Mutatis Mutandis 9
As soon as they exited the back door of GNR, Jason and Three-Dog came under fire. More Overlords were gathered in the pit below, blocking Jason's access to the collapsed train tunnel. He shoved the DJ against the wall and began to return fire, aiming for the mutants' weapons. The familiar sharp, pain made him grimace as three bullets tore into his chest, knocking him backwards.
They didn't slow him down much. He remembered when that pain used to paralyze him. It didn't anymore. Hadn't for a long time. It was a part of his job. One he was unfortunately used to. Inevitable in situations like these, which didn't happen very often. He was usually able to end it without his enemies firing a shot.
But not today. Today the sun was beating down on him, beginning the slow familiar process of healing. He injected a stimpack to speed it up a little and smiled at Three-Dog.
"Sweet Jesus." The man said, staring at his wounds.
"Bug bites." Jason replied. He poked a finger into the shallowest of the wounds and forced out the piece of lead, dropping it on the ground. Then he gritted his teeth and stood, whirling around with his Chinese assault rifle and emptying all 36 rounds into the front of a broken-down passenger bus. It spoke a lot about the intelligence of the mutants, that they were taking cover in a pit full of cars with unstable nuclear reactors, and the Wanderer found himself looking forward to the explosion.
There was a minor one first. Familiar. Smoke and flames began to billow from underneath the vehicle. The Overlords stopped firing, staring at it uncertainly. Then it erupted in a giant mushroom cloud, throwing debris dozens of meters into the air. The explosion set off a chain reaction. The other cars followed suit and the ground rumbled as the entire area was filled with forceful noise and nuclear fire.
"Sweet Jesus." Three Dog said again, standing beside him.
Jason waited patiently for the smoke to clear. There wasn't much left of the Overlords. Or of anything else, either. Just the plink of cooling metal, and the thud of landing debris. He leapt off their shallow ledge, pulling the DJ with him.
He reloaded his assault rifle and held it out in front of him, scanning the slope. He started forward, pushing Three Dog in front of him, keeping the man crouched. They moved at a jogging pace, with Jason's left arm gripping the scruff of Three Dog's neck. His right arm held the assault rifle, ready to blow the head off any mutant still left alive. They moved quickly through the irradiated area. When they got to the other side, Three Dog looked back at GNR and groaned. "My baby…"
Jason glanced backwards. The sounds of gunfire and screams of the dying, both human and Supermutant could still be heard. Jason handed the man his rifle. He walked back into the irradiated pit, stomping across the debris and waited for his Geiger counter to reach four hundred. Then he walked back to Three Dog.
"live to fight another day." Jason intoned, taking his rifle back. He lead into the DJ into darkness of the DC metro, and to safety.
Sarah planted her assault rifle down on the makeshift barricade and opened fire on the line of supermutant masters which was slowly making its way towards them.
"We hold here!" she ordered to the motley crew of knights and scribes, all of whom were holding weapons. "This is it. Do not let them pass this point."
The barricade stood at the entrance to the labs. The Brotherhood's final hold-out position. By Sarah's estimation, there were about thirty Brotherhood fighters left, a third of them scribes. The sounds of resistance from other parts of the Citadel had ceased nearly ten minutes ago. The Brotherhood had been driven into the Citadel hallways very early on in the fight, practically the moment the Behemoths came bursting through the walls. No infantry line was able stand something so enormous.
Things would have been much worse were it not for the alien upgrades Jason had shared. The first three behemoths had fallen to a barrage of the green orbs, and the enclave armour had allowed the Brotherhood's thin line to hold long enough to get the majority of knights back into the citadel tunnels. As far as Sarah knew, none of those brave few who had stood in defense, survived. But their sacrifice would be for naught if the entire situation devolved any further. As hard as it was to admit to herself, she was having trouble seeing a way out.
She reminded herself that the Brotherhood had always managed to pull through in the past. Perhaps Rothchild would get Liberty Prime working.
Sarah barreled through the doorway and down to the upper floor of the laboratory. She half ran, half leaped down the steps to the bottom floor, and confronted Peabody, the scribe standing in front of Liberty Prime's scrap metal body.
"How are we doing?" she demanded. "How much longer do you need?"
"Ideally? A few weeks." The Scribe admitted. "But we're trying."
"Get it done!" Sarah barked.
There were a few other survivors in the laboratory. Glade had taken a few knights under his wing, and was busy working with Kodiak to barricade the upper floor's other entrance, which opened directly into the courtyard. Even as Sarah watched, a few armoured knights exchanged fire with the Supermutant forces, standing at the top of the staircase.
Sarah's own barricade, blocking the A-ring entrance, was probably going to end up in the same situation. The twin bottlenecks did have an advantage: If things continued, the muties would plug the holes with their own dead long before they managed to kill off the Brotherhood soldiers. The drawback was that the laboratory was not equipped for a prolonged siege, and something in the planning and determination of the mutant attack told Sarah that they weren't about to leave.
