One.

"Never you hear me! You're never going to stop us!" The Raider screamed the words as he frantically struggled to reload his hunting rifle behind the bombed out car "Goddamn Brotherhood! I swear I'll-"

A single shot from the power armoured soldier in front of the vehicle seared a hole through his skull. The raider stayed on his feet for a minute and stumbled near comically backward before dropping to his back. This brought the rest of them scrambling from behind the vehicles and rushing for the barn behind them. Another one of the Brotherhood Knights took aim with his laser rifle. He sighted one of them just before they reached the door. He savoured the shot. His finger slowly moved backward as he thought back to his training. Never pull the trigger, squeeze it. Just before the shot though a hand touched the barrel of his rifle and lowered it.

"It would be better to take them alive." Paladin Korgann advised with his usual calm. A few raiders weren't a threat to them of course, but most of the squad were just happy to get a chance to shoot something. His attitude never changed. He was ever the worker.

"Better is a matter of opinion sir." Knight Cole muttered, pulling his rifle down from the barn. He hated raiders. He hated raiders more than any of the Capital Wasteland's pile of dangers. Supermutants were disgusting, radscorpions were dangerous but raiders were people. They were people who should have known better than the monsters. They were people he should have been able to survive without becoming cannibals and murderers. He'd kill every last one if he could. Still, the youngest member of the Kodiaks understood his duty. The objective was more important than the desire to punish.

Korgann took a few steps forward past the vehicle, making sure to check the front end to make sure the volatile engine wouldn't explode, and placed himself directly in front of the doorway to the barn ahead. He knew what he was doing. Nothing the raider band they were engaged with could penetrate his power armour. His voice boomed through the windless afternoon air "You know the position of some vital technology! Tell me what I need to know and you'll be allowed to leave. The rest of you will die here." His tone shifted, growing harsher with the next words " I am not a generous man. I will not offer a second chance!"

There was no response for a few minutes from inside. Paladin Korgann's armour whined as he shifted his weight and brought his minigun up to aim it at the structure. Cole wondered if he actually had to move or if it was just for effect. Cole trained his weapon on the barn again. Inside his head, he begged for one of them to move. He begged for one of the raiders to see the hot desert sun reflecting off his visor and get fancy.

Just try and shoot me.

"You think they're gonna surrender?" Ibanez stepped up behind him and took up a position at his left side. She sounded almost amused. They both knew the answer.

Cole scoffed under his helmet and shook his head "They're too stupid to surrender. In a few seconds one of them is going to try and shoot the commander. We'll rip that place apart and make them tell us what we need to know." He was glad no one else in the squad could see the wide grin on his face underneath the helmet. It would hardly be appropriate.

Bang. Ding. The sound of a bullet bouncing harmlessly off Korgann's armour.

"Have it your way then." Their leaders words were no yell this time. They sounded heavy; just above a whisper, but helpfully amplified to the rest of the squad by the microphones inside the helmet. He brought the minigun up beside his waist and the terrifying weapon began to spin.

Cole started firing. So did Ibanez. In less than five seconds the entire Brotherhood squad was firing all manner of bullet, laser and explosive inside the barn. The inside filled up with smoke. There were screams from the dying raiders within. After less than a minute of sustained fire the building lurched. A moment later, it collapsed onto the men gathered inside. The squad's fire quickly died down. Cole ran up to his commander who was already walking toward the wreckage. That was how these battles always went. They came quickly, and ended even quicker. It was a very frustrating state of affairs indeed.

Korgann reached into the wreckage and closed his gauntlet around a crossbeam. The armour was strong enough to make picking it up absolutely trivial. He tossed it aside and stared down at a man who'd been crushed underneath. It was a grisly sight. The man lay there with his ribs shattered. A bit of bone stuck from the side of his abdomen. He coughed through the blood and glared furiously up at them. Cole found the entire display pathetic; dying in the sand and still clinging to the anger.

He heard a hiss of hydraulics as the commander pulled off his helmet. Korgann put the black dome down in the sand and kneeled down beside the dying man. There was no kindness in his tone when he spoke. He was not trying to comfort him. There were still things that they needed to know "Your ribs aren't going to kill you." He looked up and down the man as he choked another bit of blood out then spoke again "No, I know what's going to kill you. You're going to drown in your blood. You're trying to expel as much of it as you can now but your body can't handle the internal bleeding. Some of it's going to go inside your lungs. I hear it's a horrible way to die. So I'll give you a way out. Tell me where the entrance is and I'll make it quick. I'll make it painless. Believe me, it's better that way."

The raider's eyes kept that intense, hateful glare for a few minutes. Until he came into another coughing fit. Korgann winced and clenched his jaw. The raider's eyes softened and he nodded slowly. He searched for a way to get the words out. His mouth opened and closed but no words they could hear came out. Korgann bent down and put an ear just above the man's mouth. His eyes narrowed and he nodded before rising up to his feet. The raider closed his eyes and leaned backward. He was still breathing, and by the erratic movements of his chest resisting the coughing as best he could. Korgann picked up his helmet and walked away from the barn "Minigun won't do. Cole, make it quick please."

