CHAPTER 20
The Lost Patrol
They picked up another distress signal as the base shot into view. Grey checked the frequency, chest tightening. 107.
"It's the Recon Team." The hope in the Paladin's voice was all but palpable, but some part of Grey's brain nagged her not to trust it.
From the road, glimpses of concrete rooftops pushed between withered trees. Danse took a step forward but Grey's hand instinctively shot out.
"Knight?"
Grey released the magnetic clamp on her combat rifle, bringing the magnified scope to her visor.
The training yard was still relatively intact. The rear of the National Guard Recruitment Office had partially collapsed, but that appeared rather trivial considering how much of the base remained. The rear pathways were overgrown, long burnt grass entwined through concrete and stone. All Grey could think was how the grounds were no longer to code. How ridiculous was that.
"The perimeter's hot," she said as she lowered her rifle. "Four active roof turrets and a swath of mines focused around the helipad and likely extending to the main door."
Danse made a pensive noise. "Standard operations protocol would be to set up a perimeter, get the base's security systems back online."
Grey did another sweep with her scope, doubt lingering in the pit of her stomach. "How do we proceed, Paladin?"
Danse fired across her shoulder, red beam searing through the furthest turret.
Grey flicked off her safety. "Roger that."
—
The world fell still as the main door closed behind them. Grey had shut off her radio as they entered the Recruitment Office. Wherever the pulser was, it was within 100 feet of their position. At that point, the noise was more distraction than aid.
The air was heavy and stale. Dust swam before their vision, unearthed by their intrusion. Shards of cold daylight shone through slats in boarded-over windows, turning the office into a jigsaw of light and shadow. The second storey had partially collapsed, a mess of broken floorboards and desks decorating the foyer. Grey attempted to move around it, her foot dipping into something soft. She looked down and stifled a scream.
As Danse attempted to move around her, she grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop. Before he could speak, she raised an armoured finger to her mouth then pointed down to the dead ghoul beneath her.
Danse kneeled beside her, mechanical joints stilling and silence once again settling over the office. Except it wasn't exactly silent.
Above them, ahead of them, to their left. They could hear it now. Breathing. Shallow and dry, wheezing. Grey followed the nearest breath, finding the tips of a feral's rotted hand swinging over her head.
Slowly, Danse raised his rifle, getting a lock on the feral above.
"On my mark," he whispered. "One. Two—"
Grey and Danse fired in unison. Debris began to shift, floorboards groaning, dozens of feet scurrying. The ferals shrieked as they haphazardly lunged from all corners, like the building's decay and grime itself had come alive. Red bursts seared through gangrene limbs, radioactive blood scorching the ground.
Grey pivoted, Deliverer gripped snugly in her palm. Blackened mouths and rotted teeth shone as the ferals threw themselves at her, and for a moment she couldn't help but pity them. Humans reduced to nothing but disgusting, animalistic husks. One latched onto her leg, bloated fingertips sliding across the steel plating, bleeding gums attempting to gnaw through. She pressed her gun against the base of its skull, its rotted mind unable to differentiate between metal and flesh. If it was her, she's rather be dead.
She fired.
Danse raced up the stairs as Grey made her way toward the back of the office. A dead feral was strewn across a mound of furniture, a hole the size of a fist blasted through its centre. Grey placed her hand on its chest, her suit's sensors failing to detect any heat signature. Dead, long before her and Danse's arrival. The killing blow had been delivered at close range. The seared edges suggested energy weapon.
Only as she stepped back did she realized the feral wasn't lying on a mound of furniture. It was a barricade.
She leaned around it, finding empty sleeping bags, food rations, cooking pots, scattered ammo. Signs of life. She bent, lifting a familiar flight helmet, the metal weathered and covered in a thin layer of dust. She turned it over, jaw tightening. There was dried blood on the inside.
She dropped her gaze, seeing the oxidized stains that had seeped into the sleeping bag. The streaks on the floor. A partial bloody boot print, leading away. She followed the blood trail, droplets leading to the edge of the barricade, around the corner, disappearing into the room to her right. The doorknob was stained copper.
