Feb. 7th, 2286(Mid-2182 CE)
Milky Way, Exodus Cluster, Asgard System, Terra Nova.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," Christopher Haversam addressed the assembly with upraised voice, gaining their immediate attention, despite the numerous other interesting sights that currently vied for the honour.
They looked away from the impressive panoply of weapons and gadgetry on display in front of them and stared at him with the passionate intensity of men and women whose lives and livelihoods had long depended on the quality and quantity of their equipment.
It was for this reason that they were gathered here today, on a slightly damp afternoon on Terra Nova, several miles from the main base. They stood on an isolated ridge, overlooking a wide valley below. In the distance, numerous targets and lanes of fire had been set up; some relatively close. Others, barely visible to the naked eye.
Some were the traditional plywood overlayed with roughly stencilled rings to denote accuracy. Others were realistic dummies, kitted out in spare combat armour of various qualities and grades of protection.
In attendance were Haversam, in his capacity as the Department Head of Engineering; alongside him, a small cadre comprised of Somah and the Mechanist. Stiggs had meant to be present in order to present Project Ironsides; he had called off at the last moment, much to Chris Haversam's ire.
Somah noticed his absence and leaned in close to Scott with an enquiring gaze, "Hey, Wollinski; where is the creep?"
"No idea," he murmured back, keeping his eyes locked forwards so that Haversam wouldn't see him conversing with the other Engineer. "But wherever he is, I'm going to find him and kick him in the balls for this."
In his fellow Engineers absence, the honour of showing the Heads of Special Operations, Intelligence and Ground Forces the progress they had made towards a new, standard-issue set of combat armour, inclusive of all the technological advancements they could cram into the package, was passed to Scott.
Scott, somewhat socially maladjusted, was having trouble maintaining his air of professionalism in the face of so many notable figures of the Wasteland. The last place he wanted to be was making a presentation in front of the best and most brilliant the Wastelands of North America had to offer.
There was Butch DeLoria, Head of Ground Forces, the Liberator of Washington DC, together with Sergeant Doyle and 'Latchkey' Kenny.
The three active members of their Intelligence Wing, Ulysses, Joshua Graham and Desmond Lockheart. Scott only knew so much about the first two from Chris, when his boss wasn't busy shouting bloody murder at the rest of Engineering; but what he had heard was intimidating to say the least.
Of the old, pre-war ghoul Desmond, no-one seemed to know anything, other than what Desmond himself had seen fit to tell them.
Then Special Operations, headed by Craig Boone. The sniper was a morose statue, dead-eyed and seemingly soulless with little inclination to speak or show undue emotion. Of him they also knew little. Just that he was the Courier's right hand. And the right hand of such a manic was sure to be just as intimidating as his Boss. He peered at them from underneath his red beret, the emblem passively threatening all who read it with the promise written: The Last Thing You Never See.
Scott was thankful that he could see Craig Boone. When you lost sight of him, that was cause for alarm.
With him was Jericho, scowling and hollow-eyed; if Craig Boone gave the impression of being unemotional, Jericho was the exact opposite, in all the worst ways.
After the surgery that had left him in almost constant pain as his body rejuvenated itself from almost forty years of abuse and aging, he was prone to fits of rage that bordered on homicidal. The ex-raider sat apart from the rest on a freshly hewn tree-stump, stripped down to nothing but a bulky jumpsuit of black synth-muscle. He was to be their weapons tester for the day.
Standing not a metre from him, wide-brimmed hat protecting the rain from contact with his weathered face and hair, Paulson was ready and willing to take part as the Armourer for the Zeta. His eyes tracked across them all in silent consideration, while his mouth remained firmly shut.
Despite the weather being damp, they were all enjoying the outdoors on Terra Nova. The wildlife was relatively tame and unthreatening, having a manageable number of tentacles and fangs when compared to the usual Wasteland fare. Most of it tasted fairly good. There weren't random radiation storms at odd hours during the day. Drinking too much water from a stream wouldn't make your organs slough out through your rectum.
All in all, it was Paradise for the Wastelanders.
"We're gathered 'ere today at the Alter o' Saint Christophers to worship the Holy God o' violence an' murder," the Courier piped up in an irreverent tone from near the back of the crowd, his hands tucked into his pockets, smoking a datura roll-up with an offhand air.
His hair was growing out once more from haircut in New Vegas. The cannibal was reverting back to his unshorn appearance and had been spending hours and hours hunting in the wilderness of Terra Nova.
