Thank you for both your lots of feedback, Kikaimegami. The sensible mutants are meant to be kind of cute but the real cute ones are yet to come. As for Uncle Leo, he will be surely mentioned again for he is important to the story and will be one who in the end will help confront the real enemy of the world, of the DC Wastelands.

TENTY-THREE

President Suzanne Ubama, tall and confident, sat in her chair and looked around at the various VIPs around the big round table. Faces had changed. Positions had shifted. The new USFG had been forced to forget grander long term plans in preference for more practical shorter term plans.

There was Envoy Jand from the Brotherhood of Steel. A new type of position, BofS Envoys were quite busy these days. His robes were like those of a Scribe but of a different colouration.

There was Field Marshal Julien Grey of the USDF that boiled down to the new National Guard. Any plans for such as the Army, Air-Force, Marines, Navy, Sky Guard and Coast Guard were on hold.

There was Envoy Lorral of the Guards of Steel, once known as the Outcasts.

There was Jackson Black from the DCTec Corporation rising out of the ruins of the DC Wastelands with research and development, factories, depots, workshops and other projects.

There was famous, sometimes infamous, 3Dog of GNR.

There was a nervous young man with thick glasses and early greyness to his hair who was the Director of the newly founded United States Demographics Department or USDD. He kept staring at the big fairly detailed holographic 3Dmap projected onto the table that was of the DC Wastelands and directly surrounding areas.

The President opened the file on the table in front of her and frowned softly. "The Wastelander population has turned out to be much higher than anybody assumed it would be. The truth was that many groups lived in old Subway Bunkers, a system of multiple purpose bunkers linked to the Subway Network that helped keep the Subway running but which could serve as shelters. Matter-formers, matter-manipulators, sunlight-lamps, exercise machines, security robots and clever ways of keeping contact with each other, helped thousands survive in the General Hayman to Washington II Subway Stations. These are generally not part of the Subwayer Union but have a loose mutual assistance agreement with them. Over the decades many did join the Subwayers but none were forced to do so."

She frowned some more. "Vault-74 seemed to be a dead end, to be a raider outpost with only a few accessible tunnels. So when BofS sappers dug deeper into it they were surprised to find a fully functioning Vault. Vault-74 is at least as big as Vault-101 and also has over ten thousand people in it. Also like Vault-101 it had a secret secondary vault area but in this case the Vault Dwellers found it and began using it many decades ago. Their experiment was to open the vault door automatically and attract dangerous creatures into the vault using special pheromone spray devices. Yet another indicator of the sickness of the VaultTec Vault Experiments. The Overseer sacrificed his own life to collapse the tunnels from the Vault Entrance Chamber into the rest of the vault. Raiders came but could not get any further."

Suzanne flicked through the glossy sheets of the report complete with 3Dpix. "The Subwayers are more open now about forming an alliance against the Darkman and other threats. They state there are a few million of them but not how many or their nature but we have good reason to believe they have some large exotic minorities so we need to be cautious."

3Dog grinned. "It takes all kinds to fight the good fight."

The President turned to him. "Mr 3Dog, I suggest strongly if you have nothing meaningful to add then say nothing. Security must be a primary concern of the new USA."

3Dog only grinned some more. "Of course but not at the cost of basic democratic rights or safeguards against xenophobia. As for the population of DC Wastelanders, well there is the nearly million in Rivet City thanks to the joining to the settlement of two other ships plus a growing on shore settlement area. The BofS Citadel Settlement has at least half a million people. Canterbury Commons has at least that amount of folks especially now it has been revealed that there is a fully operating Vault close to it. This is Vault-Ormond built by VaultTec for the Ormon Church and had not only an amazingly large amount of supplies in its storage subvaults but a big manufacturing processing centre plus no evil experiments. From what I have seen of the Ormon Orthodoxy and the Ormon way of life, they don't need it. Ormond is the name of the man who founded the Ormon Church who they consider to have been a Saint. The Republic of Dave has fallen to be replaced by the Cooperative Republic with now over two hundred thousand people."

He shrugged. "James Ashworth, the man who helped start Project Purity and who sacrificed himself trying to stop the Enclave getting control of the project, came from Vault-Ormond that the Ormons call the Holy Vault."

Jason Black then spoke with evident annoyance. "So that is how the Canterbury Commons Corporation has been able to supply all of its traders and merchants so readily with goods to sell to the DC Wastelands. This is monopolistic behaviour."

The President frowned hard at the DCTec executive. "Their prices are fair and over all are comparable to those of DCTec. They have been generous with their credit to some settlements, at times to their own cost. Don't make me regret allowing you to come to this meeting, Mr Black." She turned back to the map. "What of this Freedoma and the various bodies serving it? What is Freedoma?"

3Dog responded. "Freedoma is a fortified colony found roughly to the east of here on the coast. It is a colony of people dwelling in the moon in a great network of underground structures. Their ancestors were both American Alliance and Soviet League people sent secretly to the moon who found there some surprising resources that allowed rapid expansion. When contact was lost with the home world, these Lunarites decided survival was better than old frictions and they merged. This is from the PR Briefing I got from Freedoma Central HQ just a couple of hours ago. The Lunarites are here to assist us and to gain assistance from us though what their problems are they refuse to say at this moment."

Mr Black humphed. "Impossible! There are no colonies in the moon. Such a thing could never have happened. It beggars the.."

The President glared at the man again. "Mr Black, if you make one more outburst of this nature you will be expelled from the meeting. The Lunarites have proven themselves by placing a number of large light displays on the surface of the moon and we have seen them, have acknowledged them. I simply did not know of this Freedoma." She turned to 3Dog. "Perhaps you should delay before broadcasting any such PR briefing."

3Dog shook his head. "Sorry Madam President but you promised that GNR would remain free to broadcast anything that does not go against our agreement. Freedoma mostly spoke of goods and services provided by them free or cheap or at reasonable prices. In truth they also promised to assist GNR itself as a sponsor but everything is above board and true to our agreement."

Mr Black snorted in disdain.

The President nodded. "I believe you just as I would like to believe that these Lunarites mean us no harm. I would like to know how they get around so very quickly, so stealthily. They seemed to come out of nowhere. Yet they use technologies that seem largely comparable to our own. Perhaps you would know something of Lunarite technologies, 3Dog."

3Dog steepled his fingers in front of his face and frowned. "There is no good reason that I should do so, Madam President."

But then 2Kitty entered and she looked grim and sad. She stood there as 3Dog looked at her and then looked away from her.

The President spoke with a warmer tone of voice now. "We have been testing you, 3Dog. Of course we will take various peoples on as allies as long as they mean us no harm. That goes for both Lunarites and Subwayers. Do not be hard on her. She simply wanted you to be safe."

3Dog nodded as he stared at his fingers. "I do not talk in my sleep. I am unable to do so for I am genetically engineered. I do not snore and I do not talk in my sleep or sleep walk. Long ago I saved a young girl and she had with her two kittens. That was over a hundred years ago. Then came this young woman who looked much like a grown up version of that girl. She called herself 2Kitty."

2Kitty spoke then. "I am that same girl but was rejuvenated. My cats are those two kittens for they were also rejuvenated. It was part of the agreement to keep you safe. I never said you snored because you don't but you do talk very quietly on odd occasions in Esperanto."

The President nodded. "We found her for you see we are Lunarites ourselves. We come from the Lunar People's Democratic Federation, the LPDF. It replaced the Lunar Regulation Federation, the LRF, that you knew so well. We have been looking for you, 3Dog, or should I say Harold Q/Stane the super genius scientist and engineer. You escaped from the LRF for good reasons. They had found the Lunar Underworld and wanted to make war on the other humans already dwelling there and the aliens such as the peaceful selenites. No, do not frown so, and listen. The selenites, the humans who escaped in antigravity spaceglobes from the Martian Invasion of the 1800s and who were cloned by the selenites, along with the Uri9 Peoples, they became part of the LPDF. Then we found the others, the descendents of Nazi Germans who escaped to the moon in 1946-47 as World War Two was going through its last four years."

She scowled. "They call themselves the PanAxis now and they are clones with a dark joint subconscious drive to replace all other intelligent life, to one day control the whole galaxy and beyond. Yes, they are of the same clone types who now control the Enclave here on Terra. We are at war with them inside the vast labyrinth of the Lunar Underworld. The selenites have large numbers and amazing biotechnologies. The Brotish clone-humans understand their PanAxis cousins too well and hate them. We have replicants, cyborgs and robots assisting us."

"The PanAxis is much like the Enclave here on Earth because there seem to be secret links between them. Perhaps they are the one big family of extreme xenophobic, genocidal clones. They use cloned super soldiers in power armour, robots and clone-cyborgs but also new weapons. Their cyborgs are roboborgs and they also have zozoz, armoured squat saucer shaped robotic weapons with the deadly izozozi inside them."

3Dog nodded. "You want super weapons to use against them?"

The President shook her head. "We want to be able to counter the new super weapons that they are developing against us."

The famous DC Wastelands DJ frowned. "Damned, this is a dream, a very vivid dream but somehow it is also real. A form of dream based empathic-telepathy."

Even as he looked around the room began to waver as did the people, the table and the holographic map. The whole scenario was suddenly seeming less solid, less real and more dream like.

The President nodded. "Yes. I hope to speak to you for real very soon. Yes, I am not the President of the United States of America because she, like many in the new USFG, are Subwayer infiltrators. Yet they are not out to do harm because the Subwayers, who number close to ten million people, are in truth the only ones who can really sustain a new federal government. They want democracy, a constitution and an end to the various threats that face the DC Wastelanders."

3Dog woke up and sat up. 2Kitty was lying on her back next to him with her body covered by the same white sheet he had. She sighed as if expecting trouble and he leaned over and kissed her on her mouth, cheeks and forehead. Then they snuggled up together as she lay against him with her head on his chest.

Then he spoke. "It happened just as you warned me it would. I don't think they realise that you told me."

2Kitty sighed. "They do but they forgave me. They also cut me from the security intelligence network. I will be getting no more information as a Lunarite secret agent. I am now given only the one role and that is to assist you with Galaxy News Radio. I think that is good enough."

He nodded. "I agree."

Then they kissed.

Continued in TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FOUR

Jas was at the main entrance to the Lamplight Caverns when the convoy of vehicles arrived with a few hundred former BigTown residents, animals and some children, all of the other Reilly’s Rangers including Reilly herself, along with all of the other Sisters of Steel and a couple of dozen USFG specialists. These later were a mixture of teachers, social-workers, scholars, artisans and others. The President herself had ordered that Lamplight Caverns be turned into a proper settlement.

The Sisterhood of Steel had been chosen to be the military force in that area to counter trouble there and, unofficially, to be there in case of future trouble with Crosswayne’s people. Reilly’s Rangers had departed permanently from their old base, now an outpost of the new National Guard, and were contracted to assist the SofS.

Moira Brown had come along with Bittercup, her new assistant girlfriend, and her mercenary bodyguard boyfriend. She was determined to start a whole lot of new wonderful projects to help the DC Wastelanders.

The children reluctantly at first blended with the advlts but some knew former BigTowners and anyway the newcomers brought lots of goodies with them. Lucy and Red were soon working out a new clinic together. Mayor MacCready had been allowed to keep the title of Children’s Mayor.

Jas helped here and there, sorted out some arguments, talked briefly with Reilly who was bemused that Jas was actually an extension of Jasmine, and ended up in the big metal chamber examining the machines there once again.

She was convinced that Jas/Jasmine had overlooked something that was right in front of them. The matter-former machine was now producing goods for a bigger population including toys and other small simple gadgets.

The LL-serum was no longer given to the children but Jas had already anolysed it while others wanted to do so. Jas considered the serum to have potentially bad terrible side-effects that had killed a fair few Little Lamplighters over the decades.

The medical machine was a standard roboclinic booth of a kind found in VaultTec Vaults and many other places. The children knew how to fix it and resupply it with items from the matter-former.

The sample taking machine was a sealable medical booth, a toilet and painless blood taker that the children liked to use simply as a toilet because it was clean, private and smelt fresh.

But then there was the capsule, the Pain Stimulation Feedback VR Capsule, or PSF/VRC, or so it was so labelled on the sides. The girl child walked up to the side of it, crouched and tapped an inspection panel. It clicked unlocked and slid to one side with a soft humming noise. She was looking at solid-state circuitry in the form of one big motherboard; on that were daughterboards with CPUs, SPUs, digicards and other hardware along with firmware. She had examined it before and had found nothing odd before. She had even used a handcomputer to run independent diagnostics on it.
Now she was rethinking matters and something niggled at her.

So she tapped the four corners of the big motherboard that covered the back of the cavity in the machine and then she carefully felt around its edge. The secret switch was easy enough to find once she sensed what she was looking for. The motherboard swung open and she stopped in surprise but not shock.

There was a baby figure wrapped in life-support hardware, much of it being living organic in nature being true organotech. A small robotic device stood guard over the baby figure. Next to it was an advlt human brain inside a armaglass dome full of special liquid. There were plenty of solid-state motherboards, plenty of cables including fibre-optics, a console with flashing LEDs, dials, a keyboard and a small 3Dflatscreen. The baby kicked his feet a little and gurbled softly. The robot reached out and tickled his belly softly. The baby wiggled in delight and gurbled some more.

An electronic female voice spoke then. “Thank God! I thought nobody would open that damned fake motherboard door. My name is Elisa. I am the brain you see in front of you. I was one of the scientists working in Vault-87a hidden beneath the official Vault-87. Will you please get somebody older.”

Jas smiled. “I am one body of a multiple body entity. I am much older than you take me for as this is far from my first renewal. I wouldn’t blame you for not believing me as I only recently began to open up to the truth when I began to transform. I am Jas and I am also a young woman called Jasmine and another young woman called Jade. This looks to be a Draken-Sherby type set-up. This is a primitive dreamscape simulation stimulation network-system and, as far as I can note so far, intrinsically unstable and dangerous. This is the Darkman’s style of doing things.”

Elisa responded after a pause. “You speak as if you have seen more advanced set-ups but that is impossible. We are the Stimulation Simulation Sensoscape Project One. The Soviets had something like ours but gave up after their government focused on other forms of hitech. Even so they were way behind us for we had Professor Altman and Doctor Strangelove on our side.”

Jas frowned. “I am over a hundred thousand years old, in the terms of this world. Just thinking about it threatens to give me a headache. Doctor Strangelove is the name of a physically handicapped genius in a wheelchair in the movie of an alternative reality much like this world in many ways.”

The brain spoke again. “Yes, Doctor Strangelove was in a wheelchair and he had a hunched forward position much of the time and an arm that, well, behaved oddly. Some thought it funny but to me it was disturbing. I suppose this being Doctor Strangelove is a feature of our being an alternative reality to that other world.”

Jan shook her head. “No, the Darkman has used the same disguise before on other alternative Earths. He considers such acts to be funny. Doctor Strangelove is probably the Darkman.”

“Was the Darkman!” Elisa sighed electronically. “Professor Altman shot Doctor Strangelove dead. I was there but was too frightened to do anything. Altman was going insane but he was in control of the robots, of the turrets and he had the security forces on his side. So the Darkman must be dead.”

Jan sighed. “Take my word for it, please, the Darkman can not be killed so easily. Chances were that the Darkman, who is a multiple bodied entity like myself, simply sacrificed a poor cloned copy of himself. The Darkman is basically evil. He is sociopathic but at times he can be good, even very good, which makes his evil even worse in some ways. No doubt he helped create the insane VaultTec experiments and even helped cause World War Three.”

“World War Three!” Elisa responded. “What are you talking about?”

The girl child reached out and tickled a baby foot. The baby wiggled in delight. “Your reality has been in some kind of dreamscape much of the time, I take it.”

After a longer pause, Elisa spoke. “The baby boy and I are often in the same dreamscape of Wonderland but we are in the Gingerbread Cottage which is safe because the wicked witch was killed by Hanzel and Grettel. Sometimes the Little Lamplighters visited us when they were trying to hide from the Queen of Roses and her Rosethorn Soldiers. Wonderland is vast but is only part of that whole other world. I do not think this booth could contain it all. Even if you have to let me die, please save the child. I am only a brain in a dome. You can see me. Professor Altman stunned me and when I came to he showed me what I looked like. I screamed and he laughed.”

Jas sighed even more. “Really, what a very nasty cunning man. The brain here is cloned brain tissue biovat grown to fit this system. It is not your brain. Also to be more effective this system needs your whole body which is most likely in a exotank somewhere. No, he simply played on your fears.”

There was yet another pause before Elisa spoke. “If I get my still existing hands on him I will hurt him…”

Jas said; “Tell me more about what has happened and how you don’t know about World War Three.”

Elisa said. “Back in the early 70s the situation for research and development was difficult for a lot of scientists in the USA. There was the tension with the Soviets and with the nationalist and left wing rebels in Mexico which we had annexed by then. The stupid short sighted and narrow minded USFG was focusing its funding on military research and development of the most obvious kind. That is the United States Ministry of Research and Development was doing so. The USMRD was controlled by a pack of comic book loving war hawks who could only think of big robots, big supersonic bombers, big rockets, big atomic cannon battleships, big aircraft carriers, big battletanks, big power armour, big everything that was going to blow away the enemies of the good old USA.”

“Then VaultTec very quietly and unofficially began to recruit scientists, engineers and other specialists for a wide variety of secret projects. The contracts had down sides but were very generous in many ways. What clinched the deal, though, was the proof that if any of us chosen refused to go along then there was a good chance of an awful accident happening. That is we who were not on the unofficial protected list. VaultTec went after one of those and never did it again after a high ranking VaultTec executive was assassinated; he was the one who thought the protected list could be ignored. Some specialists refused and died, some refused and escaped to Canada and most caved in and went to various secret sites with people they were allowed to take. I took twenty people with me, the maximum I could take.”

