» Fri May 27, 2011 9:12 am
Well, here we are with the next installment. Considerably longer than the intro, too, so I hope you like it.
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Chapter 01: The Webs We Weave
Nathan lazily thrummed his fingers down the length of the whiskey bottle, beads of condensation building on the outside of the glass. He quickly threw back another mouthful of the stuff, the ice cold, bitter tasting liquid numbing the inside of his mouth. There was a burning sensation all the way down his throat as he swallowed, before he let out a mixture of a belch and a grunt.
"Oi! What in the blue [censored] do ya think yer doin'!?" Max hollered from the other side of the counter. Nathan turned around on his bar stool to face the owner of the Muddy Rudder bar, his employer. "I don't pay ya to get wasted, you useless tit! I pay ya to keep the drunken losers around this dive in order!"
Another man at the counter looked curiously over at Max. "Yeah...so, you know I'm sitting right here, right?" he asked, somewhat irked.
Max looked over to the man, his portly features lined with rage. "What the hell's yer point!?" he roared. "It's not like there's anywhere else on this [censored] tub yer gonna get your fix, is there?" The overweight, balding man pulled out another bottle of beer, and slammed it in front of the patron. "Drink up, rummy." The man at the counter stared back at Max for a moment, dumbstruck, before turning back to his drink.
Nathan leaned forward on the counter, bracing his heavy, muscular frame against it. "So, what? You want me to sit here, staring blankly into space all night long?" He turned back to the menagerie of crappy, rusting metal tables that made up the rest of the bar. "Besides, it's not like there's anything to worry about. What are the chances any one of these spineless [censored]s are gonna make a move?"
The patron sitting at the bar turned to face Nathan, now, his face growing more agitated. "Again, sitting right here," he pointed out.
"I don't give a fat [censored] if all they do is sit around, jerkin' off all night long!" Max snarled, his eyes growing bulbous with frustration. "Now get off yer lazy ass, and go give me a reason to not fire your sorry, good for nothin' self!"
Nathan gave a sigh of resignation, before capping his bottle, and shoving it into his pocket. He got up off his stool, assault rifle tightly gripped in his off hand, and began making his rounds about the bar, which was really just the corner of the much larger Rivet City market. Pale, fluorescent lights shone dimly overhead on the nightly regulars as Nathan patrolled through the tables.
Upon first glance, Nathan supposed he had the look of a bouncer to him. At only twenty five, he stood at a few inches over six feet, and had a sturdy, muscular build to him. He wore heavy, black military boots, a pair of worn blue jeans which fit loosely around his legs, and a dirty, short sleeved white shirt, the sleeves just barely larger than his hairy biceps. He also had a pair of brown, fingerless leather gloves, which he'd found particularly useful on those seldom occasions when he'd actually had to enforce his position as bouncer. His skin was tanned a light brown, and he had a head of short, messy dark red hair, with a few days growth of stubble on his chiselled face.
Nathan continued around the bar, bracing his rifle against his shoulder as his dark, forest green eyes scanned over the dozen or so patrons at the bar, every one of them a familiar face around the city. To his disappointment, none of the women even so much as glanced in his direction; he'd never been much of a ladies' man. Once in awhile, one of the male patrons would shoot him a sour look, but it was probably the fact that he was hovering over them more than anything. Not that he really wanted, or even thought he had to. But so long as that idiot Max was his employer, there wasn't much else to be done.
Nathan sighed in exasperation. He needed to find a new job.
"Say Max, I don't suppose you've got that radio fixed yet?" a man near the far end of the bar called over. "Lousy piece of crap was all squeals and static last time I tried it."
Max crossed his arms over his greasy white apron. "I keep telling ya brain dead [censored]s that it ain't the radio," he growled irritably in response. "There's some punk ass kid up in the bridge tower, messin' around with the equipment up there. So, you got a problem? Go talk to him." Max jerked his finger upwards, in the direction of the tower. "Otherwise, ya can go screw."