'Getting in touch with the Spirits of the planet,' he called it. What they had to say, no-one seemed to know save himself. He had been getting bored of the practise lately; Scott knew this from Lantaya, who the Courier went to bother when he lacked for engaging pastimes. Whatever the Spirits had communicated to him, if they had communicated at all, it didn't seem all that important to the old Wastelander.
"Let us give thanks for his gifts. Amen," Latchkey took up the joke with a slight smile, causing Butch to chuckle.
"Thank you, Six. But…." Christopher began in an annoyed tone but was quickly cut off.
"Yer welcome, Chris. Any time."
"In that case, I would like to book you out from never to the beginning of the end of time. I'll pay in bullets. Now shut your damn face," Haversam snapped. He straightened the tie he had on under his rumpled lab-coat, more out of anger than any sincere desire to clean up his habitually shabby appearance.
"This will be the first live-fire demonstration of our next-generation weapon systems and the reveal of Project Ironsides. The purpose of this demonstration is to make you aware of what these weapons and armour are capable of before they need to be used in the field. We will start with the basics. Jericho, if you would?"
Jericho got up from his portable seat and walked up to the bench, groaning under the weight of munitions that were laid out for the perusal of all. He picked up a rifle from the bench and held it up so that it could be seen by all.
It was matte black, reminiscent of the well-known ArmaLite design coined by Eugene Stoner. Picatinny rails were mounted on the bottom, top and both sides of the long barrel, which was enclosed in metal coils that curled tightly around it.
It had a magazine well, the same size and shape to receive the familiar ammo mags they all knew intimately, while the stock was fitted to the body of the gun by a series of hydraulic pipes. The receiver was bulkier than its older counterpart, clearly making room for a vastly different method of firing a projectile than conventional, chemical-based propellent.
Observers noted with interest, the complete lack of ejection port for spent brass and the sleek scope mounted on the upper rail. Caseless ammunition.
Somah and Paulson took the reins from here. The dark-skinned mechanic was first to provide details, her grasp of modern technology and terminology superseding Paulson's by a considerable margin.
"This is our new primary infantry rifle. This revision of the design is called the GuR3. It is a semi-automatic gauss rifle that fires 4mm EC ferromagnetic slugs with the aid of electromagnetic coils that we adapted from the M72 gauss rifle and an Eezo-based mass accelerator that Lani helped us design and fit. The rounds are stored in a series of specialised ammunition packs."
Jericho picked up one of the ammunition packs from the table and slotted it into the magazine well at the bottom of the weapon. It went home in the exact same fashion as they all were familiar with, with a click as the magazine locked into place.
"For most of these new weapon's systems," Somah said crisply, "We have elected to stay as close as possible to existing, conventional designs in order to facilitate quick adoption. There are three main types of magazines. We have a standard pack, that Jericho will now demonstrate on the target at medium range."
"About fucking time," Jericho grumbled before stepping up to the firing line and settling into a shooter's stance, body leaned slightly forward to manage the recoil and legs braced apart for added stability.
The rifle cracked, an electronic whine like that of high-voltage transformer, coupled with a loud snap of a bullet penetrating the sound barrier. It was quieter than a conventional firearm.
Muzzle flash was almost non-existent.
"How's the recoil, Jericho?"
Sarge spoke up from beside Butch, addressing his old friend directly, rather than Haversam. The old Sergeant of Talon Company trusted Jericho's experience in matters related to combat.
"She's a bitch," the grizzled wastelander replied, "But manageable."
"Kick is a bit like a ten-gauge. They got a fancy stock that'll help with the kick. Would be worse, otherwise," Paulson drawled with a comfortable air of a practised shooter. He adjusted his hat and shifted his footing, the spurs attached to his cowboy boots clinking from the motion.
Somah chimed in again with the technical details.
"The stock has a hydraulic recoil absorber built in. It will lessen felt recoil by around a third, which allows for the firing of a heavier slug at increased speeds. Due to the unique way the weapon handles, we needed to make it semi-automatic. The stock tends to make the weapon shake violently on our fully-automatic variants, which is why they never left the prototype phase. The standard pack is comprised of the ferromagnetic slugs, a Microfusion Cell to power the gauss-coils and accelerator, and a heat-sink to keep the barrel from melting."
Jericho continued to squeeze off rounds, the observers watching as the stock rocked directly back and forwards; the hydraulics absorbed the impact and kept the barrel from climbing upwards. The veteran Wastelander maintained a respectable grouping of shots, all but one shot ripping straight through the inside ring of the distant target.
With each recoil of the weapon he winced noticeably, his muscles screaming in pain from the bioorganic weave that R&D had implanted in his musculature. But he kept on firing, keeping his discomfort under lock and key.