She pushed the door open with the barrel of her gun, hinges screeching with every inch. She trained her pistol on the ferals before realizing they, too, were long dead. She continued to follow the trail, through the corpses, around the tipped desk and…
"Knight Astlin."
Grey startled at the Paladin's voice.
He moved alongside her, but she quickly realized he didn't see her. His eyes were fixed below. Fixed on the girl. The dried blood pooled beneath her.
She'd been beautiful once, Grey thought. Beneath that gaunt, waxy skin were high cheekbones, a roman nose, slender jaw. Thick, dark eyelashes rested like wings over her hollowed sockets.
Danse knelt before Astlin, hand reaching for her, hesitating. Gingerly, he retrieved the holotags from around her neck, cradling them in the palm of his hand.
"She was in my company," he said quietly. "Years ago. Best marksman I ever saw."
Grey didn't bother to say anything. Her platitudes would mean nothing; just empty words for a woman she never knew. Instead she busied herself retrieving the distress pulser from the shelf, finding a holotape lodged in the wood. Again she detached her arm plate and inserted the tape into her Pip-Boy, playing it over the external comm.
"Knight Tara Astlin. Brotherhood of Steel Recon Team 429-Alpha. Serial number 3431. It's been three hours since I set my distress pulser. There's been no word from the Paladin or Faris. Their objective was the satellite array on the coast. They may be out of range. My orders were to hold this position at all costs." Her voice wavered. Grey could hear the pain creeping in.
"The entire site has been overrun. The door won't last much longer. Paladin Brandis, sir. It's been an honour, sir."
Grey ejected the tape as the first feral had descended, cutting it off mid-shriek. It didn't matter who Astlin was to Paladin Danse—soldier, friend, lover—no one needed to hear that kind of death.
"A soldier to the end," Danse said softly. "Well done, Knight."
Before Grey could speak, the Paladin abruptly stood, his helmet scanning.
"They should have fortified their camp," he said. "Made it a proper outpost. They must not have had time. And Astlin paid the price."
Grey ejected Deliverer's mag, pulling another from her suit's storage. "I know the satellite array she spoke of. It's literally in spitting distance of the training yard. Only downside? Crawling with Mutants. So if Brandis and Faris were there, they're either dead or long gone by now."
"We still have a duty to investigate, Knight."
"And I'm not saying we shouldn't, sir. What I am saying is that you and I aren't exactly a match for a Mutant stronghold."
She could all but hear him grin over the comm. "Then we even the odds."
—
Four vertibirds shot overhead as they raced toward the Revere Satellite Array. A petrol tanker exploded as Grey and Danse reached the perimeter, the sheer force like a fist to Grey's chestplate.
They took cover behind a set of trailers, the hollers and taunts of the Lancers and Knights coming in strong over the radio. Laser fire scattered, 5mm rounds chewing into the Mutants and their makeshift barricades.
"How do you feel about those odds now, Knight?" The Paladin yelled over their shared frequency as more Brotherhood reinforcements joined the fray.
She could hear the exhilaration in his voice. The adrenaline and pride and fear mixing into an intoxicating cocktail. Except it wasn't her kind of drink. It had been her husband's, his friends', but never hers. Even when Grey took risks, they were always calculated. Survival was key and it trumped all other base needs. Throwing one's self into the pit for glory or thrill? That was a fool's game, and she was no fool.
As another swath of minigun fire upturned the nearby soil, Danse broke cover, using the distraction to his advantage and charging the nearest barricade. The ground rocked as the infantry units dropped, over a dozen power armoured soldiers joining the Paladin in his approach.
Grey shook her head and reactivated her radio, scanning frequency 107. A faint blip sounded amongst the chaos.
She crossed to the other end of the trailer, the pulser still faint, signal strength stuck at 17%.
Where the fuck are you?
A shotgun blast fired overhead. She dropped, clutching her combat rifle.
