Chapter 12: An Armory on the Basin and a Traitor in Our Midst.
We arrived at an old Pulowski shelter, in the middle of a junkyard, and I looked at Charon like he was nuts.
"This is what we trekked 5 miles for? A measly little shelter?" I was appalled that I risked my life for something so small.
"Now hold on a minute, step forward from where your standing and you see what's really here."
I was skeptical, and then I took a step forward, and sure enough I felt like I stumbled into an alternate reality, the junkyard had transformed into a burned out military base as if it had been a location of massive importance before the war. I turned behind me to look out at the wasteland and I saw a iron gate covered in sheet metal, electrically charged with a pair of the same Mark VIII turrets that Charon had told me about in the citadel. These didn't look like they had been modified though, so he probably built variants for the citadel. We opened the shelter and it looked like a normal shelter, until I glanced down and saw a bunker door. Charon pulled out a key, opened the hatch, and tossed a frag grenade down below before we could move. I ran backwards momentarily. I thought he was nuts, but then I saw shrapnel and fire burst out of the shelter.
"I have to rearm this place to explode every time I come in. Unfortunately we need the ordinance down here to have an chance to deal with this new hurdle that's been dropped in front of us." He jumped down into the bunker, and I climbed down after him. I saw he hadn't been lying. This was high quality equipment just right here in the opening chamber. He walked up to an intercom next to a blast door. He pressed the button and a Protectron came over the speaker.
"Password sir?"
"Project Nightingale." He said slowly
"Welcome back officer Charon, good to see you back so soon." Charon's expression changed from the normal to a state of panic.
"I haven't been here in 6 months. Protectron, when was the last time I entered the facility?"
"20 minutes ago, you came in, grabbed something real quick and left 2 minutes later."
"Someone else is here, they tricked the defense system with my password. The bastard might have cleaned out the entire facility...wait... there is one way to check if this was by an insider, or just some idiot raider who hit the Jackpot." Charon told the robot to unlock all doors, he ran down to the Commanding Officers quarters, which would be my father's personal quarters, and turned on a light and it opened up a secret door to a safe. Charon opened the safe, to find it was empty. I looked out towards the door and saw a shadow outside the door, and it rolled a grenade into the door and ran. Charon looked over to the door and saw the grenade.
"GET DOWN!" He said, pulling me down as a fiery explosion engulfed the room and its contents in flames. He panted from the adrenaline, his voice hoarse, "Definitely a traitor from the inside." He got up and gave me a hand up, and we inspected the remainder of the facility, to find a massive amount of gear missing. Plasma rifles, Gatling lasers, power armor, and more importantly, schematics to most pre-war robots. "Who ever stole the gear was planning a coup against the citadel, and against elder Lyons. 90 suits of power armors and countless weapons and sidearms stolen. Damn. DAMN!" We went back out into the hallway to see something crouched in the initial chamber that the ladder was in. It looked humanoid, and jumped at us and transformed into a enclave soldier shooting a laser rifle as it tumbled behind us. Charon took his shotgun and shot it at the beast , and the helmet melted away to this demonic, animal-like face. And it let out a roar that knocked me down, and startled Charon. As the scream continued, its own armor collapsed from around it into a creature that looked like it was made of stone and tar. The armor that had collapsed around it the creature just reabsorbed into its body. I shot it with a plasma pistol I had grabbed, and then it turned into a pile of goo as most anything would but then, it reassembled itself just made of goo. At that point, Charon threw a grenade at it and it absorbed that too, and then he closed the door to the CO's quarters and we heard a monstrous explosion and could feel the heat from it through a blast door. We went back out into the hallway to find it layered thickly with plasma, as if the creature had acted as a large plasma grenade. We saw a body covered in plasma, we cleaned it off and saw the body of an old employer of Charon's, Ahzrukhal, fully fleshed and not missing a single limb, odd, considering according to Dad, Charon had blown his face in with a shotgun. Even Charon was freaked out, he took a few steps back, and then grabbed Dad's extra M1014 and pumped the thing full of shotgun shells. He emptied three FULL clips on the body, and then burned the remains as an extra precaution. As he waited for the body to burn completely I went into the security room and checked the security cameras and I found something rather unnerving, whoever this traitor was, he had a accurate rifle, you can't see him on the film but you can see the bullet heading directly at the camera. It had to have been an inside job. No one is that good of a sniper. I then found a camera he had missed, and I saw him walk through the gate, and I mean that in a literal sense, he walked through the gate, open it from the inside and then let in the sniper who had dealt with the cameras, the feed went fuzzy after that and then, it got clear with someone's smile right in front of it. It had audio.
"Come and get me boys!" It sounded familiar and yet very distorted. A cold voice, but so comfy and familiar.
