"Arriving at Museum Station in one minute."
The robotic voice of the Metro Authority Rapid Governmental Transit System, or M.A. .T. crackled from Jil's headset from where she sat plugged into the Metro car drivers seat. A stripped down and re-engineered version of the pre-war railcar, it was happily trundling down the track from Anacostia Crossing Station to Museum Station located directly underneath the Mall in the DC interior. "Thanks Margot," Jil replied in the same tone she used when speaking with another person rather than a machine, "Mr. DeLoria told me to ask you if the local cell is expecting us?"
"That is affirmative, Miss Finch. Tango Sierra Eleven-Zero-One reports their readiness to receive you. As requested, Mall Security has not been informed."
"That's great," the radio operator replied with great enthusiasm, "I'll let him know. You take care, Margot."
"I always take every possible care in any operation I perform, Miss Finch."
"I know you do, Margot. And we appreciate all of it. Signing off," Jill commented wholeheartedly, before unplugging and stowing her interface cable in its carry pouch. She spun in place and leant forwards, away from the control panel and towards the Lettersman who stood in the doorway to the drivers carriage. A misnomer in modern terms. There was no driver on the present-day Washington Metro. It was all handled by Margot and her automated systems housed within the deepest depths of the Presidential Metro. So well defended by Brotherhood Scribes and Tunnel Snakes that it put Fort Knox to shame.
The railcar clattered and clanked with the passing of each uneven section of the repaired railway lines, as it carried a collection of the Wastelands most dangerous denizens to the heart of Washington. Jil peered around Letters' legs at the strangers in the passenger car attached to theirs as she made sure her gear was squared away. She snuck a glance at Letters' himself and attempted to make conversation. "So, what do you think about all this?"
The Lettersman shifted his weight, towering over her smaller form by a considerable margin. He wasn't a particularly tall man. Certainly not compared to some of the giants in the adjoining car, but she was just that short. He didn't look around at her, just kept staring at the foreigners they were being asked to escort. "You tell me," he replied, "You aren't that green, Rook. Way past time that you should have started feeling out your brothers and sisters without having to ask."
Rook frowned and looked down at her boots. "It's not my fault, you know? Lesko says the alteration affect everyone differently. Maybe I'll never be able to feel or be felt," her breathing hitched somewhat at the admission, "Like the rest of you can. But I earned my Patch. Same as the rest of you did. Mister DeLoria said so himself."
"Take your best guess then," the Second in Command of their cell ordered her. That was good. They still gave her a chance, unlike some. They were willing to try if she was. It was rare in the wastes. It paid to avoid going out on a limb for people, as much as she wished it didn't.
Jil did as the Second asked, standing and strolling over to stand next to Letters in the doorway to look at the odd collection of newcomers they travelled with.
The tall man with the recently trimmed grey hair slicked back from a savage, weathered face that alternated between looking youthful and ancient depending upon the man's expression or the angle of his face against the passing subway lighting. Dressed in a duster that reminded her of a Regulator getup and heavy riot armour. He sat laughing the trip away with his long rifles strapped across his back and God only knew how many other weapons concealed beneath that long voluminous coat of his.
"The grey haired one is carrying enough weapons to put a hole in the Monument," she opined. They watched as the big man laughed, spewing a cloud of thick tobacco smoke across those assembled. They knew it was a hallucinogenic of some description. Latchkey had taken a puff of it on a bet from Sticky, and all of them sans Rook could feel the state of his mind at the moment as he sat glassy-eyed off to the side as Silver, their medic, kept a watchful eye on him. At least he was lucid again. More than could be said for him a few minutes ago.
"Sticky saw the butt of a pistol in a kidney holster and the handle of a long-bladed knife. Maybe a machete," Letters agreed. Trust in Sticky Hand Jack to pick out details like that, Jil thought.
"He's kind of hot though," she said.
"Mmmm-hmmm," Letters vocalised without inflection, "If you like that sort of thing. Clearly the stereotype about short girls and tall guys is true in your case."
Rook snorted at the dig and prodded back, "That's a gross stereotype. Happens to be true in this case. Jealous?"
"My relationships have always been messy, but if I had to choose between shacking up with a cannibal versus another bad divorce, I'd choose the bad divorce. Not to mention," Letters finished with a sideways glance at her, "Sticky thinks the big guy has the hots for the blue girl. And he's usually got a good read on these things."
That was Letters. Always a deadpan serious response to everything. He had a quick wit too, but he tended to keep it under wraps. "He's a cannibal? Figures. All the hot ones are psychos," She joked. She wouldn't ask how or why Sticky knew the big guy was trying to get into Blue Girls' panties. Sticky had his ways, most of which were arcane or esoteric to anyone except the streetwise goofball. That, or on the few occasions they actually asked him to explain, he outright lied about how he managed it. He continuously talked about something and nothing to disguise the fact that he seemingly knew everything about everyone.
"And the rest?" Letters prompted.
