Fallout: Crusaders of the Brotherhood
Part I: Chapter 7
"You said that close quarters is you thing right?" asked Logan, keeping his voice at a low whisper while he and Veronica were hiding behind a collapsed road sign.
"Yeah," said Veronica, keeping her voice as low as the Sentinel's.
"Have you ever had to kill a raider before?"
Veronica nodded her head.
"Okay then," responded Logan, "Show me what you can do. I'll cover you."
He gestured towards the lone Fiend who was a few yards ahead of the other side of the sign. She was enjoying a cigarette and seemed distracted enough for one to sneak up behind her.
Veronica prepped her power fist as Logan readied his pistol to fire in case anything went wrong. A few occasional pops and cracks could be heard in the distance, which was unmistakably gunfire. The Fiends and NVM liked taking potshots at one another from their fortified positions. If Logan fired off his pistol, it probably wouldn't attract too much attention.
Veronica snuck up behind the Fiend until she was only a few feet away. She called out to the Fiend, getting her attention.
"Hey!"
The Fiend jumped and turned around only to get her head smashed by Veronica's power fist. The former scribe couldn't have asked for a more perfect hit. She got the raider right in the temple and was dead before she hit the ground. Veronica could hear Logan's footsteps approaching from behind.
"Not bad," he said as he knelt down to inspect the Fiend's body, "not bad at all,"
He picked up the hunting rifle that the dead Fiend had been wielding. It was in poor condition and looked as though it was bound to jam within a few rounds. It would just be extra weight if they decided to take it.
Logan then rolled the Fiend's body over its back and began searching. He dug through various pockets and pouches, pulling out a used up jet inhaler, a pack of cigarettes, and a knife. With the exception of the knife, he tossed the items off to the side of the corpse.
He examined the knife. It was a combat knife and unlike the hunting rifle, it was still in pretty good condition. There were a few spots of rust on it, but the tip was still pointy and the edge was still sharp. Logan sheathed the knife between his belt and his cargo pants as he got up.
"We need to get going," he said.
The two made their way into a nearby ruined building. The roof had long since collapsed, exposing them to the early afternoon sun. The walls were half collapsed as well as a staircase. Piles of rubble littered the area inside the old building.
Veronica and Logan had been moving from cover to cover for about a half an hour now. They moved swiftly and softly, being careful so not to alert any guards. They had previously spotted a few Fiends standing watch on a ledge or in a building, but it wasn't anything the two couldn't sneak past.
Logan took the lead the whole way. Though Veronica was no stranger to covert operations, the Sentinel was obviously more experienced in stealthy tactics. It appeared to be almost second nature to him.
Though it was used in some instances, stealth wasn't considered a conventional tactic by the Brotherhood. Power armor, though protective, was extremely bulky and hard to make precise and light movements in. The Brotherhood typically relied on the basic tactic of having heavier armor and heavier guns than the opposition. It was the Brotherhood's signature strength, but it was also their signature weakness. Veronica found it peculiar that such a distinguished member of the Brotherhood of Steel would be so well versed in the art of stealth.
They were just about to make a run from one building to another when Logan signaled Veronica to stop. He leaned just over the edge of the half destroyed wall and immediately pulled his head back. Veronica could hear several pairs of footsteps walking along the other side of the wall.
"So why da hell are we headin out anyways?" asked a voice from the other side of the wall.
"Because dat shipment was supposed to be hea ova an hour ago, dat's why," answered another voice.
"But dey could'a been held up," suggested the first voice.
"Well dey aint my ordas, so quit ya whinin," remarked the second voice, sounding agitated.
The two's argument grew fainter and fainter until their group had moved out of earshot. Logan poked his beyond the ruined wall and looked both ways. He pulled his head back and whispered to Veronica.
"Coast is clear; let's move,"
The two ran out of the ruined building and entered the adjacent one, which was in similar condition. They carefully picked their way through that building and exited it when they were sure no one was around. They then took cover behind a four-foot-high stone wall that ran parallel to the building that they had just moved through. There was a series of old pre-War houses that were lined up along the other side of the stone wall. All doors and windows were boarded up and the spaces in between the houses were barricaded; so the two would have to follow the stone wall until they found an opening or made it around the housing complex.
