KANE LIVES! Well at least I do (you can tell what series I've been playing too much of lately). So sorry to everyone for dropping out of sight for so long. To cut a long story short, I've been fighting off severe depression after all my losses at year's start and have only just clawed my way back out of it. I've not felt like writing or doing much of anything except drowning myself in games and otherwise living in a dark place.
Anyway I'm up and around and finally breaking my long downtime with a sidefic of sorts. This is going to both add to and fill gaps in my Fallout series. It takes place almost straight after Close Encounters and before my unfinished Skyrim fic (which I intend to pick up again when I'm fully writing again!)
It kicks off with a prequel of sorts to Steel Vengeance...
Grayditch-2282
It wasn't what you'd call a typical day in Grayditch settlement, mainly due to the fact that it was full of people. They'd come from all across the Capital Wasteland to celebrate the defeat of the Enclave and the founding day of the Free Capital Republic. Soldiers of the Brotherhood of Steel, wasteland settlers from all across the wasteland, Riley's Rangers, the Family, the Lamplighters and Big Towners, the traders from Canterbury Commons...all had flocked to the settlement almost overnight.
King sized campfires were roasting Brahmin meat, Jansen and the ex-Raiders from New Paradise Falls were dealing out crates of beer...and most were enjoying the free and impromptu 'entertainment' at the bottom end of the settlement.
It hadn't started out as and wasn't even intended to be entertainment...it was of course one of the Lone Wanderer's 'training sessions'. Well it started out that way but it had ended up a full blown three way hand to hand combat between him, his love Amata and his close friend Jaden Storm aka the Courier.
"Three hundred caps on Leon!"
"You're on!"
As ever Moriarty was getting in on the money action. He might have been forced out of Megaton to come to this event but he never let a good thing slip by.
No one got a result though or at least not a final one. Amata collapsed exhausted first, she didn't have the seemingly endless stamina of the other two and then, like so many times before, Jaden and Leon fought each other to a sweat soaked standstill.
Moriarty sighed as the three friends trudged away knowing he'd have a tough time keeping his caps without a firm result.
"Next time, guys?" Amata managed to get out through exhausted breathing.
"As I keep telling Jaden it's already next time," Leon grinned as he sheathed his wrist sword.
They walked back to the upper square to where big crowds had gathered at the diner and the square itself. The wire fence and car wrecks had long since been removed and people were gathered around campfires, sitting in the renovated diner or the partly rebuilt houses. It was an amazing sight for Leon. To him it beggared belief that a mere five years ago this place was an abandoned husk overrun by hostile fire ants and now it was one of the biggest and thriving settlements around.
The group ended up in one of the settlement houses where Jansen had set up a bar and was serving Jaden's friends from the Mojave, Sarah and the Pride and most of Leon's old vault family.
After Jaden's Zeta abduction Leon had gone back to Vegas via the Mothership to bring Veronica, Ashley, Cass and Jaden's entire inner circle across. Leon didn't want to risk Jaden sneaking away from him when no one was looking and secondly this was a good opportunity to get firm relations between the two wastelands.
All of Jaden's friends, save for Raul, had been speechless when they'd teleported in.
"You actually live in this?" Cass had asked.
"I did warn you it was rougher than the Mojave," Leon had replied. "This is what several direct missile hits look after 200 years. One other thing...don't badmouth the Brotherhood here." Leon had looked hard at Boone, Cass and Ashley as he'd said that.
Fortunately the first meeting had passed without incident; all of them were now drinking beer and trading tales with the Pride instead of trading fire.
"No winner again I see," Sarah grinned as she noticed the trio.
"Not today," Amata collapsed into a chair as someone passed her a water.
"Man! I missed it again!" Freddie complained. He'd been hoping to get in on the fight for some more experience himself.
"You can't take Leon alone and now you want to try him, Jaden and Amata all at once?" Butch raised his eyebrows.
"I'll gladly go a couple of rounds with you another day," Jaden offered. "But right now all I want is a drink!"
Jansen tossed Leon and Jaden Nuka-Colas as they sat down and the minute they did they were surrounded by most of Leon's old vault family.
"So, any more wasteland stories tonight, Leon?" Susie Mack asked in hope.
"What do I look like now? The stand-up entertainment?" Leon sighed.
When the vault dwellers had got interested in his past adventures it had been a little flattering at first, just like the first time he'd heard about himself on GNR, but now the appeal was wearing off and it was getting more than a little tiring.
"Well if you're all storied out for now how about I go tonight?" Dan Kerrigan offered which piqued everyone's interest.