"Well, what about him?" asked another of the customers, a young Chinese woman this time, her finger squared directly at Nathan. "It's not like he's doing anything important right now. Why not send him up?"
Max stared vacantly at the woman for a moment, as if the gears within his miniscule brain were grinding into overdrive. Finally, the man looked up at Nathan. "Hey, kid! The broad there's gotta point! Haul ass upstairs, and shut up that punk up there!"
"Isn't that something that the Rivet City patrols should do?" Nathan shot back, slightly concerned. "Last time I went all vigilante, old man Harkness threatened to show me his special 'puppet game'." Nathan narrowed his eyes. "I don't want to learn the 'puppet game,' Max."
"I don't care if the geezer had a present in his pants! Now make like a wastelander-" Max pointed angrily to the nearby door leading into the corridors. "And get the hell outta here!"
His fate sealed, Nathan gave up on the argument. He shot the woman who'd made the suggestion a 'thanks alot, you miserable cow' look, before grudgingly making his way up the nearby metal stairs, and through the heavy metal door.
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Nathan casually made his way up the last set of metal stairs that led up to the bridge, assault rifle slung over his shoulder. That late at night, the way to the bridge had been practically deserted, with the echo of his heavy footsteps up and down the corridors the only appreciable noise. The lighting cast the stairwell in a pale blue glow, as Nathan opened the large metal door leading to the bridge.
The room inside was a complete disaster. The old, pre-war consoles and instruments, having lain dormant for centuries, now splayed their innards out for the world to see. Terminal covers littered the floor, and massive bundles of wires and cables spewed forth from the open panels. As Nathan looked around the immediate area, the moon and the stars visible through the windows, he heard a sudden bang emanate from the side of the bridge.
"Busy working over here!" an irritated voice growled, from somewhere within the field of junk. Nathan stepped further into the bridge, and noticed a figure to his right, halfway inside one of the old terminals. "I'm sure whatever the hell it is you want, there's somebody else you can bother."
"Actually," Nathan replied, stepping towards the figure as he crossed his arms over his chest. "I came here looking for you." He motioned to the technological mess splayed around him. "I assume we have you to thank for the radios not working lately?"
The man grumbled something under his breath, echoed within the machinery, before pulling himself out, turning to face Nathan. "Don't tell me you actually miss listening to that idiot Three Dog," he shot back accusingly. "Moron wouldn't know music if it walked up and bit him in the ass." The man stood up from his work, revealing himself to be about Nathan's age, though slightly shorter, and considerably scrawnier as well. "Besides, what I'm doing up here is far more important than the people of Rivet City listening to I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire for the seventy fifth time in a row."
"Yes..." Nathan replied sceptically, looking about the room. "I noticed your junk when I walked in." He turned towards the stranger. "Mister-?" He began, uncertain.
The man dusted himself off, glaring at Nathan with a pair of bright green eyes. "The name's Aldric, if you must know," he replied somewhat begrudgingly. The man was wearing a pair of tattered brown overalls, with common brown shoes peeking out from beneath the bottoms of the pants. He also wore a loose, black t-shirt that looked at least two sizes too big for him, spots of grease visible on the front. In the moonlight that poured in from the window, Nathan noticed how pale the man looked, as if he didn't get out at all, and how it matched his bright, almost platinum blonde hair, cut down to only a few inches from his scalp. A pair of dirty goggles was strapped to his head, with the actual eyepieces nestled amongst the hair above his forehead.
"Aldric?" Nathan asked curiously, giving him a cockeyed look. "That's kind of an odd sounding name."
"I wouldn't expect you to know it," Aldric shot back proudly. "It's French."
"You don't sound French."
"I'm half French. Half Irish."
"You don't sound Irish either."
Aldric glared angrily at Nathan, an unmistakable look of judgement in his face. "There hasn't been intercontinental travel for two hundred years, [censored]. Nobody sounds Irish anymore."
