As Lantaya understood it, this was to be the final day that their rapidly swelling group spent on Earth. And it couldn't be any more welcome, she privately admitted to herself as the Vertibird's rotors wafted the aerial vehicle across the city below them. The last night they had spent out on the town, sampling the delights of Pennsylvania Avenue's renowned late-night Jazz and Blue's bars at the request of the Tunnel Snakes, who wished some time to enjoy themselves before their approaching departure and prolonged absence.
Sticky Hand Jack had gone to avail himself of the pretty waitress he had flirty with at John's Diner, and had no doubt ended the night in her company if their departure from the club at around midnight had been any indication. Her radiantly bright smile in sharp contrast with her dark skin, Nancy has dressed for the occasion in a simplistic, cornflower blue evening dress. And Sticky Hand Jack had given her a look upon seeing her that suggested she might as well be dressed in solid gold. Lantaya wasn't sure how much of his attention was artful and how much was artless, but she nevertheless admitted that if another being looked at her with eyes like that, she might be tempted also.
Jericho and Sarge had sat down at a table and drank themselves stupid to the memory of another dead friend, added no-doubt, to the ranks of many such men who had died over the years of their lives. Those two were some of the oldest humans she had met who were not the Courier or a Ghoul, and she respected their boundaries by staying well away.
As did the Lettersman, who called off the festivities by muttering something about saying goodbye to his son and ex-wife. He had wandered off in the company of Butch and the Rookie, Jil Finch.
The rest of the Tunnel Snakes had been roped into observing a game of darts between Bryan Wilks and Craig Boone, in which Craig soundly thrashed his younger counterpart in the arts of long-range precision and then began couching him on the finer aspects of hand-eye coordination. They also drank rather more than she was comfortable with, so she had joined the lonely table at which the Three Unwise Men sat playing a game of cards, sipping small drinks, and philosophising the night away as ED-E alternated between beeping happily in the Courier lap or swooping around the bar, occasionally annoying the other patrons.
Until one of the Jazz musicians got tired of the Bots attempts to warble an imitation of his trumpet and took a swing at him with a bar stool. After the Courier placed the man face-first through the largest drum in the drum set and they had settled the night with an impromptu bar-fight, they had all been asked politely to leave.
So ended the night, with the slightly scuffed group of Wastelanders and one alien making their staggered way back to the Metro, where Bobby's railway guards bundled them up into a railcar and sent them back to Rivet City by way of Anacostia Station in a thunder of engines and alcohol-induced comatose snores.
In the morning the Snakes had been chipper as ever and had only asked a few questions that she was privy to. Chief among them, Sarge's enquiry on behalf of the rest of his eagerly attentive team: "How much gear and personal items are we allowed to take with us?"
The Courier had shrugged and replied with another question, "How much can do ye have?"
He had walked away after that, but the answer was the right one if the delighted expressions of the Tunnel Snakes were anything to go by. And that brought them here, flying over the very Outskirts of D.C. towards a distant rolling blotch of colour upon the horizon. Lantaya had been watching this blotch for the last minute or so, seeking to ascertain its nature as it loomed closer and closer through the pilots from cockpit window, the only window in the entire conveyance.
And the closer they travelled, the surer she become that what she saw was not in fact an illusion or a mistaken impression.
It was a forest.
A gigantic, sprawling forest that covered the entirety of the western side of Washington D.C.
And that was not all, for great patches of land hand been reclaimed from the trees to grow wide stretches of crops in sheltered fields. Workers toiled for as far as the eyes could see, diligently tending to the grand expanse. Butch smiled at her from the opposite seat, sat next to the Lettersman, who still gave the impression of avoiding her gaze since their verbal confrontation yesterday.
"Cool, right?" Butch shouted over the ever-present whine of the nuclear engine that ran the rotor blades, "This is Washington's breadbasket. Ain't that what you told me, Letters? A breadbasket, right?"
Letters his Bosses' recollection of his explanation with a nod as they left the built-up areas of the city behind and swooped over the vista below, startling the wildlife and Brahmin below with the noise of the rotors.
"How did you manage to grow such extensive crops in the Wastelands?" Lantaya shouted back before linking this in her mind to some comments the Wanderer had made to her previously. She had an ears for details, and for tying relevant information together when there were obvious conclusions to be drawn, "Does this have some connection with the GECK? Or perhaps with the methods of returning life to the Wastelands that I have heard the Courier and Wanderer discuss?"
The Lettersman nodded as he broke his silence, "Yeah, maybe. I wasn't there when you were discussing it, so I'm not sure it's our place to say, though. We're meeting up with the Wanderer. He's…"
Letters paused and gave her a significant look, "… been busy since he got here."
Lantaya blinked, taking it from the Lettersman's tone of voice that this was a profound understatement. She glanced at Butch, who seemed to have lost some of his good humour. It had been replaced by a glower that seemed entirely too at home on his formerly good-natured face. "I take it that what he's done has not been well received?"
