Chapter 17 Part 1: The Repercussions of Our Past
We walked through the ruins of megaton, awed by how much destruction could have been caused by the ancient explosive. We saw citizens of our city push open blast doors and climb out to observe the debris. I witnessed young children climb the ruins like a toy. Steven sat in the center of town just looking at the small crater within the crater left behind by the explosion. He didn't say anything to us. Not a word was spoken for some time. Then it looked like he had realized something, and he started digging through the irradiated dirt, looking for something. He found two things; a piece of incredibly charred metal with a glowing red light on it, and a perfect condition holotape. Steven's look turned enraged before he even heard what was on it, he knew already. He put the holotape in his pip-boy and played it. It spoke very briefly, but the words were enough to reveal who bombed Megaton.
"You had your chance, but you betrayed both mine, and Mr. Tenpenny's trust. It was high time I settled the score. Beware the power of the atom."
Steven was in disbelief, forget shock. "Burke? HAHAHA! Oh, when I find Lee I'm going to kill him SO much. This is too good. Priceless, even." I looked at Steven like he had lost his mind. I personally threw Burke over the railing in front of Moriarty's saloon years ago.
But I couldn't deny him the culprit who turned his home to ruin, it was Burke all right. He picked himself up, drunk in the happiness that was his chance to kill Burke again. He walked over to his destroyed home, and stopped at a piece of embedded sheet metal. In a moment of absolute strength, he gripped the metal in his already bloodied hands and ripped it up out of the ground and sat it to the side. Where the piece of metal laid, there was a sewer grate. He pulled the iron grate off the hole and leapt downward. We all sat outside for a minute, half tempted to go in. He came back out with a few Chinese assault rifles, several nuka grenades, and a blade I had never seen before. The blade caught my eye because it was so thin and long, the thing looked as long as I was tall. I opened my mouth to ask him, but he walked right past us and leapt down another hole, this time back into the Citadel.
This time we had enough common sense to follow him. He opened a blast door and ran through the crowds of people in the city market, occasionally tapping a paladin on the shoulder and indicating them to come with him. In all truth, I forgot how many people really inhabit the city, how many people we saved with this haven. This had been the first time in ten years I had seen the city during business hours, when everyone and their parents are trying to sell something so they might have something to go back to when we finally leave here, if we leave here. By the time we reached the Elder's chambers we had amassed a large platoon of anywhere from 15-20 soldiers. Steven walked forward and Lyons looked at him, amused in a way.
"Let me guess, you found the culprit of the Megaton explosion, and your looking to take a platoon of my men and probably Liberty Prime to go deal with them in a very painful way. What amuses me and intrigues me is that you didn't just take the troopers and go, instead you seek out my approval beforehand, which means you may have learned something both your father and I tried to instill in you from the young age of 19; respect for your elders."
Steven scoffed, almost like a teenager "I don't need Liberty Prime, and I'm not here for your approval, I need my maps of zones 7 and 8."
Lyons, disappointed and confused, inquired "Why in god's name are you heading out that way? Were the Outcasts behind it?"
"No, the man had an independent score to settle. Personal. Not tied to Enclave, just good timing." He grabbed a large navy blue robe, slipped it on, and he looked exactly like he did years ago, he looked like an old world priest. But then I remembered the weaponry hidden inside, in total, 50 extended magazine .45 Auto Colt Pistols, and hologram armor sensors embedded throughout the outfit. He took the maps from Lyons' cabinet, before being stopped again by the Elder.
"If not the Outcasts, then who? All that is out there is Fort Independence and Tenpenny tower, both of which have been abandoned for over a decade."
"Like I said, personal score to settle." Steven didn't want to say anything more because he didn't want to accept his failure. Elder Lyons paused for a minute, and nodded. He knew what it was like, being absorbed by the desire to completely destroy an enemy from the face of the earth.
Steven turned around to the soldiers and went drill sergeant for a minute,
"All right maggots! We have a very clear, very direct objective. We are commencing a siege on the ruins of Tenpenny Tower! Now, I'm not going to lie to you, the man we're hunting is highly deadly, and the tower is most likely going to have more traps than the ambush set at Meresti 15 years ago. No one here will think less of you for stepping out now."
Two seconds later, one man began to move back to his post and Steven stopped the man and just outright exploded.
"All right boys, what we have here is a cold blooded chicken shit! I'm mean what happened, your balls drop off? You honest to god, believe you can't handle one old man and a few booby traps? You're a Brotherhood of Steel paladin for Christ's sake! Hell I could send a knight on this job and they'd be able to handle it. Are you trying to tell me you are weak?"
The soldier stood at attention and barked back, "Sir no Sir!"
