Modus Operandi 10
Nine raiders. All dead. All lying in a circle around the firepit. Weapons and ammo scrounged…
Both Sarah Lyons and the Lone Wanderer had come this way.
Gallows was infuriated by the difficulty he had in tracking them. It had eaten up his precious time. Sarah did not weigh much, and was negotiating very rocky terrain. Her footprints were damned near invisible. As for the Wanderer, if it weren't for the constant stream of dead enemies, Gallows would never have suspected that the reclusive man had passed through the territory at all.
It was midnight of her third day. According to brotherhood rules, he should have been heading back, but Gallows was determined to find them.
On the ground before him, set apart from the dead raiders, was a disassembled assault rifle. He could see which parts had been swapped and replaced.
An empty slave pen spoke volumes about the Wanderer's mission, so Gallows thought, and perhaps why Sarah had accompanied him.
He backtracked to the point at which he'd last seen Sarah's footprints. They lead to a small side-door embedded the mouth of an enormous tunnel, obviously man made. An iron grill blocked casual entry. Here the soil was softer and he was able to easily read the trail. There were three sets of her tracks, all packed down on top of one another. The bottom layer was her tracks, going in. the middle layer were her tracks going out. He followed them to a large rock, and back to the cave entrance, where she'd walked back in. Gallows opened the door, shouldered through the side passage, and surveyed the tunnel. It extended into complete darkness, and the soldier's sixth sense told him that it was far longer than any subway tunnel in the capital wasteland.
"You're a little late." Said a harsh, guttural voice. "Twelve hours to be more precise."
Gallows immediately unslung his Laser rifle and ducked into the doorway, scanning the darkness.
"You seek Sarah Lyons and the Lone Wanderer, yes?" the voice asked.
"Reveal yourself!" Gallows commanded.
"No. I don't think I will." The voice responded in a matter-of-fact tone.
"I refuse to bargain with those I can't see."
"Then perhaps it is a good thing I'm not here to bargain. I'm merely passing on a message from the Lone Wanderer in case you to tracked her this far."
Gallows relaxed slightly. "The Lone Wanderer is an ally. Therefore you are too."
There was a pause. "I doubt it. At the other end of this tunnel is the Pitt. They've gone there on business. To follow on foot means a two month journey. I don't think you've the supplies for that."
Gallows' heart sank. The faceless voice was right; he didn't. He barely had the rations to continue searching as it was.
"I'd report back to elder Lyons if I were you." It suggested.
"What are they doing in the Pitt?"
"Stopping the slave trade, and preventing raiders from entering the Capital Wasteland. A worthy pursuit."
"Why did she follow him?" he asked.
"Ask her when they get back. I assume because she is safer with him than on her own?"
"She is safest with the brotherhood!" Gallows responded angrily. "Why would she leave the wasteland?"
His emotion was not directed at the voice, but rather at Sarah, whose choice to leave he felt was a betrayal of her father and the Lyons' Pride.
"Just go home." The voice urged. "Tell elder Lyons. She's his daughter."
"Not until you show your face."
"You would shoot me on sight."
"I will not." Gallows promised, reading his Laser rifle.
There was no reply.
"I'm not moving until you show yourself." Gallows told it.
Still the darkness failed to produce a face. He fired a few shots into it at random. In response, a large rock sailed out of the inky blackness at high speed and smashed his visor, blinding him. He heard the sound of a huge shape rushing towards him, and was thrown bodily against the iron grill.
By the time he managed to wrestle his helmet off and retrieve his weapons, his assailant was gone. But a large set of Supermutant tracks had been pounded into the ground, spoiling Sarah's.
Elder Owyn Lyons sat down carefully in the Great Hall, otherwise known as the briefing room. Scribe Rothchild took a seat beside him. Sitting in various positions around the tables was the Lyons' Pride, or those bits of it which could still fight. Gallows was standing in the middle of the room. The air in the room was thick and heavy, the loss of their leader had taken a visible toll on the Lyons' Pride; their armour was unpolished, they kept their heads down, and seemed to be acting more like schoolchildren caught cheating than soldiers in a debriefing.
"You failed to find my daughter." Lyons observed, his heart already sunk as low as it could go.
"Not completely." Gallows said. "I know where she is, I just can't get to her."
The leaden depression which had settled over the room seemed to lift slightly. The Pride straightened up, listening with keen interest.
"How did she escape the Supermutants?" Rothchild asked.
"The Wanderer saved her." The black ops specialist reported.
The depression disappeared, replaced by an almost palpable feeling of intense relief. Owyn sat back and for the first time in three days, allowed himself to smile. He felt Rothchild's hand pat him on the shoulder reassuringly. The Wanderer had never let them down before.
"He saved her?" Lyons leaned forward, wanting details.
"He used an assault rifle and slaughtered the Supermutants and a Deathclaw, all of which were chasing her. I'm confident that Sentinel Lyons is in no immediate danger."
"Sunnuva bitch." Paladin Kodiak whistled.
"What? I could do all that." Dusk bragged.
"With a Fat Man…" Colvin said in the special whisper which carried all around the room. "…from a hundred and fifty yards away."
