It hadn’t been long after we’d left Lil’ Canterlot that we’d found and taken the interchange back onto Highway Five. While it was nice to be back on a well maintained and less overgrown road again, I hadn’t missed the dangers that had come with it.

“Come on, Bombay!” Hispano’s voice shouted through the comms in my ear, “Quit slacking and bring them back around already!”

The sharp chorus of screeches punctuated just how close the horde of birds were as they trailed behind me. I still had about a half a minute left before I could use the jump pack again, and the little airspeed I had wasn’t going to cut it for much longer. Shifting my legs, I snapped my tail behind me and torqued my wings. Inverting myself, I turned my body downward and dove for the forest canopy again. And you know what? The oddest thing happened when I did.

The turbine in my jump pack began to emit a low, oscillating whine that picked up into a shrieking drone as I gained speed. By the time I had hit my peak speed, my pack was literally screaming as I cut through the thickening air. I forced my ears back at the irritating noise, wondering just what the hell was wrong with it. Unfortunately, I had to assume that the pack was fine for now, because I was going to need it sooner than later.

The flock of arrow hawks behind me, or so they’d been called by the others, turned down after me en-masse. Their calls were quickly lost to me as the droning from my pack beat them out, and the smirk across my muzzle pulled itself wider. They were fast little birds in the air, sure, but as I folded my wings slightly, they couldn’t keep up with a flat feathered pegasus in a dive.

Stretching out my wings again, I let out a groan as the thickening air forced itself under them. I strained to fight the urge to let my wings snap back from the pressure, as well as to fight the sinking feeling in my stomach that I wasn’t going to level out in time and end up impaled on one of the countless bristling pine trees below.

My foreleg gave just the slightest kick of one of the pine tree tops as they sped past under me, and I felt my wings pull me upwards again. I tilted my head back slightly, looking for just the barest hint of the arrow hawks slamming down into the tree’s behind me. Of course I wasn’t going to be that lucky...

The flock had a much easier time than I’d had in pulling out of the dive, and had used their higher maneuverability to almost make up the gap that my speed had afforded me. And even though I could hear the thrumming of Bertha’s engine up ahead through the forest, I wasn’t sure that at this altitude I was going to have the speed to outpace them. Of course, that’s only if I stay at this altitude, and that consideration brought me a terrible idea…

“I have an idea!” I called out over my headset. “Everypony, stay inside the Hauler!” With a deep breath, I straightened out my forelegs again and forced myself to angle my glide down toward the trees below.

“No… what…!? Grrr!” Hispano growled at me. “This isn’t an ‘I have an idea’ moment! Stick to the plan, Dum Dum!”

I dipped below the treetops as I forced myself to keep up my speed. Come on Night, you can do this! This is just like when you first came down to the wasteland! All you need to do is focus.

Just like when I’d run away from those first flying creatures I’d been chased by, I worked my whole body in concert. I shifted my legs, tail, and head around, throwing my weight onto one wing or the other in order to dodge around the massive bristling trees before me. I winced as my right wing brushed a branch and forced me to overcompensate to the left. Another branch gave that wing a good whack, but I pushed myself to stay level.

Okay, so maybe I wasn‘t going nearly this fast the first time around...

The screeching hawks behind me however, didn’t sound as far off as I could still hear them over the drone of my jump pack. Celestia, the first creatures I’d seen originally I was able to leave in the dust, but these birds were fast! Through the trees ahead, I saw what I’d been waiting for; the bright yellow paint of the Hauler as it traveled along the cracked blacktop highway. This was going to be a close one!

“Incoming!” I shouted as I threw up my forehoof against the button on my flight harness. The jump pack began to whine as the capacitors charged, and I pulled myself back to slow down like I had the first time I’d run into the Hauler. Just like that first time, the thicker air near ground level provided more resistance, and my speed drained enough that the drone in my pack died out completely. The force of the air was just enough to slow me down, but not stop me, which was exactly what I’d counted on.

Just as the screaming hawks sounded like they were about to impale themselves into me, I broke through the treeline in a near vertical position. In the moment before I would have impacted the Hauler, I snapped my wing shut, looked to the sky, and pressed the button in my fetlock. Those birds might’ve been maneuverable, but they couldn’t follow a maneuver like this.

The world went white as my hearing disappeared and my sunglasses were forced down against my eyelids. The burning warmth of the propulsive pack against my back ebbed away as my speed drained, and I again found myself in weightlessness. However, I smiled as nothing but the quiet breeze softly whistled past my ears. Spreading my wings, I leveled myself out before I went into a slow, spiraling dive down toward the Hauler.

“You’re so fucking lucky that worked!” Hispano seethed into my ear. “What the hell was all that about!? What happened to the fucking plan?” There was a soft click over my headset before my hearing was assaulted by the roaring laughter that Hardcase was giving off. “Damnit, either shut the hell up or explain what’s so fucking funny!”

“Oh goddesses, Night!” Hardcase groaned as he tried to calm himself down. “You know when Delilah said she wanted you to be a leader, I didn’t think you had it in you! But convincing others to make the same mistake you did? I’m pretty sure that makes you a natural!” Again he broke down into laughter as Hispano only gave out a growl over the radio.

“Yeah, well I’ll take that as a compliment. And honestly, it was you who said that the beaks of Arrow Hawks were sharp enough to impale themselves into flesh and bone.” I smiled as I drifted down around the hauler, and found a good few dozen bird-shaped dents and bloody splotches on the side of it, as well as a few limp corpses stuck into Delilah and Hardcase’s containers. “I just figured that if I broke my skull on it, they wouldn’t fare much better either.”

“Oh, that’s too good!” Hardcase screamed through his laughter before it sounded like he fell off his seat and onto the floor.

“Yeah, but it was a big fucking risk.” Hispano grumbled as she zipped through the air and joined up on me. She glared at me as we spiraled down toward the hauler, but all over she didn’t seem too angry at me. “I told you, my Dad and I have dealt with Arrow Hawks before. If we’d taken out a few of them, the whole quiver of ‘em would have dispersed.”

“But it worked, didn’t it?” I flashed a sly smile at her that only drew a sharper glare. Oh come on! Was it that hard to admit that for once, I had come up with a plan that even though it was risky, it actually worked out alright? “Actually, Hardcase, I need to ask you something. My jump pack started to make some sort of noise once I got up to speed in my dive. Is that supposed to happen?”

