Mutatis Mutandis 16
Jason was very surprised to find that Alex Dargon was still alive. The scientist, along with every other human wearing a white coat, had been stashed in a cage in the very bowels of Project Purity. The innards of the installation had been changed drastically by the sabotage three months before. Thin layers of sheet metal scavenged from the bow of Rivet City now formed a thin membrane covering the enormous tattered hole created by the explosion. Bridges and thin walkways weaved back and forth across the gap. Smaller hallways and rooms, some new, some familiar, dotted the outer wall, forming a complex three-dimensional maze at the very bottom of which was a small hallway leading to the unfortunate scientists. Hanging precariously over the entire enterprise was the control room, bolstered by the support of heavy steel beams bolted to the inner walls of the Project.
Jason had very little trouble getting down to the bottom. Project Purity was not well-guarded, most of the mutants' attentions having been directed at Rivet City. The light was minimal, and the mutants as impressively unobservant as ever.
Over the years, Jason had become very adept at the systematic cleansing of facilities. Especially those guarded by mutants. The process was akin to peeling an onion; starting with the exposed outer layer and working one's way inwards leaving nothing behind to catch up. Practical application of the method came down to simple skill and timing; picking mutants off one or two at a time, never without knowing where every other mutant in the immediate area was, and which way they were facing. After a while it became instinctive, and all too easy.
The lowest bridge was a dozen feet from the ground, and Jason was able to leap silently onto the floor. It was an uneven surface, filled with potholes and wreckage, and he was able to land evenly with barely a grunt. His legs, assisted by the four hundred rad healing factor recovered easily, and he'd shouldered his silenced assault rifle, leveling it at the only door left. The entrance was filled with shadows, but there was light at the far end of the hallway. The guttural call of an overlord echoed through the space.
"Stupid Human! Why you no talk? We beat your Citadel! Stomped it! Crushed it!" the monster burst out laughing.
Jason crept to the entrance and peeked inside. Humans in white lab coats were being kept at the far end, chained to the floor. Their heads were down, and Jason couldn't make out any faces, but it was clear that an order had been issued not to kill anyone in a white uniform.
Jason's brow creased; why would they save the scientists?
No point in wondering. Not when he could ask them in person.
He slung his assault rifle across his back and pulled out his combat knife, testing the blade with his thumb. It seemed sharp enough to pull off the move. He reached into his lapel and retrieved his pistol, firing a single shot at the far wall of the cylindrical central chamber. Immediate silence fell in the room at the end of the hall, and he readied himself against the wall, knife at the ready.
"What was that?" the mutant growled. Heavy footsteps grew close, and the overlord's head appeared beyond the doorframe like a horrid half-moon. The knife slid neatly across its throat, severing it from ear to ear, cutting its windpipe and spilling a sheet of blood onto the floor. The mutant gibbered and clutched in futile, trying to stem the tide. It had just enough time register Jason's presence as the Wanderer strode smartly past it and marched down the tunnel.
"Where the hell have you been?" Alex Dargon demanded as Jason set about freeing him.
"Occupied." The Wanderer answered neutrally.
"I told you he'd come!" a female scientist happily declared to the young scribe beside her. "I told you he would!"
"Is it true?" the young scribe asked. She looked young, and Jason vaguely recognized her as a scribe from the citadel. Of no consequence; a nameless face hiding behind a clipboard. She was staring at him with a mixture of awe and fear. She asked, "Is the Citadel gone?"
The other scientists were listening closely. There were a dozen in total, all bruised, malnourished and, until very recently, devoid of hope. Another detail Jason noted with some concern: Dargon aside, all the prisoners were female.
Jason regarded her for a moment, then responded in a neutral tone. "Flattened. Completely. Elder Lyons is dead. The Brotherhood is gone."
He turned back to Alex, ignoring the fearful groaning. "Why did they want you alive?"
"I don't know!" the scientist told him. "There was a smart one. He's colored differently. Told us we were here to build their future."
"Hard to do that while chained to the floor." The Wanderer observed quietly, examining the barren room.
"I think they were going to take us somewhere." Alex settled on the floor, rubbing his wrists. Cuts and blue ribbon bruises marked the spot where the manacles had held his hands together. He glanced over at the terrified young scribe beside him and offered her a reassuring smile.
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
Jason gestured at the others. "Why are all the other prisoners women?"
"I don't know that either." Dargon glared at him. "They aren't very talkative, alright? And where were you, huh? The Citadel's gone? Where were you?"
