The next morning came barreling in all too soon and hit me hard, the sun shining through the damn window and blinding me as I groggily came to. Dreams, whenever I had them, were often so muted and bland that they weren’t worth remembering. Sleep wasn’t quite the refuge from reality that it used to be but even my hard ass couldn’t say no to it after a long day walking the Wastes. The lack of any notably loud pops in my skeleton as I got to my paws was notable as most pony-sized beds left my neck in knots and my lower back in convoluted twists in the worst of places. Breakfast was out and waiting for me from the night before, a Triple-A sized MRE of spaghetti and meatballs and another lukewarm SparkleCola. Even in the desert, just being out of the sun was just enough to get by and a hot meal was usually welcome. However...what I wouldn’t fucking give to get my claws on an ice-cold Cola… Talon only knew how long it had been since my last experience having one. The flavor hits you just right in the back of the beak...and if you close your eyes hard enough it almost feels like a piece of home.

While the gallon sized bag of spaghetti warmed up with its nifty little chemical furnace, I flicked the cap off the bottle of cola with a talon and swilled a third of the bottle into my spacious beak. Taking small sips as I went, I spent the cooking time by slipping on the wide-bodied plate carrier I had scavenged early after leaving the Stable over the basic tan shirt I wore. If there was one benefit that came from Equestria non-violently allying with the Greifenländer, it would have to be the wider selection of armors for Griffins that came about as a result. That being said though, the majority of shit out there was sized for the smaller Continental Griffins that were in primary contact with Equestria.This left those of us with some Inland Gryph DNA running strong in our blood with an only marginally wider selection to choose from. At seven foot two, I was in a weird limbo between the two major species of lion-birds which made sizing even harder since Equestria had managed the production of Shoreline armor platforms so local manufacturing could turn its attention to the production of firearms. Meanwhile, the Kaisar government had handled the manufacturing of special materiel packages for the heavy fireteams made up of purely Inland Gryphons that were as infrequent as they were brutal in the field. For myself and my fellow unlucky bastards who had a little of both in them...we had scraps.

It had been...an experience coming across the dead fuck who had originally worn the carrier I wore now. So many years of seeing death by old age rather than by violent means had made the memories of the shitwalk that was the War prior not so harsh on the mind. Seeing the poor feathered bastard missing a head from it being eaten off by one of the many Ghouls of the Badlands...the far past had come back into focus reminding me that life on the outside was just as brutal and violent as it had been when I had first left it. In the time since, the carrier had carried me through one naked engagement after another when I had the misfortune of being out of my Power Armor. While the original inserts had been a plain BR-500 steel plate, I had been fortunate enough to happen upon the untouched last stand of some nameless Master Sergeant in the General Army that had died from Rads leaving behind a pristine set of prime Celestium plates. With a bit of work from a welding tool, an industrial saw and remembering my basics from shop class, I had managed to comfortably incorporate the Celestium plates into the center mass of the front and back carriers while using the spare steel for some optional shoulder pieces that could be hung from the shoulder straps.

Checking on the spaghetti for the third time and swigging the next third of the bottle, I had enough time to fuck around with the tactical rig I had buckled, reveted and Velcroed onto the carrier and down my hindlegs. When it came to accessories, as long as you had Velcro or open space for strapping, it was one-size-fits-all allowing me a degree of customization that felt almost sinful. Mag pouches and holsters came in all matter of sizes, configurations and levels of quality with the best ones naturally coming from some sort of military source. Even then there were still even more levels of quality to be found when poking about the bodies of deceased soldiers. Nylon and canvas were sufficient but wore down too quickly for one living a dangerous, gun-friendly life. The real prize were the Kevyarn and Falco polymer plastics shit that had seemingly endless lifespans in the field and were what made up the bulk of my rig. Even separated from my armor, I was armed to the beak with enough lead soup to boil the brains of a least fifty dumbasses who felt it smart to fuck around with a pile of muscle and feathers.

Without even noticing my morning hunger said fuck it to more waiting and was already stuffing my face with warm-ish spaghetti. What I was really in the mood for was something big and meaty but being amongst a predominantly pony population, it was a bit uncommon finding a butcher of any repute. While the meatballs of the carnivore edition MRE lightly scratched the urge for meat, I would need to look soon for something larger and pray ponies out West liked their meat a bit more often than those Eastward. Even a gallon of the military’s finest preserved cuisine was only barely enough to feel somewhat content in the stomach department and with the journey ahead, nothing made the road longer than walking it on an empty stomach. Since I was uncertain if I could come across more MREs out here, I was forced to resort to the step down that was canned meat and government issued bread. A poor mare’s breakfast of yesteryear but it beat the irradiated slop the poor of the present had to endure. Like I had to tell some ponies in the past...just because I could eat Radroach or Dartling meat didn’t mean I wanted to. Bugs were still just fucking that, bugs. If I was gonna sink my beak into something dead, a basic starting point would be if it has fuckin red blood or not?

