(Engineering)
Pitt's head was full of questions, he had been offered something incredible, but to leave the ship for god knows how long? How could he tell Jackal? How could he leave his life on the ship behind? The buzz of the matrix jump was far less noticeable as he materialised in engineering. The main reactor was a sight to see, a giant triple reinforced glass (it was actually some kind of transparent metal according to Bigsley) orb containing brilliant bright white lightening jumping from one spot to another. The new arrivals always had time to stop and gawk at it, take in its beauty, of course anyone who's been on the ship more than a week simply snickers at them as they scurry to where ever it is they're needed; as Pitt stared at it he felt a sadness creep into him, he didn't know why but he felt as though something certain was rushing towards him, a finality. After a few more minutes of taking in the hypnotic light show Pitt pushed the feeling down and ambled towards the clinic, the second he stepped through the door he was bombarded with plethora of questions by Jackal and Leslie, it was quite the interrogation, but Pitt held fast and kept his promise to the Captain, much to the pair's annoyance. Leslie was slightly taller than Jackal, which was to say that she was considerably taller than Pitt, her brown hair was tied back into a small pony tail and her chocolate eyes full of life and intelligence darted from Pitt to Jackal as their ruthless questioning continued, at first Pitt was confused as he discreetly examined her, but he soon came to a realisation, Jackal would be fine if he weren't around. Pitt decided to leave as Elliot started to give him the evil eye for distracting his only help on call, politely making his exit he went down to his quarters, to collect his thoughts. His room was empty and for a second Pitt was confused, but cursing himself he remembered that the two others he shared his room with were part of his squad, it was his alone now, it was empty, even though he stood in the middle of it, it was devoid of warmth, his friend had begun to become happier without any help from him, his friends were gone and his purpose was gone with them, he was more alone than he had ever been, for the first time the ship's metal walls and view of the broken world below them made him feel cold. He sat down and held his alien pistol for a long time; he considered killing himself, there was no purpose to anything, no reason to survive anymore, just him, him and his gun.
(Clinic)
Jackal had been taking to medicine with great enthusiasm, every day he was getting better at diagnosing, treating, comforting and almost everything else he thought he was never going to do; Leslie was pushing him almost every step of the way, she had been there to mock him on his first mistake and almost everything else he did, she had come from some no name town that got wiped off the map by raiders, after some aimless years of wandering she found herself signing on with the WRM and that was just about all she'd say on her past, Jackal didn't mind, he didn't exactly want to share much about his past either, the two were colleges, constantly pushing one another on to be better than the other, and every once and a while, Jackal would turn to see Leslie just looking at him, and he would be caught staring at her very… healthy figure, and would receive no end of shit from her afterwards. But Jackal couldn't help but shake a bad feeling that day; he wasn't sure whether it was Pitt's face as he slipped out, or just how cold it seemed lately, but he fought the feeling down and went on about his routine, two hours before he could stuff his face and listen to GNR. The world had descended into chaos in a matter of seconds however as a young boy, no more than six or seven was carried into the clinic by a very distraught man who turned out to be his father, Jackal examined the child's heartbeat with his stethoscope and worked faster than light when he found that the child didn't have one, preforming CPR got his heart beating and some psycho got it beating fast enough to let Jackal focus on stabilising him on Med X. The Child who was identified as Daniel by his father Moses had simply gone from happy on a space adventure to convulsing on the ground within an hour, it started as a cough, taken over by a fever and next thing you know a full seizure kicks in turning into a sickening limpness, Jackal had no idea what this was but he knew some Med X wasn't going to cure it, Elliot who had been busy with a wounded ground patrol from RA had taken over in keeping the boy stable, steady treatments of Med X kept him breathing but in a drug induced coma, Jackal was so full of adrenaline he couldn't even think of relaxing, ignoring Leslie's suggestions to take a break, Jackal opened every medical textbook in the clinic and vowed not to move until he knew what in the hell could be done for this kid, Daniel.
