Volare
It was June 5th, 2282, late at night. The B-29 Superfortress, raised from the lake as the stories had foretold and brought overland to the base through the courage and resolve of the teams of Boomers sent to go and get her, stood parked in one of the two intact hangars that still survived at Nellis Air Force Base. Her nose art, depicting the brave and noble leader of the Boomers when she was a young woman, dressed in her Vault 34 jumpsuit, was named Pearl.
Communications was working like they had never worked before. A few hours ago, a runner from the NCR Army had come under flag of truce, saying that General Lee Oliver, the Army Chief of Staff, believed the Legion's second assault on the Dam was imminent. At Nellis, the only confirmation they had needed was the way the various channels they monitored, knowing the NCR often used them, suddenly lit up an hour ago. When a man came running and woke up Mother Pearl, telling her the Dam was under assault, she immediately ordered the Superfortress prepared for action.
Pete, dressed in his miniature flight suit, was terribly, terribly afraid. He was excited, too. Honored, exhilarated. He was Keeper of the Story but he could not find the words to say how he felt right now. He had qualified as a gunner after weeks and weeks of rigorous training, and had begged, pleaded and bargained with Loyal and Mother Pearl and everyone else to be allowed to take part in the B-29's first flight.
There were a lot of reservations about doing it this way. The Superfortress was an old bird; records found on her based on serial numbers found on the fuselage indicated she had seen action in a place called the Pacific Theater during a big fight called World War II. She'd made it back, and been soldiering on, doing her duty, when she went down due to engine failure and crashed into Lake Mead on July 21st, 1948. The landing had been controlled, the crew unharmed, but the bomber sank before she could be rescued alongside her crew.
Since then, she had stayed down there on the bottom, waiting for the prophecy of her rescue and repair to come true. Pete had been scarcely able to believe it when the Courier somehow made it through the barrage fired by the 155mm howitzers that guarded the base. The Courier had hardly been on the base for a day before word began to spread of the Courier's doings. The Courier stormed the giant ants' nest inside the underground power plant, restoring power to the base. Repaired the damaged solar arrays, boosting the plant's power output. Saved the leg of one of the Boomers wounded in the failed first assault on the plant, and sped the process of getting the rest back to duty.
And the Courier had come by to see Pete, listening attentively as Pete had proudly recounted the story of his people, the epic history of the modern guardians and custodians of Nellis Air Force Base. Pete had told of how his people were the inheritors of this land, the successors to the last tribe of proud warriors that had lived here, the United States Air Force, and the Courier had seemed impressed, inspired, and had asked all manner of polite but pointed and intelligent questions. Made comments. Pete had quickly gotten over his personal distrust and suspicion of the savage outside, as had the rest of his people. It was incredible that someone from the savage world outside could have such intelligence, such ability.
But then, Mother Pearl had foretold that an outsider would one day make it to their gates, make it through the artillery barrage they always sent towards anyone who approached them, and that when that outsider arrived, the time for change would have come. Not to simply open up and allow anyone in who wandered up to the gates… but, to change, nonetheless.
Pete had watched as men and women chosen carefully for the job hauled the dirty, battered, water-logged B-29 here to the base. It had taken hours, even with a few working military 2.5-ton trucks to help the bomber along, straddled carefully as it was between three flat truck beds.
The fact that the heavily-armed, slow-moving convoy was not harassed or attacked once was further proof that Mother Pearl was the wisest of them all, the most able to look into the unknowable future and get a sense of what it held for the Boomers. They had been stalled at the gates- the massive wingspan of the bomber would not allow it to be rolled in like the cars or trucks the gates gad been designed for- but even that did not stop the plane from making it back. Crews had been hastily called out for duty, and they had simply taken down the entire front perimeter fence, allowing the enormous silver plane to pass. Even after more than two centuries on the bottom of a lake, it still gleamed in the sun as it passed Pete by. He had insisted on coming out to help, even though his special status as Keeper- and his status as a child- technically exempted him from doing manual labor.