“Yeah... I did hear that all the way from in the rec area.” He spoke with more hesitation in his voice than I felt comfortable with. Then again, that isn’t saying much really when I was the idiot who agreed to strap this thing to himself in the first place. “It’s probably just because the altitude and speed you were at in the dive was forcing the turbine blades to spin up and resonate. It should be fine so long as you don’t try to fire up the pack while you’re going that fast in a dive.”

Yeah, thanks for that fantastic advice, Hardcase. I’d already assumed that it was probably a bad idea to use the pack while in a dive. As tasty as the ones he’d made some mornings, I had no intentions of becoming a pony sized pancake on the road.

I was about to actually say that to him when a sharp gust of wind picked up from ahead and skewed my flight. Stiffening my forelegs, I braced myself against the stronger gusts that began to form. It was weird, as everything had been so calm in the valleys we’d been in since we left Lil’ Canterlot.

Casting my gaze along the hills ahead, I noticed a subtle but steady shift in colors. The verdant greens of the lush forests steadily became darker and darker. Whole thickets of trees were either sickly looking or less densely packed than we’d been seeing. Even the overgrown roads just ahead of Bessy and Bertha were starting to show less vegetation over the cracked black asphalt. And to add more to my confusion, I’d seen a odd looking brown-orange rock just off the side of the road as it curved around into the next valley.

“What’s going on here?” The words slipped out of my muzzle as more and more of the discolored and unhealthy looking foliage crowded the hills in thinner and thinner looking patches. Again, I was buffeted by a stronger wind flowing from over the hills ahead, and this time, it brought with it a low drone.

“Alright, we’re coming up on the city.” Delilah’s voice crackled over the radio with a bit more static than usual as another gust of wind threatened to batter me into Hispano. Funny enough, she looked to be having just as hard of a time fighting the gusts as I was. “I need everyone on recon to be up in the air, and to keep their eyes peeled on the road ahead. The raiders around Cantercross will be sure to have traps in these old wrecks, so report anything out of place, and call out any choke points that you think could be ambush spots.”

Wrecks? What wrecks? I looked around, scanning the roadway for any sign of wrecks, but only more and more of the orange misshapen rocks met my eyes. Which of course, was when it hit me. They weren’t rocks, they were the rusted, deformed, and twisted hulks of old motorwagons.

I blinked a few times as Hispano and I crested over another valley hill. The moment we were over the top, greens were gone from sight. Black husks of dead trees covered the shrinking ash baked hills that spread apart in a wide plane that stretched out to the distant rust colored mountains on either side of us.

Hazy collections of dust swirled over the arid and alien looking landscape ahead of us. Not a single speck of green existed anymore on it anywhere I looked. What must have been tens of thousands of tiny glinting lakes stretched across the rocky and burnt landscape, some of them seemed to be on fire, or glowed with a prismatic unnatural sheen. But other than the haze from the fires and dust devils that traveled across the burned lands. There was just… sterile black nothingness...

Across the arid plains, an obsidian mountain lay ahead of us as the sole destination on the highway. It was a towering jagged ridgeline that ringed around the putrid green waters of a large bay, which itself opened out to a passage that looked to stretch out toward the open ocean off on the horizon. It gave off an impressive, but overall lonely feeling that unnerved me greatly in a way I couldn’t quite put my hoof on.

The obsidian mountain itself was odd in its appearance. The whole mountain felt swept back, as if some enormous unseen force had skewed it away from our approach. Not only that, but most of the taller peaks of it twinkled and sparkled in the afternoon daylight. It was like they had snow on them, even though not a single speck of its jet black caps had white on them at all.

“Ugh.” Cora grumbled through the radio. “I hate Cantercross. Hopefully we don’t have to spend more than a day in this dump.”

“Wait, so this is Cantercross?” I spat out, looking over to Hispano. She of course was already too focused on scanning the road down below us to answer, which was what I should have been doing. Instead, I was doing my normal thing of asking stupid questions when my muzzle should have stayed shut. “I was told that Cantercross was a massive city, and I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t see anything other than an open black plain here.”

“Night.” Delilah snorted at me with more than just a hint of aggravation to it. “Use your eye, follow the road, and tell me when you see the city.”

Looking down, I humored her and followed the road under us. The further I traced it away, the more crowded it became with rusted misshapen ‘rocks’, which I could only assume were more motorwagons and skycarages. Hundreds became thousands as my eye traced all the way back along the straight highway toward the black mountain.

Which of course, was when it clicked in my head. Everything wasn’t just randomly black here. This was the blast zone from the zebra bombs…

I’d first thought that Mare’s Lake was some sort of mountain when I’d seen it, but this… was something else entirely now. Squinting, I’d begun to resolve that it wasn’t a massive mountain at all that I was looking at ahead. Rather, it was a thousand towering steel buildings standing so bunched up together that while some had fallen and bent over in the blasts, they’d only been propped up or melted into the others crowded around them.

The city of Cantercross was now like a wave of blackened steel, cresting away from the blast zone as if to hide its true identity from us. And why shouldn’t it after what ponykind did? This… this whole hellish landscape was our fault, and at some point since I’d gotten down here from the secluded skies, I’d forgotten that.

“That is Cantercross up ahead.” Hispano spoke almost reverently as she gave a few flaps and lined herself up next to me. “But I can get your confusion. The north side isn’t much to look at cause the bombs kinda baked all of the interesting bits away into a solid steel wall. But hey, the south side of it’s still a pretty nice place, but dad doesn’t even like that place either.”

Her words helped to put some things into perspective a bit, and actually drew out smaller details I’d missed in the barren landscape around us. Scanning my eye over the black lands below, I could pick out odd patterns that ran across the ground, too out of place and geometric in nature to be natural.

Rusted wrecks of motorwagons sat along the dozens of curving roads that ended in circular drives, and in the driveways of thousands of flat rectangular foundations to houses that were long burned away by the fires at the end of the war. Most of which I now noticed, where what made up the small lakes and ponds that I’d noticed before.

My mind struggled to keep up with the sheer numbers of ponies that must have lived, worked, and existed in this place. All of it had been reduced to flat black nothingness that was only accompanied by the droning wind that swept through the whole open valley. Nothing up until that moment, had accurately conveyed the scale of just what we’d lost in the end of the war.