“Then I was in Vault-87a Subvault-03 where I staid until the rebellion against Professor Altman took place. I don’t even know how things worked out. Altman stunned me and played that nasty joke on me. From then on I spent most of my time in dreamscape or peering through 3Dcams in this booth. Altman set me up so I could access only these 3Dcams for his nasty joke but since I got to see my baby it was fine. Yes he is mine. I managed to keep him alive and happy with some help from an unknown third party. One day the small robot came out of nowhere and began to look after the baby. It takes general orders from me.”

Jas examined the small, very sophisticated and expensive robot. “It not only looks like something the Darkman would make but it has his symbol on it. Like I said, the Darkman does some oddly good things at times for such an evil dude. But then again Darkman is the biological father, isn’t he?”

Elisa responded reluctantly. “I wanted a baby and Doctor Strangelove offered but he insisted we make love three times. He turned out to be an amazingly good lover though dark in some ways. I don’t mean we did nasty things. We made love many times. Then I became pregnant. That was in 1977 when things went funny in the subvault, when Professor Altman began to develop strange powers and to go insane, when he stunned me and I ended up… inside an exotank somewhere.”

She went on. “We worked on various aspects of the new SSSP, the Stimulation Simulation Sensoscape Program or software for the Stimulation Simulation Sensoscape Network System or SSSNS. Though some of the work was interesting it was frustrating because we were trapped in the subvault except for virtual reality and occasional trips to the Respite Subvault, a big lovely garden dome with lots of nice features. But even that was not enough after a few years. Not only that but other aspects of the research were blocked from us and sometimes we had to beg to see data that we actually needed. It was ridiculous. Oh, yes, we were not allowed to know what was happening outside the subvault or the respite place when we were there. No news, no new holomovies, no new anything. Some tried to escape but security was intense and they got caught, got punished and went back to work. Three got terminated but only because they could be spared.”

She went on. “There were about ten thousand of us living in our subvault alone. I don’t know how many there were altogether in Vault-87a. I must return to dreamscape. I am being drawn away…”

Jas returned the motherboard panel to its place and then returned the outer panel to its place. She sat there looking thoughtful for some time.

Continued in TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-FIVE

Rivet City was quiet with only a few lights showing lest it become too easy or too tempting a target for the enemy. The aircraft carrier, a Prewar museum of a naval ship with exhibitions of both the US Navy and Marines, had lights up for the deck as VTOL and STOL aircraft took turns taking off or landing. The fairly large aircraft carrier had both a straight and a slanted flight-deck plus other space to deal with these aircraft plus elevator platforms down to two hanger workshop levels.

Rivet City now flew the new USA Flag, red and white stripes with a single big white star, and beneath it its own flag. Apart from vertibirds and vertijets there were short landing and take off military and civil aircraft of various kinds. There was even a medium sized airship from which people and cargo were being unloaded.

The luxury ocean liner had been part of the maritime museum also but not militarised except for some exhibitions on its use as a troopship in World War Two. Now its cabins, big dining areas and much else served many people as they had done for many decades.

As for the freighter, its holds had long been modified to fit sturdily built but rough looking decks, ramps and other features to make up workshops, the famous Rivet City Markets and much else. An area open to the sun held hydroponic buildings and power wind-wheels slowly spun in the breeze.

Abraham Washington strode along a deck looking out over the very wide river and at the distance bank. It was dark enough for the flashes of anti-aircraft fire to show in the air as the National Guard sent older style aircraft against the enemy. Thankfully the super mutants did not seem to have very good air defences like powerful versatile energy skyguns or SAM (surface to air missile) batteries or even skysweeper guns that could pump out great numbers of shells.

He was pleased that the museum had recently gained a few pieces from the newly found bunker-complex fairly close to the GNR Tower that was now being called simply Bunkertown by many people. He was not so pleased that the war was still being waged. It was one thing to peacefully and safely study history from a distance of time but to be directly involved in one was just too awful.

Rivet City Security Guards had all returned to the ships based settlement from escorting river convoys. National Guardsmen had taken over these duties. The security guards were bolstered by new Rivet City Militia soldiers. The presence of so many armed guards had never pleased Abraham but now the number was at least tripled and the decks of the three larger and various smaller vessels of Rivet City bristled with weapons.

A big mutated electric-eel flashed some silver as it rose briefly above the waves of the river. Such eels were tasty to eat but could kill an advlt human in one good zap of electricity. The radiated condition of the waters had produced mutated fish and other creatures and the people of Rivet City had learned how to fish the near part of the river to gain resources.

Then he saw them coming as they skipped low over the water, big and strange in the darkness, terrible shaped and he sensed danger. He never considered himself a hero and the beasties were coming at him fast but for some reason he did not run. He turned, sensed nobody else had seen the threat, and looked for an alarm but the only one near had a ‘out of order’ sign on it. He cursed but then saw the emergency case. Abraham ripped it open, grabbed up a flare and aiming it roughly over the rushing monsters, he let it off. The flare was a white one and exploded into light, happily, in the right place to show up the great oddly. The next one showed up ranks following them in reddish light.

It was enough. Heavy machineguns, lasers and other weapons opened up from the decks of the ships. Security guards and militia joined in the shooting. The on coming creatures began to explode, to veer off, to crash into the water to flip over. Abraham Washington froze and stared at the many beasties still coming towards him. He did not think to move until he began to..

When the fighting was done and the last of the strange new super mutants had been driven off with out breaching the defences of Rivet City, the new commander of the Rivet City Defence Force strode along a deck. As he did he was speaking to an aid. “You say that the flares were fired in a hurry from this deck but that nobody has claimed responsibility for the action that most likely saved many lives and much destruction.”

The aid nodded. “Twelve Rivet Cityfolk were killed and over fifty were badly wounded by those damned monsters. Some want the big sting ray things to be called skipper mutants because of the way they moved but what of the small super mutant humanoids that rode on them? They had gills but could breathe air.”

“Skipper mutants, don’t like the name. Too much like a ‘skipper’ of a ship.” The commander shrugged. “Stinger mutants because of those stings they threw from their tails and the human sized humanoids, maybe gill mutants. Naming those monsters is not something I want to spend too much energy on doing.”

Then they heard it, the excited noise of a crowd gathered further along the same deck. They fell silent and a mixture of mostly armed guards and soldiers gave them room to move through.

One woman soldier spoke. “Commander, it was Abraham Washington that fired the flares. Who would have thought he had it in him to do this. Nobody thought he was much but a would be historian and museum curator that people visited sometimes when they came to Rivet City. Just goes to show you.”

The commander responded. “Well, I had best thank the…” Then he saw Abraham Washington and he stopped speaking. The big stinger projectile must have killed the old man at once and had driven him with such force against the metal wall that he was upright against it. There was plenty of blood splashed over one of his normally neat jumpers. His head was somehow thrown back and his eyes stared blankly at the sky.

The commander could not think anything to say at first and then he ordered all there, even the civilians, to salute the dead hero. They did almost as one.

The last ever exhibit to be placed in the museum, that had anything to do with Abraham Washington, was the display of his photograph, his medal, and written details of how he had lived, what he had done and how he had died. The last words were a written commitment that Rivet City would not only keep the museum running but that it would be expanded and improved.

Its new name was the Abraham Washington Museum!

Continued in TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SIX

Uncle Leo led the growing following through a great wide highway tunnel. They moved around atomic and electric powered vehicles, past skeletal remains and before them fled feral ghouls. That is except for some who came willingly, passively to become Uncle Leo's followers. The followers scavenged what useful items they could as the convoy moved. There were robots, horse drawn carts, humans on bicycles, ghouls on horses, dogs, others leading pack-brahmins and much else. Super mutants, humans and ghouls now were all robed and, underneath, armoured except for the children and a few others.

The idea was to keep moving, to keep gathering followers and then to rest in some hopefully safe place where they could find more resources. They were in the great labyrinth of Washington DC Subway, utility tunnels and other spaces sometimes known as Undercity DC. It was a Prewar name given to hidden communities of criminals, social misfits, military deserters and others hiding down beneath the city proper. It was said there were long abandoned underground places down there like a whole set of late 1800s train tunnels and Prohibition clubs from the Roaring Twenties or even strange cult temples.

They came upon the tunnel entrance smashed through one wall and to a big rough but cleverly shored up tunnel beyond it. The tunnel sank downwards into the depths and one wall was actually a concrete wall still intact. At least for part of the way. Odd smells and sounds drifted faintly up that tunnel and most of the followers clearly did not wish to go that way.

But with out hesitation Uncle Leo led the whole cavalcade into that high wide tunnel with its clever but crude engineering. Soon they were heading deeper into the depths, deeper into the unknown. As they did they passed strange markings on the wall, many of which glowed in response to electric lights carried by the procession. The markings were not disturbing though and were quite elegantly beautiful.

When a follower asked Uncle Leo what the signs on the walls meant he smiled and said, "They are here to welcome my followers and myself. This tunnel was built for us and where it ends there waits for us many friends."

This message began to circulate and the followers became less fearful.

Continued in TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-SEVEN

Jasmine found a way back to the Lamplight Caverns when she found where the new babies came from that supplied the caverns with fresh generations. The machine was inside a big half dome display as if it was just another exhibit in the amazing museum that the Darkman had set up flat against one wall. A big 3Dflatscreen showed that another baby had just been delivered to the Lamplight Caverns being a dark brown baby boy. Still be processed was a ‘protobino’ child due to be sent to some place called Paradise Deep. The next one on the que was also protobino to be sent to the same place. These protobino babies were albino like and linked to the albino folk she had seen in her vision unblocking a big Vault-87 door in the side of the cliff; or so Jasmine sensed and strongly suspected.

Her link with Jas told her a dark brown baby had just slid down the chute into the arms of Lucy who picked him up at once to give him a cuddle. There were advlts in the big metal chamber now but they gave Lucy the honour of greeting each new baby first.

Fawkes stood to one side of her and he frowned softly. “What is this machine? A Cloneator? I have not heard of such a thing.”

“Hybrid human-alien technologies and I mean more than one kind of alien and more than one world of humanity. The Darkman most like created the blueprints for this and oversaw its manufacture.” Jasmine turned to him. “Have you ever wondered if there are too many super mutants?”

Fawkes nodded. “Where I was created I do not really know. My memories of that and my previous life remain broken and often missing. Yet I do remember that where I was locked away there were only empty tanks of FEV and that there were only a few stupid mutants and a few dead and living failed experiments. Oh, there were some centaurs as well. No transformations of humans into either super mutants or centaurs took place there while I was locked up there.”

She frowned. “We have to go back there. There are a few things that I need to check up on. I have a growing dark suspicion that somebody had pulled a great and horrible joke on the world when it comes to the VaultTec Vaults. That is a dark joke of deception on many levels.”

Then she walked around to the side of the dome where it met the wall and pointed to the wall there. “A secret door! I can sense it and even see it in a fashion.” She reached out and touched the wall in front of her. With a click and then a soft humming noise panel drew back and then slid to one side. “Subtle holographic projections and other trickery kept the door hidden.”

Inside they found a fair sized metallic chamber. There was the top of a metal chute disappearing down and out of sight. There was a bank of machinery including some computer hardware. There was a row of lockers and filing-cabinets. Behind consoles and a desk were office swivel-chairs. Inside three vertical cylinders could be seen two androids, a vaultboy and a vaultgirl, plus a security globebot.

At that moment the Reilly’s Ranger commander came into the room and looked around in curiosity before she walked to stand next to Jasmine. “The platoon has voted. We wish for transformation. The new platoon of former Talon Fists are ready to do something. As for the others, well I am not sure about them. We do not wish to be transformed into something like them.”

“I am sure you won’t be.” Jasmine smiled. “You do not need transforming. You already are because of my influence. You are physically, mentally and psychically enhanced. The transformation I am going through is increasingly influencing others around me. The sensible mutants are getting smarter and wiser.”

Petra gave Jasmine an odd look and then nodded. “They want all of us Rangers to fill out wonderful new forms they have created. I filled out a questionnaire about how high a super mutant would jump if frightened by a mouse. One question asked if the height would be greater if the mouse was white or brown?" She changed subject. "What of the others? That is those who did not turn into blue, green or yellow elementors and … go rushing off to help heal the world.”

Yes, there were the ones who failed the testing. They were transformed into puppetnoids, grey skinned and hairless humanoids who would do anything that Jasmine ordered them to do within limits of their protective code. So far they were in a hibernation like state waiting for their first task.

The platoon leader went on. “A harsh punishment it seems, being turned into a puppetnoid.”

Jasmine shook her head. “For what they did it was a very merciful punishment. [censored], torture, murder, enslavement, theft and much else. Their minds are partly here and partly in another place, divided with their spirits, undergoing other processes. That is all I am able to say on the matter. Let’s take a look around and see what is on offer in this chamber.”

The lockers held jumpsuits, lightly armoured hazmat suits, some caseless bullet firing semiautomatic pistols, some 10mmC ammo in magazines and loose in boxes, a stack of hard porm holotapes, other holotapes, bottles of soft drink including NukaCola, toolkits, medikits, scrap metal, some very small robots, stacks of blank documents, pencils, refillable biros, a NukaCola toy truck and much else.

Jasmine stood back after the lockers were carefully emptied and examined them carefully. Three puppetnoids carried the items from the lockers in plastic carryboxes to where other useful stuff was stored. Petra was a little spooked by the puppetnoids and Jasmine couldn’t blame her for that; they were a little spooky.

Jasmine found the hidden control panel behind a real control panel that swung open. She carefully examined arrays of displays, switches and a keyboard before she began to act with amazing speed. Datasymbols showed up in flowing patterns on a 3Dflatscreen.

With a humming noise the lockers and the wall behind them slid back and then to one side to reveal another chamber, a much bigger one. At the back from them was a three metre wide cylinder shaped armaglass chamber that was nine metres high and yet did not go near reaching the high ceiling. It was on a metre high disk shaped platform that was six metres across. A ramp joined the top of the platform with the floor. Closer to them, on either side of the room, were two rows of machinery. There were computer boxes, consoles and much else.

Closer to them was a pile of skeletal remains in Vault-87 jumpsuits, scientist gear, body-armour and much else of the kind. There were plenty of weapons scattered amongst the lot as if this was a desperate last stand.

Jasmine walked to the mound and frowned softly. “Professor Altman killed these poor souls as he did those who were in the chambers running off the rocky alcove entrance in the cliff face. Except in this case he shot them down with a laser-rifle in the end. Altman was rapidly transforming, was insane with mental and physical agony, was no longer in rational control of his actions. He was a bad man turning evil. He was trying to find and kill the Darkman.”

She turned to the others. “The ramp will let anybody slide down into the big metal chamber in the Lamplight Caverns. This other machine is a teleportation booth, or telebooth, that will hopefully take Fawkes, Dogmeat and I back to where we were before in Vault-87, that is to where Fawkes was locked away.”

Jasmine walked over to a blank area of wall to one side of the telebooth and soon had another secret door opening to expose the top of a spiral rampway tunnel. “This will allow you to go to and from the Lamplight Caverns. The puppetnoids will be under your charge until she discuss these matters with Reilly. Please take care of the sensible mutants. Dogmeat-2 will stay with the sensible mutants.”

Petra sighed. “You mean Dogmeat has divided just as you did into Jas, Jade and yourself. Who is this Jade and where is she?”

“It’s best if I do not say!” Jasmine turned as Dogmeat trotted in and then rubbed his head. “Are you ready to teleport, Dogmeat?”

The big dog barked once, turned and licked Petra on the hand. Petra looked surprised and then she nodded.

Petra spoke. “Yes, I will look after Dogmeat-2 and the sensible mutants. Communications through licking… interesting!”

Jasmine responded. “I hope to be back here soon.”

The three of them went into the telebooth. Jasmine operated the controls on the inside of the booth. There was a sparkling shimmer and they vanished.

Petra turned and went back to the others in the odd museum. There were plenty of things to be done.

Continued in TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-EIGHT

Jade moved quickly over the terrain, past a crumbling church, along a fragmented road and as she ran she left few traces of her passing behind. In stealth power armour the young woman then dropped to her knees behind a broken thrown up mound of rock and dirt. She peered over it in the semidarkness to the arrayed buildings and ruins of Paradise Falls.

In theory Paradise Falls was abandoned, the last slavers have departed, but now she was looking at a large group moving towards a secondary entrance. Marshal Hrashman and a few of his soldiers were there, marching armed and body-armoured. They had captives of ghouls and human Wastelanders. They had enslaver-collars around their necks fitted with explosive devices.

What was Hrashman up to? Was he selling these people but if he was, who to? Had he done such things before?

The group stopped just outside the secondary gate to Paradise Falls. Out of it came armed albino figures in black metallic jumpsuits, black boots, black goggles with odd green lens and strange transparent bubble-helmets on their heads. They carried squat rifle weapons that were electromagnetic railguns of some kind or standard 7.62mm assault-rifles of World War Three vintage. With them came battle globebots each with a M60 machinegun that would fire 7.62mm bullets or a flamer or a missile-launcher.

These albino figures, or protobinos, moved in groups of three with a robot and they soon surrounded the newcomers.

With amazing speed Jade moved closer, darting and slipping through the landscape. She ceasing moving where she could better hear what was going on.

Hrashman stepped forward and looked around with a look of arrogance on his face but he was frightened and angry also, or so Jade sensed. Then the big hulking man from Crosswayne spoke. "I bring more slaves for you to put to work down in the stinking depths of Paradise Deeps but you owe me and if you do not pay there will be no more to come. The slavers have fled to Armageddon Park and they will no longer be of use to you. The robotanks you supplied us with have begun to break down and we find ourselves unable to fix them."

