Wastelands Chance of Revival

[Maharg67]

Chapter Twenty-One (Previous Chapter) has been changed. Please reread or story in future will make less sense. Thank you for your patience. :thumbsup:

 

TWENTY-TWO

 

The big public meeting, along with a lot of smaller meetings of various kinds, had resolved not much at all. More questions had arisen than answers had been found. The settlement of Megaton and that of Megaton Bunkertown did formulate a short term agreement to last until another big public meeting was called and then a joint meeting by the Megaton Town Council and the new Megaton Bunkertown Council. Again areas of access were defined, the sharing of resources discussed and such like.

 

Councillor McDoogle played successfully on the fears of Megaton citizens that they would become engulfed by the greater population of the Megaton Bunkertown until it was revealed that the bunkerplex actually had less people in it than Megaton had. Megaton’s population was roughly 121,000 and Megaton Bunkertown’s population was roughly 98,500 people.

 

Oddly enough the bunkerplex had more animals and a greater variety of animals being of a different range. While Megaton had dogs, molerats, molemice, squirrels, brahmins, mutthorses, goats, cats and a few less common types, the Bunkertownies had Prewar horses, dogs, cats, cattle, goats, ponies, chickens, geese, ducks, rabbits, guineapigs, ferrets, and a few others; many of the bunkerplex animals were in an archival zoo with surprisingly large enclosures.

 

Days passed as a futile search took place for nine missing young women taken from Megaton. Not only did the search take place in Megaton but also in Megaton Bunkertown and the Great Lake Zone, as it was starting to be called. The GLZ contained not just the lake and Harem Island but also two smaller islands and a series of adjoining partly dry caverns with a good deal of dry fertile ground.

 

Again McDoogle tried to play on Megaton citizens’ fears, this time by pointing out that the Bunkertownies had shown up and then the young women had vanished. He got nowhere because young women had also vanished in the decades before the discovery and awakening of Bunkertown. Anyway the Bunkertownies had willingly opened up their bunkerplex to Megaton searchers except for a few high security sections and Megaton also had such sections it kept closed. Special selected teams searched those.

 

Professor Brown proposed that Megaton could expand outwards. Holy Megaton was north of Central Megaton, had no crater, while Middle Megaton was south of Central Megaton and Outer Megaton was southwards of Middle Megaton. He proposed new sectors going north-west, westward, south-west, north-east, eastward and south-east of Central Megaton.

 

Moira Brown proposed an expansion of tunnels to build a small underground monoline and perhaps even roadway tunnels for small electric vehicles. These could link underground emergency shelters and other facilities. People went to automatically dismiss the idea and then realised, to their surprise, that it was a very good one.

 

The Boxbie Twins gave up on pretending to be petty criminals and they started business as private detectives. The hut would become the centre of business but they planned to extend it, putting in a shower cubicle, a toilet cubicle and a kitchenette. They kept on searching for clues to what Harrington had been providing information to outsiders and why they were doing so. To their surprise Sheriff Simms contracted them to continue the search for the missing young women with reasonable rates of pay plus a small extra expenditure allowance.

 

A rivalry began between the Megaton Townguard and the 555th Special Army Regiment of Bunkertown. It began as friendly enough but at times got nastier. The army soldiers outnumbered, outgunned and were better trained thane their counterparts. They were also were veterans of war against the Soviets and other enemies while the Townguards had only dealt with a relatively few smaller threats. The Townguards were forced to give back all the atomic motorised army trucks and the two atomic motorised battletanks they had taken simply because they could not maintain or supply them properly. Nor did they have real training or experience in how to use such large, powerful machines.

 

Then news came that the Bobby Triplets had erected the force-dome over Harem Island and would not allow others to enter that place for the foreseeable future. No explanation was given.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

[gormonk]

moria brow shure does have her days. kracken are more or less FEV infected terror(those overgrowen squid that large wales feed on) squid, dragons are FEV infected birds.

[Maharg67]

Thanks, gormonk, for feedback

Moira Brown certainly does!

Good ideas of dragons and krakens but original idea is they are creatures that have come through rifts. Still, will consider your input.

 

TWENTY-THREE

 

Bobby-Bob landed the small vertibird in the big Town Square Hilltop Town, Harem Island, and turned the lightly armoured machine off. The stealth field was still up.