"He's poked a hornets nest, and now we need to deal with it," Letters replied forlornly, glancing sideways at Butch. He was clearly unhappy with the state of his Bosses emotional state but continued to talk anyway. "Hitting that raider safehouse is clearly the least of the things he got up to while we were meeting with each other and finding Murphy. Near as Intel can gather, he hit the safehouse at Penn. Ave, then teleported to the Pitt to speak with Ashur after picking up Clover and Charon. He went radio silent for a bit. Next thing we knew he was calling us over the radio and telling us to meet him at a neutral location. And guess what?"
"What?" Lantaya enquired dutifully, cocking her head to the side questioningly.
"He invited Maxson," Letters revealed.
She blinked.
Then blinked again.
"Arthur Maxson?" she asked after a long moment of deliberation.
"Yeah," Letters confirmed.
"The Leader of the Brotherhood, Arthur Maxson?"
"That's the one," Butch muttered darkly.
"The Arthur Maxson, who leads the Brotherhood that would dearly wish to destroy him in a hail of nuclear munitions? That Arthur Maxson?"
The Courier, who had his long legs stretched out in front of him and his own version of Ulysses' iconic duster on, revealing his muscled arms below the sleeveless garment adorned with his symbol of the '21' upon the Spade, smiled and confirmed this with a nod. "The Wanderer might prefer fightin' from the shadows, but when he's sure he has all the cards he'll be needin', he's more than willin' to confront his enemies on open ground."
"The Arthur Maxson who we have been sneaking about the city trying to avoid, for the express reason that the Wanderer did not want to have to confront him openly, and who we are now openly confronting in clear contradiction to everything we have striven to achieve over the last day or so? That Arthur Maxson?" Lantaya continued with the rhetorical questions, hiding her irritation at the sudden switching of tacks under a vail of repetitious humour and a fixed smile.
"Now you know why I don't like working with the Alpha," Butch grumbled to everyone in general, "He gets it into his head to do something, and he doesn't see clear to fill all of us in before dropping us into the shit. We ain't fighting Arthur. It's a peaceful talk on neutral ground and it's backed up by a lot of very big guns."
"The metal fecker knows his business," the Courier supported his partner-in-crime loyally, his knowing smile on display, along with his boundless confidence that nothing he was involved in could possibly go wrong for long.
"Behold the arrogance of mice and men," Ulysses commented dryly, "Care to lay our troubled minds to rest as to how you are so certain of our fate?"
"Spirits said so."
"Of course. Convenient that none but you hear the voices of ghosts."
In response, the Courier rolled up a datura blunt with his clever fingers and offered the path to higher understanding to Ulysses freely. The tribal looked at it sceptically, proceeding to refuse it as he had so many time before.
"Herbs bring no more truth than the lights and noise of Vegas. Distractions. Seek guidance from neither."
"Suit yerself," the Courier returned, already sparking up and puffing away happily.
"Hitting our landing zone in the next five minutes, Snakes," the pilot called out from the cockpit, "Do you want me to take off and provide air support? Or let the engine cool off?"
"Stay on the ground until we say otherwise," Sarge ordered, "Brotherhood have air superiority. If there's going to be a fight, better to have it on the ground. The Prydwen is floating about a mile out from our current position. Maxson must want it away from D.C. if this meeting goes hot."
Butch nodded in confirmation, speaking in a knowing tone. "Where we're going, the ground is the safest place for us to be."
Those D.C. wastelanders present all shared in the same knowing look, while Lantaya frowned. "Why would he wish the Prydwen away from D.C. at a time such as this? I would have thought it was best to have it here, even if you are not expecting hostilities."
"Separation of important assets. The Brotherhood isn't lax in its contingency planning," Sarge supplied in an authoritative voice, his training under Talon Company showing through. Despite all their faults, Talon Company had been trained and run military fashion, with extensive care taken to ensure individual members knew tactics and strategy.
"There are two targets we might be tempted to destroy if pressed. The Prydwen and the Citadel. He wants both in separate geographical locations so we can't unload a salvo from Highwater-Trousers into both and get two birds with one stone. But the best target is the Citadel. Static target, even if it is a hardened bunker."
"A salvo? What type of weapons system is this 'Highwater-Trousers'? Some sort of artillery?"
"Pre-War Satellite loaded with micro-nuclear warheads. Think mini-nukes, but a bit larger," Letters answered, "The Enclave used one to destroy the Brotherhood's mobile robotic attack platform, Liberty Prime, back in the day. We salvaged the controls for Highwater and its sister-satellite Bradley-Hercules years ago, and the Wanderer managed to restock the munitions."
The Lettersman smiled and nodded with a considering expression, "Never knew how he managed that until now. But, in light of recent revelations, I guess he must have used the Zeta. It's the main reason we can stand on equal footing with the Brotherhood, even though they have the Prydwen and most of the Vertibirds salvaged from the Enclave."
