CHAPTER 18
Ambushed
Grey updated Danse as they left Greentop Nursery. He took the information in stride, almost as if he'd expected as much. She wondered how much of that was Wasteland pragmatism and how much was a finely crafted commanding officer facade.
Nate had had that facade. Always a smile, a joke, stern reassurance, even as the walls caved in around them. People instinctively looked to their leaders for signs of danger or alarm. And leaders, if they were effective, instinctively learned to hide their fears and the gravity of the situation from their men. It ensured perseverance, even when the odds were stacked against them. The Paladin didn't need to protect her though; she knew better than most how to cope with disappointment.
Danse had given her a list of frequencies to monitor, everything from emergency Brotherhood bands to distress beacons. Her Pip-Boy churned through the stations on a loop, each feeding nothing but static back over her internal comm.
The pavement was uneven underfoot, cracked and dried and collapsing from beneath. Grey had grown more used to it over the past couple of months, but in her first two weeks out of the Vault she'd spent more time on her knees and ass than she'd ever be willing to admit. As she carefully maneuvered another pothole, she glanced up and ground to a halt. Danse's arm was extended, preventing their advancement. Grey immediately scanned the terrain, quickly spotting Dogmeat ahead, hackles raised and ears flattened to his skull.
She clicked off her safety.
The roundabout loomed in the distance. Burnt and gnarled bushes sprouted from the island, the hallowed remnants of a maple erupting from the centre. The rusted shell of a bus rested to the right. Everything was quiet. Only the glint of late-morning light reflected off what remained of the traffic signs. Something had Dogmeat on edge though and they'd both be fools to ignore the instincts of a Wasteland mutt.
Danse signalled for her to go to the right before raising his rifle, the gentle hum of its fusion cell cutting through the stillness.
She took an uneasy step forward, each movement a thundering cry. It was chilling, the Wasteland silence. She'd never realized how noisy pre-war life had been until she'd walked through the ruins of Boston on her way to Fenway Park. Every sound had reverberated, crawling up her spine and sending adrenaline through her veins. Every shifting steel beam, every gunshot, every breath. She swallowed sharply.
Dogmeat pressed to her side as she veered right of the bus. The frequencies continued to cycle. With each static click, she pressed her teeth tighter.
Dogmeat growled.
Grey's gun instantly swivelled to the bus window. There was something inside. She could see bits of pink and grey over the lip of the warped metal. Whatever it was, it was unmoving.
She stepped toward the open doors.
A gunshot sounded.
Danse pivoted as jaws leapt at him from the bushes. Gnawing fangs scraped along his forearm, slobber flecking his display. Before he could pull free, something else grabbed hold of his leg. Bone grated on steel. He fired blindly, laser hitting the gnarled maple. He kicked out and something yelped. Before he could turn, something else launched itself onto his back, sending him into the tree. Teeth scraped against his helmet seals, sensors flashing red.
He reversed his thrusters, the weight from his back hitting the ground with a fleshy thwack. Something new pulled at his rifle, nearly tearing it from his hands. He swivelled, resisting, globs of saliva burning into his visor. More teeth appeared, jutting from a mess of torn flesh and bone. Blackened eyes stared at him. Their bodies were all twisted muscle and patchy fur, jaws snapping and throats growling.
He cleaved the butt of his rifle into the nearest mutt's head, its teeth finally releasing from his leg. The other two howled in response, hackles rising. A spiked collar hung from one's neck, the other adorned in dented metal and crude leather. Not feral strays, but kept dogs. Attack dogs. Which meant their masters weren't far. He felt his pulse quicken.
He fired a warning shot at the mutts, but neither were deterred. His second shot seared off what remained of the collared one's snout. The remaining mutt didn't wait for the third shot, tearing down the road and into the burnt grass.
"We've been ambushed!" Danse shouted over the comm as he ran toward the bus.
Silence answered.
"Knight, I repeat, we're under—"
The words died in his throat as he rounded the fender. Grey stood over a motionless body, its limbs peppered in track marks and face obscured by dirt and tattoos. A pipe rifle was entwined through its fingers. Dogmeat continued to ravage the other raider's neck. Her body was limp, blood splashed across her leathers and seeping through the Shepherd's teeth.
"That's enough." Grey's words were barely a breath, but Dogmeat promptly unlatched his jaws and trotted to her side. She stroked his head with her armour-clad fingers, his tail wagging contently.
"Not much of an ambush," Danse said.
"Not much of a challenge either. If only all raiders were such light sleep—" Grey turned sharply, facing southwest. "Do you hear…"
She bolted before finishing her sentence. Danse blindly followed.
