Alpha-Omega

[Maharg67]

How sweet you are and thank you, Herculine!

 

Shows/Movies/Books/Comics/Other that will or may influence this writing

 

FALLOUT 1/2/3/Tactics/BOS the computer/console games :thumbsup:

FEAR the computer game :thumbsup:

OBLIVION the computer game :thumbsup:

GILLIGAN'S ISLAND the TV Show :banana:

X-FILES the TV Show :thumbsup:

LONE GUNMEN the TV Show :thumbsup:

SESAME STREET the TV Show :whistling:

SPACE INVADERS the video game :whistling:

DUNGEON AND DRAGON first edition gaming books :biggrin:

The throwing of various special dice for random influences :blink:

That old bit of chewing gum stuck to the underside of my computer desk :confused:

How tired I am and how much coffee I have drunk :wallbash: :yucky: :turned:

Others to be announced :wacko: :sweat: :sick:

[Maharg67]

SIX

 

President Vullumius of Megaton was the elite of the elite, as far as he was concerned. Three Elite Families dwelt inside the centuries old silo-bunker complex, in the actual bunkers, and three Nine Special Families served them. But Vullumius had never left the Inner Bunkerplex all of his life. He bustled along, mildly fat and unfit, dressed in a Prewar business suit but coloured shocking pink and a black tophat. He considered himself to be always impressive in appearance. Others considered that he always looked at least slightly foolish.

 

But he was far from being a fool as the last President had found at to his cost. Vullumius was one of the most brightest and cunning of the Presidents that had ever been. Now he was facing brand new kind of problem because it was partly founded inside the supposedly safe and secure Inner Bunkerplex itself and unlike most of those who had served before him, he was able to deal with it or so he hoped.

 

An ultrahigh radio frequency communication was going on between a unit somewhere inside the structure and somewhere out in space. It should have been easy enough to track down the unit that was that end of the communications but so far the computer network-systems and specialists had failed to do so. The hidden radio network-system seemed to be designed to avoid being tracked down.

 

The President had always known that the Inner Bunkerplex was a big maze of chambers, passageways and other spaces but not only the search began for the radio transmitter did he realize just how elaborate it was. Old storerooms had been opened up and some surprisingly useful stuff had been found along with some other amazing stuff. This included what could only be called a kind of museum-art gallery chamber.

 

The President was with his androids being his scantily clad female personal assistant, two body-armoured weapon baring bodyguards and two other assistants. But there was also Angerson, a petite almost cute freckled little woman in a Wartime kneedress of splashworked silkcloth. She was a special adviser from one of the Special Families. She was a security liaison officer but also a high ranking Elite Security Officer with a reputation for hardness and dogged thoroughness.

 

Angerson spoke as they walked rapidly along a recently robotic cleaned hallway, big and largely bare. “We have swept the museum-library-gallery and have found it clean of electronics of surveillance nature but that does not mean there is none. While we have hitech gear, we may be dealing with ultratech trickery. The people who created this whole base were able to utilise a wide range of ultratech, as you know, which is why it has survived so well. For every ultratech network-system we have gained access to and use of there is at least one that we know of that remains beyond us; there easily could be others that are hidden.”

 

The President frowned hard. He liked to be in control. He was largely in control of the Megaton President Council with his position, the Secretary of Council Affairs, the Treasurer of High Finance and six normal Councillors. His main enemy, one Emma Tahoe, was nicely wrapped up for the moment as her faction had suffered a series of defeats at his hands. He was in control of the Departmental Directors and the Departments they directed. He was in control of the Elite Security Agency and the Megaton Guard. He cared to keep the elites happy, to keep the military-security people appeased but he didn’t give a damn for the other folks of Megaton, especially those in Outer Megaton. Yet he knew enough not to hassle even them to much.

 

Angerson went on speaking. “Also of concern are some odd energy patterns showing in the major ultratech network-systems of fusion power, mattercation, duplication and super virtual reality along with others. The Core Artificial Intelligence Supercomputer, CAISC, has shown some odd inconsistencies. All these odd patterns are subtle at this moment but growing more pronounced. The odd thing is that the are no straight forward consequences of a general nature. Fusion power availability has dropped by 0.018% but mattercation-duplication production has become 0.012% more efficient. Two secondary SVR scenario/programs have gone offline but neither has been accessed for over a decade.”

 

The President snorted. “Then these matters are of no real concern.”