She could her the muffled crashing above, and could only assume that they were laying the rest of the Citadel to waste. A part of her was frozen in disbelief; the Citadel couldn't fall. That was an impossibility. One that she had to put aside. She would deal with the how afterwards. The fact was that it was happening, like it or not.
"Sarah!" she turned to see her father striding towards them, a worried look on his face. He glanced up at the barricades. "How are we doing?"
"We're holding. But if this becomes a siege, we're fucked." She said. More loud crashes shook the laboratory, and Glade's team exchanged a few rounds with the angry invaders, driving them back yet again.
"We have the armory." He said.
"But no food or water." She replied quickly. "Dad, we either die here or cut our way out."
There was a clang, and then a muffled thump from directly above the empty elevator which had once held the magnificent robot, Liberty Prime. Sarah grabbed her father and carefully pulled them both back. More unwelcome noises echoed through the chamber. Shrill laughter, and growled orders.
Suddenly, brilliant sunlight lanced down through the ceiling. The enormous round hatch was being forced open. Mighty steel girders were being forced through the thin gap, widening it further. She could hear the grunts and roars of the Supermutant behemoths as they forced the trapdoor's groaning mechanisms into submission, and wedged enormous bulks of twisted steel in the gap, keeping it open.
The knights and scribes began to fire through the new hole in the ceiling, slowing down the Behemoths' steady progress. The action slowed it down, but did not stop it, and eventually the hatch was open, revealing the pale blue calm of the sky above.
A behemoth's forceful bellow echoed through the central chamber. Sarah stared as an entire bus, coughing smoke, was thrust through the gap and fell to the bottom of the laboratory, landing on top of Liberty Prime's inert machinery, and throwing Peabody to his knees.
The bus lurched sideways as something inside it burst, setting off a chain reaction. The air was suddenly filled with fire, and an irresistible force, tossing her like a ragdoll in a tumble dryer. The last coherent thing Sarah saw was Peabody being engulfed in flame. The laboratory spun with her and she slammed into a concrete wall and dropped to the floor, dazed.
At the same moment, heavily armoured behemoths dropped down through the opening on clanking chains. They swarmed into the Brotherhood's last sanctuary like hornets from streaming from the bottom of an angered nest. For every mutant the defenders dropped, two more would take its place.
Sarah picked herself up, trying to shake her dazed mind into action. There was no sound, only the ringing in her ears. Her eyes couldn't seem to quite focus, either. Her father was lying nearby, and she was just coherent enough to register the man's lack of movement.
Green and yellow light began to flash around her as she stumbled to her feet. She scrambled for her assault rifle and used it to prop herself up as she half crawled, half walked towards her father's body. Something hit her in the back, sending waves of pain and paralyzing shock through her system, and once again sending her tumbling through the air. She landed heavily beside her father, and rolled onto her back. Her assault rifle was gone, and she watched as a blurred, monstrous shape tramped towards her. It reached down with one sinewy arm and picked her up by the front of her shirt. And there was the mutant's fist, swinging towards her face like the wrath of god.
Sarah's world went dark.
A figure sat atop a ruined building on the east bank of the Potomac. He was a giant of a man. Not obese, just built one tenth over-size. His herculean physique was supplemented by the smoothly curving plates of black and dark gray power armour. His face was covered in an insectoid helmet with yellow goggles and a few oddly-fitted breathing tubes.
He was watching the destruction of the citadel through the scope of his enormous white BOZAR light machine gun. He could hear the screams of the wounded brotherhood soldiers, the muffled echoes of distant gunfire, and the bellows of the behemoths.
There was a quiet noise as his companion took a seat next to him. The newcomer was clad in a trenchcoat and a fedora. He wasn't nearly as well armed, possessing nothing more than sharp wits and a .44 magnum, but then, he had never needed to be.
"I have to admit," the armoured man told him, "This stings a little."
The mysterious stranger glanced at the carnage across the river and smiled briefly. "In that case, I suppose I bring good tidings."
"Yeah?"
"I'm afraid we can no longer afford to stand idle." the stranger said, "I have to leave. Developments in the West."
"Legion lost?
"Yes."
"Good for the NCR."
"They lost too."
The armoured man gave him a look of shock, examining him through the yellow lenses of his insectoid armour helmet.
"Something tipped the balance in House's favor."
"That's not good." The armoured man observed unhappily. "Not good at all. We'll need a united front."
"There's more." The Stranger told him grimly, "Rumor has it that someone survived the incident at the Divide."
The armoured figure looked up at him. "How?"