 

They had penetrated the quarantine force-field erected up around the small metropolis. Now they were looking across dusty abandoned ruins of what had once been a market place of some kind. A tall stone statue of Professor Agakar was partly demolished, partly pulled down, with its head and upper third sprawled messily across big courtyard flagstones.

 

The skeletal remains of dead people were everywhere. There were abandoned deactivated robots, the skeletal remains of horses that had been pulling carts, cages full of long dead chickens and other animals. A small herd of goats had died along with a goat herder. People had died in the middle of eating at tables and a waitress had died, dropping her tray.

 

Bobby-Bob spoke to the others who were on different parts of the island. “Everything mammalian or reptilian is dead but the plants are all alive and healthy.”

 

What had once been neat flowerbeds and other small stone barrier surrounded plots of ground were now semiwilderness of plants growing helter skelter. A big tree grew in the very centre of the courtyard and was full to bursting with apples. The surprise was that they were different kinds of apples being green, red, yellow and a red-brown.

 

Then something did move into view. It was a boneskinned creature with four double jointed legs coming out of the sides of a metre wide and high cube that was the body. A zibiomechanical creature. A telescopic neck, long and flexible, snaked out from the front and up into the air to end in globe of a head. Its head was moving back and forth as if seeking something and four telescopic arms, one out of each side, front and back of the main body, were holding weapons.

 

Bobby-Anne: “Indications are that a deadly form of nerve gas was used, was released in the one moment from scented-air jets designed to freshen the air inside the force dome. These people protected themselves from any outside threat but not from an internal threat. At least that is what I compute.”

 

Bobby-Anne was at Lagoon Village with the Harem women and their girl children. She was in a treehouse modular structure that was designed to fit in visually with the village but which was a sophisticated hitech centre and small home.

 

Bobby-Bob focused on a newspaper type poster on a news-agency kiosk wall. It was 3D glossy and the words in the language of Esperanto read:

 

HOPETOWN COUNCIL TO DEMAND OF PROFESSOR AGAKAR THAT HE ACCEPT A DEMOCRATIC REFORM PROGRAM FOR THE WHOLE ISLAND. MAYOR GRUNDY STATED TODAY AT THIS MORNING’S PUBLIC MEETING THAT HE IS SURE THAT THE PROFESSOR WILL SEE THE WISDOM OF SUCH A REASONABLE DEMAND. OTHER TOWN COUNCILLORS CONTINUE TO HAVE GRAVE FEARS ABOUT THE RESPONSE TO SUCH DEMANDS.

 

Below that was:

 

INCREASING TROUBLES WITH HOPETOWN COMPUTER NETWORK-SYSTEMS AND ROBOTICS ARE COMPOUNDED BY THE INCREASINGLY AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR OF ZIBIOMECHANICAL UNITS. SECURITY CHIEF RONSON HAS AGAIN REQUESTED THAT THE TOWN COUNCIL HAVE ALL ZIBIOMECHANCIAL UNITS DEACTIVATED AND STORED SAFELY AWAY; THE COUNCIL CONTINUES TO DENY HER REQUESTS.

 

Below that was:

 

NEW ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE THROUGH THE DEFENCE-SECURITY FORCE-BUBBLE THAT PROFESSOR AGAKAR HAS NOW USED TO TOTALLY ISOLATE THE TOWNSHIP, INCLUDING BUNKERS, HAVE FAILED. RATIONING WILL CONTINUE BUT THE TOWN COUNCIL REASSURES ALL TOWN CITIZENS THAT THERE WILL BE NO REAL PROBLEMS FOR MANY YEARS TO COME BECAUSE THE TOWN IS BASICALLY SELF SUFFICIENT.

 

Bobby-Bob spoke. “Zibiomechanical troubles helped destroy the old world. Zibiomechs going insane and attacking people, attacking each other or just breaking down. These people either did not know about that or just failed to learn from it.”

 

Bobby-Sue spoke from the main vault where she was overseeing operations there. “Question is, did Professor Agakar kill these people or did it have something to do with the force that kidnapped the young women from Megaton?”

 

The three of them lacked enough data and had too many unanswered questions.

 

The zicubezi moved across the town square with manipulator held lasers held ready to shoot anything but nothing moved except some objects moved by a breeze. The zibiomech mad an odd softly thromming noise as it moved as zibiomechanicals tended to do when more active. It was hunting for something but what?

 

Bobby-Bob: “I am picking up some odd heat signatures from one of the shops fronting the courtyard. Yes, a clothing boutique for women with deactivated mannequin androids in the front display windows. No, they are just old fashioned but well made mannequins. Three humanoids with distorted human like readings are now coming out through the front door.”

