Adventures of the Wild East : Fallout Series Discussion

» Fri May 13, 2011 2:53 pm

WITH SOME HELP FROM SOME POLICETRONS AND SURPRISE PRIZES

The policetron robots were deactivated and reprogrammed. Now five policetrons stomped along with Samantha, Argyle and Herbert down into the basemant levels. They were soon making their way over and past dead supermutants of varied types, including zentaurs. What had killed them? The five smashed sentrybots gave a clue. The supermutants must have decided, in their own slow fashion, not to go to that area any more. If they had persisted, they would have won and would have gained much valuable loot.

The other threat came charging at them in the form of ghoulified SWAT Troopers, ghoulers who were more savage than typical ghouls but who were able to use weapons and othe devices, like zhouls. The policetrons fired off volleys of rocklets and beams almost as one. The distorted humans fell even as they tried to shoot empty weapons at the robots, their bodies jerking and dying.

Argyle scowled for he knew that in some ways he was not far off being a ghouler and perhaps he would have become one if Herbert Daring Dashwood had not been there.

They searched the area and came up with some nice loot. They even found two MrPortys to carry the extra stuff. A prototype police android, a sixless armoured humanoid of a kind known as a policetrola, was also claimed along with weapons, tools, body-armour, books, holotapes, audiotapes, datadisks, datatapes and much else. Policetrolas had been only manufactured in a few thousands when Doomsday took place and only about a hundred had been actually sent into the field for real situation trials.

When they found the AlphaOmega Chamber with the strange cradle and vanished other mechanism, it was not the first such they had ever found or learned of. On Doomsday many people had used a secret escape system of vanishing AlphaOmega globe-capsules to escape to some unknown place. Only a limited list of people had been given access to the small, large or medium globe-capsules and in that place a medium version had gone somewhere. Herbert scowled and shook his head as if sensing something that he did not like.

He spoke. "AlphaOmega remains a mystery for another time though some data we have found here might assist later."

Samantha nodded. "Will you ever tell us more of your suspicions of AlphaOmega?"

Herbert gave along sigh and then he nodded. "The damned fools probably thought they were being very clever. I suspect very strongly AlphaOmega Project was sending people, equipment and supplies to what one might call a mirror-verse reality to this one, a kind of mirrored Alternate Earth. It is more complicated as it sounds and more dangerous than these overly clever fools probably guessed. Despite my suspicions, I hope that everything did work out at least reasonably okay for those who escaped and for the domain that they escaped to. We have people to rescue. Lets focus on that."

They were soon moving on but now with an android and robots to assist them in various ways.

» Fri May 13, 2011 4:57 am

RESCUING SHORTY AND COMPANY

They came from a direction that the supermutants had not expected any real threat from. They shot down three of the hulking monsters before the other two could even react properly. The large kitchen chamber echoed with gunfire and Shorty, the Bigtowner, and some other Wastelanders, cringed in a corner. They were crouched with arms tied behind their backs.

Argyle blew holes in one supermutant with his rocketgun while Samantha used her exotic weapon to do the same to another supermutant.

There was Shorty, a Bigtowner, along with three gangers and two settlers. All of them were relieved but exhausted and had been badly handled by the brutish supermutants; ironically much of this was accidental for the supermutants had meant to keep their prisoners in relatively good condition.

Gangers were often confused with raiders but gangers came from the original PreDoomsday gangs of the area and were exceedingly territorial while raiders came from outside and were far more flexible in their territorial ambitions. The settlers were from a scavenger hamlet called Goober Gabe that was not marked on most maps. To them it was of grand importance, though, and they wanted to go home. Herbert Daring Dashwood promised to do what he could to serve their cause justly. Argyle and Samantha wondered at how he put this, at the words he chose, but said nothing while the settlers were pleased by this response.

Shorty was happy to have his gag removed. "Yep, that was a real downer. Them supermutants get worse every day. They come and grab up us Bigtowners even though we fight hard to stop them from doing so. We got to do something about these supermutants. I would do more but look at me, how short I am. So I do my bit by keeping out of the way. A man has to do what he has to do. Some of the others think I am useless, that I do not do my fair share of working or fighting, but they do not understand the situation proper like. I don't work so that others are more inspired to do so. I don't fight so that others have more reason to do so."

Argyle threatened Shorty with returning the gag so as to shut him up. Shorty frowned hard but he became quiet.

They looted the dead supermutants of anything useful and looted other items from the big old kitchen, finding an active storage status box in the pantry cupboard full of perisable but still fresh food rations. Supermutants preferred eating radroach meat, muttfruit and other such stuff but they did eat human type rations. Yet Herbert had the impression that these rations were not for the supermutants or for prisoners either.

