The Doomday Aftermath

[Maharg67]

Thank you again, folks, for you wonderful feedback.

 

Two notes:

 

I am ending Rise of the Clavefolk but am going to try to incorporate as much of that story into this story as I can. I have committed myself to too many stories in three forums and have been forced to cut back.

 

Secondly Dragonpen61 has left this forum for good and will not be returning.

 

I will be putting my new posting in soon as I tend to write them out of forum and then post them in these days.

 

Thank you.

[Maharg67]

FOUR: Sajji in Crosswayne

 

The DC Wastlands Space-Needle projected high into the sky where it sparkled in the semidarkness. Around it spread the surprisingly intact great structures of Central Washington and the National Mall. Landscape was lit up partly by glowing growths of fluromoss and the dots of glowshooms. The moon Luna was half full and the two smaller moons, Heaven and Hell, glowed softly silvery white and furious red in turn. Somehow these two smaller moons were always 'full'.

 

The scene was weirdly beautiful and somehow a fitting backdrop to the battle raging to the north from where the young woman stood on top of the wreckage of an electric motorised omnibus. She was almost invisible in her tight black stealth armour that covered her head to toe except for the visor and a few other features. She was Ninja armed with a power-sword, a pulsepistol, an shockblade and a pelletpistol. Ninja she was but not assassin but antiassassin and bodyguard after vowing never to willingly kill the innocent again for money.

 

Having much experience in the DC Wastelands and having done much background research she had a good idea of what was going on. Battlegrounds were far from her favourite place to be but soon she had to set out in roughly that direction.

 

Order of Steel 22nd Fist was fighting super mutants in the zone south of the jagged mountain rising unnaturally now in that area, punching up through smaller mountains and breaking their older patterns. 100mmC howitzer rounds exploded savagely but showed mostly as eruptions of smoke in the distance. OofS hovertanks, twenty-two of them, hummed along the neglected but surprisingly intact self-repairing highway leading towards the once famous Lamplight Caverns National Park. They raced to join Armatroopers like chunky hairless metallic apes in their power armour. The hovertanks passed a convoy of salvaged and rebuilt atomic motorised army trucks filled with OSSIs, the standard infantry in their light power armour, techs, equipment and supplies. One heavy truck was special with machinery on the back, was a sapper vehicle.

 

Sajji watched both the hovertanks and then the trucks go past, the first swooshing past gracefully and the latter roaring past with low growling noises.

 

Groups of locals stood in watch-towers or battlements of their fortified settlements and watched the far of flashes of light and listened to the thundering, the thumping and other sounds that drifted their way. In the distance she could see one of them fairly close to the highway. It was a dairy, meatworm and muttfruit producer though it produced other foods for itself. Sajji wondered how easy it would be to stop at that place and obtain some food.

 

Local settlers would bring supplies and scavenged stuff to be used by the OofS. They did not expect payment because they knew the OofS was the only real thing between them and the super mutants of various kinds from the human sized Brawlers right up to the monstrous striding giants of Behemoths. The area was less radded than many and more fertile. The DC Wastelands people relied on the produce from its fortified communal farming settlements, FarmCo robotic farm-complexes and other efforts. Raiders of varied kinds, be they slavers or gangers or cannibals or other kinds, had fled from the area.

 

Word had got around that super mutants hated and were vulnerable to high voltage electricity though why this was so was not really known. Word had also gotten around that super mutants often came from Spike Mountain and the Lamplight Cavern National Park. Up that way was Bigtown, an isolated city always under siege by super mutants but not much was known about that place.

 

A flight of five commercial monoplanes shot overhead being modified to strafe with 20mmC autocannons and to drop bombs. The sturdy basic built aircraft had been popular with private owners back before Doomday because they had been relatively cheap to buy and to operate which meant they were relatively easy to scavenge and repair. The Skycubs ran with no lights, using night-vision, radar and sensors. Their atomic motors were surprisingly quiet.