(Robot Assembly)
Bigsley had finished his shift as second in command on the bridge and after complaining to the Captain to hurry up his decision to pick an official person for the job (for ten minutes) he retired to his favourite desk in the robot assembly area. The artillery bots were being deployed around the wasteland to settlements as a show of good faith, they acted as sentry turrets and early warning systems, a waste of their true potential but there wasn't going to be a shortage of robots to tinker with… ever, if those materialisers held up. He had been given the task of dealing with those damn gauss turrets the West Coast Brotherhood or WCB had set up around their base camp; those things could tear through saucers like butter and had seriously supped up sensors making their active camouflage useless, it was a shit situation but Bigsley had been through much worse. For the next three hours he planned, tinkered and theorised how to destroy, bypass or remotely deactivate those turrets, and came up with… nothing, he was livid, how could those fucking turrets be so resilient! Every simulation he ran, every equation and theory came up with failure, troops were torn apart, saucers were destroyed and he pictured that punk Mason laughing his smug little ass off. His head rested face down on his desk with the cool metal cooling off his forehead, when a small idea forced its way to the front of his mind as he heard about the child in the clinic. What if we attacked biologically? Bigsley pushed the thought away, bio warfare? He was a scientist not a murderer! But how many of ours will be murdered if we don't beat them? The turrets are useless if everyone maintaining them is being killed by the air they breathe; from there we can just cut the power. Bigsley sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, his way of gathering his thoughts, what would Rothchild say? They had their problems but Rothchild was the only person who could keep up with him, who Bigsley could respect as an intellectual equal, and despite all of the disapproving glares he imagined receiving from him Bigsley couldn't think of another option, he moaned as he wished for a mentat, cursing the chem restriction on the ship he started up a new simulation in his terminal, one decidedly less… ethical than the others, and the air around Bigsley grew just a little colder.
(Pitt's quarters)
"With a laser pistol, really? Well at least you won't leave too much of a mess for me to clean up, cheers for that, blood is just such a chore to clean, wouldn't you agree?" A gravelly voice said at his door. Pitt turned quickly to meet his intruder, to his shock it was Hollow the ghoul janitor that Jackal had saved, he wore a green jumpsuit and leaned in his doorway, almost like so nobody could see him like he was, gun to his head, red eyes meeting the ghoul with shame and anger. "Now, now, before you get all 'it's my choice!' so on and so forth let me explain something to you. I've lived for over two hundred years, seen it all twenty times over, I've seen buildings reach near the atmosphere, seen the world draped in fire, seen a kid become one of the most dangerous people in DC and beyond, seen him turn a fucked up brainwashed pathetic husk of a man and make him into something that might just be healthy, in this world anyway, but what I've never seen is this, the WRM, the government of old demanded loyalty, the hippies wanted anarchy, I've never though there could ever be a middle ground, but here we stand, in America's beautiful capital trying to give freedom to all and the safety to enjoy it." Hollow walked in closing the door behind him, he lit a cigarette and sat in the chair across from him. "So Jackal told you about me yes? How many bullets do you think janitors take on a day-to-day basis? Not many, so I'm going to give you what others have died for having, a proper introduction from me, Charon pleased to meet you." Charon gave a slight bow while sitting in his chair and sat back with a smile as Pitt's face froze in realisation. Before Pitt could say anything Charon put up his hand and with a quick flick a small pin seemed to appear out of nowhere, it was a grey wing, no bigger than Pitt's thumb. "This is an agent's badge, our oath, our only true identity, we may work in the shadow but we fight for the light, against any who would try to extinguish that light, even if it were the WRM itself, putting that pin on is an act of suicide itself, although less… messy than what you planned on, one person dies and an agent is born, as young as Charlie is, we are mighty and we are everywhere and nowhere, that's our creed kid, it's your choice." Charon left the pin in Pitt's hand and walked out of the room, slouching down to hide his incredible height and played the docile janitor Hollow once more. Pitt examined the pin and saw in very small writing the words 'everywhere and nowhere' were engraved on it, Pitt sat there staring into space, and slowly his hand clenched around the pin and for a second, he felt just a little bit warmer.
(Clinic)
Jackal was almost asleep when the sound of quick beeping woke him up, sprinting to Daniel's bed he saw the child's delicate frame, once again limp and pale, but no matter how much Jackal performed CPR the child simply didn't move, his frame lay perfectly still, as though he was photograph, Jackal didn't stop, repeating and repeating, until he was finally torn off by Elliot.
"He's gone Jackal, nothing can change that" Elliot said coldly, the words of a man who had seen death on a grand scale and been forced to move on for the next person who needed him, just as Jackal was expected to. Jackal fought at first but any strength he had evaporated as Daniel's father slowly approached his boy and fell to his knees. Jackal had lost all sense of time, he barely noticed Leslie taking his hand and leading him to his quarters, the cold he felt before came back and a sense of finality surrounded him, he simply began to cry into Leslie's shoulder and eventually the tears dried up as they fell asleep in each other's arms, the world above earth had been safe, clean, perfect, but they couldn't escape what lurked below them, there was a saying in the wasteland, war never changes, run all you want death is always playing the long game, and the sun gave no warmth in space.
