Here it is guys! Chapter 11! Bow wow wow.
The sharp smell of blood was in the air. Max LeBay watched as soldiers of the Brotherhood of Steel ran guns – or should he say lasers a blazing into the radio station's courtyard, shooting any and all Super Mutant they came across. Fourteen went in, hoping to make it to their ally's position in front of the station. The Brotherhood was prepared, he observed, since on the two opposite balconies of Galaxy News Radio had manned turrets shooting down on the horde of green uglies while troops on the floor below had sand bag fortifications on all corners of the building's front entrance.
The fourteen soldiers that Max met, commanded by Sentinel Sarah Lyons, reached their armoured comrades, but unfortunately, three died on the way. A super mutant was apparently going to toss a grenade at the Brotherhood defenders, but the machine-gunnin' soldiers shredded its body with lead, making it drop its grenade. The damned thing rolled close enough to the squad of fourteen and took out two of the men, blowing chunks of their bodies off, even with their armor on.
One of those men lost both his legs, but was still alive, albeit screaming in agony. Another man from the squad stopped to help him, but a mutant with a large sledgehammer hit the man in the chest, knocking him down before bringing the weapon upon the soldier's head as hard as it could. God, Max thought. All he did was watch in the sidelines cloaked. He noticed the dead brotherhood soldier on the fountain. He was dead and poised in almost the exact manner Allistair Tenpenny landed as they fell of the tower.
Dead, with their bodies arced upwards as their spine bent around the edge of the fountain, looking upwards at the grey sky. Max thought of backing out. It was too much. He had it easy since his katana cut through most things like butter… but these… These mutants were too thick to slice through in one slice. His suit wouldn't provide much aid if they shot him. A way out was what he wanted. It was what he needed.
He noted the subway entrance off to the far side of the courtyard, out of the way and remote. He'd see the battle through, help if he could but if things took a turn for the crappiest worse it can ever be, he'd cloak and run through the subway and hope he'd find his dad out of sheer luck. He'd see the fight through first.
Luckily, Sarah and her dozen of Brotherhood companions reached the others, and made no hesitation to focus their attention on the annihilation of the Super Mutants. They were doing pretty well too. They reduced the number of mutants from about thirty to ten with only four soldiers dying out of the twenty they had. All was going well until his planned escape route turned into a death sentence. More mutants broke through the gate door of the subway entrance, flooding into the courtyard. These ones, instead of having conventional firearms like the first ones, had laser weapons like the Brotherhood, seemed at least a foot taller, with thicker necks and went down slower with bullets than the ones that were there fighting first.
"Overlords! Watch out," Sarah yelled. "You," she pointed at a soldier, "get the Fatman and blow that tunnel! Now!"
The Brotherhood soldier ran to the corner of the fortification and took out a big contraption, looking almost like a half-built missile launcher, having an exposed top and hardly any scope. He aimed the thing at the subway entrance, loaded something the color of an olive-drab and shot it. No sooner that he shot the strange device was he shot down by the lasers of the Overlords. What he shot out of that "Fatman" though, created a big explosion, made a mushroom cloud that scared the living hell out of Max and collapsed the entrance to Max's escape route, all while blowing up some mutants too close to the blast zone.
Great, Max thought. He was stuck there. He'd definitely need to kill these things to get to Three Dog. Maybe… maybe he did learn something in biology that could help him out. Mr. Brotch always told the class not to mess with your spine or else any number of terrible things could happen. Max eyed a bare-torso mutant and indeed saw the form of a spine on the back of the mutant.
Silently unsheathing his katana, Max crept up on the unaware mutant, as it was busy shooting at Brotherhod soldiers. Without a care in the world about its own well-being, it shot at the soldiers while out in the open. Big mistake. Max raised his katana and with a loud roar, impaled the sword through the middle of the Super Mutant's spine, flaring up a painful shriek from its sneer of a mouth and forcing it down to the floor.
