, with several spans of canvas dividing the space beneath the tilted shelter roof. Despite the ruined conditions, it almost looked liked it could have been a pleasant place in different conditions. The simple, airy shelter the fabric provided seemed ideal for desert living.

That was ruined by the pair of corpses lying around the entrance. One lay entangled and half suspended in the canvas that had once formed part of a shelter, forelegs crushed and contorted, with the handle of a machete protruding from the shredded remains of what had once been a neck. The other was sunk chest-first into the dirt just off the concrete pad, spine laid bare while crows plucked meat from the pony’s ragged back. Both were missing their heads.

Dusty slowed as he approached the shelter. After peering in, his gun sweeping around as he checked the nearby area, he drew back to the entangled pony. I crouched next to him, looking for any sign of movement within the canvas-enshrouded space.

Keeping his gun leveled, Dusty reached out to pull on the canvas. It took a couple of tugs before it pulled free and the body flopped limply to the ground. Partially protected by the fabric, it was the most intact of the corpses we had found. I could see clearly that it had been a wiry mare, with a ragged pale-blue coat and a short red tail. She wore barding, with a heavy metal plate encircling her chest, but it hadn’t helped her. The side of the armor was caved in, mangling her chest, and from the way she flopped and twisted to the side in a most unnatural fashion, I was guessing the blow had broken her spine.

Just in case the place hadn’t been delivering enough disturbing content, her cutie mark consisted of a pony skull with a knife driven into the top of it.

Cutie marks could be a terrifying concept at the best of times, but that mark brought an all new level of concern. It left me wondering what kind of horrific special talent that mare had once possessed. I would have questioned how a pony could even discover such a talent, but that day had already provided me an ample answer to that question.

For a moment, it seemed as if Dusty took comfort in that cutie mark. He relaxed a little, his posture softening, though he kept his gun ready. “They were raiders,” Dusty said. “Looks like someone killed them all and took off. We should be clear, but keep an eye out, just in case.”

“They took all their heads,” Starlight said, tearing her eyes away from the face-down corpse to glance my way.

“They were probably hit by some other band of raiders,” Dusty said, relaxing further and standing tall as he slowly looked around. “Raiders love taking trophies.”

“Yeah, I know,” Starlight said. “It’s just, I think we ran into the raider who did this.”

He looked her way. “Oh?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Just a few hours away from Rust. Some giant of a mare in full metal armor, hauling a bag of heads.”

Dusty’s head drew back in surprise. “Oh, shit. You met Sickle?”

I stepped in. “As I doubt there’s another mare of similar size and attire, I’m going to assume, it seems so.”

Dusty stared at me for a few seconds, mulling that over. “Huh,” was all he said at first, but eventually shook his head and looked around again. “Yeah, that’d explain the mess. She’s a nasty one. Guess I’m not surprised she’d take trophies.”

Starlight snorted. “Yeah, probably decorating her little shithole with them.” Despite the angry tone, I could see her shudder.

“What shithole?” Dusty asked, looking to her with a questioning look. “You saw her home?”

“We were in her home.”

His eyes widened, and I quickly clarified. “It was in the middle of that storm and getting dark. We thought it was abandoned, so we took shelter there. She got there a couple hours later to find us there.”

“Shit,” he said. “How’d you manage to get away from her?”

“We didn’t exactly get away,” I said. “It was more like she grabbed us and threw us out. Well, threw me into a wall and then out.” I rubbed my chest, where she had pinned me to the wall. “She wasn’t very nice about it.”

“No shit,” Dusty said, though he sounded more surprised than condescending. “I’ve got to say, I would have expected her to kill you. Like I said, I’ve only met her a couple times, but she always struck me as excessively violent.”

“We did just come out of a day-long storm,” I said. “We were soaking wet and exhausted. It would have been hard to look much more pathetic.”

Dusty stared at me with a lopsided expression the clearly communicated how utterly stupid he thought I was. “You don’t know a fucking thing about raiders if you think that’s going to stop anypony.” He shook his head and turned away, moving to the entrance. “Come on. Check out the rest of this shelter, see if there are any survivors or salvage, then we search the warehouse. Hopefully we can get something out of this disaster.”

Starlight and I shared a quick glance, and followed him in.

