Fallout 3: Pittfall
Chapter 2.
When she reached the top of the ladder, Audrey had to wrench the locking handle into its open position. Either the bolts on the thing had been applied way too tight or the entire mechanism was in dire need of lubricant. These days it was probably a combination of both. Putting her shoulder against the underside of the hatch, she braced herself on the ladder and tried to force it open. The hatch gave slightly, but remained stubbornly sealed. Yet unlike the locking handle, the hatch didn't feel stuck, she noted. It was almost as if a large mass was resting on top of it.
Trying to create the human equivalent of a piston, Audrey brought her feet to rest on the next rung up and folded her body even tighter into the confined space. Hanging onto the ladder with her right hand, she pressed her left arm and shoulder against the hatch. Using her well-toned legs, she instantly threw every ounce of strength she had upward towards the sealed portal.
To her surprise, the rounded door swung skyward with ease and her momentum propelled her straight up through the portal. Audrey tried to correct herself as she started to fall, but found that it was too late to do anything. Her upper half hit the surface of the dish, knocking the wind out of her, while her legs went back down into the access hole from whence she had just come. She felt herself sliding down and tried desperately to find a grip on the slick metal of the dish. At the last moment, her fingers found purchase on the lip of the portal and she was able to get her footing on one of the ladder's rungs. Gasping for air and trying to get her heart rate down, she didn't even register the sound of the voice above her.
"Here, miss," a sleazy male voice spoke. "Let me help you outta' there."
Suddenly, a strong hand with a powerful grip grabbed hold of her hair and yanked up. Audrey screamed in pain and threw both hands around her attacker's wrist, trying to fight him off. This only allowed the man to latch onto one of her arms with his other hand and forcibly haul her out onto the dish. Behind her, the hatch clanged shut.
The pressure on her hair was released and she felt herself being rolled onto her back. Before she could process what had just happened to her, a thick-soled black boot planted itself on her abdomen grinding into her lower ribs. Audrey yelped and looked up to see the owner of the boot was none other than a Talon Company merc. He was holding a combat shotgun which he now pointed towards her head. In spite of the pain on her ribs, Audrey didn't dare move. Two other mercs appeared from behind the first, one nonchalantly toting what looked to be a long strand of piano wire, the other unarmed except a pair of spiked knuckles.
"At last, I come face to face with the famous Lone Wanderer," the one holding the piano wire said as he slowly circled around behind her. He glanced at his companions. "Which I must say is quite an accomplishment for us as we normally don't see her when she's gunning us down."
"Not so tough out in the open are you?" the first merc, whom Audrey had dubbed Shotgun, sneered. For lack of anything better, she assigned the second Talon the nickname, Piano, and the Spike for the third.
As Piano continued to circle her and gloat, she racked her brain, trying to think of how she could have missed these other three mercenaries. Her Pip-Boy had not shown anything on the motion scanners. The only solution she could come up with was that the metal of the dish itself was thick enough to conceal the men from her sensors. She cursed herself for letting her guard her down. Being careless always got you killed in the Capital Wasteland. Always! Even the mindless feral ghouls would know that. Suddenly, Piano was right in her face, the nauseating stench of whiskey and sweat that emanated from him making her fight the urge to gag.
"Don't think for even one second that we've forgotten about Fort Banister," he hissed, practically spitting every word at her.
"Seriously?" Audrey quipped. "Considering that you morons still think you can kill me even after I cleaned out your base, I figured you all just hadn't gotten the message."
Piano's face flushed red with anger. Audrey decided to press her advantage.
"I mean come on, guys," she said, addressing all three. "How many friggin' times do I have to turn your hit squads into headless corpses for you to get the memo that I don't want to be messed with?"
At the mention of his fallen comrades, Piano snarled, grabbed her armor's collar, and hauled her forward to where she fell onto her knees, nearly knocking over Shotgun in the process. He did recover though and took a few steps to Audrey's right, still training his weapon on her. "Hold her arms!" he ordered Spike, who nodded and complied. Audrey grunted in pain as Spike twisted her arms behind her back, nearly dislocating them from her shoulders. The next instant, she felt Piano's wire wrap around her neck and go taut. Trying desperately to free her arms, she clawed and scratched at Spike's legs, but to no avail. The pressure from Piano's homemade garrote merely intensified and she began to see black dots in front of her eyes as oxygen was denied access to her brain.