Now, he stood nervously in his flight suit, the one that had been specially cut and tailored for him. The crew of the bomber was gathered around, some inside the aircraft already, some outside. There were eleven in total: Pilot, Co-pilot, Bombardier, Flight Engineer, Navigator, Radio Operator, Radar Observer, Right Gunner, Left Gunner, Central Fire Control, Tail Gunner.
Through his exceptional work on the gunnery simulators and the live-fire demonstrations that had been done with the bomber rolled outside on the runway and targets set up, Pete had been approved, though with some reluctance due to his age and status as Keeper, for duty as a gunner.
It was an incredible honor to not just be talking about history for once, but to be living it. Creating it. Pete had never felt so afraid, or so proud.
The bomber was huge, its wings almost one hundred feet across. The hangar doors had been pushed open, and Pearl sat there on her fully-restored landing gear, wings and fuselage cleaned and repaired and all four of her giant engines ready to fly. Loyal had wanted to do some test flights first, but the attack on the Dam had forced his hand. Technicians swarmed over the Superfortress at his command, cleaning and welding and oiling and checking everything they could see. Every control was examined, every gauge verified. The machine guns, 18 .50-caliber, belt-fed weapons distributed amongst several turrets, were cleaned and greased one more time.
There was nothing for it. Though Mother Pearl had her reservations, she was confident that the bomber would fly. And the Boomers, through her, had given their word. They had promised the Courier that they would be there when the savage rabble known as Caesar's Legion attacked Hoover Dam. They would not shirk from their duty. They would not fail. The bomber would fly, and fly well, or all of this- all of it- had been for nothing.
Pete looked up at his station, the tail, with its glass panels and its two protruding fifty caliber machine guns. They were huge, black, deadly-looking. They weren't anywhere near as cool as a one-five-five detonating in the distance as they let loose on another foolish savage, or on the firing range on-base where the gunners trained. But Pete had trained on them live and simulated, and the steady thudding of those massive guns was nice enough that he could make do.
Besides, the Air Force had left some bombs behind in underground storage bunkers, protected completely from the atomic blasts that had destroyed so much of the base and killed all of its inhabitants in 2077. The ground crew was loading the bombs into the open bay now, carefully attaching each one to the rack. The aircraft was so big that her bay could hold several tons of bombs, Pete was told. The explosion that would go up when they hit the Legion would be amazing, absolutely fricking amazing, and Pete would get the best seat in the house, riding in the tail.
In fact, that was part of his job. When the bomb run commenced, Pete would be expected to observe the results of the run and report on every pertinent detail he could see. The B-29 was understood, from the Pre-War books and manuals, to be what was called a "strategic bomber", which apparently meant she was not supposed to fly in low and blow up a bunch of savages up close.
A long time ago, evidently, these things had existed in the thousands, maybe the millions. The United States Air Force had, at the end of the World War II, been the largest and mightiest race of sky warriors in the world. All the books said so. And they had possessed a fleet of giant bombers that could create explosions so large entire cities would be leveled- with or without the use of atomic bombs.
The B-29, this B-29, had once been the 29th of its kind but now it was the last. Pearl was an old lady, iron-gray like the hair of her namesake. But if she had inherited any of the spirit and strength of her namesake, the Boomers would do their ancestors proud today. The Legion would simply never know what hit them.
XX
The rest of the crew accepted Pete and respected him, but he still felt out of place. He was about to turn thirteen years old. He was a kid. The rest of them had lived eighteen or twenty-something years. Loyal couldn't fly with them; he was too old. But they all listened to what he had to say as he spoke to the crew, calling them out of the aircraft as his techs worked.
"Now, boys," Loyal began, "I know some of you are worried about Pearl. She hasn't gotten a test flight in like you or I wanted. This is the first time in three hundred and thirty-four years she'll have taken to the air. It's make it or break it. And I believe the only ones who are gonna be broken when this bomber goes up are those savages in the Legion."
"Yeah," Alby, the pilot and flight commander, said, grinning.
Thomas, his co-pilot, smacked his hands together. "That's right!"