The raiders’ living space was in shambles. Tables were turned over, bedding was shoved aside, and containers lay open and ransacked. A severed foreleg lay in the middle of a walkway, reduced to tattered strings of flesh clinging to bones. The matching body was in the next room, deposited in a box. His hindlegs stuck out over the edge. One ended in a stub, the lower leg having fallen to the ground when the scavengers tore away the tendons. A crow stood on the other, picking at the intact knee. It interrupted its meal to caw at us, as if warning us away.

We left the crow to its meal and continued on.

I can not emphasize too strongly just how awful the place was. The grotesque remains, the choking stench of decaying ponies, the ever-present buzzing of flies, and the crows picking away at the bodies. It was a horrorshow, beyond anything I had ever imagined. I struggled against my own stomach as it rebelled, trying to purge itself. I breathed through my mouth in an attempt to avoid the stench, despite how awkward that was with my rifle’s grip clenched between my teeth. It only did so much; I could taste the decay in the air.

Then there was the occasional scene that seemed to transcend mere violence, rising to the level of outright sadism. One sleeping area had a corpse suspended from the wagon-shelter’s supports by a length of rope, hanging by one hind leg while the other limbs dangled at awkward angles. The pony had been disemboweled, though I couldn’t be sure if it had been by this Sickle pony or the scavengers that came afterward. The bed he was suspended over was stained entirely black with blood.

But for all that, for all the carnage and decay, there were two that stood out above the rest. One was the first, the torso-pony posted like a warning sign of what lay beyond those gates.

The second was a young colt.

Even Dusty paused as we came across that scene. The small pony’s body lay crumpled, chest-down atop a heap of blood-stained canvas, surrounded by shards of broken wood and an overturned table. I would guess the pony at around ten, maybe twelve years, though I was never all that good at guessing ponies’ ages. That was made harder by his body being misshapen, his ribs crushed in so severely that several had punctured out of his back.

The nearby wall, made of wood that looked to have once been crates, had a ragged hole broken through it; it was easy to picture the monstrous pony I remembered, throwing the colt’s tiny body through that wall. The difference in size struck me as monumentally unfair to the poor colt.

And of course, he was missing his head as well. The ragged tatters of meat and the glint of exposed spine made it look like it had been torn away rather than cut.

Dusty was the first to approach, and placed a hoof against the colt’s side to roll him onto his side. I looked away the moment I realized his intentions, but not quickly enough to miss the way part of the young pony slopped out as his belly parted. The sickening wet sound made my stomach twist again, and the air was promptly filled with the buzzing of flies as their meal was disturbed.

“Another raider,” Dusty said, without any apparent remorse. I looked back to see what had drawn that conclusion. Then I saw the colt’s cutie mark; an eyeball, impaled on a thin blade.

I walked out, past all the blood and corpses, until the stench no longer filled my nose. I sat there in the dirt field, slowly breathing in and out. I sat there, still, despite the way my limbs tried to tremble. I tried to focus on how I should just overlook it, how this was all in the past and nothing I could do would affect it. It didn’t help much.

A minute later, Starlight and Dusty emerged. Starlight looked miserable, and as she stepped out she coughed a couple times before spitting into the dirt. She looked close to vomiting. I could sympathize. I’m honestly amazed that I managed to hold it in the whole way through.

Dusty looked grim, but undisturbed.

Actually, a correction: while he looked undisturbed upon leaving the shelter, the expression soon turned to one of disapproval as he looked at us. “Not as fun as you imagined, is it?” He snorted softly. “If you really want to be some hot-shot merc, you better get used to it. That’s what combat looks like.”

“What, sticking ponies on pikes and hanging them from the rafters?” She shot him a glare, pointing a hoof back at the shelter. “That isn’t combat. That’s… something else.”

“It’s on the bad side, but death is never pretty.” He gestured the way she was pointing before walking on. “You kill a pony, that’s what you leave behind. Just keep that in mind.”

I think Starlight wanted to argue the point further, but she didn’t have any fight left in her. She instead spit again, pausing for a few moments to suck in the cleaner air. She waited there beside me as Dusty continued on, heading around the ruined wagon shelter. Eventually, she looked my way. “I guess we should get on with the salvage, huh?”

I nodded, taking another deep breath, and hauled myself up to my hooves. We weren’t done yet.

Fortunately, we didn’t come across any more bodies. We did come across the wreckage of another skywagon, its frame twisted and half covered by the collapsed shelter. The remaining metal curled away from the body, with a gaping hole where the front had been. If I had to offer a guess as to its demise, I would have to say that the spark battery had ruptured and exploded. The only question I had was whether it was a consequence of the shelter collapsing upon it, or the cause.