He burned through the entire magazine and then pressed the ejector, letting the ammo pack fall into his waiting hand, where he proceeded to slam it back on the table as he made the GuR3 safe and returned it to the tabletop.
"The next pack is similar but comprised of an Overcharged Microfusion Cell. These are meant for engaging hard targets or at longer range. Their recoil is intense. I wouldn't recommend firing shots from an Overcharged Mag without one of those synth-muscle suits Jericho is wearing. Without the suit, you'll break your shoulder," Somah warned them before continuing on.
"The third pack is equipped with a Max Charge Microfusion Cell. I don't care what you put a MaxCharge shot into, it will put a bullet right through it, through whatever is behind it and out the other side. Always check your sight picture before opening up with one of these."
Paulson edged in with his own piece as Somah finished her sentence, "I can provide these guns in a sawed-off for up-close and a long-barrel for distance. Mr. Wollinski made both. If you boys have a hankering for some custom work, I'll be in the Armoury and we can talk about some good old fashioned gunsmithing. A little personal touch."
"On the subject of personal touches," Christopher cut back in as they finished off, "This weapon system is fully modular. Rail mounts on the top, sides and bottom for scopes, secondary sights, laser designators, foregrips and underbarrel launchers…"
Christopher picked amongst the contents of the tables and hefted up a device in each hand, two tubelike weapons that were designed to be mounted on the underrail of the new rifle. "These are the 40mm GLMs we are providing as indirect fire options. We have rounds in a variety of flavours: Pulse, Frag, High Explosive, Incendiary, Smoke, Flare and Mini-Nuke…"
"Hold on just one damn second," Latchkey perked up immediately from beside Sarge and Butch, eyes wide with joy and a concerning glint in his eye, "Ya'll got 40mm Mini Nukes? I don't gotta lug around a god-damn 60mm mortar, anymore?"
"Correct," Haversam confirmed. "We'll be mounting a 60mm mortar on our updated Sentry Bots, instead. With an autoloader and targeting system. Scott can fill you in on the details. We won't be fielding those outside of prototypes until we've settled on a new chassis."
Sarge and Butch exchanged concerned glances as Latchkey wolf-whistled in supreme and sincere expectation, "That's fucking badass right there. When do I get one of those 40 mike-mikes?"
"Slow your pace there, son," Paulson said with an outstretched hand, "We ain't handing out the new guns until you've all been in with those damn Witchdoctors in the Science Wing. They gotta do their fancy horseshit to you, then you can take a safety course to make sure you don't blow up the damn ship."
Latchkey looked ready to protest, his desperate eyes fixed upon the new GPM launchers that Christopher now replaced on the table. But Butch placed a hand on his shoulder and pulled the big Southerner back from the brink. It was a testament to Latchkey Kenny's respect for his boss that the demolitions expert only grumbled silently at the denial of his new goal in life.
"The GuR3 is also threaded for a suppressor. For when you have to go in silently, instead of drawing attention to yourselves," Somah nodded towards Special Operations and Intelligence. Desmond nodded back with satisfaction, while Boone simply nodded.
Of this they were aware. They had been instrumental in working out a way to suppress the supersonic crack of a faster-than-sound projectile. Their solution was something that only a person intimately familiar with ballistics and advanced shooting could dream up.
"Next on the list we have a new AER," Somah continued, motioning Jericho to select this weapon from the table. He did so, picking up the laser rifle with one hand and hefting it like a toy in one hand. Everyone noticed the obvious difference immediately. The rifle wasn't as chunky as the old AER9. In fact it was positively slim and streamlined, looking more akin to a Wattz 2000 than the bulky AER9.
It too had picatinny railing up and down the length of the barrel, complete with a scope mounted on the upper rail.
"The old AER9 was one of the first laser rifles reliable enough to be used in the field; subsequently, it was one of the only rifles to survive in large numbers. Laser weapons are usually hard to maintain because of the electronics and fragile focusing lenses. General Atomics solved this issue by adding in a bulky protective frame," Somah said as Jericho loaded the new AER with a Microfusion Cell.
Where the magazine well was on the GuR3, Jericho opened up a folding hatch a slotted the Cell into a waiting receptacle. He then folded it back into place, engaging the rifle with a dull hum of electrical current.
"Simply put, the AER9 was a fat, heavy bitch. Most of what we did to adapt the design was shaving off as much weight and excess mass as we could and adding as many of the same modular design features as possible. The AER16 has got all the same options as the GuR3, excluding the recoil resistant stock which it doesn't require and the suppressor which isn't practical. It is also only a quarter the total weight of the GuR3. We have carbine and marksman versions, but the total range of the AER16 is less than the GUR3 due to laser dissipation at range. A mile is the best effective range we can get out of it."