Finishing the last of the Cola and tossing the empty bottle into the trash can in the room along with the rest of my garbage, I finished loading my revolver and put it in my external holster. As old as my Power Armor itself, the Big Iron on my hip was the FillyArms Castle Dragoon, a Griffin-sized hand cannon chambered in the exceptional .454 Castle round. The Steel Ranger Corps, really just a mechanized armored infantry branch of the General Army, had once upon a time run off the same hierarchy of ranks as the GA rather than having a fancy internal system of rank like the Desert Rangers. Couldn’t even join the Light Brigade with their semi-powered T-35s unless you were at least a Corporal and had proven to be a life worth investing better hardware into. Having graduated as a Leutnate from a Kaisarlands military academy prior to us being dragged into the War, my rank was transferred into the Equestrian Armed Forces as a Second Lieutenant rather easily. As the cherry on top, I had been preselected for placement in the Heavy Brigade with the bulky but serviceable T-45 model of Power Armor. Few years of tearing ass and leading Rangers into battle later and I had gotten my claws on the venerable ‘double butter sticks’ as the Captains’ rank pins were once called.

Any Ranger that lived long enough to see at least two promotions were inducted into the Lion’s Pride, the Veterans of combat with the Zebs taken from the name of one of the toughest species in their lands. At that point, taking a page from the book of the Desert Rangers, every Lion was presented with a custom built magical energy pistol as a graduation present. Being a Steel Ranger, naturally I had extensive experience using those fancy ass atomizer whatnots but had never grown a fondness for them like so many others had. Despite the relative drop in power, I had opted for one of the limited-issue FillyArms Dragoons made as part of a joint Equestrian\Greifenländer arms project meant to stimulate the economy or some shit that no longer mattered. She was a lovely, sturdy gun cast from solid pieces of Celestium Steel in the Old Kingdom while the final assembly, blackening and engraving was done in Equestria at FillyArms main production facility in Appleloosa. Considered a throwback of sorts to an older era of Equestria’s experimentation with firearms, the design had called to me ever since I had first laid eyes on it while thumbing through gun magazines while on leave. With a swivel-action cylinder that could be interchanged with one in .45-70 Celestia which was more abundant than the more powerful .454, the Castle Dragoon fired just as smoothly as it had on first test-firing it so many years ago. With the bravado of military life egging me on and no one to stop me, I had gotten inscribed on the length of either side of the barrel the phrase, ‘For Those Who Stand Against Me, I Dub Thee Unforgiven’. And thus was born her name, the Unforgiven. My trusty multipurpose problem solver, best friend and occasional Post-War ATM card.

All set to go underneath, it was high time to be back in steel and the comforting safety it provided. Of the original T-51d armored plating I had been issued upon becoming a Captain (my ceremonial second promotion since initiation), the only remaining piece forming my current hybridized armor was my helmet, but even that was kinda pushing it. Great as the T-51 series had been, when I came across the use of a superior model used by the Paladins of the modern Steel Rangers...well, when we parted on bitter terms I couldn’t help but relieve a few of them of their armor. The T-60m, as it was designated in the classified records obtained in the secure facility wherein the cache was found, was as highly advanced as it was limited in number. The ‘m’ suffix denoted ‘multipurpose’, an all too apt description for the purely Celestium Steel armor platform on a fourth generation servo chassis. While the entire T-60 line was entirely designed to fit your typical mare or stallion, it certainly did not prevent me from at least salvaging the exterior armored plating and cobbling together parts until it fit my size. Regrettably there was no salvaging any of the fourth-gen motion servos for upgrading my original T-51 chassis as I just lacked the tech to adapt them to my much larger chassis. However, a decent trade off was the lighter armor plating compared to the heavier polyceramic and high-carbon steel stuff which allowed the old servos to do more than they used to.

As for my helmet...the only truly original thing left to it was the slightly stylized avian skull paint job that I had to touch up every decade or so. Once a Plague Bird, always a Plague Bird as the old motto in the barracks went after all. Other than the ancient motif of a long dead Steel Ranger Firesquad, the rest of the helmet was a Griffin type T-51d with some eh...personally added ‘aftermarket parts’. I had upgraded the optics package with the superior version installed in Veteran Desert Ranger helmets that allowed for far greater levels of magnification as well as a wide selection of vision filters for added fields of view. Crossing the hellscape that was the remains of the Southern Front, I had ample access to a few dozen old Vet helmets taken off either skeletal remains or the soon-to-be skeletal remains of a roaming Ghoul still wearing the armor. Another neat find was the highly sensitive long-range communications package from the T-37r, the then latest model of semi-powered infantry armor specifically designed for deep dive reconnaissance teams. It was thanks to this in particular that I had first regained connection with the GIMP satellite as only its antenna and internal processor were sufficiently strong enough to punch through the highly charged atmosphere and make semi-regular contact with the network. The addition of the radio was easy enough as there was thankfully a preexisting port for limited issue radio upgrades but, the eight-inch antenna sticking out of the large attachment on the right side of my helmet was obviously not an original part.