"Then what's the problem maggot!"
"Nothing sir!"
"Good answer. Now all of you, march!" He slammed down a large red button on the side of the wall and the wall rumbled. The wall panels slid under the layer below it, and with them was revealed a tunnel headed to the southwest. Looking around, I wondered how many of these secret tunnels not even I knew about stashed away. We moved through the tunnel quickly, but it was a long way to Tenpenny Tower. Hours passed, just walking through the same endless tunnel, Steven leading the walk with a mad glint in his eyes I haven't seen since Jack was born. The maddening want, not need, to kill. Eventually we reached the end of the tunnel where there was a ladder leading up to the RobCo factory.
We each climbed the ladder up and looked out to the tower, where we saw it lit up in all it's old world glory. Every light was glowing brightly, a gem in an abandoned desert. We approached the facility very slowly, awaiting something extravagant in way of defenses. When we got too close we started seeing mines, lots of them, were talking on a scale that's difficult to imagine. All the mine's that we used to have planted in megaton rigged to go off if the enclave breached the city's gates, somehow he had more. Steven ordered us into a beeline, him at the front, disarming the mines as he went. Each followed closely behind the previous. As we made our way to the front gate, an intercom turned on and spoke to us.
"Well well well, the lone wanderer returns to the wasteland that made him a urban superstition. Here for your vengeance I assume? That eyesore of scrap has been needed to be demolished for far too long. Come in, you'll just DIE when you see what I've done with the place." He cackled and then turned off the intercom.
Then suddenly, we heard a beeping sound, faint, but beeping. Steven spun around with dismay, Burke had buried some of the mines. He barked to us,
"Run for the gates!"
We all fled for the gates, as the buried mine trigger more mines and from there it was a stack of dominoes. The outer area of Tenpenny's lavish tower was lit up like a bonfire and it was closing in. We got to the gates and used a breach charge to blast the door open. While the charge managed to get it open slightly, we were nowhere near getting through to the main complex. He had fortified the gates heavily, he was more than prepared. Steven yelled out over the explosions going off all around us,
"Climb you idiots! For the love of god, climb!" We all gripped the walls and scrambled as fast as we could over the cement defenses. As we climbed, we could hear the explosions closing in around us like a rope tightening around our necks. I glanced down to the final line of mines, and realized that they were in fact plasma mines, lined up by the dozens. Right as the second to last paladin was almost over, the rope pulled tight. The last wave of mines detonated and almost knocked the walls down around us. We lost two well trained paladins before we even made it in the gates, this son-of-a-bitch is going down. Steven's eyes grew colder, colder than I've seen them since the time when we were framed for the fiasco Adam's Air Force Base. This wasn't about megaton anymore, this was vengeance for his men. He ordered us to the door and we took our positions around the iron clad doors. We swiftly opened the doors, and attempted to clear the room, but then it hit us, chloroform in the air ducts. We were all down in a matter of seconds, however, being a ghoul, I was able to last a bit longer, and I saw the bastard, the elevator light glowed an aged orange, opened and there he was. Burke. Same outfit, same pistol, same damn smile...I couldn't fight the gas, I passed out.
Chapter 17 Part 2: Vengeance for my Men.
I was impressed. Burke turned my city to a giant pile of scrap, killed two of my men, and successfully gassed the remainder of us. I coughed and I saw Burke stroll out of his elevator, but he forgot something, my lungs and heart had mechanical implants straight from the commonwealth. I was poison proof. Now all I had to do was wait a minute and I could have him by the throat. I faked collapsing onto the ground and he stepped out, he looked at my body for a minute, and chuckled,
"The only reason you won the first time is because you caught me off guard. When I hang your men from Tenpenny tower, you'll have to go home knowing that they died because of your insolent pride." He turned to Jack and smiled cynically.
"Maybe I'll hang your spawn first." At that moment, my limbs sprang to life, clutched a combat knife, and I leapt for his throat. I hadn't felt this level of hatred since the Enclave massacred Meresti. Burke quickly stepped out of my reach and sent me headfirst into the main desk. I felt my limbs fly into action again, this time, just straight up fists. The hologram armor I bought out west lived up to it's indestructible guarantee while Burke took shot after shot at me as I swung at him. I couldn't even feel the bullets penetrate the armor, it just deflected off. Suddenly, he tossed the pistol aside and snatched a minigun from one of the downed paladins. Seeing no other choice, I opened the overcoat, disrupting the hologram defenses, but allowing me my weaponry. I pulled out a pair of .45 pistols and turned the man that was once Burke into Swiss cheese.