» Fri May 13, 2011 1:36 pm

FINDING RED AND OTHERS

Finding the prison cells and Red, along with some other captives, was surprising easy after they left the kitchen. Herbert, Samantha, Argle, Shorty, the two settlers and three gangers went armed along a hallway, turned and went along a longer hallway to then find the cells. They passed through an area dotted with the skeletal remains of long dead police officers and it was clear that a savage firefight had taken place there a long time ago. They only found out what had killed so many police officers when they began to come across the remains of wild humans in crazy body-armour carrying a wide range of weapon types. There were many more dead attackers than there were police officers but perhaps at first they had taken the police by surprise.

There was Red and eight settlers, a trader, a mercenary guard who had been with the trader and a Regulator, one of the law enforcers of the DC Wastelands.

Red was a shortish slim black woman wearing dull dark red overalls and a grim expression. She frowned hard at Shorty. "You fool! If you hadn't of panicked than the supermutants would not have caught us. You screamed and ran right out to where they could see you. Why we took you back after you escaped from the supermutants last time, I do not know."

Herbert sighed. "Because your minds were under a dark, powerful but subtle form of psychic influence for this is not the real Shorty."

Suddenly Shorty was moving with surprising great speed, power and agility. He knocked down one of the gangers and hurled himself towards a door as bullets hammered into him. He took a surprisingly large amount of damage before falling to a volley of rocket-bullets. He shimmered and changed as he died, becoming a sixless doppleganger thing with dark goo flesh.

Herbert crouched besides the doppelganger. "A mere puppet of an exterior force, this poor cloned thing had no real self-awareness, no real power to make decisions. Let the Light decide its true fate."

The thing glowed with white light for a moment and then it sat up looking like a younger version of Red, like a young female teenager in dull, dark red coveralls. She smiled sweetly around at the others and then she spoke to Herbert. "A Shadowman is here in the Germantown Police Complex. He controls the supermutants, though at times with difficulty, and has them bring captive humans here before they are sent by special means to TekVault0087 where they are processed into more supermutants. The 'special means' are an experimental teleportation hub of a secret teleportation network that the US Government was working on before Doomsday took place. The teleport hub is not totally functional but it is still actively linked with five other places, including TekVault0087, TekVault0101, TekVault200, the Pentagon and something called Ikarus Station."

Herbert nodded. "Rane will be your name, little sister to Red, and you will come with us."

Red studied Rane closely for a moment and then nodded. "Rane, yes it would be good to have a sister. Come on."

They set out and now the others, apart from Samantha and Argyle you knew him well, had a far greater respect and even fear of Herbert Daring Dashwood.

» Fri May 13, 2011 1:14 pm

FINDING THE REAL SHORTY

They found the real Shorty inside a strange capsule device that was part of a crazy, intricate cloning machine that looked as if it had been hastily put together from parts of many other machines. Herbert Daring Dashwood was visibly not impressed. He managed to release the real Shorty from the capsule, an individual who was not of great character. Red slapped Shorty across the face and he kept his distance from her after that. Herbert examined the strange jury-rigged machines in the big chamber and soon made it clear he considered them all to be the twisted, dangerous products of a warped super genius. A Shadowman could be such a one as the avatar, the puppet, of a Shadowlord.

Why had the machines been put together there? They had been used to create a small army of exotic clones equipped with power armour, energy weapons and other devices. The jury-rigged machines had created also robots of different kinds to assist them including battle robots, cargo carriers and troop carriers.

The gangers and settlers wanted to know why Herbert Daring Dashwood did not use the machines himself. Then he opened up three machines to show them the poor deformed, twisted cloned flesh that made up the core of the machines. Such was the twisted evil expressed in what they saw, that there were no more protests. Part of this awareness was because of the influence of Herbert.

Herbert summoned the Light and the machine cloned things died peacefully, as they wished, and the machines crumbled inwards, imploding.

Argyle frowned. "This Shadowman, was he the force that killed the EageEnclaven troopers?"

"I expect so." Herbert shook his head in a mixture of wonder and disgust. "Now decisions must be made about who of us are to go where. The partly functioning teleport hub is hidden behind that false wall over there. The Shadowman and his army of twisted clones vanished through it along with a force of supermutants under his control."

Samantha spoke very softly, knowing that Herbert would hear her voice anyway. "The secret assistant again?"

They did not normally speak openly of this one but Herbert just nodded this time.