 

The deformed human creatures, naked but so deformed as no longer to be seen as naked humans, came charging out of the shop. Boneskin armoured them and spikes thrust out from their bodies. Limbs were distorted and sometimes transformed into zibiomechanical like double jointed arms. These humans were monstrous distortions of zibiomechs, half changed hybrids that were neither truly human or zibiomechanical in nature. They each were very individualistic in structure. One leapt through the air on double jointed legs like some parody of a grass hopper while lashing out with a long whip-tentacle. Another fired volleys of hard, sharp, fast shooting spinedarts, a typical zibiomechanical weapon, while also swinging a long blade. The third rushed on four single jointed human like legs and clutched a laser-rifle in distorted human like hands but it used the laser-rifle like a club as if remembering it was a weapon but not how to use it properly.

 

The zicubezi turned its four lasers on the attackers and killed them! The laser beams spat on only for short bursts but each strike was precise on target in a vulnerable spot, burning through the boneskin armour with amazing ease. The creatures died, falling heavily to the ground, and then they flopped around horribly before finally coming to a halt.

 

Then the zibiomechanical continued on its slow steady patrol out of the square and vanished from sight.

 

Bobby-Sue: “Found some interesting hidden datafiles, perhaps accidentally lost and thus not deleted. Brain-5/9/9 was not aware of them. Professor Agakar was heavily involved with the Unified Zibiomechanical Research and Development Program with backing by NukaTek and the United States Federal Government, or at least aspects of the USFG. The UZRDP utilised a specialised virus to assist in the processing and growth of zibiomechanical units. This was known as the Forced Evolutionary Virus, or FEV. The UZRDP and Professor Agakar were not the only ones to utilise the FEV. Indeed Professor Agakar had to request the use of FEV from a far more powerful but not named member of the 9/of/9. The virus was transformed to work with zibiomechanicals and a new variant was known as the ZFEV. But there were various scientists serving Agakar who had grave doubts about the stability and safety of the new sub variant. Agakar ignored them all except one Professor Joe Jones who he had terminated by his own bodyguards, they had more than one duty. Aaahhh, yes, these datafiles were created by Professor Tarsha Jones, the wife of the murdered professor, in secret. She was hoping to get the proof of the murder to trustworthy government authorities. There is no mention of if she was successful or not.”

 

Bobby-Bob was in the cockpit, of course, of the vertibird, was cyberlinked to it for direct interactive control purposes. He began a deeper subtle scan sweep of the area. Then he picked it up, just a trace of electronic activity. He traced it to underground, to being beneath a diner and soon figured it was in a basement but what did it mean?

 

Should he risk leaving the vertibird and easy escape?

 

For the moment he decided to stay there and send out some stealthbots that were basically eyebots with stealth shield capacity. A dozen shot out of the flying machine and were soon spreading out into four groups of three as each stealthbot would help protect the other two.

 

Just before something silvery metallic flashed through the air and struck the vertibird, he sensed something wrong and he pushed a red button. Modular sections of the vertibird shot away from the sides and the front and he vanished with a sparkling shimmer. The rest of the small stealth vertibird exploded dramatically.

 

The chingun module extended its retractable pair of single jointed legs to become a basic combat robot still with its 20mm autogun and multiple purpose missile launcher. From another module climbed out four androids in stealth power armour and from the last module came four globebots, two of which were just basic carrybots filled with spare equipment and supplies. The androids slipped on compact backpacks, picked up 20mm autoguns and set out with the globebots and two legged chingun-robot.

 

They went towards the basement where the electrical signal had come from as quickly ordered to by Bobby-Bob before he vanished.

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited November 29, 2009 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

TWENTY-FOUR

 

Over two days had passed since the Bobby Triplets had isolated the whole Harem Lake Zone and especially Harem Island.

 

Bobby-Blue the dog was wandering through the big metallic chamber, the one that had the big armoured doors into United States Survival Reconstruction Bunkerplex #555 on one side and across from them, six other doors that everybody assumed led to nothing. The big dark blonde haired canine was friendly and wagged his tails, licked hands and made his way past USSRT-555 sappers, techs and other specialists preparing a convoy of vehicles. The atomic motorised armatrucks, trucks, tractors, armacars and two battletanks, were going down into the great glowcrystal cave system to start building a new settlement in the largest, most fertile of the glowcrystal caverns.