"This is going to be about your time with the Enclave before you met us?" Leon shrewdly guessed.
"Well I thought you'd want to know how and why we ended up in Baltimore in the first place. If you're not comfortable with the memory..."
"No that's ok," Leon assured him. "I never blamed you for what happened back then."
"I'd certainly be interested for one," Arcade spoke up. "I always wondered what happened to the group that escaped from the first war."
Dan nodded. "Ok...well as you know it was five years ago..."
Flashback-Near Old Olney, Capital Wasteland
At the very start of the campaign Dan, Kayla and their soon to be elite soldier friend Thomas Severance had been assigned to help set up an outpost near one of the most dangerous places in the whole wasteland. Fortunately they were setting up under the old road to the southeast, well away from the town itself and the usual Deathclaw patrols.
"I can't believe we got this detail," Kayla muttered.
"I can," Severance replied without a trace of humour. "It's called politics and it sucks."
They all knew what he meant. Autumn wanted to lead the campaign from the front, hence he'd taken the force to Project Purity and left his potential rivals setting up outposts in the sticks.
For Dan, his friends and his immediate superior Major Houser, Autumn's plan filled them with nothing but trepidation. He may have been a great planner and had a great tactical mind but his colossal ego and lack of restraint made him his own worst enemy.
"So, instead of helping our main purpose, we're out here in the sticks dodging Deathclaws because Autumn has a bug up his butt," Kayla snorted. "Part of me's wishing something goes wrong for him."
In truth Dan had been wishing the same thing. Only problem with that was that his problems would probably end up as their problems. Little did they know that their dubious wish was about to become true in more ways than one as their radio came alive.
"Houser to Outpost Echo. Dan are you receiving me?"
That brought them all up short. No one was supposed to be using the airwaves yet, not until the purifier had been secured. The fact the Major had broken that now only meant one thing: something was desperately out of order.
"I'm here," Dan answered immediately expecting bad news. He wasn't disappointed.
"We've been ordered to Project Purity. Things have not gone to plan there and the President wants a status report."
"Why doesn't the Colonel do it?" Dan retorted somewhat acidly.
"That's just the thing...he hasn't checked in."
Half an hour and a short Vertibird ride later Dan and Major Houser were arriving at the Jefferson Memorial and were nowhere near prepared for what they found. They knew things had gone badly wrong the minute they walked through the front door.
"Damn it," Houser spat as he saw the obvious signs of battle.
"Laser and plasma scoring everywhere," Dan remarked. "Sure looks like a lot of resistance for a so called 'easy soft target'!"
Houser nodded grimly. Dan had every reason to be bitter. The Colonel obviously hadn't treated this operation with the seriousness it had deserved; that much was obvious. Now good men were dead for it and god only knew if this place was still operational. If it wasn't their whole plan would be thrown into chaos.
When they got to the main room they found a science team had arrived ahead of them and were in the process of treating the cursing Colonel for severe radiation exposure.
Dan quickly went aside to talk to two of the other scientists who were in the process of examining the purifier as best they could, a difficult task given the control chamber was now swimming in radiation.
"I take it things didn't go to plan, Colonel," Houser started a little acidly. "Given the carnage I found outside and the state of this control room."
"The plan can still be salvaged!" The Colonel was acutely aware of Houser's dislike of him. "The other members of the team..."
"What other members, sir?" Houser glared. "All of them are gone. Given the men outside didn't see them they must have got out through the sewers or they're dead. Either way they're beyond our reach! The force you brought in with you is also missing!"
That hit the Colonel like a thunderclap and he was aghast. How could things have run away from his control so quickly and so completely? He'd thought he'd had everything in hand until James Kallan's audacious sabotage.
"Have you tried radioing our team? Maybe they're still searching down there."
Houser shook his head. "We've tried repeatedly. No replies of any kind, we're prepping another team to see if any can be saved but we have to assume the worst. It's been over an hour and a half after all."
"I was down for that long?" Autumn mentally cursed.
"Sir, you're lucky to be alive," Houser said candidly. "There's enough radiation in there to kill in less than 2 minutes."
Autumn's already foul mood went considerably darker. That meant they were cut off from the starting machinery and weren't going to be getting in anytime soon. Not without extreme radiation protection at any rate and they didn't have too much of that to spare; they'd had to use a lot of Rad-X and Radaway just to pull him and his two guards out.
"What now, Colonel?" Houser sighed.
"We go on as planned, Major!" Autumn's drive and zeal hadn't dimmed. "Our scientists are the finest alive. They can succeed where these wasters failed and can still get this purifier operational!"