Jil shifted her attention to the preacher wrapped head to toe in bright white bandages, his bright eyes piercing through anything and everything they laid themselves upon. The tribal stitching on the shirt and rattlesnake skin boots also made her think of pre-war Wild Westerns, while the flak vest made her think of a different era entirely. He seemed placid. He had a great voice though, that much was for sure. How would she describe it? Smokey? Gravelly? She honestly didn't know. But for some reason it reminded her of mahogany. Or oak. Some type of rich hardwood, in any case. "I don't know what you think about the Priest. Some kind of religious missionary, maybe?"
"Calls himself Joshua Graham. Can't decide if he's full of shit or just full of himself. Father Clifford seemed to like him though. Ran into him in the Chapel when I dropped Luke back in to school. I've never know him to be a bad judge of character," Letters asserted. The old Father Clifford had known Letters' surrogate father figure Mister Lopez and had been close to Ted as a result. Close enough that Letters could vouch for his good intentions and good sense.
The carriage lurched as it pulled into the station, the close-packed walls of the tunnel on either side suddenly giving way to clear, empty space. The platform on either side was packed with goods to be loaded onto the carriage once they departed. It wasn't often that they had passengers that could afford the cost of riding the subway line. Most just walked through the Maintenance tunnels while the Merchants and Traders reserved the carriages for the goods that needed to be transported. The faces of those men looked like a mirage through the grubby windows, distorted and confused to even their eyes, well-used and adapted to the underground.
"Continue talking," Letters leaned in and whispered the words in her ears, "But keep your voice down. Butch and Jericho say the grey-haired one has sharp ears."
"Can he hear us all the way over here? Over the sound of traffic?"
"Might be nothing, but the Boss says he thinks the big guy is enhanced somehow. Might be genetics, might be mutations, might be cybernetics. Might be nothing at all, but if you've got traffic to send that you might not want these newcomers to hear then send it over the radio."
"Copy that," Jil acknowledged. Just as she was reaching to adjust her headset the tall wastelander looked at her from across the crowded carriage. His steel grey eyes met her own and chilled her blood. She looked away involuntarily, fiddling with her hair. "Creepy motherfucker," Letters commented. She had to agree. There was something deeply unsettling about that large old man. In a world where most fighters died young, the old warriors like the Sarge, Jericho or this old Wastelander from out West were usually something to behold. She retracted her comment about him being attractive.
"The Black guy with the dreadlocks who Latchkey kept on chatting with, the one who keeps on talking in riddles and metaphors? He's his own special kind of crazy. Some kind of travelling tribal historian, near as I or Sticky can tell. Apparently Latchkey ran into him at Old Abraham Washingtons place before we left Rivet City. Said his name is Ulysses."
"Like the President? Or the book?"
"Either or," Letters said in a tone that was the verbal equivalent of a shrug.
"You said they ran into each other at the Preservation Society?"
Letters nodded. "Wilks said Dreadlocks pulled him aside on the road back from patrol, remember?"
"Yeah," Jil agreed, who did indeed recall following Letters' gaze back over her shoulder to the big tribal with the golden headed staff accosting their resident demolitions man.
"He wanted to call Latchkey out about his hat, and Latchkey told him to go drown himself in the Potomac. Or visit Washington. The man, not the place," he amended, as if there might be some confusion.
"Why pull him aside over a hat?" Rook asked in surprise, "Is he one of the Unionists?"
"One of the Temple of the Union? No, Latchkey says he's a tribal from out West, same as that sniper I talked with. It's some kind of spiritualist tribal bullshit. Thinks History has a mind of its own or something like that. Latchkey likes him though. Says they talked about History together with Old Man Abraham. Sarge had to pull him away."
"Ohh great," Jil commented blithely, "Kenny gets really heated about that kind of stuff. Is Washington's place still in one piece?"
"Surprisingly. It's not like you don't get heated about it. You used to argue with Kenny all the damn time about his hat. What's that thing you and Harkness like to say? Free will is not a malfunction?"
Rook grimaced and looked away, playing with the radio set she was assigned to deal with as squad radio operator.
"Well, it isn't. Doesn't mean I want every Unionist to start going after Kenny. He doesn't mean it like that. I know that. He knows more about slavery than most Unionists. Anyway, what about the blue girl?" Rook asked Letters opinion this time, moving the conversation along.
"Butch says she's an alien."
Rook gave him a slow sideways glance and almost detached whatever muscle group was responsible for the raising of an eyebrow. "Excuse me?" She sputtered through a snort of laughter. His serious expression stopped her cold. Sometimes she wished the enhancements Lesko made really had taken. It would be nice to be able to feel their emotions in the way Letters and the others often described. Then she'd be able to tell if they were bullshitting her.
"Your bullshitting me, right?" She asked in leu of the mental link.
"Nah, hand on my heart," Strayer said, voicing the words and performing the genuflection without a hint of self-awareness for how it stood in contrast to his comments regarding superstitious tribal bullshit, "Swear it on Old Man Lopez's good name."
"An alien?"
"No bullshit."
Rook stared at the blue-skinned woman with the oddly shaped fringe of tentacle-like protrusions in the place of hair. She looked human. Or humanlike, at least. In a world with ghouls and mutants who all descended from the same baseline human stock, things like physical appearance needed to be very pronounced to make people think he didn't have some human blood in you. But a real live alien? She'd heard rumours of course. Never definite proof. "No shit. That's so cool," she giggled breathlessly, "What's she doing here?"