 

Bobby-Blue became both noticed and yet not noticed. People absent mindedly patted him on the head, they rubbed his back, they told him what a good boy he was and then he sat in a corner and patiently waited. To all there he became invisible.

 

When there were Megatonfolk there the Bunkertownies acted like typical humans. They exchanged small talk, they joked, they flirted or they acted like professional humans focusing on their work.

 

But then the Megatonfolk all left for various good reasons and the big armoured door now installed where once there was the secret door was closed along with others. The Bunkertownies were now alone. The Megaton people had been manipulated and even influenced on a subtle psychic level.

 

They became quite different now. All the small talk was gone. Indeed the whole gambit of casual human activity was no longer there. These humans moved methodically and with amazing cooperation as if they were one unit. The big convoy of vehicles was soon prepared to leave except now four more atomic motorised armatruck joined the others.

 

The cybermen marched quickly out of an open armoured doorway and leapt easily into the back of the powerful armatrucks that had just appeared. They looked like the power armoured soldiers of the Great War be they of the USMC roughnecks, British power infantry, Anzacs, European Unionate Stormtroopers, Soviet MIs or others. That is for the odd visors with small flashing red lights and some other differences.

 

Then the convoy was moving out, was heading off and was gone.

 

Megatonfolk began to return to the chamber in spits and spats.

 

Bobby-Blue stood up, stretched, yawned and went back to the family home with out anybody noticing him.

 

At least nobody in the big chamber.

 

For deep in Megaton Bunkertown a silver figure, a cyberhuman woman by her shapeform as that of a young slimly voluptuous figure, stood watching a 3Dwallscreen where the dark blonde dog was darting out of a vault door as somebody opened it. She smiled.

 

Then she spoke. “Very clever! Nothing fancy, nothing aggressive and an agent that by its very nature is seen as more harmless. Our stealth cyberhumans failed to pick up on it and I allowed this to remain the cast lest their reactions alert Bobby-Blue. Just like the Bobby Triplets themselves, he is far more dangerous than he appears to be. So are the whole Harrington Family.”

 

The voice spoke from a clever speaker system and seemed to come from all her around her in what she might call 3Dsound. “As you have already informed me. Do not get too impressed with them, Cyberlord Sen/232a1. The Great Cyberprogram must have leeway to learn, to evolve, but we must stay also disciplined. A difficult but necessary balance if we are to help save Terra from what is coming and to help the planet recover fully. Continue to observe the Bobby Triplets just as the Cyberway is observing others through out this devastated world.”

 

“Of course, High Cyberlord.” She turned to other matters.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited November 29, 2009 by Maharg67

[Herculine]

Cybermen...

 

Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis would be so proud!

[Maharg67]

Thank you very much Herculine for the feedback and the picture.

 

My cybermen are based on Brotherhood of Steel soldiers in power armour and they move quicker, more agile. But still, they were inspired by the Doctor Who cybermen. Of course I am claiming no copyright.

 

You are welcome to add more pictures or change older ones anytime. LOL.

 

Below is a picture of an advanced cyberhuman attack vehicle!

http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/tt9/Dragonpen61/Forum%20Additives/garbagecanwithwheels.jpg

Edited November 27, 2009 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

TWENTY-FIVE

 

Bobby-Bill made his way along a secondary highway in the region once known as North Western Columbia, a place of hitech suburban towns, that is towns that were just suburbs centred on suburban service-support complexes. Smart-materials, nanobots and microbots met many buildings were still erect and in surprisingly good condition but many others were ruins or gone except for some traces. Any active larger maintenance or other robots had either been scavenged or destroyed. Bobby-Bill wore metal armour and carried both a compact backpack and a 7.62mm. He had a pipboy and a stealthboy. Other items were at his belt or in pouches or big tight pockets.

 

He moved with remarkable speed, stealth and quietness, leaving almost no traces of his passing behind him as he did so. Yet he was not using his stealthboy or the sensors and motion-detector linked to his pipboy.

 

Sensing them, he crouched behind a tilted sign still in good condition because it was made of smart-plastic, and some scraggy thornbushes with small, useful thornpods. He plucked a thornpod and carefully slipped it into a pouch.

 

Four power scout armoured figures ran slowly along the winding highway that was in surprising good condition thanks to its smart-material construction. Brotherhood of Steel in grey and brown splashwork patterned armour that helped to hide them in the bleak landscape. They ran past mail-boxes and long abandoned atomic cars, rusting tricycles and then a postal robot busy making its rounds.