"Die you filthy whore!" Piano screamed as constricted the wire even tighter.
Audrey's head was throbbing and her ears were ringing so much that she did not hear the loud roar that now filled the air around her. The next thing she knew, Shotgun was practically standing at attention as laser cannon bolts shredded his body from behind. In his death throes, the merc depressed the trigger on his weapon and consequently blew Piano's head off.
As Piano collapsed behind her, the wire he held loosened on Audrey's neck as did the grip on her arms. She immediately fell forward onto her hands and knees coughing and sucking in lungful after lungful of precious air. She gagged and spit up a bit of blood, no doubt the result of having her wind pipe partially crushed. Looking up, she saw Spike making a break for the exit hatch. He was in the midst of uttering another terrified profane expression when his body was enveloped in large blinding red flash. When Audrey's vision cleared, she saw that only a charred skeleton now occupied the space where the merc once stood. It was then that she became aware of the rapid thumping of rotor blades above the dish. Rotor blades could only mean one thing in this Wasteland.
With a sickening feeling forming in the pit of her stomach, Audrey stood up and shielded her eyes from the rotor wash as the wind now whipped through her hair. Her knight in shining armor was none other than an Enclave Vertibird which now hovered menacingly over the lip of the dish.
To Audrey the VB-02 Vertibird could only be described as an ugly aircraft. With its twin rotors gracing each wing and its overall bulbous and stocky design, the Vertibird tended to resemble a larger version of the common bloatfly that roamed the Wasteland. What they lacked in appearance though, they made up for in reputation and firepower. In the Capital Wasteland, the Vertibird was the unofficial symbol for the Enclave, the corrupt remnants of the former United States government. These were the same men and women who, up until their recent defeat at Project Purity by Audrey and the Brotherhood of Steel, were hell-bent on carrying out a genocidal extermination of every mutated being in the Wasteland. Considering that the only untainted strain of humanity was the Enclave, everyone and everything else that walked and breathed the irradiated air of D.C. was automatically blacklisted.
Above the loud drone of the Vertibird's dual engines, a gruff voice boomed through the aircraft's external speakers.
"Audrey Epson! You are guilty of high crimes perpetrated against the government of the United States. Lay down your weapons and put your hands in the air!"
Epson? Audrey could not remember the last time anyone had used her last name. She was on a first name basis with everyone she knew, including the Brotherhood of Steel and Three Dog, the Capital Wasteland's resident disk jockey for Galaxy News Radio, had immortalized her with such titles as "The Kid from Vault 101" and "The Lone Wanderer". She found that having a reputation as the Wasteland's white knight pretty much negated any need for her to carry a last name. And why the hell did everyone assume she was armed? If the idiot behind the microphone would look out his view screen he could clearly see that she had no weapons on her. Then again, to the Enclave she had to be public enemy number one after 'assassinating' their President Eden. It wasn't everyday she killed an opponent with circular logic.
Deciding she wasn't going to wait around to find out what the troopers wanted with her, Audrey figured she only had one chance to make her exit. She slowly raised both hands above her head. When she nearly had her arms fully extended, she went for her left wrist, punched on her stealth field, and disappeared into thin air. Then she ran.
The Enclave's response was immediate. Inside the Vertibird, the commanding officer who had addressed her began shouting orders to the rest of his crew. Behind Audrey, the big gunship turned in her direction and began spraying the surface of the dish with fire from its laser cannon turret in an effort to potentially hit what it couldn't see. Doing her best to avoid this rain of death, she ran until she reached a section in which one of the giant metal panels had fallen out long ago. Without hesitation, she jumped through it feet first and landed hard on the upper catwalk below the dish. The hatch that led back down into the base of the tower where Fawkes and Dogmeat awaited was just a few feet from where she had fallen. As she stood, she looked up in time to see a formation of four more Vertibirds buzz the tower, undoubtedly arriving as backup. A small part of her felt flattered by all the attention she was getting – even if that attention indicated that the Enclave was more scared of her than they were of a super mutant behemoth. Limping slightly from her fall, Audrey swung open the hatch, resealed it, and slid down the ladder.