Jericho demonstrated the weapon by scything the medium distance target in half with a burst of laser fire, making them aware that the AER16 was fully-automatic, unlike the GuR3. The beams were the familiar scintillating red that they all knew and recognised. The raindrops sizzled and evaporated as the beams cut through the air, arriving at the target the very moment the trigger was pulled. Recoil was visibility non-existent, the weapon resting rock-steady in Jericho's hands like a sleeping baby.
If babies could shoot lasers, that is.
Sarge and Butch both nodded approvingly. The Wanderer had taught Butch the advantages of Laser Weaponry: non-recoiling, armour-penetrating, versatility of ammo, no need to lead a target on the move. They were eager to put this new weapon through its paces.
"We have the same options for ammo as the GuR3. Standard, Overcharge, Max Charge. Additionally, we also have a Microfusion Breeder. Fifty shots a Cell for the first three, the last is capable of continuous fire if you pace your shots. It doesn't fire as fast or hit as hard, but it will fire infinitely."
"Not infinitely," Haversam corrected her with a dark expression on his features.
"It will fire for long enough that you will likely die of old age before you render it inoperable," Somah shot back.
She was a fiery personality and chaffed prodigiously under Haversam's heavy-handed brand of leadership. Taking a breath, she mastered her smouldering temper before it could get her in trouble.
"They are to make sure that you are never without a functional weapon in the field. But most of you will deploy with an Engineer alongside you, equipped with a portable Matter Recombinator. You can fabricate basic, small-scale equipment and supplies on the fly. No more scavving for spare ammo just to get by."
This was greeted by a murmur of contentment from all parties involved. Getting stuck out in the Wasteland with an empty gun, or worse, ammo for a gun you didn't have was a well-trodden path for all of them.
Jericho expended the rest of the Cell in a sustained barrage into a dummy at long range in the valley below, which was wrapped in old pre-war combat armour. Beams of red light washed over it and once Jericho's rifle ran dry, it was a heap of gently smoking junk upon the ground, utterly destroyed.
The ex-raider popped the hatch on the AER16 and let the spent Microfusion Cell drop into his palm, steaming ever-so-slightly in the open air. He made the rifle safe and returned this weapon to the bench, alongside the others, tossing the Microfusion Cell into a waiting bucket where it clanged loudly against the metal.
"The last rifle on the list is our personal favourite," Somah said. Both Chris and Scott leaned forward in expectation, their enthusiasm overwhelming their professionalism. Everyone present noticed the broad grins that broke out across their features, even on Haversam's perpetually pinched countenance.
"Since Winchester introduced the P94, Plasma Weaponry has always had two major faults: they are harder to maintain than other weapon systems, due to issues with heat dissipation and complex internal mechanisms; they are also harder to use as Plasma projectiles move slower than either ballistic or laser. We have addressed both concerns and the results speak for themselves…"
Jericho hefted another rifle from the bench as Somah spoke, his eyes glinting with joy at the toy in his grasp. It was a rifle, like the rest, similar in size and shape. The same picatinny railing that offered a way to fix modular additions to the outside of the weapon.
"Accelerating Plasma to appropriate speeds is a difficult task to take on. It is not a ferromagnetic slug, so we cannot use electromagnetic coils in the same way we do with our gauss rifles…."
"Save the technical details, Somah. This is getting into areas of physics that none of these smoothskins would understand in hundred years," Haversam cut in with a sigh and a motion to speed up the proceedings. "Just tell them the combat specs and let them hit it with a hammer to amuse themselves."
"Right," Somah said, sighing heavily at the lost chance to talk shop in front of an audience, "Well, since plasma has non-negligible mass we can use a Eezo-based matter accelerator to achieve higher velocity with our plasma projectiles. We also integrated the advances achieved by REPCONN in the Prototype Q-35 matter modulator. If you direct your eyes over to the suit of T-45d Power Armour in the middle of the range, Jericho will demonstrate the effectiveness of our P-36 Plasma Rifle."
Jericho knelt at the firing line and slotted in a magazine to the bottom of the new rifle, flicking the safety off as the energy weapon moaned like an angry ghost, emitting a faint green glow.
He sighted down through the scope at the distant suit of unoccupied power armour and gently squeezed the trigger.
There was a blinding flash of green lightning that shot at blistering speeds down the valley at the hulking suit of hardened metal and ceramic. It made everyone blink and wince as black spots blossomed across their eyes as their retinas stung. When next they looked, there was a smoking hole in the centre of the T-45s chestplate, dribbling green ooze that smoked as it ate away at the protective armour.