 

Angerson shook her head. “These things should not be happening at all. So far regeneration-rejuvenation, biovat/organovat and water-air circulation-recycling network-systems have shown no signs of change. For this we should be grateful at least. I strongly suggest that we activate all baseline security robots, securatrons and eyebots, and sent them out on an extensive sweep of the Inner Bunkerplex. Security officer led teams of security guards will need to unlock all armoured doors to storage vault-chambers. Current maps of the inner bunkerplex layout will need to be double if not triple checked. Of course certain sectors will be the province of elite ranks to check over.”

 

Vullumius was pleased to note that Angerson, as highly ambitious and competitive as she was, had openly acknowledged that she had neither the power or authority to do certain things or to go certain places.

 

But he was also reminded uncomfortably that, for all their power, that the Elite Families were quite fragile. The problem with inbreeding and sterility had been a growing one and yet the damned stupid families resisted strongly the input of outside genetics in various ways. They wanted their children to marry each other. So their numbers had been shrinking generally and increasingly more of them were born with problems of intellectual or mental handicaps or mental instability. Which was why he had instigated the ultra secret FNFN Project, the initials meaning absolutely nothing. It was hidden away in one of those sectors that even Elite Security did not go.

 

Then he sighed. “Angerson, today you learn things that I will only show you because there is no other choice. Today you become Elite Security Presidential Assistant. Let us start with this museum type chamber.”

 

Angerson looked briefly surprised but then she gave a quick bow. She was smart enough to know that such amazing, seemingly spontaneous generosity came with a high level of risk. The more she knew, the more useful but also dangerous she became to the President.

 

The museum, library, gallery was a great big chamber with mezzanine floors like great elegant balconies. Armaglass boxed and domed displays showed an atomic motorised roboremote sedan, or AMRS, a soldier figure in regular US/Army infantry power armour, a Hollywood robotic Robby the Robot, very life like android mannequins, or mannedroids, with Wartime and Prewar clothes and footwear plus many other displays. They walked past a 19th Century storefront wooden Indian, an elephant foot umbrella stand, large leather bound books, a big prototype laser-pistol, a neat stack of late 20th Century stacked cans of food and a basic early 20th Century tractor with a basic rollbar. Each display had a basic console with a 3Dscreen, a basic keypad and a slot for printing out hard-copies of wanted data.

 

Scientists, techies and other specialists were investigating the amazing chamber and its wealth of knowledge. Androids out numbered humans by at least two to one. A big duplicator-dispenser machine was selling for something called transcredit hardback copies of a very wide range of books in a fairly wide range of languages. But security was vetting them.

 

The President was handed a stack of books and as he looked through the titles he smiled for they were graphic novels, books full of cartoon strips, of more exotic erotic types.

 

He passed the books to an assistant android who would carry them for him.

 

Then he kept walking even as he talked to Angerson. “My grandfather brought me here when I was young. He, like the other President Councillors back then, did not want this place to be known by anybody outside of the council. They were paranoid and many of us Elite still are. I am glad that now others will benefit from this place and its resources.”

 

They made their way up a big wide spiral rampway to the mezzanine floors and there he led the group past a display of colourful movie posters of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. They were in a variety of languages but about half were in English. Then he was opening a thick vault door and through this they were stepping.

 

A security airlock followed and then they were in a great big chamber easily the size of the one they had just been in and they were again standing on a mezzanine deck. Displayed here were amazing machines, all highly exotic looking with blinking lights, tubes full of swirling glowing mist, rows of 3Dflatscreens and much else. Each was under an armaglass dome display and on a disk shaped platform.

 

There were only a small number of scientists, techies and other specialists there. Again androids outnumbered humans by at least two to one.

 

Angerson spoke. “What do they do?”

 

The President shook his head in wonder. “Logically they should do nothing but, defying science as we know it, each of them does something weird and wonderful. So far we have activated fully and controllably only five out of fifty-eight machines in this great chamber but one may hold hope for the Elites of Megaton.”

 

They made their way down to the main level of this new chamber and faced a big machine with a strange design of a slowly rotating horizontal formation of sloping semitransparent armaglass cylinders. It was like some weird round-a-bout. In three of the nine cylinders were naked women wrapped in a strange green mist. The women were semiconscious in some fashion and all three were obviously in various stages of pregnancy.

 

Angerson frowned softly. “Those are two Megaton Guards and a techie of the Special Families who supposedly vanished on a mission outside of Megaton, out in the DC/Wastelands. What does this mean?”

 

The President smiled, took out a stunrod and shot Angerson. She collapsed into the arms of a quick moving android assistant. Later they had her stripped naked and lying back semiconsciously in a fourth cylinder full of odd gas but not before the President had taken sexual advantage of her three times. He wanted her pregnant to him so that the machine could then work its special wonders on the genetics of both the woman and their offspring.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

[Herculine]

How sweet you are and thank you, Herculine!