Moreso, and I hated to admit it, was that part of me could understand just why the Enclave sealed us pegasi away from all of this. I may have momentarily forgotten what had happened at the end of the war, but I couldn’t imagine seeing this through the eyes of the pegasi who had to seal it all away. It was wrong to have abandoned the rest of ponykind for so long, but Celestia was this place depressing to even look at...

“Hello? Equis to Night…” Hispano’s voice pulled me back to reality.

“Let him soak it in, Hispano.” Cora called out as he too joined Hispano and I in the air. Looking over at him, he had his eyes pinned toward the ground, scanning across its barrenness. “One point eight million ponies used to live in Cantercross before the bombs. Only about ten thousand were lucky enough to make it out alive and un-ghoulified, hiding in personal shelters or huddled in the basements of some of the southern buildings.” He didn’t have a hint of hesitation to his words, or a crack in his stoic focused gaze. Sights like this may have been new to me, but I couldn’t imagine what Cora had seen over the years. “You may have thought you were in the wasteland before, Night, but the true nature of what it looks like can be a lot to deal with. And sadly, it’s driven more than its fair share of ponies mad.”

If this is how everything in the south had ended up after the last day, no wonder there were so many crazy ponies in the wasteland. And while not to excuse what they do in the slightest, seeing what happened here makes going raider seem a bit more believable to me. Just taking a glance at the state of everything here reminded me of just how many must have died here on the last day. What fucking hope am I supposed to have for the future when the world ended up like this while it was in the hooves of supposedly better ponies than us?

“So…” I blinked a few times before forcing my eye shut. “This is what everything looks like down south? It’s just… I can’t…” There weren’t really any words to encompass what I felt.

“No, not everything is like this.” Hardcase’s voice came over the radio with a downbeat sigh. “There’s still plenty of places out there that are more like where we’ve been than what you see ahead with the shell of Cantercross. The old cities are just… reminders of what we need to avoid as we rebuild.”

“Yes, rebuild.” Delilah cut in again, sounding even more agitated than ever. “Something that isn’t going to happen if those of you on recon don’t spot the traps hidden for us up ahead.” Oh, right. I probably should be doing the job I was hired for… “Now cut the chatter. I want to be inside Cantercross within the hour. We have a lot to prepare for in regards to Solomon.”

I’d tried to keep myself focused on my job as we drove into the outskirts of the old industrial section of the city. But every time my eye wandered across the wreck of a motorwagon, or the burned out foundation of some old building, I was reminded of just how empty this place was.

But the towering steel mountain of Cantercross now loomed over us, threatening to block out the sun as it started it’s afternoon trek downward across the sky. However, from this close, I could see just how many buildings there were on this side of the city.

Thousands of burned out steel husks stretched out before us. From here, it was easy to see how each of the melted and tilted structures once held dozens of separate floors, and in the case of the taller buildings on the steel mountain, hundreds of floors. Bits of glass that still clung to a few of the tallest buildings glinted and reflected the bright daylight, and gave the mountain a sky blue tint to it. Even with those bits of light, it was impossible to fill the emptiness that I felt the insides of the ruins gave off.

Hell, the closer we’d gotten to the city, even the wind had quieted down, leaving us all only with the groaning that came from the wall of melted steel that sat ahead. Even the still somewhat intact ruins of what had once been the industrial and factory district were quiet. The old brick and concrete buildings at the outskirts of the city were built between messes of rusted metal beams and pipes, some of which still drained fowl looking water out of them. Their interiors however, were just as dark and empty as the rest of the city.

Honestly though, I was surprised that there wasn’t even the hint of life anywhere to be seen at all. Just… the lonely ruins. But I should have recognized it as the sign it was. If I’d learned anything about being a convoy scout so far, it was that if everything was quiet, something was about to go wrong.

*BANG!*

I don’t know where the shot came from, but the resounding ping it put out against Bertha’s armor was accompanied with a flash of sparks. All hell broke loose from the ruins below us as chattering shots tore through the air around Hispano, Cora, and I.

“Break off!” Hispano shouted as she spun off in a dive. “Multiple contacts in the ruins!”

I torqued my own wings, spinning myself over and dropping into a steep dive. The air picked up under my wings as I gained speed. Howitzer’s cannon swiveled around on Bessy, lining up with the dark interior of a half collapsed warehouse ahead of us as I dove towards the convoy on the road. I leveled out my dive as his cannon stiffened up, and I braced for the blast. Before he could fire however, a trailing rocket shot out from the darkness of the warehouse.

The explosion tore a chunk out of the road next to Bessy, and shot up a cloud of dust ahead of me, obscuring the striped APC as I approached. I winced and pulled up as I tore through the gravel and rocks that were thrown into the air from the blast, zipping through the cloud as I gained a bit of altitude. Dust coated the sunglasses on my muzzle, but through it, I saw a quick burst of flashes from inside a hole in an old water tower.

“One of them is in the water tower!” I called out over the radio. Though, the pony in the tower must have heard that, seeing as another few shots zipped through the air past me. I rolled myself to the side and steered myself out of their firing arc.

“On it!” Hispano shouted into my ear as I rolled myself back into level flight.

The familiar heavy thumps of Suiza went off from above me just before the blur that was Hispano tore past me through the air. Quick gunfire from below pulled my attention down to a set of rusted pipes, as a ragged pony stepped out and fired up at her.

Dropping myself into a shallow dive, I lined up on the pipes and flicked my tongue. The crisp snap of a grenade releasing told me that it was time to pull up again. Pointing myself upward, I listened again as there was a sharp, reverberating clang that came when my grenade hit the pipe next to the pony. However, the noise was shortly drowned out by the louder pop the frag grenade gave off.

“Bessy’s left side tires are shredded from that rocket hit, we’re immobile for the moment.” Delilah groaned over the radio. “Howitzer, bring down that ruin on those raider rocket fuckers. Everyone on recon, root out these assholes and put them all down.” She didn’t have to tell any of us twice.

Howitzer’s cannon let off a blast that dwarfed the one my grenade had made. With an impressive plume of fire and dust, half of the dark warehouse collapsed and was reduced to a pile of rubble on the ground. Screams of agony and fear came from it only momentarily before the other half crumbled and collapsed onto the ponies inside.

“Bombay, factory rooftop at your ten! Two contacts!” Cora called out over the radio. “Hispano, industrial silo to your two o’ clock!”