"Ohh, lovely," Lani chirruped with a smile that looked like it had been affixed to her face with Wonderglue and did not manage to reach her eyes. She sat back in her chair and lent her head back until it impacted the metal plating of the Vertibirds interior with a dull 'bong' that seemed to illustrate perfectly how one-hundred percent done she was with the lunacy around her. "If you are determined to destroy yourselves, could you at least try something new? A virus, maybe? Perhaps rabid puppies? Nuclear apocalypse seems a bit passe after the first few blinding detonations."
"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate, To know that for destruction Ice, is also great, And would suffice," Letters regurgitated in a stream of poetic recitation. Lantaya smiled despite herself and separated her head from the Vertibirds metal wall to regard Letters from across the aisle.
"That is a very clever poem, Mr. Strayer. And very appropriate. I didn't realise you were a poet, too."
Letters chuckled and shook his head ruefully, "Nah, I can't do rhymes or lyrics. I'll credit Robert Frost for that poem. It's called 'Fire and Ice'."
"Robert Frost?" Lani snickered silently, "With such a name, I would have thought he would favor Ice from the start. Is this a post or pre-war poem? If it is pre-war, I wish I could congratulate the good Mr. Frost on his remarkable feat of clairvoyance."
Letters smiled, then turned to Butch and clarified. "Clairvoyance is seeing into the future, Boss."
"I knew that" Butch lied somewhat grumpily. He pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned long and loud. "God damn it, I miss Chance."
"Anyone who's ever been human or seen humans should have known that's where we were heading," Jericho rasped from behind a long row of Tunnel Snakes, not visible to Lantaya past the crowded interior. His voice was still horse from the roaring bar fight and the overindulgence of the previous day. "Ain't clairvoyance or any of that freaky shit. It's just common sense. Who ever heard of making a giant fucking bomb and not lighting the fuse?"
"True," Latchkey, the demolitions expert, remarked idly, "Not firing the nukes would have been a waste of good explosions."
Lantaya shook her head, her mouth curling upwards at the edges. Not so long ago, five days ago to be exact, she would have strenuously protested such a comment in light of the present surroundings. But it seemed as though the Wasteland induced a strange sort of apathy in those it touched. Even for so short a time. It put life into perspective in the harshest of ways. It would have been easy to begrudge the joke before the war, she thought, but now that it had happened, begrudging a mere joke in the face of the reality seemed petty and small-minded.
Now, laughing in the face of tragedy seemed to her to be a remarkable feat, a force-majeure, a triumph of willpower over adversity. No wonder most Wastelanders had such a black sense of humour. It was empowering, in a way.
"We're coming into land. Ready up for disembark!" The pilot called out from the front of the Vertibird. The amber landing light flicked on, bathing the interior in a soft glow.
There was a rumble of boots that rivalled the whine of the engines as they all got to their feet and, as always, performed checked on their gear. Even Lantaya found herself doing the same, getting increasingly familiar with her new possessions. She had been allowed back her assault carbine, since they had exited the city limits, and she found the returning of the familiar weapon a great comfort.
The Vertibird reverberated as it touched down, landing gear extended on the ground below. And the light switched to green.
"Disembark," Sarge bellowed.
And so they did, combat boots thumping down onto the grass beyond as soon as the loading door was released. On her way past the cockpit, she noticed that Sticky Hand Jack had lent aside and was whispering to the pilot. She didn't catch all of it, but the words she did here were clear as polished glass as she passed them by, unable to avoid overhearing the exchange.
"…. dropping our asses into the fire yesterday, Goggles. Remind me to buy you something nice when I get back from this next deployment."
"Don't mention it Jack," the pilot responded, as they bumped fists together, "I don't need anything just at the moment. But thanks for offering, man."
"Nothing? How about your girl? You want me to buy something for her?" Jack said with a knowing wink and a familiar tone of voice, "I can give it to you and you can say it's from you. Think about it man. Give me an answer on the way back. You won't regret it and cost is no object. More expensive the better, right? You might even get lucky if she really likes it," Sticky postulated with dancing eyebrows that insinuated quite a bit in their activity. The pilot seemed to consider it very deeply.
"Now that you mention it…"
Lantaya passed them and was out of earshot before she could hear any more details. She was beginning to think that the Procurement Specialist was substantially more artful than she gave him credit for, even after his display at the diner in which she truly realised that there was more to him than met the eye. Now that she thought back upon her memories of the last day or so, there didn't seem to be very many occasions in which he wasn't working some sort of angle or fostering some sort of relationship. He was so good at his job that he managed not only to do it, but even conceal in plain sight the fact that he was doing it at all.
She turned her attention to their surroundings. They stood in a clearing, which seemed as though it could either be a naturally occurring glade or a deliberate meeting spot. The grass shivered in the wind from the rotors as they spun down, slowly becoming visible to the naked eye as individual metal rotors rather than one solid blur. The trees stood as a vast crowd of sentinels surrounding the clearing, thick tree trunks towering above them as the leaves and pine needles rustled in the wind.
They were not the first to arrive.
Across from them stood a contingent of heavily armoured titans. She had thought that the Tunnel Snakes were heavily-armoured. Certainly, they wore more bodily protection than she had ever seen outside of certain Asari specialists in front-line combat, but these were something else entirely.