As the mutant went down, the soldiers of the Brotherhood of Steel raised their weapons at it and blew it to hell. Max turned and stared at an Overlord, standing roughly two to three feet over Max, shooting its laser rifle at the defendant brotherhood. He carefully revolved around the mutant but saw that there was a bulge where his back meets his neck.
So, as any curious boy does with the capable tools, he stabbed it, hard. It ran through the mutant's neck and came out the other end. The other super mutants noticed a floating streak of blood, and started shooting at it like no tomorrow, effectively finishing the Overlord.
Max went in a panic. He didn't know if they knew he was there or not so he took the Overlord's rifle and started shooting the heads of any mutant he saw. The laser rifle was pretty effective at mutant killing. Moreover, it was just like shooting a regular rifle, he found out. He didn't notice he killed four mutants alone, before leaving with his katana and the rifle.
With only eight Super Mutants to go, five of which were Overlords, Max and the Brotherhood of Steel made short work of the rest of the Super Mutant force. All was well, Max thought. A spine stabbing here and impaling throats over there and the courtyard was littered with the corpses of Super Mutants, but not without the cost of Brotherhood lives.
"Alright. Round up our dead, collect weapons, ammo, and anything that we can salvage. Move it people!" Oh, Sarah. So charming. Max helped carry bodies of the Brotherhood of Steel behind the sand bag fort and had them lined up against each other. Sarah told him to collect their Holotags while Reddin and some of the other soldiers looked for weapons. It seemed simple. Collecting items was a simple task. He'd done it before. No biggey.
"I'm gonna look for any weapon caches the Muties might've left in these buses, ma'am," Reddin yelled at Sarah.
"Just make sure you don't break your nail, Reddin," she replied mockingly.
When Max was done, he felt the vibrations again. They seemed louder, closer and he knew others felt it. He thought it was the vibrations of bodies hitting the ground, or maybe the shockwaves from explosions but these… these were more constant.
He looked at Sarah in a puzzled way. She listened intently…. Thinking before her eyes widened. She ran down GNR's entrance stairs and yelled, "Behemoth! Reddin, get away from those-" Sarah was cut off as the two buses exploded in a fiery cloud, engulfing Recruit Reddin.
"Out of the frying pan and into the fire," Max muttered, unsheathing his katana. As the fire went away, smoke took its place. Brotherhood soldiers made a line with rifles pointed at the smoke. A second later, a half of a bus flew at them, crushing most and injuring others. A roar echoed through the ruins as a giant Super Mutant came through the smoke gripping a large pole with a billboard at its end.
It was maybe twenty feet, with pieces of cars as armor, a car door as a shield strapped to its left arm and, a necklace of human skulls around its thick neck. Max saw what looked like a backpack on the Mutant made up cages somehow put together out of shopping carts. In the cages were bodies. Human bodies, bodies of wasteland creatures. "Oh, God…," Max said in disbelief.
Max put away his katana, knowing it wouldn't stand a chance against an even bigger Mutant. He searched around and picked up a laser rifle and joined the Brotherhood in shooting the large monstrosity.
Unfortunately, it didn't care. Then the manned turrets came in, shooting storms of bullets at the creature and that's what ticked it off. The Behemoth stomped its way to on the turrets, picked up the soldier operating it, and smashed it in its massive hands.
Suddenly, Max knew how to take care of it. He found the Fatman and took it to Sarah. "Sarah, where's the ammo for this thing?"
She stopped shooting at the behemoth tearing apart her soldiers and pointed to a crate with a picture of a mushroom cloud in an out of the way area before continuing her assault. He opened the box and was surprised. What the fuck are these things, he thought, picking up a football-sized… nuke? It was the shape of the damned nuke in Megaton! He remembered what it did when the Brotherhood soldier shot it and said to himself, "This should do wonders!" Before he closed the box, he took the last grenade within it.