"No they can't," Dan flatly contradicted him. "Not with the situation as it is now, Colonel. I've been talking with them and they say this place doesn't even work."
The Colonel was almost apoplectic. "But...our informant..."
"...was wrong unfortunately. According to the team's notes and our scientists this place may be functioning but the process lacks a key component: a GECK," Dan wasn't mincing words. "The team here were about to start the search for one when we arrived prematurely. Our problems don't end there either."
He walked over to the now sealed entrance to the chamber and pointed to the main control panel.
"Now I'm no hacking genius but I'd guess it has a code lock on it. A code we don't know am I right, Colonel?"
Colonel Autumn was rapidly losing his composure. "Then get our hackers and code breakers on the job!"
Houser sighed. "Even if we got them here Colonel they wouldn't last more than a minute or two in there, the radiation is too high!"
Dan agreed. "I know it's only 3 digit readout but all ten numbers are available. That could be god knows how many combinations!"
"That bastard..." Autumn spat.
Dan and Houser knew that comment could only refer to James Kallan, they'd removed his corpse from the purifier a few minutes ago, and both of them were mentally despairing. Autumn was dedicated to the cause and knew how to win tactical battles well but, politically and diplomatically speaking, he was more apprentice than most. A shrewder negotiator and/or a more far-sighted man would have performed much better than this.
"Be that as it may Colonel we are now little more than the proud owners of several million tons of scrap metal and rubble," Houser finished. "Without the GECK and the code this place is of no value at all."
"Something we'd better report to the President," Dan finished grimly. "We're going to need fresh orders now."
Everyone knew what he meant. There'd been no contingency plan for this event; no one had foreseen this situation, one where they'd failed to secure a working purifier. It had thrown their whole strategy for reclaiming the wasteland into disarray. The 64000 cap question was what the hell were they going to do now?
Grayditch
"That's something I never got," Susie commented suddenly. "Why the hell did you keep going? After that farce and a purifier that didn't work...strikes me as just stupid."
Dan grinned. "You're not the first to say that. Main problem was our leaders. Eden just had too much faith for his own good, though that was probably down to his programming. With Autumn it was simple arrogance. He always wanted to lead, he always wanted the credit and he thought he was invincible, never a good mix."
Freddie shrugged. "Ok, I get you weren't going to give up but...well Leon being the only one who knew the code. Where was your win going to come from given you'd just killed his dad?"
"You're right but you have to see it in the context of the moment," Dan explained. "At the time we didn't know for sure that Leon was the Wanderer. If we had it certainly might have given us some pause or at least a little more caution. At the time I thought the same way you are now: that we'd dug ourselves into a hole. Alright we had the purifier but no way to make it work."
"So you favoured bugging out and coming back for another day?" Ashley reasoned.
"Not completely. The Major and most of us favoured hanging on to the purifier, leaving the shields in place, but to withdraw from everywhere else and resume covert operations. See if we could start it by some other means; break the code by remote or something like that. But definitely no further engagements. We'd lost the best advantage we had: surprise."
"But we know that's not the way it turned out," Alphonse mused.
Dan shook his head in disgust. "No. We'd made one bad mistake already...and we were about to compound it by making another one."
Flashback-Outpost Echo-2 days later
"He ordered WHAT!"
Both Severance and Kayla were taken aback by Dan's loud reaction to the radio call he was taking. 2 minutes later he terminated the call, his face covered in utter disgust.
"Bad news?" Kayla finally got the courage to ask.
"Madness is more like! They're actually going ahead with the operation!"
"Without the purifier?!" Severance was dumbfounded. This was madness indeed as far as he could see. The purifier had been an essential element, if not the keystone, of the Enclave's annexation plan. Without it there was a real danger they'd be seen not as saviours but just invaders. Word of what happened at the purifier had got out sooner than they had, thanks to Three Dog and GNR, and suffice it to say the news hadn't gone down well with most wastelanders from what Dan's old sources were telling him.
After the fiasco at the purifier and the report they'd made to the President, Dan and Houser had been ordered back to the North of the Capital Wasteland to finish setting up the outpost there. They'd been half expecting orders to pack up and get the hell out. Instead the orders had been to continue with the initial plan despite a lot of misgivings in some of the ranks.
They had, of course, no choice but to keep going now but Dan had grave misgivings. Their leaders were overconfident; there was no doubt of that in his mind. Dan knew the Enclave troops were tough and had the best technology around. But he also knew the Brotherhood troops were just as tough and they weren't going to roll over. On seizing the purifier Enclave officers had put out negotiation offers over the radio to the Citadel and had got no response whatsoever. Dan wasn't confident of any of the other factions cooperating either. The Talons bowed to no one at all, Raiders were much the same and a human was still a human to a Super Mutant no matter what flag they wore.