 

The four each carried a 12.7mm heavy autorifle. They had back-up weapons like forearm-lasers, 10mm autopistols and other, more individual choices.

 

Washington DC, both the capital city of the now ceased USA and the now much messed up the great island of Columbia (not to be mixed up with Colombia in South America), was where the Brotherhood of Steel and their allies, the Sisterhood of Steel and the other Orders of Steel, were moving into. The scouting team was checking things out. They had been moving more slowly but then an old fashion fixed wing monoplane had flown over. They had heard its internal combustion engine easily. It had no weapons but that would not stop the pilot and observer in it from warning others of the B/of/S. That is if the aeroplane crew had seen the armoured soldiers but one never took such things for granted if one wanted to survive.

They did not detect Bobby-Bill following them or the way he probed at their surface thoughts, at their electronics, gently and patiently picking up information.

They were in the ruined Urban Estate of Heavenly Luxury Gardens dotted with two level houses with large double garages that most people in the USA could never afford to buy. Across the street they examined a fairly strong and fortified looking fire station. A big Red Plague sign still stood there forbidding people to not go beyond that point until their travel documents were checked. A pile of white skulls were heaped sardonically beneath it. Just beyond were abandoned diesel-electric hybrid army trucks where National Guardsman had probably tried to stop the spread of the plague and other invaders; they had failed!

 

A radroach scuttled into view but, not being stupid, it quickly scuttled away again.

 

The lieutenant checked with his suit-computer. They were just twenty-two klicks from the air dropped beacon marking the designated target. Designated target was the home of a long dead, supposedly dead. 4-Star General Johnson Hamersley. The O/of/S wanted to check out the house to see if there was any important data stashed there that would lead to finding long lost or hidden armouries, bunkers or other such prizes in the DC Wastelands. A fast moving supersonic drone had dropped the beacon and then had returned to the Hovership OSSS Courage that was sweeping towards the DC Wastelands. It was part of a big convoy of hoverships, airships and a couple of experimental skyships.

 

The lieutenant spoke com-to-tom to his team. "Sisters of Steel should be just north of us. Intelligence picked up local info that stated there are some chimpies in the area. Nasties with some Prewar military gear of National Guard standard. Kevlar body-armour, 7.62mm autorifles, rocket-grenade launchers, that sort of thing. We can try talk them into working for us or going away or we kill them."

 

Chimpies were chimpnoids, chimpanzee humanoids created by the warped genius of Professor Marue of the 9/of/9 who also created other animal humans for the war effort. Chimpnoids turned out to be wildly erratic at times but some became deadly soldiers fighting the various enemies of the USA. But the USA was no more. Chimpnoids, like all animanoids, like humans and others, were scattered across the three land masses that, linked together, made up Greater America.

 

Locals were often very happy to sell information to the Orders of Steel in exchange for weapons, tools, medicines and other resources. Sometimes they joined the convoy, climbing on board with what ever they could take with them including vehicles, robots, livestock or even building materials. The Orders of Steel wanted to set up a military base in the DC Wastelands but they also wanted camp followers who could provide the O/of/S with many goods and services.

 

Elder Lyons of the B/of/S was determined that they reach the great fortress known as the DC Citadel and make it the DC Wastelands base for the Orders of Steel. The great hitech fortress was hopefully still sealed tight behind fully operational automatic and robotic defences. For the O/of/S had the codes and passwords to get into the DC Citadel thanks to an amazing stroke of luck, a find by a W/of/S, Workers of Steel, salvage team.

 

The B/of/S squad passed through an abandoned yard, past some skeletal remains, past a slowly rusting caravan. Wild grasses grew, tough and dull green. In the distance a cloud of yellow softly glowing fog drifted over a house. Such stuff was wisely avoided even by those in power armour or sealed up vehicles. Radiation was at reasonable levels for new humanity, for most other folks. They approached a garden shed.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited November 29, 2009 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

TWENTY-SIX

 

They heard music, picking it up with augmented hearing though it was only being played softly. They approached the shed with care. The building’s door was open a little and some light was spilling out. Private Ray opened the door and there lay a seemingly dead woman on a couch but on the bed slept a puppy dog who seemed to be well fed. Then they realised the woman was not dead at all but was a ghoul with disfigured features. She wore a lightly stained Prewar dress, knee length and flower patterned. On a small metal table was a pile of canned food, various tools, an old fashioned .32 calibre revolver pistol, a stack of paperback novels in surprisingly good condition and a closed suitcase. On the floor was a dog food dish that was empty and an old metal bowl half full of clean water.