"Saving Three Dog."
"Three Dog? Is he still alive?"
"For the moment." Jason eyed the other scientists. "It's bad everywhere. I had priorities." He swallowed and looked down at his feet. "I didn't think the Citadel would fall."
Dargon sighed and set about freeing his companions. "Well at least you're here now. we can get out, right?"
"Actually, I need a water fountain."
"May I suggest the nearest subway system." Dargon said, his back turned as he held a scribe to her feet.
"This one has to be about thirty feet high."
Dargon snapped around, intrigued.
"The mutants are cooking quicklime outside." Jason explained. "They want to pump it into Rivet City."
The reactions were immediate and grim: "My god…" "That would blind the entire opulation." "They'd be helpless." "When did the muties get that smart?"
"They have a pile of it out front." Jason continued, cutting them off. He looked from eye to eye, making sure they were all paying attention. "And all the mutants in the area are coated in it."
There was a pause while all the scientist processed the new data. Alex chuckled, shaking his head. "And that's why you want a water fountain. "
The Wanderer nodded neutrally.
Alex's grin widened. "You are an evil, heartless, conniving bastard, mister Howlett. And your father would be proud."
He immediately set about handing out instructions, pointing from scribe to scribe. "Katelyn, run diagnostics on the pumps. Make sure they can supply the pressure we need. Eileen, pull the schematics. I want to know where to direct flow. Maya, Shannon, you help her with flow direction. The rest of you grab any weapons you can and meet me in the control room."
"This place is free of muties, right?" one scribe asked hesitantly.
"On the inside. Just stay out of sight." Jason told them.
Looking reassured, they each left to their assigned tasks.
"We'll have this ready in fifteen minutes. Just keep watch until then."
"That fast?"
"I built this version, Jason." Alex reminded him. "I know exactly what I'm doing."
Jason nodded and turned to follow the suddenly bustling group of scientists. Alex grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back.
The Scribe leaned inwards, a grave expression on his face. "After the smoke clears, they're all going to come here."
The Wanderer nodded slowly. "You'll have escaped before then."
"Oh." Dargon looked extremely relieved.
"Or you'll be dead." the Wanderer continued. He shrugged. "Either way, we'll have saved Rivet City, and that's the important bit."
"I need more than that. These are some of the greatest minds in the capital wasteland." Alex told him.
Jason sighed. "The moment the fountain goes, you book it east across the bay. You can swim, right?"
"Yes…?" Alex looked uncertain.
"Well now's a great time to learn."
Alex had said it would take fifteen minutes. In fact, it only took ten. Jason was staked out near the entrance, watching the Supermutant patrols. None of them seemed to have noticed the lack of activity around Project Purity, but he had chosen to err on the side of caution. If the mutants noticed, the vulnerable scribes would at least have some warning.
He heard the young woman approaching long before she tapped his shoulder. She was moving intelligently enough, darting from shadow to shadow, and always keeping one eye on the patrols. Jason found himself mildly impressed. Mildly.
"We're ready." She whispered.
Jason nodded and followed her back into the project, giving the mutant hordes one last glare. Alex had spread out his schematics on a table in the basement of Project Purity. The scribes were all gathered around him, staring down at the complicated blueprints. He began to explain his plan as soon as he was sure he had everyone's attention.
"Alright, here's the plan: We're going to Sabotage Project Purity again. Pretty much doing the same thing the saboteurs did three months ago except instead of blowing open the fuel reservoir, we'll be rupturing a pipe on the surface." He began to circle and mark off different points on the diagram. "I already know what we need to shut off, and in which order. But it'll require careful timing." He stared around the room. "Each of you will have a part to play. But this'll require careful timing."
"How will you guarantee the pipe will rupture exactly where you want it to?" Jason asked.
"That's where you come in." Alex said. "I can't guarantee a darn thing. But you could put the odds in our favor by wreaking the pipe wherever you want it to burst. Loosen some bolts, or blow it up or something. Just weaken it."
"Will do." Jason frowned "There's a hundred pipes out there, Alex. How will I know which-"
"Way ahead of you." Alex interrupted happily. "I'm not going to explain how the water gets moved. Just find the pipe closest to Rivet City. The drawback is that we'll have to shut off the discharge pipes to build up the pressure."
"Drawback?" a scribe asked. "Why is that a drawback?"
"The muties'll notice, Maya." Another explained impatiently.