"That's not true," Nathan quickly shot back. "What about the ghouls? Some of them were around before the war. I'm sure there's at least one of them with an Irish accent...whatever that sounds like."
Aldric pulled back for a moment, looking off to the side as he scratched at the side of his head. "I suppose that's true..." he admitted, trailing off.
"So what the hell are you doing up here, anyway?" Nathan asked, once again turning his attention towards the piles of crap all about him. "And what did you do to the radios?"
"Believe it or not, the radios aren't actually my fault," Aldric replied matter-of-factly, moving towards one of the bridge monitors that was actually intact. Nathan slowly followed behind him, intrigued. "There's some sort of outside source jamming the airwaves. I noticed it a week or so ago."
"And what, you went crazy and locked yourself up here? That's stupid."
"If you'd let me finish..." Aldric growled back sourly, plugging away at the old terminal before him. "I managed to figure out it was some kind of old style signal, but it was distorted. Encrypted maybe. I figure it wasn't meant for traditional radios. But as you well know, this place used to be a military carrier. So..."
"So you're using the military equipment to try and pick up the signal?" Nathan asked, his tone a mixture of curiosity and intrigue. "But this [censored] hasn't been used in centuries. How the hell did you manage to do that?"
"Because when everything outside is either irradiated or a mutant trying to kill you, you need a hobby. Or a lot of hobbies." Aldric glanced smugly at the bouncer. "I just happen to be a [censored] genius, too."
Nathan rolled his eyes at this comment. A genius? Maybe. A egotistical [censored]? Definitely. "So, what did you find out, then?" he asked, his interest genuinely piqued.
"I was just about to give the old girl a test run when you came barging in," Aldric explained with a hint of annoyance in his voice. "So, shall we?" He pressed a key on the terminal, and the speakers on the bridge suddenly flared to life.
At first, the room was filled with ear splitting static, never relenting for a single heartbeat. Slowly, though, the static began to fade, and was gradually replaced by a series of high pitched beeps and squeals. Nathan turned to Aldric, who pressed a few more keys, and without warning, the beeping stopped.
"This is an automated distress message from Vault-Tec: Vault Zero-Zero," blared a masculine, robotic voice, halting awkwardly as it spoke. "Message begins: Declaring general emergency code Andromeda. Unidentified contamination of Project Genesis detected. Threat level: unknown. Recommended contingency plan: unknown. Message repeats. This is..."
Aldric calmly plugged at the terminal, and the bridge speakers went dead. For some time, the two men stood silent, their gazes occasionally glancing outwards to the moon, and the vast, endless sky before them. Finally, Nathan turned to Aldric.
"What-the [censored]-was that," he stated more than asked, a blank look on his face.
"I can honestly say I don't know," Aldric replied, shaking his head. He resumed typing on the terminal, and a small map of what appeared to be the pre-war wasteland appeared on screen, several blinking lights flashing at various spots. "But whatever it was...it's being transmitted from multiple locations..."
Nathan rolled his eyes in disbelief. "Yeah, Max is gonna love this one..." he grumbled under his breath. "I can't believe-" He found himself pausing midsentence, a sudden noise in the background catching his ear. "Hey...did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Aldric asked, looking away from the terminal as he too strained to listen. There was a faint sound in the air, almost inaudible, like the rapid movement of air.
"Sounds like...a turbine, maybe?" Aldric suggested, not entirely sure himself.
Nathan remained silent a moment longer, the noise quickly growing louder, to the point where it sounded as though it were within spitting distance. "Yeah," he replied, before glancing out the window, and catching the silhouette of something dart between them and the moon, visible for only a moment. "What the-"
Without warning, the tranquility of the inky blackness outside was broken, replaced by the ominous figure of a flying machine racing towards the bridge tower. Nathan wordlessly wrapped his arm around Aldric's neck, pulling him to the ground just as a trio of bright, red lances of light shattered through the window, slicing through where they'd been standing just a moment earlier.