"Charon, you might want to get in here and listen to this..." I played the recorded footage for him and he got a look that you could feel the hate coming off. He walked to his old quarters and slammed his hand into the wall, breaking it, he dropped his double barrel shotgun. He retracted his arm, pulling out with it a rusty old combat shotgun that looked like it had seen more combat than he had. He then walked into the other 6 rooms, and did the same prying a total of 7 weapons out of the walls; 2 shotguns, 1 sniper rifle, an assault rifle, a switchblade, a Super Sledge and a laser rifle. After that he returned to each room, flipping a switch that was hidden behind each weapon. We walked back out into the hallway and saw a pair of cellar doors open up. He took me down into there, and apparently, it was where dad stored his one-of-a-kind gear.
"Pick your poison kid. Anything you want in here you can take. The stuff on the gray walls is good caliber, though it'll decay on you over a reasonable amount of time. The stuff on the green walls is stuff he salvaged from a spaceship, your ammo would be limited but I promise you'll need half the ammo. The stuff on the white wall is gear that your old man got his first night in the wastes, and we've never repaired it, it's held it's own against all forms of combat, uses common munitions, but not as much punch. Me and your father had a bet that if we blew Fort Constantine to the ground whether or not one of the assault rifles would have taken a scratch. Take your pick."
I gravitated towards the white wall, and what appeared to be a Gauss Rifle and a suit of combat armor.
"You're your dad's son, alright. Those when he was young were his favorite pieces of weaponry, he sacrificed the defense of the T-51b suit for it, claimed he looked like a bigger bad-ass wearing this. The Gauss Rifle was a truly a priceless weapon, best use for a Micro-fusion Cell without a doubt. Excellent potency, good way of saving ammo, since it only fires one shot, and that's generally all you needed. Plus, the piece has enough force to knock down a behemoth." I picked them up and we exited the cellar, cleaned up the mess, and rearmed the facility with explosives. In the initial chamber, someone had left us a note.
To those who can't get by with my assistance without nearly blowing themselves to hell. You idiots use her in good health.
As I finished reading a gun dropped from above. I picked it up, it was a old .44 magnum, and then I saw the engraving on the hilt, which intrigued me. It was a man in a trench-coat and fedora. I handed it to Charon to see if he knew it's owner.
"The person who owns this is an enigma, the definition of the wasteland. A random chance guardian who has saved everyone's ass at least once. Even me, and he made a career out of keeping your father alive. For him to have relinquished his sidearm to keep us safe, odds are we are going to be fighting the devil himself here soon. Come on we have to get back to the citadel Lyons is probably in danger." We scaled the ladder and returned to the destroyed base. Once we were back above, we radioed back to the citadel.
"Lyons, you there?"
"Yes Charon. How was your search for Steven's more valuable wares then?"
"Eye-opening. A new kind of mutant is running amok in the wasteland; sentient, shape shifters, put the troops on red alert, and don't let anyone into your chambers. Nobody. Everyone in the city needs to report to their own quarters, EVERYONE. Check everyone. If I don't have my I.D. Shoot me on sight, because it's not me. Everyone in that city is under investigation Lyons, understand?"
"Why exactly am I not permitted to allow my sentinel into the chambers?"
"Dammit Lyons! They stole enough equipment to burn the place to the ground, there are 90 suits of power armor missing, not to mention over a hundred weapons missing! You can't let anyone in!"
"Alright Charon! But judging by your discovery, we need you to get to the citadel now, we can't wait until nightfall, take the stealth armor and get the robot running."
"I can do that. Charon out."
"Godspeed."
I looked at Charon, and asked him with fear for an answer, "So that's it? We just risk Lyons' life for some tin can ?"
He looked at me with a look of guilt and stated, "Me and Steven had some turrets installed in case the super mutant threat ever arose again. 20 mark VIII turrets that have been modified with Chinese equipment for a perpetual stealth field, and to be able to have a secondary weapon if we were overpowered to a high extent. We gave them the secondary weapon most bases would have dreamed of; 20 Experimental MIRVs, we made our own after we found the original in the National Guard Armory. Ashur thought we were insane when we showed up to his steel mill with 2 tons of scrap and a series of schematics. He demanded we install a pair at the gates to prevent someone like Steven from getting in again by force. But if things get bad, I can wipe out the any sector in a matter of seconds. Lord knows I don't want it to come to that, but I took an oath to keep that city safe, even at the cost of its inhabitants. The people wouldn't stand a chance, and neither would any mere mutant." Charon popped open a bottle of liquor and chugged it, probably to get his mind off the very real threat the citadel faced at this point.
"Well come on, they can't keep the place on lock down forever, let's get the robot up and running so we can clean up this wasteland." With our gear in hand, we walked forward unaware of the dark reality looming ahead of us.