They raced down the western road, Malden erupting in the distance. The Med-Tek building got closer and closer and Danse felt his gut tighten, but then Grey veered right, into the brush. Her steps slowed, armour twisting side to side. Scanning, he realized. But for what?
The distress beacon pulsed in Grey's ear, signal improving with each step. It led them into a blasted out forest, a maze of scorched earth and knotted bark. Branches snapped underfoot like dry plastic. She bit the inside of her cheek. Something else snapped beneath her foot then. Not wood though. Something denser, something…
She peered down at the broken femur beneath her weight. Scraps of faded green fatigues hung from the remains, skull partially crushed and phalanges dug into the blackened soil. She stepped back, her power armour stabilizing. There were bodies everywhere, skeletons long picked clean, forgotten in what remained of Malden's outskirts. Army men and women, blasted apart. But these weren't recent dead. Likely victims of the nuclear strike or whatever came after. Dead for decades if not centuries.
The distress beacon was strong there though, loud and rapid in her ear. So if it wasn't the skeletons then…
Danse saw the bones first and the juts of brickwork second. Not much remained of the building in the distance, just scabs of foundation and plinth haphazardly enclosed by peeling drywall. Earth-coloured ivy snaked its way through the ruins, like it was trying to reclaim what little remained. This wasn't old-world devastation though. It was fresh, relatively speaking.
Grey tentatively stepped forward, but a gentle hand held her back.
"Hold on," Danse said lightly, releasing her shoulder. "Let's assess the site."
Grey had barely crossed the brick threshold before her Geiger counter started to click. Her foot slipped and she jerked back, peering below. Her stomach churned. She stood in a miniature crater, floor decimated and power armour husks melted into the concrete. A gaunt, grey face peered from the wreckage, skin sunken and peeling like paper. His dogtags had melted into what remained of his chest plate.
Danse approached from behind, helmet scanning. "An explosion tore this building apart. Some kind of high yield detonation. Look at this blast crater!"
Grey pressed her tongue to the top of her mouth, pushing down her disgust. Honestly, she wished she hadn't looked. She had never been what one would have described as squeamish. She didn't have a problem with blood or needles, had seen more than her fair share of twisted and graphic photo evidence. Limbs blown off from IEDs, a man's head cleaved through with a fire axe, bodies so peppered with 5mm rounds that there wasn't enough left to make a positive ID. But it was the Wasteland corpses that turned her stomach. They weren't… right, if that made sense. It probably had something to do with the aftereffects of the nuclear devastation. There likely wasn't enough bacteria and microorganisms left in the soil. Not enough decomposers. So corpses remained for months and years, tissue shrivelling and mummifying instead of bloating and rotting. Wasteland creatures would pick at the remains, tear off the meat and fat while it was still moist. But after a while, not even scavengers could be bothered.
No wonder produce was such a nightmare to grow, Grey mused. Wastelanders couldn't even use the dead for fertilizer.
"Over here," Danse called, drawing her from her thoughts.
He was kneeled next to a suit of fused T-60 power armour, the frame abandoned, no corpse inside.
"This is Brotherhood power armour," he said, voice quieting. "Look, you can still see the insignia. The damage, it's… deliberate." He pushed against the frame, shifting it only slightly but enough to see the melted remnants of the core casing. "They set the fusion cores in their armour to overload. That's what caused the blast." He shook his head. "Why?"
There was a quiet weight to his tone, something mournful. Grey stepped back instinctively. She wasn't sure why. Not wanting to pry? Interfere? She didn't know who these people were, felt no closeness to them. But Danse would, regardless if he knew them or not. That was how the military worked, after all. "Camaraderie", plastered all over the recruitment fliers. A nice lie, one that made people feel connected and valued. Made them feel like their sacrifices and trauma mattered. That it was worth it. She shook her head.
The distress beacon continued to broadcast at an alarming rate, the vibration of it practically dislodging her fillings. She followed the sound until it nearly flatlined, finding a cereal-box-sized transmitter posed next to another burnt-out power armour frame. Another mummified corpse. Tufts of platinum hair contrasted against dark, shrivelled skin. His eyelids were closed and sunken.
Dogmeat butted his nose against the corpse's hand, a yellowed holotape slipping to the floor. Grey released the seals on her forearm plate, gaining access to her Pip-Boy, before retrieving the tape. She played it over the external comm, the sounds of gunfire droning out her clicking Geiger.
There had been an ambush, soldiers outnumbered, power cores failing. Artemis had been pursued. Hunted. They didn't elaborate why. For their armour or supplies perhaps? Orders were given to scuttle the armour. Someone named Varham fell. Another blast. They were told to retreat, to the old military base. A callsign was given. Then nothing. Just static.