Hulking forms clad in reinforced steel and pneumatic servos, standing roughly at the height of the Super Mutants she had seen so far. The ground deformed wherever they trod, the feet landing with a reverberating thump of metal on earth. The hulking brutes carried a variety of heavy weaponry, the size of which she would only expect to find mounted on stabilising tripods or bolted onto Vertibirds, instead clutched in gigantic power-armoured fists. A second Vertibird rested behind them, the rotors entirely still in the slight breeze that drifted in from the Potomac and the far-off estuary. All of them save two wore massive helmets with bulky respirators built into the metal.
One of those with the bare head was an older man in a power-armoured suit, his receding hairline extending the length of his severe face across a long stretch of leathery scalp, tanned by the sun. He stood conversing with the only one not clad in steel. A bearded man with artfully arranged hair and a long, jagged scar across his face, dressed in a heavy trenchcoat. She instantly pegged the scarred man as the leader, with his partner in conversation being a close second, maybe a high-ranking subordinate. It was in the way they stood, the way the rest of their men surrounded them at a respectful yet protective distance.
Both men had spared the Tunnel Snake contingent and their Vertibird a glance as they landed, seemingly putting the remainder of their conversation off until after their meeting. They walked forwards as the Tunnel Snakes spread out to mirror their counterparts on the other side of the glade.
"The younger man with the scar on his face is Arthur Maxson," Letters informed those of them who wouldn't already know over the radio connection, "Youngest Elder in the history of the Brotherhood. Fought against the Shephard and his Flock during the Mutant Uprisings, and during the reclamation of D.C. and the Metro Campaigns."
Lantaya studied the granite-faced youth as the two groups formed up to face off against one another, two lonely battlelines in the midst of nature. He had a strength of presence about him, she decided. Perhaps not as obvious as the Courier's, Joshua's or Ulysses. Something similar to Butch DeLoria, she decided.
She was surprised at just how young he was. But looking closer revealed the premature aging the stress of his position had wreaked upon him. He had deep lines cut into his face by time, to join those scars of a more sinister nature.
"Guy with his power armour helmet off is Head Paladin Henry Casdin, former Protector of the Capital Wasteland Outcasts. He and a bunch of others broke off from the Brotherhood during the days when the Brotherhood was still run by Own Lyons. Dissatisfied with the direction of the Brotherhood, wanted to remain isolationist. Recently reintegrated into their ranks during the Mutant Uprisings. He's a hardliner. Far more extreme than Arthur. Thankfully, he's a professional. If Arthur was smart enough to order him to remain silent, he'll keep his mouth shut."
It was a striking contrast, Lantaya noted as the two groups finally settled into their respective positions. The studied and streamlined lethality of Butch's Tunnel Snakes, contrasted with the bulky steel and intimidating display of raw power by the Brotherhood. Neither seemed afraid of the other, just curious, like a den of lions and a pit of snakes coming into sudden, unexpected contact. Each deadly to the other in their own unique fashion, but neither overly concerned by the reality of that danger.
Butch's voice was the first to ring out in greeting, "Morning, Arthur! Sorry we didn't invite you to the party yesterday. The dance floor was already getting a bit crowded, you know? Where's the Wanderer?"
The bearded man in the long coat frowned, the picture of severe dignity. "Mr. DeLoria," he acknowledged Butch's greeting in a strong, confident voice. "The abomination had not seen fit to arrive yet."
"What, you too? Doesn't anyone call me by my name anymore?" Butch grumbled, half to himself. He didn't seem all that bothered by Arthur's scathing comment aimed at the Wanderer.
"This is a serious matter, Butch," Arthur stated, softening his voice and clasping his hands behind his back. He widened his stance to offset the more personal method of address before continuing, "Not a social call. I should have known you would be involved. You have always let your feelings for Chauncy override your good sense."
Butch clicked his tongue and nodded wearily, "Is that so? Well, I guess that's what friends do, huh? Do stupid shit together. Because if you're going to do stupid shit that might get you killed, you might as well do it with friends."
Henry Casdin's eyes narrowed in response to the evident familiarity between the two men, glancing between Maxson and DeLoria as if there was information to be gleaned as long as he kept his eyes open and fixed upon the two men. The glade was silent, save for the rustling of the trees, and the creaking of metal as the Vertibird's engines cooled.
"Good," Letters remarked too quietly for anyone not connected to their radios to overhear, "Arthur and him must not be on the best of terms at the moment. He told good old Henry to keep his trap nailed shut."
"That… thing is not your friend, Butch. Your friend is dead. I do not say this to be callous, but it is the truth. And furthermore, I would not be so quick to involve your friends in foolishness that might end in your death and theirs," Maxson continued sternly, laying out his case as cogently as he could. The audience listened attentively, none interrupting as the conversation began in earnest.
"Don't try and guilt me with that shit, Arthur. We aren't the sort to back down from a fight just because we might die," Butch responded in his typically simplistic terms. And though the words might have been simple, the message they conveyed was not.