On the far side of the shelter, a motorwagon was parked on a bare patch of pavement. It was an unusual find, I thought. Motorwagons were uncommon even before the end of the world, as the few factories capable of producing such vehicles instead spent their effort on producing tanks for the Equestrian army. Even those were few in number.

Two hundred years had worn on the vehicle, but had not destroyed it. That looked to have come much more recently. The panel over the mechanical innards of the vehicle lay open, with many parts removed. Several tool sets lay around. The raiders had been working on it, but even though my knowledge of motorwagon engineering was practically nonexistent, I was fairly certain they were doing it wrong.

Starlight was even less impressed. “What the fuck,” she muttered, approaching the open panel to peer inside. I could hear her angry muttering continuing, growing in both vehemence and incredulity by the moment.

Dusty checked out the tool sets while asking, “How bad is it?”

“These ponies had no idea what the hell they were doing!” Starlight shouted, her head still stuck within the motorwagon’s body. “This casing is pristine, but… shit, they just tore out these wires. Half these gears are stripped. Look, the metal’s all clean there where they broke it. That was recent. And… and for fuck’s sake, did they use a cutting torch on the transmission? They… they…”

She sputtered and fumed for several seconds before pulling back. “Damnit!” she shouted, slamming a hoof against the side of the vehicle. “This thing was probably a minor tune-up from running, and these raiders gutted it like--”

She swept her hoof back to the shelter, and the anger immediately drained from her. Her hoof dropped to the ground. After a moment, she sighed. “Too bad. Would have been quite the prize, huh? This thing would probably be worth a small fortune if it worked.”

“Or a large one,” Dusty said, frowning as he looked over it. “Doubt there are more than twenty motorwagons still running, and most of those are in Trotsen. Heard a merchant ask one of their caravaners how much they’d sell one of their wagons for. I didn’t bother remembering how much they said, I just remember thinking that I’d never see that many caps in my life.”

Starlight sat with a weary huff. “Shit.”

“You seem to know a little about machines,” Dusty said, which I think might have been the nicest thing he had said to her at that point in time. “Any chance you can fix the damage?”

“Oh, hell no,” Starlight said, weakly kicking the side of the wagon. “I can kludge together simple stuff and do basic repairs and cleaning, that’s all basic scavenger stuff. This? This is insane. They tried to cut the transmission casing open to get at the internals, but managed to cut into the feed from the spark battery! Somehow, they didn’t blow themselves sky high, but they did dump the entire battery’s charge into the engine. The transmission is nothing but a lump of fused metal. I’m surprised the whole damn engine didn’t just pour out into a puddle!”

“And those are the parts that can’t be replaced,” Dusty finished for her. “Shit.”

In hindsight, it seems strange to me that we should linger there, silently mourning the death of a machine when there were so many dead ponies there. Strange, and a little concerning that I might have been subconsciously avoiding anything that would lead me to thinking about the death all around me.

“We should check the warehouse,” Dusty said, turning to head that way. “Hopefully we can find something to make this trip worth the time.”

“Yeah,” Starlight said, banging a hoof one last time on the motorwagon before turning to follow. “‘Cause, no offense Dusty, but this claim of yours is looking kinda shit so far.”

Dusty grimaced, but otherwise seemed to agree. “At least somepony killed off all the raiders before we got here.”

“I’m not sure if I count that as a good thing,” Starlight grumbled. “‘Cause I kinda want to kill them myself, now.”

Dusty snorted. I caught a faint suggestion of amusement in the sound and curl of his lips, but he hid it well from Starlight.

As for myself, I couldn’t help but note Starlight’s use of humor as a coping mechanism. I think that’s what jolted me out of the numb stupor I had descended into. Sure, she had the advantage of having years to become familiar with the Wasteland, even though I had no idea if she’d ever experienced anything remotely like this, but I was an Infiltrator. I’d been trained, extensively, to work in stressful situations, and I was failing to uphold the expectations put upon me.

I took another deep breath, mentally shaking off the death and destruction. I had to focus on analyzing the situation with clinical detachment. I had to carry on, despite my fears. The fact was, I was not in imminent danger. What surrounded me was not a threat, and it was not time-critical. I could step back and think, rather than worry.