» Fri May 13, 2011 5:54 pm

USING THE TELEPORT HUB; GOING TO IKARUS STATION

They used the hidden Teleport Hub to travel almost instantly to distant Ikarus Station. Ikarus Station floated in the sky very high in the atmosphere. It was much closer to vacuum and low orbit than it was to the DC Wastelands far below. Great solar panel arrays fed it energy and the solar power station made up over a third of the whole station. It was a gracefully ugly construction, a great antigrav boosted disk that was very large but not huge, it also had special liftergas semirigid spheres. It had been a scientific research and observation platform that before Doomsday had been taken over by the military.

It had been abandoned but now there was a garrison of Brothers of Steel there including some of their Sages and Scribes. They had used the Teleport Hub in the Old Pentagon to come up to the aerostation.

The Teleport Hub in the aerostation had fully functional links to thirteen other Teleport Hubs in the DC Wastelands and was able to send the settlers and gangers back to at least fairly close to their own territories. They were sent to Teleport Hubs that were guarded by the Brotherhood of Steel. The Regulator, the trader, the mercenary and the Bigtowners staid with Herbert, Argyle and Samantha for now.

Herbert quietly and efficiently helped the Brotherhood of Steel to take firmer control of the flying station and even opened up access to various areas once closed to them including weapon network-systems and spy network-systems. As soon as the new network-systems were fully active and on line, the search for EagleEnclave and supermutant acitivity in the DC Wastelands began.

» Fri May 13, 2011 4:41 pm

THE REGULATOR, THE TRADER AND THE MERCENARY

The Regulator, the Trader and the Mercenary were not what they seemed. Herbert had sensed it had once and both Samantha and Argyle had picked it up fairly soon. The Regulator, a man, and the other two who were women, moved together too fluidly as if they were almost as one. Also they did not talk very much and yet seemed to communicate well anyway even when there was no obvious way they had done so. They turned out to be Unity, a new subspecies of humanity with a secondary shared mentality.

UnityFree was what they spoke of when confronted by Herbert and also UnityNetwork, UnityMind and UnityHub. They had also received odd visions of TekVault0087 that had both concerned them and drawn them to send an expedition. The expedition had ran into trouble with a Shadowman, for there was more than one such out there. Two Unityfolk had been wounded enought to be teleported back to UnityHub and the other three had been knocked out. They had been captured by supermutants. The other two Unityfolk had also pretended to be Regulators.

Herbert had known of the existence of Unity for a long time and had some dealings with various factions of them before because they were splintered into factions though these factions worked together against major common threats and for major common needs. Argyle did not trust them much and Samantha seemed indifferent to them. Herbert tended to get on quite well with Unityfolk and very well with one faction that was UnityFree. On a big semi-enclosed multiple purpose deck he stood next to a robotic missile turret and studied the three Unityfolk with a calm smile.

"I suggest that we work together." Herbert spoke to all three of them but 'sensed' that Jashana the trader was the leader of the three, as far as Unityfree did have leaders. "We find out what has drawn us towards TekVault0087. We find out about these Shadowmen. We find out about why the EagleEnclave seems so eager to get to TekVault0087."

After a very brief pause, red-brown skinned Jashana nodded. "Yes, we agree to this idea though we have less trust in Argyle the ghouls and Samantha the super-android than you do."

Herbert nodded. "Your previous conflict with a network of advanced androids should not blind you to the fact that Samantha is of the Enlightened Android Circle. As for Argyle, he is trustworthy for sure. We can choose to use the TeleportHub but that may land us directly into danger."

The fake Regulator, Osmond, spoke then gruffly and quite in character. "We may have a much better plan to get into TekVault0087 that will leave the TeleportHub in TekVault0087 as a possible escape route."

It sounded good.

» Fri May 13, 2011 6:59 am

I always liked your stories Maharg, glad this is still going

.

» Fri May 13, 2011 11:10 am

Josh gro-Graz, thanks for the positive feedback. It is always appreciated. :thumbsup:

» Fri May 13, 2011 9:59 am

GLIDING TO THE GROUND AND GOING TO BIGTOWN

Reluctantly the Brotherhood of Steel allowed them to take an emergency gliderboat (amphibious capacity for landing in deep water) and glide through the air, flying gracefully and quietly with only the humming of two small electric motors driving propellors. They landed the machine, as agreed, close to a squad of Brothers of Steel who would make sure the gliderboat was returned somehow to Ikarus Station. They were just a couple of kilometres from Bigtown but first they took time to greet and exchange information with the squad.