"That's what you learn down there, in the Dark. All of us are going to die someday. And everyone we love, too. We don't become magical fairies and somehow live forever. It all ends. All we get is the possibility of dying a good death. And I'm not going to shit on the last thing my friend ever put into this world before he died, so don't even ask. I may hate having to look into his dead face every time I meet it, but Chance always did seem to know what was best. I think we can trust what he made, even if it is a bit fucked up."
"A bit…?" Arthur repeated, before leaning forwards slightly to make his words clearer to any who listened; Butch especially. "Are you aware what he did on the West Coast, Butch? He participated in the launch of a nuclear missile on a city populated by thousands. And while I have no doubt that many will make the argument that victims of the assault deserved their fate, the means employed are unforgivable to any men who follows the teachings of the Codex."
There was a stunned and confused silence, followed by an exchange of glances as the Tunnel Snakes present were momentarily shocked into immobility by the news. Lantaya looked from face to face, realising that none of the D.C. contingent seemed to be aware of the events on the West Coast. Had the Wanderer not informed them? But how had Maxson known? Even Butch was momentarily taken-aback by the discovery.
"Mistake the works of flesh for steel to your own folly," a new voice remarked from the side of the D.C. Tunnel Snakes. Ulysses stood with his calloused hand upon the haft of Old Glory, the golden eagle glinting as he stepped forwards, another beam of light sending the totem sparkling in a blaze of burnished metal. He had stood beneath notice until now, off and to the side where his stature and appearance had faded into the background as those around him argued.
"Do not presume…" Ulysses' attempt to set the record straight began before the Courier came up swiftly behind him and slapped a hand over his mouth as the other found purchase in his long dreadlocks and clamped down forcefully. The rest came out in an obscure mumble through the Courier's fingers, as the King of New Vegas relished in the opportunity to sprinkle gasoline on an already roaring fire.
"That's right," the Courier agreed cheerfully as Ulysses tried, unsuccessfully, to shake him off, "'Twas all the Wanderer's fault. Ye gotta stop that loony bucket o' bolts. He's outta control, so he is!"
The declaration was uttered in the most deliberately bombastic fashion the Courier could manage, fooling no-one. It was obvious that the Courier wasn't even making an attempt at being believable, only to entertain his own warped sense of humour.
"I know who you are, Courier Six. And I have an idea of the role you played in the launching of the munitions from the place some of my peers on the West Coast call 'The Divide'. There is no use lying to me."
"Sure, I already know that. Wasn't expectin' to be believed. Just havin' myself a bit of a laugh," the Courier waved off the admonishment as he separated himself from Ulysses, who glared at his retreating back as he straightened his duster. Maxson's severe expression deepened into something approaching anger as the Courier moved to the forefront of the group facing down the Brotherhood.
"You find this funny, do you?" Maxson asked, a clear note of rage concealed beneath his simple question. "The use of the same weaponry that destroyed our world and the thousands of fresh deaths in nuclear fire amuses you, does it?
"Aye, I do. And aye, it does. My enemies thought themselves powerful. Thought themselves a threat to my rule, a match for me an' mine. An' I brought them low with naught but the push o' a dusty button."
The Courier cackled at the recollection, shrugging his massive shoulders as he untucked the still smoking roll-up from behind his ear and took a deep puff. His grin, as always, seeped long strands of smoke that obscured his face. Without his long hair to collect it, however, it soon dissipated. The victorious grin remained.
"How could ye not find it funny? How can a man be so blind, to think themselves able to influence the actions o' somethin' so far above them?"
Maxson stood firm as the grizzled Wastelander continued on advancing towards him, leaving wisps of datura smoke trailing out behind him. The Courier tapped his chin consideringly, knocking some ash from the tip of his roll-up as an afterthought.
"You see yourself as 'so far above them'," Arthur repeated the phrase scornfully, "Do you believe that unearthing the relics that turned our world into a wasteland, and using them to spread misery and discord once more, places you above all others? You are a thug and a tyrant, grasping at weapons that should have been left alone to degrade in ignominy. Do not attempt to fool me with pretences."
"Pretence?" The Courier seemed to find the accusation amusing.
"Says the man puttin' on the pretence o' bein' a player at the table. Yer Brotherhood is a spirit at war with itself. What was it ye called them, Ulysses?" the Courier gestured towards the tall tribal who still stood with his calloused hand upon the haft of Old Glory, the golden eagle glinting as he stepped forwards, another beam of light sending the totem sparkling in a blaze of burnished metal. He had stood beneath notice until now, off and to the side where his stature and appearance had faded into the background as those around him argued.
"A new flag," Ulysses spoke in his rumbling voice as he adjusted his dreadlocks that had been sent into disarray by the Courier grappling him from behind, "covering nothing but old ideas. A beaten hound. So scared of a raised hand that it snaps and howls at any who approach. Had hope for you once. Believed you would build a new Nation, to rival the Old World. But all you believe is protection. Protection of a world in ashes. Snapping and howling at any who raise hands, even if the hands hold new ideas. New hopes. A New Nation."