The true horror of the Wasteland did not lie in the carnage around me. They were just a symptom. The true horror was the reason for that carnage; the motivations that had led to this and other atrocities. And motivations, those were something I could handle. My profession was all about motivations, and in shaping and manipulating them. I might not know or understand the motivations that could lead to such a grotesque excess of violence, but I could learn.

In a way, it turned the scene around me into a puzzle. A morbid one, but it was still something I could grasp and understand. There was some comfort in that.

We entered the warehouse, with its many shelves and crates. Entering from the loading dock, the first thing I noticed was the elevated office above where we had first entered. It was likely a manager’s office, with its commanding view over the warehouse floor. The catwalk leading to it had collapsed in the middle, leaving the office stranded, like an island in the air.

Starlight came to the same conclusion I had. “Looks like an office,” she said, and started to trot its way. “I’ll go check it out.”

“Anypony seen a ladder?” Dusty asked, but Starlight simply let out a short laugh.

She turned, leaping atop a box, then scrambled up the side of a twenty-foot-high shelf. From there it was a casual hop to the next shelf, right below the catwalk. She leaped up, catching the edge with her forehooves, then flipped her hindquarters around to hook a hindleg over the edge and pull herself up.

She paused just long enough to shoot a smug grin our way before disappearing into the office.

“Okay,” Dusty said, his head tilted to one side. “That… was actually kind of impressive.”

I managed a weak chuckle as we turned to look over the contents of the shelves. For the most part, it was a few hundred identical crates, all stamped with Stable-Tec logos. A couple were already opened, presumably by the ponies that now lay dead. Apparently they had been unhappy with the crate of Stable jumpsuit uniforms, and had used that crate as a latrine. The box full of pipe ends and joints were unsullied, a fact which failed to provoke any enthusiasm from either of us.

As we worked, I considered Dusty’s comments on Starlight. It was possibly the nicest thing he had said about her, as sad as that was. Despite how vile and depressing the place was, it presented an opening; seeing as we were only halfway through our little endeavor, I hoped I could encourage a more friendly atmosphere between them.

So as we continued looking into already-opened crates, I spoke with him. “Hey, Dusty?”

He looked over. “Hmm?”

I paused in my fruitless search, turning to address him. I gave a weak smile, mixing in just a hint of feigned awkwardness; it’s amazing how much that can soften a pony’s reactions. “Well… I know you and Starlight have kind of butted heads a fair bit, but she means well. I don’t think she means to be abrasive, it’s just that she’s outgoing and used to being friendly with ponies. I, uh… I get why you might not be all that trusting of other ponies, but it comes across as a little rude at times.”

“I’m not here to make friends,” he said, turning to move to the next box.

“I know,” I said, as placatingly as I could. “And I’m not asking you to trust us, at least any more than you need to for us to work together. I’m just saying that you don’t need to drive ponies away to do that.”

He hooked a hoof over the edge of the next open crate, casting a glare my way. “What, are you a psychologist, now?”

“Not professionally,” I said, my smile growing just a touch, and throwing in a weak chuckle for good measure. “I just listen to ponies. You seem like a very nice and decent pony when you’re not trying to keep other ponies away.”

Dusty turned away again, but this time he remained still, thinking. It was many seconds before he finally sighed and spoke. “Look, you two seem like good ponies, but neither of you has a clue what you’re doing. Yeah, sure, you know about scavenging, but you’re both naive and inexperienced when it comes to anything else. You keep going like you are, thinking you know everything, you’re going to end up just like the ponies outside.”

My smile died away at the thought; I really didn’t want to imagine myself in the place of one of those corpses. “I... think we might know more than you give us credit for,” I said, and quickly held up a hoof as he opened his mouth again. “No, I know we don’t know as much about combat as you do. That seems pretty obvious. But we aren’t completely clueless, and more importantly, we’re trying to learn more.”

He sighed, and relented just a little. “Well… just try not to get killed while you do. Learning by experience tends to mean learning from mistakes, and out here, mistakes get you killed.”

A yell from the office pulled our attention that way, and Starlight emerged onto the catwalk with a thick folder floating beside her. “Hey, guys! I found the inventory!”

Dusty quirked an eyebrow. “Uh… congratulations?”

She smirked down at us. “Hell yes, congratulations,” she said as she hopped down atop the shelf beneath the catwalk. “There are, like, five bajillion crates in here.” She leaped across the gap to the next row of shelves. “You want to open crate after crate of steel floor-grates, rebar, and concrete?”