Loyal paused, smiling for a moment. He then sobered as he looked around at them. "I'm proud of you. All of you. You've worked more hours than I could count bringing this bomber home to Nellis, working on her, fixing her up and getting her ready to fly. Maybe I'll go with you another time, when you're not going into combat. But not today. I'm an old man and I gotta stay here. I want to thank you all for making this possible."
"You'll be with us," Laurie, the radio operator, said firmly. "You'll be with us all the way."
"And I'll tell as long as I live of how Loyal lived up to his name, and gave us the chance to fly."
Loyal smiled. His mouth moved, but he began to cry and could not speak. The crew stood up, every one of them, and they gathered around the old man and reached for him, embraced him, thanked him for everything he had done. Slowly, quietly, Pete began to speak. He recited the words from the poem, from the book the Courier had given him the last time the Courier had visited the base before all this started. Pete had recited the poem so many times, he knew the words as well as he knew his pride in his people, his love for this base, his conviction that death would be a joyful alternative to disappointing them in any way. Pete spoke, reciting the words he had worked so hard to know so he could say them before takeoff on the day that Pearl first flew again.
"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air… .
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."
The hangar was silent for a time, and even the technicians had stopped to watch and to listen. Finally, Loyal cleared his throat and he said, "All right. Nobody told you to stop workin'!"
The techs immediately hurried to resume their work, and the last bombs were loaded into the bay, and the doors were closed.
Loyal shook hands with every one of them as the crew got ready to board. He wished them good luck, thanked them again. Pete focused on not trying to throw up. He hefted his parachute on his back, hoping the worst would not come and he would have to use it.
"Pete," Loyal said, as the last crewman in line finally came up to him. The old man held out his hand, and Pete shook it firmly. He was scared to death but was not about to shame himself and his brothers and sisters by letting that fear take control.
"Sir," Pete said.
"You are about to embark on the great crusade, towards which we have striven these many months."
"The eyes of the world are upon you," Pete answered, heart racing in his chest. "The hopes of free men everywhere march with you."
"Good luck. We will accept nothing less than complete and total victory."
Pete nodded, shaking hands with Loyal again. That old speech Loyal had found a copy of was also worth speaking of before they took off. It spoke well of the righteousness of this cause, but Pete privately wished it had said more about giant explosions.
Then it was time. Pete climbed aboard the huge silver bomber, making his way in the surprisingly-cramped interior all the way back to the tail. He put on his leather helmet like the rest of the crew had, and like the rest of them he had a working radio to send and receive signals within the plane, while the pilot and radio operator could communicate outside the plane.
So Pete heard it when Alby said, "Ground Team, we're ready for roll-out."
As the refurbished runway tugs began to move the bomber out of the well-lit hangar, bringing her out under the glittering stars, Pete checked and re-checked his guns. They were loaded and ready to go, a round in each barrel. He had a part to do in this that went beyond observation of the bomb run. After they delivered the bombs, Alby was going to take the bomber in and bank her into a turn, circling low over the savages' camp, and the machine gunners would shoot everybody they could see on the ground. The NCR had been warned to hold off on any counterattack until after the bombs had been delivered, until after the guns fell silent and the bomber flew away.
Watching from the rear, Pete saw the plane roll out onto Runway 2 and straighten out and knew it was almost time.
Whrrrr….
Slowly, grunting and ticking, the huge Wright Duplex-Cyclone engines, 18-cylinders each, began to start up, coughing and billowing white smoke to the rear. First Three started up, then Two, then Four, then One. The bomber stayed where it was for a few minutes. Pete's heart thudded in his chest. Sweat ran down his forehead, and he grunted impatiently and wiped it away.
Then, the steady humming of the motors began to grow, swell. Mother Pearl stood beside Loyal at the entrance of the hangar, and each of them rendered a sharp military salute as the B-29 began to move on its own. Pete watched the little tug vehicles drive away from it, watched as Boomers everywhere within sight gathered and turned to watch. The noise of the engines grew to a roar, and Pete felt himself pushed toward his guns as the plane accelerated. His fear remained, but it began to be mixed with excitement in a whole new way.
"Oh, boy!" Pete said to himself, watching the paved runway speeding below him, the gun positions and sentry mounts waving and saluting as the bomber hurtled down the runway, engines howling. "Oh, boy, oh boy!"