Only as another wide blast peppered her shoulder did she realize the fire was coming from above. From the dish.
She leapt from her cover and positioned herself in the doorway to the trailer complex. The Mutant had likely seen her, but she could work with that. She waited for another shot, pellets clanging off the roof and aluminum siding, before leaning outside and peering through her scope. She ducked back in as another blast of pellets rained down on the trailer. As it did, she leaned back out and put a .308 round through the Mutant's throat.
She checked the signal strength again, the number having barely moved. She shot a look back to the dish above.
"I wonder…" She activated her comm. "Danse, northeast corner. I need some cover."
"Roger that!"
Grey threw herself from the trailer, core assembly humming to life as she tore through the firefight, shotgun pellets and .38 rounds glancing off her armour. She could hear Danse yelling to the soldiers, having them concentrate their fire to draw the Mutants off Grey's scent.
She raced up the metal gangway, spiralling upwards, before colliding with a Mutant.
It reached for her neck, green fingers grasping.
Instinctively, she ducked before driving her elbow into its gut, pushing it up against the railing. Before it could recover, she jammed her rifle into its chest, the shots cracking open its ribcage. Momentum pushed it over the rail, corpse hurdling toward the firefight below.
Grey checked the distress signal, blood now pulsing in her ears. 59%. She was getting closer.
She continued her ascent, steps slowing as the metal gangways turned to wood. The post-war structures grew more perilous as she ascended, supports missing and platforms near collapse.
As the fighting ceased and the vertibirds landed, Danse scoured the northwest array, finding Grey at the peak of a wooden shack, the pathway so narrow he doubted it could hold the weight of his suit.
Grey was knelt before something in the corner, hidden beneath a tarp and partially collapsed roof. She pulled the tarp away as he approached, revealing the mummified remains.
"Field Scribe Faris."
Grey appeared to nod before turning and thrusting a set of tags and another holotape into Danse's hands. He listened as Grey paced the shack.
"It's been… two hours since the Paladin left. My leg… I can't stanch the bleeding. Bullet must've hit an artery. Brandis… if you get this… I hope you make it back to Astlin in time. There was nothing you could do for me. Get to the bunker up north. You'll survive. That's all that—all that matters…"
Danse was the first to speak.
"They must've come to the satellite array for the comm system. Probably trying to send word back to the Prydwen. They were ambushed." The Paladin's voice quieted, brain processing. "Faris was wounded, couldn't walk. He got a distress signal, and Brandis left him behind." Another pause. "He broke the first rule of small group tactics: stick together. Always stick together. They all wound up alone, and they all got killed. Dammit!"
Grey jumped as the Paladin struck the shack wall.
She felt that anger, too, but not for the Paladin's reasons. Grey needed a lead, but Danse… He'd wanted a miracle. He'd wanted to find them alive. What a fool.
"That just leaves Brandis," Grey said, trying to hide her dismay. She knew what they'd find if they found anything at all: another corpse.
"He always was a survivor, but after all this time…" Danse sighed. "The tape mentioned a bunker. I think I know the one—it was part of my original mission brief. Let's move out."
Grey gave Faris another glance. Face turned upward, mouth gaping and withered, field scribe uniform still so brilliantly red. She pulled the tarp back over his face.
Where was the dignity in that, she thought. Bleeding out in some plywood shanty like a gutter rat. That was no way for a man to die. For a soldier to die.
She wasn't sure what possessed her as she and Danse moved through the celebrating troops.
"One of our men is up there," she said to the Knight-Captain as she passed. "Ensure he's given the respect he deserved."
She didn't bother to return the salute.
Our men. Grey scoffed as she and the Paladin marched back north toward Greentop Nursery. Maybe there really was something in the Brotherhood's water supply, she decided. Or maybe more of her husband's sickening sentimentality had rubbed off on her than she'd ever realized.
Regardless of what it was, she needed to get it in check. That kind of thinking? All it would do was make her weak.
She was stronger than that, she reminded herself.
She had to be.