She slid sideways, dropping over the edge of the shelf. She dangled there for a moment before twisting and dropping to the floor with a clatter of hooves. “Or do you want to go right up to, say, a crate loaded with two-dozen blast-door servos and all their electrically-powered, hydraulically-operated goodness?” She thumped a hoof triumphantly against the crate she had landed next to, grinning smugly.

“Okay,” Dusty said, slowly nodding. “That’s actually pretty useful.”

“Oh, what’s that?” Starlight said, her smirk returning as she cast a smug glare his way. “I actually know what I’m talking about?”

His expression fell to a flat glare, and he turned it my way. “Yeah, that went well.”

I responded with a sigh, burying my face in a hoof.

Starlight looked back and forth between the two of us. “...Did I miss something?”

Dusty responded by turning his flat glare her way. “Whisper here was just talking to me about being nice, so we wouldn’t be at each other’s throats the whole time.”

“Oh?” She replied, seemingly confused for a moment. “Oh.” She looked over at the folder floating next to her, then the crate she was still leaning against. She lowered her hoof again. “Um, sorry?”

He continued to stare for an awkward moment before finally rolling his eyes. “Good enough. Come on, there’s a door to a back area. We’ll check through there real quick, then we can look for any valuables in that inventory.”

“Sounds… good?” Starlight said, casting a confused and questioning glance my way.

We followed along behind Dusty. Sure enough, there was a doorway leading into another area. The door itself had been torn free of its hinges, with a massive dent right in the middle, and lay half atop another dead pony. Three more corpses were scattered around the room.

I’ll spare you the details. I think you’ve gotten the idea by now. Suffice to say, each was gruesome in its own uniquely horrific way, and the stench was absolutely appalling.

The room they lay in was in shambles. It seems to have been used as a common room, but the table was now broken under one of the decaying ponies, with chairs and even a couch overturned. Signs of violence abounded, and not just from the bodies. There were casings scattered about, and bullet holes peppered an entire wall and the one chair that remained standing. A stubby rifle, as crude as my own, lay near one of the dead ponies, its barrel dented in and bent. A couple crude knives and a length of pipe with a spiked end lay near the other ponies. The weapons had evidently done them no good against their attacker.

Playing cards were scattered around the broken table, and empty bottles lay all over the room. Even with my attempt to focus on empirical data, that little detail led my mind on unpleasant paths. It was hard to imagine these ponies as murderous raiders. It was much easier to imagine a group of happy, colorful ponies, laughing and drinking and playing games.

Starlight gagged again, pulling out her jacket to wrap around her muzzle as best she could without blocking her sight. I tore my gaze from the scene of destruction, and looked to Dusty. “So, about Sickle,” I quietly said. “We didn’t see anypony else with her.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t,” Dusty said, holding a fetlock to his nose. “She doesn’t play well with others.”

“So she came here, killed… at least a dozen raiders, and did this all on her own?” I looked around the room, with its shattered furniture and scattered bodies. It looked like it had been a hell of a fight. “How?”

“Well, to start with, shooting her tends to just piss her off,” Dusty said. “She’s huge, probably the strongest and toughest pony I’ve ever met, and that’s not even counting her armor. I only saw her in a fight once, but I saw a raider with a pipe rifle put at least five rounds into her chest plate. I don’t think she even noticed.”

“That’s damn good armor,” Starlight said, her voice muffled as she pulled on the sleeves of her jacket, tying her makeshift face-mask in place.

“It probably weighs more than you do,” Dusty said. “Hell, probably more than I do. And if that all wasn’t enough, she’s usually loaded up on just about every combat drug you can think of.”

“Probably doesn’t help that these ponies emptied enough bottles to leave an entire town blackout-drunk,” Starlight said through her makeshift face-mask. “Can we move on, now?”

“Yeah,” Dusty said. “Come on.”

We moved past the bodies, stepping over the overturned chair blocking the walkway. The smell improved only marginally as we stepped through the doorway and into another room. It was a barracks, with a dozen bunks and plenty of lockers. It also contained at least a hundred more bottles, as well as their source: a couple of crates were set near the center of the room, the packaging material that had secured the bottles within strewn about them.

Starlight stepped up to the box, squinting to read the worn label, then flipping open the folder levitating alongside her. “Two times one gross, Serene Skies Quality Cider.” She looked back at the scattered bottles. “Two hundred and eighty eight bottles, and they’re all empty. Shit, these guys must have been wasted.”