As the Suit sealed shut around me, the pneumatic seal hissed softly closed around my body followed by a message on my HUD that indicated my three-hundred minutes of EVA breathing was on immediate standby. A quick run-through of flexibility and power tests and we were cleared to head out as soon as I felt like it. With my PipBuck being attached to my arm inside the chassis, the armor docked directly with it and, through the fancy microfilament crystal tech lining the chassis, I could control my PipBuck remotely using only my thoughts. The HUD that backlit my visor lenses interfaced with the Eyes Forward Sparkle system displaying for me a wealth of info such as a compass with beacon trackers, the load on any weapons on my person, my relative state of health through the Medical Diagnostics System, a reactive Geiger counter for RadZones and a meter for S.A.T.S. The StableTec Assisted Targeting System was...well, there just ain't a way to badmouth something of such usefulness and brilliance. Magically amplified microdoses of adrenaline for precision shooting and safer reconnaissance? I was totally on board for any kind of kickass leg-ups on the yuppy fucks vying for my head. With barely a flick of my thoughts the HUD displayed the map I had been viewing the afternoon before.

" Hmm if I remember right there was a possible entry point around...here." I said, focusing my thoughts towards narrowing down the map view to the right area. “Hope to fuck there’s still some gear worth looting in that shithole... Let’s see what the GIMP has to say on those Hellhounds.”

The live-feed satellite still image was much crisper than the feed from my PipBuck had been earlier as now I had better lighting for the image as a whole and the updated optics system I had installed into the helmet provided a cleaner picture. There were at least a dozen or so Hellhound shaped mounds of pixels marked with a red tag across the expanse of the impact zone but, there was also an almost certain entry point three-quarters of the way down the crater wall. On the Southwestern side, a large black mass of pixels occupied space in what seemed to be a concrete wall of some sort, most likely a hallway or part of a smaller room. The destination was only roughly twenty miles south and the ambient radiation readings from GIMP were well within the tolerance range of the T-51’s radiological shielding. Aside from the big mutated murder dogs wielding big guns, this was going to be relatively easy. It was highly doubtful the Hellhounds had burrowed too deeply into what was likely the most secure military structure on the West coast meaning the deeper I went, the better shit I was likely to find. If it wasn’t big enough to fit their long-clawed paws, the Hellhounds just ignored it entirely; and with high-security doors usually being electrified against drilling, Hellhounds quickly learned they couldn’t claw their way into everything.

With the path locked into my E.F.S, I left my room and started down the hallway back towards the front door. As I came out into the main lobby, I glanced around the half bar/half stage theater for Rose. Noticing her behind the bar instead of the inns’ front desk, I came over and handed her a bag of three-hundred caps. I was going to be here awhile if Macintosh was worth a damn and the work out here was as good as I’d heard while on the road.

"Here's for the room. Three-hundred should be enough for another ten days should I need a place while I’m near New Pegasus itself." I said, holding up the key so she knew I still had and wanted it.

She smiled and, after a moment of chuckling at the bag in her sultry Southern tone, pushed the bag back towards me while shaking her head.

" You know what, handsome? Keep th’ room key fer now and Ah’ll make sure it's ahlways ready fer ya. Big ol’ birds like yew need ah place tah stay too don’t ya?"

I nodded, not entirely sure how to respond to the sudden gesture of generosity by a total, if good-looking, stranger.

“Well then, consider th’ SugarApple yer home while ya stay here darlin’.” She crooned, batting her well-rehearsed eyelashes at me. “Ah’ve always had a thang for th’ big, beefy type. Exotic meats be ah girl’s dream after all!”

Sweet Celestia’s soggy ass did this girl have few shits to give it seemed. Either the chicks out West were all this easy to get or Stable 39 had done more wonders to my sex appeal than I had thought…

“Well...um...thanks.” I managed to stammer out, the tinny sound of the mic hiding some of the fluster in my response. “I guess I can uh...use the money for something...else. Yeah.”

She exploded into giggles of delight and purred, “My, my...ah beefcake an’ ah flustered one at that! Gimmie ah ring if yer feelin’ frisky sugar. Ah’ll be waitin’!”

With that situation hastily dealt with, I left a still giggling Rose behind and headed out into Freeside. The early morning sun being out meant that the streets were rather alive with all types walking to and fro on their way to trade, head home, take a shit, whatever the fuck their personal lives had going on. Street vendors lined the large roadway leading right up to the entrance to the Stirrup, hawking their wares at any who came near and always on the lookout for someone who looked heavy on the caps. Being so blessed as to be among that group, those vendors who could get past the 7ft power Griffin look attempted to lure me in for all sorts of shit. Everyone from junk merchants, Chem dealers, and gun brokers to assorted meat shops and high-risk gambling loan stands claimed their share of the People’s Stirrup. Passing up on glancing through the meat stands for a tasty morsel, I turned left back towards the open desert and began to follow the beacon marker on my HUD.

"At least it ain't snowing. Fucking hated that shit out in Manehatten." I mumbled to myself as I walked onward, grateful as always to the environmentally controlled interior of my armor for keeping me at just the right temperature no matter the climate.

As a last minute stop before truly leaving Freeside, I ducked into the nearest bar to grab just a few more SparkleColas to fend off my damned Sparklediction. Entering the bar, the eyes of everyone inside naturally turned to gawk at the gigantic bird that had just wandered into pony-sized accommodations. The quality of armor and weaponry around me, despite the rather grungy establishment, heavily hinted that this place was a hotspot for Merc groups and maybe even affiliated with the Syndicate, the ‘legendary’ organization said to rule the world of the killing elite on the whole Westcoast. That would explain why the response to my entry was rather...unremarkable. Mercs and Bounty Hunters came in armors of all makes and models big and small and one of em getting ahold of some PoA wasn’t out of the question for some.