She hit the ground running, nearly bowling over Dogmeat in the process. The startled animal growled his displeasure but immediately put it behind him as he happily trotted after her. Audrey emerged onto the upper catwalk still favoring her right leg – probably a nasty bone bruise from the fall – and leaned over the railing to find Fawkes seated at the computer station the late female ghoul had once occupied. The big mutant turned around when he heard her footsteps, a look of giddy excitement on his face.
"Audrey, my dear!" he exclaimed cheerily. "It is good that you have returned as I have something wonderful to show you. The research this ghoul here was conducting on this instillation is absolutely fascinating!"
"Fawkes, I hate to rain on your parade," Audrey cut in as she made her way down the stairs. "But we've had a bit of an unexpected development."
"Oh?" he inquired, fully facing her when she reached the bottom.
"The Enclave's showed up in force. We've got five Vertibird gunships outside and no telling how many soldiers inside of them. Our odds of escape aren't good."
To her surprise, Fawkes returned her dire revelation with one of his crooked toothy smiles. He usually sported one of these looks whenever he found a pre-war toy of destruction he couldn't wait to test out. He folded his large hands together and touched his index fingers to his lips.
"Then it is all the more imperative that you come over here and see the ghoul's research." He indicated the data that was present on the computer screen. "It might just be our ticket out of this place."
Audrey sighed as she joined Fawkes by the desk. She leaned around his injured shoulder and peered at the computer. As she read the through the text, her mouth fell open slightly.
"My dear, what on earth happened to your neck?" Fawkes said having just noticed the ligature marks on her throat.
"Nothing that hasn't already been dealt with," she replied, waving a dismissive hand at him. "Now hush, I'm getting to the good part."
After another minute or so, she stood back and folded her arms across her chest, a cocky grin sliding onto her face.
"Highwater-Tousers, huh?" she glanced over at Fawkes.
"Indeed," he replied, holding up a holotape. "These activation codes were on the ghoul's corpse."
Audrey's grin grew even wider. "Well then, what say we go test them out?"
It was not hard to hack into the Enclave's radio frequency. With the right tuning – and the addition of 'Safe Cracker' software courtesy of the Brotherhood Outcasts – her Pip-Boy was able to break the encryption on the channel used by the Enclave personnel in the Vertibirds outside. She needed to get through to whoever was in charge of their squadron if her and Fawkes' plan was to work.
She carefully turned her Pip-Boy's dial and heard her radio crackle to life with garbled noises that soon turned into undeniable signal traffic from the Vertibird crews.
"Excuse me," she spoke into Pip-Boy's built in microphone. "This is Audrey Epson. I need to speak to the commanding officer.
At the sound of her voice, all chatter on the channel stopped. She was pretty sure she heard one of the troopers try to stifle a curse. A few seconds later, the same gruff voice that had addressed her earlier on the dish came through to greet her again.
This is Commander Gray of the Enclave Air Corps. Young lady, just how the hell did you get access to this channel?" he demanded.
Audrey fought the urge to laugh. This was going much better than she had expected.
"How I did it is not important. Why I did it is. I'm contacting you to announce my formal surrender to the government of the United States."
"Holy shit!" This came from another soldier who hadn't been able to control his surprise while listening in. Gray instantly admonished him.
"Silence, Lieutenant!" he snapped. "Control your tongue or I'll have you court-martialed for insubordination!"
Audrey couldn't help but snicker. So that's the sound of someone's mind blowing. And here I thought it would be more squishy, she mused. After that, there was silence on the other end for nearly a full minute. As she was about to add another baiting comment, Commander Gray came back on.
"Miss Epson, you are aware are you not, of the nature of your crimes against the Enclave?"
"Certainly, and I wish to make amends for my actions. If you let me live, I will spill every tactical detail I can on the Brotherhood of Steel. After all it's about time America reclaimed it former capital, don't you think?"
She must have caused Gray to have a seizure upon hearing her offer as the com had gone silent again. A moment later, he returned."
"What are your terms, Miss Epson?"
This next bit was key. She had to make sure she played it perfectly.