Butch got up and motioned for Doyle to hand him a pair of binoculars, through which he scrutinised the effect a single shot from this new weapon had on one of the most robust methods of protection the Wasteland had to offer.
He could clearly see out the other end of the suit. The shot had gone clean through the power armour and out the other end, spraying the ground with green spalling. He offered the binoculars to Craig Boone, whose eyebrows raised themselves speculatively. Even he was surprised.
"The P-36 only has twelve shots in the mag, but each shot is well worth the price of admission. Max range is just under a mile; as with our AER16, plasma weapons tend to dissipate at longer ranges."
Jericho, getting impatient with the lack of actual demonstration that he was being asked to do, started expending the rest of the magazine at a nearby copse of trees while Somah spoke; blowing the trunks apart near the base and watching with the occasional cackle as they toppled over, one after the other.
The Courier leaned forwards and tapped Ulysses on the shoulder to gain his attention. "Sure, I might have to try one o' those out meself. Been a while since I tried my hand at energy weapons."
"Technology turned the Old World to dust and ash. We sit here, revealing in the birth of new horrors. Look at how easily it destroys Old-World tools of war. What would Caesar have done, confronted with this? Even he might have put down the spear and blade, abandoned his Road. Taken up Technology, like the Bear, or Brotherhood."
"Think we're takin' it too far, Uly?"
The tribal ran a hand through his dreadlocks, separating out the twisted braids so that their story could be more visible. To whom, only he knew.
"Technology burned the Old World. When it was still young, still weak. Even then, it crushed all before it. Giants of the Divide, still giants. But now the cub is full-grown. See how large the best has grown. Do we set it loose on the New World? Repeat History, soak another page with ash and blood?"
"What, ye think we can burn down every star in the night sky, Uly? We're operatin' on a bigger scale now. No use worryin' 'bout it. Not even the Spirits themselves could bring down the sky."
"House watched, the day the Old World burned. The day the sky fell on America, crushing it into the sand of Mojave. Held up the sky, saved Vegas and its lights. No man believed another could wrestle Vegas from his grasp. Not even Caesar, with the Bull at his side. Not until you. If the sky can fall, it can be held up. If the man who held up the sky, can be beaten down. One day, all stars in the sky can be snuffed out."
Ulysses gave the Courier a hard stare, holding one-another's gaze as Jericho fired the last round from the P-36 and extracting the magazine from the bottom of the rifle.
For some reason, the habitually irreverent Courier did not find it within himself to refute Ulysses with deriding comments, or jokes to make light of his friend's assertion. There was a brief moment of shared apprehension between them as they considered a future where even the Giants of the Old World paled in comparison to the horrors of tomorrow.
Would even they, with their legacies of survival against all the odds, survive in a New World that birthed weapons more fearsome than those that burned the Old to the ground?
"Come on, girl. Not that this ain't nice and all, but why don't you let me shoot some of the really fun guns," Jericho called out to Somah as he got up and tossed the scorching Plasma Mag from one synth-muscle clad hand to the other, spinning it in mid-air like a football. "You didn't call me to limp down here just to fuck around with these little popguns, did you?"
He pointed to the larger weapons on the table, squat monstrosities that exuded a palpable air of menace, now that they had all seen just how effective their two standard infantry rifles were shaping up to be. Somah waved the impatient man off and continued on.
"For each weapons type, laser, plasma and ballistic, we have other variants for different purposes. We have a gauss-minigun that can be carried by an individual trooper, mounted on a Sentry Bot or on one of our new Falcon Dropships."
She pointed to the gauss-minigun they had on display, a beast of a weapon with three revolving barrels, each wrapped in the electromagnetic gauss-coils needed to propel their deadly swarm of projectiles.
"A laser gatling that can be used in the same role…"
Another heavy weapon sat alongside the first, also substantially cut down in weight and mass from the original. It was missing the formidable outer-frame that had made the first iterations of the pre-war gatling laser, the West Coast H&K L30 and the East Coast UB-FRIED 3000, so distinctively blocky.
"We have the Courier to thank for this baby," Somah enlightened them as she stroked the side of the gatling laser thoughtfully. "The X-25 Gatling Lasers mounted on his Securitrons were already streamlined and cut down to the bare essentials. We just jury-rigged an updated trigger mechanism and carry rig, upped the output and called it a day."
"Jus' don't tell Yes Man I nicked one o' his arms," the Courier snorted to himself as he put his feet up on the back of Ulysses' chair, causing the big tribal to look over his shoulder at him with narrowed eyes. They had recovered from their brief moment of introspection and now regained their normal selves, old rivals turned occasionally grudging and argumentative friends.
"Unlike the Courier to stop at one," Ulysses observed dispassionately.
"Maybe several," The Courier shrugged with a private grin.
"You do violence to your soul with theft, Six. You should curb that impulse," Joshua spoke up for the first time to his nearby friends, chiding as one might reprove a younger brother. The grey-haired Courier took it on the nose with a yet wider grin, taking a long drag from his stubby roll-up.
"We also have a wide selection of sidearms," Somah gestured towards a long row of handguns and stubby, short-barrelled PDWs.
"Updated AEP10 Laser pistols, GuS2 Gauss Pistols, our take on a G86 plasma pistol with the new mass accelerator…"
Somah paused on this weapon and shot a grin at Desmond Lockheart, "Our thanks to Desmond, who happened to have a blueprint for a Glock 86 floating around. Since the company has been gone for two-hundred years, I'm sure they won't mind us violating their patent."
The Ghoul smiled, seemingly with genuine warmth at the recollection of times gone by. "Good times. Stole those specs off Mr. Glock a few years after the bombs dropped. Brilliant man… shame what happened to him."
"What happened to him?" Butch asked, curiously. Oddly, the entire presentation seemed to have spontaneously paused as everyone stopped to listen to the unusual event of Desmond Lockheart sharing a small part of his mysterious and expansive past.
"He was dying of cancer. Paid to have his consciousness implanted in an AI. Stupid bugger," Desmond said scathingly, but with a certain air of sorrow at the sad tale, "AI research wasn't good enough back then to replicate a human personality. He ended up an electronic vegetable that spent all its time designing new weapon schematics."
He related all this in the manner of a man who had more than a few stories to tell. Ulysses seemed particularly engrossed in this glimpse pack into a past that he had always pondered.
"Met him a few years after the bombs fell, in the basement of a Glock Research Building in Austria. His company had bought his AI and been using it to design new weapons. When I found him, he didn't even know the War had happened. Not that he would have cared. He just kept on pumping new schematics onto the building's mainframe computer. No-one had downloaded them for three years, but he just kept on making them…."
The Ghoul looked on in silence, his face fixed with a thoughtful expression.
"Bloody grateful I pumped myself full of radioactive sludge rather than become like him. You feel like your blood is laced with Napalm for a few months, but at least you still have your mind."
There was a pause as the assembled Wastelanders watched Desmond stroke his chin, looking back on the past as if examining it for falsehood. The Ghoul looked up as he realised the silence his words had produced and seemed surprised at their close scrutiny.
"Don't stop on my account. Storytime is over; get on with it, will you?"
Somah coughed and paused to recollect her place in the proceedings, "Where was I?"
"Wasting my fucking time by explaining to everyone about the gear but not letting me use them," Jericho grumbled in the background. He glanced skywards and sniffed the air.
"Hey, Six! It smell like rain to you?"
The Courier and Ulysses both glanced skywards. The Courier caught Ulysses' eyes and both motioned their ascent and agreement.
"Aye, 'tis a blow comin'. Wind is carryin' it in from out south-west."
"I think we can leave the rest of the weapons we have available and move on to the demonstration of Project Ironsides then," Christopher said as he stepped back to the forefront and waved Somah back as he motioned for Scott with the other arm. Scott visibly started with nerves; it had been so long since the presentation began that he had forgotten he was required to participate.
Seeing his hesitation, Somah sidled up to him and whispered in his ear, "Come on, Scott; This is embarrassing to have trouble speaking in public at your age. How old are you?"
"Forty-nine," Scott stated in a distracted voice.
Somah opened her mouth to reply but stopped short as his words registered. She blinked owlishly, "You're forty-nine? And you still have trouble speaking in public?"
"I haven't had a lot of positive experiences with people," he said with a defensive air. "And I spoke in front of crowds, before. Lots of them… when I was the Mechanist."
"Well," Somah said with a raised eyebrow, "if it helps you to get through the presentation, just do that then."
Scott blinked in surprise and glanced sideways at her. "Be the Mechanist again? I don't think that's a good idea. I can get a bit… carried away. The Wanderer made me promise not to do that anymore."
"Quit being overdramatic, Wollinski. Everyone else already calls you the Mechanist; occasionally. Would you rather talk to a group of wasteland legends as Scott Wollinski, the forty-nine-year-old engineer who still has trouble speaking around crowds? Or as the Mechanist?"