 

They sensored and scanned the interior of the hut, the old robotic lawn mower, the metal locker with its door open to show shelves with more items. They found no threats but took nothing for granted.

 

Lieutenant Dolan spoke through his speaker. "Please awake. You are not in danger."

 

The ghoul woman sat up with her start. The pup woke up and upon seeing two big figures, the other Brothers of Steel were out of sight, began to bark bravely at them. The woman looked around for her pistol but then laughed sourly. She then spoke. "My little old revolver can stay where it is. Shooting at you would be as useful as spitting at you. So you don't want to kill an old ghoul woman who was alive when all the madness took place. That is very nice of you. What do you want? Information I suppose. You can't have puppy."

 

Dolan responded. "We would appreciate information but we would also appreciate it if you would join our people. We are the Brotherhood of Steel of the Orders of Steel. We are coming to the DC Wastelands in order to establish operations here. I am not at liberty to state what these will be at this time. I can tell you that we intend to create a large military base and, linked to it and protected by it, a large civilian settlement. Camp followers we need to provide goods and services to the base. Once you are invited, we take you. That's it. Are there any others in the area who could go along with you or instead of you if you do not wish to..."

 

"Not go with you, are you kidding!" The ghoul woman leapt up hugging the puppy to herself. "I was just having a nap when you caught me off guard. I have been rather tired lately. I am glad I found this poor little pup wandering not far from here. He is amazingly alike the pup I had as a little girl that my father accidentally killed by running it over with the family car. I wouldn't speak to him for a month."

 

The lieutenant nodded. "Very interesting. Amazingly alike you say and you have been getting more tired since you found him."

 

The old ghoul woman frowned. "Now, you see here sonny Jim, I am much older than you, and I am no fool. My puppy is a very special kind of puppy but he only makes me a bit extra tired when he could do much more because he loves me."

 

The lieutenant nodded his helmeted head and then took his helmet off to reveal a human head but it was hairless and was metallic steel, was shiny. "We are the Brothers of Steel. I was there when the Martians invaded, when their comet-ships splashed into the seas, the oceans, or exploded into the lands. When the first of those damned biomechanical zitripods strode out of the craters and started making for the nearest seas or oceans, I helped fight them as part of the United States Marine Corps. We took down a few and they disintegrated too many of my comrades. Our projectiles and lasers often deflected from their energy-armour but just as often they got through. Outside of Baltimore we destroyed five of those damned tripods and hundreds of those tripocs in their weird energy-armour. Lucky for us they mostly just wanted to get to the big wet salty."

 

The old ghoul woman nodded. "Forgive me for my foolish presumption. Was it the FEV that did this to your people?"

 

He nodded. "Not all who belong to the Orders of Steel are of our kind, are metahumans of the kind called Steelpiens. A silly name, I think, but one thought up in a hurry by scientists who had no time to spare. There are losses but also compensations to being a Steelpien metahuman, or steelman. Some of us are humans, some are other kinds of metahumans like you ghouls who can resist high levels of radiation and even get healed from it. We have a vertibird coming this way to pick you up with your special puppy and your stuff. The policy is to find what ever we can take of good from the DC Wastelands and use it to make greater good."

 

The ghoul woman smiled. "Just call me Martha." She smiled some more. "Can you turn away while a modest old lady changes her clothes."

 

The lieutenant put his helmet back on, adjusted it, relinked it and turned his head away as did the other B/of/S soldier. Even as they did so the nice old ghoul lady shimmered and changed, grew strangely beautiful with translucent silken skin and long translucent silken hair. Her eyes shone cold and intense. Her beautiful mouth opened to show rows of amazing translucent fangs. Her old dress was now a silken translucent garb of great beauty. She dropped the now flaccid puppy onto the bird in a careless fashion and its appearance changed so it was now thin as if something vital had been drawn out of it.

 

With a scream of triumph and rage, with amazing speed and power, she leapt at the two armoured figures. But something sparkled and shimmered in mid-air, hurling her backwards with a scream of frustration, rage and pain. The beautiful monster of deadly illusions struck the floor but then began to rise again with amazing speed. The 20mmC and 15mmC shells ripped through a wall as the other two B/of/S opened up on her with their weapons. The powerful projectiles ripped her body to shreds. In the doorway the two steel soldiers whirled with amazing speed and added their firepower to the barrage.