He loaded the tiny nuke onto the Fatman, seeing a small grip device keep the nuke in place and ran across the courtyard where the Metro entrance was. "Hey, shitter!" Max pulled the pin on the grenade and threw it at the super mutant, blowing up near its back. It turned around and ran at Max, eyes of fury directed at him. "Say 'Hi' to Reddin for me," he said as he launched the mini nuke at the mutant, effectively hitting it in the chest.
The blast stunned and blinded Max for a second before he notice just how much damage he caused to the abomination. The nuke ripped the Behemoth into pieces, dismembering it and decapitating it. The Behemoth, with its large body, also shielded the Brotherhood forces from any damage the explosion might've caused them. Lady Luck struck again! The Brotherhood soldiers raised their rifles and cheered. Even Sarah raised her rifle and gave a nod to Max, giving a nod back.
Max went up to his new monumental kill and found the cage backpack, relatively unscathed, except for a few burns. He pulled out any Brotherhood soldiers and gave their Holotags to Sarah. He found some caps, a broken syringe, and a clip of pistol ammo.
Finally, after receiving word over the door's intercom that they unlocked the doors, Max finally went inside the Galaxy News Radio building. When he stepped inside the building, cheers and claps swarmed Max. Inside the building were more Brotherhood of Steel soldiers, armed to the teeth but clapping for Max, cheering that he took down a behemoth all by himself.
One soldier patted him on the back, to which Max asked where he could find Three Dog. The soldier pointed to a single door in the middle of a wall overlooking the entrance to the building. Max cloaked to get away from the soldiers cheers and went through the door to a room with no people in it.
"Hello?" Max uncloaked and walked around. "Three Dog?" Max ascended the stairway in the middle of the room and met a gaze with a man in shades. He took off his mask to take a good look at the man before him.
"Well if my eyes don't deceive me, and I'm sure they don't, I am looking at a spitting image of James LeBay. Tell me son, what took you so damn long to reach me?"
Max grew joyful. "You met my father? Then he did come here! Is he still around?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I said, trying to calm down Max. "Yes, your father came here. He asked me some things, and then left after I told him what he wanted to know. He's not here… sorry kid."
"Oh…"
"What I could do, though, is tell you where he went. For a small favor."
"Can't you just tell me? I've been wandering this damned wasteland for two weeks, drank nasty cola that nearly got me killed, and was nearly gotten blown up in space. I've seen shit I wish I've never seen, had many friends die, and experienced a world I never wanted to experience. I was put to death twice, had people die in my arms and now I have you keep information from me that can help me find my dad, which is the entire reason I'm fucking out here risking my neck!"
Stunned, I gave a whistle of disbelief and said, "Ha. I thought I had a bad day." There was silence between them for a brief moment. "Okay fine. I'll tell you where your dad went." Max's face lit up. "Your dear old dad James came here and started talking about Project Purity and Doctor Li and other things about sciencey things I didn't quite understand. He did, though, say he was going to visit the good old Doctor."
"Where is Doctor Li?"
"She's at Rivet City. I'm not sure if he's still there, though."
"Um, where is Rivet City?"
He may have not known but my eyes widened behind my glasses. "You don't know where Rivet City is? It's just down the river! My god boy, where have you been the past 200 years?"
"Well, I'm not sure where I was for the other 181 years but I was at Vault 101 for 19 of them," he replied dryly.
"I know. I hear great things about you, Max. Some great and some weird… Some… unknown to me. Those unknowns is what I want to hear."
Max eyed the famed Three Dog, bow wow wow, and asked, "What exactly do you want to know?"
"Where were you those two weeks after Mister Allistair Tenpenny fell off his Tower's balcony with him dying and his assailant vanishing from the clinic with a broken body?"
"Eh… that's a bit sketchy."
I smoothed down my mustache. "Help me out here, Maxy. The people want to hear more about you. Those two weeks without you have garnered more and more requests for info on you. I don't have anything to give them besides the Megaton Nuke being disarmed and that you came from a Vault. I need info from those two weeks, and getting here shouldn't have been like cutting cake. I'm sure they would want to know what happened as you traveled here."
"The wasteland knows about that?"
"Hell yes they know about it. You've become a sort of icon for these folks of the wasteland! One of the few people out in this wasteland doing any good for humanity comes from a pampered Vault! On a trek to search for his father and killing tyrants and mutants on the way. It brings me to one question: Will you inform your fans on your unknown journey?"
Silence.
"Okay. I'll do it. How are we going to though?"
I laughed. "With my baby, of course! We can record it and broadcast it for all to hear."
"What if I want to listen to it sometime after we record it?"
"Well son, just tune a radio to 103.8 FM. Make sure its 103.8 because if it's not, it's just that stupid Enclave station. Trust me, just a load of bull comes from that."
"103.8, eh? Alright, let me see." Max brought up his Pip-Boy 3000 and went to the little tab that titled, "Radio," and tuned the frequency to 103.8 and was serenated by smooth jazz coming out of the device's speakers. "Beautiful."
"isn't it? It took me a while to set everything up, but we can talk about that later. Right now," I said, wrapping an arm around Max's shoulder, "we got an interview to do."
"Okay, What would you like to know?"
"Well first off, Max," I stopped him, eyeing the blade on his back, "wear in the hell did you get this katana?"
"From a faraway land… How did you know what this was?" I gave Max a sly smile.
"Maxy, may I call you Maxy?" I didn't give him time to respond before I went on. "If you walked a mile in my shoes, well, you'd have blisters the size of Radroaches. Other than that, you'd find that during my travels, I seen many old pictures, read many pre-war books, gazed at my share of pre-war comics and even found a couple toys. At least one-third of those mention a katana, an old eastern bladed weapon with a curved cutter. I know they're old too, if that wasn't obvious."
"So you would wander? Wandering the wasteland was your life until you found this place."
"Not exactly. Close though. See, my parents were part of a pack of traveling performers. We'd wander town to town, settlement to settlement and put on shows. After a couple years, I grew tired of it all and finally left Ma and Pa to find my own voice. It was rough. Eventually, after years and years of traveling, I found Galaxy News Radio and decided to pledge my life to fighting the Good Fight against raiders, slavers, the muties, mercs and those damn Enclave. During my travels, I'd collect things, weapons, clothing, armor and the like, and after I made GNR my home base, I decided to put all my things away, making this my baby, and my treasures a reward for those that earn it.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because after the interview, I have one favor to ask of you, Max."
"What is it?"
"I need you to replace my broadcast dish that a super mutant with a rifle decided to use as target practice. Believe it or not, that limits my broadcast range, leaving only the people nearest to the Ruins of D.C. able to hear the music and announcements."
Max remembered when he first entered Moriarty's Saloon, seeing Gob hit the radio playing jagged white noise. "That's why I didn't hear about you until now…"
"Yep. Megaton, Arefu, Girdershade and the Republic of Dave. Any settlement outside the ruins gets static, making the Good Fight a hard fight outside the city. That's why, Max, I need you to replace that dish. With your interview broadcasting through the waves twenty-four-seven, everyone would be fighting the Good Fight. You'd give the people of the wasteland hope! And believe me, hope is hard thing to have these days. When it's all done and good, not only will you be giving hope to the people across the wasteland, but I'll through in where to find my stash of valuables."
Silence.
"Alright," Max said.
"Ha ha," I cheered. "Okay, let's get this thing started!"
Sorry I took so long on this chapter but I really wanted to get most of my facts right, backstory wise, while also adding a bit of my own touch to it. What did you guys think of the meeting? Leave some constructive review on your thoughts, suggestions, advice and I'll note them for the next chapter :D
*SPOILER ALERT* Max will tell his tale of Mothership Zeta. :o Stay tuned!
Also, we have a new Beta/Co-Author: Alone in the blight, who unfortunately couldn't help with this chapter due to computer malfunctions but you'll see his style in the next chapter.