Notes to be added here.

A to Z

DCS: Direction, Coordination and Supervision.

Enclaven: The Enclave. Enclaven is the actually Enclave Government. The Enclaves are great hidden colonies of the Enclaven. Otherwise canon.

Jadekin: Main Character, metahuman, genetically engineered field operative of the mysterious New Earth Union, the NEU.

0001

Jadekin leaped to one side and the bullets zipped through the air where he had been crouching low on a hard red boulder. He landed, rolling, behind a slanted and rusted NukaCola advertising sign with the NukaColaBoy holding up a softly glowing bottle of the infamous beverage. There was a big, faded sticker across the sign that read: BANNED FOR SALE BY AUTHORITY OF GOVERNMENT EDICT 1265409-1232. He came up in a crouch, took the hand-grenade out, pulled out its pin and hurled it over the sign. There was a muffled sound of cursing and then, seconds later, an explosion.

He wore good strong, hardened leather armor, combat boots and pouch dotted belts. That is he looked like a typical Wastelander of the area. The young man was hot and sweaty because it was a hot, bright day.

More 5.6mm calibre bullets exploded off the sign and one smashed through a rusted area but it was nowhere close to where Jadekin was. He moved with amazing speed across the toxic ground, past the decaying body of a big, dead radscorpion and rolled across the same ground. As he rolled he aimed, and fired, his large, powerful revolver.

Three bandits were running towards him. Only one had a gun, an old AKM16 assault-rifle that was well looked after by the looks of it. The bandit seemed to be looking after it more than he looked after himself. One of his special bullets, from the big Magnum .44 revolver pistol, struck the ugly man with the assault-rifle and killed him. The other two bandits, both with crossbows built in one of the settlements, were visibly startled and they lost focus on their enemy for a critical moment. It was enough and Jadekin shot each of them so that they also died.

The hand-grenade explosion had killed two other bandits, both brutal brutalized women. Jadekin wrinkled his nose at their stink. Around him stretched Wastelands of what had once been New Mexico of what had been the United States of America. Mutated jungles competed with slowly decaying city structures of self repairing smart materials. Radroaches scuttled over atomic motorized hovercars and smaller, more basic electric Ecars. It was daylight still and ghouls did not come out in the sunshine unless they had to do so.

Jadekin grabbed up his cowboy type hat and his back, picked up the dropped assault-rifle and made it vanish with a sparkling shimmer, then did the same with the two crossbows. He grabbed any valuable and-or useful items like Emergency Issue Dollars, a golden ring, bullets, some dried muttfruit, an eating knife, a spork, a combat knife that needed sharpening, boots, boot laces, a cap and a few other items. They all disappeared bit more was left behind than was taken.

That was one of those tricks that he had been born with, that he could not explain, along with the voice in his head that gave him orders, that told him how many credits, debits, merits, demerits or anything else he had earned, good or bad.

=-DCS wishes for you to start traveling to the area that was known as the District of Columbia, or just 'DC'. You will be given further instructions. Please continue your on going missions. You have gained 100 credits and now have a balance of 1,245 credits.

DCS stood for Direction, Coordination and Supervision. It was a name that said nothing to identify itself as was intended.

Jadekin scowled but he headed out. He did not want to be around the bodies, and remaining loot, that would both attract unwanted attention.

Interesting Maharg.

Thanks for the positive feedback, bosmight342

0002

He would sell looted items at the nearest markets he found or to the nearest trader or anybody else who would buy them. Unless that is he used items for bribery or for straight out trade. Sometimes, on impulse, he just gave things away.

When he found the empty, cool, underground chamber he sat quietly with his back to a wall and gulped down some water from a canteen he took out of the compact backpack. The canteen went back into it and then out came two foodbars of high nutritional quality but only dull flavoring.

Some normal cockroaches scuttled across the floor. A big black spider was high in a cobweb in a corner of the ceiling. The slowly rusting wreckage of a roboremote lay in a corner, a dumb robot as controlled either by humans or smart computers or both.

=-The roboremote in the chamber with you. DCS wants you to examine it after you have rested. DCS wishes you to travel to the area known as the District of Columbia. Assistance will be provided.

He hoped that this did not mean teleportation. He hated teleportation because it was damned painful and he always felt sore and nauseous for hours afterward. Jadekin was getting more used to it, more resistant to the after effects, as DCS predicted he would. He had only been out in the field for just over three years as he made his way from his first appearance point, in what had been Panama, up to New Mexico.

