A/N: Fawkes is very prone to attack unprovoked in the game if an NPC or creature is "hostile" to the player. Admittedly he's not as bad as Charon in that regard. (But we'll save Charon for the next fic, should there be one.)

13

I heard the protesting creak as Fawkes went down the old stairs. He didn't seem worried about snipers, which at the time struck me as odd for somebody as smart as he is. (I did find out why later, but I'm not going to spoil that one. My commentator here says there is a reason, however peculiar, behind everything he does. He made me type peculiar twice, too. I spelled it wrong the first time.)

After that there was quiet for a long few seconds. I crouched there and strained my ears to hear below and around me. Beside me, Three held still, probably doing the same. I could see something stirring behind the rickety setup across the platform, but I couldn't tell how many were there or what they were doing. Even if they knew to look for us, they shouldn't be able to see Three and me in the shadow of the tunnel mouth.

There was a single gunshot from below. I held my breath, listening for the return fire or for the heavy sound of a giant body falling. There was another gunshot. Another. Whoever it was had some kind of rifle; the sound is different from a handgun.

"MY TURN!" screamed Fawkes, and the tunnel shook around me. Then the roar of the gat cut loose, and the giant rattle of it echoed in the big space like the sky was falling.

Raiders came running out from behind the wood barriers across the platform from me. I counted four as they came straight toward the stairway, running across the platform as best they could in the weird mismatched assortment of shoes they were wearing. Two of the four had submachine guns and were already firing wild bursts toward the stairwell, though there was nothing they could hit that way.

Footing was uneven over the broken concrete and garbage. It slowed them down a little. I had plenty of time to draw a bead on the fastest one and shoot him through the chest. (Some men will tell you they can shoot a running man through the head at two hundred yards. They're mostly lying. The few that can do a thing like that don't flap their lips about it.) At that range it didn't cut him in half, but it did make a big enough hole that I could see the woman behind him through it before he dropped. I took off her right arm at the shoulder before she got to cover. Then all three of them were behind the escalators, letting the dead man's kicking body lie as the plasma went on burning him.

(Fawkes says it would add a humorous historic aside if I were to note that there was a time in this country when men would not shoot a woman. I ask him why. He says it's because women were mostly unarmed and were considered to need careful protection. I think he must be making it up. Sounds like crazy talk to me.)

"Not to worry," I told Three. "I never saw a Raider could hit much of anything from a distance. After a while they'll get mad and charge us again, and it'll be easy pick - "

Three was already gone, dodging behind a pile of old lockers to my left. I sighed, but quietly. Fawkes is stronger, Three is faster, and I'm the only one who isn't batshit crazy. Lucky me. I took a quick look around, making sure all the noise hadn't drawn anything else. Nothing was coming up the tunnel behind me, which was a comfort. I waited for a break in the random bursts of automatic fire before I dove for the cover of the lockers myself. Three wasn't there any more. I risked a peek around one side of them, where my face would be in shadow. A Ghoul's face is easier hid than a smoothskin's, because the blotchiness breaks up the outline.

One of the Raiders was halfway visible in the shadow of an escalator, firing at something off to my left. Three must be in the trench of the old tracks where I couldn't see him. I edged carefully over to that side, took aim, and fired. The hairy leg I could see disappeared in an explosion of gore and goo. I heard a scream, too high and primal to be taken for male or female, and then the Raider fired a couple of random bursts and keeled over backward out of my sight. He wouldn't bleed to death, not from a plasma burn. The shock might kill him, but that would be unusual. You don't get a shock kill with Raiders very often; mostly they're so jeeped on Jet or Buffout that they'll keep coming 'til you hit something really vital.

I hadn't seen Three move, but I heard a scuffle and a snap from the nearest pillar when the sound of the gatling laser cut off for a second. A body flopped out from behind it a moment later, a big dirty guy without much in the way of clothes on. The one remaining Raider shot him probably a dozen times before they realized he was one of them and already dead. I couldn't see any other marks on him. Maybe Three had rabbit-punched him.

The survivor launched herself out of cover and ran screaming at the corpse with just a knife in her hand. I waited until she was about halfway there, then I shot her through the torso. She kept on running with that gaping hole through her body for probably three or four steps before her legs gave out. Then she tried to crawl, mouth opening and shutting and eyes rolling around. I was glad I couldn't hear whatever noise she made. Three took a couple of quick steps out of cover and stamped down on her head with his booted foot. It made a horrible wet crunch of a noise. There's nothing like the sound of a skull breaking and it's another thing I'll never learn to like. The body twitched, one leg kicking, but she stayed down.

I took a quick look around, making sure there were no others, before I stood up out of cover. Three shook his right hand. A couple of drops of blood flew from his split knuckle, but I didn't see any holes in his Vault suit. There was no point in asking him. Fawkes was still at it down below, screaming almost loud enough to be heard over the gatling laser. I walked over to the Raider whose leg I had shot off. He was dead, glazed eyes staring up at the back of the escalator. I guessed the shock had got him after all. I was glad for the big echoing space to thin out the stink.

I turned toward the stairwell with Three beside me. I hate going down stairs into a firefight. Whoever's down there can see your legs before you see them, which means by the time your head is in view they've probably already got you sighted in. You can toss a grenade down the stairs first to give you cover, which I wasn't going to do with Fawkes down there. You can do a dive roll down the stairwell and hope you land the right way and don't shoot yourself in the process. I am not stupid enough to try that with a plasma rifle. Or you can lay down at the top of the stairs and try to get a view of what's below you, and maybe plug any hostile party before they notice you. (Fawkes says it's "lie" down. Sounds wrong to me.)

I flattened myself out on the dusty floor and took a look down below. The stairs bent around out of sight, so I couldn't see much. This meant there was nobody below who could see me, either, so I got up and started down to the landing. Three brushed past me and got there first. He stuck his head around the first corner, and then he whisked himself around and out of sight.