"We are protecting humanity from itself. From men like you, who believe that wielding the weapons that burnt the world to within an inch of a cinder is anything less than a path to mutual annihilation."
"An' how are ye meant to go about that, young Maxson?" The Courier sneered, "Have ye ever thought this through, for just a moment? If ye wanted to stand against a man such as I, ye'd need to bring every ounce o' violence, every molecule o' malice, all yer capacity for destruction to bear an' aim it all straight an' true at my head. An' even if ye won, ye'd end up right where I am now. Holdin' the biggest weapons in a smokin' ruin. Willingly bendin' yer knee to my Spirits, bringin' about all ye fight to prevent."
The Brotherhood Paladins and Knights who flanked Maxson and his Lieutenant shifted uneasily, hands tightening on their weapons. All this talk of mutual annihilation sounded suspiciously like a threat, to them. Maxson was staring the Courier in the eyes, unbending. "And you think I will allow you to do this? That I won't fight back?"
"Sure, wouldn't make a blind bit o' difference if ye did, Maxson. I got all the biggest guns, so if it's a fight ye want, ye can enjoy defiance from the bottom o' a crater. But in all honesty, yes. I do. And no, ye won't."
The Courier's delighted grin split his face as he laughed at the thought. "Ye may not be a coward by nature, Maxson, but yer a coward by choice."
He was standing right in front of the Elder of the Brotherhood now, towering above him in a haze of fragrant smoke, cackling like a hyena. Nobody spoke but the Courier, who wielded his words like a hammer upon an anvil.
"Do ye hear the spirits o' the Old World whisperin' to ye now?" The Courier enquired, his grin wider than ever, "Tellin' ye how those Generals an' Politicians felt as Nations stood ready to annihilate one another? They believed so deeply in their convictions lad, that they would rather the world burn than be anythin' other than what they willed it to be. Now that is courage. That is belief. That is faith. What do ye have? What do ye believe? That nothin' is worth the use of a nuke? Then all I gotta do to beat you is threaten to use 'em. An' I got all the nukes I need to threaten everythin' ye hold dear."
The Brotherhood looked on, aghast, as the Courier taunted their leader and all they believed in front of them, unable to act. Because what they believed would not allow it.
"With a belief like that ye'd lost 'fore ye ever began. Ye won't fight, 'cause fighting itself is to lose. Brought low by naught but a threat. This is why I preferred the Legion. If given the choice an' they weren't so set against usin' tech, they'd 'ave launched the nukes and be done with it, the second they knew they'd lose. If the world couldn't be theirs, it can all burn. That's conviction. That's belief," the Courier tapped the side of his nose. Maxson looked repulsed by the very idea.
Bored with his one-sided debate, the Courier turned away from Maxson and made to stroll away. But Maxson's hand shot out and wormed its way into the Courier's coat lapel. It held him in place as Maxson spoke.
"You wouldn't."
"Ohh," the Courier spoke without looking back at the leader of the East Coast Chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel, "I'm thinkin' I would."
"Tyrants don't destroy what they tyrannise. Not completely. Their egos do not allow them to do so. If they don't have a world to tyrannise then all they are is ordinary. And you wouldn't be able to stand that. And they certainly don't destroy themselves. They love themselves too much," Arthur spoke calmly, although his confidence was clearly shaken.
"Then 'tis a good thing I ain't a tyrant then?" The Courier said with a deceptively bright grin, shaking the Elder's hand from his duster and adjusting himself accordingly. "If the world won't submit to bein' what I see in my mind's eye, Maxson, then it can be ashes and nothin' more. We'll drag ye into our future whether ye like it or not."
His words echoed through the trees like a series of gunshots, fading away as the reverberations settled. Only for another sound to grow. A creaking of branches and twisting of bark. And the forest…. moved.
A gigantic pine cracked and shifted, the earth deforming and flowing as the roots burst through the carpet of grass. Two exceedingly long branches concealed within the canopy overhead burst from the thick concealing leaves and punched themselves into the ground like a facsimile of human arms. Bark crumbled away from a point someway up the trunk, what remained adopting the shape of a face swelling cheeks outlined roughly in brown. Heads turned, eyes and mouths wide open.
"Now, now," the tree spoke in a voice that rumbled like the earth, slow and ponderous like an old man trying to collect his thoughts from where he had left them long ago, "All this talk of fire and ash…."
The tree paused as if to draw in a deep breath to support his titanic frame, leaving the shocked audience spellbound in anticipation as the treeline all shifted in sympathy, faces appearing on every trunk and roots bursting from the ground in showers of compacted dirt and split grass. Even the Courier, fully in the throes of his semi-psychotic monologue stared at the sight, datura roll-up hanging precariously from his lip as his own mouth gaped open like a carp.
"…. Is disturbing me and Herbert."
Arthur Maxson had his hands out, forestalling the Brotherhood from opening fire at a yell that barely made itself know above the rumble of shifting earth.