He was heading for a well near a try. Ibanez and the rest took up position behind him a moment later. Cole headed over to the raider and trained his rifle against the middle of the man's forehead. Then he scoffed. No. Too easy. Too quick. It wouldn't do at all. He brought his foot up into the air and drove it downward. There was a sound of crushing and wet things being driven into the earth; a sound that even sickened Cole and the release of an awful stench into the air. He made distance from it as fast as he could to join up with the rest of the squad.

Korgann was looking at him as he put his helmet back in his head. A firm stare vanished behind the green visor of his T-51b. When it locked shut, he turned back to their target. A well. It was a rather wide, but otherwise unassuming stone well in the ground. Those things had been uncommon before the Great War. It was nearly impossible to find one now. The Paladin headed closer and looked down the well before shaking his head and stepping away "Ibanez, you're going to love this. Trash that thing."

She hesitated for a second, confused, before heading forward to the well. When she reached it she threw a kick upward. The force of the blow blew the stonework apart. Pieces went flying across the field. She swung her hands around to clear the rest of it, kicking up a great cloud of dust that was impossible to see through. Cole heard Ibanez laugh and headed closer, angling past another member of the team. When he headed past the dust he found himself looking at a large metal hatch sitting there in the ground. Ibanez looked up from her work and chuckled "Yeah, that one's pretty good sir. Clever."

"No number on it." Cole remarked quietly, crossing his arms and inspecting the hatch "Say, I thought we'd been out of the hunt for technology business for a while now. We're supposed to be protecting people, not raiding vaults. You want to spill the beans on what we're doing here sir?"

"No."

Well, that was to the point. Korgann put his weapon on the ground and reached down into an opening beside the hatch. He lifted the lid and groaned a bit as he forced it up into the air. When he finally let it fall to the other side, it crashed into the ground with a gigantic thud. They found themselves looking into a large black hole going into the earth with a ladder heading down. The space was wide enough for them to fit. Korgann looked back at them and spoke "Cole. Ibanez. With me. Rutger, keep an eye out."

Knight Rutger nodded and Cole watched Korgann drop down into the hole. He heard him land at the bottom of the shaft with a heavy, metallic thud. A moment later Ibanez followed. Cole hesitated. He hated heights. He had since he was a trainee and his instructor pushed him off a balcony. He saw Rutger looking at him and could imagine his fellow knight smirking under his helmet. The idea of being laughed at didn't sit well with him, so he gritted his teeth and dove in after his superior. The fall was longer than he expected but sure enough he landed just behind the others. They found themselves in a large, round tunnel that had been dug from the rocky and soil. This much rocky ground had to mean the farm above was just about useless even before the bombs fell. It had to be a disguise. A disguise for something far greater.

"Keep your eyes open." Korgann muttered up ahead. The further they headed through this tunnel the more manmade it became. Now there was metal lining the walls. The tunnel was becoming a large steel tube. Cole tried to see past the Paladin to the end of the tunnel but the bulky shoulders of his power armour made that impossible "Have either of you ever been inside a vault?"

A vault. He heard Ibanez suck in a breath.

"No sir." She answered. Cole could hear the wonder in her voice. The vaults were relics. One hundred and twenty two of the underground installations had been built in the years before the bombs fell by the United States Government and Vault-Tec. By now most of them had been opened up, cleaned out and partially destroyed by the various denizens of the Wasteland. It looked like this one hadn't been touched to Cole. The entrance still seemed hidden. The raiders hadn't found it yet, which meant this vault had to be full of completely untouched tech. Ibanez was practically bouncing with excitement.

"We've got a door here." Korgann's voice snapped Cole back to reality as they excited the tunnel into a wider section. Finally, Cole could see past the commander. Indeed there was a gigantic metal door in front of them. The circular door had a number painted on to it. It was in the twenties but the second number had been seared off. By what remained, it could have been a six or an eight. It was too difficult to tell. Korgann stopped to inspect it for a few minutes, reaching a hand up to touch against the doorway "Laser burn. Should have mostly faded off by now. Someone else was here."

"How could someone else have been in here?" Cole questioned as he looked around the cave "Only entrance was back there. Nobody came in that way. Vault's only got one door right?"

"The ones we know about only have one door. Yes." Korgann corrected him flatly before he nodded his head to the console beside the door "Open the door Ibanez."

She headed over and inspected the console for a couple of seconds before hitting a few buttons and pulling down a large yellow switch. An alarm began to blare in the tunnel. Dust covered siren lights turned and shined orange on the walls. The door pulled back with a howl of metal against metal. The ancient door scraped backward before changing direction off to the side and finally groaning to a stop. Cole felt an uncomfortable chill run up his spine. It was like walking into a tomb. His mind screamed one thing at him.

You shouldn't be here.