I risked a look when I got there. Nobody was looking at the stairwell. Both the surviving gunmen were concentrating on Fawkes. They were trying to stay behind cover, but there's just not that much that will hide you from a gatling laser when the person carrying it is strong enough to chase you. Fawkes just kept on, legs like trees pumping up and down, shaking the ground with every step. The two he was after dodged from pillar to pillar of the room's central platform. I caught a glimpse of one of them as he ran past the bottom of the stairs. He was wearing black combat armor with a white claw spray-painted on the shoulder. That was all I saw before I had to duck back to avoid the rain of red light. The beams from the gat hissed against the concrete. I waited for that to die down as I thought,

White claws. Must be Talon Company. Which was interesting enough to keep me occupied while I waited for Fawkes to stop shooting in my direction. I, personally, am nobody important. There were (and are) a fair number of people who might kill me in the course of a regular day's work, or because I was in the way, or because they felt like it at the time. That's part of the cost of doing business. Nobody would pay Talon Company mercs to kill me.

I couldn't imagine anybody would pay them to kill a Scary Gary, either. That meant they were after somebody else. It was possible this was a chance meeting, but I doubted it. Talon Company has a reputation for taking certain kinds of contracts. They wouldn't be after scum like the Raiders upstairs. They might be after Fawkes, though. He'd been friends with the Vault Dweller, and the Talons had been after the Dweller more than one time without success. Even I knew that.

That being the case, you'd think they would've brought some heavier ordnance. There was no more spatter and hiss of laser on concrete next to me, so I risked another look. Fawkes seemed to be standing in one place now, twisting his enormous torso to and fro as he aimed a spray of more lasers at the mercs. Now that I was looking, I spotted the body of the third one. He was sprawled out on the escalator stairs, loops of pink gut hanging out where he'd been cut almost in half by the lasers. A minigun lay a few steps below him. Ah hah.

Now, just in case anybody reading this has never seen a minigun (in which case, lucky you), let me explain. A minigun is an aircraft weapon, usually off a helicopter, that's been adapted so it can be carried and fired by one individual. As such it's usually a super mutant's weapon, not a human's. Even with the lightweight metals they were making before the war, firing one would be about like having a grown man running on your chest. The dead guy on the stairs was pretty huge, but he didn't have power armor or anything else to offset the weight and the kick. He must've been an easy target for Fawkes. I hadn't even heard him get a shot off.

Neither of the others looked big enough for the mini, assuming they could survive to get up the stairs and get it. One of them must be carrying the rifle I'd heard earlier. The other one probably had one as well. Talon Mercs like hunting and sniper rifles. They're more precise than automatic weapons and they can be used at a distance.

Which same is also true of plasma rifles, of course. I couldn't get much of a bead on either of them the way they were still running around, though. I couldn't figure why they didn't try to escape back up the escalators. It seemed to me like their best chance, since they couldn't know I was there. Unless there's something else upstairs. Can't be Ferals. They'd be down here already. They're not smart enough to shy off from gunfire. Probably not one of the old robots, either; they'd risk that, and anyhow all you need is an old metro ticket to show them. Everyone knows that.

I spotted Three down in the shadow of an escalator, crouching where he was invisible to anyone without a vantage above him. I saw him before either of the mercs did. In fact, one of them never saw him at all, because he tripped over Three's outstretched foot and then Fawkes shot him to doll rags. Three did a quick backward roll out of sight, but I couldn't imagine how he could've avoided all the little red beams.

The other merc saw him, but he didn't have time to do anything about it. He hesitated for a second, trying to decide what to do, and then I shot him through the body about the same time Fawkes hit him with the gat. He literally disintegrated. No blood, no guts. Just ashes.

Fawkes let the gatling laser power down. The absence of sound left a ringing in my ears. I shook my head to let it clear.

"It's Thistle. I'm coming down," I called down from the stairwell. Fawkes hung the gat's barrel back up, so I slung the rifle on my shoulder and went on down. Fawkes was looking around him, craning his thick neck. I could hear him breathing hard, and when I got close I felt the heat coming off him and the gat both.

"You okay?" I asked him.

"Certainly," said Fawkes. He'd got his voice back under control already. But then, he hadn't been wounded this time. "I'm not certain about Three, however. It is possible I might have inadvertently injured him."

"Three?" I said loudly. There was nothing I could attract that wouldn't have already been drawn in or driven off by the giant rattle of the gatling laser. My hackles were just starting to settle (this is what you call a figure of speech, being as a Ghoul has no back hairs to raise or lower) and the knot unwind in my belly. When I was fighting for my life I didn't notice it was there. Only afterwards, when it went away and left me a little weaker.

Three stuck his head over the side of the farthest escalator. He looked warily at Fawkes for a second, making sure the shooting was over. Then he vaulted over the rail and landed neatly eight feet below.

"Ga-ry," he said, and grabbed a fold of fabric at his waist and pulled it away from his body. There was a neat scorch hole through it.

"Looks like a near miss," I said. Three nodded.

"I apologize," said Fawkes. "Aim is sometimes inexact with this weapon."

Three snorted. He looked at me. "Thistle?"

"Nah, I'm fine," I said, correctly interpreting his tone. "Mostly I let you two do all the work." I shook my head. "You should've seen him, Fawkes. And I thought Raiders were stupid about charging a loaded gun."

"He is faster than an ordinary human," said Fawkes. He turned to look down at Three. "He has had nearly two human lifetimes to learn. And I imagine his time in the Vault was not much more pleasant than my own."

Three looked up at Fawkes as if he'd never seen him before. Then he nodded.

"Okay," I said. "We've still got some walking to do. Let's go."