“On it!” I called out, looking over as I shifted my weight to bank around again. The old brick building had sets of slanted, sawtooth like roofs that offered alright cover against incoming shots. Still, some encouragement for them to stay hidden might not be a bad idea.

I flicked the trigger to my subgun with my tongue, sending out a pair of bursts toward where the roof ponies were hidden. With a tweak of my wings, and a small adjustment of my outstretched forelegs, I worked to line myself up for a pass to drop a grenade. To my dismay, they weren’t as willing to hide behind their cover as I thought.

A pair of stallions in crimson colored spiky armor popped out and took pot shots at me. I was forced to pull off my attack to avoid them, and I quickly shifted my hoof to press at the button on my harness. Their guns must have been in fairly poor condition to have missed me at this range, but I doubt they’d have been able to hit me at all from the scared looks across their muzzles.

Still, the capacitor in my pack whined until it hit peak charge, and I pulled myself into a vertical climb. As I slowed, the pair below be took a few more shots up at me which I could only pray didn’t kill me. Snapping my wings shut, I straightened myself out, and depressed the button in my fetlock.

There was a distinct stabbing feeling in my rear left leg as the shock of acceleration hit me. I cried out, struggling against the urge to immediately flare my wings and flip over to see what happened. My leg felt like it was on fire, and I grit my teeth as I just knew I’d been shot by those assholes down there.

As the feeling of weightlessness came over me, the sounds of more shots from below met my ears. Growling, I let myself flip over, pointing directly down as I started to plummet. Easily, I started to pick up speed, grinding my teeth against my bit with my tongue at the ready. As it had before in my dive, the jump pack began to emit it’s loud shrieking as I became a blue streak heading right toward them.

The two of them seemed to shrink down and cupped their ears as the wailing death above them approached. Though annoyingly, the one of them that was a unicorn simply kept his gun pointed up and was blindly firing at me as he ducked under the remains of an old air conditioning unit. The old sheet metal would have been easy to punch through with my gun, but shooting the fuckers would take two passes, and I didn’t have time for that shit.

A quick flick of my tongue released a single grenade from my harness. The moment it was away, I flared out my wings and began to pull up. Problem was, from that height, I’d gotten going quite a lot faster than I’d ever really gone before. Hell, even the drone from my pack was a high pitched scream now that made my own ears hurt.

Twisting my wings, I tried to roll and give myself a few extra seconds to pull up by skewing my path away from the rapidly approaching factory. As I did however, I noticed that mid roll, my wings scooped up a bit more of the air than I’d expected, and I’d begun to easily shift my trajectory. My mind raced as I continued to pull up, trying to figure out just how I’d been able to turn so easily at that speed.

Unfortunately for me, turning that quickly at that speed came with its own problems. My mind started to lose focus, and the world around me turned black and white for a moment. I fought off a feeling of incredible drowsiness that threatened to drag me off to sleep mid flight. The only thing that kept my focus, was Hispano’s far off sounding voice in the back of my head.

“Bombay…” Why did she sound so fuzzy and far off? “Don’t tell me you passed out from that!”

Passed out? What did she mean? I blinked as her confusing words flooded my mind. Color returned to the world around me as the wailing drone from my pack also came back into my ears. Since when did everything become so flat and black? Blinking again, I looked down and found the road under me again. Huh, I was going the wrong way?

Turning my head, I looked back and found myself a good distance away from the convoy. Twisting my wings, I slipped into a long arching bank that helped to kill off some of the speed I’d gotten in the dive. My droning jump pack quieted as my speed lowered, and I breathed a small sigh of relief.

Goddesses is that noise annoying. I mean, it’s probably not as annoying as getting a grenade dropped on you, or being shot in the fucking leg, but still! On that, I was actually curious as to how I’d done. Looking up above the old factory ruins, I spotted Cora floating about and surveying things, while Hispano zipped up through the air to join him.

Well, it shouldn’t be a surprise that she got her targets. However, from the fact that they’re both not actively maneuvering, I think it’s safe to say that at the very least, the rest of the raiders won’t be interested in keeping up their attack. Still, I couldn’t help but ask.

“Hey, Cora, did I get those two?” I mean, I’d never gone that fast, and with the noise it had been quite hard to concentrate after all. I winced as I pulled my flight straight again, which tweaked my injured leg. I’d be happy with just a partial hit on those two assholes at this point.

“You might not be as good as a Talon, but I’ll be damned if you aren’t halfway decent at bombing.” Cora’s voice came across as… oddly happy, and that was a bit unnerving to say the least. “You actually hit one of them with that grenade of yours. Never seen anything like it in my life.”

“I only hit one of them?” I spat out without thinking. Ugh, while a part of me had really wished I’d gotten the both of them, fifty percent accuracy from that sort of attack isn’t all that bad I guess. I just hope that the one I did get was the asshole who’d shot me.

“No, I mean you actually physically hit one of them with your grenade. Right in the face.” Cora let out a squawking laugh. “I think you might have caved his skull in with it. His friend was so mortified that instead of running, he just stood there in shock before becoming red paste like his buddy. It was...”

“You alright there, Night?” Hispano cut in with a heavy note of worry to her voice. “That was uh… an interesting maneuver you pulled. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anypony go that fast in a dive before, and I think you almost passed out pulling out of it.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t.” Cora jumped back in again. “You must have pulled some serious G’s coming out of a dive like that. I’ve been around as you know, and I’ve only ever even seen one other talon pull out of a dive like that.” He paused for a moment as if to gauge something about what he’d said. Still, as if to keep me from dropping into complete uninteresting silence, the throbbing pain from my leg flared up as I subtly tweaked it during my flight. “You know what?” He spoke up again, “I think the fight here is done. You should land and get your leg taken care of, and get Buck to give you a once over as well.”

“Alright, sounds good.” I nodded to myself and angled my flight back toward the Hauler. Even from here, I could see Buck standing and waiting for me on the railing of the rec area.

“Good work with those raiders, all of you.” Delilah’s annoyed but relieved voice filled my ear. “Hardcase, get Boiler and come down here. It’s going to take the both of you to get Bessy back into a roadworthy state. And then once both Night and Howitzer get the all clear from the doc, we’re back on the road again.”

Wait, what’s wrong with Howitzer?

“What happened to Howitzer?” Hardcase asked with impeccable timing.