They continued along the wall until they reached its end and the end of the series of houses. The space they had to move through was narrow. On the right side was the sidewall of the house on the end of the complex and on the left side were the ever-imposing walls of camp McCarran. They were deep in Fiend Territory now. They moved up through the narrow pass until they reached the end.
Logan looked around the corner of the house's wall on the right and spotted another lone Fiend standing in front of a campfire. The nearest bit of cover was too far for Veronica and Logan to jump to without the Fiend noticing.
"This one's mine," claimed Logan as he drew out his newly acquired combat knife.
Slowly, the Sentinel crept his way up to the Fiend; his movements were completely silent. As soon as he was close enough to the Fiend, he wrapped his arm around him and cupped a hand over his mouth. Veronica could hear the Fiend's muffled screams as Logan drove his knife into the Fiend's chest. The raider jerked and twisted as Logan restrained him in his arms. The Fiend's movements steadily slowed as he died. When the Fiend stopped moving completely, Logan gently lowered the body to the ground. He pulled the knife and wiped off the blood onto the dead Fiend's pant leg.
He then motioned over to Veronica, keeping his voice as close to a whisper as he could but still being audible, "Come on!"
They continued moving building-to-building, cover-to-cover. Logan would periodically stop and wait for a Fiend or two to walk by. Now that they were in the middle of the Fiend's turf, they were going to have to move much more carefully and much more quietly.
As Veronica followed Logan, he stopped suddenly and swiftly snapped his head towards the distance as a nightstalker would if its primal instincts had been alerted.
"Dogs,"
Veronica could hear the faint barking off in the distance.
"If they haven't already picked up on our trail, they will if we stay here long," urged the Sentinel, "We have to move now!"
Logan grabbed Veronica's arm and pulled her out of cover. They started to pick up the pace. As the sounds of dogs grew closer, the two weren't so much concerned with stealth as they were with reaching NVM territory before the search party reached them.
Logan led Veronica into and narrow alley between two buildings. It turned out to be a bad decision since there were two idle Fiends standing in it, but there was no time to turn around.
"What the fu–"
The first Fiend's sentenced was interrupted as he received a bone crushing punch from Veronica's power fist in the chest. He collapsed to the ground, holding his chest and groaning in pain. Before the second Fiend could react, Logan pounced on the raider with his combat knife, forcing it into the bandit's jugular.
The dogs sounded as though there were only a block away. Logan and Veronica were going to have to hurry. They were about a half-mile beyond the northern territory held by the NVM.
Veronica ran as fast as her legs would let her move. She dared not look back. It could slow her down and every second counted.
They reached a three-story building with barricades made from old road signs, stacked cars, and buses jutting out from both ends. It must have been the northern wall constructed by the Fiends to help keep the NVM from overrunning them from the north.
As the two made a dash for the building, a nearby Fiend opened fire on them with an assault rifle.
"Screw you!" he yelled as he landed bullets left and right of Veronica and Logan, but none of them actually hitting his mark.
The doors to the pre-War building busted open as Logan charged through them like a bull would. Veronica followed him to the top of the three-story building. Though the first two floors were mostly intact, the roof on the third floor had collapsed and there was a lack of walls.
On the northern edge of the third floor was an unstable looking makeshift catwalk built out of chunks of cars and other large pieces of scrap metal. Logan was the fist to go down it. Every step he made caused the whole thing to creak. The catwalk wasn't built to be rushed down on in a hurry.
Whether it was because of the extra weight added or if it was just her bad luck, when Veronica planted her foot on the poorly constructed scaffolding, the entire thing collapsed. Logan's image disappeared underneath a wave of twisting and screeching metal. A huge cloud of dust kicked up as the once been catwalk crashed to the ground. When the dust settled, the Sentinel's body was completely buried by a pile of bent pipes, pieces of pre-War vehicles, and other chunks of scrap metal.
Veronica had no idea what to do now. Logan was gone, as well as her only means of evasion, and there was no question that the Fiends were still on her tail. Veronica looked all around her, searching for some alternate escape route. There was none.
"Think, Veronica think!" she said aloud as she closed her eyes, searching her brian for a solution to her predicament.
"Think this," said a male voice behind her as Veronica felt a blunt object hit the back of her head.
The former scribe's vision went dark as her senses started to numb. The last sensation she felt was the feeling of being dragged through the dust and rubble of the pre-War building.