(Robot Assembly)
Bigsley had run a new simulation, an airborne virus could easily be introduced into the bunker's ventilation system, if the disease that the boy had could be reproduced the entire population of the bunker could be dead in a matter of two hours, first they would cough, one after the other, panic would set in as the fever hit, when the fell to the ground in seizers it would be far too late for them, their bodies would go limp and cold and then all of their technology could be taken with no resistance at all, the remaining forces could be dealt with a simple orbital strike, no high powered scrambler to save them like the bunker, it was tactically genius, so why did it make Bigsley so uneasy? Wouldn't it be better for the WRM? No casualties on our side, not even a single bullet fired, they would just catch a cold and die, right? The point was moot unless the disease could be replicated and made airborne, Bigsley would need to see the body, he would say he was making sure it couldn't be spread, if Elliot made problems he would just say he had a lead on an antidote and say it just didn't work out in the end, what was the harm of just taking a few samples? He could be saving hundreds of lives, wasn't that something people were called heroes over? All he knew was that he needed a drink, and badly, why was it so cold?
(The Bridge)
"Dear god, how? How did this happen? HOW DID WE LET THIS HAPPEN!" The Captain shouted in disbelief and anger. The window in front of him had been connected to one of the cameras placed in the wasteland, all this camera saw however was debris spread for miles, and body parts, so many pieces of human made so… inhuman. The camera panned to see the burning wreckage of the Citadel, every now and then a person would emerge from the wreckage and simply walk around in shock, others babbled incoherent nonsense; the majority of the Brotherhood's fighting force had been out, fighting supermutants, patrolling, trying to remind people of the brotherhood's existence, something that was grimly ironic now.
"Reports suggest that it was a very large container of C4 explosives, complimented by many smaller strategically placed ones, if that was nuclear there wouldn't be any survivors, it would seem that the explosives killed most of the people underground so it would seem it was placed there." One of the techs said professionally, knowing they would break if they didn't cut off emotions, Bigsley wasn't the only tech poached from the brotherhood. The Captain began to bark orders at the speed of a bullet train, the majority of RA was sent as a relief force headed by the Captain himself, saucers were used to destroy debris blocking exits for the people trapped below and RA and the medics just did whatever they could. On that miserable cold, grey day the Brotherhood died and the WRM became the voice of the wasteland.
(Citadel)
The Captain oversaw the relief effort himself, his voice hard and loud, just trying to save as many as possible. The walls of the Citadel were still smouldering and crumbling, this place would never be defensible again, the courtyard was covered in concrete, metal and everything else the Citadel could have torn out of it. Patrols came back one by one, they all screamed in pain and sorrow as they saw their beloved home in ruins, their brothers dead and dying, whatever bad blood there was between the two organisations had been burned clean, they worked side by side, just trying to save what they could. The dead could only be identified through their holo-tags, the Captain searched and searched and with a feeling of anguish and despair he found what he begged god not to see, Owen Lyons was no more, his years of vigilant protection were finally at an end. The captain knew the pride had been sent away, he didn't know what to do when they came back, it would only be a matter of time, he was tempted to pull out all of his men just to not be the one to tell her what had happened, but as held one of the only things to mark the existence of elder Lyons he knew he couldn't run, nowhere would be far enough, not even space. All of his fears came true two days later, as they continued to pull out survivors and tend to the wounded a blonde haired woman vacantly walked across the destruction, closely followed by her pack, they simply took in the destruction and felt all of the pain their comrades felt enter them and when Sarah saw the Captain, the Wanderer, it all crashed down upon her. Charging at him at an extraordinary pace despite her power armour, Sarah threw punch after punch at the Wanderer who blocked every one of them.
"WHY! WHY DID YOU LET THIS HAPPEN!" Sarah screamed in fury
"Sarah calm down!" the Wanderer yelled back, he was only wearing a black overcoat and every hit from the hard steel of her power armour hurt badly, blocked or not. She just punching and punching until the Wanderer had one knee on the ground just trying to hold his ground, it took the entire pack to restrain her, blood dripped down the Wanderer's arms when he stood up; he simply nodded to one of the techs who spoke into a small white circular disk. A beacon was shot down behind the Wanderer and he was the Captain once more, all of the WRM members began to use it until it was just the Captain staring at Sarah and the remainder of the brotherhood. "This beacon will be extracted in ten hours, if you want to make the people who did this pay, simply say 'take me home' to the beacon and we'll give Lyons justice together." Without another word he turned towards beacon and disappeared into the great ether, leaving the brotherhood to mourn and decide their future. On this cold day the WCB sealed a certain finality upon the wasteland, it was them or the WRM.
Special thanks to oddliver who has been very helpful in coming up with ideas through the majority of this story