Chapter 7

"This is my castle! I'm the queen!" squealed Jessica as she pointed at her tin can palace. Her eyes flicked up toward her playmate. "I'm the queen!" she puffed up her cheeks and stared Jule down.

Jule laughed. "All hail Queen Jessica! Ruler of Tinytown and tiny castle!" She smiled at the baby. Then looked at the shut door to the porch, where her father stood talking with the mysterious Mr. Chance.

"Hey, Queen Jessica. Lets play a different game." She suggested.

"Okay, as long as I still get to be the queen." The little girl replied.

"Sure," answered the older girl as she pinched the little girl's cheeks. "Lets play hide and seek. I'll count to a hundred. Remember the rules, stay inside the town and away from the dangerous places, okay? Whats the password for today?"

Jessica's face lit up "Your Majesty!"

"Okay. If you hear me yell "your majesty", that means you win and you have to stop hiding, okay?"

Jess stuck her tongue out. "Fine." Jule still remembers the first time she had "lost" the little girl while playing hide and seek. Sandara, Jesse's mother was frantic, and so was she. Jessica probably knew the little nooks and crannies of the truck yard better than even Detroit's founding father. She could hide and just disappear for hours. After that incident, Hide and Seek became a banned activity, but Jessica was not happy. Her tantrums were the stuff of legends. Eventually, she got her way and her favorite game was taken off the blacklist, if with a few extra rules.

"Good girl. Now go!" She made a show of closing her eyes and turning around, both actions exaggerated to let the kid know that she should get running. "One, two, three..." she muttered just softly enough for Jesse to hear.

Jule listened to her quick little footsteps fade away, then pressed herself to the wall. She strained her ears, trying to ignore the humming of the refrigerator on the other side of the wall

".... power armor.. technology of the brotherhood... completely different." The buzzing of the refrigerator was too loud where she was for her to make out everything that was being said. Jule realized that she was listening from directly behind it. Irritated at herself for her momentary lapse of intelligence, she moves away from the spot and closer to the door.

"At least thats all I've heard." she was able to make out her father's voice. This is a lot better, she thought to herself. "Can't say I've given much thought about it. I haven't had contact with the brotherhood in eight years." Brotherhood? As in the Brotherhood of Steel? This made her curiosity flare even more. She pressed her ear hard against the thin wall.

"Well," a different voice answered. Chance. "Thats close enough to what really happened. "Yes, there was a fight in the brotherhood. Yes, there was mass desertion. Yes, I was among those who.. deserted." Chance said the last word in such a way that Jule could tell it left a bad taste in his mouth. "But it all depends on who you ask."

"Long story short, after twenty years of battling super mutants, my mentor, the man I owe my life to and who brought me into the brotherhood had gotten it into his thick head that Lyons was too soft. That he had forgotten what the brotherhood was supposed to be doing here, and that he had gone native."

"Back then, I was Paladin Lance Ryman. And when the shit hit the fan, I had just returned from a long range recon mission. Thats what I did. I stalked off, sometimes alone, sometimes with two or three knights, wandered the wastes, checkin up on the muties, lookin for lost tech, or whatever the hell else Lyons might want me to do out in the wastes."

"You were a scout, then."

"The best one in the whole brotherhood. I've been around."

"Anyway," he continued after a pause, "I was dogshit tired, and I didnt even have the chance to take off my recon armor when Casdin pulled me aside and started talkin my ear off. I wasn't in the mood to listen, so I didn't really pay much attention. Figured he was pissed off at Lyons over something again. Had no idea how right I was. He told me to be ready, that its happening tonight. Shit, all I wanted to do was to get debriefed and hit the sack.

I was stupefied when Casdin woke me up in the middle of the night, In full power armor, and told me that it was time for us to go. I tried to talk him out of it. But thats like trying to convince a raider that Jet isn't good for your health. Apparently, a lot happened while I was out in the wastes. And Casdin, that bastard, got me involved. And so, we ditched the brotherhood. I figured even if I had stayed, Lyons would not believe that I did not know anything. Personally, I didn't care about brotherhood ideals and all that jazz. I just figured the citadel was as safe a place as any in the wastes to live."

Jule thought about what she was hearing. No wonder he was so good with a gun. He was a member of the Brotherhood of Steel. And from what she was hearing, she got the impression that he was of a reasonably high rank. She could tell that he was a person that people would follow. She recognized that soon after they had started their trek from Rivet City. He gave off a similar vibe as her father.. that of a leader. This Casdin man probably recognized that about Chance as well. And used it. She continued listening.

"We set up a base somewhere, called it Fort Independence. Called ourselves Outcasts. A big Fuck You to Lyons and his goons. It only took me a couple of months to see the cluster fuck of a situation we were in. We were few, constantly under attack by raiders from Fairfax. Between the raider attacks and the lack of equipment, we were barely surviving, and we couldn't really afford to mobilize enough troops to effectively look for lost tech, which I thought was the whole damn point of the exercise. We were slowly rotting away. It was doomed from the start, really. And when I suggested to Casdin, rather forcefully, that we move out, at least somewhere not so close to raiders, and told him that we were getting nowhere, he flipped a switch, kicked me out with nothing but clothes and Angelina.

So here I am, an outcast from the outcasts. Go figure. Cant go back to the citadel. They'd shoot me on site the second they recognized me. Cant say I want to. Been out there, drifting, nearly a year now. Surviving. Scavving. Minding my own business. Life's surprisingly good, actually. I can usually scrounge up enough caps to get whatever I want.. which is usually another gun. I'm not tied down by some stupid code, and I'm free from politicking and that god damned heavy ass power armor. You have no idea how much it stinks in there after a while. Those things haven't been washed in two hundred years."

Somehow, Jule believed every word she heard. It did, after all, coincide with what she had seen. He moved like a blur, outnumbered (if not necessarily out gunned) and killed a whole group of raiders. She knew he would never be in that situation had it not been for her. And he certainly had no obligation to risk his life to save hers. She had no doubt that after that slimy raider killed her, he would have easily been able to give him and his flunkies the slip. Suddenly, knight in shining armor made a lot of sense to her.

She decided she had eavesdropped enough. There certainly was enough to keep her mind occupied for a while. She stepped away from the wall, as silently as she could. Trying to ignore the muffled words as the conversation continued on the other side.

"One hundred," she muttered as she went off on her search for a little girl, hiding somewhere in the town.