“He took some spalling to the face from the rocket blast. Nothing major.” Delilah snorted in her normal annoyed way. “Make sure Boiler knows that it looks worse than it is. I don’t want either of you worried about anything else other than making sure we can get back on the move.”

The chalky tabs of Chill went down all too easy for me, and the cup of water that followed really hit the spot.

Immediately, I felt a bit of my strength return as the soothing numbness of the drug washed over me. I let my wings flop back, relaxed, letting the tension and strain in them wash away as I leaned back into the plush cushions of the rec area couch. Looking out the back and into the charred black wasteland behind us, the same creeping feeling of hopelessness I’d felt before started to claw its way through the back of my mind.

“Alright. I’m sorry we don’t have any potions to help with your leg. The one you used back at Sun Dog City was the last one we had until we can restock in Cantercross.” As always, Buck’s voice was an oasis in the desert of negative thoughts that permeated my mind. “Even so, how’s the leg feeling?” He asked as he reached up and adjusted his medical yoke before looking down with a kind smile.

“Better.” I offered back, lifting it with a wince and looking over the tightly wrapped magical bandages he’d tied just below my cutie mark.

It had been awhile since I’d seen these particular zebra ones. The last time I’d had them on me, they were wrapped around all four of my hooves after another, equally successful bombing run. Part of me wondered if my original assumption was correct that I’d be as striped as a zebra by the time we arrive all the way down to Delilah’s town. Still, having darker blue stripes at the very least beat out having a gaping wound in my leg!

“So, how is he?” Cora asked calmly as he beat his wide wings, coming in for a soft landing in the rec area.

“He seems fine.” Buck gave a shrug as he walked over to the kitchenette and grabbed one of the porcelain cups from the cupboard. “The gunshot wound was a fairly simple fix, though not the fix I wanted. But, he doesn’t seem to have any adverse effects from the G forces he endured.” Pouring a small bit of the freshly brewed coffee from the pot, Buck gave a long and relaxed inhaling sniff of the hot brew before finishing his thoughts. “Then again, while dealing with those forces wouldn’t be unusual for a pegasus, I think that having lost a leg actually helped him in this case.” Pulling the mug up to his lips, he took a small sip of it and smiled wider.

If I’d been the one with the coffee right now, I would have spit it all over the floor.

“How the fuck does having lost a leg help me!?” I flailed myself so hard that I was nearly able to stand up. But seriously? I may have adjusted to having lost it, but it was far from a good thing to have happened to me.

“Calm down there.” Cora deadpanned and rolled his eyes. “With your amputation, you have less blood in your lower body than the average flyer. Less blood means you are less affected by G forces.” Cupping his talon around his beak, Cora stroked it as if he were grooming a beard. “Yes, the connection is clear now. The only talon I’ve seen perform a dive like that had also lost a leg.” Cocking his eyebrow at me, he smirked. “Though, you’re lucky your prosthetic is lighter than the solid steel cyberhoof he became stuck with.”

The heavy hoofsteps of somepony below silenced the three of us. I perked my ears and cringed as it sounded like half of Boiler’s stacked junk in the ice hold was knocked over. A muffled obscenity that I couldn’t quite make out came through the floor from what could have only been a very annoyed Howitzer. Slowly though, he made his way up the Ice hold stairs, and shoved the hatch open.

“Alright, Doc.” Howitzer spoke up as he came into view, and both Buck and I emit the least subtle gasps ever uttered from the state of his head. “Fix me up.”

What was most notably wrong with him hit me a little too hard, and I realized that Delilah had lied when she said his injuries were ‘nothing major’.

I looked into the bloody and pulpy socket where his left eye had once sat, and reflexively winced as just the barest hint of pain pushed its way through the chill from behind my fake eye. However, with as regrettable as that was, past that, he didn’t look too bad. It was… hard to describe, actually. I couldn’t see a single open wound on him, other than his missing eye of course. Even so, the entire left side of his head was absolutely matted and drenched in blood.

“I really do hope we’re done with losing eyes on this trip, because at this rate, it won’t be long until I’m the one who loses an eye. And if you want me to be your doctor, I pretty much require the two I’ve got.” Buck sighed and put down his coffee before heading into our container with a defeated look across his face. “Still, I’m going to need a lot more bandages if this keeps up…”

“Eeyup.” Cora simply shook his head. “Spalling’ll do that to you. Perhaps now you’ll consider wearing goggles inside Bessy?”

“Nah, it’d only get in the way of using the optics for the cannon. Even missing an eye, I can still aim well enough to eradicate anything if I can point the muzzle at it.” Howitzer gave out a snort that ended up pulling a wide grin across his broad muzzle as he looked at me. “And like Lucky said before, we can’t have Night here hogging all the injuries to himself, can we?”

“I certainly hope that’s a joke.” Delilah’s lax tone was off putting for the delay the raiders had caused. Really, I’d expected her to sound a bit more frustrated than anything. “Most of us on the way up were fortunate enough on this trip to escape major injuries, but I sympathise with the Doc. We can’t afford to get injured at the rate we have been.”

“Which is why things need to change.” Delilah grunted as she continued and climbed the last few steps up into the Rec area. Stepping around Howitzer, she took a moment to just breathe and scan her eyes across the charred black wastes. “The Sun Dogs may have rejected my offer, but the goal still stands.”

“Trying to build an army isn’t going to help. Not against someone like Solomon.” Cora crossed his talons as he leaned against the rec area table. “A precise and overwhelming strike would be a much better idea.”

“No.” Delilah offered back without breaking her gaze from the wastes. “Those like Solomon only know and respect one thing. Power. A show of united force will shake the very foundations of his world, and show him that he’s not as high and mighty as he might think. And while it may not be as precise as a surgical strike, you don’t use a scalpel to destroy a foundation. You use a sledge hammer.”

Turning around, Delilah pushed her glasses further up onto the bridge of her muzzle. She squinted and looked between Cora and I as if she weren’t sure if she could even trust us. Still, I didn’t like the tone she’d picked up in Lil’ Canterlot. I can’t claim to really know, but to me it felt like she’d snapped a bit. She didn’t feel like the same Delilah I’d met up in Inuvik. Then again, I wasn’t the same Night anymore that she’d met up there either.

“From now on, Night, you’re to wear the reloading sling when you’re on patrol, and I’m setting aside a small stock for you to use. You’re going to keep it loaded with one of Bessy’s shells, ready to drop at a moment’s notice.” Just the smallest curl of her lips into a smile unnerved me even more. “There’s little room in the ruins of Cantercross to maneuver the convoy, and there’s bound to be more trouble ahead. So the second something seems off, the moment you see something out of place, I want you to dive like you did in this last fight and drop that shell to obliterate whatever it is.”