"As soon as the fountain appears, you all rush east." Jason told them. "I'll keep the mutants occupied. Can you all swim?"
There was a general murmur of affirmation.
"You realize you'll be trapped in the middle of a mutant horde and a cloud of blinding gas, right?" Alex asked.
"I'll be fine." Jason told him.
"But-"
"I'll be fine."
"Commander Danvers?"
Lana stopped rubbing her eyes, and looked up at the friendly-faced security officer. His arm was outstretched and he was holding a cup of coffee for her. She took it without a word, listening to the gunfire and the screaming of the wounded, most of whom were spread out on the tables of Gary's Galley. She had to listen to it. There was no way to block them out.
Angelina and Diego were doing their best to assist the stressed Doctor Preston in treating the wounded. Gary himself had been killed in the first half hour of the siege. He'd stood side by side with Mister Lopez and held the drawbridge long enough for those trapped on the wrong side to get to safety. Both of them had promptly been canonized by Father Clifford, guaranteeing that if anyone made it out of this alive, their deeds would be remembered.
Clifford had gone further, though. He had allied with Preston in organizing the humanitarian side of the siege, rationing food and water, and helping the wounded when they could. Almost everyone in the city was handling the crisis rather well, given the fact that the mutant invasion had come out of the blue. Danvers had had a long talk with Clifford about their supplies, and they had calculated that Rivet City had four months before their supplies began to grow really strained. That was more than long enough for the Brotherhood to get down and rescue them.
Though she was privately worried that they hadn't heard a thing from the Brotherhoood since the fall of Project Purity. She wasn't about to let it show.
"How are we doing, Joey?" she asked, picking a direction. She lead him up the stairs of the city's Security headquarters, partly walking because it something to do, and partly because at the very top of Rivet City was a crows' nest lookout, which provided an excellent view of the siege.
"Fine, Ma'am." The man reported. "We've been keeping the muties away from the walls. Took down a behemoth half an hour ago."
"Keep on it." She said. "Don't get cozy."
"No ma'am." The security guard said grimly.
They reached the crow's nest and stepped out. Half a dozen snipers had taken up position at the railing, and were picking off any targets the bright moonlight or streams of tracer rounds revealed. The siege raging below them cast an entrancing play of ever changing light and shadow, though the pace of the battle was slowing; night was good for neither party, as the darkness hid targets and resulted in too much wasted ammunition.
As she watched, Danvers found herself missing Harkness. The man always seemed to have the answers, and though she knew her worried troops were looking to her, she felt desperately uneasy with the weight of her responsibility. Rivet City's defense was her job, true. But no one and nothing had prepared her for the sheer number of muties.
"Keep your eyes out." she ordered. "I don't want any of them sneaking around the sides. If they do, pick'em off!"
"Yes ma'am." The troops chorused.
She needn't have worried though; oddly, the mutants seemed more intent on keeping the humans from escaping than they did on entering themselves. After the first ours of the tactic, the battle had turned into a siege, and the mutants seemed to lose interest in bridging the moat. The hourly messengers had observed the mutants closely, and reported mutants lifting, carrying and burning sacks of unknown contents. They were working hard at something behind the frontlines, and the question of exactly what and why worried Danvers more than any other.
A roar echoed from below, and another behemoth emerged from the ruins.
"Christ…" Danvers murmured quietly, watching the creature lope forward. Its arms were held out protectively, a shield against the defender's gunfire.
"We can't take this…" Joey muttered grimly.
"Carry the order down to the flight deck!" Danvers barked. "I want that thing brought down before it tears into the ship!"
At that very moment an ungodly noise shredded the night, drawing the attentions of all combatants towards Project Purity. A fountain of fresh water was rising high into the air, climbing tent feet. Then it pushed to twenty and rocketed past thirty, the wind catching it and spreading the entire southern point of the capital wasteland in a cold spray which soaked through clothing and drenched both sides.
"Wonderful…" Joey murmured to her. "There goes our fresh water."
But Danvers was too busy listening to the sudden rush of horrible noises from the mutant camp. Guttural cries of pain and agony serenaded the cheering defenders as the entire mutant camp was engulfed in an acrid cloud of white smoke.
"The hell…?"
"What happened?"
Danvers stared over the edge of the precipice into the boiling cloud of smoke. "What's going on down there?"
Mutants began to emerge in streams, smoking and steaming. Screaming and flailing at themselves as if on fire, they threw themselves recklessly into the Potomac, which only seemed to make things worse. The water beside the wrecked hull had turned into a frothing, churning, seething mass of dying mutants, even as more of them threw themselves in.