 

Sajji dropped lightly onto the ground. Two other figures in black stealth armour crouched there and both were young women whose bodies were outlined immodestly by their suits. One of them handed her a compact pulsecarbine, an uncommon GunTek weapon of much sophisticated power. The others also had pulsecarbines. Sajji spoke quietly for whispering actually carried easily in the quiet. She did so in the language of English. "Snap/One will try to avoid getting to close to the actual battle. He will try to blend into what is going on, to take on a role that allows him to skirt the edges with out attracting the wrong kind of attention. If any of the Order of Steel security intelligence people realise he is there, they will torture and kill him. Snap/One assassinated a very popular, experienced and skilled Captain over a hundred years ago."

 

Taro responded. "Will he not have support with him?"

 

"Most likely but will he be able to utilise them easily?" Sajji looked up as the sky as the dark elongated shape of an OofS airship drifted overhead in darkness. It would be operating as an observation post, a radio listening post, a communication relay point and a special weapons support platform if it had to do this. Attached to its underside were two Buzzbee vertibirds, each a smaller type vertibird with its enclosed lifterfans. There were also parapods that could parachute the crew down to the surface in case of an emergency. "The OofS has put a lot of valuable assets into this operation and for good reason. The SMs seem hell bent on sweepin through the farmlands of Crosswayne on a rampage of death and destruction. If that is allowed to happen the whole DC Wastelands will be worse off. As it is a few powerful factions have assisted the operation be it the fledgling DC Republic, the mysterious Subwayers, DCTek, CC Corporation, the DC Guilds, the Brotherhod of Steel, the Sisterhood of Steel or others. Not openly or officially but the support has been there."

 

Nedli spoke quietly. "Snap/One came here to kill somebody, didn't he? He is famous for being an assassin."

 

Sajji responded. "Mostly but he does other kinds of jobs also. He has even operated as a bodyguard and an antiassassin for relatively good people. Snap/One serves a cause, serves a master. We used to assume he was only after profit be we gained more data on him and had to change our minds." She began to turn. "We must head out for we have much ground to cover before we get to Reach-Point Alpaha-Beta."

 

The three Ninja slipped into the semidarkness and vanished into the landscape with amazing speed and ease.

Edited October 6, 2009 by Maharg67

[Herculine]

I'll be on the edge of my seat waiting for the next installment!

[species5478]

The anti-assassin theme is relatively untouched by many authors. I personally, enjoy stories based around soldiering and would love to know where you're taking this...

[Maharg67]

Lost Souls

 

They drift endlessly across the world

or repeat the actions of yester year

a man here mows the lawn where there is only dead ground

a woman hangs clothes on a line where there is only a crater

children play where super mutants and x-mutants fight

beavers build a dam in a running river now green with toxic slime

rats run through a sewer and ghostlike right through a mutant rat

they are there but not there

sometimes they can be seen by some people

so sad, so quiet or perhaps quite the opposite

one can pray for them

one can wish them well

these Lost Souls

that number well into the billions

[Maharg67]

FIVE: The Mysterious Stranger Amongst the Giant Mushrooms

 

The Mysterious Stranger departed from the road and began to stride through broken area dotted with mutated giant mottled grey mushrooms or treeshooms. They were only safely edible if soaked in clear water for a while. The water was then thrown out and the giant treeshroom flesh could be cooked to be found surprisingly high in its nutritional quality.

 

As the tall figure walked he began to pick up the sounds of battle drifting to him across the landscape with his amazing sense of hearing. The great Spike Mountain could be seen clearly now and he admired it as he always did such weirding structures created during Doomday. The great metallic stone spike had smashed up through the small mountains of the Lamplight Cavern National Park.

 

The Mr Porty robot followed on faithfully still and was careful not to brush against the giant mushrooms that sometimes had a nasty surprise buried inside.

 

He was on his way there to access Clave-087, one of the great city bunkers designed and built by ClaveTek, a great quasigovernment corporation that had built all the Claves around the world but more in some regions than in other. But Clave-087 was special because it was there in a great research and development complex, that Forced Evolutionary Virus had been first created. The name was a falsehood, a code name, for in truth FEV was not really a virus at all. It was something far more deadly.

 

It was getting darker. The sky above sparkled briefly with some errant energy patterns. In the distance, as if in response, the Space-Needle of Washington DC also sparkled briefly.