“But Ma’am,” An appalled gasp made its way out of Howitzer’s muzzle as he turned to face her. “We’re running low on shells as…”

“Enough.” Delilah snapped and spun around to him. Howitzer visibly shrunk back as her glare burned. “We will restock once we reach Cordite headquarters, but I will not risk the chance of us not even making it that far to begin with. Understand?” She kept her burning glare on Howitzer until he nodded slowly. Even then, she simply ground her teeth and growled as she turned back toward staring at the wastes. “I’m the boss of this company, and you are my employees. The questioning of my orders ends now.”

While this was how I’d expected to see Delilah from this delay, I didn’t like this new attitude at all. I watched as she turned and walked off, disappearing into her container and shutting the door behind her. The moment she was gone, both Cora and Howitzer gave sighs of relief.

“I’ve never seen her this bad before.” Lucky spoke up through the cracked door to his container.

“She’s never been under this kind of stress before either.” Howitzer groaned as he turned and walked over toward the couch, plopping down on it as Buck stepped out of our container. He wore a distant and disappointed look across his muzzle that perfectly described the mood we’d all been left in from that. “But I shouldn’t have spoken up. I never even considered stopping at Cordite to resupply.”

“That’s no excuse.” The words tumbled out of my muzzle like always, but I didn’t fight them. “While I’m willing to do what it takes to keep us all safe, I can’t say that building an army will do anything against Solomon. Wasn’t the whole point of not fighting him because he could just hire off whoever he wants to fight back?”

“Delilah has a point with her plan though.” Lucky spoke up, groaning out his words before there was a heavy thump that came from his room. Cora simply rolled his eyes and walked over to Lucky’s container and stepped inside. “Oh, thank you.” Lucky remarked quickly. After a moment, he walked back out with the still blindfolded Zebra slung over his shoulders. “As she was saying, Solomon does respect power, it’s just part of Saddle Arabian culture. Money is power, and whoever has the most money is King. So if Delilah can pool together enough allies, then while Solomon can hire enough ponies to fight back…”

“He’d effectively spend away his chance at becoming king.” Buck surprisingly cut him off. “But… that’s a risky move. We don’t know how much he can afford to spend, do we?”

“He’s practically got a blank check at the moment thanks to Mr. Wizard.” Cora groaned as he set Lucky down between Howitzer and I on the couch. “An alliance with a future king of Saddle Arabia could potentially give Mr. Wizard enough resources that he could directly take control over most of the frozen north. And unless he either dies, or decides that Solomon is a bad investment, that blank check isn’t going to change in the near future.”

“I don’t trust you to deal with something as big as Solomon’s brother.” Lamia’s words wandered back through my mind.

“His brother…” I spoke up, pulling confused looks from just about everyone. “Lamia said that Solomon’s brother, Prince Brayef or some such, just unexpectedly showed up. If we could get him on our side, then we’d definitely be able to outspend him.”

“No.” Cora shook his head. “From what I understand, and as unlikely as it may seem, Solomon is actually the best candidate for the throne. His brothers are all monsters who have spent the last decade conquering the lands around Saddle Arabia and enslaving their inhabitants. And if those they conquered didn’t cooperate, then it turned into genocide. While Solomon may not care for ponykind, he knows better than to kill off potential customers and trade partners.”

“Then maybe…” I blinked a few times as I tried to think about things. There was no way we could raise an army just from settlements that would be big enough to get rid of Solomon, and I doubted that Delilah was willing to spend herself into bankruptcy either. But if we didn’t want his brother’s on the throne, and as much as the thought sickened me, then we’d have to somehow convince him to leave without killing him.

“I… I don’t know.” Hanging my head, I just knew that there had to be some way to resolve this.

“Well, it’s no use worrying about it at the moment.” Lucky sighed. “For now, just focus on getting through Cantercross. It’s going to be hard enough as is to get through this dump of a city.”

“Alright… there we go.” Buck took a step back as he finished tying the quickly staining crimson magical bandages around Howitzer’s head. Held in one of his paws was a battery rigged up to a copper coil that reminded me of the device that had been used to pull the bullets out of him back at Filly Crossing. Except now, it was covered in tiny metal fragments I’d assumed had previously been embedded in Howitzer’s head. “Given a day, you should be all healed up. Minus the eye, of course. Your sight will be fuzzy for a while as you adjust, with some headaches and such. But there’s no scarring on the inside of the socket, so there shouldn’t be any lingering pain.”

“It’ll take some getting used to, but I’ll be alright, Doc.” Howitzer smirked and looked over at me. “If anything, I’ll just get some pointers for adjusting from Night.”

“Speaking of…” Lucky whimpered as he lifted his hoof and prosthetic, prodding them at the blindfold still tied over his eyes. “When… will I be able to see again?”

“Well…” Buck huffed as he curled his paw around the underside of his chin. “I was going to leave it on for another day or so just to be safe, but you have been making a remarkable recovery so far. So I guess we could try removing it and start you adjusting again.” Stepping up, Buck reached a claw under the side of the blindfold and hooked it. “Now keep your eyes closed, and when I tell you, open them slowly.”

Carefully, he dragged it up and off Lucky’s head. I don’t know why, but for some reason, part of me had expected to see a pair of gaping sockets where his closed eyelids were. Thankfully though, the only part of Lucky’s head that didn’t seem to be scared or damaged were his eyes.

“Hold on one sec.” Cora stepped up beside me, and with a quick swipe of his talons, plucked Double Delta’s sunglasses right off the top of my head. “Sorry, Night, but he needs them right now more than you do.” With a flick, he set the dark aviators down onto Lucky’s muzzle and pushed them back until they sat pretty much against his eyelids.

“Alright, now remember, open them slowly.” Buck said as both he and Cora stepped back from him.

It was hard to tell from behind the dark sunglasses, but for the first time in quite a while, Lucky opened his eyes.

“It’s… fuzzy, but I can see you, Doc.” He blinked a few times as his muzzle cracked open into a fantastically wide smile, and he gave out a stiff but short laugh as he looked between Buck and Cora. “I can see!” Of course, then he turned and looked to Howitzer. “Oh, geez, Howitzer. That’s rough.”