Then an albino woman figure stepped into view. She wore a purple metallic jumpsuit, black boots, black gloves, goggles with green lens and a transparent bubble-helmet. She smiled. "Marshal Hrashman, you sent us inferior slaves. They were sick and were soon dying on us. We suspected you might do something like this so we gave you robotanks that would break down, that you would not be able to repair. You owe us as much as we owe you. You will give us these slaves and we will give you the parts and manuals you need to repair your robotanks with."

Then she changed subject. "You failed to occupy the Lamplight Caverns as we had agreed. You have still not done so."

He shook his head. "Sisters of Steel in power armour! Elite veteran soldiers who could go through my forces like hot knives through butter. Now they are joined by Reilly's Rangers. I brought my forces all the way here to the Lamplight Caverns expecting only to face resistance from children and look what happened. The place was full of power armoured women. And that Jasmine! There ain't something natural about her."

The protobino woman nodded. "Quite the opposite but I do not wish to go into that now. The Darkman is gone from Vault-87. Even the army of super mutants that he left behind under the control of one of his clones is on the way to the National Mall Zone. We will try to find a way for you to get into Vault-87 with out going near Jasmine or her various companions or allies."

He frowned. "Crosswayne is becoming problematic for me. My people have started to question their loyalty to me now that I am no longer there to remind them that they need to stay good followers."

The albino woman sounded disdainful. "You mean that you are not there to oppress your people any more, to demand extreme protection fees, to grab up young women to add temporarily to your harem, to shoot anybody who questions you or your puppet government of pathetic councils."

Hrashman grinned. "I am a strong man and a good fighter. I protect my people. I protect Crosswayne. I deserve some rewards." He lost his grin. "Let us get on with it. I detest the company of your people."

She nodded. "The sooner we part ways the better for you are primitive, selfish and with out true cause."

Jade cursed silently to herself and wondered how it was that the truth about Crosswayne had never quite reached the DC Wastelands. Or was that true? She ached to save the people being enslaved.

Yet there was something not quite right with what was happening in front of her. The slaves were not quite acting proper for down trodden folk.

It was then that Marshal Hrashman's forces came charging from all directions in large formations. The albino folk were thrown into confusion at first but quickly they became organised in a careful retreat. Still it seemed that Hrashman had the upper hand, that he had managed to sneak up on the these strange new occupants of Paradise Falls. They brought robots with them and jeeps with heavier weapons. They rode in on horses. Then came custom built battlebuggies and bigger wheeled war-machines loaded with trigger happy soldiers and powerful weapons.

The protobinos fell back in a highly organised manner through the secondary entrance to Paradise Falls and then were gone from sight. The Crosswayne soldiers rushed towards the apparently lightly armoured gate.

Jade reached out with her mindeye and she noted a larger force of Crosswayners attacking the main gate. They also were rushing at it in a crazy mixture of atomic and electric powered machines.

It seemed that Hrashman would have himself another victory through deviousness and smart planning.

Which was when the Martian mechatripod rose above the Paradise Falls buildings on flexible long telescopic legs that used force-fields to become supportive when needed, and unleashed a much improved heat-beamer. That is much improved over the ones that the Tripoc Martians had used in the invasion of the 1890s that had been mainly focused on the United Kingdom.

The heat-beam swung across the attackers and they simply disintegrated with red hot flashes, leaving little more than black ash behind. Vehicles exploded. Soldiers turned into screaming living torches who were mercifully shot by their comrades. The Crosswayners turned weapons up against the hulking hood and the rest of the rounded off structure of the mechatripod's cabin. Despite a flickering of force screens, lasers did burn marks on its hull. Bullets and even 20mm calibre shots, bounced off it. A missile exploded and the mechatripod shuddered horrible and a big dent was left behind.

But then the mechatripod was unleashing two secondary weapons. A multiple missile launcher began to fire the same sort of standard missiles the attackers were using but lots of them. A big 20mm six barrelled gattling-autogun unleashed a storm of 20mm shells.

It was then that parts of the buildings facing the enemy fell open and from those opening began to be fired a wide range of weapons. Heavy machineguns, missile launchers, rocket-grenade launchers, laser weapons, plasma weapons and many assault-rifles.

Marshal Hrashman died as a heat-beam disintegrated him even as he screamed out a furious battle cry.

The survivors fled as best they could, taking the wounded with them if they could or killing their own as a merciful act. Soon the Crosswayners were gone except for scattered bodies, burning vehicles and other remains.

The defenders ceased firing, the mechatripod sank smoothly out of sight and the buildings went back to looking normal again.

Jade was stunned at the quickness of Hrashman's total defeat, at his death. Hrashman had turned out, it seemed, to be a brutal man hated by his own people, a man who thought only of his own power and wealth. Yet Jade sensed she should check out this story before she accepted it. She was also amazed by the sudden shock appearance of an active Martian mechatripod right there in Paradise Falls. The Martians had sabotaged their machines as they died and even when fixed humans had never quite got the hang of properly controlling one. There were only a scattering of mechatripods that had survived the invasion in the 1890s and many had perished in World War Three as they had been in museums or private collections. Still there were plenty of whispers of mechatripods and other Martian tripoc technologies being hidden away for research and development purposes.

Tripocs were the actual Martian peoples who had invaded; poorly translated Martian data found with the dead invaders had hinted at the existence of other kinds of Martians in a great underworld.

She slipped away into the night.

Continued in TWENTY-NINE

This is undisputedly my favorite fan fiction and story on this entire website.

TWENTY-NINE

Jasmine, Dogmeat and Fawkes stepped out of the telebooth and stopped in shock. They were in Central Washington DC but this was no war ravished and feral ghoul haunted place. No, this was a pristine clean, wonderful place full of flowing crowds in Prewar clothes moving along wide sidewalks. Peaceful robots were in the plenty such as vending-bots selling icecreams, to striding policetrons and roving eyebots with stunguns instead of lasers.

Nobody seemed to mind that Jasmine and Fawkes were heavily armed let alone that Fawkes was a big hulking super mutant. The humans kept bustling past shops with big armaglass or holographic display windows. Some schoolchildren hurried past in uniform. Then some happy go lucky soldiers wandered past on leave in uniforms with out armour or guns.

Trams and buses were plentiful on the wide streets as were both atomic and electric cars. Three wheeler vehicles hummed along on wheels or floated through the air just above the street surface. There were combooths with computerised communications and in the distance another telebooth.

A big airship passed overhead in the close distance with a large cabin beneath and advertisemants flashing big on the sides of its dirigible hull. Beyond that, high in the sky, drifted a great metallic disk of some kind of skyship. There were commercial, police, paramilitary and military vertibirds and vertijets. Low flying aircars moved in their own lanes. Skycars flew higher and many were police vehicles, deadly and heavily armoured with many weapons.

Skyscraqers were very thick and often pyramidic. Jets of burning methane gas exploded high into the sky.

It was raining steadily but the rain pattered off a transparent plastic cover above the sidewalk with water flowing down clever channels to vanish into a drainage system of hidden pipes.

The clothes were Prewar like but less modest with hems being halfway to the knees and often cleavages being exposed. All people were attractive. There were no old looking people, no crippled people, no sick looking people.

It looked like a wonderful Utopia because everybody was smart looking and they were smiling, always smiling with bright shiny eyes.

Then she noted everybody, even the children, wore hats.

Then she noted there were no animals, no dogs being walked, no police officers riding horses, no pigeons begging for crumbs and no petshops.

Then she noted that there were many heavily armed police officers with police power armour and even more heavily power armoured paramilitary order officers with even bigger guns. There were very many policetrons and turrets. There were very many eyebots.

Too many smiles! No anger, no sadness, no nothing else but smiles.

Dogmeat whined softly. Fawkes grimaced and shook his head. Jasmine made her decision. She turned and nodded at the telebooth.

They all three stepped into it and soon vanished with a shimmer.

Seconds later a large force of order officers swarmed into the spot that the three newcomers had been in. But the paramilitary troopers stopped in frustration as apparently they could not go into the teleportation device.

Continued in THIRTY

THIRTY

Stupid mutants stomped along a big, wide tunnel beneath the National Mall that was amazing in appearance. Along either side of the elegant hallway were great Roman style pillars and between each one a great sitting stone figure. The stone figures were of strange humanoids in big stone throne chairs for each had four arms and each arm was double jointed with two elbows. Also each figure had two heads, one looking friendly with a big smile and the other looking angry or sad.

There were great burning torches that burned brightly and yet constantly with very little flickering and no smoke at all.

The tunnel was very old like much of the mysterious Undercity that most Postwar Washington DC folk would have been shocked to know was beneath their feet. The Darkman had built his army of super mutants and now they were invading that ancient hidden realm that was there long before the first Europeans arrived on the North American continent or even before the first Native American Indians had arrived.

The stupid mutants were heavily armed and a few had new improved body-armour. With them scuttled spider mutants and centaurs. With the moved robomules, four wheeled robots that just carried things of use like nice crunchy radroach meat, water, ammo and SM-serum. SM-serum was stuff that healed super mutants faster and made them live longer. With out SM-serum sometimes super mutants suddenly died for no apparent reason or they went berserk and attacked everything in sight.

They passed through an intersection of tunnels and the sounds of battle drifted to them from one big side town down the sides of which grew dark rubbery plant vines in thick abundance.

Leading the convoy was a behemoth with new type body-armour and a big 40mm autogun. He turned and aimed his gun down the side tunnel. Something was coming fast up that tunnel and it was not friendly to super mutants. The behemoth screamed outrage that anything should dare challenge him, dare to try and frighten him.

Then he let rip with his big gun and it thundered away. The bizarre attacker, a flickering shape that was constantly changing and sparkling, screamed in agony but kept coming. It was disturbing to look at because it kept almost looking like familiar things but never quite totally looked like anything at all. The more one tried to focus on anything to clarify it, the less clear it became. Blood and gore spouted from it.

Other super mutants started shooting their weapons at the same threat. They fired off laser beams, plasma pulses, missiles, rocket-grenades, bullets and jets of flame.

Then it was gone but left behind was a heap of bits of super mutant, of weapons, of other things that had once been another super mutant group.

Continued in THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-ONE

3Dog woke up from his nap on a cot in a side room from the studio, stretched and looked at the other two copies of himself. Except that they were not exactly like him.

The younger looking version of himself wore light power armour was picking through some Prewar books and even some Postwar published but more basic made books. He turned and spoke. "1Dog is my name and we are one. I must go soon for it is not good for the three of us who are one to stay too close together."

He put the book down. "We are like Jasmine who is now Jasmine, Jade and Jas but I do not know why or how we are alike. This is really quite weird, more than a little disturbing but quite interesting. I am going to search further this bunker-complex of bunkers which so far has always had two new bunkers leading off each bunker. From the first bunker there were two bunkers and from them another four, which of course means there are now seven bunkers. There is something odd, puzzling and not quite logical about the way the bunkers are laid out. They almost appear to be taking up the same space as each other."

The older appearing version of himself, but still youthful looking, wore a labcoat and other such gear. He smiled. "I, 2Dog, am going through the new GNR Archives which now is an amazingly ten large chambers big and we may discover more archives."

3Dog sighed. "2Kitty is going to have kittens when she finds out about this. Firstly she learns I am from the moon, am over 200 years old and now there are three of me who are still one entity. Why is this happening?"

2Dog shrugged. "Bro, it has already happened but I do not know why. This way we, that is I, get to be a scientist, a DJ and a roving investigator at the same time. Some powerful but subtle force wants us to do something very badly even if they have to twist reality to get things done."

At that moment 2Kitty walked in clad in a fluffy bath towel.

Then 1Kitty walked in clad in another fluffy bath towel.

2Kitty pulled off her towel and began to dry her hair. She frowned softly at 3Dog. "I don't suppose you can explain any of this to me."

1Kitty was a younger looking version of 2Kitty but still advlt. She giggled. "Ooohhh, so many hunky handsome men."

2Kitty sighed. "Oh behave yourself, myself, 1Kitty."

1Kitty slipped off her towel and began drying her wet hair. "Poor 2Kitty had a bit of a shock when I popped up and started washing her back in the shower."

1Dog grinned. "Nice to look at you two lovely young women but we have to go our separate ways. This is why we underwent the Self-is-Many Splitting Process as did Jasmine and Dogmeat. Yes, even Dogmeat the dog."

At that moment DJ Bot the robot drifted in, stopped, and then spoke. "Ooohhh no, I fear that I am having some kind of computer processing breakdown. Is it my ocular circuits? Is it my central processing? Could it be my sanity clause? No, there is no such thing as a sanity clause." The robot laughed in a bad electronic manner.

3Dog groaned. "I swear, DJ Bot, that your jokes are even worse than mine and you tend to mess them up."

DJ Bot responded. "Quote from an old movie. The Marx Brothers of which the fourth was actually a sister. Groucho, Harpo, Chicko and Boppo. So where are folks off to?"

3Dog shrugged. "I am staying here at GNR."

2Kitty nodded. "And I am staying with him, of course."

2Dog responded. "As already stated, I am going to plunge into the new GNR archives."

1Doggy nodded in turn. "Also as previously stated, I am off to further explore this amazing bunker-complex of bunkers."

1Kitty smiled. "I am off to GNR Tower because I have a strong but subtle sense that there is something about that building that is very important, something that we have overlooked despite all of our years working and living there. Remember that the super mutants kept attacking GNR Tower but nobody came up with a very good reason why they should bother to do so even though they lost large numbers doing so."

The others departed. 2Kitty and 3Dog snuggled up together on the bed, under the sheets and then they kissed passionately.

Continued in THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

The National Mall Zone was a sea of ditches, sandbag walls, metallic fortifications, turrets, barbed wire, rotting bodies, bits of armour, broken weapons, spent bullet casings, mud, pools of stale water, scuttling radroaches and crouching super mutants. The tall Washington Monument was collapsed. Craters dotted the terrible expanse.

Brotherhood of Steel and National Guard forces surrounded the whole area. They relied heavily on sensors, small turrets, observers in tall ruins and observation aircraft flying over quickly to keep a check on what was happening.

Nobody was fighting on the surface or in the ways just below the surface. There were patrols and sentries. Scouts snuck through the area.

When the super mutant found the electric guitar all set up with an amplifier, he was amazed. Old buried memories came flickering through his stupid mutant mind, old skills bubbled to the surface.

He put down his gattling-laser.

He gingerly picked up the guitar.

He began to play quietly. At first he was not very good. Slowly he got louder and louder, better and better. His fingers flew over the strings. He jerked the guitar up and down as he played more and more wildly.

Then, heedless of danger, he leapt up onto a hill. Now he played for all he was worth. The amp was pushed to its limits. He was no longer just a super mutant, he was a superstar mutant.

At that moment three howitzer rockets hit him at once. There was a mighty explosion. Bits of superstar mutant, electric guitar and amplifier flew into the air.

After a long pause, a long silence, a Brother of Steel called out. His voice echoed across the battleground and all that heard his words had to agree.

For he said, "Everybody is a damned critic!"

Continued in THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FOUR

Jasmine, Dogmeat and Fawkes stepped carefully out of another telebooth and found themselves in an abandoned looking vault chamber with heaped up furniture against one long wall. The metallic surfaces of wall, floors and ceilings were rusty. She had seen this effect in Vaults 87, 92, 106 and 108. Back then she had not thought much about it, had taken it as granted.

This time she walked over to a wall and touched it. Then she turned to her companions and spoke. "The rust effect is faked. I suspect that many ruined vaults are actually a lie created from clever special effects, clever planning and perhaps other tricks. There is a synthetic psychic effect being generated in the background that influences people to believe in what they see, to not investigate too much, to grab what loot they can and to leave in a hurry."

Fawkes nodded. "Yes, it no longer feels so real as it did when I was trapped in the experimental section of Vault-87. If this is part of Vault-87 then it is not an area that I knew of let alone visited."

Then she saw it, the white holotape sitting on an overturned metal desk. She picked it up and studied the front. On it was . She looked around and then walked over to a corner. Soon she had the holoprojector set up on a table and had it functioning after a search for some working parts. Dogmeat sat quietly in a corner with a bowl of purified water next to him while Jasmine and Fawkes watched the show.

Robots were busy floating around a series of hallways and chambers putting the finishing touches to what was a whole pack of lies. They were putting into place skeletal remains, pools of dried blood, gore bags and much else.

A man in a white business suit was looking rather smug. He turned to the Darkman, who was taller and elegantly quiet in his black Victorian gentleman's get-up, and he spoke. "Not the best special effects that I have ever done but very good considering the short time and lack of other resources I have had to deal with. People will come into Vault-87 and experience horrors. Super mutants, radroaches, filthy conditions, stories of horrible death and cramped conditions. They will wander around in circles, find some loot, kill some super mutants, and if they survive they will leave. Then the fake vault will be fixed up for the next visitors. It is far from perfect but I hope it will do. I also hope I have more than earned my reward."

The Darkman nodded. "You will find a home waiting for you in SSS01 itself and a bonus of a happy sixy wife, an adoring mistress and some daughters for you to play your twisted games with. None of them will be real but they will be real enough for your shallow little mind. Now go before I snap your neck."

The man in the white business suit gulped in fear, turned and hurried off. Soon he was gone from sight.

The smart mutant, generally human sized, marched into view and saluted the Darkman who nodded. The newcomer wore odd black power armour.

The smart mutant, an officer by his ranking symbols, then spoke. "Lord Dark, the Enclave no longer responds to any attempts at communications. The new clones are refusing to acknowledge your leadership."

The Darkman scowled. "Well it seemed like a good idea at the time to introduce cloning to the Enclave. Let that be a lesson to both of us, soldier. When we come to the point we assume we can't make mistakes, than we are sure to make mistakes. This oversight is going to prove to be very troubling though the Enclave's power is now scattered and focused mainly on the Western Coast of North America and up in Alaska. What of Professor Altman?"