"Get us off the flight deck!" Danvers ordered, watching the smoke rise. It was obviously doing horrible things to the mutants, and she wasn't about to risk her own forces.
"Yes Ma'am!" one of the snipers saluted and disappeared, his comrades staying behind to observe the carnage in stunned silence.
"Who's that?" Joey demanded suddenly, pointing at Project purity.
They all followed his gaze left, just past the cloud of burning mist. She could make out the tiny silhouette of a lone figure, sprinting across the open ground on the western edge of the mutant encampment, towards the bow of the ship. Several mutants lucky enough to be caught outside the burning cloud had noticed, and were opening fire. The behemoth had spotted the figure too, roaring in agony as it waded through the chest-high acidic smoke, trying to reach its target.
"Is that…?" Joey asked.
Danvers nodded, feeling both exhilarated and terrified, for they had both made out the Lone Wanderer's brown duster and black assault rifle.
"Cavalry's here, boys!" one guard declared, prompting another round of cheers.
"It's the Wanderer!"
Jason dodged left, feeling a shot riffle through the air just past his right ear. Normally he would have returned fire, but he was a little busy. The behemoth was the worrying factor, and it was rapidly catching up to him, giant footsteps shaking the earth. He heard the cheering defenders on the deck of Rivet City, followed by the crack of sniper rifles. Immediately, the small arms fire ceased, and Jason sent them a private offer of thanks.
He reached the bow of the ship and immediately began to climb as fast as he could, finding purchase in the uneven plating and rusted holes. He hadn't gone more than ten feet up before a roar behind him told him the Behemoth had arrived. Acting quickly, he reached out with his left hand and swung free as a fist the size of a bus stop plunged into the side of the wreck, right where he'd been moments before. He kept climbing as the enormous mutant drew back its arm for another strike. Jason whipped out his pistol and emptied the clip at the mutant's face, causing it to recoil and buying him precious seconds to gain more height until suddenly he was out of reach.
The mutant roared and charged at the side of the ship, tearing gaping holes in the side as it tried to reach him. Jason kept climbing, even as his footing was slowly ripped away by the mutant. At last, through sheer determination, it gained a solid handhold and pulled itself up, planting its feet in the shredded plating and climbing after him,
Jason reached the summit first and pulled himself over the top, pausing to look back down at the mutant. The damned thing was too big! He could take it, sure. But he was out of grenades, having used the last of them to weaken the pipes at Project Purity. Trapped at the top of a plateau, armed only with a 10mm pistol and a silenced assault rifle, and a behemoth slowly closing in?
Not an ideal situation.
As a matter of fact, as he backed away from the edge, Jason was hard pressed to find a point where he'd been worse prepared. Stepping out of the vault, perhaps? He needed either a lot more ammunition, or some heavy ordinance.
Then his eye fell on the pile of abandoned jetfighters, and he wondered if any of them were still operational. He'd only need a few seconds, after all. If they were anything like the cars scattered throughout the capital wasteland, then he had all the ordinance he'd ever need.
The super mutant behemoth crested the edge of the flight deck , roaring in triumph. Its right hand slammed into the metal, fingers gouging deep trenches as it pulled itself over the top. It rose, snarling as it dug its left hand in, its weight causing the entire deck to crumple. It looked up, searching for the tiny human target, and spotted the man. The human was standing atop one of the old-world machines, smirking.
The behemoth roared at it and planted a foot against the hull, pushing itself further. The human reached down into the old-world machine, which started to rumbled and roar louder than the behemoth. The he looked back up, threw the mutant a nonchalant salute, and vanished into the night.
The Behemoth growled and clambered further, just managing to get a knee over the top before the machine emitted a crashing bellow, fire streaming out behind it. Spinning wildly across the deck, it flashed towards the mutant at an impossible speed, hitting it in the stomach and launching them both clear across the battlefield. A few moments later the night was bathed in nuclear fire.
Okay… so maybe the jetfighter was a little over the top…
… But so AWSOME! Coolness factor wins out. I'm glad this story is at the point where I can do that, and still have it all work (or maybe I'm just getting over confidant –if so, let me know.)
But I see too many stories on this site try to start at this point without the character and world-building first. It usually falls flat. I hope this one didn't.
Note: when I finished this chapter, I had 'How You Like Me Now' by The Heavy playing in the background. Didn't even realize it. Very fitting though.