He turned to Tom Severance who had just as grim an expression as he wore. Both men knew they were thinking the exact same thing.
"This one ain't going to be over by Christmas, is it Dan?"
"Maybe Christmas in a few years," Dan muttered in response. "Without the purifier and the cooperation of at least one settlement or faction we could be stuck fighting insurgency for god knows how long."
"NO!"
Both men had been so steeped in their own depression they hadn't noticed Kayla taking another radio call. Now she had their full attention as there were tears in her eyes.
"Understood," Kayla choked back tears as she passed the radio to Dan. Houser was on the other end with Doc Farnsworth and they were standing on the remains of the outpost that had been set up near Megaton.
One hour later the trio were getting off a Vertibird in front of the old supermarket and they were walking the short distance to meet an ashen faced Houser.
"I should warn you now...brace your stomachs," he'd warned. It wasn't an exaggeration. The outpost hadn't just been taken out, it had been wiped out with brutality to rival the worst Raiders around. The guards had been taken out with precision, 2 had been cut off at the legs by a missile and the third decapitated by laser gun.
That wasn't the worst of it, not by a long shot. The outpost commander's head had been stuck on top of the outpost's computer like a grisly trophy and so far there was no sign of his body. For Kayla, her worst nightmare had come to pass.
"Oh shit!" Dan saw Doc Farnsworth near the last body, that of a 19 year old girl in grey Enclave officer uniform, first.
"Who's that?" Severance asked as an almost inconsolable Kayla ran over to Farnsworth.
"Her name is...was Erica Rivers," Houser explained. "She was given a lieutenant's commission only recently. Kayla was the one who mentored her, they were almost like sisters."
Dan had remembered Erica well. A very attractive and intelligent girl, full of energy and life, committed to getting America back to its old glory again and helping anyone she could along the way. She was not someone who'd deserved to be killed out here and left to rot.
Doc Farnsworth joined them as he finished putting the unfortunate Erica into a body bag and comforting Kayla. "I know it's not much consolation but she died quickly and cleanly: one 10mm round to the head."
"Like she was executed?" Severance guessed.
"My educated guess would be her reward for answering whatever questions were asked by her killer," Farnsworth said as levelly as he could manage.
Dan and Severance exchanged an amazed look. How had he worked all that out?
"A bullet in the head? Not what I'd call a reward, Doc," Severance finally said.
Farnsworth gestured the four to follow him over to the camp's large supply crate and pointed inside. "She was given a quick death as opposed to the slow lingering one that that Commander Harris got."
All of them nearly lost their lunch as they saw the sight inside: namely the rest of the outpost commander. His body had been crucified on the far wall of the crate with what looked like railroad spikes. The surrounding floor was soaking in blood and it was safe to say this was where he'd been decapitated.
"What sick bastard can do something like this?" Kayla spluttered only just keeping from throwing up.
"Plenty of Raiders that would," Severance mused.
"This wasn't Raiders," Dan's tactical mind was already working overtime. "Think about it, this place would be covered with graffiti paint and body parts if it had been. Not to mention there'd be a lot of their bodies lying here right? Our guys would have got some of them at least. This wasn't a group attack...I'm thinking it was only one guy maybe two at most."
Everyone knew that what he was saying made sense. That had been the other crazy thing; there were no other bodies and no clue as to who had done this.
"So what are you saying, Dan?" Houser had always valued Dan's insight.
"We're in a big pile of shit is what I'm saying," Dan was being very blunt. "Think about it, whoever did this isn't an amateur, no wastelander could do what he's done here today."
Severance nodded. "Taking down 4 power armoured soldiers and 2 officers and leaving no trace behind? He's the sort of guy I'd be looking to recruit for my Sigma squad."
"He'd be looking to gut your squad, Captain," Farnsworth warned. "This man might be professional but the way he's acted today has told me 2 things. One: He's got a hate streak against us a mile wide and he doesn't care who knows it. Two: It's safe to say he's getting a great deal of pleasure out of this. This wasn't just an attack on us, it was done with pure spite in it."
"And you think he's going to do this again?" Houser reasoned.
Dan snorted. "One look around this camp would tell you that, Major. If I were you I would be worrying what he tortured out of the commander and Erica."
"The location of our other outposts!" Kayla realised.
"Amongst other things," Dan said darkly. "The real question isn't whether he's going to do this again. It's how many of us are on his list. Well that...or how deep does his hatred run?"