Henry Casdin had a plasma caster at the ready and was standing against Maxson's back, keeping his superior covered from the rear. He didn't show any shock, or fear at the sight of a foe he clearly wouldn't prevail against. Just raw professionalism. The weapon in his metal fists glowed with unearthly green light.
"Didn't your mamma ever tell you…" the voice of the trees split the air as the giant pine leant over the Courier and cast its shadow upon his upturned face. Another pause as it drew in a mighty breath.
"That trees don't like fire?"
A root separated itself from the roiling mass beneath the trunk and slithered forwards like a snake, slowly tapering off to a width no thicker than a human finger. It wrapped itself around the Courier's roll-up that was already on the brink of toppling off his lower lip onto the ground and crushed it into pulp like a boa constrictor tightening its body around a tiny animal.
Lantaya had covered herself in a thick barrier of overlapping biotic fields the second the earth started shifting beneath her feet and had watched, mesmerised, as the world around them came to abrupt and terrifying sentience. The only thing that kept her calm were the reassuring figures of the Tunnel Snakes all around her, weapons held low and faces unconcerned. "Do not engage," Sarge shouted into his receiver for everyone's benefit, even the startled Brotherhood Knights, "Harold is just making a point."
The Courier, meanwhile, recovering from his shock, had pulled his tarnished lighter from his pocket and flipped it open to slowly wave the comically small flame in the bark encrusted face.
"Then get ye gone from the councils o' men, Spirit. I got plenty o' fire to go 'round," he proclaimed in a jokingly dramatic tone. Lantaya watched as his hand snaked behind his back beneath the duster, where she knew he kept a number of grenades, including some packed with his own blend of white phosphorous. That was the Courier. Telling jokes at the same time as he surreptitiously prepared to face down a force so infinitely beyond him that it beggared belief. He really wasn't capable of backing down from anything, was he?
The tree, if anything, looked amused by the defiance.
"Please refrain from threatening our allies, Six." a faint heat haze observed objectively as it strode from the rapidly shifting depths of the forest, "This remains neutral ground and we came here to negotiate in good faith. Not threaten one another. And certainly not to threaten innocent lives."
The Wanderer decloaked, his form becoming visible to all present as other figures made themselves known behind him. The formidably tall figure of Charon the ghoul, followed by another heat haze that resolved itself into the lithe form of Clover. She draped her black Stealth Armour clad-body across the cyborgs side, resting her head on his shoulder as she grinned maliciously at the assembled Brotherhood.
Behind them came the hulking form of a Super Mutant, yellow-skinned in contrast to the darker green that Lantaya had come to know. It face was twisted and contorted, its shoulders hideously out of proportion to the rest of its body. It reminder her strongly of the first Mutant she had ever seen, the Overlord who the Wanderer and the Courier had killed on the Zeta.
And slightly off to the side, two other men with black skin and black hair, though one was displaying the first tinges of grey within his tangled black curls. Both wore powered armour of a radically different make to the Brotherhood, but just as bulky and obviously just as formidable. They bore no weapons, however.
Behind them, trying her best to remain inconspicuous, a platinum-blonde women with extraordinarily pale skin, dressed in the more typical wastelander garb of leather and salvaged pre-war fabric, supplemented by whatever rags were on hand. She seemed poised to run at any moment, eyeing everything around her with a measured caution.
"Charon, Clover!" Jericho called out to his close companions before turning his attention to the Mutant and nodding his head in a markedly less cordial fashion, "Hey, Fawkes. You look like shit."
"That is a recent development," Fawkes growled in the guttural tones of a Super Mutant, surprising Lantaya with how functional he appeared as compared to the one other Mutant of her very short acquaintance. "It might behove me to ask you for advice. Having lived your entire life in a similar condition must have bestowed you with great wisdom on how to deal with it."
"Please ignore the Courier, Arthur," the Lone Wanderer asked of the Brotherhood Elder as he stepped forwards into the centre of the glade, cybernetic eyes flickering across those assembled. He ignored Jericho's rebuttal towards Fawkes, which made up for his lack of gentile diction with his truly disgusting panoply of Raider insults and curses.
"He has an extremely confrontational personality," the Wanderer clarified, as if that excused it.
"Why don't you just say he's a psycho," Butch stated bluntly.
"Better than a coward," the Courier commented in his own defence, using his still flickering lighter to set the tip of a new roll-up ablaze as he held Maxson's eyes, peering around the massive tree trunk that faced him. The Elder and his second-in-command glared balefully at the tribal warlord in return, taking the comment as personally as it was no doubt meant.
"Would you shut up, your highness," the leader of the Tunnel Snakes shot back, adding a mocking tone to the title, before adding as an afterthought, "Please."
Maxson nodded his thanks in Butch's direction before addressing the Wanderer directly.
"I knew the Oasis Forest was not natural. Our scouts informed us that occasionally, the trees themselves would move, and that they killed interloping Super Mutants during the Uprisings. But I did not expect to have my suspicions confirmed today, nor in such a spectacular fashion."