"Simple, Commander. During my hasty retreat earlier, I was forced to leave some of my equipment in the upper portion of this tower. Allow me free passage to retrieve it and I will then come back down to ground level and board one of your gunships without incident. If I encounter any resistance on my way up, I will puncture the cyanide capsule I have tucked in my mouth whereupon you will lose the only chance you have to take down the Brotherhood on the East Coast. Is that clear, Commander?" Come on you pompous prick, take the bait!
"What about your dog and mutant?" Gray countered. "We know they are here too."
Audrey suppressed the desire to verbally destroy him. She had just given the Enclave their Holy Grail so to speak and Gray still wanted more assurance.
"The dog comes with me but the mutant means nothing. My only cause now is to serve my country and the rightful government. Nothing and no one else matters. He does not know of my deception yet, so do not fire on him until we are all on the ground outside the tower."
But the Enclave officer still wasn't convinced. "And just how do we know you are sincere in your offer, Miss Epson? You go from decimating our ranks to turning yourself in? Just like that? Do you take me for damn fool, woman?"
Audrey's patience had finally reached its limit. "No Gray, I take you for a dumbass," she hissed. "You know damn well my surrender is promotion material. Seriously, how often does your Ace of Spades come to you and say 'Hey! Arrest me!'?"
"Epson, I – "
"Shut up, Commander! If you don't take my offer right now, I will personally go out of my way to find your superiors – those I haven't killed – and tell them about your reluctance to accept the proverbial golden goose. Then, I'll recommend that you be put up in front of a firing squad. Grounds? Unrivaled stupidity." Audrey took a deep breath, suddenly realizing she hadn't felt that good in a while. Tearing a pretentious snob like Gray a new one was more satisfying than she had expected. Her rant was soon rewarded.
"Miss Epson, you have deal," said Gray, his voice a little smaller than before. "You may proceed through the tower freely." But underneath the shame, Audrey could almost see the greed blazing in the man's eyes.
She ended the transmission and looked back to where Fawkes and Dogmeat stood behind her in the room with the ladder leading up to the outer catwalk. The entire time the previous conversation had been taking place, Fawkes had been subduing his laughter. Now he let out a hearty belly laugh that reverberated around the cylindrical chamber.
"Those pathetic imbeciles have no idea what they're in for do they?"
"Well, right now we have the upper hand if we play along," Audrey reminded him. "If we delay much longer, Gray and the Fourth Reich up there might start getting suspicious and our window of opportunity will be gone."
"Do you think they will actually let us roam freely?"
Now it was Audrey's turn to laugh. "Heck no. I'd give it five minutes tops before the super-troopers blast their way through the front door. The Enclave may be a bunch of arrogant bastards but they certainly aren't stupid." She started to climb. "By the way," she added eying his injured shoulder. "Are you going to be able to lift Dogmeat up and down the ladders with that – er, 'flesh wound'?"
"Without a doubt, my friend," Fawkes said confidently. "But if he claws at me like last time, I might consider dropping him." He said this last part all while staring down Dogmeat, who, after surviving a cave full of Deathclaws, a run through a gauntlet or five of super mutants, and the assault on Project Purity, wasn't fazed by much these days.
"You two, I swear," Audrey shook her head. "Let's do this."
Upon opening the hatch to the outer catwalk, the trio was jostled by the rotor wash of a hovering Vertibird, its gun turret tracking them as they started toward the next door. Audrey paused and wagged a finger at the gunship, more to piss the pilot off than anything else. It must have worked as the Vertibird then pulled away from the tower and gave them some space.
Behind her, Fawkes wrestled with the impulse to unleash his Gatling laser on the flying menace. He wanted very much to bring the primal wrath he knew he possessed down on the heads his friend's tormentors, but he trusted her instincts. For the time being he had to play nice.
Once they were inside the last antechamber, Audrey closed and locked the door. She then went to the wall-mounted terminal and hacked through its flimsy excuse for a firewall.
"This should be the terminal the instructions downstairs mentioned," she said once she had gained access to the full system.
"Let us hope so," Fawkes replied. "Otherwise this load of crap we just fed the Enclave is only going to buy us enough time to compose our execution speeches."