Didn’t take long to find the large chalkboard lit up by a smattering of old stage lights. It was a Bounty Board like any other I had seen except for being significantly larger and more detailed than any I had previously encountered. I wasn't even a few steps away from the board when I noticed it. My own fucking name was on a Bounty Board this far away from the Citadel?! The fucking chalky white marks spelling out the name stuck out in bold letters with all the contrast of blood in the snow. I should have fucking known the goddamned SR were already a step ahead of me in logistics despite my connection to GIMP. Bastards knew why I came this way and wanted to make sure every Bounty Hunter from Manehattan to New Pegasus knew my name and face. And as if there wasn’t already enough shit to process, there was already someone attached to my name. To the right of mine, the name Killer Queen was spelled out in yet more bold print and the price for my head was a whopping twenty-five thousand caps. I was all too popular with the wrong fucking people and that kind of money was nothing to shit on.

I had never heard of my current Hunter before. Sounded like some posh Royal type from before the Great War or some stage name for a music artist. It was a shit sandwich alright but...I couldn’t blame the Hunter really, at that price who wouldn’t take up the bounty? Awareness meter at a full fucking high, I decided that the three Colas in my bags would have to be enough for the journey and I booked it right back outa there. With my cover blown before I could even establish it, I needed to keep out of sight and reduce my visibility to the public which was like hiding a Buffalo in a fucking rainbucket. For every generous soul like Rose, there were a hundred others willing to slit your throat for a bottle of water or a half-used Chem. Bounty or no Bounty, my goal remained unchanged as it suited my needs perfectly by getting me out of town and into a RadZone. When it came to options for dropping my public visibility to minimal levels, there were few better. Long as I stayed there, the only ones who could follow me in would be Ghouls and the Steel Rangers themselves. Either way, both made for less scary targets than Hellhounds or Tarantula Radwasps.

God it felt like everyone seemed to be staring at me as I made my way through the poorest parts of Freeside in my attempt to reach the open deserts beyond. Guess the sight of a 7ft tall Gryphon made even bigger by a set of PoA was a damned rare sight out here. Merc group by the name of Talons who naturally hired many Griffs had a hoofhold in the region but I felt confident in assuming none of them had even a T-45 in their ranks. Out West, away from the heartlands of Steel Ranger production with StableTec and the Ministry of War, the armor of choice out here were the various models of general-purpose combat armor called by the brass M-CAP. I’d seen plenty of ArmTech’s extensive catalog of combat armor and was impressed to say the least with their effectiveness even if it paled in comparison to my T-51. Anyone who could afford it wore it and out West, they were decently plentiful for the right price. Hell, Camp Macintosh was supposedly the site of at least half of ArmTech’s entire production line and they carried a lot more Griffin-sized shit than you’d expect. Might even find something in my size.

The desert greeted me back with open arms as the last vestiges of New Pegasus gave way to the dunes. In the back of my mind I wondered if there was really a need to head on into was basically an irradiated shit hole filled with Ghouls, muties, and all sorts of disgusting creatures. If I ignored the very obvious fact that I was worryingly low on ammo for most things in my arsenal, I suppose there really wasn’t a point. To only rub my beak into the shitpile more, my M2 carbine used hard-to-find .30cal ammunition which could only really be found in former military bases. Not like the piece of shit was really even worth the ammo. I had been stuck with that fuckstick ever since I had lost my previous service rifle in an engagement with Raiders forcing me to commandeer one of theirs. Though the M2 was a decently fine rifle, the one I had nicked off that fucker’s body hadn’t gone by that description in probably a good decade. Bolt jammed like a motherfucker, mag release was always sticky and the stock had probably been used to play angry golf with a few heads somewhere along the line. Once I got back from my first round of plundering, New Pegasus was the perfect place to shop around for a new piece. Someone kept these Mercs and whatnot up to their ears in beautiful guns and I was gonna find out who and make damned sure I got in on the action.

Open desert travel was definitely nowhere near as visually engaging as wandering the much more densely packed Eastcoast. If you could ignore how fucked everything was, walking the cities and towns out there provided a decent amount to look at. Old factories, gutted townhomes, abandoned stripmalls...bits and pieces of the old world that told a small piece of the story of the area you were in. Billboards, discarded newspapers and magazines...lotta ways to get a feel for how the place was like before the Great War and have something interesting to focus your eyes on as you walked. Hell, at the very fucking least they gave ya points of reference for navigation when talking to people who didn’t have a PipBuck. Not the desert though...same old boring ass bullshit every mile you walk. Only a small population lived out here in the Pre-War days and I found myself asking why, of all the places in the world to live, did they choose a goddamn desert? Especially nowadays with the weather of the post-apocalypse unchanged from overcast with a chance of fuck you in over two-hundred years.