 

Shows/Movies/Books/Comics/Other that will or may influence this writing

 

FALLOUT 1/2/3/Tactics/BOS the computer/console games :thumbsup:

FEAR the computer game :thumbsup:

OBLIVION the computer game :thumbsup:

GILLIGAN'S ISLAND the TV Show :banana:

X-FILES the TV Show :thumbsup:

LONE GUNMEN the TV Show :thumbsup:

SESAME STREET the TV Show :whistling:

SPACE INVADERS the video game :whistling:

DUNGEON AND DRAGON first edition gaming books :biggrin:

The throwing of various special dice for random influences :blink:

That old bit of chewing gum stuck to the underside of my computer desk :confused:

How tired I am and how much coffee I have drunk :wallbash: :yucky: :turned:

Others to be announced :wacko: :sweat: :sick:

 

Now I better understand why I like your stories so much... you're just as eclectic as I am!

[Maharg67]

Thank you, Herculine!!!

 

SEVEN

 

Bobby looked out over the Martian surface towards the distant Marsville, the major city on Mars of the newly forming Solsystem Federation. He then turned to look in another direction. He appeared like a typical young tribal brave in metal reinforced leather armour and armed with a 3/shot bolt-action rifle of a kind often used by the tribals. But holstered at both sides were two big powerful .38 Magnum revolver-pistols and over one shoulder hung a scabbarded samurai sword.

 

A light warm breeze blew pollen and dust from the east as he looked roughly north to the only small appearing dome of Marsville. A coyote howled on the breeze being one of the Terran animals to adapted well to the new Martian conditions, at least in the Green Zones.

 

He turned back to look at a dirt road winding gently towards the base of a vast Terraforming machine tilted up from where it was sunk deep into the ground. The road ran to an end at a settlement situated below a massive strut and that took advantage of great gridworking and other substructures.

 

Small groups were making their way towards the settlement along the road. They were often using horse or oxen drawn wagons or were riding horses. There were donkeys and mules loaded with packs. Less common were basic electric or steam powered machines. While there were braves and amazons as warriors, there were mostly non warriors though a few were hunters.

 

It was soon clear to him that these people were refugees of some kind. He could sense a fear, an urgency about their movements. They were taking everything they could with them including flocks of sheep, cattle and even building materials.

 

In that settlement was hidden somebody he wanted to speak to but for now he was just content to observe quietly what was happening.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited December 12, 2009 by Maharg67

[species5478]

LoL...battlebuggies...lol...I even like saying the name!

[Maharg67]

Thanks Species5478. I think its a great name myself and I intend there will be plenty of them used in the story. Battle of the battlebuggies!

 

EIGHT

 

Jack’O’Man and his Regulators came to Megaton where they were welcomed by the Outer Megaton Folk happily enough. CCA soldiers had raided painfully close to Megaton itself and nobody liked what they had been up to. Ironically it was the real bandits and less common, more dangerous raiders who hated them greatly for they hated both the competition and having to fight these soldiers. They preferred going through the Jagged Lands happily dealing with neither side of the old war. Normal Wastelanders were tough enough to deal with and seemed to be getting tougher somehow, better organised.

 

Megaton was part of the Non-Aligned Union of Settlements or NAUS. It was an irony that they had ended up organising to avoid joining either organised side of the old war for the Island of Columbia. NAUS had no qualms with trading with both the UnionCol or the CrosCom. At least the Elite Families did not though the Outer Megaton Folk had good treason not to trust the CrosCom traders who tended to try to cheat.

 

The battlebuggies were parked close to the Regulator Outpost building and local traders had come down to see the loot taken from the dead CCA soldiers. It was an open secret where the stuff came from but nobody mentioned the fact openly. Jack’O’Man let his traders deal with this because they were much better at it than he was though he was not half bad at bartering himself.

 

They were outside of the big crater itself and inside the massive ring wall which was big enough to be also a fortified building in its own right. Power wind-wheels turning in the strong breeze and solar power arrays moved slowly to follow the path of the sun. There were some areas greenery with tough grasses, bushes and trees along with flowerbeds and other trees or bushes dotting elsewhere. Along with citizens, nearly all of the adults being armed, there were informal Megaton Militia. The militia staid informal because the Elite Families would not allow any other force in Megaton but the Megaton Guard which they strictly controlled. They kept their true numbers and other resources a secret and, with much arrogance, the Megaton Guard ignored the militia as being of no threat and of no importance.