Despite almost running into a group of supermutants, they made good time and were soon in Bigtown again. There everybody happily welcomed Red and almost sort of reluctantly welcomed Shorty. The newcomers were given a reasonable condition house to stay in. Almost at once the newcomers began to further assist the Bigtowners. Some tech was fixed, defensive walls fixed up and some supplies given over to Red for her clinic and to others for the workshop-workroom. They fixed up a holoprojector and gave some pulselaser guns to the guards. They fixed up a MrHandy robot that would in turn assist the Bigtowners to fix yet more stuff. They helped in other ways.

They did not speak to the Bigtowners of Ikarus Station and Red went along with this happily enough. Shorty went along with this unhappily after he was threatened.

The expedition would go into the Lamplight Caverns and deeper to Little Lamplight. Red and Shorty would stay at Bigtown because Red was needed and nobody wanted Shorty to go, himself least of all.

They were still at Bigtown when Sarah Lyons arrived with her force of Brothers of Steel. They were slightly reduced in numbers, were more worn, but they were mostly fine. With them came some new allies and some old allies. The nature of some of the newcomers surprised even Herbert Daring Dashwood.

» Fri May 13, 2011 9:10 am

NEW ALLIES ARRIVE AT BIGTOWN

With Sarah Lyons and her people came a platoon of Reilly's Rangers mercenaries but also a platoon of ghoulified National Guardsmen who had survived since Doomsday. They brought their armoured vehicles, robots and also some combat androids that looked like androids with metallic green skin; they were hairless. These were not human like replicants. The National Guardsmen had started to serve the Brotherhood of Steel thanks to the changing attitude of the DC Brotherhood. The Reilly's Rangers did not care, had often worked with ghouls who served as local guides or even mercs. Reluctantly Reilly's Rangers were expanding numbers in response to growing demands on their services and growing threats against them.

The Bigtowers were overwhelmed by all of the newcomers and yet they welcomed them, especially when the newcomers assisted to fix up Bigtown some more. The combat androids were drawn to be with Samantha as if detecting that she was a 'cousin' of theirs. Argyle was soon with the National Guard ghouls and Reilly's Rangers. The Brotherhood of Steel Troopers tended to keep to themselves.

Herbert was standing in a newly built squat, armoured guard-tower when he was joined by Sarah Lyons. She was in Brotherhood of Steel combat fatigues and body-armour, not her power armour. Herbert was scanning the distance with scan-bincoulars, that is away from the quite close cliff face and main entrance to the Lamplight Caverns.

Sarah Lyons spoke, getting to the point. "The story that the Bigtowners tell of Little Lamplight makes no sense."

"You mean how is it that new Little Lamplighters appear when there are only children in Little Lamplight or how does it seem that Little Lamplighters spend far too many years as children before they come out of the caverns." Herbert responded. "There are supermutants out there, a large group of them, and with them are zentaurs but also other things. They will be attacking Bigtown altogether too soon."

It was dim with not only an approach to night but thick storm clouds broiling overhead. Heavy rains would come along with high winds and much lightening but the supermutants would not attack during the actual storm for they were frightened of such things.

Herbert changed subjects. "The mystery of Little Lamplight and the Little Lamplighters will not be fully solved until we get to Little Lamplight. This is because those Little Lamplighters who leave to come here to Bigtown have many memories wiped by some kind of process that is unknown to me though I have my suspicions. The Little Lamplighters will not let us in unless we doing something for them. They have many defences including turrets, rail-turrets, roboremotes and robots along with some surprisingly tough Little Lamplighters. The Bigtowners have told me that four Little Lamplighters were taken by slavers, most likely to Paradise Falls. We need to go and rescue or even buy those special children in hopes of convincing the Little Lamplight Leadership to allow us into Little Lamplight. From there we can go to TekVault0087 though the going will not be easy. It will be through Murder Pass that has supermutant sentries, turrets and some robots. The only thing on our side is that the robots and turrets are not friendly to the supermutants and visaversa."

Sarah Lyons nodded. "We had better prepare for the storm. These Bigtowners are quite hopeless."

Herbert sighed. "If your mind had been blasted the way their minds have been, you could easily be the same. They were sent to Bigtown to be captured by supermutants for in their minds I have found secret programming making it more difficult for them to defend themselves from any attackers. I have been carefully healing their minds and removing the monstrous, damaging form of programming that they have been subjected to. I have no doubt that a Shadowman is behind what was done to them."

The Brotherhood of Steel Knight cursed. "You can deal with Shadowmen. I will deal with more mortal enemies of the kind I am trained and experienced to deal with."

Herbert replied with a mild grin. "Most wise of you."