“Said the pot to the kettle.” Howitzer snorted through his own smirk before nodding over toward me. “Or multiple kettles, as is the case.”

Lucky turned and froze as he looked at me. He looked over the scars that Galina had given me, and his joy filled smile shrank. Again it was hard to see through the tinted glasses, but I could see his blue eyes had locked on the emerald gem in my prosthetic eye.

“Woah, Night…” He spoke at almost a whisper. Without warning or hesitation though, he leaned himself over and wrapped his hoof around me to pull me into a hug. “Thank you for being here.” He let loose a whimpering sniffle as his wet cheek matted my neck fur. “Thank all of you for everything. I may not be able to walk, but it’s because of all of you that I’m still even alive.”

“Speaking of which.” Howitzer groaned as he pushed himself up. “I think I’m going to go have a word with my sister. The repairs shouldn’t take too much longer, and I’m going to remind her to build you that wheelchair once we’re back on the road.” He reached out and gave the Zebra a firm pat on the back. “We’ll have you up and about again in no time, Lucky.”

“As for us, Night,” Cora sighed and nodded toward the Ice hold, “We need to go get you set up with that reloading rig and get back in the air. Hispano could probably use a break before we get back on the road.”

“Right.” I hung my head a bit as I tucked my wings up tightly against my back.

While I didn’t mind hauling a shell around under me, I had to wonder how adding yet another weighty object to my load was going to affect my flight. Sure, the jump pack helped me to get up into the sky, but if I lost too much altitude or airspeed before it charged, then I was going to have problems keeping as close of a watch on things as Delilah wanted. But that was a problem I’d have to solve when it came up.

For now, I just needed to prepare myself to enter the city of Cantercross…

The path that the now elevated highway cut through the wall of bent and baked steel was something I’d almost missed. Twisting and turning amongst the crumbling brick and concrete of the old industrial district, it was an artificial canyon that felt as spooky as any foals tale could be. All that was missing was for it to be a dark and stormy night...

The groans of the melted steel buildings had given way to a low, almost rhythmic pulsing. It wasn’t exactly like the noise an archano engine would give off. No, it sounded more like a heartbeat punctuated by groans in the breeze. Deep in my mind, I wondered if it was in fact, something big living within the metal walls. And with how big Tephra was for a dragon back in Mare’s Lake, I’d hoped that it wasn’t an even larger dragon just waiting to pop out and cook us all alive.

The route the four lane highway followed through the old city was barely wide enough for Bertha to fit through. Though to their credit, the Road Crew had done an admittedly amazing job at keeping the old roadway structure patched up and clear of so much as even small bits of metal and glass. While maintaining thousands of miles worth of road was a feat in and of itself, this highway through the city must have been a point of pride for them.

Still, no amount of work the Road Crew could do could seal the literal thousands of gaping and open holes in the melted buildings around us. However, as unnerving as those holes were, the further we drove into the city, the more I began to notice them change. Bit by bit, the interiors of the buildings began to straighten up, becoming more uniform. Not only that, but it wasn’t long before the amber rays of the late afternoon sun began to show through some of them.

The highway curved slightly, pulling around the charred remains of an old triangular shaped building. Unlike the others, this building caught me off guard with the fact that some of the higher floors had tattered clothes covering the windows, billowing in the soft breeze that pushed through the thin steel canyon.

Behind those coverings, I could see artificial lights that still worked, and even what looked to be a foal peeking out to watch as we drove past. The foal smiled at me, waving energetically as I soared through the air only a few floors below. Sadly, I was too lost in the sudden appearance of an inhabited building to wave back. Though, I couldn’t really blame myself as I turned my attention back to where the road was now heading.

I squinted as the setting sun beamed down onto me with full force. The whole damn city just past the curve opened up into a wide clearing. A cleared area a few blocks across in size stretched out on either side of the highway, as if somepony had decided to clear cut the buildings here like it had been a forest, and leave the inner city looking like it was a steel fortress. And what a fantastical looking fortress it was.

Ahead, lay buildings that for lack of better words, looked completely out of their time. They were almost untouched by the destruction that befell the rest of Cantercross, still sporting things like intact windows, and working exterior lights. It was a densely packed sea of concrete, glass, and neon that stretched up defiantly into the evening sky.

Even the bright, multi-ringed exterior of a towering Ministry of Awesome branded building in the center of what remained of the ‘intact’ part of the city gave me pause. It shone with a neon glow that would have put the entirety of Neighvarro’s downtown districts to shame! Near the peak of its thin, cone-like shape, six bulging rings pulsed with colors, alternating through each color of the rainbow one after another. I’d only heard stories about the old Ministry of Awesome hubs, and glimpsed the occasional black and white photo in articles, but it really was something else to behold.

For being only a small, now ‘secluded’ part of Cantercross, this huddled and secluded collection of buildings was nearly the size of downtown Mare’s Lake. It was only now that I could quite comprehend why Rook had laughed at me for not understanding just how ‘big’ a city could get. Still, the polarizing mix of light and shadows that the bunched up intact skyscrapers cast, gave the look of a city at war with itself.

Of course, that wasn’t helped by the monolithic tubular structure that stood near the waterside part of the city. It was only dwarfed by the Ministry of Awesome hub, and the various wires and skeletal construction that stabilized the tower made me think it had once served some sort of job as a radio antenna or something. However, the overly large rectangular red flag that held a single white W that flew from it gave me a terrible feeling in my gut.

Behind us, the melted steel wall was bent and curved, stretching over us slightly. From this side, it looked like it was indeed a steel wave waiting to crash down on the city, ready to pull it into the same state that the rest of the wasteland was in. Even so, from this side, I could see that some of the buildings looked like they’d been cut in half, or scraped away altogether to create the barren void we currently were driving through.

The Convoy moved along the elevated highway further across the cleared and flat expanse around the city, all the while, the pulsing sound I’d heard had shifted tone. Sharp screatches of metal accompanied each swift beat, which now distinctly came from the right side of the clearing. Looking over, I blinked a few times as my eyes ran from the cleared ground to the open sky.

The shattered pavement and debris on the floor of both sides of the clearing was churned up in two distinct lines, leading straight along the clearing like the ancient tracks of some enormous beast. Following those tracks however, lead me to an even more confounding sight of what looked to be that ‘ancient beast’ itself.