"Haven't had a chance to quiz the Boss about it. But if I had to guess? We get pulled from rotation off the Frontier and scrambled back to Rivet City by Vertibird, at the same time the Boss is stockpiling everything you'd need to field an expedition out in the baddest of the Badlands, and suddenly an alien shows up in Pennsylvania? And Sarge and me heard them talking about the Wanderer. Which bears out, because the cowboy and that Asian-looking asshole the Boss was talking with are both the Wanderer's men, remember?"
"Somethings up," Rook surmised.
"Something is so far up someones ass they'll crap out conspiracies every time they take a shit," Letters confirmed. His lips twitched at the sides. Bryan Wilks caught the tail-end of Letters' amusement through their link and smiled, seemingly for no reason where he sat in the neighbouring railcar, lovingly cradling his sniper rifle. "Boss said the mission he has us slated for is long term, a year or more. What does that tell you?"
"We're going to space?" Jil queried with a desperate eagerness. Her face was so emotive he didn't need a mental link to know how she felt about the prospect. It was infectious. Not in the same way that he found the emotions of the others, but infectious, nonetheless.
"Looks that way. But keep your cool. Keep it Major League Dark, Rook. If the look of these guys is anything to go by, we might be rolling in on some rough customers. And even rougher business. Knowing our luck they'll have us shut up in a metal box suspended in vacuum for all twelve months. We'll come back with muscle atrophy. Nothing is better approached with an excess of emotion, than with calm deliberation and due consideration," the Lettersman paraphrased.
"Who said that one?" She enquired as the automated doors to the railcar slid open and the passengers all detached their behinds from the uncomfortable seats that folded down from the wall and stretched their cramped legs. They were travelling light at the moment. Which was to say that most of them were strapped with several pounds of iron for self-defence, but no heavy packs. Those were being transported separately in another railcar and would be brought on by another set of Tunnel Snake logistical staff. Though, judging by Sticky's conspicuous absence, he must have gone off to see what he could glean from their guests belongings. The wheels of intelligence gathering never stopped.
"Can't remember. Seneca or Epictetus. Maybe Marcus Aurelius?" Letters scratched his chin, "I'll have to read through the Discourses again. I don't think it was Seneca, though it does sound like something he'd write."
The railcar emptied in short order, the Tunnel Snake contingent unloading first and last to both lead the way for the new arrivals and to provide perimeter and rear security. The civilians on the platform paid the heavily armed men in the combat armour and leather jackets no notice, save for a brief glance. The Metro was staffed and operated by the Tunnel Snakes as the only group that Margot would trust to deal with directly. Letters and Jil unloaded last. SOP was never to put the radio operator up front. Lines of communication needed to be protected.
The platform was illuminated by a mixture of freestanding floodlights mounted up above on the upper levels, and fixtures that had been bolted into the concrete ceiling when the engineers had renovated the Metro to open the lines back up. They hung from heavy-duty steel chains, covered in cobwebs, and sometimes shredding little puffs of dust that drifted down into the beams of light cast by the floodlights.
Letters felt a stab of melancholy as the memories came flooding back. Ghouls flooding forwards in swarms held at bay by the weight of lead being thrown at they, howling and hissing in the dark. The cries of men being torn apart that echoed for miles in the tunnels. The oppressive silence that existed in the Dark as you wondered when the next attack would come, and if you would survive it. If the man beside you would survive it. The stabs of flame that roared through confined spaces, licking at your flesh like the tongue of some immense subterranean dragon. He started as a hand brushed against his shoulder, flinching away, and emerging back into reality.
Rook was had her hand on him and eyed him with a concerned expression, while in front of her and looking back over their shoulders, Wilks and Silver met his eyes. They nodded to him. They understood. It was hard not to, when you felt what they felt. Walk a mile in another man's shoes, was the saying. As far as Tunnel Snakes went, you all shared the same shoes. It's what you signed on for. Letters took his hand away from his left side, where he could feel the phantom echoes of the old burn scars from the flamer that had almost sent him to meet Los Carlos and Flywheel in the afterlife. Almost made him one with the Darkness forevermore.
It was hard, being back here. But he still took his proper turn on the roster patrolled the Tunnels along with every other man who wore the Patch, bore a Claw, or had the insignia tattooed on their skin. That was his duty. It was what Tunnel Snakes did. He returned his squads nods of acknowledgement. "You okay, Letters?"
"Let me tell you something, Rook." He said as the calmness settled in once more. He needed to maintain authority. That was what being a leader was. You could expect people to master their fear and charge into the Darkness if you couldn't demonstrate that capacity in yourself. "You never have to ask me if I'm okay or not. I'm Second in charge of this squad, not you. As far as your concerned I chew nails and shit spent brass," he said in a gruff voice, "I'm goddamn bulletproof."