"Spectacular?" The trees echoed in their ponderously slow chorus before breathing deeply. In a human man, such a breath would have been the prelude to a bellow or a shout, but in this massive entity it seemed nothing more than a natural mechanism. Harold's voice never deviated from its slightly monotone, albeit deafening drone.
"Well that's…. mighty nice of you. You're welcome to…. come visit Herbert and I…. sometime."
Arthur Maxson curled his lip up and wrinkled his nose, "An Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel does not associate with Mutants. If your forest did not protect D.C and its surrounding farmland, I would mobilise the Prydwen and burn you and your forest to the ground."
The trees shifted and the ground rumbled in anger at the Elder's statement, but the leader of the Brotherhood not only held his ground but raised his head high in defiance.
"But" he admitted slowly, "the loss of human life would be unacceptably high. Crops have always grown unnaturally well within the confines of your domain. It has kept the masses of D.C. fed where many other places in the Wastes would fail to produce the needed foodstuffs. I take it that this is also you're doing?"
"It is," the Lone Wanderer agreed as the titanic pine tree settled back into the spot it had previously occupied and sunk its roots deep into the soil below like a nest of bark brown pythons.
"Harold is psychically connected to every tree or plant that grew from his own seed. He has managed to subsume a great number of different plant over the years by consuming them from their root networks, upwards. Most of the grain grown in these regions are grown by him. More so than the fieldhands who tend them."
Henry Casdin broke protocol in that moment to voice a disturbing realisation. "We've been eating pieces of that…. thing?"
"Yes. Also, you have been sitting on furniture made from his wood, drinking water that he purified by running it through his root systems, and living in houses constructed from materials harvested by Paradise Falls," the Wanderer clarified. As always, his tendency to unload a deluge of severely disturbing information without any regard to the effect it might have on others, remained profoundly strong.
"You're…." The titanic tree intoned in a voice like grinding stone before drawing in a lengthy breath, "…. Welcome."
There was a loud clatter as a Brotherhood Knight dropped his minigun, released the clasps on his armour and managed to get the helmet off just in time to projectile vomit his lunch all over the ground.
"Star Paladin Gallows! Take that man's name," Head Paladin Casdin snapped in a burst of furious anger, likely build up during the course of the contentious conversation and given an avenue to release itself now. "He did not have permission to remove his helmet!"
"Better out than in I say," Harold echoed in the voices of a thousand trees, before taking in another titanic breath of air, "Ain't that right…. Herbert?"
There was another long silence, broken only by the self-assured voice of Irving Gallows telling the Knight in question to get a hold of himself and put his damn helmet back on. Then Harold chuckled, as if the Herbert he had addressed had actually spoken back to him. "Bah, you're no…. fun nowadays, Bob."
"But there will be no burning of forests, nor of cities from now on, unless the issue is forced upon us," the Wanderer stated firmly, drawing the attention of those present back to him. He directed this statement as much to the Courier as he did to Maxson, both of whom rankled under the statement, given that they were both authorities unto themselves.
"You are well informed as to our activities, Arthur. I take it you received communications from the Brotherhood back west?"
Arthur Maxson grimaced but nodded reluctantly, "Yes, I have."
The Lone Wanderer nodded his head, affecting an air of serious contemplation. Henry Casdin curled his nose at the intrinsic falseness of the expression. To people who knew what to look for, the Wanderer was as obviously fake as a three-dollar pre-war bill. It made him almost physically ill to contemplate a future engineered by the likes of this abomination.
Or the likes of Courier Six.
The report on his previous actions and proclivities, straight from the archives of the Circle of Steel, who had compiled it during the course of their investigation into Elder Elijah, Scribe Veronica Santangelo, and later their own Agent Christine Royce, had been damning enough. But to add such flagrant disregard for the dangers of Pre-War technology to boot? The arrogance to believe that it could be used and abused for his own ends?
"Will you acknowledge the necessary formalities, Arthur? Or shall I?" The abomination asked. "You and I both know that any talk of ashes and fire, reprisal or punishment, is merely talk. We have squabbled amongst ourselves for long enough. And this latest development, as regrettable as it may be, has given me the leverage I required to put an end to it."
"The use of nuclear munitions on a populated area is merely regrettable to you," Arthur Maxson stated.
"I apologise. My personality matrix has subroutines built in to simulate the human tendency towards understatement. Should I use another word to make you more comfortable?"
"No," Maxson spat the word with finality, before straightening to his full stature and looking the Lone Wanderer straight in his cold, dead, cybernetic eyes.
"As decreed by the Council of Elders in light of the events at Flagstaff and The Divide, I have been directed to halt any attempts to apprehend or hinder you or your compatriots. This measure is in no way a capitulation on the part of our Brotherhood and should any nuclear munitions be deployed against the Brotherhood of Steel on either Coast, rest assured…"
Arthur Maxson's voice cracked like a whip across the glade as he added his own solemn promise to the end of the official message, "I will ensure that hostilities will be renewed and escalated beyond your ability to comprehend."