He lied on the floor a minute, and then, The creature that brought him back from the grave, revealed itself. It was a ghastly thing, looked like someone had used a human to dredge the river. Covered in muck, it was a stark change of pace from Burke's attire. It appeared slightly dazed, so I took the opportunity to grab Jack and Charon, tossing them outside the gates where they'd be safe.
When I returned, the beast had left with my men, and Burke stood in their place. I stepped inside, and the doors sealed shut behind me. I pulled out another pair of .45 pistols and emptied my clips onto Burke. Burke instead of trying to dodge, simply donned two power fists, and deflected my shots with some of the most precise martial arts I've ever seen. I looked over to one of the pillars to see he had drawn a happy face with my bullets. Conventional weaponry wasn't going to work now, he was drawing on that creature for energy and skill.
I knew I was going to have to use the Masamune blade. I crafted the blade using some hologram tech salvaged from the Big Mountain research facility, and as such it had a lot more potency when drawing on the power of the suit I also made back then. Problem was, when I made them, they operated on the same power source within the suit, so if I use the sword, I'll be vulnerable. I reached for the sword, aware I was going to take a few bullets by the end of this. As soon as I gripped the sword I felt the electrodes connect with the receptors with in the blade's handle, as soon as I saw glow a faint blue, I started attacking. Burke was caught off guard by the speed and power with which each blow was dealt. One of the blows that missed cut through a pillar like it was butter. I saw Burke's eye turn cold with fear, and he ran for the elevator. I charged after him, my speed unhindered by the holographic weight.
Alas, he was just too fast for me to catch. The elevator doors slammed closed behind him. Quickly, I pried the doors open and gripped the walls of the elevator shaft. I put the blade handle in my mouth and started climbing. It took a little bit of effort, but I got to the top quickly enough. I forced the emergency hatch open underneath the elevator and leapt in. I opened the doors to the suites level. I cleared each of suites slowly laying explosives as I went.
Finally, I opened the doors to Tenpenny's master suite. The suite had been wrecked. Broken dishes and papers covered the floor, along with many holotapes and maps. Everything I examined had to do with me on some small level. The holotapes were transmissions from Galaxy News Radio. And then, I saw the creepy part. Burke had written my title; LONE WANDERER, all over the west wall. Burke had developed an obsession with revenge, that I understood fully and sympathized. What I didn't understand fully, was how long had it been since Burke had been reincarnated? Most of these holotape dated between when Charon tossed him over that balcony and when we staged the massacre. I guess there was only one way to find out, and it was out there on the balcony.
The wind whistled between the two open doors to the balcony, I crouched down and crept out the door. When I got out there, I saw the beast from earlier and Burke himself, pushing things over the ledge, but I was too far away to see. I took a few steps closer, and I took one step too close, the creature stepped back from the ledge, took a deep roar, grabbed the rest of what they were dumping and disappeared in a black mist, dropping what I realized was one of my men on top of me as it rushed me. I threw the corpse off of me only to see Burke with a gun to my face. He then raised his hand to his mouth and coughed violently for a minute. I saw blood spew from his fist, and I took the advantage, I leapt up, Masamune in hand pinned him against the wall.
He chuckled and began speaking to me, "Now you got me where you want me again, and I can't turn away, I'm hanging by a thread, I'm feeling like a fool, and I'm stuck here in-between the shadows of my yesterday, I got no other place to hide,just like a sitting duck, and now, it's time for the fall." He barked loudly, "NOW HENRY!" I saw a briefcase on the table, and I saw Casdin walk out of the doors. He walked to the briefcase, opened it and turned the switch. Afterwards he leapt off the balcony.
I turned back to Burke, "What have you done you bastard?"
He coughed out, "It's a shame this virus only works once. Otherwise I'd be able to live through these next few seconds." I prepared to cut his throat, but I heard a deafening crash and then, an even louder explosion followed it up. I held him up to my face,
"YOU BASTARD WHAT DID YOU DO!"
He laughed hysterically and said, "Fort Constantine was a valuable asset, otherwise, finding a nuclear bomb would've been difficult. The other 10,000 pounds of explosives cost a pretty penny though."
I lost it, I silenced that infernal bastard once and for all, I took the Masamune blade and plunged it into him, nailing him to the wall. I prepared to leap, right as the explosion's damage reached me, and I lost my footing, and fell. I dove downward at high velocity, however I stuck the landing, tossing my overcoat onto Jack, the hologram armors blocking each piece of debris that fell upon. Suddenly, I realized I was missing Charon. When I left them by the gates, Charon was right beside Jack and now he was gone. Casdin must've taken him when he fell to the ground. I heard something, and instantly felt the pressure of a piece of stone wall crush me. At first there was pain, and then, nothing. Silence.