With a sigh, my HUD followed my intentions and brought up my personal playlist of music. The list was small, even smaller than the rather tiny discography of that DJPoN3 on the public radio frequency. In it were a few songs from the homeland and a selection of the rock-n-roll era of music that had come and gone all too soon in the world. While I would definitely kill to get my talons on some new music, so far I considered myself lucky. I had access to shit nobody else seemed to all thanks to illegally transcribing some of my old vinyls into the recesses of my PipBuck ages ago. Could definitely walk faster and more focused with a good guitar solo shredding away in my ears and I needed their help getting my tired ass back into the desert. That bed was prickling the back of my mind like a cactus...

* * * * * * * * * * * *

An old train station had been my latest landmark to walk towards and one that was finally not just another cactus or particularly big ass rock. About five-hundred yards out though I noticed the compass lining the top of my HUD lighting up with a few red ticks meaning I had a decent enough distraction ahead. Twenty miles wasn’t a tough march by any stretch but with probably only six hours of sleep in the tank and over fifty miles traveled the day before, I was regretting setting out so early. Probably would have woken up to that Rose chick sharing that comfy ass bed with me but...wasn’t like that would have been a bad thing.

To the business at hand, by the time I casually walked past the lone decrepit station I already had my revolver unclasped and ready to practice my quickdraw. First Raider came from the roof, barely a word shouted from his throat before a .454 blew it out and he tumbled to the dirt clutching what was left of his neck in his hooves. Kicking his already useless kitchen knife to the side, I finished the job with a casual second shot to the head while darting my eyes around the station for the other three markers on my E.F.S. Didn’t have to wait long though before Ugly Thing 1 and Uglier Thing 2 crashed somewhat in unison through the boarded up station windows on the platform that came up to my shoulders. Correction, used to be up to my shoulders until I gave the old wings a heavy flap launching me up and into the air, crashing down with the authority of Steel.

“A buckethead bird!” The male laughed inexplicably, his second-second hand Cloudsdale Typewriter way too puny to even scratch my paint job. “Why won’t you just roast up nicely!”

“Seriously…?” I sighed, glancing between the two of them with my revolver pointed in the air, half-cocked.

“The fuck ya mean, ‘seriously’?” The mare spat, revving the engine of her Tearer, the old delightful portable combat chainsaw.

They weren’t even a worthy distraction for fuck’s sake with perception checks like theirs. S.A.T.S came online like a dream, the small meter in the bottom right slowly depleting as the spell ran its course, and the ugly world around me came to a near standstill. Calculating hit probabilities based on dozens of factors from weapon type, recorded combat performances, windage/elevation and a bunch of other statistical data, S.A.T.S gave the user godlike control over how they chose to fight. The HUD overlay changed slightly, previously relevant displays shrinking into their respective corners while the main field of view highlighted each body in a semi-transparent orange. Flicking my eyes about between the various body parts, I had an average hit probability above eighty-five percent anywhere I aimed for. Never been one for statistics but even my big dumb bird brain could feel comfy with those odds.

Boom! Boom! Two shots fired within the blink of an eye and the uglies were down and out leaving the brown station walls and platform with a fresh coat of red in some places. Number 4 was taking their sweet time showing up so I was going to take my sweet time reloading leaving my ambient microphone near maximum. I’d hear him coming a mile away even if I stumbled and dropped the speedloader twice.

“Come on out dingus!” I called out, swinging the cylinder free of the frame in my talons and holding the weapon vertically so the spent rounds fell to the ground. “Can’t hide for long from someone with E.F.S ya know!”

I got my reply exactly from where I had predicted. In the light chaos of dealing with the other two, number 4 had snuck in from behind from somewhere else in the station. These fucks seemed to think I was wearing something from ArmsTech and could indeed be hurt by whatever peashooters they had managed to scrape from the bottom of some mangy barrel. In the spirit of cruel sportsmanship, I allowed him to swing his lead pipe as hard as he could against my back and watch as the damn thing bent like a reed around resolute Celestium hardware.

“Free shot over! Home court advantage!” I laughed as I turned and gave him a blow of my own, a servo-assisted knuckle duster right to the torso.

As he collapsed to the ground, heart and lungs punctured deep from an impacted ribcage, I finally felt more awake. I didn't care much for what they had on them as I started looting them all, finding a few loose rounds for 9mm and 20 gauge and just a single common healing potion. While I had hardly expected even a decent haul, my first experience with true Westcoast Raiders was a pretty underwhelming one. It was true that it had only been four of em holed up in some nondescript building in the desert but still. Until I had seen otherwise, the Eastcoast Raider gangs were more impressive to me.

Distraction over, a quick peek inside the station proved I was better off wasting my time walking. The remainder of the journey was uneventful until I began to see the outermost effects of the blast that took out Camp Macintosh heralded by a progressive blackening of the dirt and clumps of flash-fused glass from the sands. Most had forgotten the name of the base in recent decades with Post-War signs on the E-15 just calling the area the Crater as it was the most significant impact site near New Pegasus. Sure there were others dotting the country any direction on the compass you went, but New Pegasus and the San-Palomino were by far the least bombed out sectors of the Continent as far as GIMP maps were concerned. The ever faster clicking of the Gieger counter in my right ear was indication enough that I was walking right into a RadZone, right on schedule.