The smart mutant officer nodded. "We have traced him into Vault-87a where he has been causing murder and mayhem amongst the humans there. Professor Altman departed before we could capture him. The VaultTec humans are now once more working productively on the SSS Program. Fifty-two humans were killed and eleven were brain killed. The brain killed ones are being cyborged back into some kind of usefulness. Clones are being made from the dead ones."

The Darkman scowled. "I should have killed him instead of giving him a second chance but his powers and insanity grew far stronger, far faster, than I had assumed they could. I can only compute that the fool experimented both with FEV and the baseline mutagen as well. He played god with his own genetics and now he is paying the price for it. Keep tracking him. Return to your command duties."

The officer saluted, turned smartly and departed swiftly.

The Darkman turned and looked straight at Jasmine and saw her in a seemingly impossible fashion; then he started to talk to her. "So, Jasmine, what do you think of my little bit of foolery. There were no people here in Vault-87 except a few workers who helped with the fakery. There were no settlers, no experiments, no suffering people. I speak to you from many decades ago. You have discovered the telebooths and you even accidentally visited my utopia of SSS01 where everybody smiles because if they stop smiling, they die! At least that is the case on Smiledays. There are many different types of days in the SSS01 Calendar. SSS01 is based on Prewar Washington DC but you will never find it again. Hello, Fawkes, you really were a rather entertaining fellow and I am glad I did not kill you. I hope the three of you will not become problematic to me. Really, there has been too much killing."

Jasmine nodded. "The DC Wastelands will learn that many vaults are fake. They will go seeking the truth."

The Darkman yawned. "Really, don't be so melodramatic, grand-daughter. Yes, you are my grand-daughter just as Catherine, your mother, is my daughter. Yes, she still lives. Your father died heroically and heart broken not knowing that his dear wife Catherine was living with him in Vault-101. So far and yet so near and yet so far. For yes, you are your mother and she is you. Catherine is Jasmine, is Jade and is Jas. When he seduced you on your sixteenth birthday after you had done your GECK, well that was just too much for him. Guilt, James always carried too much guilt thanks to his stilted religious upbringing. So with out warning he stole secrets and ran away from Vault-101. Only Amata, who later betrayed you, saved your life."

She nodded. "My father, James Ashworth, the man who helped start Project Purity and who sacrificed himself trying to stop the Enclave getting control of the project, came from Vault-Ormond that the Ormons call the Holy Vault. He told me this many years ago. Our relationship was a little on the dysfunctional side but so were many in the confines of Vault-101. Treat people like trapped animals and what will they act like? "

The Darkman nodded. "I must go. It has been nice talking to you. This holotape will not self destruct in ten seconds but it will go blank. Please feel free to record something useful onto it. Consider it a small gift from your grandpa."

Then the projected imagery went blank.

Fawkes shook his head. "How did the Darkman do that?"

She held his big hand. "Because he, like me, is a living god and in truth we exist outside of time as you know it." She took out the supposedly blank holotape and slipped it away. "The Darkman had a reason for prompting me to keep this holotape but for now let us focus on doing some exploring."

They moved out of the chamber and the door closed behind them. They turned to see it was now cleverly blended with the wall as just another panel. How many other such secret doors were in the vaults?

There were hallways, chambers with long horizontal windows of murky armaglass looking into them, banks of computers, rows of desks, gore bags, mediboxes on walls full of medical loot, ammo boxes full of ammo loot, lockers with other loot, a couple of clinic chambers and computer terminals. One computer terminal had a heart rending story of suffering that Jasmine now knew was totally made up.

A secret door led into a big chamber with a big Cloneator machine. In the same big chamber were lockers full of gear to equip super mutants except for body-armour. The big machine was designed to clone stupid mutants, complete with their normal armour, and centaurs. She smiled and she activated it again, for it had been turned off, investigated its controls and then reprogrammed in a fashion that was supposed to be impossible.

They went through more hallways and found secret doors to two large storage chambers full of useful equipment and supplies including rows of globebots in storage, ready to use.

There was another GECK in the very place where Fawkes had grabbed the other GECK and had given it over to Jasmine. That was just before she was ambushed by the damned Enclave.

Then they were facing three Reilly's Rangers in light power armour who had come from the direction of the big museum like chambers. Leading them was Reilly herself who looked quite pleased to see Jasmine.

Reilly stepped forward. "So the telebooth took you deeper into Vault-87."

Jasmine frowned. "Whole damned vault is a fraud. There were never no experiments, no turning of people into super mutants, nothing. The real Vault-87 is elsewhere, I suspect, along with Vault-87a. Fawkes was fooled, I was fooled, others were fooled. Place is riddled with secret doors. There is another GECK exactly where Fawkes found the one that the Enclave took from me. Lockers I looted now have fresh loot in them. I found a big Cloneator machine that creates stupid mutants and centaurs to replace any that are killed. It also creates false prisoners that are killed. Nobody lived here, nobody suffered."

Reilly looked around with a shocked expression on her face. "Professor Altman?"

Jasmine shrugged. "The Darkman was behind this and other fake vaults. How many, I do not know. You have a look of concern on your face. At least know I have found a great deal of equipment and supplies, including robots, that we can use and that we may find more. Also the cloneator machine is going to produce what I call soldier mutants of and human soldiers."

Reilly frowned. "We will need it all. The Sisterhood of Steel is all here now. Star Paladin Cross has now become a Sister Steel. All of us Rangers are here now. We got militia. Big Towners have come along with a few folks who once lived in Megaton. I had a talk with Moira Brown. She found that people did not respond very positively to her Survival Guide and wishes to talk to you about creating a new and better one. She is a very interesting person but did you really do all those stupid things for her?"

Jasmine sighed. "Moira Brown always did get at a weak spot in me. Still, thanks to her, I became more resistant to radiation and gained a few other new tricks. Now, please tell me what is up."

Reilly spoke. "The Little Lamplighters are dying. Jas has been able to put them into a kind of deep sleep to slow down the sickness but she needs something more. I thought Jas would have told you something."

Jasmine cursed. "It was there in the back of my mind but I was intensely focused on other matters. We need that second GECK. Fawkes, will you do the honour of going to get it?"

Fawkes nodded. "Also the other things that were in the same room that might help you. Fawkes does not want children to die even if some of them teased Fawkes because he is a super mutant."

Jasmine smiled at him. "Jas had a word to the children about that. They will show you more respect from now on. They have come to love the sensible mutants and Lucy became very protective of them and of Dogmeat-2."

Fawkes raced off to get the second GECK from the high radioactive zone.

Jasmine took Reilly and showed the RRs where the secret chambers were with the resources and the big cloneator machine that was busy producing its first soldier mutant.

They went on looking for stuff that might save the children.

Continued in THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-FIVE

1Kitty made her way through the abandoned settlement of Radio Town that now served as barracks for various people now working in the GNR Tower for the new USFG. People smiled at her in a puzzled way until she explained that she was 2Kitty's younger sister.

2Kitty had informed her clone-sister of where she could find blueprints and other plans of the building. An architect was studying the plans for the new government to see how well the building could be salvaged for future uses. She passed National Guardsmen, men and women, cleaning weapons and other equipment. She walked through rooms full of sleeping folks on bunk beds.

The architect was easy enough to seduce. He was a Subwayer from that heavily organised underground society and he was a nerd complete with a pencil protector in one pocket, thick glasses and a Tshirt with a picture of a Prewar comic-book superhero on the front, Captain Patriot. The old USFG had pushed the superhero as a gung-ho super soldier both with his own special intrinsic powers and special super power armour. Captain Patriot could sniff out commies, social misfits and pacifists with his super nose.

Half an hour later, with Ned Young sleeping soundly on his bunk in the small room, 1Kitty was busy hacking his computer. She soon got through his security and then she was examining not just data on the building but data on Ned Young himself. He was in truth not just an architect and not just a nerd.

Ned Young was secretly working for DCTec, the newish DC Wastelands corporation that was quite busy in some parts of the area. DCTec was far more than a mere corporation or at least these notes hinted at it. They, like the BofS, were collecting up Prewar technologies and knowledge. They were doing so not so openly.

Ned Young had already managed to open a secret safe in a decrepit building manager's office. A real blueprint of the building showed things that the official blueprints carefully hid. There was a massive great metallic spike sticking up through the building to stick out the top as a fake lightening rod. There were a whole lot of hidden rooms and extra hidden basemant levels.

Below GNR Tower was hidden Vault-GNR but there were no details of what exactly this was.

In the lower right hand corner of the blueprints was the code .

The blueprint had not enough details and too many odd terms with out due explanation to what they meant. Yet she guessed enough to become very concerned. Postwar climate and weather were wild at times with great thunderstorms. Every time lightening struck the GNR Spike it drew a massive amount of electricity down through the metallic structure to the hidden basemant levels. GNR and the BofS had been blithely living in the tower for decades, along with the folk of Radio Town, with out knowing how much danger they were potentially in. For even as 1Kitty looked at the design of the Lightening Spike, she was not overly impressed with its safety systems.

Ned Young woke up to find himself the prisoner of the newly created CSIA. Two CSIA agents and 1Kitty escorted him, dressed only in undershorts, to an empty room where they began to question him. But even as they entered the room, Ned Young grinned at them and died.

It was a mystery for they had searched him for secret poison capsules and other such items. It was 1Kitty who found that a golden ring could force a small pin into the finger when the face of the ring was twisted and then pushed in a special manner.

The evacuation of people from GNR Tower began gradually but steadily. Bunkertown was the destination for this move as it was for the old move.

Continued in THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SIX

On that day they buried the girl called Princess in the Burial Chamber in the Lamplight Caverns.

On that same the Warlord Han and his army were destroyed by combined forces from the DC Wastelands.

On that same day Colin Moriarty, formerly of Megaton, was shot down when he tried to set up a new club in Armageddon Park with out getting permission from the DC Syndicates first.

On that same day a Wastelander was sure he saw Elvis at a ruined diner close to the hidden entrance to Vault-112.

On that same day the Enclave invasion of Point Lookout began with the arrival off its shore of a battle fleet of repaired naval ships, airships and big atomic powered hovercraft along with many other vessels. Amongst them was a massive double hulled catamaran style super aircraft carrier with no less than four long flight-decks and four short flight-decks. There was also a super dreadnaught, a massive battleship with great rocket-shell firing cannons and massive laser batteries. Three hours later the Enclave controlled Point Lookout except for sporadic fighting with small groups of resistors.

On that same day the Subwayers voted in a major referendum and became officially part of the new United States of America.

On that same day a lowly Scribe Novice walked into a big half buried chamber beneath Lyon's Citadel. He expected to find it empty except for some junk which he was going to check in case it might be recycled into something useful. It was no longer half buried and seemed much bigger, cleaner and almost polished. He almost fainted for the chamber was not empty. Lined up in it, all gleaming and brand new, were ten Liberty Prime robots, one hundred sentry robots, one hundred MrGutsys, one hundred MrHandys, one hundred robotanks, one hundred eyebots with lasers, ten big Jolly Grey Giant vertibirds and a whole mass of crates, canisters and other containers of related equipment and supplies. There was no partridge in a pear tree. The Novice ranted and raved into a working intercom unit so much that two Scribes raced down to cart him off to the nearest doctor. Then there were three very excited Scribes.

One that same day US President Suzanne Ubama signed an Anti-Slavery Act covering the whole of the DC Wastelands. It was signed at the Lincoln Memorial Centre. Considering how close the army of super mutants were, it was signed in a real big hurry.

On that same day the new FBI began a major investigation of DCTec and its secret activities in and beyond the DC Wastelands.

On that same day the first official baseball team, the Rivet City Dodgers, was formed in, you guessed it, Rivet City.

On that same day one Freda McManus of the new USFG Cartography Department, understaffed and under funded, began to examine old maps of the Prewar USA and North America. She compared them with newly made maps of North America, being largely guesswork, and he found some odd inconsistencies. Thinking little of it, she went through other records that he had including some Prewar school atlases. Then she focused on Prewar maps of the DC Wastelands and compared them to newer maps. Again there were inconsistencies.

On that same day the weekly newspaper, the Washington DC Weekly, began gathering material for its first edition. It was based in Bunkertown.

On that same day a giant white bunny rabbit was seen by a whole caravan of Wastelander travellers. It wore a dinner vest and had a pocket-watch. The strange creature hopped into view, cried out that it was 'late for a very important date, and then hopped away. When hunters went after it they found weird tracks that quickly vanished.

On that same day Ben Bailey, a normal Wastelander, surely broke a speed record when he ran the last kilometre to Rivet City. It helped that he was being chased by over twenty feral ghouls.

On that same day Doctor Lesko, the scientist who created the giant fire ants that burned down the settlement of Greyditch, was put on trial for various crimes. Charges ranged from manslaughter to scientific criminality and child neglect.

On that same day Scientist Anna Holt, who betrayed Jasmine and Project Purity by joining the Enclave, was found by the Regulators in a Sisterhood of Compassion outpost. Since she had gone insane they left her to the care of the SofC.

On that same Doctor Li returned unexpectedly to Rivet City where she began to lead various new and old projects. She refused to say what happened during her attempt to travel to the Commonwealth but now she had a limp and a small but obvious scar on her left cheek.

On that same day all the super mutants vanished from the National Mall leaving behind only automated defences such as turrets, pressure plate operated spike-pits and flamer grills. There were also many mines and booby-traps to deal with. All robots that served the super mutants also vanished. The departure was done so quickly and cleverly that neither the National Guard or the Brotherhood of Steel realised anything was wrong until many hours had passed.

On that same day the Family found itself being chased by over a hundred vampire ghouls. Vance led them in a cunning and speedy manner but in the end they were captured except for two Family members who were killed. Before they were captured, the Family eradicated eight of the powerful vampire ghouls.

On that same day Uncle Leo and his followers walked through part of the Labyrinth of the Lost Souls, a vast and alien underworld of caverns, tunnels and smaller chambers. There Uncle Leo is met by many thousands of deformed lifeforms that were once normal people, animals and plants. He begins to heal them as best he could.

On that same day people swore that a youthful Daring Dashwood, with his faithful ghoul servant Argyle, were seen riding a motorbike with sidecar across the DC Wastelands near Rockopolis. Argyle rode the bike and Daring Dashwood was in the sidecar. On that very day Daring Dashwood, old and retired in Tenpenny Towers, died of a heart attack.

On that same day the AntAgonizer was seen eastward of Canterbury Commons but this time with many human warriors dressed like herself in strange armour and many terrible giant ants that spat savage jets of napalm like flames. The witness watched the AntAgonizer destroy a large force of raiders before they fled from the scene as quickly as they could.

On that same day Doctor Zimmer arrived at Rivet City on the same airship that brought Doctor Li. He came with no android bodyguard this time and he begged for political asylum. FBI agents picked him up and put him in a cell.

On that same day in Megaton Billy Creel and Lucy West got married. Her brother Ian West was best man. Maggie was also there, of course, as were many other Megaton people.

On that same day Butch DeLoria opened his barbershop in Vault-101's new market.

On that same day Ellen DeLoria, Butch's mother, joined the newly founded Vault-101 Alcoholics Anonymous Association branch and took a vow of abstinence.

On that same day Charon bought his own contract, became his own employer, and became truly a free citizen.

On that same day Commander Jabsco, commander of the Talon Mercenaries, learned that the Darkman controlled Armageddon Park and from then on the Talon Mercenaries, including the elite Talon Fists, would serve only Lord Dark.

On that same day Confessor Cromwell took the followers of the Church of Atom and departed in outrage when learned that the new USFG planned to bury the Megaton atomic bomb in special glass. The cult would soon set up in the abandoned monastery in Springvale.

On that same day Doc Church of Megaton was found dead in bed having taken an overdose of powerful pills. There was a suicide note but it did not clarify why he took his own life.

On that same day Gob, with Nova as company, returned to the Ghoul Underworld and met his mother, Carol, for the first time in many years. This time he and Greta would get on far better than they did in the past.

On that same day Doc Hoff was killed in a firefight with Regulators trying to arrest him for dealing in illegal drugs of a very new and dangerous kind obtained from the DC Drug Syndicate.

On that same day a small out of control fire began burning in the Pitt. By the next day it was a raging toxic smoke shrouded firestorm. Explosions shook Pittsburgh. Refugees fled in the thousands towards the DC Wastelands. Thanks to the Brotherhood of Protection and the Sisterhood of Compassion, most survived. As for the trogs, it seemed that they all perished. The firestorm would burn for over a month and when finally it was done, so was the Pitt.

On that same day Deputy Weld was rewarded a long service medal. He continued to guard the Megaton Inner Gate but now his position was more of an honourary one than a practical one.

On that same day Elder Owyn Lyons got a very special long distance message from the Brotherhood of Steel Elders on the West Coast. The Elder Council at Lyon's Citadel began a long secret meeting.

On that same day Evan King, formerly of Arefu, retired to Tenpenny Towers.

On that same day Gary Staley of Rivet City Markets brought out his new cookbook, 101 Easy to Cook Meals for the Hungry.

On that same day Flak and Shrapnel came out of 'the closet' and no I don't mean they were hiding in the closet in the first place.

On that same day Knight Captain Gallows showed up, amazingly alive, and held a secret meeting with Sarah Lyons. They had much to talk about.

On that same day Grandma Sparkle and her sons were eaten by Yao Guai. Some saw this as poetic justice.

On that same day Gunny of the Brotherhood of Steel first tested the new super power armour that was double the size and power of but slower than standard BofS power armour.

On that same day, in an amazing twist of fate, Jericho of Megaton joined the Regulators.