Glade laughed. He was technically still on medical leave, unfit for combat. However with the aid of a cane he was able to walk, and had attended the briefing along with everyone else.
"When is she coming home?" Scribe Rothchild asked.
"That's the bad news…"Gallows coughed and continued, aware of the suddenly hostile eyes of his comrades. He sighed. "It appears that the Wanderer was in the middle of…his own affairs when he rescued Sarah. For some reason, he's gone north to Pittsburg."
"What?" Kodiak's mouth was hanging open. "Why? There's nothing there! Nothing worth going there for, anyway…"
"Nothing confirmed." Rothchild corrected. "None of our scouting attempts since the scourge have returned."
"And Sarah is with him?" Owyn asked, his voice silencing the group, all of whom had begun to talk amongst themselves.
"Affirmative." Replied Gallows.
All members of the briefing stared thoughtfully at the floor.
"Waaaaait a second." Colvin said, shifting position in his chair, "if they're up in the Pitt right now, who'd you hear this from?"
"That's the other piece of bad news." Gallows said grimly. "It appears the Our Messiah has at least one supermutant ally."
This revelation was greeted with shocked silence. The Dusk began to laugh. "Oh, c'mon!" she said, glancing around the room, "look, I don't like the man, but we all know he's handed in at least half as many blood samples to Tristan as all the rest of us combined. Why would he ally with a mutie?"
"Twice." Said Rothchild.
"What?"
"Twice as many." The scribe repeated. "You've been neglecting your quotas of late."
"You're shitting me." Dusk repeatedly dryly.
"No. it's all down in the logs. When he handed them in, and how many."
"Lets get back to the matter at hand." Paladin Glade said, heading off the inevitable protests. "Elder Lyons, your daughter is in the Pitt. What do you wish of us?"
Owyn sat forward, staring thoughtfully at Gallows, his hands brought together as if praying. He began to speak "Long before we ever settled here and entered this eternal war with the Supermutants, we were ordered by the High Elders in California to find the Capitol Wasteland and retrieve any technology found there. On the way there, we came across the steel town of Pittsburg."
He sighed, an unpleasant memory coming back to haunt him. "We destroyed it, attempted to wipe it clean of any and all mutated creatures, including people. We stripped it of all useful technology, slaughtered almost the entire population, took those few healthy humans we could find, and let the radiation cleanse the rest. We left it in a state of ruin more complete and unfit for life than it ever had been before we first came."
"Not the way I remember it." Kodiak said. "You were saviours, coming in to rid the place of crime and povert and everything. The scourge was the best thing to happen to it."
"You were very young, and we have spent our time feeding you propaganda about the righteousness of the brotherhood, and our cause." Lyons admitted. "It is only natural that you remember it differently.
Greg 'Kodiak' Bear opened and shut his mouth several times, then stared blankly at the floor. Colvin leaned over and patted him on the back, trying to reassure him.
"Owyn!" Rothchild snapped. "This is not-"
"They need to understand the history of this place!" Lyons replied heatedly. "And why it is that the Wanderer is going back now."
Jaws dropped all around the room.
"You already knew, sir?" Glade asked sharply.
"Two weeks ago, the Wanderer came to me in private. He told me of his first visit to the Pitt. During the Scourge, we lost a few Paladins. One of them was a man by the name of Ishmael Ashur. He is listed in our database as Missing In Action."
"Just like Sarah." Glade murmured, gently urging the ageing man to speed up.
"It appears," said Lyons, while Rothchild shot the Paladin a glare, "that he has taken the ruins of Pittsburgh and hammered them into civilization. Not a kind one; It runs on the blood of Slaves. Many of whom are taken from our own capital wasteland. You all have taken note of the fact that Raiders keep finding their way back to this wasteland even though you have cleaned them out again and again and again?"
There Pride nodded.
"The Wanderer had a theory that they come from the Pitt. He was in the North trying to confirm it. If he has left for the Pitt, I can only assume that he has confirmed it, and is going to do what is necessary to protect the wasteland."
"Why wasn't I informed of this?" Gallows demanded. "It may have helped me."
"I did not expect him to encounter Sarah." Lyons told him. "Believe me, if I had known this was coming, I would have done things differently."
"He can probably handle the Pitt, but what does that mean for Sarah?" Colvin asked. "She's walking into a radiation filled slave city run by Raiders. That does not sound healthy."
Murmurs of agreement sounded through the group.
"I will not order any of my Knights to walk into that place again. It is very likely that none of you would come back." Lyons said. "However I will order you to go north and await their return. Take as many supplied as you need, hold there until they come back. Then retrieve my daughter and bring her home."
"A thought occurs to me, Owyn." Rothchild said, taking a seat beside his friend. They watched the Lyons' Pride file out.
"And what is that, Reginald?"
"Is it possible that all that we have done here to clean up the Capital Wasteland is merely penance for what we did to Pittsburgh?"
"A thought occurs to me, Reginald." Elder Lyons said, leaning back in his chair. To his old friend, he looked more exhausted than ever before.
"And what is that, Owyn?"
"That you are far too perceptive."