Two files now appeared on the green computer screen. One said 'Highwater-Trousers' and the other said 'Appropriate Soundtrack'. Audrey synced her Pip-Boy to the computer and quickly slaved the console to her device. It then began to automatically scan for the activation codes she had uploaded before leaving the tower's base. Once the codes had been recognized, a screen appeared on the Pip-Boy that asked her to confirm or deny the initiation of the launch sequence. For moment she chose to wait and she tabbed over to another of the Pip-Boy's menus.
"What did it mean by, 'Appropriate Soundtrack'?" Fawkes asked.
"That's what I'm going to find out right now; I've downloaded the audio file to my drive."
Audrey toggled opened the correct file and initiated a playback of the recording. To her surprise the sounds of a timeless classical melody filled the chamber around them, reverberating off the concrete walls. The notes made her heart swell with happiness as she and Fawkes shared a knowing gleeful look while Dogmeat panted beside them. This was going to be all too perfect.
This time, it was Fawkes who opened the hatch first and proceeded out onto the dish. If the Enclave had any surprises waiting for them up top, he would be the last thing they would want to tangle with. He set Dogmeat down gently on the metal surface of the dish and helped Audrey up through the portal. When he saw the two mangled corpses of Piano and Shotgun, in addition to the still-smoking remains of Spike, he turned to her in slight aggravation.
"Friends of yours?"
Audrey started to make a smart-alec remark to him when two Vertibirds rose from below the sides of the dish to hover over the trio. One was Gray's. Ignoring the immense gusts of wind thrown up by the two gunships, she patched herself in once more to the Enclave's private channel.
"Commander Gray, this is Epson; do you copy, over?" she said, raising her voice to be heard above the Vertibirds' drone.
"This is Gray," came the terse response. "Epson what the hell are you doing up here? I thought you were collecting your gear and meeting us at the bottom? And why are you on this channel in front of the mutant?"
"He can't hear me over the sound of your engines." She jerked her head over at Fawkes who was making a conscious effort to wander around the dish aimlessly while staring dumbly at the Vertibirds. "And to answer your question, I thought you might be interested to get a new musical arrangement for your eyebots to spew out. I'm patching it through to your ships now."
"What in the name of – "
Gray's words were cut off as the glorious music Audrey, Fawkes, and Dogmeat had listened to below began playing full blast through the speakers inside the Vertibirds. One of the gunships shifted position slightly as the pilot must have been frantically trying to cover his ears.
"Epson!" Gray squawked over her Pip-Boy. "Turn this God-forsaken racket off now! What is the meaning of this?"
With an evil smile adorning her face, Audrey confirmed the launch sequence. She casually put on her lucky sunglasses.
"It means, eat Tchaikovsky you bitch."
Miles above the Capital Wasteland, an ancient pre-war technological behemoth awakened from a 200 year long slumber on Audrey's command. The vacuum of space had perfectly preserved the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System – FOBS – satellite, also known as Highwater-Trousers, and its entire explosive payload. Positioning jets fired off as the orbital strike platform acknowledged the data from the SatCom array and silently floated into position directly over the facility. While such a targeting strike was normally considered suicidal for anyone still in the dish tower, in this case it could not be helped. The late ghoul scientist had discovered that the motivators to position the array's dish were offline and as result, she could only make the dish face straight up and hope to get a lucky ping off one of the hundreds of orbiting satellites floating around above. That one in a million shot had come – and so had Audrey and her friends who were now turning the ghoul's research into an exit strategy.
Like a mechanical octopus, the FOBS extended eight arms out from its center in an equidistant pattern, each brandishing a warhead. From the end of each of the arms, a targeting laser was fired at the ground below to provide an easy track for the guidance systems on the missiles to follow. The missiles themselves, while not nearly as destructive as the ICBM's and Fat Men that had destroyed the civilized world two centuries before, still contained enough conventional knockdown power to destroy a small army or a military base if clustered together. Once the FOBS had established an accurate reading of the terrain below, the satellite ignited the engines of its eight missiles and sent them hurtling down to planet below.