“Serene Skies is non-alcoholic,” I said. A moment later, I had to correct myself. “Well, it was. I have no idea what two hundred years does to cider.”

While I couldn’t see her mouth under the jacket, I could see the corners of Starlight’s eye rise with her grin. “You know the coolest shit, Whisper!”

Even Dusty chuckled, though it came out more as a choked snicker as he made his way past us. Only three doors remained. One led back outside, hanging halfway open but undamaged. Another led into what looked to have once been an office, complete with desk and shattered terminal. Opposite the office was the most unusual room of the entire place. Unlike the rest of the building, with its exposed supports and sheet-metal walls, it was made of solid, poured concrete. The door was normal size, but made of heavy metal, even having another metal plate welded on to cover the latch, likely to prevent easily shimmying it. It was battered, scraped, and dented by these ponies’ assault, but it had held firm.

Dusty was grinning as he looked over the door and the wall it was set in. “Now this looks more promising.”

“Yeah,” Starlight said, the corners of her eyes wrinkling with a grin. “Nopony makes a room like that unless they want to keep something important in it.”

I nodded along. “So, how do we get in?”

“Can either of you salvage experts pick a lock?”

Starlight gave a short, humorless laugh. “It looks like they took a chisel to the lock,” Starlight said, opening her bags and rooting around. “I doubt anypony could pick it now.” A moment later, she pulled out a pair of dark goggles, minus the strap, and what I soon discovered was a hoof-held cutting torch. “But don’t you worry. I got this.”

We stepped back as she moved in, not toward the lock itself, but the heavy hinges on the opposite side. She started to cut, and we looked away, watching the sharp shadows dancing around the room as she worked.

Less than a minute later, the torch winked out, and she gave a satisfied laugh. We turned back as she pulled out a small pry bar, wedging it into the gap of the door, and pushed. It took several tries and a bit of grunting before a grinding sound emanated from the door, and with one final push of the bar, the severed hinges slid free and the back corner of the door thumped down to the floor.

“Stand back,” Starlight called out as she took a step away, and we held back as the door teetered and fell outward. The top crashed into the opposite wall, tearing into the sheet metal and denting the support behind it before coming to a halt barely a foot from the ground.

Eager to see what we had uncovered, we entered the room.

The first thing I noticed were the many different shelves, the lockers, and the two dead ponies lying in the center of the room. It was a strange relief that these bodies were unlike the ones outside. They had been there much longer, possibly since the war itself. Nothing remained of them but skeletons and the strips of cloth that had once been uniforms.

That relief was slightly spoiled on seeing the jagged, gaping holes missing from the back of each pony’s skull, and the old-model service rifle laid across the abdomen of one of them. The implication was clear to me, but where the scenes outside had evoked horror, this one produced a sympathetic sadness.

We didn’t linger long on that before turning to the contents of the room.

As it turns out, the locked and heavily reinforced room was an armory.

Granted, it was an armory for a small army depot well away from the frontlines, and it was equipped as such. We didn’t find a grand arsenal of military weapons, but we found enough that it began to look like the trip might be worthwhile after all. Dusty and Starlight worked together for once as they stripped the small armory, sorting the contents into two sets. One consisted of the items that were in good condition, while the second, larger group included all those that were not.

By the time we had finished, there were three old service rifles, complete with slings and cleaning kits, ten pistols with holsters, and three grenades. Aside from the weapons, there were also a half dozen ratty uniforms, which we tossed aside, and helmets, which were added to the pile. Of the firearms, only three of the pistols were judged to be in acceptable condition. None of the rifles made the cut, though Dusty noted one of the rifles as being “pretty close.” There was also an impressive amount of ammo, totaling about three hundred rounds for both the rifles and pistols. Dusty had put most of those in the “questionable” pile, and was in the process of doing the same with the magazines.

“Well, it’s not great, but it should get us some good caps,” Dusty said. “There’s always a market for guns and ammo.”

I saw a different opportunity for advancement, however. “Would you mind if I keep one of those pistols?” I asked. “It’s the model I trained on, and I’d like to have an alternative to this rifle.” And as much as I disliked this whole deal of needing to be armed, I’d much rather one that was small and easy to conceal. Consider it an old habit, if you must.

“Fine with me,” Dusty said with a shrug, looking over one of the rifle magazines. “You can do whatever you want with your share of the loot.”