 

Mr MS stopped and turned to a treeshroom. The robot also halted but kept to a safe distance for it had seen the Mysterious Stranger do this before for certain creatures were planted as babies inside these giant mushrooms and grew all curled up to one day dig themselves out. They fed on the giant mushroom flesh. The Mysterious Stranger touched the surface of the treeshoom, a curiously smooth almost slimy feel, and a moment later a grey human like hand pushed out of the mushroom flesh and gripped it. Energy flowed from the Mr MS into the mushman's body.

 

Then the young mushman woman slipped out of the treeshoom, dropping onto her feet, naked a grey of skin being shaped like a young human woman but being hairless. Her skin was smooth and almost slimy like that of the treeshoom. Like all mushmans she was linked to the treeshooms and devoted to them as she was to other mushmans. Her curiously oval grey eyes peered up at him for while he stood at two metres tall (seven feet?) she was only roughly a metre and a half tall.

 

She spoke fluent Esperanto, the Internationalist language once taught by the United Nations World Government to many millions of people around the world. "Questions in my mind? Smart mutants come this way but they go around our sacred treeshooms. You say such monsters come from humans as we were once humans? You have done something to me. Aaahhh, you cured me of the loop-worms that sometimes feed on us and sicken us."

 

The Mysterious Stranger smiled. "Cured you of that and gave you the enhancement of mind, body and spirit but not soul. The last you must deal with. Gave you also the ability to draw power from radiation to both support various new abilities and nuetralise radiation. I can not tell you how these powers work. They are a gift."

 

The mushman woman beamed a smile with odd pale white teeth. "Then the Great Goddess herself must have sent you. I will help make the growth of the treeshoom forest stronger and grow bigger. We will have more children and then more adults to defend our treeshooms from the humans, the ghouls, the molerats and the others who come to steal our sacred treeshoom flesh."

 

Mr MS then spoke again. "I would like you to trade treeshoom flesh for goods from the humans and the ghouls. Humans struggle to survive in these lands. Ghouls come out at night and attack even if the settlers or wanderers can avoid such as the gangers or slavers. These humans can give you items that you can use but they can not. Right now though I need you and other shoomans to help me find something of importance."

 

The mushman gave him a look of sharp curiosity. "There are many things of importance in this area. There is the Broken Blue House where we mushmen make things from scavenged things and repair things that we have made from scavenged things. There is the Place of Eight Trucks where we feed captive radroaches so they become fine and heallthy. Then they are fit to eat. Perhaps you do not speak of these. Perhaps you speak of one of the other broken buildings."

 

Mr MS pointed to the ground. "Underground places of hard materials like smart-concrete and others?"

 

After an obvious thoughtful pause the mushman woman nodded. "Follow me and I will take you to a metal building that was perhaps once all underground."

 

They moved through the treeshoom forest, past green bushes and small, squat trees, and then through more treeshooms. The metallic modular structure was indeed an underground minibunker that had been partly uncovered by the Doomday forces. Despite its name as a 'minibunker' it was quite large and heavily armoured with triple layers of material. Despite the smart armouring it was lightly scorched in places. A thick tube projected above the main rounded off cube shape of the minibunker proper.

 

The Mysterious Stranger darted up the side of the structure with amazing agility and speed but the small woman followed almost as quickly. Mr Porty only reluctantly went up when asked to do so by MR MS. The armoured hatch was very thick and very well locked in varied ways. The tall man looked around for a moment as he squatted there. The exposed minibunker was not actually too obvious because there were rises in the ground all around and also some thick groves of taller trees. In the near distance some mushmans were busy weaving baskets from plant fibres as they sat on a grassy mat of the same. One of the mushmans had a double barelled shotgun resting on her lap and a man had a powerful looking crossbow.

 

Mr MS nodded at the folks on the mat. "You found weapons and tools?"

 

The mushman woman nodded. "We did in some of the broken buildings and in two buildings that are not broken. You altered two other mushmans. Why do you do this?"

 

"I serve a cause, a purpose, to help this world and its people." He spoke now with some earnestness. "I serve another cause to discover exactly what happened to this world when Doomday took place and what led to it happening. A mushman can now draw power from sunshine, the brighter the better, to work various new abilities. Another has been enhanced of mind, body and spirit but even more so of spirit which allows greater psychic ability. Your people tend towards peacefulness and lack much of the aggressiveness found in humans. Your strength is needed to help shift this world away from being the hell that has largely become."