Grey ejected the tape.
Danse kneeled before the corpse, expression forlorn. "What a choice. With no armour and no supplies, their chances of survival were low. But that was the right decision. Technology must be protected, no matter the cost." He pulled Varham's tags from his remains.
"That's one hell of a cost," Grey murmured as she injected a small vile of RadAway into her arm. She'd be damned if she ever sacrificed her life for some sprockets and wires. But she wasn't about to tell Danse that. She knew when not to add insult in injury.
They did another sweep of the crater, pocketing the distress pulser and collecting dogtags. There were three empty power armour frames. Three survivors then, providing they had cleared the blast radius in time. After a quick search of the grounds, she decided they must have. All the other remains were too desiccated and decayed to have died within the last decade. So where did the survivors go?
"The recon team made it this far," Danse said, as if reading her mind. "From this position, we could assume they were headed west, toward Malden, but it is possible their pursuers forced them off course. If we can locate the nearest military base—"
"Way ahead of you." Grey activated her onboard map, scanning the rendering and mentally comparing it with her pre-war knowledge. Fort Hagen and Fort Strong were the only two Army bases in the Commonwealth, both of which she'd recently visited and both of which bore no traces of a Brotherhood recon team. There had been a small Air Force contingent at Satellite Station Olivia, but that was miles north. Artemis wouldn't have been traveling south and near Malden if Olivia was their intended destination. That and the raiders there had been dug in too deep to have only acquired the base a few years ago. Navy then? No, their shipyard had been reduced to a crater either during or after the war, and with the USS Constitution auspiciously sticking out of Weatherby Savings & Loan, Grey was keen to keep clear.
There was something she was missing though. That tip-of-the-tongue sensation. Was it a place she'd been? A location she'd discussed? A passing comment by a judge advocate? She closed her eyes, trying to conjure the past. She couldn't help but think there was something ironic about that.
She found herself in her old JAG Corps office. Nate was perched on the corner of her desk in his Army Greens, blue eyes practically sparkling with mischief. He'd been trying to goad her into something, that mix of flirtatious teasing and light humour. Muffled Christmas carols filled the space, another charity or church or children's choir spreading their seasonal propaganda in the main concourse two floors below. Her jaw tightening with the memory, some bits so faded but the sounds so sharp. She remembered her annoyance, her need to keep a neutral face.
It was December 2075. She and Nate had been reviewing their findings, which were, at that juncture, precious little. She'd been picking the Sergeant's brain for over an hour. Anything he could tell her about his old squad, any detail he may have missed. The difficulty was that they didn't quite know what they were looking for. Two soldiers, once the best of friends, were now cast as perpetrator and victim in some bizarre whodunit. A peculiar plot further complicated by falsified records, hinting that something larger was at play, something that went all the way to the top. Except Nate was adamant the squad hadn't been involved in anything requiring covert status or a cover up.
Grey had massaged her nose for the millionth time that day. They needed access to Walsh. Needed to speak to him. Any official questioning would be monitored though, and she couldn't tip anyone off that she was doing more than witness prep and light touch investigation. It was also likely Cantrell had a tail on Walsh in the city or at least a car on his house, so contacting him outside of the office was just as dangerous.
"You said Walsh had family in the Commonwealth. Who exactly?"
"Aunt and Uncle, a few kid cousins, half-sister—well, sometimes her."
Grey had straightened. "Why 'sometimes'?"
"She's with the National Guard."
He'd said that like it was explanation enough.
"And?" Grey'd prompted.
"Right. You're technically a civilian. How do I explained… Before this war, Walsh and the guys always used to tease her about sitting around on the sidelines, and she'd joke that that was where she liked to be. But now…" He shrugged. "I think she's spent more time on the front lines than Walsh and I combined."
"So, on the slim chance she is in town and not getting her ass blown off in Alaska, where exactly would I find her?"
His lips had curled into a smile. "I'll drive."
Grey opened her eyes, map overlay bright across her visor. She zoomed in on the area then traced the path back to Malden. Her eyes lingered on their current location.
"So you were forced off course," she mumbled.
"Knight?"
"I know where they went," she said.
"Then we move out."
As they retraced their steps to the main road, Dogmeat trotting alongside, Grey could still feel the past lick at the corners of her mind. Images of Nate's old Corvega. Them driving into Charlestown, across the northeastern bridge. The feel of the leather beneath her bare legs. His wistful smile as Ella Fitzgerald played over the radio.
Hopefully, she'd have more luck this time than she did in 2075. And considering how that visit went—well, the bar had been set pretty damn low.