On that same day eyebots again began to float across the DC Wastelands broadcasting the messages of President John Henry Eden and the propaganda of the Enclave. The new eyebots had powerful cameras as well as lasers.

On that same day Lucky Harith became the Director of the Canterbury Commons Corporation and moved into his newly refurbished double storey house.

On that same day the Mechanist, would be superhero of Canterbury Commons, was spotted leading a small army of robots across the DC Wastelands on the river shore opposite from Rivet City. He still looked like he had an upturned bucket on his head.

On that same day Nathan wandered, half dead, back into Megaton and into the arms of his highly annoyed but grateful wife.

On that same day, in Rivet City, Paulie Cantelli died in the Rivet City Clinic of causes that were an open secret amongst Rivet City folk.

On that same day Pinkerton ceased to be a recluse and rejoined the Rivet City community as a scientist.

On that same day a slaver merchant from Paradise Falls, named Pronto, was found dying just close to Paradise Falls. Before he died he spoke of strange albino humans living deep in the ground who secretly bought many slaves from Paradise Falls. He mentioned a place called Paradise Deep but died before he could give any details.

On that same day the Crosswayne folk voted in a referendum to join the new United States of America.

On that same day strange flashes of light were seen on the surface of the moon that were so bright they could be glimpsed even by day.

On that same day a small group of explorers entered Vault-112 to find that everything was returned there, replaced, brand new looking from brainbots to VR-loungers and everything else including many other vault facilities. But the place was occupied by Vault Dwellers who offered to sell virtual reality holidays, safe and cheap, to the explorers. They could choose from Tranquillity Lane, Swiss Alps Holiday and Tropical Island Paradise. Given the reputation of Vault-112, the explorers fled except for one who took a holiday. Three days later he emerged quite happy and a little poorer.

On that same day Sergeant RL-3, the MrGutsy robot, officially became a protector of Canterbury Commons.

On that same day the woman called Silver, an ex-prosttute, returned to live in Megaton.

On that same day life went on all across the DC Wastelands.

It was a busy day.

Continued in THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-SEVEN

1Kitty pushed aside a broken couch and carefully checked the wall as the two Central Security Intelligence Agency agents, a man and a woman disguised as typical Wastelanders, watched her in action. She then noted an odd bump under the decaying wallpaper and pressed it. There was a small sharp clicking noise and the panel slid to one side with a soft humming noise.

It was the bedsitter apartment of a lowly manager's assistant with enough privileges to have a place to stay in GNR Tower. There was a 3Dphoto of her face in a fame on the bedside table.

The secret door revealed a big chamber and taking up one wall was the gently curving side of the outer layer of a thick safety barrier that sleeved the Lightening Spike proper. The room had desks, electromechanical typewriters, computer terminals, big computer mainframes, metallic console machines and some odd hardware.

The protectron gave no warning but fired its laser weapon. The woman CSIA agent was shot in the left arm. She cried out as she was shoved backwards by her comrade. 1Kitty moved with impressive speed as she pulled out her powerful .44 Magnum revolver pistol and fired into the robot. It shuddered, sparked and fell motionless.

Cursing softly, for protectrons normally gave audio warnings of hostile intentions, she slipped into the room for further investigating. There were no more security robots but there was a slowly decaying body in a merc's outfit on the floor with a laser-rifle next to him. It was lying face down with the face turned away from her. Clearly somebody had gotten into the secret room before her.

The CSIA man spoke from the entrance to the room. "I have to get Sandra to the nearest medical assistance but I will try to be back soon."

1Kitty nodded. "You stay with her since you have been partners for a few months now and send me somebody else. I should still be here."

As soon as they were gone, the young woman carefully began to examine the dead mercenary. She turned the body over and when she saw the face she was startled. For the face was identical, apart from the decay, to that of Ned Young. This could have been Ned Young's identical twin but the more logical conclusion was that both this dead merc and the dead architect were clones of the same batch. That would make them clone-brothers.

She further checked the area but while the chamber held a few useful stores in lockers it did not hold the keys to any secrets.

Continued in THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-EIGHT

"They're all gone!" The Brother of Steel Paladin crouched and peered into a big long and deep ditch that should have been filled with angry super mutants. Even as she did so she heard the explosions of booby-traps being triggered off safely by sappers. The same sappers were having a difficult time clearing away booby-traps, mines and turrets through out the maze of ditches left behind by the super mutants.

"That's impossible." Ajax, the National Guard Commander crouched holding his laser-rifle as if he thought he should be shooting at super mutants and was wondering why he wasn't. "Damned impossible. There were thousands of super mutants, mostly stupid mutants, but lots of weird ones as well and lots of those horrible little centaurs. Where could they have gone and so damned quickly?"

A Buzzbee vertibird shot overhead as it tried to spot any super mutants. All such low observation flights so far had found no missing super mutants. They were gone from the DC Wastelands.

Paladin Paula Orien shook her head. "Why doesn't this make me feel good. The fighting is over. The Brotherhood of Steel has time to mend its wounds, to gather strength and to start seeking technologies again. Yet I do not feel better. This is just too damned wrong!"

At that moment four armoured figures slipped passed them moving with amazing speed, quietness and a kind of deadly animal grace. They were Clanhunters from the Subwayers and they were trying to track the super mutants. They wore their special hunter power armour. With them came a pair of Psyabalists in exotic bone, metal and leather armour. They were trying to track the psychic traces left behind by the departing super mutants.

Orien shook her head in wonder. "I am damned glad they are on our side. If anybody can find the super mutants, they can."

Ajax nodded. "What are we going to do with all these earth works?"

It was a good question. Much of the National Mall was now a great mess. The new United States of America was having enough trouble just making the area safe for people to pass through.

Ajax used to be a Major but he had proven to be such a fine mix of good commander and politician that he was now in command of the new National Guard with only two people more powerful than him. One was the President and the other commanded the whole of the United States Defence Force, which was pretty much the National Guard.

Recently the new National Guard had been collecting up old military vehicles including much from the Washington DC National Guard Depot. Underground parking chambers had given over trucks, armoured cars, APCs, battletanks, robots, bulldozers, worker power armour and even an armoured ditch-digger. But getting these machines into action was taking time and effort.
Commander Ajax went to stand up but then both of them sensed something and looked upwards. The great big capsule, looking like an oversized white space-capsule, was held up by three big open grey parachutes. As they watched they noted small short bests of jets firing to steer it.

It was over nine metres wide and nine metres high being a rounded off cone with the underside downwards. Then it was landing with surprising gentleness of the ground and the parachutes were collapsing. Yet even as they were being dragged into the machine. Not catching on anything, the parachutes soon vanished.

A big hatch popped open and out clambered a Rebirther in oddly colour patterned power armour that looked much like that of a BofS soldier. Then came another. Each came out with a big gun but also hauling some kind of equipment supplies canister. But this was only the first of many big paracapsules landing in the area. Many others were drifting now, lightly piloted, to land in the big open area.

A Rebirther strode over to Ajax and Paladin Paula Orien and he saluted the surprised figures. "Greetings. We are the 333rd Rebirther Taskforce sent to assist you with the reconstruction of the National Mall Zone. All we ask in return is space and other resources to build our new main base of operations here."

Ajax stood up and nodded his helmeted head. "I think that the President will agree with that. We badly need your assistance."

There was an explosion in the distance.

The Rebirther swivelled his helmeted head. "First thing we can assist with is those mines, booby-traps and turrets. Our equipment for dealing with such is more advanced and sophisticated than anything that you have."

The Paladin also stood up and then she spoke. "Perhaps you can help us track down the super mutants."

But this time the Rebirther shook his head. "The super mutants have followed the Darkman into another dimensional realm; they have gone from this world and it is beyond us to find them. For that you will need other than Rebirthers to help you."

More paracapsules were landing even as he spoke. There were also ugly graceful dropgliders gracefully landing with power assisted gliding. They were of various sizes but at least one was the size of a big Prewar BO747 supersonic airliner. Yet the most surprising ones were the fully powered shuttles, again ugly beautiful in appearance, that hovered protectively above the landing dropgliders and paracapsules.

Commander Ajax turned to the Rebirther, who was clearly an officer. His voice showed his shock. "Just how many of you Rebirthers are landing here today?"

The Rebirther responded quite calmly and matter of factly. "One hundred thousand Rebirthers, one hundred thousand Brother Protectors, one hundred thousand Sisters Compassionate and Five hundred thousand New Earthers. There are also two hundred thousand Selenitors. Most are landing closer to the eastern coast where they will extend our colony of Freedoma."

Ajax scowled. "This is an invasion."

The Rebirther again replied calmly. "The Lunar People's Federation has over three billion people and is tied up in a war inside the moon with a powerful enemy. If we wished to we could land millions of troops here but we do not wish to. The main reason we are coming here in such numbers is that our enemy inside the moon is called the PanAxis. The PanAxis and the Enclave are basically the one and the same thing. Freedoma is here to help the new United States of America stay free while also making sure that the enemy does not gain the very special resources hidden away in the DC Wastelands. I will not speak of the nature of those resources. That is a discussion that will take place between our Envoy and your President."

The Rebirther went on. "Yesterday the Enclave invaded and conquered Point Lookout in a matter of three hours. They have a battle fleet there now of over a thousand ships, airships and hoverships plus a few atomic submarines. They have a super aircraft carrier at least twenty times the size of the aircraft carrier that is part of Rivet City and they have a super dreadnaught battleship of immense power. It can hurl rocket-shells that weigh each four metric tons to a range of at least fifty kilometres and shoot multimegawatt laser beams that can burn through most fortifications like a hot knife through butter. They have over five hundred thousand elite Stormtroopers, Marinetroopers and Aerotroopers. They also have thousands of new cyborg-deathclaws along with a whole new range of robots unlike anything seen in the DC Wastelands before. They also have new types of weapons that we have no strong intelligence on."

Ajax gulped and then he sighed. "Well, you convinced me. That's a pretty good argument. Welcome to Washington DC."

The Rebirther bowed quickly. "Thank you."

Continued in THIRTY-NINE

Abbreviations (Will be edited in future)

BVRC = Bethesda Virtual Realit Corporation

BofP = Brotherhood of Protection

BofS = Brotherhood of Steel

CofA = Church of Atom

CSIA = Central Security Intelligence Agency

FBI = Federal Bureau of Investigation

GNR = Galaxy News Radio

MFDP = Multifold Dimensional Pocket

NIP = Nothing in Particular

RR = Reilly's Ranger

SofC = Sisterhood of Compassion

SAofDC = Stamp Collectors' Association of the District of Columbia

SofS = Sisterhood of Steel

SWATT = Special Weapons and Tactics Team

USA = United States of America

USDF = United States Defence Force

USFG = United States Federal Government

USFP = United States Federal Police

USNG = United States National Guard

THIRTY-NINE

Jade found her way across country by motorised stagecoach that travelled with some BofS tracked APCs like squat box shaped trucks with low tracks either side. She got off at the new Free Trade Outpost outside of Vault-101 and made her way past colourful stalls and alert security guards in body-armour.

Vault-101, now expanded to include Vault-101a, was able to sell purified water to the local Wastelanders along with small manufactured items, hydroponics food and other items of value. Metallic globebots floated in the air to help keep security. Vaultboy and vaultgirl androids assisted with many tasks.

From the stagecoach stepped some new residents for Vault-101. While some folk had departed from Vault-101 to live in Megaton or Rivet City, other folk were leaving smaller settlements that could no longer be properly defended. There was a whole new way of life developing in the vault.

United States Federal Government people had taken over the use of a whole newly discovered subvault and were turning it into an administrative and archival department. With them had come new resources including more security guards and security robots.

Jade wore Wastelander clothes like she was some new settler, moved with confidence, and walked straight past Vault Dwellers who should have seen her as a younger version of Jasmine. She stopped and examined the price of bottles of pristine water on a big stall table.

She looked at the woman behind the stall table and spoke with evident anger. “Reduce your price to the agreed upon one now and refund all who bought your bottles of water at the new cheat price you have imposed.”

The jumpsuited woman frowned. “Who are you to poke your nose into our affairs. We need to make a fair profit.”

Jade shook her head. “The old price was fair profit. This is cheating. I am Jade Ashworth. Amata will hear of this.”

The woman frowned. “More Ashworths to trouble us. First the father, then his daughter and now you. Amata was the one to order the increase in price. The Vault-101 Cooperative needs new funding for new projects.”

Jade smiled. “New projects, what sort of new projects?”

Amata was suddenly standing there with a clipboard in one hand and a pencil behind one ear. She frowned at Jade. “You look like a sixteen year old Jasmine. Have you come to cause us more trouble? Is Jasmine still angry with me?”

Jade spat out her words. “For your deep betrayal of her after she came to your rescue after you called her to do so over an emergency radio frequency. She brought the Reilly’s Rangers with her, paid them to go with her, and you fobbed her off with some stinking petty gift. You could have stood up for her but you wanted to make sure your climb to power as High Overseer went smoothly as possible. James Ashworth died a hero. Jasmine Ashworth almost died as a hero. Amata the High Overseer is seen across the DC Wastelands as a betrayer of friendship, as a betrayer of a great hero. Only the fact that you saved her life once grants you any redemption. Seems Vault-101 folk have not learned their lesson.”

“That is not true.” A tall dark skinned woman in a blue jumpsuit walked up. “Amazing, like looking at a young Jasmine. Now that Vault-101 is holding elections, Amata is no longer assured of her position. Also many Vault Dwellers have become ashamed of how we treated the Ashworths.” She turned to Amata. “Which reminds me, I have heard you wish to charge the Sisters of Compassion to send more supplies to the nearest Wastelander Assistance Outpost at Balk Springs.”

Amata scowled. “Caroline, you are starting to get on my goat. The SofC demands more with every passing day. We must care for our own people first. Ever since you became Underseer of Vault-101 you have been on my back about every major decision I make. This is enough.”

Caroline turned to Jade. “Elected position by Citizen Vote. The Underseer supervises all decisions made by all Overseers including the High Overseer. The Underseer is linked with Coordinators and Supervisors. The Underseer is an attempt to balance against the power of the High Overseer. Amata has been very secretive about these new projects that are based in Vault-101b, a newly found vault.”

Amata nodded. “Vault-101 Security Protocols mean I can not discuss such matters at this time. The new projects will gain us new wealth, security and other resources. The Professors have assured me that even such fools as you, Caroline, will be pleased by the results.”

The Underseer shook her head. “Where did all those new guards come from and those new robots and those others now in Vault-101b?”

Jade sighed. She looked at her Pipboy and pressed some buttons. Then she spoke. “Begin Operation Trojan. Activate all combat teams. Activate combat robots. All Citizens must report to emergency stations. All Citizens must report to emergency stations. Will specialists prepare for emergency responses. The hospital, clinics and first aid posts prepare for casualties.”

The sound of gun fire, of 10mmC caseless bullets and lasers being fired, drifted out through the tunnel that led to the main vault door to Vault-101.

A pair of vertibirds came soaring through the air above, Enclave machines bristling with weapons. Both of them started dropping towards the encampment even as Stormtroopers came sliding down lines towards the ground.

Amata looked stunned. “But they promised there would be no fighting, no use of power armoured soldiers.”

Jade sighed. “Be the High Overseer Amata and do what you do best.”

Amata then pelted off. Soon she was ordering people around in a very efficient manner. Security guards, robots and AA-turrets were firing up at the vertibirds.

Jade crouched down and then she sprang upwards like an arrow. She shot up into the air like a missile and then halted between the two flying machines. For a moment she floated high up in the air in a seemingly impossible manner. Then she whirled and energies flew out from her hands. Both Jolly Grey Giants exploded and Stormtroopers fell to the ground as backpack jets flared to slow them down.

The Stormtroopers landed and rolled to come up firing. Brothers of Steel came out of nowhere in power armour, firing 20mm shells as they came. Stormtroopers died as holes were ripped in their armour.

Jade saw no more Enclave aircraft and drifted down to land gently on the ground again as if supported by an invisible parachute. Underseer Caroline was staring at her in shock as were others.

Armatroopers stormed into the Vault, a new BofS force.

Jade sighed. She turned to Caroline. “Vault-101 has already fallen to our forces. False government workers from the new subvault are launching a secondary attack along utility tunnels. Fighting has broken out in the approaches to Subvault Section A1a3. That is the place they found the poor dead human alien hybrid in the capsule-chair. Amata and her people allowed Enclave scientists to come into the very heart of Vault-101 to investigate VaultTec secrets.”

Caroline went pale. “She was always too much like her father and still too much under his influence even after you were expelled and she became High Overseer. They had secret meetings together before she made major policy decisions. Her own advisers complained she would not listen to them. Overseers, Coordinators and Supervisors never felt she was heeding them either.”

Jade sighed. “Amata will be terminated for high treason. She signed a major alliance agreement with the new United States Federal Government and then security intelligence agreements. The alien human hybrid and other Vault-101 secrets were to be left for investigation as soon as a new R-and-D team could be sent here. We figured what she was up to very quickly and secretly began to send military forces to here in disguise. When Jasmine came here last she found Amata and her people to be obstructive and false. Jasmine was the one who supposedly found the secret areas and the poor half human half alien dead in his capsule-chair. But Jasmine worked out that Amata already knew of the chamber, had been there before.”

Caroline sighed. “The USFG is going to take over Vault-101.”

Jade shook her head. “No, the original Vault-101 will continue to be classed as a normal semiautonomous settlement with its own leadership. The rest of the vault, though, will be USFG territory.”

That was when part of the cliff face above the vault entrance exploded outwards and then out from the newly formed tunnel shot a sleek enclave vertijet. The VTOL supersonic machine shot outwards, turning as it went, and then shot off westwards. Four more of these vertijets followed, each large enough to carry many Enclave clones and robots along with much else.

Caroline sighed. “You have won.”