Standing on the rim of the circular depression in the earth spanning over a mile, my compass showed only my waypoint marker and now featured some more red blips. Now that these angry little bars were on my suit’s HUD, the danger of a pack of Hellhounds nearby made the distraction from earlier feel even more like a walk in the park. Nine mil and basic ass shotguns were like buzzing flies being nothing more than making annoying noises as they shattered against my armor. Hellhound claws though...those were a whole shitshow unto themselves and made my own talons seem like dull letter-openers. Be it the Taint or the Rads or a mix of the two plus more, Hellhound claws were finely sharpened enamel embedded with microscopic acid glands. Highly corrosive to every known material both organic and inorganic, even my T-60 pieces would only handle a couple of good swipes before taking significant damage. Pair of four long scars on my right side was evidence enough of that and had been the original reason I had to replace my T-51’s torso assembly not even a month outta the Stable.

Keeping my huge ass as covert as I could, I headed down the moment I could see a large break in their roaming patrol patterns. Sliding most of the way down the Crater's wall and taking only a few of the paths the Hounds had trampled down themselves, I made it to the waypoint marked on my map finding the large hole in a tunnel wall as I had guessed the night before. Gods it was hard to believe what had happened here. A whole fuckin’ military base, gone just like that leaving behind a cesspool of irradiated, nightmarish creatures. Nearby where I crouched, observing the rest of the Crater in the event I had been spotted heading down, I noticed some hoof prints in the black sand. Two sets to be more accurate. A smaller set, obviously belonging to a younger pony, and more adult-sized tracks both leading into and out of the tunnel entrance. A relatively new discarded can of corn and empty bottle of Cola tossed to the side of the entrance further confirmed that somepony had come through not too long before and made it out alive. Praise Talön, the insides were passable and survivable.

I entered the blown out tunnel and turned on my helmet's flashlight while I descended into the darkness that laid before me. Rubble laid everywhere for the first dozen or so feet of the tunnel in either direction I chose to go but the sight of fresh bullet holes in the walls at regular intervals to the left made me decide to go right. Sure, the path to the left was probably safer with those two crazy Ghouls having already come through there but that also meant the left was more than likely not worth combing over for sloppy seconds. Besides...half the joy of urban exploring was taking the path not taken before and accepting the risks that came with blazing trails in two-century old architecture.

Most of the rooms I passed were either already looted by Hellhounds or didn't have much shit in them that I needed, like piles of their literal shit. Finds like that made me eternally grateful I had purged my helmet’s air filters and washed them in RadAway only two-weeks prior part of my larger tune-up job I had undertaken while holed up in an old mechanic’s garage. The old Crystalline Fusion Core had been acting up more and more often since I had exchanged it for my last one that had run dry. The T-51 chassis were a huge step forward in energy management and reduced consumption over the 45s but two-centuries worth of time had not been all too kind to CFCs. Unless you found one in pristine condition holed up in some designated Pre-War storage locker/charger, any Core you came across was more than likely to be missing most of its charge. While the one I had forcibly recovered from Paladin North Star had originally registered as having ¾ of its lifespan remaining, it turned out it was a brand new one that had a micro-fracture in the housing. The heat leaking from the arcane reactor was manageable by the suit’s environmental controls but the slow loss of energy and fuel particles had taken their toll on the housing leaving me no choice but to toss it before I ended up with more Rads than my suit could handle.

Soon I came to a crossroads in the tunnel. The path in front of me and to my left had both collapsed in, leaving only a short hallway to my right that led to a large, solitary steel door. Going up to the door and seeing it in a better light revealed this was an important door by the size and markings on/around it. The faded yellow caution marks, dead lights humping the upper corners, striped red paint...all signs pointed to an electrified locking mechanism hiding something well worth breaking into. A terminal to the left side had a small orange light illuminating its power button and while it was a bit of a longshot that any of the codes I had would open the door, at least there was still enough power left to try.

“Aight bitch, reveal your secrets…” I grunted as I pushed the glowing button and was illuminated in the sickly green color of yet another StableTec interface.

Being so deep underground, I felt it was safe enough to step out of my armor for as long as it took to interface with the terminal from my PipBuck and run through my list of Pre-War executive command codes. The small black cable extended from its housing smoothly and plugged right into the terminal’s access port causing the ‘Enter Password’ prompt to be replaced with a message stating ‘External StableTec Device Detected’. From there my PipBuck lit up with lines of code as the two systems figured each other out and my device was allowed to connect with the mainframe. On a lark, I plugged in my own security code hoping a military complex such as this had my credentials on file which would save me a lot of time and hassle playing cat-and-mouse with potential lock-out from the system.

‘Welcome, Captain Garand.’’ Read the screen before graciously being replaced by a loading bar. It felt...surreal seeing my old rank staring back at me on an old military computer.

‘!!!ATTENTION!!! At 03:27 hrs 10/27/77, EDS sensors registered the detonation of one or more WMDs within the EDS network. A Tier-III Eclipse Event is assumed to have occurred. Pending all-clear from Hexagon or StableTec representatives, full lock-down procedures are in effect and all personnel are required to take battlestations.

Connection with Hexagon Servers - Offline

Connection with StableTec Servers - Offline

Connection with GIMP - Offline

Connection with EDS - Partial Systems Failure

Connection with EAF HQ - Unknown

All NCOs and Officers are required to report to their CO and await further instructions. We thank you for your patience in these troubled times.’