Rook blinked, and he met her gaze with a calm surety that he had become so used to projecting. It wasn't a lie. He knew he could be the master of himself. She nodded, hesitantly, which he returned and ushered her back into her proper spot in formation after clapping her on the shoulder. The Eyebot, ED-E, swooped in once he saw his newest friend move away from her conversation and started beeping pleasantly but insistently for attention. "Thanks for asking though," he added, unheard by anyone save himself. And the sharp-eared Courier.
"Bobby the Tits," Butch cried out as he stepped forward, laying his arms out wide to receive an embrace from a squat and overweight gentleman with hairy arms and a silk shirt unbuttoned at the neck to display more cleavage than most women had to offer on a good day. Bobby the Tits grinned with a mouth almost entirely filled with steel or gold fillings, the Tunnel Snake tattoo that curled around his left eye partially obscured by a long flap of hair that had come adrift from his slicked-back style. His massive bulk almost enveloped Butch's lower half as they clapped each other on the back.
"Mister DeLoria! Boss! How you doing nowadays?"
"Just Butch, Bobby. Doing good," Butch replied as the two men separated, "Better than whoever's been doing your hair, that's for damn sure. You get a refund?"
"Not in caps, if you catch my drift," Bobby chuckled in a voice that sounded like lung cancer, clearing his throat of phlegm. "Tells ya, the older you get the more of a disgusting motherfucker you become. My fat fucking stomach almost smothered her while she was trying to work the shaft. When I finished all that came out was a puff of dust, brother. Reminds me of the bad old days. Debt collecting is a bitch, am I right?"
Their shared laughter echoed through the Station's vaulted ceiling before Bobby turned his attention to those who followed on behind Butch. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Butch! You brought some heavy hitters for this gig. Expecting trouble?"
"Always," Butch replied, "You got everything I sent ahead for?"
"'Course. Didn't Margot let your Rookie know? Even threw in a bit extra since you're the Boss and all. Warehouse is stocked whenever you want to confirm inventory," the Tits took a moment to lean off to the side and clear his throat again. The more you listened to it, the more you became convinced that Bobby the Tits' voice sounded how cheap cigarettes smelled. "Got a safehouse all kitted out for you while you're looking into this business with Murphy. Fucking shame about that bodyguard of his, even if he did have a lump of ground brahmin dick for a face. Still, look on the bright side of life, right? At least he won't have to look at himself in the mirror anymore. No offense, buddy."
The last was aimed at Charon, whose expression didn't change at all at the blatant racism. When it came from a man like Bobby, it seemed as natural to him as breathing. Bobby nodded past Butch to some of the others, "Sarge, you good? Good! Letters, still thumping those books? Sticky Hand Jack!" He uttered the last greeting with another wide armed hug that signalled to all present that Sticky had re-joined their group from wherever he'd been sequestered during the railcar ride. They hadn't even seen him return, but that too was their procurement specialists way. The two of them embraced, Sticky's signet and pinkie rings glittering in the Metro lighting as his gold chain upon which is Claw was proudly displayed slipped unintentionally into Bobby's cleavage.
"Bobby-boy, best tits in the game," Sticky greeted him, "If they were any better you and Letters would already be divorced. Twice."
They all shared a laugh, even Letters. It was easy to get away with off-colour commentary when you shared emotions. All of them knew what they were about. "Hey, Bobby," Jericho called out from the back of the line, "What colour panties you wearing today?"
"Black and lacy," Bobby replied as he flipped the old raider the bird, "Same your mother wears."
He gave one last stick slap to the side of Sticky Hand's shoulder before turning away. At which point, Sticky returned the slap on Bobby' ample behind that sounded like background noise in a meatpacking plant. "Enough foreplay ladies," Sarge ordered with a half grin, "Show us the armoury. Rivet City didn't have all of what we wanted in stock, but I know you got connections with the Pitt. We need several tons of iron and all the intel you can give us on Murphy."
"Coming right up, Sarge. But first," he turned his attention to those of the group who weren't wearing Tunnel Snake regalia and began twisting his own signet ring with the Tunnel Snake emblem marked upon its face around his finger, "Cough 'em up. No unauthorised personnel bearing arms past this point. You can keep anything chambered in sub-calibre, but you leave your cannons at the armoury 'til you boys leave the Mall."
The Snakes looked at the newcomers from out West, clearly expecting them to object, but aside from the sniper shooting the Courier a look for confirmation, they all seemed to be fine with the order. The First Recon sniper with the red beret, who Butch had introduced to the Snakes as Boone, shrugged off both his rifles with a straight face. Bobby took both by the barrels and carried them over to a checkpoint set up just before the broken-down escalator that haven't escalated a damn thing since before any of the Snakes were born.
He handed them over to a number of similarly tattooed staff who meticulously checked the safety, the chamber, the magazine, tagged both Boone's All-American and the Gobi Campaign Rifle with a paper tag on the end of a loop of twine, then handed Bobby a docket with the details catalogued on them. This he handed to Boone, who read the contents with a critical eye, before nodding. "Take care of those. They've killed more men than you've ever met," the sniper uttered the words with a grave solemnity.