But Jade shook her head. “I have the dark fear that the Enclave people got exactly what they came to get thanks to Amata’s greed for power, her desire to please her manipulative hateful father.”

She turned to Caroline. “By the authority invested in me by the USFG President Suzanne Ubama I now pronounce you to be temporary High Overseer until new elections can be held. Congratulations!”

Caroline did not look very pleased.

Continued in FORTY

FORTY

The new USFG was operating as per normal; that is under conditions of barely controlled chaos.

Bunkertown Bunker-A001 had almost been emptied of all of its stored goodies. The last items, crates of very popular toilet paper of the soft forgiving kind, were even then being removed. The empty bunker was being quickly as possible converted into a new USFG reception and visitors' centre. It had turned out to be even bigger than it had first seemed to be.

Bunkertown Bunker-B001 was the GNR Bunker with a huge archives, a museum, an art gallery and other facilities. Now GNR people were living and working there with a few others such as their families and friends.

Bunkertown Bunker-B002 was the USFG HQ Bunker with the President's Quarters, other quarters, the War Room, Presidium facilities, meeting rooms, Presidential Guards barracks and much else of the kind.

Bunkertown Bunker-C001 was full of goodies of a World War Two vintage civilian kind ranging from greyscale 2DTVs, paperback books, LP records, vacuum cleaners, jukeboxes to pinball machines, sedan cars, motorbikes, toilet paper, clothes, shoes, camping gear, medical gear and a good deal more. It was being emptied as this stuff was sent to where it was needed.

Those were the Bunkertown Bunkers that had been opened so far. 1Dog had found that each discovered bunker led to two new bunkers. Elevator like chambers in Bunker-A001 had led to Bunker-B001 and Buker-B002. An elevator like chamber had led from Bunker-B001 to Bunker-C001.

In the maze of chambers and hallways that made up the nine levels of the cube shaped Bunker-B001 was exploring, was trying to find an elevator like chamber that would most likely take him to Bunker-C002, if there was such a bunker. People were still moving into the bunker that was now called the GNR Bunker. PA speakers were broadcasting the radio channel through the bunker's public spaces even as it was being broadcasted across the DC Wastelands.

Jogs, another DJ who was 3Dog's official apprentice, was speaking about the new GNR poll asking Wastelanders if they should call themselves Wastelanders, Columbians or Americans. The poll results were so far not so conclusive.

1Dog entered the museum chamber where people were assembling displays of Prewar and Postwar types. Materials had been salvaged from various private and museum collections through out the DC Wastelands. The tall slim woman directing it all was looking tired and frustrated. She was waving her pencil at various people and shouting out orders in English and, sometimes, in Spanish.

1Dog stood next to her for a short time waiting to speak to her. At last she turned to him with a soft frown, checked her clipboard, looked at him again and frowned some more. "Who are you? A relative of 3Dog? If you are can you ask him to promote the new museum on the radio more. I mean, it was his idea in the first place. Now those damned super mutants have left the National Mall we can salvage more riches from the various museums and other institutions there."

1Dog smiled. "I will be sure to speak to 3Dog and I am sure he will be glad to do so. Have any of your people found an odd elevator chamber in a place where one would least expect to find one? That is away from the main banks of elevators that carry people between bunker levels."

The woman nodded. "Yes, yes indeed. Young Stanley, a fine young man with a strong gift for dropping valuable vases, found such an elevator not too far from here. He was eager to please and I was eager to get him away from the vases so I sent him to investigate. He took a protectron robot with him for security."

1Dog sighed. "These bunkers are still largely unknown to us. I think that it was unwise to send Stanley alone to one even if he did take a protectron with him. Now where is this elevator to be found?"

She frowned at him. "I hope nothing bad has happened to him. He is my god child, which was the only reason I hired the hopeless young fool. The government assured me that this bunker is secure."

"It is as secure as anything can be in the DC Wastelands." He began to walk away. "The dates beneath the picture of President Nixon are wrong and that motorbike on display is not a HD/Hog50A but a HD/Hog54B. That model was used mainly by various State Police Services of the old USA."

She snorted at his back, looked at the mentioned displays and then sighed tiredly.

Upon finding the elevator like chamber, it was tucked away in its own lobby chamber complete with a big curving reception desk, he called upon security. Soon there were security guards and security robots watching over the chamber.

Continued in FORTY-ONE

FORTY-ONE

1Dog entered the elevator like chamber alone. The doors hummed closed and he pressed the button marked C002. He had a strange tingling sensation go through his body and for a second he felt an uncomfortable dizzy feeling.

As soon as the doors slid open he saw the smoking wreckage that was a protectron robot. There were drops of blood on the tiled floor and a dropped clipboard with a pencil lying next to it.

Not a good sign!

He drew out his laser-pistol even as he shot through the open doorway and crouched behind a reception counter. The place was covered by light dust but there were some footprints in the dust on the floor and other indications that people had recently been there. Also by the signs a body had been dragged away.

The big lobby chamber was pretty bare except basic furniture, fittings and decorations. Stanley had been dragged into a hallway leading off from the lobby chamber. 1Dog sensed danger but he could see nothing particularly dangerous.

Then he heard the hissing noise like something between what a human and a snake might sound like. The humanoid came stalking into view with a roughly shaped human body wearing WW2 type combat fatigues and boots but its head was roughly like that of a snake that twisted back and forth on a thick snake neck. The creature held a powerful semiautomatic rifle.

Yet 1Dog did not shoot because he sensed no danger in this one. Instead he stood up and pointed his laser-pistol to the floor and spoke. “How are you going, dude? You seen some young guy called Stanley. That smoking bit of junk was the protectron robot that was supposed to protect him.”

The snakeman turned and his forked tongue flickered in and out. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. Then he spoke in a hissy kind of voice. “My kind are used to people shooting first and asking questions second. You could have shot me and yet you didn’t. I am Harold the Snake. I was human once before the Enclave got hold of me. That is one Professor Marue who turned humans into animamans and animals into animanoids. A twisted mind if there ever was one. The Brothers of Steel rescued us from Marue Island and brought us here but then they abandoned us. They said they would return but that was about two hundred years ago.”

Harold the Snake looked at the laser-pistol. “Is that some kind of fancy raygun?”

“Laser-pistol. A standard model of a weapon used up on the surface but not as common as guns like yours.” He smiled. “I am 1Dog.”

Harold hissed. “So you come from the good old USA. I bet you haven’t seen anything as weird as me up there. How is Washington DC these days. I suppose everybody has robot servants and live in luxury. We have a fair life down here or at least we did until the troubles began about a decade back.”

1Dog sighed. “You are far from the strangest thing that I have ever seen. The good old USA is gone though a new one is rising out of the radioactive rubble of the old. A sea of broken buildings, drifting clouds of toxic gas, ruined cars including unstable atomic ones that could always blow, mutated monsters of a wide variety, rogue robots, the Enclave, savage human raiders of which the reavers are the worst, slavers, cannibals, twisted trogs, packs of savage dogs, wild humans barely more civilised than wild animals. From Alaska to Mexico, from the West Coast to the East Coast, the USA is no more. Settlers in fortified settlements battle for survival and somehow civilization struggles on.”

He seemingly slipped a thick, flat plastic module with a 3Dscreen on one side. “Coloured 3Dphotos from some of my travels through what used to be the USA including annexed Canada and annexed Mexico. Look at the screen with the fancy pattern on it and press the little blue button every time you want to see a new picture.”

The Snakeman shrugged as if he expected to see nothing shocking and then he began to look through the pictures. On and on he snapped the blue button. After he had quickly seen about a hundred pictures he passed it back. “I think we have been lucky to be down here in these bunkers which are words I never thought I would ever say. The young man was taken by Sned the Donkey and Rob the Rodent. They serve Lord Dark, also known as the Darkman. About a decade ago he stepped out of an experimental teleportation booth, a telebooth, in a laboratory workshop in Bunker-D012. As you probably know by now all these bunkers are in a kind of multiple fold dimensional pocket. Each layer has twice as many bunkers as the one above it. Every bunker as two bunkers coming off it. But we of the Animal Clans, we are much deeper in the Bunker Maze now and have moved from the bunkers into other spaces that have opened up in the MFDP. My comrades and I came to this bunker hunting for Sned the Donkey and Rob the Rodent for they are wanted for many crimes committed against lawful citizens of the Animal Clans, of Ozarnia that is our hidden homeland.”

1Dog shook his head. “I did not know it though my people are coming to suspect the truth. We now inhabit Bunkers A001, B001, B002 and C001. We are the new United States of America. The Darkman has caused us much trouble. He was one of those who probably helped to cause World War Three to happen. Why would the two animamans take Stanley?”

“As a hostage, as a gift to Lord Dark?” The snakeman shrugged. “Can you contact your people and bring help.”

1Dog nodded. “I have already done so. What I know, others also know for I am a clone and no, not an Enclave clone. What is in this bunker?”

Harold the Snake shook his head. “Some odd stuff and lots of normal stuff. Shag the Dog and Babs the Bunny should be coming this way soon. Please, no jokes about Shag’s name. He is hyper sensitive about it. As for Babs the Bunny, she will try to seduce you straight off. Do not be surprised if I throw a bucket of water over her. She won’t take it personal like.”

They moved down a long wide hallway and passed a number of thick wooden doors. They opened each one carefully to expose small office rooms each with a desk, a mechanical typewriter, a bunk, a sink with taps with a bathroom cabinet, an odd shower like cubicle in a corner, a file cabinet, a wardrobe and a bookcase. On each bunk was a human, a naked young man or woman, immersed into what looked like a big semitransparent gelatine capsule. Bookcases were filled with books and boxes of magazines. There were prints or posters on walls. There were personal items. A light layer of dust lay over everything.

Harold the Snake hissed softly. “We call them the Jelly-People, the poor humans trapped in those damned capsules. We don’t even know if they are still alive because we can’t get to them. Even the Darkman left them alone and he punished any of his followers who tried to interfere with them as a joke or to try to please him. This area is riddled with hallways and those small chambers. Each of them has a young attractive man or woman in a body-capsule.”

On impulse 1Dog went and touched one of these capsules though Harold the Snake was impatient to move on, clearly assuming nothing would happen. When the capsule shimmered and glowed, when the naked young woman climbed out of it coughing and sneezing up jelly stuff, the snakeman hissed in shock.

The naked young woman frowned softly at both of them, did not seem at all surprised by Harold the Snake’s appearance, and walked straight to the odd booth in the corner of her room. When she was showered and dried, the gorgeous young woman slipped into underthings and combat fatigues plus webbing and boots. She seemed not to care that two men watched her get dressed. She armed herself with a combat knife, a pair of handcuffs, two fragmentation hand-grenades, a semiautomatic pistol and a submachinegun. Both guns fired the same .45 calibre of bullet. On her fatigues were the symbols of the Sisterhood of Steel.

Then she turned to 1Dog. “Thank you for bringing me back with out any brain damage. I don’t know how you did it but I suggest we start saving the others now before anything bad can happen to them. I am Susan Crier of the Sisterhood of Steel, an auxiliary service to the Brotherhood of Steel. We get to do our share of fighting but are still expected to make coffee, do the laundry and get the typing done.”

1Dog frowned. “Women are soldiers in the Brotherhood of Steel now and they no more make coffee, do the typing or do the laundry than any of the men do.”

She shook her head. “Sounds fineto me. What about the good old USA? Something tells me that you don’t have good news.”

1Dog sighed. “I will wait until I can tell a whole group of you. We need your help to find an innocent young man called Stanley.”

He told her something of what had happened. She had plenty of questions to ask but left them for later.

Continued in FORTY-ONE

FORTY-ONE

Jasmine, Fawkes and the Reilly’s Rangers found a cure to the sickness that killed the Little Lamplighter named Princess. The other children were saved from what became known as Clone Pox.

The explorations of Vault-87 continued. The Gallery Chambers were separate, were in truth part of a subvault called Vault-87c. This included the sensible mutants and their area and the cloneator machine that replaced children in the Lamplight Caverns and sent other children to other places. Jasmine feared to interfere with it because of its sheer complexity so it kept popping out infants at a fairly regular pace.

Mayor MacCready gave up his position and became just a young boy going to school and doing chores around the Lamplight Caverns.

Jasmine, Fawkes, Cran and Reilly stood together in a large Gallery Chamber. Before them was a row of domed displays that seemed to be the Darkman’s comical side showing. In each one was a stupid mutant in costume. There was a ballerina on the tip of one toe; there was an Elvis Impersonator all in white; there was an astronaut in a bulky moonsuit; there was a bikini clad stupid mutant with a surf board; there was a an artist painting a picture of a bowl of fruit; there was a housewife ironing some clothes on an ironing board; there was a rock and roll star with an electric guitar; there was an oversized boy scout; there was a movie starlet whose white dress was being blown upwards as she clung to it; there was a normal stupid mutant with a minigun; a normal stupid mutant with a sledgehammer and there were many others.

“All of this is linked with some powerful secret project somehow involving the code . The Darkman spoke of the code as representing a version of Washington DC that Fawkes, Dogmeat and myself visited very briefly thanks to the use of a telebooth.” Jasmine looked around. “The project is linked with virtual reality but is not just about virtual reality. We need to find Vault-87a and hopefully there we will find some answers.”

Cran, who now commanded the Sisterhood of Steel, shook her head. “Our scouting parties are constantly finding new areas of Vault-87. They found a big garage workshop stuffed full of robovehicles like those used in Vault-101. They found that depot also full of useful equipment and supplies. The people behind this conspiracy had a great deal of resources to play with.”

“Which they got by stealing it from the people of the old USA!” The Mysterious Stranger suddenly stood close to them having seemingly come out of nowhere. “One of the reasons that the Soviets were able to invade Alaska was that the USA was weakened by the activities of the conspiracy run by the Enclave. Except that then the Enclave was controlled by the Darkman. Many organizations were part of the conspiracy, many of which would surprise you. They included the Patriot People’s Party, VaultTec, NukaTec, the Futures Foundation, the Echelon Think-Tank, the Congressional Funding Regulation Subcommittee, the Free Masons, the Federal Reserve Bank, the United States Defence Committee and many others.”

The Mysterious Stranger sighed in a tired fashion. “The whole of North America is isolated from the rest of the world behind a vast force field that warps the very laws of nature both inside and outside the field. The Isolation Barrier was raised on the very day that World War Three took place. This was not supposed to happen. Everything went wrong. The conspiracy collapsed. The USA was supposed to be safe from nuclear weapons but was devastated when the Soviets launched a surprise attack. Why? Because they had learned about the rising of the barrier and fear caused the Chinese and Russians to strike out.”

He kept on speaking. “The Vaults were built as a back up plan in case the USA was actually attacked. The false vaults with their insane experiments would hopefully conceal the real vaults and perhaps seed any Postwar landscape with survivors. The whole Vault Program was riddled with inconsistencies and stupidities.”

Jasmine turned to him. “I know you from somewhere.”

The man, who was dressed like a 1940s American private detective, nodded. “I was there when you were born. I am your grandfather. So is the Darkman. Its hard to explain why this is so. Your mother is still alive.”

Jasmine nodded. “As the Darkman told me. He told me that my mother and I are actually one entity.”

The Mysterious Stranger shook his head. “This is not so. Your mother is a living god like both of us. She became Beatrice, a woman living in Vault-101, who became a lover of James Ashworth, your father. She helped bring you up and took on a motherly role with you when you were younger. Beatrice still lives in Vault-101 as an aspect of your mother.”

“Living gods?” Fawkes scratched his head. “Makes sense that does but what does it mean?”

The Mysterious Stranger turned to Fawkes. “We are an ancient people who drift across the Multiverse of interwoven universes feeding off the psychic emanations from more primitive peoples. In truth we live outside of time and space as you know it, or at least we should do. Now some of us, including the Darkman, are trapped here in North America by that damned force field. The irony is that the Darkman helped set up the force field project in the first place to trap some of his enemies. The Darkman is a wanted criminal of our people and I was chasing him, was going to capture him and take him back to our people to face justice.”

Cran frowned. “What does actually mean?”

The MS responded. “Stimulation Simulation Sensoscape Project One.”

Jasmine nodded. “Jas talked with a woman called Elisa who had a child to the Darkman. She is trapped somehow in Vault-87a and her baby is in the big metal chamber in the Lamplight Caverns under the care of a small robot and Lucy of the Little Lamplighters. Can you take us to Vault-87a?”

He nodded and turning, pointed to a single domed exhibit of a stupid mutant dressed as a baby with a big baby bottle full of milk and a nappy. With a humming noise the whole disk shaped platform and dome moved slowly to one side. A circular hole was revealed even as a safety rail rose around its edge to stop people falling in accidentally. A disk shaped platform rose into view with more humming noise.

Standing on the platform was a brainbot. The machine hummed along on its tracks and moved towards them. Then it came to a halt and a voice spoke from it. “Greetings from Vault-87a. The Leadership Council of Vaultburg, a large subvault and surrounding fertile caverns, has sent me to escort you. The people of Vault-87a are a fine mixture of ex-employees of VaultTec, clones, cyborgs, androids and others including some ghouls and super mutants. If you have any prejudices against androids, clones, cyborgs, super mutants or ghouls, you are welcome to leave them behind. I am not classed as a robot. Because I have a human brain I am classed as a cyborg and am a voting citizen of Vaultburg. Please hurry as there is much to discuss. The albino clones are a threat to all of us.”

They followed the brainbot to the elevator platform that then sank downwards with more humming noise. They found themselves in a vast chamber stretching out in all directions and dotted with great big exhibits in domes. An atomic submarine, a naval frigate of WW2, a steam locomotive from the Wild West of the 1800s, no less than three huge Martian Invasion machines from the late 1890s, a Liberty Prime robot, a Formula One atomic powered racing car, an early prototype vertibird, the huge flying boat called the Spruce Goose and many others.