It was not exactly the most profound thing in the world to say. Pete knew he probably sounded like a savage, some primitive getting all excited over something he had been swept up by and didn't fully understand. He knew he was the Keeper of the Story and he was supposed to know something better than that to say at a moment like this.
But it was all Pete could think of, the only way he could phrase his joy and his fear, as the B-29 raced down the runway, gaining speed every second, moving faster than anybody in the world had ever dreamed of going in centuries. Pete held onto the controls for his machine guns, gripped them hard as he felt the nose of the plane lurch upward. The ground shifted, or rather, the plane did.
Suddenly, it was moving, dropping away from them, distance growing by the second. As cheers and exultant shouts exploded in the cockpit way up front and carried to the back of the aircraft, Pete knew they had done it. Engines droning, humming with well-tuned power, the B-29 flew out from the base. Slowly, it began to turn, and Pete cried helplessly as he waved, not even caring that his brother and sister Boomers could probably not even see him. He knew they could see the plane, that they could see Pearl had made it and that she was airborne again, and that was all he cared about.
Three centuries had passed since this bomber had last flown, more than three centuries. And yet here she was, soaring as if it was only yesterday. The story had been true. It had never occurred to Pete that he would see it done in his lifetime. He had never dreamed that he would be allowed to go into battle as part of her crew. But here Pearl was, and here he was, both of them doing what few had ever imagined.
There was a strange feeling of weightlessness, or- it was hard to say. Pete could have closed his eyes and still he would have just known he was not on solid ground. He was airborne. He was flying. The physical sensation that came with that, the final proof that he was doing what no one had done in centuries, overwhelmed Pete. He had to fight to get control of himself, and from the sound of things so did Alby and the rest of the crew. There was a lot of coughing and throat-clearing and talking in officious-sounding voices as they flew on to the Hoover Dam.
Pete knew he would remember this for the rest of his life. He looked at the ground, speeding past below him, dark and rugged. He looked up at the stars, thousands and thousands of specks of light amidst endless black. He swore to remember this, to remember all of it, and tell of the day when the lady of the lake, the Pearl, first flew again, and Pete and a lucky few others came to know the joy of flight, the first Boomers to fulfill their people's destiny and take to the air, where they had always belonged.
There was nothing better than this in all the world.
A/N: 12-23-2017.
I got the idea for this early in 2017, when I was playing "Fallout: New Vegas" and became interested in the story of the Boomers, and their Keeper of the Story, Pete. So I got the idea of writing a story and here we are.
A B-29 Superfortress really did crash land and sink in Lake Mead in 1948. It was not a bomber, as the game depicts, but rather a B-29 that was modified for atmospheric research duties. The real B-29 also is a lot less intact than the game shows it as being, as it suffered more damage than the game shows in the landing.
In this story, I deliberately avoided specifying whether the Courier is male or female, since the player chooses that when they set up the character. Also, the player has complete choice over whether the Boomers succeed in getting the B-29 raised from Lake Mead and ready to fly in time for the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, and who they assist in the battle. The Boomers are more helping the Courier than the faction the Courier is fighting, anyway. The game starts in 2281 and, given that the year is more than halfway over by the time the game starts, the battle will most likely take place sometime in 2282. I picked the night of June 5th because that's 338 years after the commencement of Operation Overlord, the amphibious and airborne invasion of France by the Western Allies. I liked the idea of the tyranny of Caesar's Legion being dealt a serious defeat on the anniversary date of Overlord's commencement, even if few, if any of the participants of the Second Battle of Hoover Dam would know of that.
The poem that Pete recites is "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., and it is a poem the Courier can recite a little bit of when speaking to Pete in the Boomer Museum. Loyal and Pete together reference a few pieces of General Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech to the men of the invasion force as Operation Overlord got ready to get underway.
"Volare" means "To Fly" in Italian, and is the name of the main quest with the Boomers in "Fallout: New Vegas".
I believe it is specified in-game that Loyal sent robots to retrieve the bomber from the lake, but I liked this version I came up with, so I kept it.