At the same time Audrey saw the first of the targeting lasers touch down, the finale of the Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture began to blare out over the facility's PA system. As the crescendo of chimes and brass began to build, seven other lasers hit to form a dotted ring around the SatCom array. Gray was shouting something at her over her Pip-Boy's radio, but she ignored him and stared up at the sky, anxiously awaiting the reentry plumes of the FOBS' payload.
"Prepare to dive down the hatch if one of these things is off the mark, Fawkes!" she called over to him. Fawkes acknowledged with a thumbs up. He too was awaiting this grand spectacle.
Their patience paid off. As Audrey pushed her hair out of her face, she beheld the first missile as it came streaking down one of the laser tracks – and scored a direct hit on Gray's Vertibird at the same time the climactic fanfare of the Overture initiated. The explosion knocked them off their feet and Audrey had to press herself as tight as she could to the surface of the dish to avoid the large chunks of debris flying in all directions from the explosion. The other Vertibird pulled up sharply and tried to fly out of harm's way, only to accidentally intercept the second missile in time to the low brass-simulated canon shots. The fiery remains of the doomed aircraft careened violently into a nearby group of trees.
Audrey rolled over in time to see this and started to laugh, but the smoke from the explosions and resulting fires caught in her throat and she sat up in a minor coughing fit. Her coughs though were mixed her laughing spasms. She felt a set of powerful but gentle hands helping her to her feet and found that Fawkes was by her side along with Dogmeat.
"My dear, are you all right?" he was saying loudly into her ear.
"Never – never better!" Audrey exclaimed once she regained use of her lungs. "Come on, this fireworks display isn't over yet!"
She led them up to the lip of the dish and looked down to where the three remaining gunships had landed in a small cluster. All around the SatCom array, more missiles were hammering the ground, each seemingly in sync with the Overture's canon shots. Looking through the scope she had taken off of Hendrix's rifle, she could see Enclave personnel streaming out of the facility and making a break for the gunships, apparently abandoning the effort to capture her from below. About a hundred yards away another missile struck the ground and the earth shook from its impact. The Enclave soldiers only moved faster in trying to prep the Vertibirds for flight. Unfortunately for them, their efforts were in vain. By the time the final drum roll was sounding, the last warhead slammed into the Enclave's improvised landing pad and wiped out anyone and anything on the ground in a blast of concussive orange fire. The force of this explosion combined with the smaller ones from each of the Vertibirds seemed to make the entire tower rock backwards and Audrey dropped the scope and once again found herself knocked on her backside. She haphazardly tumbled down the bowl of the dish and came to a stop near the hatch. Fawkes and Dogmeat rushed to her aid, and again found her engaged in a laughing fit.
Audrey held up a hand to signal to Fawkes that she was fine, but couldn't get any words out as she was laughing so hard. By this point the music had stopped and the only sounds that filled the air were impacts of falling debris, crackling fires, and her hysterics. Fawkes stood over her and started to say something, thought better of it, and decided to join her. He plopped down next to her and found himself starting to chuckle. Soon they both were holding onto each other and crying from laughing so hard.
Audrey reached into her pack and pulled out a whiskey bottle that was half-full of the appropriate amber liquid. She took a swig then offered some to Fawkes who graciously accepted. He drained the bottle in one swallow and tossed the empty container back behind him where it shattered. Together both friends shared a moment of camaraderie, enjoying the sensation of having stared down the odds again and come out ahead. Dogmeat, clearly having had enough excitement for one day, laid down next to Audrey and rested his head on her thigh.
"That never should have worked, Fawkes" she said after a bit. "We just called down a freaking airstrike on our heads! Whose idea was this anyway?"
"I say that we call it an even commitment to insanity."
She smiled. "We can run that line by Three Dog and see what he says." Reluctantly, she got to her feet. "Come on boys, I'm starving and I hear there's a special on mole rat jerky at the Brass Lantern tonight. We can make it back by dark if we hurry."
She knelt down and was about to open up the hatch when her Pip-Boy made a chirping noise, indicating it had picked up a new radio signal. She rolled her eyes and toggled it on. What now? She supposed she shouldn't be surprised; the height and location of the SatCom installation practically made it a lightning rod for any incoming radio traffic.
Many years in the future, she would be able to recall the words she heard next very, very clearly.
"To anyone who can hear me, my name is Wernher."