They reached not the floor but a great viewing platform. A reception committee of humans, ghouls, androids and super mutants in jumpsuits were waiting for them. They focused on Jasmine, which surprised her.

A woman came forward, tall and elegant and with only one large eye. She wore elegant silkcloth robes. She spoke. “I am Leela. I am the President of Vaultburg, a secret civilisation of just over two million people. What do you think of this Gallery Chamber? Most incredible, is it not. The Darkman certainly had a way of gathering treasures to himself. The place is a vast museum, art gallery and library but it is far more than that. These exhibitions have a special purpose to them. They are part of an amazingly sophisticated computer program called Stimulation Simulation Sensoscape that projects virtual reality onto reality, that alters reality itself to suit the desires of the user of the SSS program. Or at least that is the theory.”

The woman frowned. “Professor Altman altered me and gave me this one eye. I am a cyclopman now and intend to stay as one since my single eye gives me special abilities of vision. I can see by your auras that you, Jasmine, and you, the Mysterious Stranger, are far from being mere humans. Like the Darkman you are of those aliens who call yourself the living gods, an arrogant term if there ever was one. You are Multiversal parasites drifting through time and space feeding off the psychic energies of other peoples.”

Jasmine sighed. “You are in no position to judge us, President Tazmara. You helped the Darkman to make the SSS into a reality and to create SSS01, the virtual reality copy of Washington DC which, I guess, is full of trapped people that the Darkman can feed off when ever he wants to. Just how many human minds are trapped in SSS01, President Tazmara?”

The woman blanched visibly and then visibly relented. “What you say is true. I was a greedy fool who saw myself as a joint winner of many wonder prizes and somebody who would go down in history as a great scientist. There are banks of people in status capsules inside a hidden vault named Vault-87b but we do not know where it is or how to get there. Those two and a half million people thought they were going to live in a series of VaultTec vaults hidden in this area. Instead they ended up trapped in the virtual reality hell of a fake Washington DC. Every day is a new hell such as Smileday, Fightday, sixday, Sweatday and many others. Because the days are chosen randomly they can not even prepare for what is to come.”

She scowled. “That insane monster Doctor Braun escaped from Vault-112’s virtual reality system and got to SSS01 only to find himself a victim there. Now Braun suffers just as he caused many others to suffer when he was in control of Vault-112. We have managed to use a whole jury-rigged system of hardware, firmware and software to spy into SSS01. I myself talked with Doctor Braun’s trapped and tormented mind. Vaultburg is in danger now but not from any form of virtual reality. The albino clones of Paradise Deep, they are called protobinos, have been sending heavily armed and armoured raiding parties to the very outskirts of Vaultburg. They have so far failed to get back into Vault-87 except one taskforce that was wiped out by the super mutants. They cleared away the fake boulders in the cliff alcove entrance in an attempt to find a way to bring a large military force into Vault-87 but the protobino people are easily harmed by sunlight, are a nocturnal people, who worship the Tripoc Martians. Yes they worship the same Martians who invaded our world back in the 1890s.”

Jasmine spoke of the cloneator machine that produced cloned babies on a steady basis, most of them being protobino babies. She spoke of the Martian mechatripod that had destroyed the Crosswayne Warlord Hrashman and his soldiers at Paradise Falls.

Tazmara nodded. “Paradise Falls was pretty well known for providing slaves to that monstrous dictator at the Pitt, that fool of a former Brother of Steel. Refugees from the Pitt got to Vaultburg and now live peacefully amongst us. What was not so well known was that many slaves were sent down through a secret set of tunnels beneath Paradise Falls to a huge bunker complex known as Paradise Deep. Paradise Deep was set up by the Paradise Eternal Corporation who were a commercial competitor to VaultTec. Over a million people went into that huge set of bunkers but it became a hell hole after the bombs fell. Refugees fled from there and reached Vaultburg. Indeed they were the ones to help start Vaultburg.”

The woman looked out over the great chamber. “The Paradise Deepers are a mixture of albino clones, cyborgs, exotic mutants and elite immortals who are vampires of some kind able to feed on the life energies of others. Some of those vampires escaped, in the past, out to the DC Wastelands. Vance and the Family are descendents of such people. But the worst creatures of Paradise Deep are the ghoul vampires who have, we recently learned, captured Vance and the Family.”

Jasmine nodded. “Vaultburg is welcome to become part of the new United States of America.”

Tazmara shook her head. “We have found a solution against the Paradise Deepers. We are going to unleash Clone Pox upon them. Most of their kind are clones and soon they will be ended as a threat to Vaultburg. We do not want you to interfere.”

Jasmine shook her head. “You will do no such thing. Together we will find a way to destroy the threat of Paradise Deep with out killing so many people. You know of the Lamplight Caverns now. A child died there recently of Clone Pox. Try to use germ warfare and you will answer to me.”

She reached out and took Tazmara by the hand. “We must work together, we must combine our resources. Make contact with the people of the Lamplight Caverns and through them with the USA. We will instigate a combined defence plan.”

Tazmara frowned. “The Clone Pox robots are on their way to Paradise Deep even as we speak.”

Jasmine frowned back. “Paradise Deep gained its first sample doses of antiviral drugs for Clone Pox just hours ago. Jade delivered them to the very gates of Paradise Falls itself and passed them over. Why does Vaultburg really want to see the destruction of Paradise Falls? Or is it just the Leadership of Vaultburg who wish to do so because you wish to hide the fact that the slaves sold to Paradise Deep were on sold to Vaultburg. Vaultburg is a slaver society and over half of your population are ghoul and super mutant slaves forced to labour in mines, farms, workshops and factories of your people. Vaultburg is not a democracy. The United States just banned all slavery within the DC Wastelands. Vaultburg is inside the DC Wastelands.”

Tazmara pulled out the 10mmC pistol from her robes with surprising speed even as Vaultburg snipers aimed their sniper-rifles at Jasmine and her companions. Jasmine and the Mysterious Stranger moved quicker, pulling out huge black pistols. The two of them moved so fast they were not even a blur of motion. Guns thundered. President Tazmara fell dead to the decking as pulsebullets of energy exploded into her. Snipers died, all four of them, even before they could pull the triggers of their weapons. One sniper, a woman, toppled from her position and fell through the air to land heavily on a metal floor far below.

A tall, portly man in silkcloth robes stepped forward. He scowled heavily at the dead former president and then at Jasmine. “This is an act of war. We must return to Vaultburg at once and consult with the Leadership Council. You will be punished for what you have done.”

“It was your people who tried to fire the first shots.” Jasmine stepped back. “I sense more of your killers are here. You invite us to talk and then try to kill us. This is very bad manners.”

The portly man grinned. “I thank you for now I am President of Vaultburg. In gratitude I shall have you all killed.”

But at that moment Sisters of Steel in power armour poured into the big chamber from three directions. As they did they fired off their 20mm autoguns with expert aim. Before them fled security guards in kevlar body-armour who clearly served Vaultburg. They were also humans. Outgunned and out numbered these security guards were soon surrendering.

The brainbot put his arms up in surrender. “Don’t shoot me. Cyborgs are second class citizens of Vaultburg. Only humans are considered first class citizens. Slaves, be they ghouls or super mutants or even humans, are third class citizens. Androids have no rights at all and for robots it is the same. I don’t want to die for Vaultburg.”

Jasmine touched the brainbot and it shimmered. Then the brainbot lowered its arms. “Wow, I can feel, I can sense things like I did as a human. I no longer feel so isolated, so half insane. I have new abilities. Now, if you want to invade and conquer Vaultburg with as little death and destruction as possible I can tell you how to do it for my computers are full of data on Vaultburg’s defence and security network-systems. Later we can play a nice game of chess in virtual reality.”

Jasmine nodded. “Of course, that would be wonderful.”

So it was that the invasion of Vaultburg began, a civilization based on slavery where the masters were VaultTec ex-employees living in reasonable luxury while most of the Vaultburgers lived in hard poverty. It was Jasmine who went amongst brainbots and androids, touching them and altering them. It was these brainbots and androids that first revolted even as SofS and RR forces stormed parts of Vaultburg.

Continued in FORTY-TWO

FORTY-TWO

1Dog dived and crawled behind a couch as bullets and shotgun pellets exploded off the wall behind him. He had spent the day dealing with awakened Sisters and Brothers of Steel who were all gung-ho to clear away all supposed enemies in the bunkers, various animal-humans including a very randy bunny-woman and now this.

Poor Stanley was a hostage in a cramped office at the end of one hallway. Sned the Donkey and Rob the Rodent were keeping him prisoner while 1Dog was trying to convince them to give up.

His last few words had almost got him killed. He was in a small waiting room like space and a kiosk like serving window was in front of him. On the other side of that were the two villains and the hostage.

1Dog unclipped the stun hand-grenade, leapt up and threw it. He hoped that it would not explode too close to poor old Stanley. If nothing else Stanley would hopefully gain more survival smarts and not wander into unknown bunkers with only a protectron with him as security.

The stun-grenade exploded with a very satisfying blast and then the sounds of two animal-humans being thrown around. 1Dog leapt out from behind the couch and shot across the room with his laser-pistol in hand. Then he was untying a very stunned and sorry for himself Stanley.

Stanley moaned and looked around himself. Then he looked to 1Dog. “Thank you for saving me from those… those things.”

1Dog waggled his finger at Stanley. “Now don’t be xenophobic. A couple of those animal-humans helped save your life. No more unofficial explorations of unknown bunkers, right. We should get you back to your aunty.”

Stanley groaned. “No, no, not that! She is always ordering me around and is always making me nervous so I drop vases and things.” He rubbed his wrists. “Those ropes were very tight.”

1Dog helped Stanley get up. “Did you hear these two say anything of interest?”

Stanley scowled. “They wanted to take me to somebody called Lord Dark. It seems Lord Dark sent them out to take prisoners so that Lord Dark could question them. These two are very frightened of this Lord Dark.”

“They are wise to be. He is also called the Darkman.” 1Dog turned as Sisters and Brothers of Steel came in. They now wore kevlar body-armour, including helmets, as well as fatigues and other gear. Then Babs the Bunny came in, saw Stanley and smiled very warmly at him. She was very sixy in a very exotic fashion and Stanley blushed. 1Dog sighed. Harold the Snake walked in, saw what Babs the Bunny was doing, and hissed softly at her. She gave Harold a dirty look.

Harold the Snake spoke. “You already have two dozen children of odd parentage. You damned rabbitnoids are going to over populate our society in a couple of years at this rate.”

Babs the Bunny snorted. “Harold the Snake, I can’t help it if you are cold blooded in more ways than one. Anyway our people need new generations if we are to survive. We are the last of our kind in the whole world.”

1Dog shook his head. “No you aren’t. I saw a colony like yours on the West Coast and another hiding in a ruined vault somewhere close to the Canadian Border. Still Babs the Bunny has a good point. Also the USA needs people.”

Harold the Snake hissed. “They will treat us like circus freaks. We need to make contact with others of our own kind.”

1Dog nodded. “Right now the new United States of America needs people and right now is the right time to get needed and gain some advantage for yourselves. Now, somebody has to take Stanley safely back to Bunker-B001, the GNR Bunker.”

Susan Crier spoke. “Some of my people will take him there. Babs the Bunny, stay away from the Brothers of Steel. They have enough to deal with.”

Babs hissed. “Jealous! Worried I will steal your pretty boys away from you?”


1Dog groaned softly. Then he spoke as calmly as he could. “We need to question these two thugs of Lord Dark. I suggest we take them somewhere secure. Babs the Bunny, stay with Harold the Snake. He is better for you than you think. Are there any more of your people I need to awaken, Lieutenant Crier?”

The Sister of Steel shook her head. “Not in this bunker but there are things I want to show you that we found here. The Darkman has been busy with some of my people. What we found has me wishing to kill him in a most painful manner.”

1Dog responded. “You will have to get in line behind a few million other folks. Lead on. Let us face these horrors for surely with the Darkman involved that is what they will be.”

The Sisters of Steel were inside their jelly capsules but they were obviously pregnant. There bellies bulged big and smoothly. There were eighteen young attractive women, inside capsules, lined up beside each other on the floor of a big metal chamber.

1Dog touched each in turn and then stood to one side as the pregnant young women were helped to their feet, were led towards a row of body-booths against one wall. He was frowning softly as Susan Crier came to talk to him.

Susan frowned. “Well, what is the verdict?”

1Dog sighed. “The father of their children is the Darkman. He is a so called living god. I am a so called living demigod. The children will be living demigods as I am but will be of various powers. Each woman will have twins, triplets, quads or quins. Together the eighteen of them are going to give birth to sixty children. They are going to need a lot of special supplies including nappies, milk, nappy cleaner, cots, baby bottles and much else.”

Lieutenant Susan Crier whistled softly and then she spoke. “We will care for our own. They will have loving parents, all of them, and other support. Why would the Darkman do this?”

1Dog frowned. “My people have powerful mating urges if we face danger. It is one of our survival instincts. The Darkman has gone into great danger and he has left behind himself some children. I will be up to the mothers if they want to give birth to the children.”

But Susan Crier frowned at him. “They are Sisters of Steel. They will do their duty and their special children will serve the Brotherhood of Steel.”

1Dog nodded. “Very well, that is not my affair. We have things to do.”

And they did those things.

Continued in FORTY-THREE

FORTY-THREE

The Ironsides Mercenaries had failed to get into Vault-301 even when their sappers had tried expertly using high explosives. But they had radiated out from there in a careful search and had found both more enemies and more vault features. They also found Hamilton's Hideaway which they converted into a base of operations after killing the raiders dwelling there.

In the Moonbeam Outdoor Cinema, a great yard of abandoned atomic and electric cars facing a huge holoprojector screen that was in surprisingly good condition, they found a cinema complex. There was a diner, a take-away kiosk, the gateway where cars came into the place and bought tickets, the projector rooms and other facilities. Below that was a basemant and, hidden below that, a bunker. In the bunker was a second vault door to Vault-301.

Ironsides fought raider ghouls in the cinema, the soldiers and raiders both trying not to cause any atomic cars to explode with their now unstable atomic motors. Much of the fighting was hand to hand, was very bloody, but the ghoul raiders were soon being massacred. The few survivors fled into the semiwilderness.

Marshal Ironsides floated down a laneway between parked wreckages and was pleased with what he saw. Only one Ironsides had been injured and then only lightly. The bodies of the ghoul raiders lay scattered all over the place. The outdoor cinema complex arose ahead of him with sentries already posted on the roof of the building crouched to make themselves into smaller possible targets.

The Marshal slowed his hoverchair and lowered its struts. He turned off its motors to conserve energy and examined a computer screen. The hoverchair was far more than just a way to get around. It was a miniature mobile command centre.

They had found a Lightening Spike, it was smaller than the GNR Tower one, because the building around the spike had collapsed to expose it.

They had found a prefabricated bottle bunker close to the Moonbeam Outdoor Cinema with a hidden entrance. Just before the A-bombs had fallen a quick rich expert called Prefab Jack had an idea for making more money. Prefab Jack got his name and his wealth from manufacturing prefabricated swimming pools, emergency shelters, houses and many other structures. So he began to sell prefabricated shelters which came with many features included. These were like big square multifibre bottles with various entrance tubes like bottle necks, hence the name. Bottle-shelters dotted the whole of North America but most were in the DC Wastelands.

In the bottle-bunker were two dead families who had died of murder suicide as the advlts had poisoned the children and then themselves. They had found out the limitations of trying to survive in a bottle-bunker.

It was in a bottle-bunker complex of five linked bottle-bunkers the Ironsides had found the surprise enemy. Strange robots had attacked them that were like brainbots but where the brain was normally shown in a dome was instead a turret with more weapons, cameras, mikes and sensors. In the front each also had a gattling-laser. Brainbots normally had life support systems to keep the brains functioning and the new weapons seemed to fill the same space.

These robots had given no warning but had attacked with much savagery. Five Ironsides had died before the others in the team had withdrawn in a rush. So far the Ironsides had found no way back into the bottle-bunker complex.


The dead were already sent in body-bags to Fort Bannister. The Ironsides had taken over the fort, once the HQ Base for the Talon Mercenaries, and now occupied its bunkers plus a big complex of prefab modular buildings and tents. They had found there a secondary series of hidden bunkers the Talons had failed to discover which had many fine resources to them including fixed facilities, robots, vehicles, weapons and other equipment plus supplies. In Fort Bannister, hidden in a very cleverly concealed safe, the Ironsides had found evidence that the real person behind the contracts against Jasmine, 3Dog and a few others of good karma, was the Darkman.

Ironsides had got as far as BigTown only to find that it was now a small thriving settlement of ghouls. The ghouls were highly nervous until the Ironsides medics fixed a few of them up and the Ironsides supply sergeant gave out some ammo, rations, medikits and bottles of purified water. It was the ghouls who spoke about the odd activity they had seen close to Moonbeam Outdoor Cinema. The ghouls had spotted some power armoured figures in Enclave like armour but it was coloured black. This had been at night since ghouls did not like bright hot sunshine much on their skin.

Hearts and Minds was an important tactic used by the Ironsides who had learned it from Lyon's Brotherhood of Steel. That is get the hearts and minds of locals on your side to gain valuable assistance including knowledge of what was happening locally.

Marshal Ironsides sensed somebody standing close to him, sensed no threat, assumed it was his second-in-command and spoke to her. "We need to do some more triangulation, some more logical reasoning of where to find other entrances to Vault-301."

The warm, confident young voice that answered was that of a young woman and not that of the tawny, scar faced tough second in command. "I can tell you that there are five main and fifteen secondary entrances into Vault-301 but that Vault-301 in not just another VaultTec Vault. Inside the actual vault is a dark power that would consume both you and all of your mercenaries in less than an hour and your deaths would not be quick or painless ones."

