Chapter Eleven.

She woke up to the sound of gunfire.

Rolling out of bed, she remembered to get into her RobCo jumpsuit before heading out the door. It was early in the morning, but people were running all over the town's catwalks and the crater's edge near the wall. Everyone was carrying a weapon, and the main gate had been closed.

"Moira!" came Walter's voice from her left. She turned to see the old man's dark, wrinkled face twisted with aggravation. "Get a gun, woman, we're under attack!"

Nodding, she went back inside, grabbed her 10mm pistol and went back out. Walter was still standing there, looking like he didn't know what to do with himself. Most of the activity seemed to be centered on the front gate, and she could hear bullets bouncing off the metal walls that surrounded the town.

There was a loud BOOM and a faint vibration. "Damn assholes are shootin' missiles," Walter said. "Won't do 'em any good, heh."

"Who's attacking us?" Moira asked. Raiders and the occasional super mutant gang came wandering near the town now and again, sometimes taking a shot or two, but because of the formidable walls, no one had ever launched a serious assault on Megaton in recent memory.

"Dunno," Walter said. "I've been keeping my ass away from the walls."

Moira watched the commotion from the balcony in front of her shop which was roughly on the same level as the front gate. She could see Lucas Simms shouting orders at people with guns, along with Deputy Weld and Deputy Steel, the two robots that helped Simms with guard duty.

Another missile struck the wall, causing some people to flee and Simms to shout. The walls were holding, but Simms was still ordering people to gun ports.

Moira knew better than to go running off to battle. She stood with Walter until Simms had worked Megaton's fighters into some kind of shape where they could function without him. Billy Creel and Nathan seemed to be taking charge, and Simms ran down the hill towards the nuke, then up the ramps to where Moira and Walter were standing.

"Friends of yours?" Simms said, gesturing to the front gate.

"Who?"

"The Talon Company," Simms said. "I counted at least a dozen, but there's more. Any idea why they might be shooting at us?"

Moira looked at Walter, and back at Simms. "Um…"

"Walter, go make sure the water pump keeps working. We lose water, we're finished."

Walter nodded slowly, looking hard at them both and went up a ramp to the water pump building. When he had gone, Moira told Simms what she had discovered the night before when defusing the bomb.

"That doesn't make sense," he said. "Why would they try to buy you after they had already rigged it to blow?"

"Maybe it was someone else," Moira said. "Mr. Burke did disappear, maybe he came back and did it."

"I would've seen him" Simms said. "It could be they told a few different people to do it, hoping one would succeed. It doesn't matter. Right now, we've got those Talon assholes to deal with. You didn't learn anything that might explain this while at Tenpenny's, did you?"

She shook her head. Maybe her Mentat-less brain hadn't absorbed important details, but even with them she could recall nothing. "Maybe the Talon Company wants the nuke itself. Not to go off, but to have so they can set it off some other place," Moira said.

"They haven't made any demands yet," Simms said. "Either they're showing us how tough they are to start, or they're here to kill us anyway."

"What are we going to do?" she asked.

Another missile struck the front gate, causing Megaton's defenders to shout and duck. The Talon Company wasn't exactly the Brotherhood of Steel, but they were well-armed. "I don't know yet," Simms said. "We can hold under siege for a long time, but not long enough. Unless we get help from the Brotherhood or the super mutants decide they want in, it's only a matter of time."

***

Moira had been forced to allow the townspeople access to her weapon stocks. She tried to keep track of who took what to get it back when the siege was over, but she doubted it would happen.

One thing she didn't let go, or be seen, was the mini nuke. It needed a special launcher to be fired, otherwise it had to be rigged to explode. Unlike its larger counterpart, it was an impact weapon.

Night fell and while the Talon Company's shooting became less frequent, they hadn't left, nor had they said what they wanted. Moira was popping Mentats and eating what was supposed to be canned meat when Simms walked in.

"Alright, Brown, we gotta think," he said.

"Thinking is fun," Moira said, shaking the box of Mentats. "If we knew what they wanted, we could give it to them and they would go."

"We don't know what they want," Simms said. "I suspect they want us wiped out, but I don't know why, unless someone paid them."

"Tenpenny," Moira said. "Blowing up the town didn't work, so he might have paid the Talon Company to get rid of us…but after the fight in the tower…"

"We're not going to appease them," Simms said. "Think about how we can get rid of them. We're not soldiers, we can't run out there guns blazing and expect to win."

"I could re-arm the nuke and we could send it out on a Brahmin cart," Moira said.

Simms laughed. "The town would be caught in the blast, you'd kill everybody."

"Not if I lowered the yield," Moira said. "We could send it out at night, throw a coat over a Mr. Gutsy or a Protectron to make it look like a person and boom! Those poor Brahmin, though…"

Moira ate another Mentat. She was beginning to get the taste in her nose, which meant she should go easy on them for a few hours. She popped a second and promised herself she would stop.

Simms looked at the box and then at Moira. "Alright. I'll round up some men to build the rig, you get to work on the bomb. Be quick about it. The ruse won't fly in daylight and we might not last too many more days."

To be continued…