The sheer audacity of StableTec’s little customer service buzzword comfort fest following up news that the world had just got assfucked by Balefire was...just fucking awful. This wasn’t the first time they had a tone-deaf response to something like this and I doubted this was the last one I would have the displeasure of seeing. StableTec regardless, I was finding my security clearance was insufficient to override a full facility lock-down. Amongst the codes in my PipBuck were a few dozen other officers from various Corps and specialties that had all proven useful for getting into specific military outposts. That being said, like hell I had even a Brigadier General’s credentials in my collection let alone the Lieutenant General needed to override the lock-down. This was going to be a challenge to get into, no two ways about it but, that meant that whatever loot was to be had on the other side was going to be well worth the effort.

After a quick sneeze to clear my nostrils of centuries old dust, I decided to take a different approach. There was no way that the door led to something as secure as a mainframe or a fallout bunker which meant that if I could kill the power for the whole complex, the doors would retract automatically. It was supposed to prevent a lock-down from becoming an entombment when the air pumps shut down but it was also a weakness I could exploit. The only question was how much power was left in the fucking place and if I had a way of sucking it dry.

‘*Access Facility Maintenance Records*

Welcome, Captain Garand.

!!!ATTENTION!!! StableTec Geothermal Plant Fault! Emergency Power Only!

Environmental Controls - Offline
Subterranean Air Pumps - Emergency Power Only
Water and Sewage - Offline
StableTec Geotherm Plant - Unknown
Emergency Lock-Down - Engaged
StableTec Crystalline Fusion Reactor Gen III - Online’

Well, at least the main power was most definitely out. With emergencies seeming to be on their last legs, the easiest way to suck the system dry would be…

‘*Inact Local Door Override*

!!!WARNING!!! Insufficient Power

Access Denied - Insufficient Security Clearance’

“Ya think I don’t know that already ya piece of shit?” I growled under my breath as I repeatedly typed in the command hoping to trigger an alarm from too many attempts.

After the fifth attempt, I nearly jumped outta my feathers when a dying klaxon rang out from the speakers above the door followed by a feeble attempt to spin the angry red lights nearby. After ten seconds of plugging my ears against the noise, everything died at once leaving me in the dark with just my PipBuck’s orange glow for light. A moment later gravity assisted the upwards closing blast door in coming free of its now loosened bolts, revealing with a tail-curling screech of metal on metal the object of my desires. It only took a moment to climb back into my armor and turn my headlamp on to see my prize.

The room was rather larger than I had expected and the presence of cage-door cabinets and large wooden crates gave me ample evidence to assume I had the most welcome luck of stumbling across a minor armory. Taking out a flare, I lit the bright red sparkler for adults and tossed it onto a cabinet on the far side of the room giving the low-light optics upgrade more than enough light to illuminate the whole room with. Closer inspection of the room revealed however that it was...not nearly as well supplied as I expected a freshly cracked military cache to be. The armory was populated mostly by those same wide-mesh cabinets with the far wall of shelves caged off from the rest of the room. Most cabinets were clearly empty and what few weapon racks there were were all empty of guns.

While I was no lockpick, I was strong enough to curl my armored talons into the edge of locked doors and peel them open like soup cans. Most contained only a few tins of ammo or a few boxes of spare parts or magazines, all for 5.56 service rifles that I didn’t own. The M2 Carbine currently slung across my back took a rather unusual .30cal round that was increasingly rare as nobody seemed to have the specs for casting new ones. Even the basic service rifle used by your average Platoon grunt, a rifle that shared my namesake, used a .30cal cartridge too. That however, had the advantage of being both a highly successful and insanely mass-produced rifle seeing action on every Front and Campaign with slightly above average performance. Not only that but the fuckin .30-06 round was actually a well respected rifle cartridge for sustained burst fire and single-shot long range sniping. The comparatively puny .30 Carbine round was a civilian’s rifle. One that was only distributed in Manehattan. Needless to say finding rounds for it this far out West was just too stupid to even consider hoping for.

The spare mags were a decent enough find since they made hauling 1,200 rounds a lot easier to manage than stuffing them in a burlap sack and then into my saddlebags. The exterior of my armor was dotted with bolted-on magazine pouches and mag-strips that allowed me to carry both plastic mags and metal ones alike depending on my current loadout. Nothin’ standard-issue about most of my gear but surprisingly enough these external fixings were a holdover from the War itself. Since Griffins and Dragons alike could better fuck around with small and finnicky things like mags and stripper clips, our Powered Armor was equipped so that we could use a variety of rifles, shotguns and the like while suited up. Unlike ponies who preferred their PoA with built-in weaponry like tri-barreled miniguns and 40mm automatic grenade launchers.

Once the cabinets had delivered everything I found worth taking, I turned my attention to the cage protecting the shelves at the far side of the room. The padlock took no more than a swipe of my talons to tear off and skate across the room making a lot more noise than I had expected. Heart still pounding slightly from the noise, I glanced over what the shelves had to offer coming away even more disappointed than I had been with the empty gun racks. Of all the sub-armories in the entire fucking complex, I had to find the one storing spare wheels for artillery. Something I would have expected nearby or in a mechanics garage or related storage facility, not stuffed away two hundred feet underground.