I picked one of the “good” pistols, checking it over. My firearm training had been a long time ago--even perceptually speaking--but I still remembered my lessons well enough for that. To tell the truth, I may have made a little bit of a show of checking over the weapon. Showing competency with firearms seemed like a good way of earning some degree of respect from Dusty, which could only smooth things over for the rest of our outing.

With my check of the weapon done, I slid in one of the “good” magazines, loaded with “good” ammunition. Then I hesitated. My instructor had focused primarily on firearm safety, with marksmanship as a largely secondary concern. One of the lessons of that training was to only chamber a round when a shooting engagement was likely.

Reluctantly, I pulled back the slide. The Wasteland is a dangerous place.

I engaged the safety and slid the pistol into its holster. Then it was just a matter of finding the best place to strap it. The outside of the right foreleg, like Starlight wore hers, seemed the most sensible position. I strapped it on, testing out the fit and position. It put the pistol’s bit within easy reach, while keeping it out of the way of the rifle’s stock. It was acceptable.

The holster also had a pouch for a pair of spare magazines, so I picked out two more and loaded them up. I tried not to think too much on the size of arsenal I was quickly amassing.

“Looks good on you,” Starlight said, sharing a smile. I had more mixed thoughts on the subject, as I wasn’t sure I liked the fashion statement it made. Despite that, it was clear she meant it as a compliment, so I smiled back. She seemed happy with the reaction. “So, we should get back to the warehouse. There are a few crates of stuff that might get us good caps.”

“You two go ahead,” Dusty said, picking up one of the rifles. “I’m going to see if I can get one of these fixed up.”

“Sure thing,” Starlight said, while I enjoyed the improvement in her mood. “Oh, and when you’re done here, maybe look around, see if there’s a wagon or cart or anything we can use to haul stuff. The more we can carry, the more caps we make.”

“Sounds good,” Dusty said, and we parted ways. We remained silent, holding our breath as we passed the bodies, until we emerged into the warehouse proper once again.

“Okay,” Starlight said, leading the way. “Let’s get that crate of servos open and emptied out, then we can look for other good stuff.”

“Rust was wanting machine parts,” I said, trying to remember the exact list Scrap had rattled off. “I remember rubber was important. Lubricant and bearings. Oh, and tools.”

“Oh, tools! We’ll have to swing back by that motorwagon, they had a bunch out there. Those should sell well.”

She broke out the pry bar once again to pry the lid off the crate she had indicated before, the nails squealing loudly as they resisted. “Soooo,” she said as she shifted to pry further down the lid. “What did you say to Dusty that got him to pull his head out of his ass?”

I shrugged. “I think he’s got trust issues. You heard what happened with the last pony he worked with. He seems pretty nice when he isn’t trying to drive us away. I basically just pointed that out and convinced him he didn’t need to do that with us.”

“Huh.” She gave another sharp pull of the pry bar, and the lid finally came free. “Surprised that worked.”

“He’ll probably be a bit critical of our fighting ability,” I said as I took one end of the lid and helped her haul it off. “But let’s face it, neither of us are really hardened soldiers.”

“Yeah, well, he doesn’t have to be a dick about it.”

We dropped the lid to the ground, returning to the crate to begin unloading it. “No, and I told him so,” I said. “I expect he’ll still have some criticisms to make, but hopefully he might be convinced to be more helpful about it.”

She snorted, pulling apart the packaging to retrieve the contents. “I don’t need his help. I was hunting with my mom since I could float a rifle, and I’m an excellent shot.”

“Oh, I know,” I said, nodding along as I helped. “It’s just that I imagine he’s got a lot more experience with the tactical side of a firefight. Sounds like he’s been doing that sort of thing for a while. He might have some useful things we could learn.”

She grunted. “Yeah, I’d rather just get this all done with and ditch the dumb prick.”

I resisted the urge to sigh. Things would go much smoother if ponies would just get along. Instead, I was stuck in a much trickier situation: trying to convince two ponies of very different mindsets to react the way I wanted them to react. I cast a quick glance toward the back door, making sure Dusty wasn’t listening in, and spoke slightly quieter. “Just play gentle with him. I may have convinced him to be a bit nicer, but he seems pretty quick to upset.”

“Right,” she said, smirking. “Coddle the big baby, got it.”

I chuckled softly, even though I found the situation anything but funny. “Something like that. It’s more that we can avoid a lot of headaches by playing along.”