"The Mechanist," Scott breathed out, as if afraid to hear the name spoken aloud. He had heard it spoken many times before, but this time he heard it with his heart, rather than his ears. "I was just a grown man playing dress-up. But I damaged things, ruined lives. Everyone hated me while I was the Mechanist. They couldn't decide whether I was a joke or a menace."
Christopher Haversam plodded up to the two Engineers and abruptly clapped his hand on Scott's shoulder, unaware of the current turmoil. "Is there a problem here? We need to get this wrapped up, Wollinski. Can you make the presentation or will I do it?"
Somah, who was a hard woman at the best of times and regarded discipline as a form of tough love, waved him off. "No, the Mechanist is going to say his piece. Right, Mechanist?"
Scott blinked and looked at her, feeling the pressure of numerous pairs of eyes on the back of his head. Feeling his dark skin heat up as blood rushed into his face. The embarrassment. The discomfort. The self-consciousness of being judged. He had always preferred Robots to people. They were without agency, easy to work with.
How he wished that he could be someone else. Someone less self-conscious. Someone like the Mechanist…
The Mechanist straightened out his hunched posture and smiled with a self-assurance that was a mix of arrogance and confidence. He nudged his two colleagues gently aside and stepped forwards, leaving Somah looking at his back with raised eyebrows, shocked at the sudden transformation that had taken place right in front of her.
She didn't realise that simply standing up straight could cause such a drastic physical change in a person. Scott suddenly looked like a completely different man.
"Greetings, citizens. My sidekick, whose job it was to present our project to you has been detained on matters of great importance. I, the Mechanist, will be the one to reveal our grand works to you all, our League of Heroes!"
Somah grimaced from behind him, realising her mistake too late.
"The products of nature are feeble and imperfect. But those of Men and Science are strong and pure! Iron and steel are our bulwarks against the darkest nights, the machinations of villainous minds!"
Everyone in the audience seemed somewhat taken aback by the sudden fervour and zeal that Scott was displaying, completely out of proportion to the situation. They too cringed somewhat in their seats, glancing sideways at one another with raised eyebrows.
All except Ulysses, who followed along with a grave expression, as if this was ordinary conversation.
"What's gotten into him?" Sarge asked.
Butch sighed and buried his face in his hand, "He's acting like the Mechanist, again. Chance told him not to do that anymore."
"Why? He dangerous?"
"A bit. But mostly he's just embarrassing. God damn nerds," Butch groaned.
"Our aim is to make you as Iron and Steel. Behold!" The Mechanist beckoned Jericho forwards, who obeyed with a face that looked like he had just swallowed a lemon.
"Why the fuck are you talking like that?" Jericho rasped as he got close enough not to be overheard.
But Scott was too far gone to listen to anything that couldn't be folded neatly into this invented internal universe, where he was a superhero making a presentation to a secret society of fellow heroes.
Maybe the Unstoppables. If the Silver Shroud didn't hold a grudge for all those years of being a villain, that is.
He ignored Jericho's question and the violent glint in his eyes, taking him by the shoulders and spinning him around to show the onlookers the shunt installed in the base of Jericho's neck. Fibre optic cables emerged from it to link into a connector in the back of the synth-muscle suit, like a close-clumped tail of dreadlocks.
"This is the first step on the road to true transhumanism! The merging of flesh and machine, to create a being that transcends both. This is the Universal Neural Link!"
And, almost unconsciously, the observers accepted the odd mode of presentation in favour of scrutinising the newly revealed tech with genuine interest.
"Using technology gifted to us by the Lone Wanderer, which he obtained in his pursuit for immortality, the expertise of the venerable Think Tank of Big Empty and the spoils of Earth's conflict with the vile, extra-terrestrial menace of the Zetan, we have constructed this door in the wall between man and machine! Using this, we have connected this rough-and-tumble vigilante of the Wasteland to a suit of synthetic muscle, that allows him to perform wild feats of strength!"
Jericho eyed the Mechanist with latent ferocity and rage at being made a part of his awkward sideshow, nevertheless obliged him by striding over to a massive boulder sitting, half-buried in the earth at the side of the slope down into the valley. Against this he shoved his shoulder and dug in his heels, rocking the huge stone out of its nest and rolling it down the slope with a grunt of effort.
They watched as it crashed down the slope, sending clods of earth and splinters of wreaked and crushed foliage everywhere.
"Within the suit itself are nodes of the mysterious Element Zero, the secrets of which Matriarch Lantaya has revealed to us! When exposed to electric currents, they generate gravity altering forcefields that can protect the wearer from harm…"
Scott strode instantly up to the table and picked up one of the GuS2 pistols, which he loaded with a confident air and pointed at Jericho with a flourish.