There were worse than bandits out there. From traders, settlers, tribals and others he had learned of the slavery based New Confederacy that used ghouls as slaves. Trouble was they also took on humans as so called bonded labor and they were not much better treated than the poor ghouls were. He had no desire to run into New Confederate slavers, who also grabbed human prisoners to be turned into bonded labor.

Which was when he heard them and was grateful that they were loud, especially to his enhanced metahuman hearing. He slipped through the building and came to a position where he could see them. There were four NC battlebuggies, big semi-enclosed armored four wheel drive machines, one with six wheels and the other three each with four wheels. The machines were much bashed around and their biofuel fueled engines spat out thick exhaust fumes. They flew small New Confederacy flags, almost identical to the original Confederacy flags of centuries ago. These were no low grade slavers or even any kind of slavers. No, these were elite NC Rangers who were well equipped with metallic body-armor and automatic weapons along with a couple of lasers. Yes, he also spotted a missile launcher and a grenadeshell launchergun.

Then he saw the strange, clumsy looking array on top of the first vehicle. Primitive, and bulky, but it was a device that these soldiers were using to trace more subtle kinds of energies. Nothing that he knew of the NC indicated that they had anything near the technologies needed to make even a crude and basic device like the one he was looking at.

The lead vehicle began to slow, to turn towards the building he was in.

0003

=-Run! Hide!

The advise was not needed as he was already on the run, was racing back down into the depths of the ruined but largely intact building structure. He moved with surprising speed, agility and lightness so as to leave very few traces behind of his passing. Then again he was a metahuman. There was also his very strong desire to survive, the same drive that had gotten him through the process that accelerated his growth so that he looked about twenty when he was actually ten years old; not all survived the process and if they did, many were damaged badly in some way, were given other duties to do or were terminated.

He dropped through a hole in a floor, landed amongst some skeletal remains of ghouls, and ran through a basemant level where huge old machines slowly rusted away. The former USA, of the Thirteen Commonwealths, had been heavily industrialized in places. That part of New Mexico had been one of them. WestTek Corporation signs supported that idea though the huge industrial park had been used by more than one corporation.

=-My sensors indicate another metahuman is leading a group of humans into the building. A rogue metahuman, a traitor.

A traitor? Jadekin considered such a term with dark irony. A traitor to a supposedly great cause that engineered children, like himself, and turned them into older metahumans using a very painful process that not all of the children lived through and not all of those who lived, survived in a wholesome manner. What cause? Project AlphaOmega of the New Earth Union. With exotic technologies, deeply hidden bases of operations and other resources, who could really oppose them? The Enclaven, perhaps. The Institute of the DomniCommonwealth, often known just as 'The Commonwealth', the Brotherhood of Steel or the League of New Republics? That was in the former USA, in the former Thirteen Commonwealths, but what of other forces around that poor devastated world? In Panama he had been forced to deal with the Oligarchy Kings who lived in large ships trapped in the Panama Canol. There had been other threats on the way north but none of them could match the power of the NEU.

=-Sensors indicate they are following you, somehow. They could have picked up some residue energy splash of the teleportation process that brought you, to this area a day ago, and that might explain it but there could be another reason. Metahumans can sometimes 'sense' the presence of other metahumans. You must escape for you are needed to go to the District of Columbia, the DC, and find a place called TekVault0101 or just Vault 101 for short. There you must meet with a man called Professor James Eastwood and also to find out about a child of his that was born outside of TekVault0101.

Suddenly he knew who the rogue metahuman was and it was not good news. Quakeman was one of those metahumans who went dangerously insane during his growth acceleration process but in a subtle way that got past all of the special psychological safety security tests that followed the process. His kind were thankfully rare. For once Jadekin was supportive of the term 'rogue' for he knew of a few so called 'rogue metahumans' whose only crime had been to want to be free.

Quakeman was a monster, a psychopathic killer with an amazingly cunning mind backed up by high intelligence, enhanced abilities and a powerful desire to carry out his own warped goals, what ever they actually might be.

Its really interesting how you combine Fallout with Sci FI. I can also sense a little bit of Cyberpunk themes.

Thanks again, bosmight342, for the positive feedback! This time I tried to keep my posts shorter than in my former topics.