Marshal Ironsides turned head and saw a young woman wearing jeans, an open denim jacket, a denim cap, black leather boots and a thick belt dotted with items including two very large pistols in holsters. She also wore a black string vest with nothing underneath but her slimly voluptuous body. The woman was a redhead, strikingly beautiful and had a big powerful semiautomatic sniper-rifle over one shoulder that looked like it could wipe out a behemoth at a goodly distance.

She stood with absolute stillness like a very dangerous predator about to strike. The leader of the Ironsides knew at once that this woman could probably take on his whole mercenary corporation and win with out too much effort. She was way out of his league like the woman Jasmine that he had once met.

She took a sheet of paper out from her blue denim jacket and passed it to him. It turned out to be a basic but efficient map of the area marking out the various entrances to Vault-301. "I am Red Sonja. Like Jasmine and the Mysterious Stranger I am an Eternal. This is a name that we do not often use with others. I am one of a few Red Sonjas and Red Sonjis, the former being women and the latter being men. I am what you might call a bounty hunter but I am not paid in mere physical resources but in something that we Eternals find far more valuable."

Then she reached out and touched his hoverchair. It shimmered and the marshal shimmered for a moment. Then she withdrew her hand. Marshal Ironsides stood staring at her, stunned.

Then he spoke. "You upgraded the hoverchair but you also did something else." Then he opened the side of the hoverchair and for the first time in over twenty years he stepped out on legs and stood upright. These were brand new legs in altered fatigues and body-armour. On his brand new feet were brand new combat boots. Then he looked at her carefully. "What do you want?"

Red Sonja smiled. "I did it because you needed to have it done. I did it because even we Eternals need good karma. I did it because I need you and your mercs to assist me. I did it because I sensed the fears deep in you of being trapped in a deactivated hoverchair while an enemy comes to kill you. The hoverchair is now a much improved mobile command and weapons station but now it is actually a robot with keen artificial intelligence. It can follow you around or work independently of you or work with others as long as you give the new robot the right set of coded commands."

He sighed. "I once dreamed of blowing up my hoverchair for as good as it was, it was the symbol of my lack of legs. Now I will cherish it as an extension of my mobility and my ability to command. She looks as if she has a few tricks."

The robotic hoverchair turned and spoke to him in a warm mature female voice. "I certainly do, Marshal Wonderful. I have a 20mm autogun, a big multipulsegun, extra ammo storage, a special computer network-system, a small medical bay, a coffee percolator and much more."

Other Ironsides emerged into view, clearly stunned. Some wore power armour and others wore body-armour. They stared at their leader in wonder.

Second Marshal Conroy stepped up to the Marshal, looked at Red Sonja and back to the marshal again. "Is this one of those Jasmine tricks?"

Red Sonja snorted. "No, I am another entity altogether. We are distant cousins in the complex terms of my people. You might say, in primitive terms, that we belong to the same family and the same clan. But Jasmine is more powerful than me for she is higher caste and will become great even by our standards. Even the Darkman is frightened of her but he has good reason to be."

The marshal stepped back into the robohoverchair and settled in. "I now name you Lieutenant Lucy Harmer II, or just Lucy-Bot, after my first second in command who died saving my life."

Conroy shook her head in wonder. Then she got back to business because she, like any typical Wastelander, was used to dealing and moving on. "We are getting a bit stretched trying to cover all of this area, Marshal. We need more resources to keep a track of the area and to find more entrances into Vault-301."

Red Sonja turned and touched an abandoned atomic sedan. With a sparkling shimmer it transformed and became a squat grey hovering robotic vehicle. A robohover, it could operate just as a robot or be controlled by a crew of two humans in light power armour or less. Though it had some weapons and moderate armour its main abilities were speed and agility along with that of going over water, mud or other tricky terrain.

Thus she moved amongst the vehicles and converted atomic sedans and stationwagons into hoverbots, MrSneakys and small scouting robotic vertibirds called vertibots. After Red Sonja had created five of each she announced that she had no more spare energy to use on such things. Then she lay on the bonnet of an electric sedan speeder and actually soaked up the sunshine to regenerate power. A very soft shimmer surrounded her as she did this.

The MrSneakys were scouting versions of MrGutsys with less weaponry and a good deal of sophisticated surveillance and stealth gear. Unlike MrGutsys they did not go around shouting out stupidities but kept quiet unless they had to speak.

The vertibots were robots but could carry one person in light power armour or less or a relative amount of cargo.

Ironsides brought in some battlebuggies to the cinema area and with them came some light fast all terrain trucks. Techs were soon going over the fifteen new machines and were highly impressed. They were assisted by varied kinds of techbots.

Copies of the new map were printed out and then passed out to various units. The MrSneakys were sent out. The vertibirds lifted off each with one pilot who would do more observing than piloting. The hoverbots each shot away with two figures in the back being one pilot-observer and one gunner-observer.

For a while the situation remained pretty calm.

Continued in FORTY-FOUR

FORTY-FOUR

The War Room was busy with the big map table covered with a cleverly projected holographic map of the DC Wastelands. Markers indicated settlements, outposts, units and other data. From the platform she stood on President Suzanne Ubama could easily see what was going on. Except that the data coming in was scattered.

An adviser spoke to her from one side. “We have our own eyebots sweeping over the DC Wastelands and beyond giving out your messages and our propaganda. We have scouting drones, scouts and aircraft gathering what information they can.”

The President nodded. “Vaultburg has fallen?”

The adviser nodded. “Vaultburg is now part of the new United States of America. The old slave owning oligarchy has been overthrown. Amata Cliffton, the former High Overseer of Vault-101, was executed this morning for high treason. We still do not know just what damage was done by Enclave scientists gaining access to Vault-101b. Our own scientists are now investigating both Vault-101a and Vault-101b.”

Suzanne sighed heavily. “A foolish young woman wishes only to please her stupid father and pays a very heavy price for doing so. What of her father?”

The adviser checked his Pipboy screen. “He has escaped but we have put out a generous bounty on him. Bounty-hunters are seeking him even as we speak.”

Her eyes swept across the map. “The Lunarites are concentrated in Freedoma on the coast and in the National Mall except for scattered Rebirther, BofP and SofC units. How many of them are in the DC Wastelands now?”

The adviser shook his head, muttered something, and then sighed. “We estimate at least three million. The number of refugees coming from the Pitt Firestorm is over a million and the SofC and the BofP are the only ones giving them any real hope so we expect many of the Lunarite numbers are focused between us and the Pitt. We have lost the resources of the Pitt. Will we provide resources for the refugees from the Pitt?”

The President nodded. “A guarded convoy of trucks shall be sent with what ever we can spare, a little as that is.”

She changed subject. “What word have we gained from Point Lookout?”


The adviser sighed again. “Nothing. The coastal boats that normally come from that direction have failed to arrive at Rivet City with their trade goods. That means we have nobody to question on what is happening there. This is no coincidence. The Enclave has wrapped up Point Lookout and doesn’t want the rest of the world to know what they are doing there.”

The President shook her head at some thought and then spoke. “We will send scouts and spies to Point Lookout. Unmarried volunteers with out dependents only. Preferably people who know Point Lookout. I want the same done towards the Pitt and to Freedoma. The new force will be called the United States Ranger Scouts Service, the USRSS. Most people will soon be calling it the RSS. The USRSS will be the scouts and the United States Military Intelligence Agency, the USMIA, or just the MIA, will be the spies. Imagine all these agencies and forces but no real resources to put behind them.”

The adviser looked puzzled. “You Subwayers dominate the United States Federal Government, so why don’t you supply more resources?”

She gave a start and then looked hard at him. “Just how many people know that this is so?”

The adviser shrugged. “Pretty much everybody. Yes it’s an open secret amongst us Wastelanders that you Subwayers run the new USA and why complain? You have the education, the resources, the organisational abilities and experience of government. We are just a whole lot of scattered survivors. Many of us are rogue or insane or alcoholic or drug addicted or more than one of those. Have you ever heard of Sanctuary?”


The President nodded. “Just a story of some place where the very desperate and not likely to survive can somehow go or are taken in some wondrous fashion.”

The adviser nodded. “It exists. I know because I have been there.”

Suzanne Ubama stared at the young man hard and realised, with a shock, that she had never seen him before and did not really know him. So why had she been standing there discussing highly important matters of state with him? Then she realised that nobody else in the chamber seemed to notice his existence or that she was talking with him. He was also dressed oddly and this should have caught her attention.

He wore a grey suit, a white buttonshirt, a grey bowler hat and large glasses that seemed to magnify his eyes. He carried a grey briefcase in his right hand and a grey umbrella in his left hand.

The President spoke. “Just who are… Yes, we got reports on you. Statesman Alba Diplomori. They say you spoke with Elder Lyons before he started to support the Wastelanders and to fight the super mutants.”

“That is me! I am linked to the Mysterious Stranger.” He bowed gracefully and then spoke some more. “Why are the Subwayers so reluctant to send more resources to the new USA? Can’t they see that they will benefit by doing so?”

The President frowned. “The Isolationist Political Faction of the Subwayers lost the referendum and we joined the USA but they hold enough power to force cuts in the amount of assistance sent to the USA. They play on the fears of the Subwayers who do not wish to see the Subwayer Union run out of enough resources to stay safe in case there is a major attack of ghoul vampires or those albino clones on our underground homeland.”

Statesman Alba Diplomori smiled. “Then inform them that the USA is about to launch a joint campaign against both the protobinos and the ghoul vampires. In this case the USFG will of course need more resources if it is to destroy these enemies of the Subwayer Union.”

“It could work.” President Suzanne Ubama nodded. “As of now you are my Special Envoy, that is if you do not mind.”

“You do me an honour.” Alba bowed gracefully. Then he stood and passed a single sheet of paper to her. “Will this be good enough wording for such an agreement to present to the Subwayer Union Triple-Council, especially to the Senate as dominated by the Isolationist Faction?”

She read it, laughed quietly, and then passed it back. “Very good. A very nice bit of ego stroking and a neat way for any Isolationist politician to change his or her vote while saving face. Yes, that will do nicely.” She slipped a pen out and signed it. “Please go at once. I have yet more meetings to attend.”

He nodded. “I will return as soon as possible.”

Then he was gone.

Suzanne Ubama studied the holographic map for a while and then looked around in a puzzled manner. She had the odd impression she had just been talking to somebody but that was impossible. All her staff knew better than to disturb her in moments like this. No, it must have been her imagination or something.

The President went back to studying the map.

Continued in FORTY-FIVE

FORTY-FIVE

Jasmine was at Jasmine's House in Megaton but this was a different Jasmine than the Jasmine who was even then in Vault-87. This Jasmine had not left Megaton for over a year. She was in the big old building made up of concrete, aeroplane materials and glass. She was standing in the semi-enclosed top level of five levels including two basemant levels.

It was bright warm sunshine and the noises of construction work carried to her from several directions. While there was some power tools and other machinery, much of the work was done by sweating labourers. The old water processing plant was replaced by a new semi-underground one in a concrete building but Walter was still working on it. Now he had two human and two robotic assistants to help him.

In place of the old water processing plant was the new Mayor's Office which was a largely rebuilt building.

Moira Brown had gone off to the Lamplight Caverns with Bittercup and the bodyguard mercenary. Craterside Supplies was in a newer and bigger building which was actually six shops owned by four families. One sold guns and ammo; one sold clothing and body-armour; one sold footwear; one sold books and tapes; one sold odds and ends; the last sold food as a grocers including fresher food. Each shop had a back entrance but shared the same entrance chamber at the front. A big flashy neon sign advertised the main shop name.

Jasmine turned and saw the new club now run by Gob and Nova. Actually they were away in the Ghoul Underworld and it was being managed by Nova's sister, Nada. The club had no prosttutes any more or seminaked go-go dancers as it once did. Nor did it have any gambling. What it did have was better service, fairer prices and a bigger selection of drinks and food. It also looked much better inside and had a whole lot of comfortable armchairs and couches to sit on. It was called the Nova Club since everybody agreed, including Gob, that this sounded better than the 'Gob Club'.

Lucas Simms was still the Sheriff but he now had four deputies and four volunteer deputies to assist him as well as law dogs and more robots. The new Sheriff's Office was mainly offices, the jail and a dormitory.

The Church of Atom was recently vacated and already was being converted into a new community hostel where each person would get a small bedroom but would have to share other facilities. This building was being fitted with solar power panels thanks to the Rebirthers' gifts to the settlement; other buildings were also being fitted with these and solar hot water systems.

Houses were being changed as people moved to new and better houses in the newer outer parts of Megaton. These buildings were being converted to government, commercial and other uses.

The settlement looked nicer, had more greenery, had more colour, had more people but the people still carried guns and now there were new battlements added. AA-guns poked up at the sky thanks to the growing fear that the Enclave would start airborne attacks from Point Lookout. By supersonic aircraft it was not very far away at all. Bomb shelters were being constructed.

As for her house, it was not going to change. She was not going to move. Her house was now very special for she had transformed it. Sometimes she opened part of it to visitors and they walked through her combination museum, art gallery and library. Her pets wandered peacefully through one whole level and sometimes sunned themselves out on a big semi-enclosed sundeck.

A big contented molerat was slumbering against her leg. Lying on his back, behind her, in a very undignified manner was a huge yao-guai. Stretched out and sleeping peacefully on his belly were a mother cat and her five kittens.

Behind her also stood two android security guards in light power armour. They were a vaultboy and vaultgirl.

The new mayor of Megaton was one Dalton Carlton Junior. He was savvy, brilliant and politically experienced. He was also an egomaniac with a bad habit of dipping into the new town council coffers. Lucas Simms and Jasmine both had warned against the election of this man, as had others, but too few people had listened. Dalton Carlton wanted to live in Jasmine's house, wanted to stand in the semi-enclosed level on top and peer self importantly out over the town. Not only did he want it but he wanted the town council to pay for it at a stupidly cheap price. He was demanding that with the house should come all of its fittings, most of its furniture, most of its decorations and much else including the MrHandy Wordsworth.

He was becoming a pest!

But worse than that he had been in contact with the Darkman, he was a traitor.

The telephone rang except there was no visible telephone. It stopped ringing and a voice spoke out of mid air as if it was speaking from a poor quality telephone line. "Hello, is this the Ashworth House?"

It was Mayor Dalton Carlton.

She spoke back but her voice was that of a tired, sore throated old man with a tired wavering voice. "Wadsworth here, may I ask who is speaking. I can hardly hear you. Damned fangled telephones. Never can hear anybody on these damned fangled telephones. Why I remember when I was a boy?"

Mayor Dalton Carlton replied angrily. "I happen to know that Wadsworth is a MrHandy robot and?"

Jasmine broke in.. "I am a what? No, no, no, I am not a robot. Who ever told you I am a MrRandy robot? Sounds rather rude to me. Why back when I was a young man people would never dream of saying anything so rude over the telephone. You should be ashamed of yourself, Mr Carlton Dalton."

"Its Mr Dalton Carlton, not Mr Carlton Dalton." The mayor sounded angry for it was the fifth time he had telephoned Ashworth House that day and always Jasmine had toyed around with him.

One time she had pretended he had telephoned Rivet City by mistake. Another time she pretended to be a talking Dogmeat. Another time she had been just an echo of his every word. The last time she had spoken only poor English and pretended she could only speak Mandarin Chinese.

She responded. "Oh, sorry about that then. It's my hearing you see. Oh, you see. No, I should say 'you hear' really. No, oh, so funny. Well now your name is really Mr Carlton Dalton and not Mr Dalton Carlton. I hear you loud and clear. I will never forget your name, Mr Carlton Dalton."

"I know its you, Jasmine Ashworth." The mayor shouted into the telephone. "I am going to have that house and I am going to have it for free. I am going to have most of what is in it. You will walk out with only what's on your back for I am?"

She sighed and there was the sound of a telephone being hung up on the mayor.

Suddenly there was the sound of a gunshot. At least she heard it as a few did in Megaton did but not most. The mayor would appear to have killed himself but in truth the Darkman would have had him killed. For Dalton Carlton was quite insane. She wondered what his real name was, who he had been before the Darkman had taken him and twisted his mind to suit his purpose. The Darkman was a cunning fool in some ways. Those he twisted were never the same, often went out of his control, often went insane and became self destructive.

She could not help the mayor because he had too much dark karma and had been an evil man before the Darkman had twisted his mind. The man's dark karma had made it easier for him to fall victim to the Darkman.

There was the sound of a telephone ringing. Jasmine spoke into mid air. "Ashworth Household, Megaton! Jasmine speaking."

Lucas Simms spoke in a grim voice. "The mayor is dead. He apparently killed himself. I don't suppose you know anything."

Jasmine responded. "Not on the telephone. Come straight away and bring a deputy as a witness. I want you to see something of importance."

Later she gave the sheriff proof that Dalton Carlton was stealing monies from the Megaton Town Council and had visited many times a rather nasty little combination stripclub, brothel, drugden, casino and nightclub called the Megaton Club. It was at the very edge of Megaton. It was a place that Lucas Simms very much wanted to close down. Two witnesses had seen the now dead mayor speaking with the Darkman and had noted that the Darkman was angry with the mayor but that Dalton Carlton seemed to be oblivious of the fact. It seemed that his growing insanity had muffled him from the truth.

Lucas Simms left with the dark knowledge that the Darkman had killed Dalton Carlton but knowing also that he could do nothing about it and dared not even try.

She went into one of the secret levels of her special transdimensional house, it was bigger inside than outside, and bathed in a big bowl of a bath that was nine metres wide. Some animals came with her and others played, dozed or did other things in the greenery around the edges of the big chamber.

Continued in FORTY-SIX