"Hey, what the fu ….!"
He unloaded four shots into Jericho's chest from short range, causing the Raider to flinch unconsciously away from the report of gunfire. The shielding in the synth-muscle suit saved him, blossoming outwards in a rippling field of biotic purple.
"What the fuck, you fucking psycho!"
Jericho was white with rage, advancing on the Mechanist with murder in his eyes. The Mechanist merely grinned and pumped a few more shots into the shield, causing Jericho to flinch away and the shield to dissipate as the gauss pistol, at close range, broke through.
Instantly, a second shimmering barrier of white light caught the last bullet and arrested its momentum.
"We have layers shields, one using the miraculous Element Zero and the other, the deplorable but effective technology of our sworn nemesis, the Zetan! I regret that we cannot demonstrate the effectiveness of the Matter Forged armour plating which we have harnessed the power of Science to create, but our assistant, the wild vigilante Jericho is not wearing any, and would not benefit from its protection."
Jericho looked from the muzzle of the gauss pistol to the Mechanist's smiling face and wisely decided to let the dispute go. For now.
"But this is not all that our Universal Neural Link allows us to do!"
The Mechanist said, unloading the gauss pistol and replacing it on the table.
"It allows us to directly communicate with our loyal mechanical creations, sending commands to them through code and transmission, giving one man the ability to command a legion of Iron and Steel if he so desires! And conversely, a machine could talk with any man with the correct additional implants! A Man could be implanted with a storage device capable of holding gigabytes of data, a limitless store of knowledge that he could draw upon when required in pursuit of Justice!"
So passionate was the Mechanist that all had forgotten that he was acting out of character; instead, they leaned forwards and stared at him with mouth slightly agape. Somah, who alone was aware what had prompted the sudden change in her fellow engineer, took the opportunity to walk quickly forwards and interpose herself between Scott and the audience.
"But we are getting off-topic," she said with a polite smile, "The UNL implant is part of Project Preliator, which is being run in the Science Wing. It is only tangentially related to Project Ironsides. It should be left to Doctor Lesko to explain it, as Head of his Department."
She surreptitiously brought her heel down on Scott's shin and foot, bruising him industriously with her heavy combat boot. He snapped out of his fugue instantly and with a grunt of pain, hopping away to lean his weight against the weapon bench. Somah continued on in his absence.
"We plan to customise each individual suit of armour for the user, so that each man and women in the Expedition can have a suit that compliments their needs and role. They come with the option of a number of supplementary, optional weapons systems, including over-the-shoulder mounted 20mm grenades launchers, artificial biotic modules, flamethrowers and miniaturised lasers built into the wristguards."
"The Burning Iron Fist of Mechanical Justice," Scott groaned from the background, before Jericho took the opportunity to get some payback, elbowing the wannabe superhero in the ribs. Whilst wearing a strength-enhancing suit.
It hurt.
A lot.
"The Ironsides armour system has many support functions, including an onboard computer than can be accessed through the UNL and through your Pip-Boys. It has an inbuilt series of autoinjectors to administer Stimpacks, Hydra or combat enhancing drugs when required. It also comes standard with an integrated series of Microfusion Breeders, that will keep the armour powered indefinitely throughout a mission."
Somah paused her flow to judge of the effect of her words on the assembled Wastelanders. They seemed slightly taken aback by the sudden collaring of Scott from the stage, but this was overshadowed by their profound interest in what Somah and he had just revealed to them.
There was a long silence as they digested the information.
"What's the catch?" Desmond asked abruptly, his eyes narrowed at the three engineers, Paulson and Jericho. "I wasn't born yesterday. Nothing this good is ever free."
Somah paused and sucked in a breath before answering, "You'll need to have a UNL installed in the base of your spine. Which means you'll need to consent to Doctor Dala cutting you open and putting it in. And as Jericho can attest, she doesn't have the best track record."
"You can say that again," Jericho groused as he wiped the results of Scott's bloodied nose off on his synth-suit. He still winced with every step, the muscle graft making every moment an exercise in resisting agony.
"Seconded. Check yer head after she's done. Love 'er to death, but she has a nasty habit o' stealin' people's brains while they ain't lookin'," the Courier commented blithely.
There was a second, longer silence as they all weighed the risks.
"Can I get one with the Confederate Crossed-Rifles emblem on it?" Latchkey eventually asked in his southern drawl.
Somah raised one eyebrow against the backdrop of her dark black skin.
"…Yes?" she hazarded.
"Sold!"