"I don't know. I'm going to go find out." The Stranger stared thoughtfully at the carnage. "You stay here. Make trouble for Brutus. We need to know what he gave the Good Doctor. Find out."
The power-armoured figure slapped a fresh magazine into his BOZAR and stared across the river. The Behemoths were setting about destroying the Citadel. They were using giant clubs to knock down the walls and reduce the once magnificent structure to a ring of rubble. More masters in the center of the courtyard were slowly building up an enormous pile of bodies.
The heap was already as tall as some of the shorter mutants, forcing them to fling the armoured Brotherhood corpses on top. The mutant corpses, of which there were also many, were being laid out in respectful rows.
"My Pleasure." The armoured man said grimly.
"I'd recommend fixing the SatCom arrays." The Stranger advised.
"Highwater-Trousers?"
The mysterious stranger motioned at the army of Behemoths patiently dismantling the pre-war structure. "Can you see any resistance standing up to that?"
"I thought this was supposed to be a test."
"It is. That's why I'm not ordering you to kill Brutus. This is still Howlett's fight. We'll just do what we always do …adjust the odds a little."
Brutus stared down at the two strangest of his prisoners. The first was a child. The small boy's eyes were tightly shut, and his arms were hugging a comic book to his chest. He was whimpering softly. Brutus carefully reached out and laid a hand upon the child's head. Its hair was quite soft, its limbs spindly and small. It looked fragile, like a china cup. Easily broken. Easily crushed.
"Don't touch him, you brute!" The second prisoner snarled, struggling against his captor's hold. He was an old man, with a white beard and the robes of a scholar. Blood caked the side of his face, and he looked to be near the end of his time.
"You think me one, don't you?" Brutus asked, removing his hand from the child's head. "What is this little one's name?"
"Arthur Maxson."
"The last Maxson…" Brutus mused thoughtfully, eyeing the child. The Maxons had run the Brotherhood back when the Master had first set out to create a Supermutant nation. And now their last descendant was at Brutus' mercy. The Mutant let out a barking laugh, enjoying the irony of the situation. The universe truly worked in mysterious ways. "Ha! And what is your name, human?"
Brutus was impressed. The old human, even with his home lying in smoking ruins, the bodies of his knights being piled behind him, still found the inner strength to meet Brutus' gaze with a steady, calm glare. "Elder Owyn Lyons. Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel. Leave the child alone. Whatever quarrel you have, you will exact your punishment on me. Let the child go!"
"Hmm…" Brutus tapped his chin with one hand, and pulled out his enormous sword with the other, hefting it thoughtfully.
Lyons looked down at the ground, letting out a long quiet breath. He said, "You wear armour into battle. You command an army. You carry a weapon. You are a Warrior."
Brutus began to laugh, watching the feeble old human. "A warrior, I am." He bent down on one knee, confronting the Brotherhood leader eye to eye. "But what makes you think this is war, Elder Lyons of the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel?" Brutus asked, pitting the last three words out as if they carried a foul taste.
The old human simply glared at him.
"This is an extermination." Brutus told him, rising to his feet. "Mankind is nothing more than a pestilence we must rid ourselves of before we can move forward."
"Move forward to what?"
It wasn't Brutus that answered, but Casey Jones. The old mutant had wandered up from the riverside to stand beside Brutus and observe. He began to recite The Poem. It was Brutus' favorite, and the only thing he'd had to cling to during the century-long chase across the country.
When Man's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and we shall need it - lie down for an aeon or two,
Until The Master of all the wastelands shall put us to work anew.
And those that were good shall be happy; before an iron throne they shall kneel;
They shall splash at the world's canvas with brushes of stone and steel.
They shall find real saints to draw from –those servants who didn't fall;
They shall work for an age at a time and never tire at all!
And only The Master shall praise us, and only The Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the thing as he sees it for the Master of things as they are.
As the mutant spoke, Brutus had moved behind the old human. He wrapped his fingers delicately around the throat of the Brotherhood's leader, and squeezed. It was a short process. His objective was not to cause pain, or to suffocate. He simply increased the pressure until he felt the quiet crack of the old man's spine. Elder Lyons' eyes bulged for a moment as he went limp in the mutant's grasp, and then the light left them entirely. Brutus dropped the carcass on the ground and turned to the child. The cockroach, still clutching its comic book.
"The Lone Wanderer will save me." The boy said. "He'll kill you."
The Supermutant king hefted his sword, feeling its comfortable grip in his palm. He paused for a moment, glancing at the impassive face of Casey Jones. He said, "I very much doubt that, little one."
So… yeah. It's rated 'Mature' now. I intend to pull no punches. Any problems, mistakes, whatnot… lay'em on me.
Oh, and uh, Happy Birthday, Krow Blood.
*edited 12/11/05- added the poem from the old version of chapter 5 in there, along with Brutus' new allies.