 

Close by was the Order of Compassion Outpost which was protected by the Order of Protection. While the Sisters and Brothers of Compassion wore short robes plus trousers, shirts and body-armour, the Sisters and Brothers of Protection wore metal armour and fatigues. OrderProtect soldiers were well trained and equipped as well as highly experienced by the time they came to places like Megaton so close to the dreaded Jagged Lands.

 

Though the UnionCol constantly denied it, as did the Orders themselves, the Crosswayne Commonwealth claimed that the Orders were puppets of their enemies and would not allow them into Commonwealth Territories. The truth was they feared that the Orders would soon discover the terrible way that the commonwealth treated many of its people and worst of all its slaves. Slavery was banned in the Union of Columbia which was one of the reasons the old war had taken place, a war in which the commonwealth had been pushed back to lose over forty percent of its old territories. The CCG claimed it had been a victory for them but if so it was not a type of victory they could afford to win again. What had ended the war was that both sides had ran out of steam and had been forced to deal with other problems.

 

The irony was that most of the great island remained out of control of either side in the war and even most of their territories were barely controlled by them.

 

Buildings were painted metal and parts of prefabricated building. There were a sprinkling of prefabricated bottle-bunkers hidden except for entry-huts or other buildings above them, basic prefabricated bunkers beneath the ground, guard-towers and other structures. A small airstrip could be seen in the distance and a double helipad that along with a hanger and a terminal made up the small airport. The tannery was out of sight but its stink could be picked up lightly on the air.

 

Megaton Guards in body-armour and combat fatigues were in and on the defensive ring-wall where others were not allowed to go except for special circumstances. Megaton Guards were a mixture of humans of the Guard Families, special androids and mercenaries whose families dwelt in their own special area of Outer Megaton. All officers, NCOs and Elite Squads were of the Guard Families. Only the Elite Squads had power armour or energy weapons.

 

Jack’O’Man was never pleased at the sheer number of Megaton Guards who numbered just over ten thousand. That about one for every ten other people who lived in Megaton be they of the Elite Families or those many who lived in one of the big Common Houses with little more than a bunk, a foot-locker and a wall-locker to call their own. The Megaton Guard was powerful, well embedded and had some extra tricks up its sleeves should there be an attempted rebellion or invasion in Megaton.

 

Something caused him to look up and then he froze in surprise for passing very high through the sky above, leaving a contrail behind itself, was a sleek black supersonic jet of some kind. It was moving damned fast and it was heading for Washington DC proper, the great city semiruins beneath the still intact City/Dome. A dome that was actually a bubble and which had not let anybody in or out for easily over two centuries.

 

Then others were looking upwards and were amazed.

 

Suddenly the world was looking a great deal bigger than the Island of Columbia.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

[Maharg67]

Above have been added two new chapters, SEVEN and EIGHT

[dezdimona]

had some catching up to do. Excellent as always.

[Herculine]

Like the Lady said... always excellent!

[Maharg67]

Thank you Dezdimona and Herculine, as always. I will do my best to continue to entertain you and others.

 

NINE

 

Star Marshal Hawk/Eye Samuels had gained special data from Spacestation Freedom. All those who had perished in the spacestation were linked with the creation of JSET but so was he. Except those who had perished were also linked to a special decision to detonate the secret super weapon hidden inside JSET’s spaceship. It was a decision justified at the time to expend the super soldiers for the sake of humanity but it had turned out to be a lie.

 

The Solsystem President, one Johnson Jameson, had decided that the new Solsystem Federation had to be created even if it meant giving amnesty to the criminals who had murdered the surviving JSET metahumans. Most had accepted the decision because the Solsystem Federation needed the assets of the crumbling Spacer Federation and now they had them.

 

Bobby of the Jupiter Space Expeditionary Taskforce had somehow returned alone to Spacestation Freedom, where the JSET soldiers had spent years growing and training. There he had utilised amazing new powers to kill fifteen powerful individuals of the now gone Spacer Federation. But he had done so before the Solsystem Federation was able to take over the aged spacestation and thus the crimes had not been committed inside its territories or jurisdiction. Thus the Solsystem Federation, or SSF as it was now often being called, had no strong desire to officially deal with the murders of the fifteen. Indeed there was a sigh of relief, hidden of course, that the new federation did not have to give positions of authority to the fifteen criminals who had been murdered.

 

Unofficially an extensive search had soon found no sign of Bobby of JSET. He was gone as if he had never been there.

 

For a time Star Marshal Hawk/Eye Samuels found himself attending a series of meetings at Marsville, many of them VIP with the SSF President himself residing.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited December 14, 2009 by Maharg67