Lantaya noticed how the sniper didn't bother to reveal the fact that his sidearm was actually chambered in 5.56mm rifle rounds, and thus qualified as a weapon to be taken away. She held her tongue, not least because she was not that intimately familiar with the definitions and categories of human munitions. And also because, in this unfamiliar place, she would be grateful for the taciturn sniper to be armed if only because they would look out for one another in a pinch. She had her biotics, whatever might happen.
Bobby chuckled derisively, then caught Butch's raised eyebrow and pointed expression, and mastered his visage before nodded with equal dignity. "An' are yer lads not disarmin' as well? We're startin' to feel singled out," The Courier commented as he hefted his massive Anti-Material Rifle in one hand and freed the attached magazine with the other. He didn't keep a round in the chamber on the big rifle. If he had to fire in a hurry he'd use Clark's carbine. Much more manoeuvrable.
Paulson kept his revolvers for even though the .44 Magnum revolvers were large, they were sub-calibre weapons, and Toshiro kept his blades as they fell outside the purview of firearms restrictions entirely.
"Tunnel Snakes spilled blood for this city down here in the Dark," Butch said as he sat against the checkpoint desk and watched the Courier set down the gigantic rifle on its surface. Letters caught Jil's incredulous look at how the Courier's impressive bulk made a rifle chambered in .50 BMG look simply regular sized in comparison to himself. "The Washington Assembly gave us a…."
Once more Butch scrunched up his eyebrows and glanced at Letters, who tendered the answer to the unspoken question immediately. "The Assembly gave the Tunnel Snakes special dispensation to openly carry whatever weapons we deem necessary for our needs within the city limits. Also because we're one of the only organised military forces with enough manpower to police the streets of the interior without being stretched thin," he shrugged whilst crossing his arms over his own Infiltrator-pattern R91 rifle slung across his chest rig.
The Courier laid Clark rifle down on the table during this conversation and opened up the magazine to prove to the attendant that the weapon was chambered for 12.7x33mm, and therefore not a restricted item. The tattooed man look incredulously at the monstrosity of an adapted carbine but had to admit that it technically fell outside of the rulebook, and therefore was a permissible item. Bobby's attention was briefly called to assess it, to which the large man agreed with the assessment, before turning back to the conversation between Lantaya, Letters, and Butch.
"That must be a rather large undertaking," the blue alien Lantaya spoke up as she handed over her assault carbine to a Tunnel Snake with a spiral of Snake tattoos running up and down his bare, muscled forearms to his round biceps and shoulders.
"It isn't if your smart about it," Letters explained as Bobby eyed Lantaya up and down and gave Butch a questioning look, "If we took you on a full circuit around the outskirts of DC, you'd notice one thing about these ruins. There isn't any way in or out of the city without going through the underground. The bombs dropped too much wreckage across the main roads, too many buildings and bridges collapsed in inconvenient places. Way back in the old days the DC interior was a hallscape. A battleground. Super Mutants on one side, Raider clans on the other, feral ghouls everywhere in-between. They controlled the paths in and out of the DC interior, so they owned DC."
Letters watched Lantaya's face as she took in the new information and looked around her at the bustling Metro Station with its checkpoints and crowds of workers loading and unloading goods from the railcars. "How long ago was this?" She enquired.
"Hell, it was like that less than five years ago. Wasn't quite as bad though," Sticky Hand Jack commented as he ran a loving hand over the ArmaLite assault carbine Lantaya had relinquished, a type of weapon not often seen on the East coast, "We had trade routes set up to the Mall where we escorted caravans through the Dark for caps. Good business, you know? People used to pay a lot for Tunnel Snake escorts through the Tunnels from Rivet City at Anacostia. You'd either take a chunk and pay off the local raider clans to open you up a path or go in heavy, Fangs out. Ever see what frag grenades do to a man in a confined tunnel?" He hissed and pursed his lips dramatically, "Major-league Darkness, Blue. Those were the bad old days, back before Mister DeLoria took back DC," the grinning Snake said with a playful look in the Bosses direction.
"Fuck you say DeLoria took back DC like he did it all on his lonesome?" Jericho sneered, "We were there too, you know?"
"Butch," Butch corrected both of them on automatic. "It's just Butch."
"It was the Bosses idea," Latchkey stated, throwing Jericho a narrow-eyed look. His eyes were still slightly glassy from the datura and were starting to get puffy and red around the edges, but that only have the thickly bearded man a more distinctly savage appearance. No love lost. Jericho was a solid man to have beside you in a fight, but damn if he wasn't grating to get to know personally. But they'd all fought together at the end of the day. Whatever else happened, Letters was sure that Jericho had their back just as they had his. Force of habit.
Jericho was about to offer a rebuttal that would inevitably spiral down into a twenty-minute argument when Butch cut in. "I ain't smart enough to call it my plan. You guys all know I'm a dumb motherfucker. All I did was ask a bunch of dumb questions one night over a bunch of beers, and everyone started taking me seriously. And I'm not the Boss. Haven't been the Boss in years. It's just Butch."
"You'll always be the Boss, Boss. Even when you're not the Boss, you're the Boss, Boss," Sticky Hand Jack replied in a light and airy tone. His force repetition of the world seemed intentional. It made Butch rolled his eyes.
"Well the Assembly says I ain't, because you can't sit on the Assembly as an advisor or any other way unless you are…"
He paused, uncertainty written upon his features, until Letters once more took up the slack in the department of vocabulary in which few were his equal. "Unaffiliated, Boss."
"… 'unaffiliated' with any armed forces. So I ain't the Boss, and my name is just Butch," he glanced meaningfully over his shoulder to Letters, who grinned widely back.
"So, yer sayin' ye took back the Metro from the wastes, did ya?" The Courier brought them back onto topic as he lit up a roll up with his old, tarnished lighter that somehow managed to shine in the light of the floodlamps. His steel grey eyes glinted next to it, three points of a triangle as his craggy features were illuminated then fell into shadow once more as he flicked the lighter closed. He had somehow managed to find the only angle available that would keep his face dramatically obscured in shadow from the lights. Drama queen, Letters thought, though privately he wished he knew how to do that. Shame he didn't smoke though. "That's a hard job, a bloody hard job. Tunnel fightin' in the Dark, packed close as lovers with the man yer tryin' to kill. Explosives, knife fightin', fields o' fire."
The Courier shook his head, judging the size of Washington DC in his mind. The amount of effort and manpower that would have needed to be expended to retake such a large underground area was unbelievable. An operation of that scale and complexity made Hoover Dam pale in comparison. Hoover Dam had been a simple affair as battles went. A stand-up fight, line up and keep squeezing the triggers in a target rich environment. Superior fire power won out, and he had made sure to stack the deck heavily in his favour with aerial support from the Boomers and the Enclave. A type of warfare the Legion had no answer to. But what these Metro Campaigns would have had to have been…it was a different kind of slaughter.
"How many bodies were laid down 'ere, down in the dark? These here walls are stained with blood and echo with the screams o' dyin' men," he proclaimed in a puff of datura, looking about him with narrowed eyes, unknowingly triggering Letters memories once more, and prompting Wilks to sidle over and elbow his Second in the side to break him out of the memory before his emotions overflowed into his fellows.
"It must have been an undertaking of decades to advance through these tunnels," Joshua mused in an amazed tone, "Clearing them, securing them. Inch by inch, mile by mile. It must have been gruelling. I cannot imagine it. Such a war to be undertaken and finished in only a few years. How many men died down here?"
"Surprisingly few," the Sarge answered the Burned Man's query, "A lot of planning and preparation went into making the Metro Campaigns a plausible undertaking. We went in with a fair number of aces tucked up our sleeves. But still," he nodded grimly, his eyes dull and seeming to lack that essential spark of life for a brief moment, "The butchers bill was extensive. Hundreds dead on our side, thousands wounded. If you see a man or women in DC missing legs, burn scars, knife wounds, limping; odds are good they're a Metro Campaign Veteran."
Lantaya recalled the man the Burned Man had been speaking to outside Rivet City. A man missing a leg, who Joshua Graham had praised, saying that he had a good heart. Brutalised, damaged by life, sacrificed to the wastes to secure the future of others. A martyr to the cause, in the same vain as many who came before him. "We try and take care of our own," Butch said as if in answer to her thoughts, "But others ain't so lucky. This ain't pre-war. The Assembly is trying to fast-track the training of more doctors and open new hospitals in DC, but shit doesn't happen overnight."
"So many enemy bodies we couldn't pull them all out of the Metro," Sarge continued in a monotone voice that seemed to them like an NCO giving his after-action report. Which, in a way, it was. "Had to set up fires and burn them onsite. Gas mask filters had to be changed out at least twice every hour during clean-up duties. Got clogged up with the smoke from the burning bodies. Worst was when contact was so heavy we couldn't clean up the bodies as we pushed forwards, which was more often than not. Then the rats and the bloatflies would swarm the tunnels, get set up in the corpses. Then we'd have to bring in the flamer crews. No use shooting then with centrefire ammunition. They just…. swarm."
The Sergeant's eyes seemed to hollow out before their eyes, as he stared right ahead and through them as if they weren't even there. He seemed gaunt, eaten away from the inside out so his skin was slowly contracting inwards to hug against bare bone like a skeleton wrapped in sheer cloth. The Courier took a deep puff of his rollup and offered it to the Sarge. The man looked at it through his hollow eyes. Before shaking his head. "We don't do that shit anymore," Letters replied as the Sarge politely pushed the large tribals hand away, "If we started, we'd never stop."
"Aye," the Courier agreed, taking another deep puff of his rollup, and bled the smoke out from his nostrils where it swirled around him in the beams of the floodlights, "I know."
"What manner of 'aces'," Lantaya fumbled the unfamiliar expression with her tone of voice and accompanying sentence structure, "Did you possess that could equalise the odds against a well-situated enemy force entrenched in a fortified position such as this?"
The Lettersman leant back and closed his eyes before reciting in a far-away voice, "Ground which is reached through narrow gorges, and from which we can only retire by torturous paths, so that a small number of the enemy would suffice to crush a large body of our men: this is hemmed in ground," he opened his eyes and rolled of the conclusion with iron assurance in his statement, "On hemmed-in ground, resort to stratagem."
A deep, resonant chuckle drew the attention of the Snakes to the tall tribal man, Ulysses, who stood leaning on his staff. He hadn't brought any firearms to speak of. At least none that couldn't fit underneath his long duster coat with the Old-World Flag emblazoned on the back in red, white, and blue. "History speaks; the words birthed of a mind that alone could topple Nations, build empires, engineer the fall of Kings and Emperors. Few better. Found those words once, in a library of the Old World, buried beneath the ashes of so much knowledge lost to time. Caesar took it for his own. Those words put many tribes of Arizona to the sword. Pity men such as Hanlon had also read its History for themselves. Made it their own."
"You read Sun Tzu?" The Lettersman asked.
"I know his History," Ulysses confirmed, "And you? What Road did you walk, to find the Artist of War at its end?"
Ted Strayer shrugged, eying the tall tribal with something approaching respect now that he knew the man had obtained some of the same knowledge as him. And not only had read it but had understood its significance. "I'm the Lettersman. Reading is kind of my thing."
The rest of his cell chuckled at this gross understatement of the truth, that the Lettersman had read a sizable chunk of the combined digitised archive of the Alington Library and would probably die one of the most knowledgeable men in the wastes, thought that was a low bar to surmount. That curious sense of vicarious pride at this small acknowledgement of their resident intellectuals bonafides filling them with pleasure. There was a general sense of, 'Yeah, our boy is smart too.'
"Our biggest ace was Margot. Before the start of the Metro Campaign, Butch led a team down into the Presidential Metro and spent weeks down there ripping out walls and running cabling down to her mainframes under the White House," Letters explained to the assembled company like a professor outlining the syllabus, "Hooked her up to the lines running through the conventional Metro lines. From there she can control the Protectrons, the pre-war security systems, the cameras, the microphones, the rail-lines. We prepped the battlespace before we ever made the first move. When it came time to fight it out, we knew exactly where the enemy would be before they even got there. And we could communicate with anyone else in the Metro, from anywhere, in real-time. The two most important things to have in war are good intelligence and good communication."
Ulysses nodded approvingly. He knew this all too well. They had both been his prerogative during his time with the Legion, and he knew all too well what they could accomplish. Cleverly employed, they had built Caesar a Nation from the dust of Arizona, after all. What the Tunnel Snakes had built was one step up. The Underground of DC was their Kingdom. One that they had an iron grip upon. Not even the whole of the Legion, he decided, could wrestle this place from the grasp of the Tunnel Snakes. Not without some very clever manoeuvring on the part of the Frumentarii and even then, Ulysses thought as he spared the man named Sticky Hand Jack a glance out the corner of his eyes, they seemed to have their own agents ready and willing to combat them in the shadows.
"We also had the edge on tech. Even the boys in Steel don't have one over on us. They don't try and make anything new. They just keep using whatever they dig up from the ruins," Clover supplied, hopping up and plopping her perfectly curved behind onto one of the workbenches the Tunnel Snakes used to take inventory of confiscated weapons, crossing her legs provocatively in her form-fitting Chinese Stealth Suit. She faded from view, leaving only an indistinct heat haze to be seen, and knowingly disappointing those of them who had a stronger than average inclination to indulge in the male gaze. She faded back into view with her arms posted on the tabletop behind her, back slightly arched to show of the breastplate of the armour. An elegantly seductive pose.
She grinned knowingly, the smile of someone who liked to use violence and sexuality interchangeably. The Courier took a puff of his rollup and thought that he probably wouldn't try and get into her pants. Women like that, the ones who used sex like a weapon, might stab you in the back out of pure habit the second you had your clothes off. Flirting was fun, intimacy was breakdancing above the abyss.
"An' once the Metro were clear, ye could turn DC into the world's largest fortress," the Courier commented as he shot Clover a wink, which she returned with an arched eyebrow, as if to say, 'Already taken, big guy.' The Wanderer must have had his hands full back when he was still human enough to appreciate such things, the tribal thought.
"Washington DC is the safest place on the East Coast. Don't get me wrong," Butch said with a self-deprecating chuckle, "We're a rough enough room. Rough enough crowd. Balls-to-the-wall and if you ain't careful someone will kick yours into your throat, then cave your teeth in for good measure. But if you are careful, which is an easy enough thing to be here, you can live your best life. I think that's what Chance would have wanted."
"And you organised all of this?" Lantaya asked, sincerely impressed by this man that stood before her, scratching his neck in embarrassment, seemingly slightly irritated by the suggestion that he did anything at all. It was somewhat humbling to see a man who didn't have a very advanced vocabulary, didn't seem to be overly intelligent, looked and talked for all the world like a rougher-hewn version of a greaser-thug than a leader, but nevertheless had fought tooth and nail to give tens-of-thousands of men, women, and children a stable future. And then had settled down to cut the hair of little boys in his dingy little barbershop, surrounded by men who had followed him through hell.
"Fuck yeah," Sticky confirmed on his Bosses behalf and without prompting, "The Boss led us all through it, start to finish baby. Didn't lead from the back like some of those Brotherhood mooks, either. Front and centre. When the Boss goes out, he always takes point. Nobody else could have done what he did."
With this realisation, she looked at Butch's eyes, and immediately found what she expected to see. That spark. That indefinable light that she saw in the eyes of Joshua Graham, Ulysses, the Courier, and in the Dreams of the Courier's father. And she was sure she would have seen in the Wanderer's eyes, if she had known him when he was yet a human being, and not a soulless cyborg. It danced and glimmered in the fluorescent lighting of the underground like a fire within his soul. A glimmer of what lay within his heart. "No. That's fucking bullshit," Butch supplied in a serious tone, glaring at the rest of the Snakes with a very real anger in his voice, "I didn't do shit that anyone else couldn't have done. I didn't do shit that Chance couldn't have done a thousand times better. You see, this is the fucking problem!"
Butch's anger wiped the obliging smiles off the faces of those Snakes who were present, and even the jovial ones like Sticky and Rook fell into a strange, half-nervous yet half-expectant silence as they sat there, looking at their leader who was leaning up against the edge of a workbench. Looking at him like they had just stepped on a landmine and were scared it might go off if they moved to far from side to side. ED-E hid behind Rook, nudging her like a child asking its mother to protect him from the scary man.
"When something goes wrong out here, it's always somebodies problem. Some fucking putz gets saddled with dealing with it, and it'll be them every single fucking time something goes wrong from then on, they have to go out and deal with it. And guess what," Butch exclaimed as his voice rose and its seemed to those present that he was losing his temper, "One day that guy goes off and gets himself killed trying to fix everyone else's fucking problems! Every missing person, every fucking town in danger, every stupid motherfucker who needs you to collect thirty Nuka-fucking-Cola Quantum's for some goddamn reason! Every stupid…"
Butch slowed his sudden torrent, because it seemed for a moment that his voice would crack if he continued without stopping. He hung his head, and even those of them like the Courier, Ulysses and Graham found themselves bereft of that light that shone in the depths of the greaser's eyes. His voice as he spoke the next words was filled with so much anger and loathing it took Lantaya's breath away from her, though directed at whom she did not possess the context to tell "…every dumb fuck whose mother is getting attacked by Roaches and he can't do anything about it himself."
Sticky's face, usually so expressive, had closed down like iron shutters slamming down over his emotions he didn't trust himself not to display in front of others. All of the Snakes had taken on a similar reserve, staring straight ahead, too embarrassed to meet anyone's eyes.
"Then that guy is dead forever and suddenly no-one knows what the hell to do. That isn't what the Snakes is about," Butch stated, once more back in control of his voice, and speaking with such confidence that it made them all question if they had really seen his brief lapse in composure to begin with. Those of them who couldn't still feel the emotion he had felt in the back of their minds. "When something goes wrong, that's not somebodies problem. That's everybody's problem. It's our fucking problem. When something goes wrong, it's not somebodies fault. It's our fault for not catching it sooner. And when something finally goes fucking right in this hellhole, it's not me who did it, its fucking you!"
He jabbed his finger at them savagely, to punctuate his point, glaring at them. They remained silent, like scolded children. Even men like Jericho and Sarge, more than twenty years his senior, couldn't meet his gaze. Though none of them were sure if this was a scolding or an affirmation of their abilities and achievements. Even Lantaya, a Matriarch of age and standing and in no way involved in any other capacity than that of a bystander, had to restrain herself from dipping her brow and apologising for any offense she may have caused.
Butch quietly simmered in his anger for a moment more, the silence stretching out as it became clear that no-one had the confidence to breach it save the Courier, Graham, or Ulysses, and they were too preoccupied studying this strange now side to Butch's character that was so completely at odds with his outward appearance. Suddenly, the greaser came to his senses, and realising all he had said, and the comparative strangers he had said it in front of, in a public place. He swallowed thickly, before slightly hunching over to shield himself from the gazes he suddenly felt fixed upon him. "Come on," he muttered as if he could just gloss over what had been said and no-one would bring it up again, "Times wasting. I'll show you the Mall. That Warehouse where we're storing your shit. And Sticky? It's just Butch."
He set off at a fast pace, hands jammed deep into the pockets of his leather Tunnel Snakes jacket, one of the few who still wore the original black leather variant from the first formation of the gang. The menacing insignia was in striking contrast to his embarrassed shuffling and hunched shoulders. But his shoulders seemed all the broader for it. ED-E floated out from behind Rook's back and beeped an enquiry that sounded something like, 'Is he gone now?'
Sticky Hand Jack came up beside Lantaya as Letters watched and nudged her in the side with an elbow. He had a calculating look in his eyes, and Letters and Ulysses both suspected that the wily procurement specialist had meant for Butch to react that way in front of the newcomers, to highlight a point that everyone in the Snakes wanted to be clear to anyone who was anyone in the wastes. "And that," he said in a voice loud enough for everyone but Butch's retreating figure to hear, "Is why he'll always be the Boss."