Fallout: Equestria, Project Horizons

Chapter 21: Waterfall

Horizons
By Somber
Chapter 21: Waterfall
"I shall save you! Show yourselves, you dogs! You curs! Ha! There you are, you mangy mutts."
It actually seemed like the Wasteland, for once, was throwing me a carrot. Sure, we'd lost the whole morning going to Miramare only to have to teleport back to evade another monsterpony, but then we'd discovered an alternate route. One that might get us past without having to worry about flying death... or at least not worry so much. And I'd have somepony to get drunk with!
Of course, we'd need spark... magic-y... stuff... to make the boat run.
"Charity!" I cried as I stormed into the post office. The yellow filly didn't bother looking up from the stack of boxes next to her.
"No time to deal with you now, Blackjack. I've got to double-check this stuff and make sure Tarboots didn't swap me those mines for a few boxes of gravel," she said sourly around a pen as she scribbled on a notepad.
I leapt over the counter in a clear violation of every rule of the Crusaders and seized Charity's shoulders with my forehooves. "Charity, I need spark batteries and magic cartridges! Now! Or gemstones! I need them right now. Please!"
Her eyes lit up and rolled thoughtfully, and with a flip of her head she spat out her pen and sent it spinning through the air to land neatly behind her ear. "Well, adding in processing costs and the Getting On My Nerves Tax... I figger I could sell 'em for..."
"And we're broke," I added. Paying Ditzy and trading for what we'd needed had sapped most of our caps. I grinned as widely as I could and tried to ignore the feeling of sweat running down the back of my barding.
Her smile disappeared. "Get out," she declared imperiously. She flicked the pen from behind her ear, caught it in her mouth, and resumed checking her list.
I fell to my knees. "Please, Charity! Please! Without the boat, we'll have to walk, if we walk the monsterpony will find us, if she finds us then I'll feel sorry for her before I kill her, and if I do that then I'll feel guilty, and if I feel guilty then I'll whine! Please don't make me whine!" I begged as several Crusaders peeked over the counter to watch in amazement.
"I... you... what are ya..." she sputtered as I fell on my face and hugged her hoof.
"Please Charity! Please please pretty please pleasepleaseplease PLU... LEEEEZZZEEE!!!!" I wailed as I kicked my back hooves.
"All right!" she yelled down at me, yanking her hoof free of my embrace as she blushed. "I can spare one!" My eyes grew large. "Erm... two?" Tears ran down my cheeks as my lip trembled. She let out a grunt of disgust. "Oh, just take the whole box, Blackjack!" She walked over to a shelf, pulled out a wooden crate, and tossed it to me, six glowing spark batteries rattling within. I just gave a whimper, the whine growing higher and higher.
A bottle of Wild Pegasus plopped on top of them.
Humming in glee and floating the box in front of me, I made my way back towards the bridge, the humming faltering not a bit when, a few seconds after I got out of the shop, Charity screamed after me, "It's going on yer tab, Blackjack! You hear me? With interest!"