She paused, leaning on the edge of the crate. “Eh. Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She smiled, slowly. “Sneaky little Whisper. I like it.”

We chuckled quietly, continuing to unload the crate. When we finished there, we moved on to other crates, following the inventory Starlight had discovered. Before long the servos had been joined by a case of industrial lubricant, 8 large rolling bearings, and a whole crate of pneumatic hoses. The final crate we opened held four high-energy power distribution arrays. They were bulky devices, intended to split the powerful output of large-scale spark generators, and full of all sorts of electronics that might fetch good prices from Emerald.

We were just unloading it when Dusty walked up to the loading dock. “Found a cart,” he said around his cigarette, and shrugged off the collar. The cart it was attached to was small, with spiked poles rising from each corner, and the rickety wood frame was splashed in purple paint that had long ago faded. “We’ll need to strip it, though. I’m pretty sure it belonged to these ponies, and we don’t want the problems it’ll bring if somepony recognizes it.”

It was quick work to pull the poles off and scrape away the chipped paint, and soon we were loading our loot into the wagon. That loot joined the weapons Dusty had already loaded into it, which included his old pipe rifle. He had one of the service rifles strapped across his back, instead. Even though I really wanted to get out of there and have a chance to just think and sort things out, it seemed like a good opening. Put the mission before personal comfort, and all that. “Got that one working, then?” I asked rhetorically.

“Yep,” he said, giving a little shrug of his shoulder to shift the rifle. “Picked out the best parts and oiled her up. Should do well. It’s not quite what I’d prefer, but it beats the hell out of a cheap pipe rifle.”

“Equestrian Army Service Rifle, Infantry, Model 3.” I couldn’t help but smirk a little at the way his eyebrow quirked upward at that. “The first self-loading service rifle. Not as common as the later Model 4, but I’ve heard good things about them.”

“Yes. Well.” Dusty shrugged again. “It’s also a lot heavier and kicks like a mule. I guess the effective range is a bit longer, but it’s not as flexible. Not as good for suppressing fire, for example.” He frowned, then shook his head. “Guess it might fit my situation a bit better now, though. I’m too used to fighting in a team.”

“Well, you’ve got a team for now,” I said, giving as genuine-looking of a smile as I could manage. “At least until we’re done with the job. And heck, my rifle’s pretty much only good for suppressive fire.”

I felt a little proud of myself as he chuckled. Combine a little bit of Ironshod Firearms internal design documents, a passing interest in military developments, a couple classes of very basic firearm safety, and a good deal of faking it, and even I could look like I knew what I was talking about.

We finished loading the cart, including a quick trip out to grab the tools near the motorwagon, while Starlight gave the inventory one final read-through. “Yeah, I’m not really seeing much else here, unless somepony wants to buy about five hundred tons of concrete. I don’t think anything else would be worth the weight to haul back.” She closed the folder. “Kind of annoying that they had two crates of cider but not a single piece of food. Who planned that?”

“Let’s get going,” Dusty said, sliding his rifle to the side as he slipped the cart’s collar on once again. “If we make a good push, we can probably get back to Gemstone before it’s too dark to travel.”

With our carefully selected load of salvage, the cart gave only the barest squeal of protest as it started to roll. I almost started feeling good that something had gone right. Of course, we had to roll past several decaying and mutilated ponies on our way out. It’s fair to say that put a damper on things. One could pretend the corpses weren’t there when they were out of sight--and smell--but it’s much harder when you’re walking past the bodies as crows picked away at them.

Passing through the gate, I slowed, looking at torso-pony once again. I couldn’t help it. It was just so grotesque, so violent, so sadistic.

The few scraggly remnants of purple fur rustled in the dry breeze, the one last hint of what that pony had once been. Soon even that would be gone.

“I feel like we should do something about them,” I said, my voice somber. “It doesn’t feel right just leaving them like this.”

“They were raiders,” Dusty called back, his pace never wavering. “Fuck ‘em.”

I winced at the coldness.

Starlight stepped up beside me. “Come on, Whisper,” she said, her voice soft and quiet. Comforting. She tried to give a sympathetic smile, though given our surroundings, it ended up as more of a grimace. “Crows have to eat, too.”

I sighed, turning away from the desecrated body. “Yeah,” I murmured, and followed along, while my imagination pictured black forms feasting on ponies.

We all have to eat.