“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ shitting me…” I growled at the racks on racks of large rubber tires. “Ya couldn’t even be for fucking APCs or something cooler could ya. No...why would ya you stupid fucking rubbery fucks!”

I don’t know what came over me in that moment...one moment I was glaring daggers at the tires and the next I had punched and kicked my way down the rows. The stress of everything had caught up to me and ended up getting vented on a bunch of useless fucking rubber tires. I was tired, I had a Bounty on my head by the SR, I had spent all that time breaking into the joint and now I was feeling a headache as Sparkle withdrawal started to set in. Scrambling for my left bracer at the same time as my saddlebag, I managed to extract a bottle of Cola and a special purpose adapter that plugged into the air valve of my helmet. Within moments I was sucking away at the small rubber piece connected to the straw system that dipped into the bottle and felt my headache subside with every sip I took.

SparkleCola addiction was a fucking bitch to live with. Even now I could remember when the news had first caught wind of the condition only for SparkleCola to shoot down every accusation they could in and out of court on the grounds of slander and libel. Even a dumbass knew the courts sided with the ones with the money back in the day and with SparkleCola being essentially by the Ministry of Arcane Science’s blessing, Twilight Sparkle’s face sold a lot of Cola. Nowhere near as nasty a withdrawal process as what I’d seen of Buck or Dash addicts, Spaklediction still had a nasty list of symptoms of its own. A list I had too much experience with. First came the headaches which turned into migraines. Then came the shits and finally dehydration and lethargy...and for anyone on the run, the last thing you want to have happen is needing to hop outta your armor every twenty minutes to shit behind a bush. Sure, the T-51 featured a unique codpiece inside that let you change your piss into drinkable water in a huge pinch but when it came to number two...not even magic could make that eh...reusable.

After a brief sit down and letting the Cola sit in my stomach for a bit I felt well enough to stand back up and slowly pick my way through the maze of tires I had created. Tripping over a few, I fell forward suddenly and came crashing down on top of a small desk that had been used by a requisition officer, entirely collapsing it under all the weight. Instead of getting even more mad than before though, I had come across something far more valuable to my well being than even 5.56.

“Well hellooooo beautiful…” I grinned, reaching out for the hidden stash of glowing bottles of liquid goodness my fall had uncovered under the counter.

* * * * * * * * * * *

As I ascended back up to the Crater, my insides probably glowing as bright as a Glowing One, I noticed something in the sand and dirt. A faint golden gleam from the sunlight overhead glinting off something near the entrance of the tunnel. Normally I wouldn’t go near such a thing as this was a common sign of a Raider trap, but seeing as this was abandoned in the middle of a RadZone, I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to check it out. Nearing the twinkling shine I noticed the faint outline of a revolver in the sand, the gold color coming from some sort of engravings on what little of the barrel peeked out from under the black earth. My curiosity definitely piqued, I fished a talon under it and yanked it free of the dirt for examination. While I had expected like a .357 or maybe a .44 Magnus at most, I was genuinely amazed at what I found. From the looks of it, this was a genuine Ironshod Armory BFR custom produced for the Desert Ranger Veterans. She was in bad shape missing chunks of the grip and most of her finer engravings muddled and worn from poor care and maintenance. The empty cylinder released smoothly thankfully enough but that was about as much good as I could say about it. The trigger was rusted and worn to the point I was afraid to even test if the hammer mechanism was still worth a damn but that didn’t stop me from feeling at least a little excited. I had actually managed to snag something that was definitively from Camp Macintosh and got a decent amount of ammo for whatever weapon I would soon buy chambered in 5.56. It could have been far worse.

“Fuck yeah! You’re a keeper for sure little lady.” I said with a grin, slipping the old revolver into an extra holster I had strapped to my breastplate for when I wanted to use my similarly sized Castle Dragoon while in my armor.

With my new toy tucked away, I brought up GIMP one more time to check on the locations of Hellhounds around the Crater. Instead of that however, what I got was a frantic alert stating that meteorological conditions in the immediate area indicated an incoming RadStorm. The T-51 and the upgraded parts I had added were more than enough to handle the Rads of a bombed out Crater like this but RadStorms were a totally different beast. Dust and sandstorms abounded in the Wastelands, usually striking without warning as nopony was left to regulate the wind and weather at large. This meant any that struck a RadZone would inevitably form an intensely charged storm of magically irradiated sand and dust that could strip you bare of skin nearly as fast as it could kill you from the Rads alone. Slotting a vial of Rad-X and a small bag of RadAway into their respective receptacles in my armor, I quickly triggered the auto-injection system and pulled up the map function on my HUD. Looking round at the surrounding areas to see if I could find some shelter, I noted a nearby mine on the map, only being about a mile away. Being labeled as a former Gem mine, it was bound to be deep enough underground to offer enough protection from the storm to let me sleep out of armor. After clearing it of nasties of course heh. I marked the location and began to follow the new arrow that appeared on my compass with an extra spring to my step. The GIMP was starting to whine verbally over my headset about the impending storm and I had learned to trust the bitch when it told my ass to hurry. This was gonna be a big one.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3: A Light Shining in the Darkness Estimated time remaining: 6 Hours, 51 Minutes