* * *

Seahorse used to be an Equestrian Navy patrol boat," Oilcan, the rust-coated engineer mare, explained as she trotted to a hatch in the stern deck, her horn glowing as she undid the dogs and secured a rag in her curly red mane. "Doubt there's anything original on it besides the engine, though. I figger the last twenty years or so we've had to replace everything at least once." She hopped nimbly up into the air and disappeared down through the hatch.
The rest of the crew was finishing up business with two caravaners from Flank who'd come to trade chems and boxed food for bullets and music recordings brought from Tenpony in Manehattan. Sore as I was at Caprice, I'd gotten some Sugar Apple Bombs and some more Buck (just in case I had to wrestle Rampage again) from them in exchange for a few rounds of hunting ammo. A dirty look from me proved quite effective at getting them to shave a bit off the bill.
"Come on in," Oilcan said cheerfully. "Plenty o' room for all."
Glory stared into the hole with an audible gulp. I just gave her a friendly nudge on her hip and a smile that would hopefully convince her not to worry about it. P-21 jumped down happily; stable ponies had no problem with nice, tight, cramped spaces.
The engine itself was a block of polished brass inset with rubies and emeralds. It was connected by wires to a sapphire water talisman, twice the size of what we saw in 99's utility room, that was hooked up to several large pipes. "This here's the engine. It converts the raw magical spark energy into power for the water talisman. That makes the water that jets out the back to move the boat."
"Is there supposed to be this much water in here?" P-21 asked, looking down at the inch or so of scummy water that was sloshing about our hooves. My PipBuck clicked slowly; there wasn't nearly enough radiation to worry me unless I had an engine bilge water slurpee.
The motherly mare grinned at him. "Well if you'd like ta grab a bucket and do something about it, I know we'd be much obliged." She reached into my box and pulled out a spark battery, flipping the heavy square container in her hooves. Inside the crystal hovered a red ball of magical energy that shed little waving lines of light. She opened a panel with her mouth and pulled out an empty container, then slid the fresh one into the receptacle. There was a sudden hum as the gems lit up. "Of course, for when we don't got spark batteries, we've got a flux converter." She gestured at a circle strung with a spider web of glistening crystal strands. "Ain't nearly as efficient."
"And if that doesn't work?" I asked.
"Well, then ya can get out and push. We've had to do that a few times."
P-21 looked at the grease-slathered boards of the exposed inner surface of the hull. "I'm just curious why it's made of wood."
"You know what happens when you take a nice metal boat out on the ocean? Pretty soon it's a rusty boat at the bottom of the ocean. Sure, lumber might be a bitch to find, but it's a damned sight easier to get and work than steel plate. We seal her up with tar and pitch as well as we can, paint her if we can get it, plate the hull if we can manage it, and she's the best damn boat in Equestria."
"With an interesting captain," P-21 observed dryly.
Oilcan chuckled. "Yeah, Thrush ain't what most folks expect, but her daddy was two buckets shy of a dry hold. Once, we were stuck on a beach off Manezibar with this tainted sea serpent watching us past the reef. So the captain, he somehow gets a whole flock of rock crabs to carry the boat on their backs to the far side of the island!" The rusty mare slapped P-21's back as she laughed. "Thrush ain't quite the measure of her daddy, but she's the best girl for the job," Oilcan said firmly as she smiled at P-21. "I had my reservations, but she's the mare who loves Seahorse the most. She was willing to let her daddy go to keep it."
The rest of the spark batteries went in a locker above the engine. "Seems to me going downstream wouldn't require much power," P-21 said.
"Shows you don't know boats, boyo," Oilcan replied. "Going downstream, you've got the water pushing you into rocks, beams, snags and worse. Half our power is spent maneuvering around obstacles and the other half fighting current. Just wait till you see the Towers. Any boat that tries to just go with the flow is in for a nasty surprise. The Hoofington River eats ponies. With all the rain about, there's a lot of energy in all that water."
Just another thing about this place I hated. I found myself scowling in the direction of the city. It seemed so wrong, like it was a trap trying to draw everypony in with lures of riches and food. I wondered how many ponies had come to Hoofington and ended up killed by raiders, poisoned by taint or radiation, or sucked dry by Enervation fields. The more I thought about it, the more disturbing it became. Even Lacunae's Goddess seemed distressed by this place.
Hoofington: the city that kills. It'd killed ponies when the zebras burned it. Killed zebras as it made itself the target of the war. And now it killed everypony it lured in. I could almost hear the cards shuffling in my head.
"Hey, you okay, Blackjack? You've got a shooty look on your face," P-21 asked, giving me a nudge. I had a 'shooty' look? I needed a mirror.
"Just... not a fan of Hoofington," I replied sullenly.
Oilcan chuckled as she rubbed her nose with a dirty hoof. "Heh. Join the club. I used to live in Friendship City. Nice town. Maybe a touch crowded, but a good place to live," she said as she checked some power cables. "One day, her daddy's in port and so damn drunk that the town assigned him a guard so he wouldn't blow something up on accident. He mentions that he needs an engineer. I've got a comfy life ahead of me, but he goes on about the riches, the adventure, the sights, the adventure, the rum, the adventure, the sex... oh yeah, did he mention adventure? Boyo talked me into bed and then onto his boat. Been a lot of places. But Hoofington's always been the worst. Always has enough treasure to bring you here. Always has enough grief to make you wonder why you came in the first place. Bilgewater got eaten by a river serpent this trip. I doubt he'll be the last... but the Seahorse'll be back. I'm sure of that."
"So why do you stay?" P-21 asked.
Oilcan sighed and smiled, reaching out to touch the engine. There was a lover's look in her eyes. "Back home, I had a pretty comfy life; wasn't no Tenpony, but comfy. Out here... well... we ain't found riches, the sights are all pretty damned ugly, the rum's watered down, and the sex gets a little awkward on a little boat like this... but the adventure? He sure wasn't lying about that. Long as the captain can steer her straight, I'll keep her running. To Hoofington or Hell itself."