“Celestia… what the hell is that?” I couldn’t hold on to those words if I’d wanted to as my eyes took in the oddity before me.

A machine bigger than I’d ever imagined could be built, rested upon eight sets of massive metal tracks. Four massive steel booms extended along its centerline from a central metal housing, and was connected by hundreds of taught and loose cables. On the rearmost boom, dozens of different concrete slabs sat together in large bricks, each collection stacked slightly offset to the next to ‘climb’ up the back of the boom. On the ‘front’ boom however, was the real oddity. An enormous circular ‘saw’ blade spun as the whole machine slowly turned towards the wall of steel that made up the northern half of the old city.

The saw blade itself, while considered thin compared to the rest of the machine, must have been three ponies wide. The saw’s jagged ‘teeth’ looked hollow on the inside, and I reflexively cringed as they plunged into the inside of the steel wall. The pulsing noise grew louder as each tooth gouged and scooped out entire floors at a time from the broken buildings, dumping them onto what looked like a conveyor belt that ran through the forward boom and straight into the obscured heart of the machine.

“That’s the Reitpony two nine three, the largest excavator ever built.” Hardcase’s voice picked up through a short burst of static on the radio. “An engineering marvel.” He sighed contently as I could only assume he was looking upon the machine with a longing gaze. “Isn’t she sure something?” I’ll at least give it to Hardcase, that even though he’s got some weird fetish for giant or impractical machines, this one was actually worth fawning over.

“Yeah, something bought and paid for by Burro Industries to mine shale at a quarry almost a hundred miles southeast of here. Annoyingly, it was stolen and is being used to clear out the ruins of old Cantercross.” Delilah chipped in with her normal tone. Wait, so it made this whole clearing!? “And unfortunately for us, it’s also now the central union headquarters of the Road Crew.”

“Pretty impressive, wouldn’t you say, Night?” Hardcase gave a light hearted laugh over the radio. “If it comes down to it, it’s not going to be so easy to just drop a few grenades on it to clear, let alone that shell you have slung under you on top of that.”

“To be honest, I don’t think that even the SFG could have handled something this big…” I blinked a few times as the distinct possibility of having to fight around that beast filtered into my mind. We’d already had to fight pretty much every other road crew vehicle we’d come across, so why would our luck spare us from this?

“Always nice to know we have fans of Large Marge.” The arrogant and smooth voice of a stranger came over the radio. The strange stallion offered his own light hearted laugh as the soft rumble of an archano engine started up just inside the highway offramp that plunged deep into the shining neon city. “So you’re the convoy who’s been the pain in my mother’s ass. Well then, it brings me great pleasure in requesting that you submit to my crew so that she may finally deal with… I’m sorry, what’s the name of your leader? Lilly? Dandylion? It was a flower, I know that much...”

“Delilah.” Delilah snorted sharply and simply. “Burro.”

“Wait, as in the actual Burro Industries, Burro?” The stallion giggled like a foal on the other side of the radio. “Shit, this just keeps getting better and better! We’ve got a lot of your equipment still hanging around.” He caught himself mid laugh, forcing it back as he tried to speak in a more serious tone. “If my mother knew it was the Burro Industries head messing up our representatives, she’d probably have thought it was fair enough of a trade. Still, I’ve heard a lot about you Mrs. Burro, so this meeting should prove to be quite interesting!”

Just past the first few buildings of the inner city, a whole other convoy of construction vehicles pulled up from the off and on ramps that laid just out of sight. It was a dozen or so vehicles, all heavily armed and armored construction equipment like normal. However, the large vehicle that took its place in the center of them stood out from the rest. It wasn’t as big as either Knuckle Boom or Double Drum’s vehicles, but it was its own kind of different.

It was a longer, thinner vehicle, sitting on six small-ish sized wheels. The single pony cab was huddled at the back over four of the wheels, perched high up barely in front of it’s oversized, exposed, and glowing red hot archano engine. A pair of exhaust pipes seemed to have been fitted on as well, belching flames every few moments, and giving it the feeling of a machine built for raw power. A long length of the machine was dedicated to a central raised bar that was the centerline of it, sticking far out ahead of it to the tip of the machine where a pair of wheels sat. Secured underneath and perpendicular to that central bar, was a long and extremely sharp looking blade that in total, stretched all the way across most of the four lane highway.

“Ma’am?” I spoke up, debating on if I should start to charge the jump pack or not. I know that she said to dive on any hostiles without hesitation, but… I had to have some hope that this didn’t have to be a fight. Even so, I felt like I needed to let her know that I was ready. “Just say the word.”

“The word?” The strange stallion laughed again. “Well, you’re either quite brave, or quite stupid. Either way, do not mistake my instructions and passing commentary as a polite but optional request. You will come with us peacefully, or we can go the difficult route where you will be destroyed here and now. It’s your choice, but unless you start to slow down, I’m going to have to assume you’d like to do this the hard way.”

“Alright.” Delilah grumbled. “Night, pack it in and get back on board Bertha. To the rest of the crew, stand down. We’re going to submit to them for now.”

“Awww.” Hardcase groaned over the radio. “And here I was hoping we were done with this whole bit back at the Ranger’s base…”

Well, this wasn’t a fight yet at least, so that much had to be a good thing. Still, as I started a slow, winding corkscrew descent, I couldn’t fight my sinking feeling that this would all go sideways soon enough. While Double Drum had been nice enough, we were still the ones to destroy his machine. And in the case of Knuckle Boom, we had hardly even met the mare before melting her and her entire crew.

In my slow flight, my vision kept locking onto the monster machine off in the distance. Could we even afford to take on the main headquarters of the Road Crew? We didn’t have the SFG anymore, and while Bessy’s cannon could do good work out on the roads against single targets, it wasn’t going to be nearly enough firepower to take down half the vehicles they have. We were just one convoy against an army, and there were no odds in that.

Still, the odds hadn’t really been in our favor this whole damn trip, which I’m sure is why Delilah’s been looking to try to turn them back around. Then again, maybe that’s actually why she didn’t want me to attack them just now. She may have gone about it the wrong way back at Sun Dog City, but perhaps if we play our cards right, we can walk into their camp as troublemakers, and walk out as friends.

Author's Notes:

A big thanks to TheFurryRailfan as always for helping to fix the chapter up!

And of course, another big thanks to Kkat for putting out and letting us all use the Fallout: Eqeustria setting!