 

The ghoul vampire burned away and only a kind of gungy softly glowing ash fell to the floor.

 

The lieutenant and the soldier beside him moved further into the hut even as a shimmering ran through the puppy and it filled out, visibly becoming healthier and fitter. Then it was sleeping a normal healthy sleep.

 

With a sparkling shimmer Bobby-Bill came into view and carefully, gently picked up the sleeping puppy and held it in his arms. He was sitting on the bed as he spoke to the three. “My name is Bobby-Bill. Name is odd but it comes from the deep mutated highlands of Western Virginia along with the people who came here to the island of Columbia to find a new home.”

Lieutenant Dolton nodded. “Our people sent scouts up there. Isolated highlands like that should have been safer but got struck by some kind of exotic super weapon. I heard there were some big bunkerplexes there and clan-family strongholds.”

 

Bobby-Bill nodded. “Lots of Harringtons still up there and also others in those strongholds. Lots of blood feuds, territorial greed, superstitions, hatred and fear of outsiders, twisted church faiths, dark cults, goddess cults, psychic powers, bizarre mutations, monsters and a string of heavily fortified VaultTek vaults and USFG bunkerplexes that nobody can seem to get into.” He changed subject. “That was a ghoul vampire, or ghoulvire, a very nasty and very powerful type of beastie that is more powerful than a human vampire and a ghoul combined would be. Ghoulvires seem to thrive on doing evil with only a very few important exceptions for the important exception seem to be exceptionally powerful even for their kind. The majority of ghoulvires, the evil ones, seem to be mostly servants of some kind of evil entity, a dark mystery.”

 

Dolton frowned. “Is this area a focus of these monsters, a kind that my people have not met before?”

 

“No more than any where else.” He shrugged. “If they have home grounds nobody has found them and lived to tell about it, or at least they are not speaking of it. That creature was not here by mistake. I sensed purpose beyond it being here. You were in greater danger than you knew. You assumed that your armour and your metallic nature would hold it back easily; you were wrong. It would have killed at least one of you before you destroyed it and likely have wounded badly the other. For that was an elder of her kind and the older they get, the more powerful they get. I could have killed her with some difficulty but I considered that you deserved the chance to pay her for her deceptive cruelty.”

 

He stood up and yawned. Then he spoke again. “The 5-Star General’s House and the grounds around it are a death trap. Somebody was determined to make sure that nobody but they got into the bunker when they set it up. I have been picking up your surface thoughts and comlinks. You will need to find new disciplines of mind shielding and improved electronics and radio shielding. I have things to show you.”

 

Dolton frowned and then nodded his steel metallic head.

 

Close to the tilted shape of a rusting rust proof metal clothes line structure, stood a beautiful young woman floating as a fire elemental, glowing translucently flickering red and yellow, both like and unlike a solar elemental. Next to her stood five animal elementals, a mother dog and four of her puppies. They were translucent but otherwise like their old selves.

 

Bobby-Bill put down the solid puppy who happily dashed off to his mum and got very licked for his troubles. The other puppies rushed over to meet their sibling and licking and sniffing was exchanged with much excitement and wagging of tails.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited November 29, 2009 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

TWENTY-SEVEN

 

The robotic ship moved majestically across the lake after sliding out of a cave opening in the cliff face below the small mountain on Harem Island. The containership was ignored by the fast moving drones. Then it was coming to a slow halt and did halt close to the now enlarged set of platforms and other structures where the pumping-station was. Now it had modular residential buildings, an armoury, storage depots, big robotic turrets and manned turrets along with others, many of them only partly completed so that there was also scaffolding, heaps of materials and other items. Humans in worker power armour, androids in exosuits and robots were watching the big freighter and waiting for something to happen.

 

Neither they or the soldiers were concerned as the freighter opened down a big ramp from its bow and the ramp settled down onto a big new platform. Construction robots started coming down the ramp. Some floated through the air, some stomped on legs and others rolled on wheels or tracks.

 

The Bobby Triplets were setting it up so that folks could start going to and from the big bunkerplex inside Harem Mountain, the vault structure that could house at least a million people. And yet no invitations had been sent.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited November 29, 2009 by Maharg67

[dezdimona]

this story is just great.