Fallout Equestria

Chapter 7.

Only I had murdered these two, and even in retrospect had no reason to believe my admittedly fear-fueled instincts had been wrong. One of the dead ponies had a pair of manacles as a cutie mark, and the other had the keys both to the front door and the cage that took up two-thirds of the room.

My eyes widened at what I saw before me. This was not like the cages in the Ponyville Library; there were no prisoners behind these bars. Instead, there were weapons. And boxes of ammo, some stacked on top of other boxes of ammo!

I was in the armory!

Two thoughts raced through my mind, each right on the heels of the other: I had just hit the jackpot! And this was probably right where most of the slavers were headed first!

Swiftly, I turned and locked the door. Then began to barricade it. Not too heavily, as trapping myself in here was not going to save anypony, least of all myself. But it would give me time. Time to loot and to consider my next move. A filing cabinet, the table and the metal desk should do. Bottle caps and gaming chits slid to the floor in chaos as I upended the table and place it against the door. I levitated the filing cabinet against it to hold it in place. Then the desk was wrapped with a glow identical to that of my horn as I swung it around. The desk, I noticed, had a glowing terminal. Time allowing, it might be worth it to see what it had to say.

First, however, was improving my armament.

*** *** ***

Seven ammo boxes (half of them locked), two gun cabinets and a weapons locker (also locked) later, I was less like a pony and more like a walking arsenal. There were dozens of weapons, but all in such crappy condition that I was only able to salvage three useful ones out of them including a needler pistol, the repair assist spell of my PipBuck allowing me to swiftly tear down the worst of the weapons for the best of their parts. The weapons locker contained two battle saddles, both far too heavy for me to bother with.

I now had ammo for everything but Little Macintosh, including weapons I had never seen before, such as spark packs designed for recharging magical energy weapons, and three missiles. It disturbed me greatly that the slavers had a small stockpile of missiles. Particularly since neither of the battle saddles were built for them.

But by far, the biggest prize in the lot had been neither a weapon nor ammo, but a set of schematics for creating a homemade gun that would fire poisoned needles! It would be silent, crippling and I was pretty sure I'd seen most of the parts required back in Absolutely Everything.

The slavers took little time figuring out I had barricaded myself in their armory. If that gave them pause, however, they didn't show it. Relocking the door had been a useless effort; the first pony to the armory had her own set of keys. The table, cabinet and desk were proving much more worthwhile, and by the time I had finished repairing the weapons I was taking, they had finally ceased bucking their hooves at the door. I had no doubt that they were waiting outside in quiet ambush, but that gave me yet a little more time. I used it to take a look at the terminal. It took almost no time to hack it. The password was "terminal". I was unimpressed.

The first entry was ancient; dating back several years before the apocalypse. The others were all within the last few months.

Entry One:

Had a surprise inspection from the Ministry of Morale yesterday. We pretty well knew it was coming, and I'd been given instructions on what to do; but I couldn't believe how smoothly it went! We slip them a small percentage of the special product, and they give us clean marks? Even if they were dirty, I couldn't understand why they wouldn't bring the cage down on us and impound all of it for themselves. Seemed too good to be true. So I did a little digging, and a friend of a friend working over at Ironshod who claims to have an inside peek gave me this apple to chew on: according to him, the head mare of MoM herself actually loathes the new contraband laws. And since MoM enforces those laws, that means all sorts of tasty zebra treats are slipping into Equestria right under the Princess's nose. I figure this means as long as she says golden delicious, we're golden delicious. And even if the Princess suspects her (and how dense would she have to be not to?), she really is the one pony the MoM can't bring up on sedition charges!