 

He leapt upwards and landed on the hatch with amazing power and again, agility. Then he crouched there and splayed his fingers against the metal surface of the thick armoured hatch. After a moment he nodded. "Not exactly what I wanted but it still can help. Do you note the small logo-symbols in the smart metal of the minibunker? This is a VaultTek structure. They were a private corporation that built specialised vaults in PreDoom times and who built what they called LifeVaults being emergency shelters of various kinds. This is a VaultTek minibunker, a small LifeVault. Questions are: is it still functioning, is there anybody alive in there but in status and is this minibunker linked somehow with other shelters?"

 

The mushman woman clambered up onto the hatch and frowned. "Why do they battle so savagely with such terrible weapons?"

 

He sighed. "Super mutants are attacking an important farming region for Wastelander humans and civil ghouls along with others. The produce from Crosswayne feeds many people and is less radded than food from other places. A large military force is fighting them."

 

At that she smiled at him. "It was a rhetorical question. We know about the super mutants and the Order of Steel. Smart mutants came to us once and tried to get us to provide the super mutants with food. They were very rude and we had to chase them and their stupid mutant bodyguards away. I am afraid we had to kill two super mutants. They saw us as naked and vulnerable because we were new to them. They did not know there is more to us than appears on the surface."

 

She raised her right hand and it shimmered to transform into a savage, sharp, hard spike. As this happened she grimaced mildly with pain. Then she transformed into back into her hand with anther mild grimace. "But you know about my people. You did not ask for my name."

 

He tapped on the hatch. "You mushmans are sensitive about your names and who knows them but your name is She'Oro of Goddess'Paka. Goddess'Paka is this settlement of mashmans, giant mushrooms and the others you have not spoken of."

 

At that she grimaced but not out of physical pain. "We do our best to help them and they help us guard our settlements from danger. How long will it take to unlock the hatch?"

 

There was a clicking noise, a soft humming noise and then a series of other sounds from the hatch. Then half of it slowly opened up with another soft humming noise. Mr MS didn't have to point out the obvious. He ignored the ladder going down into the dimly lit minibunker upper main chamber and dropped down into it. The mushman woman darted down using the ladder. Mr Porty was happy enough to float where he was until Mr MS asked him to float down. The robot grumbled as it did so.

Edited October 6, 2009 by Maharg67

[Herculine]

I'm beginning to wonder if the best word to describe your writing style would be "prolific". One of the pieces I've posted literally took years for me to write. At the rate that you produce narrative, you definitely should try this as a profession.

[dezdimona]

I'm really enjoying this.

[species5478]

I always hesitate to give constructive criticism, or any criticism because I never know how sensitive authors can be. ( :whistling: ) I fit that bill...Yet I'm personally responsive to all forms of advice, but I've found throughout life, most people only want one kind of response. Whether athlete, entertainer, author, etc. But I'll take a chance here, because the rewards could be great...

 

I've noticed a definate focus on the story. It seems in each telling, Maharg is getting better at crafting plot and dialogue. I've had to really read this carefully, because like any good story, I want to become absorbed in the moment. To that effect, Kudos have been given. I would do the author an injustice however, if I didn't expose what I feel, is a crippling fault. Main paragraphs feel convoluted. There's too much emphasis on the story, and not enough on the characters. In some cases this is good, but for this type of story, I sincerely feel that a greater focus on the characters, will propel the storyline forward much faster, and with greater ease. Let your characters tell the tale...I want to know these entities intimately. I want to feel their emotions, know their perspective, and understand their plight. Am I too eager? Perhaps. But I know what I like. I'm standing at the cliff Maharg, take me over the edge...

[Maharg67]

Thank you for your positive feedback, Hurculine, Dezdimona and Species5478 (I love all of your forum names) :thumbsup:

 

Species5478 I agree but would like to point out that there is a difficult balance to keep between focusing on characters and on storyline (plot), description, narrative, background etc.

 

There has to be a balance. I do not know if I attained my goal but I wanted to more slowly introduce the characters after establishing them into the story world. The problem with starting with the character is that it is easy to give too much emphasis and bog down the story. I am still working on the balance. I am taking your feedback into mind now and am reviewing (yet again) all that I have written.

 

thank you! :thanks: